IT Horizons Blog

Folders suck at making your data and documents easily searchable and they’re slowing your business down. That’s a pretty bold statement isn’t it? After all, file folders have been used since the early days of enterprise to store documents and information, why all of the sudden do they suck? I’m going to answer that for you with a quickly conjured example of your typical folder, letting you down when you need it the most. I’ve always thought accounting was sort of a neat field, so I’m going to create a fake accounting firm called ‘Horizons Accounting and Bookkeeping Company’ (HABCO). Here is what a folder structure for a company such as HABCO might look like. You can see we have: Duplicate sub-folders such as invoices, taxes and year end. A complicated amount of folder/subfolder nesting. Folders are containers. They describe what is inside of them. The invoices folder holds invoices, straightforward...

I hear people often refer to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive as backups. I’d like to dispel that myth by explaining why these cloud services do not provide enough data protection to be considered a true backup and also how an actual online backup system can provide robust data protection that compliments the convenience offered by you cloud storage service of choice. Cloud storage service – how does it work? A cloud storage service like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.net synchronizes documents and files from your personal computers and devices with your cloud provider. If you make a change to your documents on one of your connected computers or devices, those changes replicate to all your other devices by synchronizing through the cloud (and by cloud we mean a data center/set of servers and storage devices maintained by the provider). This is handy because now you can access your files...

You know you need technology to run your business, but you don’t know where to start, or don’t have the time or money to do it. You're not techy and your company is behind in the technology realm. Just getting your office printer, or your email to work is a challenge. Investing in technology, learning new software, getting new computers and a network means learning new processes and it seems terrifying. It doesn’t have to be, it can be simple when you hire the right IT team to help take your business to the next level! The days of keeping customer information in paper phone books, and invoicing by paper are long gone. You need technology to get things done, to keep your client information safe, and to get systemized. Before investing in the latest-and-greatest gadget that promises to turn you into a computer whiz and make your business the...

'The Cloud' refers to accessing your data or programs over the Internet instead of locally. “The cloud” is really just a metaphor for the Internet. Some of you may have even seen the Internet expressed in drawings as a puffy white cloud, back in the day. This is where the term, 'the cloud,' started. How can a business benefit from using the cloud? Unparalleled Connectivity & Increased Collaboration: Access your data from anywhere at any time with your team. You can save thousands of dollars on your business' information technology needs. Physical onsite servers & backup solutions are now optional. Just 5 years ago, when a small business was moving to the next level and needed an IT infrastructure, the cost could be between $15,000 and $30,000! Today, instead of investing all that upfront cost for technology hardware and physical setup, we can leverage cloud subscriptions that often take a...