It's less than a year away until April 8, 2014 - the official end-of-life of Windows XP and Office 2003.  After that date, Microsoft will no longer provide support of any kind including security patches for the operating system and Office suite introduced a decade ago.

If you haven't upgraded all of your business computers, now is the time to start planning and budgeting.  Remember to get a complete inventory.  Don't forget about that one laptop you use every blue moon or that one PC that runs a special printer or some manufacturing equipment.

We're all looking forward to the warm and sunny days of spring and summer.  But there will be rain and there will be severe weather.  Please review the following checklist to make sure you are well protected from disasters.

• Emergency plan - Prepare a list of critical contact information of people you'll need to call during an emergency including key team members, building management, key vendor partners, etc.  Meet with your team before the disaster so everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.  Keep this list on your phone and outside the office.
• Surge protectors - Electronics should be plugged into new and functional power strips that include surge protection.
• Battery backup - Critical equipment, like servers and phone systems, should be plugged into uninterruptible power supplies to keep them running during short power outages.
• Server backup and disaster recovery - Critical systems, like your file server, should be regularly backed up and the backups should be taken offsite and verified.
• Insurance - Review your insurance coverage to make sure it provides for the types of perils and recovery you need and expect.
• Standing water - All electronics including servers, workstations, printers, network gear, battery backups, and more should be raised off the floor.
• Remote access - Severe storms may mean people will work from home.  Verify remote access to your network is working as expected.
• Cooling - Servers and other sensitive electronics don't like high temperatures.  Make sure your server closets remain cool.