DISASTER RECOVERY - PART 1 (Insurance Safeguard)

In the early days of 1982 when we first began Taylored Systems, it was a simple process to have a disaster recovery plan. Back then, you only had to worry about phone lines, and phone systems. If you were a small or medium sized business there was no voice mail or ACD (Automated Call Distribution). Exchange servers and internet came along a few years later. If anything you had a single standalone PC, and not everyone had a computer. In those days sales of fax machines were the going rage, and we spent several years selling them. There was only one phone company, Indiana Bell. If the phone lines went down we would contact someone at their home office to get help as call forwarding was just becoming popular, and if the phone systems went down we had spares in our warehouse to correct any problem.

In those simpler days most people did not expect you to return a call immediately, if you got back to them in the same day they were lucky. Now days when people call they expect either an immediate call back, or an email answer. Technology has come to a point where we live for immediate gratification in everything that we do, and because of this we are concerned about not only our phone lines and phone systems, but our internet connections, fax machines, voice mail, unified messaging, routers, Ethernet switches, exchange servers and regular servers. Should any of these go down or out, we would feel as if we were back in the dark ages using only candles for illumination, and the pony express for message delivery.

Taylored Systems has an existing Disaster Recovery Plan in place to keep us going in case of an emergency. Under our plan we have a T1 that provides our internet and phone line service, and a separate circuit that we share with other companies on a different server as backup, we also have a Toshiba CIX670 in our warehouse to replace the one in use. We do tape backups every night and change them every morning, and each week they are taken off premise for safety. Tapes are now becoming a thing of the past. Now we are transitioning into a BDR-Computer (Backup Disaster Recovery) to securely transfer our data and be within a short reach in the event we need a recovery.

With disasters like Katrina, the floods in Indiana that occurred last summer, and tornados almost every summer, we just need to be aware that anything can happen and we all need an insurance safeguard to keep our business running smoothly. Even though we were not in the midst of a natural disaster we have had to use our redundancy plan due to an outage. We simply logged into a website, and plugged our phones into our back up SIP trunks which kept us in business during the three hours the lines were down. With products like the BDR and a PLAN, it is now just as simple to manage all of our complex technologies as it was to manage the few pieces of equipment we started with in the early days.


Mary Couch’s conversation with Bill Taylor

Should a recession stop progress???

The answer to that question is NO! Recessions post WWII are measured by the unemployment rate. According to the U.S. Department of Labor the unemployment rate as of November 2008 is 6.7% and rising. Analysts predict that it will reach close to 8% before we see a turn around. Compare the 6.7%-8% to the average of 2007 and 2006, 4.6%; yes we are in a horrible downslide like a child who fell off his sled halfway down the hill. However there should be an opportunity seen in the downslide, an opportunity to examine a current place and find where one can become more efficient. Also we are not as bad off as we have been in the recent past…

In 1980-1985 the United States had a similar unemployment issue. The average of those six years was 8.1%. In the years between 1980 and 1985 we saw the rate rise from 7.1% in 1980 and top out at 9.7% in 1982 before finally beginning a descending swing in 1985 with the rate back to 7.2% and falling. During a recession with an unemployment rate the highest it had been since 1948, when the Department of Labor started measuring recessions based on unemployment, one would not find that as the best time to start a new business. However, in 1982, a young Bill Taylor DID start a new business, his FIRST business. The thought of a recession and unemployment never crossed his mind. He saw an opportunity to accomplish a goal and he went for it, in true American fashion.

The point of comparison is that even in today’s slow economy people should not stop what they are doing and hold steady. We should continue to look for opportunities and take care of our needs. The longer we stay stagnate waiting for things to change, we miss these opportunities, and those who did not tread water move directly past us taking our dream.

There will always be needs. Those needs will force struggling markets to regain their position and move the economy back to where it will continue to grow. Growth is something we have seen, even in the recession. Our structured cabling department has continued to grow. Our nurse call products for the healthcare industry have continued to grow. The necessity and growth for more bandwidth, and the decreasing cost of internet connectivity has coupled into a tremendous opportunity for companies to gain the bandwidth needed to do more efficient applications. Some of those applications we are seeing include online billing, online banking, online records, distance learning, hosted computer services, hosted phone systems, IP based video surveillance, government applications, hospitality industry providing internet to guests. These are a few areas that are continually growing and not standing still waiting. If they aren’t standing still why are you??????

Luckily here in the Midwest we have not seen the downturn as predominately as other areas of the country, so maybe it is easier for us to be optimistic about the future. Our message is to keep looking, find new ways to become efficient, use technology to your benefit, and create opportunities for yourself and others. Like the child who lost his sled we will inevitably try to sled again, lets just hope next time it’s a smaller hill, and we have breaks so we can stop and get back to the top more quickly without falling.

This was Michael Martin's latest conversation with Bill Taylor.

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Evolution or Revolution???

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

With a new year comes change. Change has sparked everything from debates to thinking to wars. Change has proved to be both good and bad, as well as provide comfort to some and horror for others. Change was made by the Pilgrims in the 1600s, debated by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in the 1700s, shown by Abraham Lincoln in the 1800s, felt world wide in the 1940s, practiced by Martin Luther King Jr. and sang about by Bob Dylan in the 1960s, initiated by Bill Gates in the 1980s, and accepted by the majority vote in 2008.

2008 was a year unique in its own for change. People have started to see the bottom of the barrel and are worried about how to fill it back up. In a downward plunge into one of the deepest depths our nation has ever been driven there is hope and a promise of better days. All of this has to do with change and learning from mistakes and triumphs of the past. We take this knowledge and use it towards our future in hopes that tomorrow will be a brighter day.

Taylored Systems has embraced this new outlook on the future and has asked ourself, what can we do, how can we do it, and how will we help others through??? We have answers to these questions and that is the purpose of this blog.

"Conversations with Bill Taylor" is one of many changes that are happening at Taylored Systems this New Year. The blog will be designed to help, inform, educate, and show insight. We will be updating this bi monthly and the information will be compiled from conversations with the founder of Taylored Systems, Bill Taylor, and key people that have helped him grow a small phone company into a multi-million dollar technology corporation. The idea is for us to help you and your company move forward through changing times.

Comments and questions are welcome and encouraged....

Good Luck to all and hopefully we will be meeting in the future.

Thanks

Taylored Systems