Over the years we have seen many new clients come to Alvaka Networks feeling like they are hostages to Information Technology. IT Hostages feel this way for many different reasons. Most often the person feeling this way is the CFO, Controller, CEO, COO, IT manager or an IT technician for the most part in that order in terms of frequency.
Why do you feel that way?
It is usually because your systems are:
1. Poorly designed
2. It doesn’t work right
3. The system is insecure
4. No one knows what the last guy did to it
5. Deadlines are not met
6. Management does not understand what the IT team is doing
7. The IT team feels management never approves proper budgets and procurements
8. and every investment in IT seems to create new problems that just make the situation worse
But these reasons are not really the crux of the problem. What causes the real sense of frustration is the powerlessness to resolve the issues. Problems that are momentary in nature are to be expected when running IT systems, but when the problems persist for long periods of time such as months or years, then the hostage syndrome begins to set in.
The reasons management feels victim to the IT Hostage Syndrome is different than why IT staffers feel like IT Hostages. Alvaka Networks will provide a road map for you on how to be rescued from the IT Hostage situation before Stockholm Syndrome sets in or even worse, you just give up.
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.