COVID-19, Remote Work, and The Managed I.T. Experience

About this episode

APRIL 3, 2020

Michigan’s first 2 Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases were confirmed on March 10, 2020. Over the course of only two weeks, the number of cases broke 1,300 ultimately leading Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to issue a statewide stay-at-home order for all non-essential workers on March 23, 2020. In this episode of the GEEK FREAKS PODCAST Ron and Thomas discuss their in-house experience switching to remote work as part of the statewide effort to practice social distancing and how managed I.T. has given clients peace of mind during a time of uncertainty.

Here’s a list of free tools and offers to assist your business needs during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Microsoft Teams is free for six months.
Zoom free version.
Google Hangouts for existing Google G Suite business and educations customers.
Intermedia: AnyMeeting video conferencing and webinar service is free through December 31, 2020. Also there’s one free Webinar Pro license per account — which enables live broadcast events for up to 200 people.
CucumberStudio, a collaboration platform, is available for free. Also, free BDD training is provided through the Cucumber School.
1Password Business is now free for six months.

For a bigger list of tools visit: (Click Here)

MEET THE GEEK FREAKS

RON HARRIS

VICE PRESIDENT

15 years in the industry.
Enjoys spending time with his family, riding his Harley, and finding time to sleep.
Fun fact: Ron broke both of his arms.
He's a simple person, enjoys work, but also enjoys being alone reading a book or learning something new. Loves candy DOTs!

THOMAS DARRINGTON

SERVICE TECH LEAD

Has been working in I.T. professionally for 5 years.
Holds an Associates of Science in Information Technology from Ivy Tech.
Also has held certifications in A+, Network+, ItGlue, 3CX, and Windows System Administration.
When he's not working or learning about technology, he likes to spend time with his family and his English bulldog Bob.

VIEW TRANSCRIPT >

Episode 23 Transcript Ron: (00:00) Welcome to the Geek Freaks Podcast. Your go to destination for answers to the most crucial business technology questions every business owner needs to hear.

Speaker 2: (00:11) [Intro Music]

Ron: (00:19) Special guest on today's podcast is Thomas Darrington. How are you Thomas?

Thomas: (00:24) Hey, I'm doing well. How are you?

Ron: (00:25) I'm good. I know you're not physically here, but you're on the tele with me, so.

Thomas: (00:30) I'm there in spirit.

Ron: (00:31) It's yeah, there you go. It's good to hear. Yeah. How's, how's your quarantine treating ya?

Thomas: (00:38) It's going all right. I'm trying to stay as focused as possible. Which as we all know, when working from home there's a lot of distractions.

Ron: (00:46) Yeah, it's a incredibly hard, that's why I'm at the office and also I don't have an office at home because it's commandeered by my wife who's working, been working from home for months. So...

Thomas: (00:58) See, mine wife always works from home, so I just go tag team in the office with her, so...

Ron: (01:03) Oh, there you go. There you go. As long as you both don't have to be on the phone, then it's all good, right?

Thomas: (01:07) Yeah, exactly.

Ron: (01:08) Great. So today we're going to talk about what's I guess, topical and relevant and on top of everybody's mind is that's the, a COVID-19 and I guess the executive order to be shut down and working from home. So you and I were kinda on the front lines of figuring out how we were going to do this internally. Uh, I know we talked to um, Oh, HR was out on vacay and yeah, so we just kinda did what we had to do and I guess to start with internally, we first had the discussion about what is it going to take probably or the discussion that a lot of people are having right now or had, what does it take for us to work remotely? And I think for the most part all what we do, we could do remotely, right?

Thomas: (01:54) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we use a lot of web based applications. A lot of companies use a lot of web based applications. Now the biggest hurdle is everybody being able to access their, their files still. Um, that they keep on their work computers and if they're not taking those home and how are they accessing those?

Ron: (02:12) Yeah. And so when we talked about it, uh, I guess if you have to look at what we do, it's all SAS products on top of our VoIP system, which is also a technically a SAS product. So for us to make the logical jump to say to work from home, it was more of how's everybody gonna function, um, to the level of keep customers happy.

Thomas: (02:32) Right.

Ron: (02:33) So I think from that standpoint we're very lucky. I know that there's been a number of customers er customers, but a number of companies that have shut down that haven't been so lucky. So...

Thomas: (02:42) Yeah. Yeah, I hear about the struggle from a few different people, uh, trying to use their, their products and work with their people and they're not having a good time. So I'm glad that we have that opportunity and they try to provide that opportunity.

Ron: (02:58) And I think for the most part, so we roughly serve about 2000, uh, individuals like PC servers, that kind of stuff. And I think for the most part we were able to get everybody, you know, minus the servers, pretty mobilized and functional. So I guess let's discuss how we, how we made that jump from being on prem to off site. So we moved, uh, I think the five of us sat down and talked about what we were going to do, uh, and how we were going to do it because we already had customers looking to get off site. So some first use case, we allow them to use our RMM. Correct?

Thomas: (03:33) Yeah, yeah. That's correct which a big shout out to them they've been excellent.

Ron: (03:41) Yeah. Ninja has been good and I'm glad we reached out to them ahead of time to kind of let them know what our plan of attack has been.

Thomas: (03:47) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think in a lot of cases it saved a lot of headache for customers. Cause obviously, uh, I mean the g-to reaction, everybody tries to get set up for VPN, but VPN has limitations. Um, and sometimes it's the best and sometimes it's awful so, uh, I think that TeamViewer has been, has been an excellent, um, work from home connection to their computers, uh, without a lot of security compromises.

Ron: (04:23) And I think, yeah, and I think that's been when we had to look at it as an over, you know, as it like, not an overarching theme but a of a solution. We didn't really find a, a one one solution fits all the necessary situations and scenarios. So I'm glad we were able to have a few of them prepared and ready for our customers. I think for the, for the most part, everybody's gotten off pretty to a pretty hot start without a lot of issues. A lot being said for our service desk...

Thomas: (04:52) ....smooth for, I mean, we're getting, we're getting a lot of requests and there's a lot of calls and a lot of people needing assistance. But, uh, for the most part, everybody's been very understanding and you know, people understand that there's going to be pain with this, but we're getting them set up with the tools that they need and making suggestions for what we can provide and what they can find on their own.

Ron: (05:17) So we bumped them up and we bumped some of our customers to TeamViewer. We got some of our customers that had terminal server already available to them. We just amped up the, ramped up the resources to their terminal server. Um, I know we have some people that even the solution was even grabbing their desktops off their, um, their workspaces at the office and taking those homes. So we kind of have a, we kind of have a all over the board situation going on right now.

Thomas: (05:43) Yeah. The, uh, the taking the desktops home was, uh, one of the rougher solutions, but it actually worked out pretty well for some people. Um, if they even have all their monitors and keyboards and all the connections that they need.

Ron: (05:58) Yeah. They took everything home.

Thomas: (06:02) I was, I was actually, I was pretty surprised that I, but it worked out pretty well.

Ron: (06:07) And I think we're lucky enough to have a stack that we use internally that is, you know, a mobile friendly, I guess when we look at everything. Um, but yeah, it's, that was, I mean we didn't have a choice. I think what, so Wednesday, Wednesday, whatever, first day last week we worked from home Tuesday or Wednesday, um, some of the staff worked from home and...

Thomas: (06:34) Yeah, Monday we came in and it was, it was everybody was, it was normal. And then all of a sudden it was announced and they're like, okay, we were scrambling, let's figure this out. And then by Wednesday we were all working remotely trying to help everybody else working remotely. Uh, I know that you were still going in, uh, in a few people, but this week when the mandatory came down, everybody kinda stayed home from there.

Ron: (07:01) Yeah. And it's, I think it, um, I think by Wednesday or Thursday or Friday we were out of loaner devices. So I guess that's...

Thomas: (07:09) Yeah, those went real fast.

Ron: (07:11) And I think that's kinda like the biggest thing to look for is like, as you know, as you look at whoever's listening to this, as you look at your over, you know, overarching theme of what you want to do with technology or maybe you're you're planning for next year is mobility now is laptops, tablets, surfaces, VPNs, you know all that stuff is very tried and true and safe. As long as you take the steps to make sure it's safe and work with the provider that's gonna make sure it's safe. So you know, you have terminal server, what is it, 3389. You want to make sure that port's closed or you're obscuring the port in some form or fashion because that's how a lot of ransomware gets in and you just have to take the steps to make sure it's going to be available. But it's very interesting that we know we have customers and businesses that have always been like, no, no work from home, no work from home, nowhere from, okay. Everybody work from home and we, and they pull it off pretty flawlessly. So it's pretty amazing to me that that was how quickly we can turn that stance around when we need to.

Thomas: (08:04) Yeah. And I think a lot of companies from this are now looking at us and seeing the struggle that they've had to go through for the, for the ability to work from home and saying, okay, well what can we do next time if there is going to be a next time. Because I think that contingency is important. Having some ability to, you know, provide that remote to show them your companies that you care about their health or wellbeing whilst also caring about, you know, your bottom line. I think there's a good balance to that.

Ron: (08:36) Well, and I think it's, it's not as, uh, it's, I mean we make it as cost effective as possible, but it's not cost heavy anymore like it used to be. So there's not a big gap in between the cost of desktops and laptops and so on and so forth, so forth. And even like with our VoIP solution, I mean, think about, uh, an the Battle Creek agency that left in like two days notice. And it's like nothing ever happened. You know what I mean? They took their tablets home and they have their, they have the 3CX VoIP system and they have the cell phone app installed and they are working and functioning on a pretty high level and using Teams to communicate. So it's like, yeah, you don't want to have to use it but you want to make sure you have it in your back pocket. But then we had some customers that are like, Hey, I need devices. And we didn't have any at that point. Now they're spending money to get mobile devices because some people sometimes don't have devices at home to use.

Thomas: (09:28) Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's a, you know, there's security concerns of people using their personal devices or their home devices and uh, you can defend so much with, with antivirus software and although the security, the cyber security that you can offer, but there's still that concern of providing that access for just, just having access to files in general. I mean, if, if somebody decides they want to take something and put it on their personal device because it's easier to use, then you have to be concerned about your documents now being on that personal device. So...

Ron: (10:05) I think it goes to show how important that security and mobility and I guess more so how far those those technologies have come. You know, I mean, yeah, it's been pretty seamless for, I would say 90% of our customers. Um, and I don't, I mean, service desk, ticket wise and service load, it's been hard. We've been working 12 hour days. We've been dealing with crisis's crises on a regular basis and getting through them. But I think that has a lot to do too, with the uncertainty of the current environment that we are in in the world. Not so much like my email's not working and it's the end of the world that people are projecting. So I think if you look at it from like, okay, a bad and a good, I think it's been more positive than negative when people started pulling out and doing what they needed to do to stay safe.

Thomas: (10:59) Yeah, I completely agree. The a, I expected this to be a lot more difficult and I'm not trying to downplay the current like experience because I know that everybody has been working extremely hard to make sure that we're providing the best experience that we can. But, uh, the, the ability to work from home now, it's just, it's so much easier than it used to be and it's, it's made these transitions very basic. I'm just repeating a lot of, when you're saying just agree, I think it's, I think it's been great.

Ron: (11:35) So let's, I guess let's fast forward. So we're working from home and let's say we're, we're not, you're not a customer of ours and you need to, you need to communicate with your team and you need to figure out a way to hold meetings with clients. You need to figure out, um, you know, how you're basically going to have basic communication to your end users or your customers or your clients. I know a number of tools are available. So I guess if you want to rattle down a quick few that maybe some people have heard of, maybe some people haven't heard of, but are there and are out there.

Thomas: (12:08) Sure, sure. So, uh, one of the biggest ones that you've been hearing, I'm sure everybody's been hearing about lately is Zoom. Uh, Zoom has made a huge impact during this quarantine situation. A lot of schools, a lot of work, um, a lot of businesses have been able to use their service for free and they made that open to everybody so that they can have that communication. Uh, Teams has been made free for a certain period of time to help people get through this, which I know a lot of our clients use. Office 365, which they can get Teams and there's a whole bunch of packaging and whatnot, but, um, they've been using that to communicate with their clients. Um, which was an interesting step for us to try to figure out. And it's actually an integrated feature with Teams that they can have calls with clients through Teams that don't have Teams. Uh, which I thought was really cool. Um, or that's just for communication purposes or file sharing purposes, uh, Google Drive and Dropbox have made a big strides in providing free versions of that software right now I know that it's not HIPAA compliant. I had an issue with this week going back and forth with someone discussing that and making sure that they were doing every thing they could to [inaudible] clients during this time period. So if people are going to be using [inaudible] be aware of that as you're not a business partner with them or you're using a free service [inaudible] the type of information on there, but the service is great. The ability to share that documentation with your people without having to have A VPN connection to a server or anything. It's being able to drop it somewhere that uh, that's a really valuable feature. And I think a lot of these businesses that want to help people, but at the same time it showcases their tools. So that's pretty awesome.

Ron: (14:18) Yeah, and I think it's, it's very cool that a lot of these companies have stepped up and made their services and software available for everybody. Right. You know, Zoom, Zoom is pretty expensive, but Zooms easy to use, right? Teams is easy to use. It's all about ease of use in this time because I don't, I don't imagine, you know, a five, 10 person companies sitting down and ready to take on like complex issues right now. In this time, right? So Dropbox, easy to use, One Drive, easy to use. So as I guess as we sat down and kind of discussed alternative tools, the biggest thing that we wanted was ease of use. Right? And I think you kind of nailed it on the head with those four that it is ease of use, but there's also some things to be aware of, which would be the BAA and the, um, the HIPAA compliant and all that other stuff. And you know, a lot of people don't really don't need to worry about that, but some industries do. And it's something to keep on the top of mind as, as we work for these two, three, four, five, six weeks that we're going to be, you know, dispersed throughout the state city as we try to work together.

Thomas: (15:19) Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, I th I think that it's great that they're offering these services. I just really, it's one of those restore faith in humanity moments where all these major companies are coming together to provide that service for free because they just want people to be successful.

Ron: (15:38) No, and I think it's, um, yeah, no, I, it goes to show that a lot of companies are doing, doing the right thing and it's great. And I know that in this time that of, you know, major uncertainty that people are just looking to just stay productive, keep the lights on, keep their employees close, keep them off the unemployment line and do everything they can. And I, and it shows that everybody's kinda in this together, which is great. Um, but yeah, all very easy tools. I know there's a few links, um, I'll make sure Luis puts it in the YouTube video and on LinkedIn, but there's, there's a few of them that you can find that has a lot of good resources for sharing information and for, you know, staying on top of it. And I think the other thing that we have talked about and has been on our mind is in the three weeks when we come back to work, how that is going to transition in. And I think for, again, for most of our customers it's going to be pretty, you know, minus the people that took their whole rigs home. It's going to be pretty seamless. It's going to be grab your tablet, your laptop, back to your office, plug in your doc, you're good to go.

Thomas: (16:37) Yeah. And I think that that'll be nice for the people who have it seamless and for the people who don't, we would be there for them to help them out. And that provides us an opportunity to make sure that everything's getting back to normal. And I think that that's kind of one of the most important things that people need to keep in their mind is that things will go back to normal. It's just going to take time.

Ron: (16:58) And it's weird right now. Like I told you guys this morning, it's weird being in this giant building with just two people. Um, you know, and the only reason we're here is cause we don't have anywhere else to go necessarily right now and we've got to get all the packages for all the equipment we've been waiting on. But it's a, it's definitely a weird time and I'm glad to see that, you know, for the most part, uh, everybody's fighting this whole thing together and it's been great. And, um, I think coming back is going to be awesome for a lot of people and I'm excited to have everybody back. But I just, I think that as you look at your disaster recovery plan, your disaster backup and recovery plan, I think this has to be something in you keep in mind, nobody ever thinks of a pandemic to be like a disaster. Well, we gotta have a plan for this in the future and we have to understand that this could be a thing again, unfortunately.

Thomas: (17:43) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is a good opportunity for companies to really, to really take that into consideration and to, I mean, we were talking about earlier, uh, the, the opportunity is there. It's a lot easier now and it's not as costly. So just the biggest investment is like if a hardware change from a stationary desktop to a more mobile laptop. But other than that, your applications and everything, that's all pretty seamless. So...

Ron: (18:14) But if you're with Omega Computer Services it's the same cost. I'm not pitching our product, but it's the same cost and it's, I mean it's, you think about what we've been doing in the last, I want to say 18 months, encrypting the devices, two form factor, making sure they have the VPN installed and making sure that the machines themselves are secure as possible. Quick pass, good password hygiene. That kind of stuff has all been at the top of our mind because of the security stuff. But this is just another avenue to think about it. As that stuff gets out in the wild, it's protected, you're protected, your assets, your data, everything is protected and it's secure. So not only you have to think about protecting yourself from ransomware and that type of disaster or fire and having the, the good backups that happen automatically or you know, getting the backups offsite, that kind of stuff. But you have to take it from a standpoint of the machine and the workload and how we're going to work, where we're going to work, how you know, how things are going to go in this event, and I think it's shown that a lot of companies have put a lot of time into that and it's in a lot of our partners have been very awesome at allowing us to say, no, we should probably go to laptops. It makes sense to do or tablets it makes sense to do. It's been, that discussion has been, um, happening a lot more in the last probably 18 months, let's say. And I think it's going to happen more going forward as we go through their sales cycle, as we do renewals, it's only gonna make sense to get them on mobile devices and allow them the flexibility and the mobility in a safe, secure fashion.

Thomas: (19:47) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you can see that with our clients, the ones who, who have prepped for themselves, they're the ones having the least difficulty in these situations. They've called, make sure that their good and we're like, yeah, you're good to go - just start doing it, and if you have issues and then you know, they've been great to work with. It's been a pretty easy transition for them. So...

Ron: (20:11) The also, the other thing that we, we kind of really lucked out by I guess, and we did this five, six years ago, it was going to an all VoIP solution, right? Is making sure that we had the ability, uh, and the more, so the flexibility to allow people to work from wherever they want to work. Not only with email but phone calls. So I mean, we have people, you know, 20 person companies that are all answering the phone all in a ring group, you know, doing the same, similar to what you guys are doing. It's, it's functioning as it should in the office and out of the office. And I think it, and if you don't have a VoIP system and you thinking about doing it now is the time to do it. Now is the time to pull the trigger to make the investment. When you have the opportunity again with Omega, it's low, real, real cost effective, but with anybody, just to make sure you're thinking about that as you move forward, because we don't know what the future holds for us. We don't know if we're going to be working from home for nine months, 10 months, whatever the case. It's not going to be that long, but we don't know what's going to happen. And I, and I think it just goes to show that we as I.T. people, I mean, you and I talked about it, we don't get a lot of kudos in this moment and this thing, but we have to be vigilant and we have to take care and we have to be ready to act and it's, it's paid off, you know, finally it's paid off.

Thomas: (21:26) Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, we're trying to show our value here. Uh, and I think we're in, this is a great opportunity for us to do it. And I think we've been doing our best. Uh, and you know, everybody has been all the people that are out still working on the front lines like [inaudible] this situation they've been excellent and you know, my hat goes off to all these people that are putting themselves out in harms way. Um, but also yeah, your I.T. providers for helping to keep it in the, in the back end too. We're trying to make sure that you can continue to function...

Ron: (22:00) Well and I think, you know, when that executive order came down, it wasn't that you're not going to work, it's that you can't work in your building. And I think that was the biggest thing that I took away from it. When she pushed that out I was like, Oh, here we go. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta go. And I told you guys that, I said the next 24 48 hours are going to be slammed. And I think once we get people home and they get in, they start to find their rhythm and their anxiety. And their emotion, their emotions from this whole change of have waned, that we're going to be okay, but now we have to prepare for the other side of this in three weeks or I think it's less than three weeks now when we come back, it's going to be not emotional, but it's going to be like, Hey, we're back at it. Let's go, let's go. So...

Thomas: (22:39) Yeah, we've got to get a bit of [inaudible] work and you know, back and nothing, none of my monitors are [inaudible].

Ron: (22:46) Yeah. So it's going to be crazy. But I, I know we hear and I think a lot all over the world, all these I.T. companies are up for the challenge. I haven't seen a, I've talked to a good number of MSPs that are doing everything they could. Some are struggling because they, they don't, they're not set up the way we are with their programs and plans and all that. But I think for the most part, uh, everybody's, you know, done what they could to get somebody working. And it's been fantastic to see now. Now, if we can get our supply chains to open back up when this thing opens back up, we're going to be in business.

Thomas: (23:15) Yeah. That's always the kicker there isn't it.

Ron: (23:17) I've had more calls with Dell and you know those vendors, just to make sure everything's trending in the right direction. It sounds like it's running in the right direction. I just can't get any hard firm dates right now. Everything's quick and dirty, so we'll find out. But anyway, Thomas, I appreciate your time. I know you've got to get back to taking care of the, the squad out there, so thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for all the hints and, uh, everybody else stay safe. Keep distancing. Um, and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Thomas: (23:44) Yeah, thanks Ron. I appreciate being out here.

Ron: (23:47) Hey, see you Thomas.