OCTAVE Consulting: 8 Reasons Why your SME business needs a CIO

Every business be it small, medium or large is employing technology to cut costs and stay efficient.  Its kind of a norm now. But is it only about that? Surely not. Here are the top 8 business reasons that will compel you to think that researching, comparing, procuring, deploying and maintaining technology solutions across your business or organization is an ongoing process and you should have a dedicated resource to execute the same:

1. Technology is penetrating every vertical of the business. 

Some of the key areas would be:

a) Security & Surveillance
b) HR Management
c) Purchase & Procurement
d) Finance & Accounts
e) Sales & Marketing
f) Legal Affairs

2. Owner / Director level of training & understanding of technology is paramount for business success.

3. Use of technology is solving many old problems but creating another set of new problems which owners/directors may not be able to foresee.

4. Most new solutions / cutting-edge technology solutions are low cost / open-source solutions or you or your Company already owns them
(Eg. If you have paid subscription of Gmail you are entitled to a host of other Google Paid services which hardly few are aware of) are not advised by current market players as they have no financial interest in implementing them.

5. Certain day-to-day or week-to-week operations of technology have to be monitored at owner/director level and cannot be outsourced to the IT Team.

6. Every technology solution comes with an inherent risk. Managing that risk in a cost-effective manner is critical.

7. More often than not a holistic approach to technology management and security should be taken in terms of defining a governance strategy and policies to give a general direction to the digital transformation efforts.

8. Adopting Technology and upgrading to better tech solutions is an ongoing process.

As mentioned previously its simply not a one time job. The market is flooded with new and cheaper solutions everyday. Meticulous evaluation and putting up a business case for tech-upgrades can become a challenge to the business owner or the management team and that's where a CIO can step in!

Eminent IT / IS Managers from Industries in Central India participate in VMWare open forum on Business Innovation


Recently VMWare organized an Open Forum on Business Innovation at Nagpur. I am glad that I was invited to share the discussion panel with other IT Managers from leading industries of Vidarbha some of them being Mr. Sanket Joshi, Head IT, Vicco Laboratories & Mr. Pramod Pampatwar, Director Technical, Jhulelal Institute of Technology. The forum was moderated by Mr. Vikas Gupta, Head IT (Spend Management) at Essar Group.

Going Digital & Going Green: Evaluating Energy Consumption of Laptops / Desktops and other Networking / IT Devices



Power tariffs in India are still on a higher side and do demand a certain attention from the owner's end so that their power bills do not skyrocket ! With processing power of CPUs on the rise alongside the need of more and more IT gadgets like projectors, LCDs, Wi-Fi routers, Firewalls, Network Switches etc etc , which are switched ON 24x7, it is a good idea to have a first hand idea of their power consumption as well. 

Lets quickly run through why a Small & Medium Enterprise would bother about Energy consumption and energy conservation by IT hardware / gadgets:

SME vulnerability to data leak & security breach: Why Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking is getting important even for smaller organizations



In this post we shall discuss why even smaller organizations need to be careful when it comes to data security and why someone would be interested (read ethical hacker!) doing so.

1. Easy availability of Tools for Ethical Hacking & Network Penetration

Image result for kali linux
A simple google search will give tools for Wi-Fi Hacking
Itis not new - China employees thousands of personnels who are continuously spoofing and monitoring networks and corporate / government servers around the world. But who are these people and what are their qualifications. These are young talented teenagers or would be teenagers who are just playing around with tools on the internet and have an affinity to technology. No formal degree or education is needed. All you need a simple laptop/desktop with a dedicated internet connection. Thats all! There are videos on Youtube to train on Ethical Hacking. Freely available tools and websites which will scan IP addresses for open ports.

Disaster Management: Backing up critical data in multiple locations / PCs and Why cloud backup may NOT be the best solution


While protecting data has always been a key priority for bigger organizations, in today's data-centric and highly analytical world, it is imperative that even smaller companies take definitive steps to protect their data. Any theft or loss of data may result it days to weeks of double data entry work and cause loss of essential man-hours - thereby increasing the operating costs. 

Multiple options are available ranging from low cost to paid cloud / private cloud based solutions depending the size and criticality of data. Before we begin it is always important to segregate your data into different levels of criticality so it will be easier to manage the backup solutions and invest in them.

Our Clients: SMEs in Nagpur Go-Digital and Adopt Technology across Business Verticals

Over the past few years, OCTAVE Business Management Services has helped many organizations go digital and adopt technology to fulfill their critical gaps and needs. Below are some companies and organizations of repute in Central India.


Some of our esteemed Clients in Central India (Nagpur)

Cybersecurity: How to define basic firewall rules in routers to allow Email Only Access to Desktop/Laptop Clients?

Today, the market is flooded with thousands of variants of home / small office routers and wi-fi devices. These devices again come with multiple settings that need to be taken care of while setting up for the first time. Doing this can be intimidating and time consuming. However at the same time it is important to understand the security features these gateways / routers offer so we can ourselves configure them or ask our ISP / IT support person to do the same which require minimum understanding and effort. Lets take a look at two simple ways:

How to Auto-Start & Shutdown PCs / Laptops? - Part 2 (Wake on LAN using Mobiles & Gateway Routers)

As discussed in our previous post, we can also use WoL (Wake on LAN) Facility to boot the PCs remotely outside our local subnet (read internet!) and also from our mobile phones.

1) Wake On LAN - Sending Magic Packet via SmartPhone:

If your mobile phone is in the same Wi-Fi network as the PC, then its pretty much about downloading any suitable app on your Smartphone. One which I have tried and tested on Android goes by the name of Wake on LAN and its link can be found here.   It asks for the IP Address of the PC and the MAC (Physical address) of the NIC and sends the magic packet via Wifi Network.


How to Auto-Start & Shutdown PCs / Laptops? - Part 1

In my previous post we discussed the uses, applications and advantages of auto starting and shutting down PCs. In this post we will discuss how can this be achieved in multiple ways. 

Lets split the problem statement in two parts. 

PART 1 - Starting/Booting a Laptop / PC Remotely 

 A quick google search will give you multiple solutions for booting your machine. The most popular and easiest solution involved is using LAN connectivity and capabilities of the Ethernet card / motherboard and the broadband router. All the latest PCs / Laptop have the necessary hardware to support this functionality. It just needs to be correctly configured. This method is referred to as Wake-on-LAN or WoL in networking parlance.

1. Enable Wake-on-LAN or Wake on PCI card capability in BIOS settings of your motherboard. Usually this setting is found in the PnP/PCi configuration or Power Settings option in BIOS settings.

2. Enable WoL capability via your LAN / network card settings. A typical setting for a gigabit network card looks like this:



Automatically Starting and Shutting down PC Desktop / Laptop - Advantages, Uses and Applications


As the blog heading reads, the solution is intended for SOHO (Small Office and Home) Segment. I personally believe that in offices wherever Desktops/ Laptops are in use considerable power saving can be done by starting or shutting down computers automatically. 

Lets understand in brief the factors that how can remotely booting and shutting down PC / Laptop can be useful for SOHO/SME segment and the application scenarios:

1. Power Saving

Often employees and sometimes as owners also we tend to forget shutting down our PCs or just let them keep switched on so we don't have to boot them all over again the next morning and waste our precious time (!).

General Laptops consume about 60-80 Watts while desktops may consume anywhere between 150-250 Watts. Some older models may consume even more! If the employees or even the third party computer maintenance guys across the road are made aware of the considerable energy savings this can result in, there will be enough motivation to implement this solution

2. Security