I’m Doing Fine on Cloud Nine

Every once in a while my computer has a hiccup. You know what I mean-something unexpected happens. Maybe Outlook keeps freezing and then restarting, or I can’t connect to the Internet or, my most recent favorite, the return key stops working.

I restart my computer and try to remain calm but, as it’s booting back up, a little voice in the back of my head is wondering, “What if I get a blue screen? What if my computer is dying, or dead?”

The return key thing happened again this week and, although my computer seems to be working just fine, these episodes always prompt me to pause for a few minutes and think about what I would do if my computer actually died.

My goal is simple: If my computer no longer works, I want to be able to jump on another computer, immediately, and keep working. In other words, I want to have zero dependency on a particular piece of hardware.

I’m not quite there yet, but I’m close. Here are the solutions I’ve put in place for my business. See if they apply to yours as well:

1. Bookkeeping – I’ve used QuickBooks for years for my clients and myself. But, after a recent hiccup, I moved my company finances to Xero. Xero is a “cloud-based” accounting software that syncs with my banks and credit card companies. I can access my accounts from any computer and, since it’s synced with my bank, it’s reconciled with just a few clicks of the mouse.
2. Data – Or, as I like to think of it, “my stuff.” It consists of documents, photos, music, videos and pretty much all the information (and memories) that sit at the center of my life. Needless to say, it’s all very precious.
   
   At the moment, I have two parallel systems going to protect it:
   
   One is Dropbox, another cloud service that houses all of my documents, both on my hard drive and on Dropbox servers. I can log in from any computer and get right back to work.
   
   The other is Carbonite, and it’s intended for more of a catastrophic loss. It backs up my entire computer and, if I had to permanently switch to a new machine, I could do a full “restore” from Carbonite.

3. Email – Outlook is an unreliable, unruly beast and I’m through with it. To quote Taylor Swift, “We are never, ever getting back together!” I’m in the process of moving to Gmail and Google apps. Again, all cloud-based.
4. Scheduling – My calendar (Google again) lives in three places: my computer, my iPhone and my iPad. It’s always up to date, always synced and always with me.
5. Account access – I manage at least 100 online accounts, not only for myself, but also for my clients. They include web sites, bank accounts, e-mail vendors…you name it. There’s no way I could remember all of them, let alone each user name and password.

   I could write everything down in a notebook, but LastPass is a much better solution. This free (Yes, free!) service keeps track of all of it, securely and conveniently.

   I log into my master account, click on the site that I want to visit (organized by client), allow LastPass to automatically enter the user name and password, and go right in.

Lots of my clients (and friends) have taken steps to back up their data. That’s important and, as I mentioned above, something I also do.

But data backup and “interruption prevention” are not the same thing. If your computer is lost, stolen or simply dies, you’ll wish you could just buy another machine and get right back to work.

I’m almost there!