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Tips on choosing a new phone company for your small business

Jun
22,
2012

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about updating your Internet bandwidth.  Since then it has occurred to me that a similar study would be prudent to make concerning your voice provider.  There are so many new flavors and players in the voice game today, that I feel it merits further discussion.  Let’s dig in, shall we?

Tossing aside the cherished acronyms like DMARC, MPOE, MPLS, and DLCI, voice communications comes down to a few general questions.  First, do you have multiple offices you would like transparent communications with?  Second, are you married to your existing phone system?  How much savings would it take to consider a divorce?  And third, do you have customer service, dispatch, or support groups which work off a call center or separate numbers?

Armed with the answers to those questions, it’s time to do some shopping.  You’re going to be accosted with VOIP, Unified Messaging Systems, and a myriad of resellers bundling packages from the big telco players into suites of services guaranteed to satisfy your every telecom need for millennia.  And to be honest, there are some great packages out there, and certainly VOIP and UMS are technologies worth investigating, both for cost benefits and efficiency, but what you want right now is leverage. Pick one of the resellers in your market. CeBeyond and Telepacific are a couple of the big players in the LA metro area.  And talk to them about just mirroring your current service, you just want a quote.  Let them know you want to compare apples to apples, then you’ll decide if you want to trust your business to them.

The pencil will be about half sharp on this first volley of numbers, they’ll know who you are with and what their prices are for services as old as you have.  They’ll likely price themselves below your current provider enough to make you interested.  Now take this number to your current provider, and see what they’ll do to keep your business.  Odds are they will counter with a ‘special’ billing promotion they can put you on right away which will save you more money and allow you to maintain their sparkling level of service.  If you’re not interested in swapping phone systems, and the savings seems worth your expenditure of effort so far, jump on their offer and sail away on the smooth waters of your new savings.

But, if you’re not afraid of a little choppy water, and you want to see how far you can save,  entertain your new broker friend with the idea of switching to a VOIP system.   VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol is familiar to almost everyone now.  Everywhere from Jack Bauer’s TAC center Cisco system on 24, to the Magic Jack infomercials, VOIP is here to stay.  And for good reasons, business quality VOIP systems can exceed traditional analog systems in voice quality, initial costs, cabling, and  TCO.

Sure there will be a learning curve, the hassle of switching carriers, systems, and lines, but once through those rough waters, you may find all new ways to put your telecommunications system to work for you.  Like unified messaging.  Simpletech’s VOIP support services can help you in making informed choices when it comes to VOIP systems, installation, and support.  Call us for a consultation on your business needs.

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Do you backup your website? You should.

Jun
20,
2012

As companies rely more heavily on cloud services, ecommerce, and online access, making sure you’re ready to recreate your online presence if necessary has often taken a backseat to forward progress.  Do you assume your providers are backing it up for you?  Do you know who they are, how to get in touch with them?   What will you do when your website is replaced with a dreaded 404 error?

Planning and documentation are the keys to getting your website up and operational when trouble strikes.  There are several pieces of information which are key to know.  They are the  name, number, email, websites, and hours of operation of the following:

  1. Webmaster  – who created and has the original code for your website
  2. Web hosting company – whose server does your website reside on
  3. DNS provider – who associates your domain name with your website, mail server, etc.
  4. Email provider – stores, forwards, or controls your email addresses and data
  5. Domain registrar – where you bought and need to renew your domain name
  6. ISP – your Internet service provider

In addition, most of these organizations will have account names and passwords to make online changes.  These need to be kept safe and up to date.  All of this information can be put in a secure place in the office, and secured as well with the person(s) most responsible for maintaining your presence.  Be sure to log into these sites and update contact information as it changes, 2pm on a Sunday afternoon is not the time you want to be searching for a former employee to get them to reset a password for you.  Trust me on this one.

You will also want to make some backups.  Your web designer should be able to provide you a backup of your entire website.  You will want to make a backup of your internal router and firewall configurations, as well as the passwords for them.  Screen shots of email configuration screens, and unique browser settings will also help get you back up and running faster.  The procedures for doing this will vary from company to company, but your IT person should be able to create them fairly quickly.  If not, start looking for a new IT person.

Online, you’ll want to log into your email provider, and get printouts of your email addresses, settings, and any forwarders you may have in place.  Next, take a trip to your DNS provider to get a copy of all of your records.  These are like index cards in a library, they direct the different services associated with your domain name to the servers responsible for that service.  Get them all, especially any CNAME, A, and MX records listed.

From all of these providers, you’ll want to get the renewal dates of the services, and place a calendar item 60 days prior to make sure you don’t have a lapse in service.  Backing up your online presence can be every bit as important to your business as your local server backup is.  Do yourself a favor and invest the time needed to secure your future.  If you need help with any of these items, call Simpletech, that’s what we do.

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Video Surveillance for Your Office: The Eye in the Sky May be Easier than it Seems

Jun
18,
2012

Perhaps George Orwell is to blame, but we as a technology driven community have at times seemed reluctant to install video surveillance.  The media fans the flames of our fears with “Person of Interest” or “Eagle Eye” exploiting video cameras as tools of a paranoid conspiracy plot. Maybe it’s time we look rationally at this tool available to our offices.

Video surveillance offers both a deterrent to crime, and a tool to prosecute when needed.  It can in some ways be the boss, when the boss is away, or be a comforting security to a lone employee. Whatever the motivation, the prices have been dropping on ever more sophisticated systems over the past few years, and though the cabling may seem unfamiliar, installation need not be performed by costly security specialists anymore.

When planning a system, the first consideration are the goals.  What do you want the system to do for you?  Understanding your needs is vital to placing the right cameras in the correct places.  When determining placement, consider two types of cameras, those for overview, and those for detail.

Overview cameras may tell if your parking lot is full, how many tables are open in a restaurant, or if your employees are playing Xbox in the lunchroom instead of working.  They are typically of lower resolution with wide angle lenses.

Detail cameras provide identification of a particular area, a cash register, license plates entering a parking lot, or people passing through a doorway. These are your HD cameras.

The specific placement and resolution for cameras is based on some simple math. The number of pixels per foot of viewing area will determine the discernible detail in the video footage. For instance, to consistently identify a human face requires 100 pixels/foot.  If a doorway is 7 foot tall, and your camera views the top edge of its frame to the floor, you would want a camera with at least 700 vertical pixels.  In camera resolutions, the second number (1024×768) is the vertical resolution. Depending on the zoom factor available for the camera, it can be placed anywhere so long as the field of view remains the same.

After you’ve determined placement, its time to look at some DVR options. DVR systems are feature packed, so choosing one that has what you need may take some analysis. Some of the more important features to consider are:

Output format – if you have to turn footage over to law enforcement, how simple is it to make a DVD or video file in a common format?

Storage capacity – How long can you retain footage at the resolutions and number of cameras you require?  Average security needs are around 14 days.  But specialized circumstances can require 30 or more.

Remote viewing – most systems have remote viewing from both a pc and some smart phones.  How secure is it?  You want to make sure your surveillance system isn’t used against you to find a good time to rob your office or store.

Audio – most DVR systems offer at least a couple of channels of audio.  If you want to capture conversations,  look over these options carefully.

After making your plan and choosing the features best suited to your needs, a team can come in and mount and cable your cameras. Setup your DVR and welcome to a new age.  With 4 camera systems priced at under $500 including cabling, it’s hard to justify not having a system for nearly every business. Simpletech Solutions offers a suite of products and services to help with these choices, call us for a consultation.

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Does My Business Need More Bandwidth? Getting All The Bang You Can Out of Your Bucks

Jun
14,
2012

I’ve been looking into bandwidth costs for some of my clients lately, and am running across some interesting results.  Many of them have ignored their high speed internet connection since it was installed and working well.  This is an ever evolving industry, and as such, new opportunities are constantly popping up.

Are you getting the most out of today’s hard earned dollars?

If you haven’t checked with your Internet service provider lately, perhaps it’s time to do so.  First, lets clear up a terminology myth so you know what they are talking about.  Bandwidth – this is the potential for communication on the channel.

Picture the information super highway as a real highway, and each packet is a car, the passengers are bytes, and the bytes are made up of bits, arms, legs, heads etc.  A four lane highway may safely have a car every hundred feet, traveling at a respectable 65MPH this means 228 cars pass any given spot per minute, with 8 passengers and 5 parts per passenger.  That’s 9120 parts per minute of bandwidth.  At 3 am, the section of highway may only have 1 car per hour, but the bandwidth remains the same.

Your ISP usually measures bandwidth in megabits per second.  Just as it would be irresponsible to take on a road widening project without studying traffic patterns,  no one can say you need x bandwidth per user responsibly without a look at your network, workflow, and traffic patterns.

But if you’re fairly assured that your internet traffic is legitimate business work, not youtubers, spammers, or virus attacks, and your internet seems sluggish, a bandwidth upgrade may be the fix.

ISP’s will describe the bandwidth in 2 parts as “3×1” or “2×768”  the first number is your download bandwidth (think eastbound side traffic toward home) and the second is your upload bandwidth (westbound, away from home).  Requests for a video on youtube will go out on the outbound side, and the video stream will come in on the inbound side.

Several applications and business models use upload bandwidth to facilitate data transfers, backups, telecommuters , and cloud or terminal server environments, but still by far your download bandwidth is usually the greater need.  Which makes the numbers confusing, in our 2×768 example, it would seem that the outbound bandwidth is disproportionally high, in actuality, what your seeing is apples and oranges ISP slang.  The download speed is being represented in MBPS or megabits per second, while your upload speed is being referred to in kilobits per second, or a one tenth ratio.  The apples to apples comparison would read 2x.768, and that is probably expressed in you contract’s fine print, but when talking to the salesperson on the phone, the distinction is rarely made.

Now that you’re equipped with the esoteric geek speak necessary, go forth and negotiate a new contract for more speed and less cost.  One last caveat, find out if you currently have a static IP address(es), when you switch contracts make sure you carry over those same addresses, or get someone familiar with networking to help you through the transition.  Simpletech can help, that’s what we do.

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Mobilize Your Forces; Choosing the Right Device for Your Small Business

May
31,
2012

As the new generation of mobile devices, tablets, smartphones, and netbooks begin to take root in everyday life, their usefulness in the workplace is growing exponentially.  Today I want to explore some of the innovative ways to put this technology to work for you, and also, maybe get a glimpse beyond the horizon at what’s coming along this path.

Tablets like Apple’s iPad are the hottest thing from the high school classroom to the Fortune 500 boardroom.  Sleek and fast, these stripped down computers offer swift and easy access to the web, email, and a plethora of custom applications.  Retail operations are adding credit card readers, bar code scanners, and turning these devices into portable registers for a better shopping experience.  Restaurants are making pay-at-the-table use of these same innovations.  Field service work has never been more efficient.  Completing work order forms while on the job, inserting pictures, video, and customer signatures into your system in real time has been clunky in the past waiting for laptops to boot and find networks.  Now the process is streamlined, and because there are fewer moving parts, the tablets can live longer in harsh environments.   Whether taking notes or making a presentation, checking email at the airport or writing a novel from the beach, tablets are here to change where we can work.

Smartphones have been evolving as well.  Finding a niche between the laptops and tablets has been a trying job for the designers.  Reading email, SMS messaging, GPS mapping, and time management applications are the true wheelhouse of these devices.  Communication, direction, and accountability all in your shirt or purse pocket drive this trend.  Companies are looking more often at SMS messaging being the replacement of the old pager.  Phone calls are often inappropriate, and emails can be sluggish to receive and read through in some business situations.  But a quick text can be just the solution to get the latest sales figures to the salesperson making the presentation to a client.  GPS tracking is becoming a tool with incredible potential.  Tracking employees, getting driving directions, even verifying the safe speed of company vehicles can all be managed by a smartphone with GPS.  If the smartphone has a true Achilles heel, it is input.  Nobody has small enough fingers to efficiently utilize a smartphone keyboard.  Software like Dragon Speak, and others in the voice to text arena are making huge inroads in making input to your phone easier and more accurate.  Look to the near future for the Star Trek like verbal interfaces to your mobile devices, especially our cell phones.

Netbooks are replacing laptops in both the classroom and the workforce.  With a true keyboard, quicker boot times, and long lived batteries, these Lillyputian laptops have the power to do almost anything your desktop can in the office.  The benefit of being able to use standard PC applications, as well as the freedom of movement make this a great choice for travelers and students.

Choosing the technology milestones to mark the path of your organization can be a daunting task.  Simpletech’s leading IT Support for Small Business can help you make these choices, implement them, and keep them up and operational working toward your benefit.  Call us today for our expert advice on mobile devices.

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Out With the Old, In With the New. Answering: When Should I Upgrade My Computer?

May
31,
2012

When is it the right time to replace an existing workstation?  Nobody ever wants to lay out hard earned profits to replace a computer that’s still working, but a closer look at the numbers may show that to be exactly the right plan.  Over time your computer slows down, it’s a fact of life just like death and taxes.  This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the strain of heat on the CPU, additional load of OS and application patches, and the overhead of more sophisticated protective software (anti-viral/malware/etc.).  Let’s look at some productivity models worked around weak workstations and their replacements.

First let’s look at someone who makes $100k and spends 5 minutes a day in combined “wait” time watching the hourglass spin on their desktop.  They are currently making $.80/minute gross pay (not including benefits and employers contributions)  That five minutes means $4 a day, $20 a week, and $80 a month.  After the capital expense tax benefit, a new workstation class system today should run about $500.  Meaning that in less than seven months a new system pays for itself just in added productivity.  Considering that you were going to replace the new system eventually, and all you’ve done is hasten the scale, the benefits grow even more.  Let’s say that this plan costs you an additional computer every six years.  You would have originally replaced the system every five years, but now at every three, one additional.  But if you extrapolate our wasted time costs, that additional two years of slow work cost you $1,920, or almost four times the adjusted price of a new computer.

Because the model scales, a person making $50k/year will save you almost $1000 by switching to a 3 year rotation plan.  This is also why, especially in larger offices, trickle down computer theories fail miserably.  Passing an older system down to other employees may seem like the perfect solution to stretching dollars, but in fact you may be burning them instead.  As the costs of standard workstations drop, so does the benefit of passing your troubles along to an underling.  Just as a little brother will grudgingly smile upon receiving your old dress pants as hand me downs, your employees often don’t feel the respect personally, or professionally when they are handed a 4 year old system as a cherished present from management.

One noted exception to the ‘hand me down’ situation is in a terminal services or Citrix environment.  Because the remote session merely processes the screen and keyboard information of the server, and doesn’t do much computing itself, the system speed and capacity requirements for moderately fast operation are significantly less.  For a group who works with a short defined list of applications which can run on a terminal server, this can be an economical solution.  But please keep in mind the costs of the server and licensing for the users.

For an in depth analysis of your computing needs, and the costs of upgrading your network to a higher standard of performance and efficiency, contact Southern California IT Support Speciailist Simpletech Solutions today.  We specialize in making your tough computing decisions simple.

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Office Wireless, Are You Paying Extra to Kill Productivity?

May
23,
2012

How many hours of productivity are you losing a month because your employees are abusing the wireless network in your office for their personal technology devices?  Not just in the time they waste checking facebook, emailing pictures, or youtube hopping, but in productivity lost by your entire office when they suck up your bandwidth.  Many offices have seen the number of devices on their wireless network double or triple in the past few years even though they haven’t significantly changed the number of computers they own.  Application updates, pushes, and synchronized email connections will even tap your connection without warning.  Most recently, printers are broadcasting themselves as ready for personal smart devices to print directly to them, costing  your company  paper and toner as well as time. What are your choices as a business owner?

Let’s explore some of those options.  The most obvious answer is not to give out your wireless password.  Unfortunately, that also limits its usefulness.  Most routers and access points have the ability to screen users by MAC address, meaning you can filter which devices have access.  This can be a tedious process in a larger organization, but very effective in controlling Internet usage.    The status and information pages of computer network adapters, on both mac and pc will provide you with the MAC address, six pairs of hexadecimal numbers usually separated by a : or -.  Tablets and phones will usually have them  listed in the network configuration information.   With over 200 trillion unique combinations, this address can allow you to block or allow specific devices easily.

Setting up a security device, be it a router or a firewall, with the ability to block certain websites can also be an advantage to your overall productivity.  Blocking the app stores for the various mobile devices will prevent users from chewing up your bandwidth updating angry birds, or downloading back issues of Field and Stream.  Blocking iTunes, facebook, Pandora, and youtube can save you bucketloads of bandwidth as well.  If you use these pages  for business social media purposes, you can make your wireless network a separate entity from your wired network, and set up these fences on the wireless side only.

With the prices of SOHO (small office/home office or consumer grade) devices plummeting, users are more frequently now than ever before bringing their own wireless to work.  They may not be considering the ramifications of hooking a device to your network to grant themselves and their buddies wireless in the office.  Maybe they even think they’re doing you a favor.  Often these devices have little to no security and provide an excellent way for unscrupulous people to infiltrate your network, steal your data, and turn your systems and servers into their own little server farm.    Some devices can now wirelessly become repeaters, so an Android phone in a pocket may be latching onto your wireless, then broadcasting another network for unauthorized users to access.  Scan for rogue access points often, and look for new devices on your private network.

If you’re concerned about data loss, poor productivity, or the cost of maintaining a healthy online environment for your business needs, and you don’t fully understand the corrective measures discussed here, call on Simpletech at 951.781.3412,  your solutions partner.

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Is Anti-Virus Enough? Not Any Longer

May
22,
2012

The days of ‘glamorous’  virus attacks like Michelangelo and Jerusalem are far behind us.  Today’s Internet battlefield consists of various rootkits, worms, and Trojans, designed to sneak behind your defenses and strike at you for money, information, or crippling your system.  The wall of security built by companies like Norton, McAffee, and Kapersky is more of a chain link fence today.  Now more than ever, the user shares in the responsibility of system protection.  Dodging malicious code is a union of preparation and discipline and we must all learn the dance steps if we want to continue our online adventure.

Preparation starts with an Anti-Virus package.  For my computing, I want something with low overhead.  I’m far less likely to cancel a scan or update its not chewing up all of my system resources.  I want frequent updates and an  easy to understand interface.  I also want cheap.  I hate the blackmail popups about renewals, and software that is nearly impossible to remove.  For my systems I use Microsoft Security Essentials http://windows.microsoft.com/mse .  This is my outer fence, now let’s place some guards in position.  My next layer is system monitoring.  I use spybot http://www.safer-networking.org/ to actively watch my registry and scan for spyware.  Then I want to check on the troops, spot check their work, and squash anything that’s gotten through.  For this I use Malwarebytes  http://www.malwarebytes.org .  I scan my system weekly, and I still seem catch something every month or so.  I’m sure there are better combinations out there, but this suits my needs well.  Plus it has the added benefit of being 100% free for home users.

Now for my part of the equation.  The basics first.  I don’t open email attachments unless I have an idea what it is and why I have it.  I don’t open the “joke” pictures or videos people send me, no matter how enticing the description.  I don’t share USB flash drives.  I have some for work, and some for home, and never the two shall meet.  If I must move files, I do it through Dropbox http://dropbox.com , where my live protection Internet scanning gets a fair crack at it.  I don’t surf like I used to either, I’m careful to choose short URL’s when searching.  Often hackers will bury their files deep in someone’s ill protected server and build websites there to attack from.  This results in long convoluted URL’s.  I choose the root domain and try to use the site navigation to get where I’m heading.  When grabbing shareware tools or utilities, I search for reviews and referrals on other sites before downloading, often the reviews will post links to alternate sites to download  from, I always apply the smell test to these.  If they want me to install their download tool to enhance my internet speed, grow 3 inches taller or even live forever, I decline.  I read very carefully the buttons and instructions on freeware or shareware pages, often the reason they’re offering this jewel of software for free is because the site is filled with landmines of spyware just waiting for an errant click.  If you place your mouse over (hover) a button or link, and look to the bottom left of your browser window, you can usually see what URL that link will transport you to.  Does it look like where you want to go?  If you must download free software form unfamiliar websites, look for these landmines before playing Russian hopscotch.

The time has come when we the users must take a more active role in protecting our systems.  Stay informed, stay protected, and stay alert.  For more information, or help removing a malicious software attack, call Simpletech’s it support technicians today at 951-781-3412.

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IT Support in San Bernardino

Dec
30,
2011

IT support in San Bernardino can sometimes be hard to find. San Bernardino is one of the largest counties in the United States and there are many businesses within those county borders that rely on technology day in and day out. It is important to have a strong support team in place when engaging an IT support company.

Simpletech Solutions provides San Bernardino IT support for small and medium businesses. They have a dedicated team and every client receives their own account manager than ensures a high level of service. Simpletech provides a very diverse but complete package of technological services. Below are a list of some of the services Simpletech offers to San Bernardino businesses across the county:

  • Server Installation
  • Network Installation
  • Firewall Setup and Configuration
  • Antivirus setup and configuration
  • Web Design
  • Internet Marketing
  • Managed Services Support
  • Project Management
  • Hosted Exchange Services
  • Shoretel Phone System Installation
  • Talkswitch Phone System Installation
  • Security camera Installation
  • Network Cabling

Simpletech Solutions offers many more services and can tailor each service to the need of the customer. The Simpletech Support engineers are qualified and certified to handle any business network through their rigorous training and experience. State of the art tools are used to monitor and maintain servers and desktops as well as generate technology management reports for top level executives.

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IT Outsourcing vs. Full Time IT Professional

Dec
21,
2011

There are a couple things to think about when trying to determine how to best handle your IT support needs. If you are a medium sized company, or a large company, you will start to consider a full time network administrator. We have outlined a few reasons why that might not be the best idea.

1. The salary for a single full time IT professional will probably run you anywhere from $60,000 – $100,000.

2. That IT professional will need you to purchase software tools that will enable them to run your company efficiently. Different tools are needed for both Mac’s and PC’s.

3. You will need to purchase Anti-Virus and other security tools in order to protect your company.

it services

IT Support

4. If you are a multi-site company, you will need to pay your IT professional mileage reimbursement.

5. You will need to pay for data backups if you wish to have your computers backed up.

6. You will pay payroll taxes.

7. You will pay Vacation Days

8. You will pay for sick days.

9. You will probably pay insurance.

10. You will pay workers comp.

11. You will most definitely hire sub-contractors to fill in when the full time IT guy is not around.

12. You will hire consultants to pick up where your IT professional’s knowledge ends. Your IT pro is only one person and his/her knowledge is limited to only one person’s ability to learn.

13. You will pay for additional overhead costs such as:

  • Rent
  • Computer
  • Software
  • Supplies
  • etc

In addition to the above direct expenses, you will also experience the effects of a single full time IT professional in the form of significant risk and lost productivity. The following are indirect ways in which you will experience this loss in productivity:

  • The result of a system outage during the IT professional’s vacation time. (Who do you call, and who knows your network if your full timer is gone.
  • The result of sick days or injury (Downtime with No Support)
  • Minimized knowledge base of one person.
  • Multiple projects or emergencies – lack of depth
  • Turnover
  • Trust and political issues from having an inside have access to the companies most important information. (Majority of hacks are from insiders)

At the end of the day, you could end up end up spending up to $100,000 in direct costs alone, and much more in indirect costs that have been outlined above.

This is where managed service providers have come on to the scene and given small, medium, and large businesses the ability to cut costs by almost 60%, while increasing productivity and decreasing risk. Managed Service providers like Simpletech Solutions make each of those bullet points above a moot point. Take them all away. There is a reason why AMGEN, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world just outsourced their entire in house IT department. Over $800 million dollars worth of IT services. More and more companies are seeing the benefit of IT outsourcing. Are you?

 

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