Biggest problem with the great cloud migration: getting there.  

I am a HUGE fan of moving what makes sense for your business to the cloud and letting others worry about the maintenance and upkeep of equipment and software.  But here's the catch, what happens to the average company when their Internet goes down?  You email, you backups, your accounting software, and everything else that you have trusted to be moved to the cloud is now inaccessible.  Do you send all your employees home and have them work there?  Can you trust your employees to not just goof of the rest of the day?  

How to minimize your risks:

Get redundant Internet!  Don't be lazy about it and buy two T1 lines from the same vendor, because those will most likely both go down at the same time.  Buy a backup DSL or cable line into your office.  It will be worth the minimal monthly investment.  

Buy a router / firewall that can handle it.  We love SonicWALL products at Strickland Networks.  Most of the models automatically handle dual Internet connections.  Meaning if the primary is unavailable, outbound traffic is automatically sent through the second connection.  But it gets better, many models you can add a high availability unit as well.  This gives you 2 SonicWALL firewalls working in tandem to prevent downtime in the event of a hardware failure as well.  Now you could lose 1 firewall and 1 internet connection before becoming unproductive.    

Need some more help:

Email or call us today.  817.224.2020

Over the past 10 years I have worked on a multitude of routers / firewalls.  SonicWall is my absolute favorite.  In operating systems, I have switched around liking one over the other but in firewalls, SonicWall has always been my champion.  

One of the best features is you do not have to be a genius to program the firewall.  No memorizing long commands and perfect syntax to be used in command line.  There is a simple, easy to understand GUI that is web based.  Any computer with IE or Firefox (no chrome support, yet) can connect and make changes.

The price is just awesome as well.  We have had customers request Cisco and I throw in a SonicWall quote to compare; SonicWall wins hands down every time.  The add-ons that people crave like Intrusion Protection Service, Antivirus / Anitspyware protection, and Content Filtering are very solid products with low prices.  

Wireless: SonicWall has you covered.  My first sonicwall wireless install was for a 3 story 15,000 square foot office building.  I placed the access point dead center vertically and horizontally and I had the whole office covered.  Not one single dead zone.  This was in 2005.  Pretty much unheard of to cover that much area for about $500.  Recently we installed a much smaller office with 4 access points, let's just say the neighboring tenants are now having trouble using their wireless because the SonicWalls are broadcasting so well.  

The two things that just bring it home for me are support and reliability.  When I call support, I do not wait that long and I get knowledgeable people.  This is not like calling a PC company and everyone reads a script.  In the reliability department, I have installed hundreds of these units and the most common replaced part, power adapters.  In 10 years, I have sent 1 SonicWall back to the manufacturer for replacement.  

Everyone's blood is blue until it hits oxygen, mine just happens to be SonicWall blue.