Once again, constant readers, I feel the time is right for me to dispense my wisdom.

Like as if I didn’t have enough to deal with in relation to my health tribulations, I also had to witness my human growing increasingly frustrated  – not with me I might add, I am far too perfect for her to find fault – with some seemingly unfathomable matter…

I started to pay a little more attention to her frustration and realised, with some degree of puzzlement, that it was work-related.

After conducting some cursory investigation, I finally understood the root cause of her exasperation. She apparently had launched multiple marketing campaigns targeting a number of industries. Through these, she offered a free IT Audit (whatever that might be). To her surprise, despite the offer of something for FREE (!!!), these fell on deaf ears. Nothing. Not one reply or enquiry.

After analyzing the situation, and doing some research on my own while she was sleeping, I came to this startling conclusion: no one really understands the value of an IT Audit. Whether it is free or not, it is simply irrelevant.

In my world, as you well know, everything is free. We are also very simple: you show us a treat, we want it. In your world, it is a bit more complicated: you like rewards. So when you give us a treat, you expect a reward. We understand this: you give us a treat, so we give you a reward. And that reward will be that we wag our tail, rollover or sit cutely, or do something that makes you giggle and that we know you love. It works very well for both sides.

Going back to the previous scenario, the treat is obviously the Free IT Audit. My human in return will expect a reward, and that reward will be your information. And there lies the issue: why would you give your information to someone if you don’t think that there is a value in the Audit process. What would you get in return?

Here’s the nub of the matter: You don’t know what you don’t know. I have witnessed my human and her crew at Atruent being told by potential clients: “I rarely have any IT issues! I spend less than $2K a year on IT support, why would I spend more?” Those very same businesses would end up spending large amounts of money in one go because all they saw was the minute tip of the iceberg. When their IT infrastructure failed, it failed spectacularly! The purpose of properly maintaining an IT infrastructure on a regular basis is simply to make sure that those epic failures don’t happen, or are a least greatly minimized. It’s a bit like maintaining your car or your boiler: no one ever questions the value of regular maintenance there.

But here is the thing, how would you know what your network needs or doesn’t need if you don’t have a thorough audit done? If you are handling client data, how do you know if it is secure? How do you know if your Infrastructure is adequately protected? How do you know if you have a proper backup? How do you know if your Disaster Recovery plan is working (do you even have one?)? In case those nasty things called ransomware hit you, how would you recover? And could you? (I wrote about those nasty things before on a previous blog https://www.atruent.com/the-tech-world-according-to-lady-wrinkles-the-dignified-dog-ransomware-wednesday/).

atruent team member

I must admit that I feel the frustration slowly ramping up in me, because now I understand why my Human is getting annoyed: SHE IS OFFERING THIS AUDIT FOR FREE! Why wouldn’t you take advantage of it? Even if you decide not to work with my Human and her faithful crew at Atruent (www.atruent.com) which, in my opinion, would be a mistake…) you would have a detailed report, explaining what your Infrastructure needs or doesn’t need, and you could just hand this over to your current provider and tell them to fix what needs to be fixed! (Quite frankly, they should have done that for you in the first place, but again, who am I to tell…).

are you overpaying for IT support

There you have it, get that audit done, get the information you need to run your business efficiently, and especially, at least, gain some peace of mind.

Now, going back to treats, I really feel that I deserve one for all this hard work. I think I’ll just go and look cute in front of my Human, she always gets the message…

(FYI, This is me looking cute..)

 Until next time,

Your Humble Servant,

Lady Wrinkles

The Dignified Dog