Bits & Bytes - March 2023

Welcome to our latest update

A round up of news and tips from March, that we hope you enjoy

You get knocked down, you get up again

Friday 31st March is World Backup Day. The date gained traction in 2011 after a student posted on Reddit that he lost his work when his hard drive failed and he wished someone had reminded him of the importance of backing up.

At The Final Step we are fond of saying your backup is only as good as your last successful restore. When did you last check your business is recoverable and assess how long that took and how much data you lost?

The interval between data loss and recovery is a nervous time. Particularly, if it is due to something like ransomware. Getting ready for such stresses is what Tony Thomas, VP of Strategy at ConnectWise calls Blast Zone Engineering. Here's a short article and video on what he means and why he cites The Final Step's approach as helpful in building your resilience.

Read the article here.

It's a timely reminder to go now and check how your business handles a test restore. Don't leave it until tomorrow as the day after World Backup Day is April Fool's Day!

Decisions, decisions. Tip of the month

Are you planning anything involving others? Maybe it's a meal out - Italian or Thai? Or a cinema trip - Allelujah or John Wick 4?

Such decisions can involve a lot of texting and scrolling, so Sam Thompson's Byte-size Bulletin video tip takes you through how to run a poll in WhatsApp and reach a consensus more easily.

Let us know if you have a tip that saves you time.

Team effort

March has been a remarkable month and reminded me that great teams are more than just the sum of their individual parts.

We celebrated several anniversaries, grateful for our colleagues continuous development of themselves, their teams, our clients, our service and the IT community.

• Luisa Marques celebrated 17 years at TFS
• Faye Simmons celebrated 8 years at TFS
• Emre Giritli celebrated 3 years at TFS
• Shaun Shefi celebrated 3 years at TFS
• Tim Turnbull passed Microsoft Exam SC-300 Identity and Access Administrator

Our founder and MD, Raja Pagadala, attended ConnectWise's IT Nation Conference. He participated in a panel discussion on best practices in the MSP industry and Lee Cockerell's session on hiring the right people.

For International Women's Day we celebrated the aspirations, inspiration and achievements of four women we are lucky to have as leaders at The Final Step. Between them they have 39 years of experience building the people, systems and processes that deliver our service.

We didn't have many people physically in the office on the official National Employee Appreciation Day, but hey - every day is the right day to appreciate employees, so we made up for it the following week with a slightly noisy lunch (apologies to the neighbours). The team's choice was - burgers, after a doughnut breakfast. But the pictures clearly show fruit on the table as well.

Every time we spend time together we realise we should do it more often. It's important.

On to Q2 2023

Well, the first quarter of 2023 whizzed past. Good luck with your next quarter's goals and let us know if we can help with how technology can unlock your potential.

Please get in touch with Simon Heath. 
Connect with Simon on LinkedIn.