With over 80% of Internet users surfing on smartphones these days and mobile device usage growing nearly 60% year over year, there’s no denying that technology drives our actions. Once seen as a distraction in the workplace, mobile devices are now advantages to companies with field sales and other positions that need quick access to information on the fly. This digital transformation is also being aided by the adoption of BYOD policies and fuels the need for mobility.

The downsides to digital mobility include complications associated with printing on the go. Laptops, phones, and tablets have an advantage in the field but when it comes to printing a contract for signature or a document needed to bolster a sale, print has been a recurring obstacle. Until recently, field staff and other mobile employees or those who prefer tablets to laptops lacked print capability options; but not anymore.

Big Data – what does it mean?  Ask 5 people, get 5 different answers as it means many different things to different people. I do believe in Big Data and the value that can be achieved as data driven decisions and applications create immense value by utilizing data sources to discover, present and operationalize important business insights.  However, what I am seeing in the marketplace is confusing as every tech company claims to have a solution for analyzing the huge amounts of data businesses create. I challenge this reality … Do these tech companies really know how to use this data?  Or are they jumping into the hype and creating what is now being dubbed “Hadumps” and “Data Swamps”?   

Here is my belief … data on its own is meaningless – period. The value of data is not the data itself – it is what you do with the data.  For data to be useful you first need to know what data you need, otherwise you just get tempted to know everything and that is not a strategy, it’s an act of desperation that is doomed to end in failure. Why go to all the time and trouble collecting data that you won’t or can’t use to deliver business insights? Focus on the things that matter the most otherwise you’ll drown in data. Data is a strategic asset but it’s only valuable if it’s used constructively and appropriately to deliver results.  

Nearly three out of four organizations are at risk of failing to recover from a disaster or outage. Two thirds say their disaster recover (DR) planning did not prove useful in their worst event. Most have not documented their DR plans, have not established key metrics such as Recovery Time Objectives, Recovery Point Objectives, failover, or failback processes. Those are the disconcerting results of a survey conducted by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council. 

You know how important your systems are to your operation so if you fall into one of those categories, it’s time to do something about it. Here is a five-step plan to get you started on developing an effective DR plan.

1. Inventory your applications and services
As a first step, you need to understand what applications and services you are going to protect under your DR plan. Begin with mission critical apps that control your financial and business processes and then move on to others that are necessary to keep your ongoing business operations up and running. After identifying these critical elements, assign priority levels to each.