Month: February 2023

Having a plan for an internet outage is crucial.

If your internet goes down, Ultra IT will go through a thorough checklist first to figure out where the problem lies:

• Is it a hardware issue?
• Is your computer playing up and not connected to the network?
• Is it a firewall or modem that is causing the issue?
• Is it the line or the internet coming in to the building ?

In most cases, it could be at least three different vendors that you will have to deal with, if you are sorting the problem yourself.

Ultra IT will deal with all of your vendors, so that you don’t have to coordinate them, and figure out where the problem lies.

Recently we have partnered with Vodafone, and recommend them to our customers, in order to streamline processes if something does go wrong.

Think about the country of Canada. Earlier this year, business ground to a halt in an instant. A botched maintenance update by a large internet service provider (ISP) created chaos for more than 10 million customers.

Here are some suggestions that can help you ensure you are protected against an Internet outage:

Building a backup plan for lost internet

About one-quarter of Canada’s internet capacity was offline. The downtime lasted only 12 hours for some, days for others. The list of outage impacts is long. The problem halted some point-of-sale payments, some nonprofits lost the ability to serve vulnerable populations, and cellular-dependent traffic signals in Toronto were out of whack.

What can we learn from this? Businesses should prepare a backup.

Backing up your internet

Setting up a secondary internet connection can help your business remain online. You’ll be ready if there are system issues, intrusions, or power a failure. For this to work, you’ll need to partner with a different provider than you do for your primary internet. This cuts the odds that both your main and backup internet will go down at once.

If your primary internet connection is wired, consider a cellular backup. For example, a router with 4G backup would switch you to that network if the main connection failed.

The very nature of redundancy is that it repeats what you already have. That can make some businesses balk: Why pay twice? Yet internet redundancy can help you avoid lost business, productivity, and brand reputation, not to mention the stress of having to try to do business in this digital age without being able to get online.

Maybe you can’t reinforce your IT infrastructure with a second provider. At least reach out to your current ISP to learn their backup plans. Ensure they have failovers established to back up their systems.

The Canadian outage saw many businesses floundering. With the ubiquity of technology today, it’s not unlikely that more ISP outages will happen. Be ready for the worst with plans for redundancy and contingency plans.

In Summary

Ultra IT can take care of all of these issues for you. If you would like to talk to the local Vodafone representative, please contact Deena Pawson, Northland Customer Business Manager at Vodafone.

Hopefully, we never experience an issue like Canada did, however it is is best to be prepared. Contact the team at Ultra IT if you would like further information.

The impact of technology on the environment is well known, and yet we are seeing some small but significant changes, which signal a shift in the right direction.

Why does Technology have such a big impact on the environment?

The effect on the environment is not only because hardware is replaced every few years, but also because everything is backed up online, and sits in a data centre. These data centres use a huge amount of electricity and resources in the process. Plus there is the packaging…and there is a lot of packaging.

However, it is not all doom and gloom, here are a few great innovations that are making incremental changes to the environmental impact.

Cardboard packaging:

Just a few years ago, we would end up with piles of polystyrene packaging, that the computers, monitors, phones and every other IT devices were packaged in.

This packaging was NOT recyclable and we could only pay for it to be dumped.

Now, very little packaging comes with IT equipment. Nearly everything now uses pre-pressed cardboard. This contains far less material as it is shaped and not solid, and can go directly into recycling. What a great difference this simple change has made.

Better electronics:

The latest devices tend to use far less power than the ones a few years ago. The processors are more powerful, and less power hungry.

Because they consume less power, they need less cooling and less cooling means they can be designed to use less materials. Manufacturers are thinking hard about how to reduce power consumption.

Smaller devices:

Devices are generally getting smaller and therefore use less materials in manufacture.

The classic example of this is the move several years ago now from the huge CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors to the much thinner and lighter digital screens.

The other clear example is moving from the older desktop computers to predominantly NUCS or mini-PCs, which have a fraction of the raw materials. Again, our recycling racks would be full of old desktop computers, whereas now there is just a small pile of dead NUCs.

Better recycling:

The recycling services have also improved. Whilst e-waste continues to be a huge global issue, New Zealand technology companies are seeing small gains happening.

Use of recycled materials:

Some laptop brands have started using recycled materials in the construction of equipment such as laptop cases, and laptop bags, even letting you know how many plastic bottles it took to make them!

Carbon offset schemes:

Some manufacturers are also offering carbon offset schemes, where you can offset the emissions used in producing and manufacturing the equipment. Ask us for more details if you are interested.

Manufacturers are aware that consumers are increasingly aware of the impact on the environment, and want to make a point of difference.

It’s definitely not all roses as we still despair at the number of plastic bags that are used, and how every little thing comes in its own bag.

In summary, we wanted to let you know that there are many notable changes going on in the IT industry to make it ‘greener’ and less damaging to our planet.