January 2008
In this issue

√ Boost Hiring Success
√ Success Story
√ Seminar Update
√ Security Reminders
√ Employee Spotlight
 

If you've been in business for any length of time, you've done the painful hiring dance. I sometimes refer to it as, "The revolving door policy."

I've hired some good ones and some bad ones. I've used newspapers, college Web sites and the job sites on the Internet. Recently, I've had a stroke of good luck. Or is it that I am getting better at it?

I've learned some lessons, which I am offering here in the hopes that you may be able to apply them. Life is painful enough without hiring the wrong person. So here are my "6 rules for minimizing hiring grief by using the Web."

For the 6 rules read on

D.C.-based Firm Gets Upgrade
and Superior Remote Support from ITS

Background
The Performance Institute is a private, nonpartisan think tank improving government results through research and training on management best practices. Based in Washington, D.C. and San Diego, the Institute serves as the nation's leading authority and repository on performance-based management practices for government.

The Challenge
Prior to IT Solutions’ involvement, the company had an aging network infrastructure that was causing complications with e-mail capacity and delivery, as well as increasing amounts of spam. With user frustrations and network delays on the rise, The Performance Institute found itself in serious need of short-term upgrade assistance and longer-term technical support and guidance. To complicate matters, the company’s in-house IT administrator was leaving the company, creating a large gap in internal knowledge and support for not only the increasing amount of issues, but the day-to-day monitoring and upkeep required.

"We had just experienced the unthinkable - our mail server crashed and we lost mail from dozens of users, and on top of that, that is when we realized we had no reliable back-up system in place," recalled Nicole Cathcart, Vice President of Marketing for The Performance Institute. "Although we could identify the end outcomes we wanted from our IT, our needs were growing past our ability to effectively hire or manage any IT staff. As a small company, we needed an IT solution in place quickly that was cost-effective and 100% reliable."

The Solution
After a rapid but careful analysis of the current infrastructure, IT Solutions recommended and then implemented an up-grade of the server environment to Microsoft Windows 2003 Server. MS Exchange 2003 was also deployed to eliminate the e-mail capacity/delivery issues. A spam-blocking service was put in place to dramatically cut down on the nuisance of unwanted e-mail, and or DataShield product was put in place to monitor bandwidth usage and help optimize users’ online work responsibilities.

As with many similar businesses, data backups could be unreliable at The Performance Institute, so IT Solutions installed our DataVault product to eliminate the gaps in coverage and provide offsite replication of critical data in the event of a catastrophe at the client’s location. In addition, external domain name system (DNS) issues were consolidated to improve efficiencies, and Active Directory/Group Policy was analyzed and reconfigured to make internal network access more streamlined.

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