Setting Up the Digital Office
Still running an analog business in the digital age? In a follow-up to his article in the Sept./Oct. issue ("Digital Publishing in Japan," page 27), John Tyler offers some advice on how to get your office on the digital track.
by John Tyler
Getting a digital office up and running doesn't have to be the most expensive, all-consuming experience in your working life -- but it will be close. You not only have to develop momentum among those in power; you have to convince everyone from the president to the receptionist that you know what you're doing, and that what you're doing is best for the company (and for them personally).
Today, we sit around in offices interlinked by electronic means: your telephone connects you to the outside world, your computer is wired to everyone else's on the floor, your fax offers call-grouping to clients around the city. But does this mean that yours is a digital office?
Setting up a digital office means different things to different businesses. But there are some basic things that it requires for all offices: Knowing the present state of your office, and how you can benefit from hardware upgrades. Having the proper network in place to ensure your data is transferred
efficiently and (cost-) effectively. Having a staff of computer-literate employees who know how to make the most of their electronic office and of your company.
Analyzing office needs
How your office is, or should be, wired depends entirely on the nature of your business. An accounting office will likely have a money transfer machine hot-wired to the bank for easy transactions and payments. A service-related business may have a database loaded with client information running on all its machines, and a sophisticated backup system to ensure no downtime. A production company that constantly sends data outside -- to a printer, design company, or output shop -- will likely have a speedy ISDN line and fast modems, as well as specialty output devices like a laser printer that does transparencies.Despite the low rate of home computer use in Japan (often given as 8% of Japanese households, versus 37% in the US), Japanese offices are making major purchasing decisions in an effort to get up to speed, datawise. Offices that five years ago had one accountant who knew how to enter information with an electric typewriter now have entire departments sharing data on a LAN. The office network may even include an "instant teller" of sorts, a system that can confirm outside deposits, pay employees, and transfer funds, all from the desktop at work.
An office dependent on a database, with a roomful of employees accessing the server, needs special hardware. This includes a solid network system, such as 10Base-T, to link all the computers and printers together; a strong server that is fast enough to send the data to users on demand; and a reliable backup system.
With all that data flying back and forth, there is a probability of data loss, making a robust and well-planned backup system essential. Yet backing up data is easily the least-thought-out corporate strategy in Japan today. Though managers are beginning to look at the types of data they have, they too often do not see the amount of data. Those little ones and zeros can add up to very, very big backup headaches.
How does an office deal with data protection needs? RAID (see the sidebar, "What kind of protection do I need?") is arguably the best option on the market these days, though there are many other options to choose from. Backup devices like hard disk drives, removable storage devices (Syquest disks, magneto optical disks, and tape drives), and recordable CD-ROMs may offer a better price-per-megabyte ratio, but a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) offers better protection.
The network
When creating a digital office, heed one word of advice: Get the network up and running in its entirety first. Do not, as do so many companies without a defined agenda, go about the process piecemeal. Don't link these ten computers and not those five because "I can't see how they'll be doing any work with Mike's section any time soon." Rest assured that "any time soon" will be tomorrow, and that Mike will be asking for a direct connection now or he won't be able meet his deadline. Ultimately, the binder-twine approach to wiring an office will prove far more expensive than the savings you'll see initially. Continually adding on here and there will soon produce a kludge system that creates office-wide headaches.In a perfect world, you would forecast the requirements of your staff over the next three years, then purchase all necessary machines in one fell swoop. There are several advantages to this: you get your network, lock, stock, and terminal; the staff will have sufficient machines to ensure they can do their jobs effectively; and the company can save through the bulk-purchase discounts that retailers can be enticed to offer.
For networking, definitely go the Ethernet route. Prices have come down at least 50% in the past 18 months, but Japanese prices are still higher than in the US -- so if you know what you want, order from abroad. Whether you buy here or there, though, you should determine exactly what you will need. Don't rely on an "expert" consultant to explain your needs. (My own company's recent purchase of an extra Ethernet setup came without the necessary adapter that attaches the line to each computer -- a fairly serious omission that the vendor didn't consider, even though we paid a consultant's fee in addition to the hardware purchases.)
If you use your lines to communicate with the outside world, check out an ISDN (integrated services digital network) line. Many Japanese offices use these wideband routes, and prices are bearable when compared to normal Japanese phone rates. A 64K and slower-but-still-zippy 38K line can link you and your printer or output service, or you and your overseas offices. (I recently sat in a Marunouchi office having a real-time discussion via 64K ISDN with two designers in Hong Kong. There was no delay between lips moving and voices laughing; it was, as the jingle goes, "the real thing.")
The people
A major mistake commonly made among companies taking their initial tentative steps in the digital world is to assume that the employees, given computers, will eventually learn how to use them properly. Sorry, Orville, it just won't fly. While the vast majority of users will achieve a minimum level of skill -- enough to barely get the job done -- they will shun gaining more knowledge because just doing what they're doing now is painful enough. It can't be said too often: Train your employees now, and offer frequent reinforcement and refresher courses.A corollary to training current staff is to institute new hiring protocols. Make the decision -- hard as it may sometimes be --that in your computer-laden office, new employees must have more than a peripheral knowledge of computers. In this day and age, it's also worth considering what many small-company managers see as a luxury: hiring a trained network manager. Many offices (mine included) have one or two knowledgeable staffers who double as network managers, but these people constantly have to juggle a wailing coworker's computer concern with their own work and pressing deadlines.
A trained network manager realizes when he has to work (when no one else is), knows how often each machine needs to be cared for (regularly, not just when it stops working), and has the time to sit down and troubleshoot problems. Paying a network manager to do this job should be looked upon in the same light as hiring an accountant to play with the books: neither offers tangible returns to the company, but both have skills others don't and can contribute to the corporate bottom line -- making a profit.
People may be part of the personnel section in the company books, far from the capital section where the hardware purchases sit, but they must be a paramount consideration when you tackle the task of digitizing your office. Purchasing the computers, the lines, the backup stacks -- this requires nothing more than convincing the purchasing department, or your supervisor, that spending the money is necessary and will benefit the company. Hiring the right people, however, requires a whole new mindset.
Obviously, you can't ignore specific skills and focus only on computer skills; otherwise, you'll end up with an office of high school math majors who are demons at clicking a mouse through Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel, but can do little else. If you're spending money on hardware to run the office, be sure to spend the time (and money) on training the current staff to use it properly, and hire more selectively in the future.
The digital office has arrived, and we add to it with each new purchase. It's not all equipment, though. Once you have identified your digital needs, and rationalized your purchases, look once more at the people behind the machines. It is the staff, after all, who will coax all those shiny new machines to churn out the product and earn the company a profit. Trained employees are what makes your company more than just an office full of wires.ç
What kind of protection do I need?
There are six levels of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) protection, in no special level of hierarchy -- each level offers something different for the digital office. A top-end RAID system means behemoth arrays, hardware controllers, and capacities in the gigabyte to terabyte range (and mega-yen of cash). Midrange systems usually handle 30GB to 80GB, and low-end (though not necessarily low-priced) systems have 4BG to 10GB capacities.The six RAID levels:
RAID level 0
This level is the black sheep of the family. It "stripes" data
(writes it across multiple disks), but it does not actually protect against
data loss because it doesn't offer redundancy. While level 0 offers the
fastest performance, it lacks data mirroring (used in level 1) and parity
(used in levels 2 and above). Level 0 is popular mainly for its speed and
price.
RAID level 1
Level 1 is the group security favorite. It uses disk mirroring to protect data, but in the process it uses more disk space and has a higher level of fault tolerance (thus increasing the price). Disk mirroring writes data to four separate disks in a four-disk array, giving even the most paranoid network manager a worry-free sleep.RAID level 2
Level 2 was designed for mainframes and minicomputers; this configuration stands alone in its offer of built-in error correction. Very few Mac or PC users need this type of system, because all SCSI drives on the market offer the same protection. Level 2 data parity is the same as levels 3, 4, and 5.RAID level 3
Level 3 works best for a small number of users accessing large files (usually image files). All drives in a level 3 system act in unison to read or write one large file, which means that level 3 is not optimum for working with small chunks of data being repeatedly called up by several users. Level 3, however, features the fastest read and write times of all levels.RAID level 4
Cheaper than level 5, level 4 offers drives that work independently of each other. It is faster than level 5 when reading data, so it is good for a transaction inquiry system that does more reading than writing.RAID level 5
Level 5 is best for cases of many users accessing lots of data. It distributes parity over all disks in the stack, not on a single dedicated parity drive; this makes level 5 reading somewhat slower than level 4, because the system has to skip around to find the data. Newspapers and magazines who use this system swear by it, finding that it meets the needs of many users going after little bits of data continually.