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Burnt Orange Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts Talk About Windows End Of Life… Are You Ready?

The Trusted team at Burnt Orange Solutions are located in the Saskatoon computers Category.

Honesty and respect are important factors in daily communication at Burnt Orange. Gareth and the team at Burnt Orange Solutions are YOUR Saskatoon IT stress solution. Burnt Orange Solutions are your Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts


WINDOWS END OF LIFE…ARE YOU READY?

Our Saskatoon IT Tips are from the Trusted professionals at Burnt Orange Solutions.  We promise to have a one-hour response time for all your Saskatoon IT support needs. Honesty and respect are important to us. In our latest  IT Expert tip Article, we discuss the imminent Windows end of life and what happens if you aren’t prepared.

Windows End Of Life.

Let’s start off with the news that the much-loved Windows 7 operating system has now less than 1 year of life left in it.

On January 13th, 2020 Microsoft will cease to provide any further updates or security patches for Windows 7.

After this date, Windows 7 will become an ever-increasing security hole in your home or business network. As hackers and criminals find and make use of security gaps in the coding of Windows seven anyone who is still using it will be at greater risk of infection risking data being stolen or made inaccessible.

Saskatoon businesses need to plan for the change now. Depending on where you look for the figures, polls show that anywhere between 30% and 50% of businesses still use Windows 7.

Depending upon the number of PCs, the complexity of the network and the number of different programs used it could take months to plan and roll out new Windows 10 PCs to a business network.

Burnt Orange advice, contact your IT support company now to ensure you are fully secure and using Windows 10 before Christmas 2019.

Windows Server 2008 End Of Life Date Approaching

The much-used Windows 2008 Server operating system has now less than 1 year of life left in it.  Windows 2008 Server will become an ever-increasing security hole in your business network. As hackers and criminals find and make use of security gaps in the coding of Windows 2008 Server anyone who is still using it will be at greater risk of infection risking data being stolen or made inaccessible.

Depending upon the number of servers, the complexity of the network and the number of different programs used it could take months to plan and roll out new Windows 2019 Servers to a business network.

Burnt Orange advice, contact your IT support company now to ensure you are fully secure and using Windows Server 2019 before Christmas 2019.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 End Of Life – What You NEED To Do

This doesn’t mean that your Windows 7 PC or 2008 Server will suddenly stop working, what it does mean is that no more patches or upgrades will be released by Microsoft.  It means that every day after January 13th the Windows 7 computers and 2008 Servers will become less secure and more likely to be infect by a virus or become victim to ransomware or other hacking type code.

Recovering from a virus attack or ransomware infection is a very expensive operation, so what should your business be doing?

  1. Contact our team at Burnt Orange Solutions to discuss planning an upgrade to Windows 10 and Server 2019. Depending upon the age of your PC hardware it may not be necessary to buy new computers, but it will mean server hardware. Early investigation is a must as it can take months to plan and roll out an upgrade depending upon your individual needs.
  2. Contact all your software vendors, do the programs you use on a daily basis function in Windows 10 and Server 2019? If not, you are going to either need to upgrade or move to a new software package.
  3. This is going to cost your business money, there is no way to avoid it. New computers, new softwares, IT consultants and engineers, possible down time due to the upgrade process, possible business interruption.
  4. Plan on changes to your network if you need to keep any Windows 7 PCs or 2008 Servers in your office due to legacy software packages (fun fact – 7% of the worlds computers still run Windows XP), these PC must be kept separate from the rest of the network for security reasons.

Burnt Orange Solutions can help your business navigate this necessary evil, whether you have 1 PC or 500. The main take away here is to start the process sooner rather than later!!

As 2020 approaches expect many IT companies to be very busy and not have time to fit you in for an upgrade.

Don’t be offended if in December 2019 you call a computer support company to discuss the upgrade and all you hear is laughter from the other end of the phone.




Contact Burnt Orange today for more information or to take advantage of your FREE initial consultation. View them on Facebook here. They are your Burnt Orange Solutions are Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts!


Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts Burnt Orange Solutions Top 5 Ways IT Adds Value To Businesses

The Trusted team at Burnt Orange Solutions are located in the Computers & Web Design Category.

Honesty and respect are important factors in daily communication at Burnt Orange. Gareth and the team at Burnt Orange Solutions are YOUR Saskatoon IT stress solution. Burnt Orange Solutions are your Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts


IT Adds Value To Businesses

Of all the reasons that a business doesn’t leverage IT, the one that makes the least sense to me has to do with their size. There seems to be a reluctance to adopt more than what – for whatever reason – is “enough” for a business of their size and or capacity.

There is definitely a disconnect here that needs addressing. We know that more technology solutions, designed to make a company’s tasks easier, are not going to make these tasks harder. If anything, adding the right technology will help to increase the business’ capacity and profitability.  Maybe it’s because the employees of a business are afraid that their jobs will be at risk if a machine can do them – and they’ve never considered that someone still has to tell the machines what to do.

Regardless of the reason, it is important that anyone in charge of making decisions for a business understands the true benefits that modern IT solutions can deliver to all parts of their operations.

For instance:

IT Benefit 1. Money Management

Let’s face it, without money coming in, no business can operate for long. So the ability to properly manage incoming and outgoing cash flow is pretty crucial. A simple spreadsheet can be used to accomplish this, but that requires many hours to be invested to keep this document updated.

On the other hand, the right IT solutions can eliminate a considerable portion of this requirement. This allows you to save time, reviewing your finances and looking at future growth, instead of constantly micro-managing them.

 

IT Benefit 2. Team Work & Collaboration

One of the problems with most ‘tried-and-true’ business solutions, like paper files in a cabinet, is the fact that they make teamwork more difficult. With paper files, people need to be involved and often gathered in the same room. This makes life difficult and risks papers getting mixed up or lost, and perhaps crucial insights that won’t make it out of meetings.

However, there are IT solutions, like cloud computing, that not only keep these kinds of documents secure, they also allow your team members to easily work together on a document, wherever they happen to be. As a result, all insight and progress are saved in one place, accessible to any who needs to work on it as a team.

 

IT adds value to businessesIT Benefit 3. Efficiency

Businesses have a huge amount of work to attend to, regardless of their size. Anything that can help that work be done faster should be a welcome addition. Whether that speed comes from analyzing how time is being spent and optimizing it, managing tasks through digital tools to ensure that all responsibilities are filled, or any other way, should be motivation enough to adopt the solutions that enable these benefits.

 

IT Benefit 4. Mobile Work and Telecommuting

Remember how technology solutions were able to enable collaboration, wherever a user happened to be? This is due to the mobility that many solutions can provide. Smartphones are more and more able to communicate with those devices, making it possible to work from effectively anywhere.

Other solutions can allow an employee to work from home, offering some additional productivity benefits and perks for employees.

IT Benefit 5. Customer Service

Finally, the right technology solution can assist your business with its all-important customer service needs. You could apply a method to assist customers in need of support automatically, saving time, as an employee can step in with a clearer idea of the situation – assuming the employee needs to interrupt what they were doing at all. If you run an appointment-based business, you can put the ability to schedule a time in your client/customer’s hands if you want, establishing availability and automatically having it update as it changes.

Of course, this is but a brief sampling of what the right solutions can do if properly leveraged. Make sure you read some of our other blogs and service descriptions to learn more about what we do.




Contact Burnt Orange today for more information or to take advantage of your FREE initial consultation. View them on Facebook here. They are your Burnt Orange Solutions are Trusted Saskatoon IT Experts!

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