Planning IT Expenses for the New Year

Jan 1, 2014
3 min read

Happy New Year everyone! With the new year rolling in and many businesses owners and managers in wind down mode the last month our so now is the time that you should really be planning your IT expenses for the upcoming year if you have not yet done so. There are some important changes in the IT world coming up this year that you do not want your business left in the dark about. Most notably is the end of life for Windows XP. Windows XP support from Microsoft will be ending on April 8th, 2014. When XP reaches its end of life date the operating system will become even more vulnerable than it has been in past years. Hackers will find new security risks within the operating system and Microsoft will no longer work to patch those risks. This means anyone making credit card transactions, online banking, etc. is at high risk for identity theft. One other aspect to think about is if your company hosts confidential data about clients on your network, having a Windows XP computer on your network puts that data at risk as well.

Due to the end of life of Windows XP businesses are going to be forced to either use Windows 7 or Windows 8 computers. Because Microsoft has had Windows 8 out for some time now, Windows 7 computers are no longer available in big box retailers. The problem with this is if your company waits until XP's end of life and your industry specific software is not supported on Windows 8 yet, once again your going to be at risk if you cannot get any Windows 7 computers in quickly. Do you know if your software is compatible with Windows 8 or not? Now is the time to find out! This is not something you want to wait to the end of life to get started on. There will be many companies that do wait and the demand for Windows 7 computers will sky rocket making them difficult to come by. One other note, online retailers are only allowed to sell Windows 7 computers through November of this year so if for some crazy reason you wait that long its going to be even more difficult to track down a Windows 7 computer. Another thing your company should be planning for is a business class router if you do not have one already. Business class routers can greatly improve security of company assets and can help cut waste from employees playing on the Internet all day. Don't think your employees would do that? You would be surprised how many times we hear that then after we put one in can actually show you the amount of non-work related pages that are used during the day at work. Studies show that as much as 2 hours a day employees have admitted to spending online doing non-work related things. That's more than 2 and a half weeks of pay for that employee a year! Now imagine that number over your entire staff...What could your business do with that wasted money? What about your IT support costs? It would be great to know exactly what your costs would be each month. With our Managed Service plans we cover all of your IT related bases providing you with a monthly IT budget, peace of mind, and increased employee productivity. Less downtime! Give ABC Computer Solutions a call today to schedule a consultation and begin planning for your businesses new year. Don't wonder what your IT costs will be this year, know!