In this newsletter:

1. DRG is 5 years old
2. Business Continuity
3. Social media and business
4. Don’t forget our blog
5. Linux in the classroom

DRG is 5 years old!

Since Paul first setup DRG Technology from his spare room in 2005, DRG has gone from strength to strength. With over 800 clients on the database, ranging from home users to large businesses (some with multiple offices around the country), we are justifiably proud of our customer service ethic and our ability to solve any computer issue you can throw at us!

Over the last 5 years, we have watched many of our clients, like us, shift from operating as one-man bands in the spare room, growing into significant sized businesses.  We are proud to have been there to help them along the way.  From setting up computers and networks, to building web sites, we can provide the full range of IT services to make sure your business grows smoothly and reaches its potential.

The DRG team (Paul, Alex, Dominic and Tammy) provides over 20 years IT experience, including Microsoft Certification. Our experience and qualifications means that there is little you can throw at us that we haven’t seen before!

Business Continuity

With the recent earthquakes in Chile, volcanic eruptions in Iceland and flood’s in Southland, it’s a good time to think about your business continuity.

What is Business Continuity?

Business continuity refers to the planning process that businesses should go through to ensure it can still operate during unforseen circumstances. Businesses should first consider what constitutes a disaster – and this may not be the obvious huge natural disaster event. Its worth considering how your business could operate if your server was damaged beyond repair, if you were to lose critical data or machines or if you were faced with a significant period of ‘down time’.

Among companies who lose data in a disaster, 50% never re-open and 90% are out of business within two years! Source: The Cost of Data Loss: By Harald Anderson (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Cost-of-Data-Loss&id=7111)

DRG Technology works collaboratively with its clients to ensure that businesses are considering their critical systems, and ensuring that these are backed-up and that there is redundancy within the system or that quick replacements are available. Regular and reliable backups are a critical part of this planning – you can’t recover what you don’t backup.

To help businesses to look at their continuity plans we have produced a guide – click here to download your copy.

Social media for Businesses

Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin can be very useful marketing/networking tools if used correctly. Building up a strong network can increase your profile in the market place – but getting it wrong could kill you stone dead!

There has been much debate as to whether Facebook and Twitter are good tools for marketing your business. How successful these tools can be for your business will depend largely on how much effort you are prepared to put into them, and also whether it’s the right place to be advertising/promoting your business. Both mechanisms can be time consuming, but on the flip side, there is almost an expectation that a business will have a social marketing presence.

For or against, businesss are deciding for themselves whether online social marketing is worth the effort. Tourism Industry Blog puts its case forward here. DRG Technology has a facebook page and Paul has a linkedin profile (see below). We won’t help you decide what to do, but if you need help setting things up, we’d be delighted to help.
http://www.tourismindustryblog.co.nz/2010/04/why-you-shouldnt-ignore-facebook-as-a-marketing-tool/

DRG on Facebook

Don’t forget our blog

For those you haven’t been to our web site in a while you may not realise that after a re-development early last year we added a blog. Paul periodically updates the blog with IT news, significant security issues, new hi-tech toys and other things as he finds them. Visit www.drg.co.nz to see the latest posts – just click on ‘our blog’ on the menu bar.

As part of DRG’s own social media marketing the blog is also repeated on our Facebook page and Paul’s LinkedIn profile.

Linux in the classroom

A recent post on our blog covers Paul’s first impressions with Ubuntu running on his laptop.  Ubuntu is a free Linux based operating system – a replacement for Windows!  It can be installed on an existing PC as a second boot option or it can completely replace your current OS.  The Edbuntu packages offers a huge range of free educational software for all ages – from Pre-School up to Tertiary.  The software covers everything from spelling to maths to astronomy!  And the best thing?  Its all free! If you are interested in finding out more about Ubuntu give Paul a call or drop him an email.