Spring Cleaning tips for your technology

When I was growing up, spring cleaning was both a major event and an annual ritual at our house. As a part of that ritual, the entire family was asked to go through every nook and cranny of the house, look through everything that had been shoved under beds, piled into closets, and hidden away in the attic in order to make the basic decision of keep it or toss it.

While I have to admit I didn’t much care for it as a child, as an adult working with data I have come to see the wisdom of my mother’s ways. Because if you think families keep a lot of useless junk around the house, you ought to see what the average company has stored on their computers and servers for no good reason these days!

So let's get cleaning!

Here are some Spring Cleaning tips for businesses to follow to help keep your data organized and your IT operating smoothly.

Data Clean up:
There are two ways to clean up data.

(1) Delete it or
(2) Archive it

It's a good practice to go through your electronic files once a year and determine whether or not those files need to be saved, archived, or just deleted. By doing this it will not only help you improve efficiency; it will also help you lower your storage costs, reduce power and cooling consumption in your server, and make the entire operation run more smoothly by making files easier to locate.

Technology Audit:

In today's economy, running efficiently is a necessity. To operate your business at it's maximum potential while keeping your expenses down, you have to be educated on what areas are costing you more than they should. Conducting a yearly telecomm audit is a smart move for any company. This audit will help to find areas where you can reduce costs without reducing service. Companies like SJK conduct these audits for free for companies and the savings can really impact your bottom line. What do you have to lose?

Update your IT Library & backup procedure:

This is something that few people put any value in, but it is one of the most important pieces of your technology spring cleaning. Organize your computer documentation, software CDs, licenses, hardware inventory, and make sure that all your critical data is being included in your backup. I'm sure you have all been there at one point or another. Your system crashes and you need to reload the PC or a particular piece of software - but you can't find the software or the license! How frustrating! Keeping a good IT library alleviates the stress of reloading a PC or recovering an item from your backup.