One of the motivators of moving to the cloud is the economics of it. And as technologies evolve so do delivery models. If we take a quick look at history, we can see the same thing happen with electricity. Now, a ubiquitous fact of life, it was once the cutting edge of technology only available to those that could afford to purchase, house and maintain a generator. With time, the production of electricity became centralized as companies began investing in large power plants that allowed them to deliver electricity to its customers and charge for that they used thereby taking electricity from luxury to utility. Soon, sooner than you think probably, cloud services will become a utility as well.

There are a number of ways to go into the cloud. Private and public cloud being two of the more popular ways. With Office 365 and its hosted Exchange service, it is difficult for almost any business to make a case for keeping an email server on premise. The cost of the hardware, the configuration, installation alone will run you several thousand dollars. That is before the ongoing cost of maintaining the system. One Exchange server has the capacity to hold several thousand mailboxes. Whether you set up 12 or 1,200, the cost of the hardware and software is still the same. With Office 365, you pay for the boxes you use. Same goes with their Team sites and OneDrive services. Each offer 1 TB of storage space for your employees to save files and collaborate for about fifty cents a day per employee. At about fifty cents a day, you get the hardware space for storage, and the software to install on up to five systems for that user. The savings on the software license alone is a good reason to seriously consider cloud and subscription options.

With cloud services companies making the investments into hardware, software and infrastructure, giving its customers the same benefit of economics of scale that the electric company does to modern day businesses, going cloud more often than not makes good budgetary sense. You aren’t running a generator to power your office, after all?

Technology is rapidly and ever evolving making how every industry does things constantly changing as well. There are new ideas on how to do things, what to do and how to expand the industry even further. Museums are adding interactive displays to their once static exhibits. Marketing firms are including digital offerings to their portfolio. Law firms are protecting their clients’ intellectual rights on the internet. Contractors are taking tablets with them on site to make sure their projects are on schedule and supplies are available. Dentists are looking up your x-rays from their keyboard, not their filing cabinets. Take a moment now to think about how your industry is evolving with technology. Are you keeping up?

Even educational systems have changed in response to the growth in technology. Students are coming out of college with a set of skills that were difficult to find in the last century. The Microsoft Office Suite is a given, not the rarity it once was. Some high schools are even teaching their freshmen students how to use the CAD software architects use, and these fourteen year olds are getting certified as well. That’s not to say it’s a good idea to hire a high school student for your drafting needs, but these are the skills with which they are starting college. Once they graduate, they will have skills that they will want to see challenged. A recent grad, or even someone with some work experience, won’t want to work below their skillset.

Are you set up to attract the best and brightest in your industry? Is your business meeting the demands of your clients as they are now or as they once were? Are you following industry trends or are you on the leading edge? And how does that benefit or impact your business? Answering these questions can give you some clarity on how your company can more effectively use technology.

If you find yourself in that rare, and therefore, not well practiced position of having to choose between a PBX phone system or considering a VoIP system, there are a few things to consider. It is not a choice that is made very often, so it can be overwhelming even just understanding what the fundamental differences are between these two choices, but there are three fundamental considerations that can help make the decision significantly easier to make.

First, let’s start with your budget. If you are considering an on-premise PBX, you will more likely than not be required to make a considerable upfront investment for the hardware, or long-term lease payments. Either way, it is a considerable commitment, one that may require a large capital expenditure. This may be the right choice for you if you have a rather larger number of users but only use a small amount of phone service like a call center. Otherwise, a hosted solution resulting in smaller monthly costs works better for businesses interested in freeing up operational costs. Hosted VoIP fees are for the service only and the phones can be either be purchased out right or lease, whichever better fits your budget.

The second thing to consider is the growth you are projecting. Chances are if you are considering a new phone system it is because you may have grown out of your current system. With an on-premise PBX, any further growth could result in a required upgrade of the PBX hardware or expansion of the phone lines. The “add ons” will add up. In terms of growth, hosted VoIP offers greater scalability. Adding more users just requires the purchase of more phones, a requirement in both cases, some quick administration on the back end, and voila. Plug the phone into the network and they are ready to roll. It’s just as easy to add remote users as well. And the call volume can increase to the amount the internet connection will support. Again, hosted VoIP offers a lot of flexibility and scalability.

Lastly, what is your down time tolerance? If you decide to go with an on-premise PBX, you will have to consider that it will be the single point of failure. If a piece of hardware were to fail, as they will sometimes do, there will be no outgoing or incoming calls until the issue is resolved, or the replacement piece is ordered and installed. If your business cannot tolerate a minimum of a few days of no phone service, then hosted VoIP may be the better choice. Any reputable hosted VoIP company will have redundancies in place that protect the customer from any downtime. More often than not, when an issue does occur, the client is none the wiser as even the call quality is maintained.

There have been some innovations since Bell first uttered the inaugural phrase “Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you.” But so far, the one to make the biggest impact on businesses has been the innovation of hosted VoIP. Do you have funds ready for any upfront capital expenses? What is your projected growth for the next 3 to 5 years? How much down time can your organization tolerate from your phone system? Will you clients even notice or will cause serious harm to your relationship? Answering these questions can help you make the best choice for your needs.

User Rating: 5 / 5

There’s been a trend lately that makes Managed Service providers nervous. In a time when people have more access to technology more than ever in history and where people often have on them more than one internet enabled device at a time, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has become a popular method for companies, especially startups, to keep their own costs down. But, this can bring significant security risks to the company that puts this practice into place. Especially since most do so without a written policy.

BYOD may seem like a great idea. The employee gets to use the system they already own and are comfortable with, making the learning curve of say a regular Mac user to a PC disappear. The employer gets to completely cut the cost of hardware and software from their budgets saving a considerable amount of money. But at what cost? If there is no policy in place, the computer owner has complete rights to deny any virus protection in favor of what they may or may not have in place, can object to the data on their systems being backed up and can download any and all data to their local hard drive, quit and walk it right over to their next employer, your competitor.

A BYOD policy can protect the company from some of this, certainly by having the employee agree to have the system maintained and managed by the company for the duration of corporate use, but not all of it. Which is why a hosted desktop solution is a great, cost effective middle ground. By having the desktop hosted in the cloud, the employee will still use their personal system to access it but none of the data will ever touch their hardware. It will remain virus and malware protected by the cloud service provider and if the employee ever leaves the company, the hosted desktop is simply turned off and access turned off. The employee remains with no trace of company information to take with them. Hosted desktop prices are utility model based, meaning you pay for what you use, making it very scalable and a good fit for companies with seasonal employees that have the BYOD practice in place. Are you considering instituting BYOD in your organization? Have you put together a policy for BYOD? How comfortable are you with your company data on systems you cannot manage or control? Answering these questions can help you determine if hosted desktops make sense for your organization.

User Rating: 5 / 5

The business of phishing is big and growing. With 89% of phishing attacks being carried out by organized crime and 30% of the emails they send being opened, the numbers game is working in their favor. And don’t doubt, it is just a numbers game. They don’t care how large or small you are, they just want an easy mark. They can sell whatever they find, that’s not a problem. There’s a market for everything. But what they want is for you no to look to closely and click those links with confidence. They’ll take it from there.

The tactics they use are engineered to prey on your comfort level with those you trust. There are far fewer emails being sent by Nigerian princes, though still a few persist, and more are being sent in full Chase Bank, American Express or Paypal disguise. They will even contain certain vital information like the last 4 numbers of your account, or your login user name. But with just a small dose of healthy mistrust and a keen focus on behavior, it’s not that hard to pick out the phishing lures.

If Chase Bank is sending you account information it does not have a history of emailing you about in the past, it’s suspect. May not be a scam, but still worth taking a moment to check a couple of things. First, no matter how legit it looks hover over the Click Here buttons, or whatever the main call to action button is. If it is not the domain of the purported sender, it’s a scam. If it’s not clear, check the From address. The same rule applies. Is it from the amex.com account, or something completely alien to that?

Be aware, you have to be diligent, because they have been known to purchase domains like microsfot.com, or offiice.com in order to throw those off that are just doing a perfunctory scan. If both of these tests do not yield the results that leave you feeling 100% secure in either direction, independently open a browser and type in the URL of the company from which the email supposedly came from. DON’T CLICK A LINK to get there. Type it in, and navigate to the contact us page, and just ask them if it’s legit. Whoever the company is, will be able to tell you if the information in the email was from them or not. If it was, better safe than sorry. If not, you did good squashing a probable headache. Score one for the good guys!

Typically, the day for an average staff member at a NYC small business looks something like this: At nine o’clock they come in, log in, and walk away to settle in and get coffee. They go back to their desks to open up Outlook and now have up to another five minutes to chat with a neighbor about the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Once email finally comes up they can start catching up on correspondence when suddenly they see a client is asking about a file they urgently need resent. Now the employee has to go get the file off the network, only to find that they are getting an error saying they cannot access that file. Feeling frustrated, they try to get the file a few more times only to resign themselves to the fact that there is a problem with the server.

They then go right to the in-office tech specialist, the receptionist. The receptionist was not only hired for their ability to answer phones and multi-task, but for their youth and presumed expertise with all things tech. Once the receptionist lets the office employee know that the server has been rebooted, they successfully retrieve the file and attach it to the email they have ready to send to the client, who has already has called once about it. Upon hitting the “Send” button, the dreaded, but expected, happens; the internet is down, again. One more trip to the receptionist, and twenty minutes later the internet modem has been rebooted as well, restoring the internet and finally allowing that email to go out to the client. What should have taken seconds, has now taken more than an hour and a portion of the trust the client once had that they would be well taken care of.

The cost of inefficiencies and loss of productivity can be more accurately calculated by not only how many hours you pay your employees to struggle to do their jobs, but by the impact of the heavy cost that is felt in poor customer retention and loyalty. Both of these will show clearly on you bottom line. What are you doing to eliminate inefficiencies? Are there inefficiencies you can identify but are not sure how to address? Can you be doing more to remove costly inefficiencies? Answering these questions can not just improve morale, but customer retention rates as well.