Too often businesses are looking at their organizational map with “the business” and its functions on one side, and the Information Technology (IT) services on the other. The business focuses all of its planning on one side and doesn’t even think about the other.

By: Mark Richmond, President/CEO of Micro Doctor IT

Ransomware is a virus that encrypts the files on a computer and any network shared drives attached to that PC. Businesses are being hit with ransomware at an alarming pace. Once those files are encrypted there are 2 options: pay the ransom (averaging $1500.00 in Bitcoins) or restore from an unaffected backup.

When it comes to social media, figuring just what, if any, value it offers your business can be complicated. There is no exact science when it comes to figuring it out and even experts disagree as to just what is and is not important when measuring the value of your company's social media.

Big data. You may have heard of it; after all it’s been putting in an appearance at boardroom meetings across the globe for some time now. But what actually is big data? And what does it mean when applied in a business environment? More importantly, what can it do and how can it help your organization to succeed? And getting down to the nitty-gritty, does the term big data actually mean anything – or is it just another empty industry buzz word? The good news is that it’s not, and using big data can actually help drive profit.

Are you making the most of one of your business’s greatest assets? Along with your loyal customers, your team of enthusiastic and hardworking staff, and your tastefully decorated store or office, there is an all-too-often-unsung hero just waiting to help you take your business to the next level: your data.

When listing your company’s assets, your blog probably doesn’t make the cut. Many businesses tend to ignore blogging - which is a real mistake these days. By putting time and resources into your blog, your can transform it from just another webpage to one of the most valuable things to your company’s growth.

Next month on April 8, 2014, Microsoft will stop supplying security updates and patches for Windows XP and Office 2003. So does that mean you have to instantly replace all your computers running Windows XP?

Micro Doctor previously had about 20 Servers in our Warren, Ohio corporate office and data center. A couple of years ago we started a project to virtualize our data center servers. This means that we transitioned what were previously many separate physical servers, into just a few physical machines that each hold multiple virtualized servers. The reasons we wanted to do this were ease of management, lower cost of hardware per server