Now that the elections are just one day away, the race still remains close. But aside from the two men taking center stage, things are on overdrive behind the scenes as well. Election officials are working hard to make sure every vote is counted and that all votes are counted correctly. While statistics may indicate that voting fraud is quite rare these days in the era of electronic voting, there are other things to worry about, such as  unintentional human error, technical difficulties, and other flukes not necessarily attributed to cheating. The other problem when it comes to elections is the auditing that has to be done should there be a need for any recount. That’s why this year, a company called Clear Ballot is piloting a new program meant to make vote auditing faster and easier.

Software piracy has always been one of the hot-button issues in the tech industry. Pirated software has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until the Internet that it truly exploded. According to the 2011 survey conducted by the Business Software Alliance about 57% of people all over the world have acquired some form of unlicensed software (up from 42% in the previous year). The software industry has tried many ways to stop the proliferation of unlicensed software, from introducing stronger DRM restrictions to introducing tougher legislation. Is the software industry going about it the right way?

Moving to the cloud is an easy decision for most business. Forward-thinking companies these days realize that cloud computing is the future, and in some cases, they simply can’t afford not to switch to the cloud. However, while migrating from physical servers to the cloud computing can be pain-free especially with the right provider, there are some things a business can do to facilitate the process. So, if you’re ready to take action and move to the cloud, here are some tips to make the migration easy, and more importantly, successful.

Yesterday, the Internet was rocked over the news that domain name giant Go Daddy went down. With 53 million domain names registered with the company, the blackout was major news and its effect was far-reaching. Sometime after 10 a.m. PDT on Monday, website owners started noticing their sites were down, and Go Daddy’s twitter feed was flooded with complaints. By about 1pm, Go Daddy finally sent out a tweet acknowledging the problem. At first, hackers claimed credit for the attack, which Go Daddy was quick to deny and said it was a technical glitch. They claimed that corrupted router data tables were to blame. Service was finally back for most sites by about 7pm, but that damage had already been done. This outage not only affected the millions of websites hosted by the company, but those who registered their domain names through Go Daddy and other services.

Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. Disasters can strike anywhere at any time, and the only thing we can really do is prepare for them. When it comes to business, corporations and big businesses have redundancies and back-ups in place so to protect themselves from any catastrophes that may come their way. Power outages can shut down businesses for an indefinite period of time. Hurricanes and fires can wipe out offices and floods and snowstorms can prevent employees from coming to work. However, for those who can’t afford to house rooms and rooms of servers, (like small businesses) should they be left out in the cold? Not necessarily. Cloud computing has made it possible for even the smallest businesses to play like the big boys. This technology has allowed small to medium-sized businesses to use the same applications and software as their larger counterparts, making them more competitive in their respective industries. This means of course, that disaster recovery plans are cheaper and easier for businesses of all sizes. If you don’t have a business disaster recovery plan for your company, consider the advantages of building your plan on the cloud.

In today’s world, business is all about dollars and cents. Yes, despite management and small business owners keeping their eyes on the bottom, very few consider cloud computing to be the solution to cut costs and increase that ever-important number at the bottom of the ledger. They complain that the cloud is not secure and reliable. However, as we may have already discussed in previous blog posts, this isn’t necessarily true. The fact is, companies working in these economic times simply cannot afford NOT to employ cloud computing in some form or another.  So, let’s look at the different financial benefits that cloud computing can bring to your company.

Last week’s major storms and the Amazon cloud service crash put the social networking world in a tizzy. Pinterest, Instagram and Netflix experienced outages for a few hours and its users went on Twitter and Facebook to voice complaints (and perhaps a few well-deserved jabs and sarcastic comments.) This is not the first time this has happened, and when such events occur, cloud computing is always put in the spotlight. Pundits and experts start asking, how safe is cloud computing and are we really ready for cloud computing? While we at Deconn Technical Services do believe that the world is ready for the cloud, we also enjoy hearing what the other side has to say. Events like the Amazon crash foster a lot of debate, and although we don’t enjoy outages and crashes, such events can only help improve cloud computing services.

With cloud computing gaining ground these days, it’s no wonder that many IT departments are shaking in their boots. Many fear the loss of jobs and function, as more and more companies are starting to realize that the cloud is here and it’s here to stay. However, this should serve as the wake-up call for all IT managers, CIOs and business owners who employ IT pros. The future of IT is not bleak, however if they want to keep up with the times, they must make major changes to the way they work. Here’s are some of the things IT departments can do to stay relevant.

It’s no secret that cloud computing has been changing the face of business and enterprise, and will continue to do so in the coming decades. However, many companies still have a hard time making that decision to fully switch to cloud computing. Here in Southern California, cloud computing San Diego firms, like us, are seeing some resistance to moving to the cloud. First, there are the concerns - security, downtime, accessibility are the top concerns. However, there are concerns which aren’t about technical issues. More often than not, the biggest barriers to cloud computing come in the form of policies and politics within the company, and well, the human user base itself. These are the things which cannot be changed with a mere script or purchasing more security software or more bandwidth. Let’s take a look at how these factors can affect a company’s ability to switch to the cloud.

Cloud computing has been gaining a lot of traction in the past few years. For big businesses, moving to the cloud is a no-brainer. After all, IT expenses, which includes software purchases, hardware, personnel, floorspace and electricity to keep systems running 24/7 accounts for a huge part of their budget. For start-ups with a limited budget, a public cloud solution is a cheap way to get up and running with little investment, while still keeping the option for expansion open later on. However, what about those in between? What about the small businesses, many of which are the backbone of many communities, but are now struggling with the ever-increasing costs of doing business?