Key Trends Defining Unified Communications and how SNET Defines Communications

Key Trends Defining Unified Communications and How SNET Defines Communications!
Defining Unified Communications (UC) has always been a bit of a moving target. And that’s made many people wonder if they really need it.
In the beginning, UC often meant things like being able to see your voicemail and e-mail together on a PC.  Or having software you could put on your PC to control your phone and directory. The operative initials were as much PC as UC.
Now Unified Communications is being redefined. Mobile devices are a big part of what’s bringing about the change. Collaboration technologies are part of it. And so are improvements in the underlying communications infrastructure—IP, SIP, 4G and more.
At SNET Communications, we have just completed work on our SNET Communicator- which allows you to have a client running on whatever device you use- Droid, iPhone, Tablet or iPad- and see the status of your office phones, chat and even have a video call. Of course, you can still click to dial, have voice mail messages appear as email messages and all of the usual benefits of screen pops!
IP and SIP: The “unified” part of UC has always been primarily about getting your phone and computer to work together using the Internet-based IP and SIP protocols. This made it possible to have your PC and your phone on one network. But the bigger benefit was that a phone call itself was now able to be handled as a digital file (i.e., like an e-mail.) Just as you can easily have one e-mail go to multiple addresses, you can have calls go to multiple devices and numbers: business phone, mobile and home phone. Just as you can have dozens of people on an e-mail chain, you can have dozens of people on a conference call—without having to use a conferencing service. Just as you can easily manage different e-mail accounts, you can have multiple incoming lines for different segments of your business—a key way to create a better customer experience.  The benefits are substantial. That’s why sales of IP-based business systems grow in the double digits every year and are a driving force behind the UC revolution.
UC Apps: Everyone loves their mobile phone, in part thanks to all of the mobile apps that are now available. You can use your mobile to check the weather, do your banking, find a movie, etc. Now you can also get a UC app. SNET has one .It lets you tightly integrate you mobile phone and your office system: Manage your office directory. Set up conference calls. Make a call directly from a text. Getting the right app to marry your mobile phone to your office communications system is a major step forward for UC.
Collaboration: This is one of the hottest buzz words in business today. In fact, the terms “unified communications” and “mobile collaboration” are often used interchangeably. They are both all about bringing the right people together with the right information in the right context. “Presence” is a big part of this.  Having presence capabilities let you see at a glance who in your organization is available and how to reach them quickly.
Video: Today, anyone with an Internet-enabled device, a webcam and free software can make a video call to almost anyone else in the world. It’s estimated that more than a third of Skype-to-Skype calls now include video, with peaks as high as 50 percent during the holidays. This rapid spread of video calls in the personal, consumer market is driving the growth of video in business. Also, the SIP standard provides capabilities that simplify how video integrates and connects, opening the way to regular use of video with the same ease as voice and messaging communications. Businesses are also discovering that the smart use of video conferencing can give you new levels of flexibility in partnering, assembling teams and competing for top, full-time talent. For all of these reasons, video is becoming a larger part of the UC equation.
SNET Communications (www.snetconnect.com)  has a wide range of resources on our website that look at all aspects of UC—where it is today, and where’s it’s going.

The Complete SNET Blog Guide to Service Level Agreements: Everything you need to know

What are Service Level Agreements (SLA's)?
A Service Level Agreements (SLA) is a contract between a service provider and customer that specifies what service will be provided, how it will be measured and in what timeframe it will be delivered. “SLAs” simply identify certain service levels or performance standards that the service provider must meet or exceed. The SLA also specifies the consequences for failure to achieve one or more service levels, such as credits granted to the customer on future invoices or rights of termination on behalf of the customer in certain instances. The SLA may also include credits or bonus incentives for performance that exceeds targets.

The linked concept of Service Level Management (or 'SLM') arises from the idea that, if you have agreed levels of service, you should have an agreed method of monitoring performance and dealing with exceptions and changes.

Why Do You Need SLA’s?
There are two major reasons to have a SLA, first, is to have the ability to measure the level of service being provided to the client and second, is to reap all the benefits from a well structured, well executed, enforceable SLA. The latter should be the desired outcome from any SLA the client constructs. This is an important point that is very often overlooked. Let’s take a look at an over simplified example (or is it?); let’s say you’re a retail store with business hours from 9 AM – 9 PM Monday - Saturday. You rely on your service provider in order to run your business. So you construct a SLA with your service provider that requires the availability of the services to be 99% excluding scheduled maintenance; however, you don’t specify hours of operation or days of the week in the SLA. The potential outcome is that the SLA could be measured on a 24 hour day / 365 days a year. The SLA could be met with 432 minutes a month of downtime, that’s more than 7 hours a month, 84 hours in a year! Ouch! Unfortunately, many times with newly established SLA’s the provider meets their SLA commitment; however, the client’s desired business outcome is not achieved, why, because SLA’s are not trivial to construct.
Hopefully, from the SLA example above it’s starting to become clear why SLA’s benefit both the client and provider. The main reason the client enters into a SLA contract with a provider is to receive a cost effective level of service that allows them to support and grow their business. The main reason the provider likes SLA’s is that the SLA clearly defines the scope of the deliverable that they will be compensated for. Therefore, the client needs to find a provider that will be flexible and willing to participate in a partnership that allows periodic updates to the SLA’s when the SLA are not meeting the client’s desired outcome. Without a partnership and the ability to work together to refine the SLA when appropriate, both sides will end up failing, as evidenced each year as thousands of clients file for divorce with their provider by either invoking the termination clause in their contract or just not renewing. However, with a strong partnership and clear roadmap through well-constructed SLA’s that can be modified and enforced the outcome could be a marriage made in heaven!

Key Elements of a Service Level Agreement
SLA's define an agreed service between two parties, whether it be internal departments or separate organizations. Below is a list of features you should consider when creating an SLA:
• What the service being provided is.
• The standard or quality of the service.
• The timetable for delivery.
• The responsibilities of the supplier and the customer.
• Provisions for legal and regulatory compliance.
• Mechanisms for monitoring and reporting of service.
• Any payment terms.
• How disputes will be resolved.
• Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.
• Termination conditions.

What Are SLAs?
Although in industry practice the SLA is a separate addendum to the outsourcing contract, it is not legally a separate agreement, but another set of terms and conditions of the services contract itself.

Structure of SLAs: Good, Bad, and Ugly
A good SLA will usually include a section that provides precise definitions of key terms. Next, specific service levels will be described in perhaps more than a dozen categories. In most cases, service level compliance is measured on a monthly basis.
From such service levels, the parties identify certain “key” service levels. Key service levels will be weighted by importance or severity so they total 100 percent. Then, if the outsourcer fails to achieve some of the key service levels, the percentage of key service levels missed for the month can be applied as a service level credit against a percentage of the invoice. If all the key service levels were missed in that month, then the full percentage service level credit could be given to the customer.
In some cases, the parties may choose to identify not only a threshold level of acceptable performance for each service level, but also a level of “increased impact” if the performance is at an agreed level below the threshold service level. If the outsourcer’s performance falls below the increased impact level, the percentage service credit may increase substantially.
Another factor that may be included in calculating service credits is a “frequency factor” that measures the number of times a particular service level is missed during an interval, such as a rolling 12-month period. If the frequency factor is triggered, the percentage to be applied against the total service credit is increased by some factor, for example, 1.5 or 2.0.
Just because certain service levels are not included in the “key service levels” does not mean they have no significance. First, they provide an objective measurement for tracking performance in areas that are important to the customer’s business and can spotlight the problem areas. Second, these non-key service levels are in fact contractual obligations which if not met, could form the basis of a claim of breach of contract by the customer.
Critical Conditions
Often the parties identify a subset of the key service levels as critical. For these critical service levels the parties will agree that the outsourcing contract may be terminated by the customer if the outsourcer fails to meet them at the frequency specified. Why is it important to include this type of provision? Contract law generally entitles one party to terminate a contract if the other party “materially breaches” the contract. A breach that isn’t “material” may entitle one party to claim damages, but it will not entitle that party to terminate the contract. Identifying the “critical” service levels and providing specific conditions for termination eliminates ambiguity in determining whether circumstances entitle the termination of a contract for cause as a material breach.
Force majeure!
Force majeure clauses excuse a party’s failure to perform if the failure resulted from an act of nature such as an earthquake or other natural disaster beyond the party’s control. In service provider contracts, negotiating the provisions of excused performance in the context of the service provider’s responsibilities and liabilities can be most challenging and time-consuming.
Examples include failures resulting from the customer’s non-performance, failures of third parties, and failures in hardware and software. Service providers seek a broad definition of force majeure and customers seek a narrow, tightly defined provision. Fair resolution lies somewhere in the middle. In any event, provisions should be included in the SLA addressing the outsourcer’s responsibility to correct and mitigate the effects of an excused performance failure. A force majeure event should not completely absolve the service provider from any responsibilities whatsoever.

9 Questions to Consider in an SLA Negotiation
Customers negotiating service provider contracts for the first time may be surprised to find that service providers are generally not proactive in proposing a fair and well designed SLA structure to the customer. Unfortunately, service providers may respond to a proposed SLA from the customer and negotiate in hopes that the customer will ultimately agree to an SLA that favors the service provider. There is clearly an opportunity for progressive service provider to distinguish their services by drawing on their experience in drafting and implementing an SLA structure that thoroughly addresses the customer’s needs in a fair manner.
Every customer must be prepared to know what they want and why they need the SLA, and be ready to convince the service provider. Reasonable customers will avoid over-measuring and including every imaginable service level. They should agree to fair credits for failures in meeting the service levels. Outsourcers should be willing to understand that the customer requires significant protection in the SLA, and acknowledge that there are certain levels of performance that would justify termination of the contract.
SLAs are not easy to design or negotiate. But a comprehensive, fair and effective SLA is critical for a successful outsourcing relationship. In the course of negotiating an SLA, customers and service provider have the opportunity to learn a lot about how their future partner will approach important issues in the relationship.

1. Which service levels will you measure?
Service levels are defined ways of measuring a service provider’s performance. A service level generally is a measure of the quality, speed, availability, capacity, reliability, user-friendliness, timeliness, conformity, efficiency or effectiveness of services.
A good service level is both within the service provider’s influence or control and an important measure of the success of the deal. A good service level is also designed to align the incentives of the service provider and the customer.
2. What will you measure, exactly, for each service level?
The parties must define the service level with precision. Unless each service level is precisely defined, the parties will not have a true agreement — a meeting of the minds — on service levels. Instead, you’ll have a situation where the customer believes that the service level measures A, B and C and the service provider believes it measures only A and B. When C fails, you’ll have a dispute that the SLA doesn’t address.
3. What process will you use to measure achieved performance?
For each service level, you need a process for measuring performance that the service provider achieves. The measurement process will affect the results. Thus, you need to know how service levels will be measured before you can decide how high to set the bar for performance.
The key issues in choosing a measurement process include:
Accuracy. A measurement process with a large margin of error puts more risk into the deal than one with a small margin of error.
Cost. The cost of a measurement process includes both the cost of running the measurement system and the burden that the process places on the people, computers and other resources that could otherwise be performing services.
Visibility. A good measurement system allows both parties both real-time access to data and the ability to audit historical data.
4. What is the measurement period?
The measurement period is the time horizon for measuring performance. Typically, the measurement period will be a month or quarter. Longer measurement periods give the service provider more opportunity to make up for bad performance. Shorter measurement periods give the service provider a “fresh start” more often. Longer measurement periods mean that more is at stake during any one measurement period.
The SLA should define not only how long the measurement period is but also how much of that time is within the measurement period. Is it 24×7 or 9×5? Does it include times when the service provider is shut down due to acts of war, terrorism, failure of its suppliers or other traditional force majeure events? Does it include periods when the demand for services exceeds the assumed levels?
5. What reports will be provided?
The SLA should require the supplier to make available clear, useful and timely reports on performance for each measurement period. The SLA should define precisely what information will appear on the reports, such as exception reports for missed service levels and trend reports for key service levels. The SLA might also require the service provider to conduct a root-cause analysis of service level failures and report the results to the customer.
6. How well will the service provider agree to perform?
Note that we’re at question number six, not question number one. Too often, people start with the number — say, 99.9% — and then start to define a service level. That’s the wrong order because the number is only meaningful when you know what’s being measured, who will measure it, how it will be measured and how often it will be reported.
The SLA can include both minimum service levels and target service levels. The service provider would be obligated to meet any minimum service levels, and failing to do so would be a breach of the outsourcing contract. The target service levels would be measured, and there might be service level credits associated with failure to meet them, but a failure generally would not be a breach of contract.
Customers should be wary of these pitfalls:
Agreeing to Existing Internal Service Levels. Some customers agree that the required service levels will be set at the customer’s existing internal performance. By doing so, they preserve the bad service that the outsourcing was designed to improve.
Agreeing to Agree on Service Levels. Some customers, eager to sign the contract, agree to work out service levels later. However, once the contract is signed, the deal team breaks up and the service provider has no incentive to agree to challenging service levels. Thus, no service levels are ever developed.
Agreeing to Fix Service Levels at Initial service provider Performance. Some customers, with no basis for setting service levels, agree to set them at whatever levels the service provider can achieve during the initial months of the contract. This gives the vendor an incentive to hold down service levels during those initial transitional months, that is, during the most perilous time in the contract term.
Setting the Wrong Incentives. Some customers ignore the idea that the supplier will “manage to the money.”
Asking for the Moon. Some customers demand unnecessarily high performance commitments. Providing better service requires the service provider to use, for example, redundant systems, excess capacity and better technology. Asking for better service than you need means paying more than you need to pay.
7. Will the minimum and target service levels change over time?
The SLA may include not fixed but floating performance commitments. Particularly in long-term, large-scale outsourcing agreements, SLAs may increase the performance commitments through:
Contractual Ramp-Ups. The SLA can include a fixed schedule of increasing requirements.
External Metrics. The SLA can base the service level on an outside measure of acceptable or achievable performance.
Supplier Performance. The SLA can ramp up the performance requirement based on the service provider’s actual performance. For example, for each year, the target performance could be increased by a percentage of the amount by which the service provider’s actual prior-year performance exceeded the target performance.
8. Will the SLA include service level credits?
A “service level credit” is a credit that the service provider grants to the customer after a service level failure. The service provider may be required to write a check to the customer or the customer may simply have the right to apply the credit to future service. Either way, it reduces the effective price of the services and the service provider’s profit margin.
As an example, an SLA might call for service level credits for any of 10 service levels. For each of those 10 service levels, the SLA might indicate a number of “credits” to be granted upon a failure, with each “credit” being a small percentage of the customer’s total bill for the measurement period.
The total service level credits for a measurement period might be capped at, say, 10% or 15% of the total monthly bill. This means that, although poor performance could reduce the supplier’s profit margin, it would not create a loss for the service provider. The total pool of service level credits (that is, the total service level credits payable if the supplier misses every service level) would then be some multiple of the cap.
There are many variations on this theme. Some SLAs impose credits only for repeatedly missing required service levels. Some SLAs allow the service provider to earn back service level credits for subsequent good performance, or to use superior performance to get “Get Out of Jail Free” cards to avoid future service level credits. Some SLAs have entire schedules of credits for a single service level, with larger service level credits for larger or repeated violations.
Service level credits are an incentive system. Smart customers design the service level credit structure on obtaining good performance throughout the contract term. They also retain the right to revise the service level credit structure so that they can re-align the incentives as their priorities change.
One important question is whether the service level credits are the customer’s sole remedy for a breach or merely one of the customer’s remedies. This is an area where loose contract language can have surprising results.
9. When does failure to meet service levels allow termination for cause?
Outsourcing agreements, generally, can be terminated for cause upon a material breach. A sufficiently severe service level failure would be a material breach. However, without clear language in the SLA, the parties might argue about whether a service level failure is sufficiently severe to be a material breach.
The SLA can provide increased certainty by defining particular events that, without argument, allow termination for cause. You can set minimum service levels at the level that allows termination. You can also define an amount of accumulated service level failures that allow termination for cause. For example, termination for cause might be allowed if the service provider breaches a single service level three times in succession, or the supplier breaches enough service levels that the service level credits are limited by the cap. The effect is to give the customer a clear exit right for substandard performance.

Hiring and Keeping Great Employees: The Mobility Factor

In recent years, the global economy has seen sustained levels of high unemployment. So that means it’s easier than ever to find and hold on to great employees, right? Wrong!

Finding and retaining the really effective employee remains a major challenge, particularly because today’s work force is so diverse. That’s why “one-size-fits-all” strategies for keeping good people simply don’t work any longer. And because turnover among valued employees is costly, disruptive, and negatively impacts customer satisfaction, it remains a major challenge. That’s why more and more companies are taking advantage of their communications systems to support teleworking options.

An insurance company of approximately 40 people headquartered in the Washington, DC metropolitan area did a comprehensive study on their telework program and found that 64% of employees said they would turn down a 20% salary increase to continue teleworking. In addition, 57% of teleworking employees reported improved job satisfaction/morale. For more information, see Unleashing the Hidden Productivity of Your Small Business by Chuck Wilsker, President & CEO, The Telework Coalition at: http://bit.ly/qiom1T.

Teleworking is not for every employee. But by implementing a teleworking plan, employers get more options for addressing the needs of employees they simply don’t want to give up:

The valued employee who wants to stay, but whose spouse or significant other needs to relocate.
The employee who needs a better work life balance—to be more available to children, an aging parent, etc.
Members of Generations X (born after 1961) and Y (born after 1981) who have grown up on technology and expect to make it part of their everyday lives.
With gasoline and public transportation costs rising, the five-day-a-week commute is becoming an expensive approach to workplace management. The Telework Coalition (TelCoa) estimates that a full-time teleworker receives an $8,400 indirect pay raise, regardless of his or her salary rate, due to the reduced expenses in gas consumption, wear and tear on the vehicle, insurance, parking, etc.

With two-earner households commonplace, there is a greater push to find ways to put personal and family obligations ahead of corporate needs—without making it an either or tradeoff. Teleworking provides that option and its one that more and more businesses are going to have to look at. http://bit.ly/k2scnJ

Communication - My Manifesto

We are put on this earth to live. We live with other people. Communication is a necessity. Like breathing. Technology is a means to this end. Somewhere, we got lost.

I can probably trace the watershed moment of our attention span to when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video came out. It became the gold standard for how long the general public could maintain concentration.

Faxes became the next attention grabber. How quickly could you scan a page became the determining factor for attention. E mail was soon to follow. People stopped writing. If I want to really display an emotion today, I will write you a letter or note by hand. Otherwise, it's an email. Writing is reserved for special occasions. Somehow, we all became "king baby". "I want your attention RIGHT NOW!". Email isn't good enough. Now we have texting and instant messaging. We don't care what you are doing- you will pay us attention right now. As I write these words, I have gotten three texts and one instant message. Where is my train of thought going? Are these really important? Is it highly critical?

As a wired society, we have developed ourselves into a societal attention deficit disorder. I should say, an attention deficit by disorder. What is this doing to our civility? I can text something abrupt easier than I would barge into someone's space. I can write coarsely- or post abusively because the consequences are just out in the Ether and it doesn't require a lot of courage.

Now we have "cyber bullying" - where the consequences are profound. Lives are ruined when private information is posted. What happened to slander and libel? Go to any news site and read comments to almost any article. Conjecture is presented as fact. News is a matter of opinion.

Our workplaces are permeated by "king babies". "I want what I want when I want it NOW!!!. I will send you a text, I will interrupt you, I will reach across the network and grab your attention!."

Communication is our interaction with each other. It defines our relationships - at work, at play and as a society. Civility is our way to regulate these interactions. Communication without civility is disorder. Disorder spoils the development of our thoughts. Our thoughts become our words, our words become our actions, our actions become our character, our character becomes our destiny.

How to choose a phone system for your business

Overview
No matter what the nature of your business, communication is a key to your success. As a business owner you have many different choices for business communication, including traditional land line service, voice over IP service and cell phone service. To get the most for your money, you need to evaluate your needs, seek out quality service providers and consider each plan carefully.

Step 1
Determine your company's needs, including how many phone lines you will need and how many employees your business expects to have. Quantifying the scope of the project will make it easier to get quotes on the business phone system your company needs.

Step 2
Find out which companies serve business customers in your area. You can find this information in your local telephone directory and in local business journals, newspapers and periodicals as well.

Step 3
Compare traditional land line service and voice over IP services. In many cases, VoIP can provide lower rates than traditional services, but it is still best to compare both kinds of phone service.

Step 4
Compare the total costs of each plan, including the basic cost of service and any add-ons you might be required to pay. Choosing a business telephone service with a set monthly fee makes budgeting and business planning easier.

Step 5
Get a list of the standard services that come with each plan. Plans that include popular services, such as voicemail, call forwarding and caller ID, can make your business telephone service more useful and versatile.

Step 6
Compare the warranty plans for each business telephone system. A lengthy warranty plan can be very valuable as it can save the company money down the line.

SMB Concern: Viruses, Trojans and Malware! Lions, tigers and bears!

I came across the following article by Mathew J. Schwartz in Information week today. I was truly impressed and alarmed. The "boogeyman" is out there for small businesses- and it takes the form of malicious hackers who can pose a catastrophic failure of information infrastructure for small businesses. I highly encourage every business owner to have a network security plan in place - and make sure it is reviewed and updated. Please read the article- and


By Mathew J. Schwartz , InformationWeek
November 4, 2010 11:40 AM


When it comes to information security concerns, small businesses still fear the virus. Indeed, according to a new survey of 1,600 end users in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and United States, conducted by antivirus vendor Trend Micro, viruses are the leading concern for 63% of small businesses.


Small business respondents' other top concerns were Trojan applications (60%), malware designed by criminals expressly to steal data (59%), data leaks (56%), spyware (55%), and fake AV (52%). Spam and phishing threats ranked lowest.

Most of today's antivirus software suites protect against many viruses and worms. But when it comes to data-stealing malware, 21% of small U.S. business respondents said that their IT department could do a better job of protecting end users. Notably, only 47% of small businesses install security software to help stop such malware, 30% offer related security policies, and 28% provide relevant education or guidance.


Another interesting finding is that, compared with midsize or large organizations, the typical small business in the United States tends to be less worried about data loss. While 74% of respondents at large U.S. enterprises ranked data loss as a top threat, only 49% of small U.S. businesses said the same. Also 22% of respondents at large organizations in the United States think their employees have actually leaked data, versus 10% at small organizations.

In general, of course, small businesses have fewer security controls or policies in place, owing to a paucity of investment in information security technology, awareness, or talent. That may explain small businesses' approach to data-leak prevention. While small businesses are worried about data leaks -- more than spyware -- only 44% of them have data-leak security policies in place, compared with 61% of large enterprises.

Interestingly, however, the odds of actually being trained on a data-leak policy -- if it exists -- were about the same, with 70% of respondents at large organizations, compared with 61% at small ones, saying they received such training.

Tradition still determines how we communicate!

Plantronics has released a study that reveals a lot about the way professionals use communications in the workplace. And, as it turns out, traditional mediums still rule.
"How We Work: Communication Trends of Business Professionals," looks at the communications habits and preferences of 1,800 employees worldwide. The findings show that for the most part, professionals rely on more traditional forms of communication to drive results. E-mail is critical to the overall success and productivity of 83 percent of respondents, of which 81 percent say the same thing for phone calls. Audio conferences were rated critical for 61 percent, while sending or receiving IM was for 38 percent of respondents. Social media came in last at 19 percent.
The study also showed definite preferences in the ways employees collaborate; if collaboration is more critical to success and productivity, in-person and video-driven meetings are preferred over text-based communication. Despite its popularity, e-mail is not the preferred method of communication for mission-critical decisions, and only 3 percent of respondents prefer it for complex or technical discussions.
"'How We Work' shows that, given the demands of work today, professionals are essentially creating communication tool belts that allow them to pick the right tool at the right time," said Clay Hausmann, vice president of Corporate Marketing at Plantronics in a prepared statement. "Video, voice and text-based communications all have a role, as does social media, and one isn't growing at the expense of another. The pace of innovation around new communication technologies is astounding, and yet it is the end user who ultimately decides which technology will play a key role in their business communication and for what purpose."
The full study can be found on Plantronics' website.

Back from Speaking at the Channel Partners Show 2010

OK- The Steve Austin cartoon avatar had to go. I received way too much flak about it and it was agreed that it didn't convey the right image. Done. Now you get to look at the professional portrait...Boring, but how impressive...

I was asked by the editor of Phone+ Magazine, Khali Henderson, to speak at the opening panel discussion for the 2010 Channel Partners Conference held in Washington DC. Wow! I joined four other distinguished interconnects and systems integrators that had made the move to becoming a VoIP provider. My message was simple, partner with a company that you know and trust, who is professional and who provides a superior product. I was happy to tell the assembled attendees that that was what we did with SNET Silver Networks.

I was able to bring up case studies - using actual installation figures about our cost savings for clients, how using a hosted PBX actually reduced their total cost of ownership and increased their functionality. I told my professional colleagues how at first, I was apprehensive about going to a "cloud" environment- but that today, I realize how well the "cloud" has supported my clients!

Back in the exhibit halls, we were investigating a lot of new options to enhance the offerings in hosted applications. We think that 1st Quarter 2011 will see a lot of enhancements in the way that people will be able to collaborate, in the security of networks and in proactive way that the client networks are managed.

Message heard loud and clear: it's a brave new world out there! Innovate, enhance and use it!

The importance of Disaster Recovery and Back Ups

Have you ever lost an hour of work on your computer?
Now imagine if you lost days or weeks of work – or imagine loosing your client database, financial records, and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled.
Imagine what would happen if your network went down for days where you couldn’t access e-mail or the information on your PC. How frustrating would that be?
What if a major storm, flood, or fire destroyed your office and all of your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server…do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you feel confident in? How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all?
Many small business owners tend to ignore or forget about taking steps to secure their company’s network from these types of catastrophes until disaster strikes. By then it’s too late and the damage is done.

After working with over 1000 small and mid-size businesses in the Chicago area, we found that 6 out of 10 businesses will experience some type of major network or technology disaster that will end up costing them between $9,000 to $60,000 in repairs and restoration costs on average. That doesn’t even include lost productivity, sales, and client good-will that can be damaged when a company can’t operate or fulfill on its promises due to a down network.
What’s most exasperating about this situation is that 100% of these disasters and restoration costs could have been completely avoided easily and inexpensively.
The 5 Most Important Things You Should Do To Make Sure Your Company Is Protected From These Types Of Disasters:
While it's impossible to plan for every potential computer disaster or emergency, there are a few easy and inexpensive measures you can put into place that will help you avoid the vast majority of computer disasters you could experience.
Step#1: Make Sure You Are Backing Up Your System
It just amazes me how many businesses never back up their computer network, OR only keep an onsite copy of their data. Imagine this: you write the most important piece of information you could ever write on a chalk board and I come along and erase it. How are you going to get it back? You’re not. Unless you can remember it, or if YOU MADE A COPY OF IT, you can’t recover the data. It’s gone. That is why it is so important to back up your network. There are a number of things that could cause you to lose data files. If the information on the disk is important to you, make sure you have more than one copy of it.
Second, it’s absolutely critical that you keep an offsite copy of your data. No one expects a flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster. But did you ever consider theft? What if someone breaks into your office and takes every single piece of computer equipment you have? It has happened.
What if a neighboring office catches fire or if a faulty sprinkler system waters your server room? Here’s another onsite disaster most people never consider…
What if your data becomes corrupt or a tape drive hardware failure erases your data? Again, your data is nothing but a memory. That’s why you want to not only keep an onsite copy of your data, but also an offsite copy. Your data is just too important to not do everything possible to protect it.
Step #2: Perform A Complete Data Restore To Make Sure
Your Backups Are Working Properly
This is another big mistake I see. Many business owners set up some type of backup system, but then never check to make sure it’s working properly. It’s not uncommon for a system to APPEAR to be backing up when in reality, it’s not. Remember the Health Products Company that shelled out $40,000 to recover data they THOUGHT they backed up? Don’t let this happen to you.
Step #3: Keep An Offsite Copy Of Your Backups
What happens if a fire or flood destroys your server AND the backup tapes or drive? What happens if your office gets robbed and they take EVERYTHING? Having an off-site back up is simply a smart way to make sure you have multiple, redundant copies of your data.
Step #4: Make Sure Your Virus Protect Is ALWAYS On And Up-To-Date
You would have to be living under a rock to not know how devastating a virus can be to your network. With virus attacks coming from spam, downloaded data and music files, web sites, and even e-mails from friends, you cannot afford to not be protected.
Not only can a virus corrupt your files and bring down your network, but it can hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees unknowingly spreads a virus to a customer, or if the virus hijacks your e-mail address book, you’re going to make a lot of people very angry.
Step #5: Set Up A Firewall
Small business owners tend to think that because they are “just a small business”, no one would waste time trying to hack in to their network, when nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve conducted experiments were I connected a single computer to the internet with no firewall. Within hours, over 13 gigabytes of space was taken over with malicious code and files that I could not delete. The simple fact is there are thousands of unscrupulous individuals out there who think its fun to disable your computer just because they can.
These individuals strike randomly by searching the internet for open, unprotected ports. As soon as they find one, they will delete files or download huge files that cannot be deleted shutting down your hard drive. They can also use your computer as a zombie for storing pirated software or sending spam which will cause your ISP to shut YOU down and prevent you from access the Internet or sending and receiving e-mail.
If the malicious programs can’t be deleted, you’ll have to re-format the entire hard drive causing you to lose every piece of information you’ve ever owned UNLESS you were backing up your files properly (see 1 to 3 above).