CPA Practice Advisor

SEP 2017

Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.

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4 SEPTEMBER 2017 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com RANDY JOHNSTON EVP & Partner K2 Enterprises & CEO of Network Management Group, Inc. randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com @RPJohnston FROM THE TRENCHES Hardware Matters - Think About Working With None! WHAT SHOULD I BE LOOKING FOR? With cloud strategies, including both hosting and SaaS, does local hardware matter? The short answer is yes, although some would debate that response. Like many technology answers, "it depends." Depends on what? Several items determine how much you must worry about these factors, for example: do you work locally, do you have reliable Internet access, how fast is your internet speed, are your applications available in the cloud, and how secure does your data need to be? Cloud will prob- ably not be cheaper, but is more likely to be accessible anywhere, anytime on any device. The following table outlines some of the components that you need to consider in a typical computer deployment: Note that the items listed below the "From Cloud provider:" line are things that you should manage in house if you implement a private cloud OR that you pay for separately if you use public cloud or a hosted provider service. All the components including: Firewall, Gigabit Switch, cabling, workstation (desktop or portable), monitor and storage still need to be managed, patched and replaced whether you are in the cloud or run a premise-based private cloud. Occasionally your hosted vendor will specify and require a particular firewall or switch and even less frequently the workstations will be managed by your hosted provider. Budget for replacements on a three to five-year cycle to keep your team members productivity high. Oh, and by the way, never forget backup and security! Computers are st ill sold at the rate of around 300 million per year with slightly declining volume over the past years, but with an increase in volume so far this year. Tablet volume is less than computers and declining more rapidly. Some users are trying to do the majority of their work from a mobile phone, but accounting and productiv- ity workers rarely find a mobile only solution viable. What should you look for in a current computer? Acceptable specifications include: ■ For processors, pick 6th-8th genera- tion Intel i5/i7/Xeon processors • Possibly new AMD Ryzen • Avoid i3, Atom, Celeron • If mobile, look for 2 in 1 or 3 in 1 designs, so the laptop can also be used at a tablet. By the way, we always recommend touch screen to improve productivity. ■ Other specifications • Solid State Drive (256 GB+) - M.2 NVMe • 8-16 GB RAM • Stick with business grade/ workstation grade hardware • Touch screen • Consider ■ WWAN (cellular SIM option) ■ Docking station ■ External keyboard WITH SO MUCH focus on Cloud and Mobile, can you imagine using your technology with no hardware? Hardware has become so cheap, reliable and generally good, many of us take this part of our technology experience for granted. It has been ten years since we've had the iPhone, and the wave of current cell phones has impressive capabilities. But more impressive are the servers, desktops, monitors, scanners, laptops, firewalls and switches that support our technology productivity. Technology releases go in cycles and this year is certainly a banner hardware year. COMPONENT GOOD BETTER BEST Firewall True Firewall Security Services Managed Gigabit Switch Layer 2-Trunking Stacked Backplane Layer 3 Chassis Cabling CAT 6A CAT 6AF CAT 8 Workstation Core i5 8GB Core i7 8GB Core i7 16GB Monitor Two 22" Three 24" One-Two 27-32" Storage 15K Drives SSD SSD NVMe From Cloud provider: Server Tower Rack Xeon Rack Xeon SAN iSCSI SATA Fiber Channel Virtualization VMware ESXi VMware Essentials+ VMware Enterprise Remote Microsoft RDS Citrix XenApp Citrix XenDesktop or VMWare View

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