I am going to start this article about the importance with IT Management Software, or at least the thought of why they are available to us, with a small story about something that just happened to me. It is also important to say in the beginning that this article is more about raising questions than answering them.

A few weeks ago I was in Barcelona. It is a beautiful city with lots of possibilities. I was warned, however, about all the pickpockets in the city, especially in the metro.

I have never had anything stolen from me and went there a bit naive. Since I had a new smart phone I decided to do all business on that while away on my trip. The result of my naivety - I got my phone stolen after only 1 day.

The experience of getting the phone stolen was horrible. Since I had automatic log in to the email addresses and all sites I needed to work on, I had to quickly get hold of an Internet cafe.

After a couple of hours of work to report to the police, change passwords, block the SIM card, etc, everything was sorted so that nobody could steal the company information. However, for the rest of the trip I had to rely on Internet cafes’ to have some work done.

Back to what this article really should be about - how we can secure our information with IT Management Software.

It is very common, more in smaller companies than in larger, that you trust that the information is safe in your computer. However, after a few computer crashes you realize that your information is not safe on the laptop. You then come to the next step to do backups or work more on a software offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). This is where we come to start using what is called an IT Management Software (or Data Management Software).

The IT Management Solutions area that can be covered under the word IT Management Software is very broad and can cover everything from Network Security to Data Management and Capacity Management, but we are only talking about the concept of Data Management.

Not having the information that you once created because your computer is broken or stolen is devastating. But, it is also hard to know what solutions out there that you can trust. If you have all information on the computer in your room and that computer is never connected to Internet, at least you know that you have the only copy and that nobody else can steal it.

There are backup solutions that can synchronize your information regularly when you are connected to Internet. This will enable you to both work while online as well as offline. Those kind of solutions are very handy but do they cover all your needs?

Other solutions out there are document management solutions that allow simultaneous editing from different people. This, of course, would be brilliant. You don’t have to hand over a document for editing by other people and what is changed by one person is logged. But, how does this work as you wish if you want to work offline? And what about security? Can the information be stolen by hackers?

One more thing to think about is what to do if the information is destroyed and backed up - do you know how to get it back? I have been in several companies where they do backups and believe that they are easy to restore if needed. But, when something happens and a file needs to be restored, it takes several man-days for technicians to solve. The information you believe is vital to have access to also needs to be restored if you lose it. Regular restore tests should be done to ensure that you really have access to your information the way you want it.

This article has mainly been about Data Management in the IT Management Software area. It is important to set the standards that you need for the company and the core information so that this is safe and easily accessible by you and nobody else.

Sit down and think how you would like to have it in the best of worlds and then see what tools are there to support you. It requires some work, but not as much work and energy that is required if your core information is lost.