Getting dazed and confused with all of the options for chatting, texting, tweeting, posting, liking and poking people at work nowadays? Fear not, Unified Communications can help you and your business manage and make sense of all of these different communication forms. Read on to find out more.

Because of continued improvements in technology and changes in the way people work, we now have a multitude of options to communicate with one another. This can be both a boon and a curse, as not only do we have to learn and master a variety of devices from which to communicate—but also contend with an equal or higher number of forms with which to communicate. For example, not only do we make a phone call to talk nowadays, but we also chat, text, tweet, post, like, poke, huddle, share screens, do white board sessions, and more. We can do all of these whether on the desktop computer, laptop, netbook, tablet, desk phone, mobile phone, TV – and soon maybe even from the kitchen refrigerator! Not surprisingly, people have started looking for ways to tame and simplify all of this complexity—and thus was born the concept of "Unified Communications."

Unified Communications, simply stated, encompasses the organization of different communication tools and models so that it can be used and managed in an integrated way, with the goal of improving flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness. To illustrate the benefits of Unified Communications, here are some examples of how it can be used in several business scenarios:

1. Have a "single number to call" or a simpler way of reaching people. Instead of remembering and sharing a phone number, IM handle, email address, twitter account, and more, you can have just one number or address by which people can reach you—and systems will bridge that with whatever device or application your Unified Communications happen to be on or you prefer. So you can easily have calls placed to your desk phone routed to your mobile phone when you are out, and have voice mail emailed to you as a recording in case you can't answer.
2. Reaching people when you need them. If you are working remotely, or managing remote workers, Unified Communications systems can indicate your or your colleagues' location or "presence"—i.e., whether you or they are available at the normal location, working remotely, or out in the field.
3. Synchronous or asynchronous way of working. If you work with people in different time zones you can opt to conference when your schedules overlap, or swap messages that can be answered at their convenience if they don't —and be able to track and tie all of these together.
4. Richer collaboration. If you work on projects, Unified Communications can allow you or your team to get in touch and collaborate in a richer and more interactive way. While working on a project you can chat, switch to voice calls for better clarity, or conference via video to provide more context, as well as share screens for easier collaboration—all from a single screen or session.
5. Application integration. Imagine if you had the ability to call people from your email application's address book, or initiate a web conference from your instant messaging tool. With Unified Communications that is all possible.

Unified Communications may sound expensive and complex, but in reality it can actually lessen costs and make things simpler for you and your business. Learn more about Unified Communications and what else it can do to improve your business by contacting us today.

Thinking of adopting a "bring your own device", or BYOD, policy at work? Learn more about what it is, why it's becoming popular – and what you need to consider before rolling it out.

You may have noticed more and more of your employees or colleagues bringing their own computing devices to work—be it their mobile phone, tablet, or laptop. Or perhaps in your company or in other companies you may have seen, they have let people decide which device they prefer because they are used to it at home. You may not realize it, but this is all part of a large trend called the "consumerization" of IT, in which the influence of consumer technology is being increasingly felt in the workplace. With the wide availability of cheap but powerful mobile devices and online services, a growing number of people are being exposed to the latest technology at home first—adopting them at a rate faster than most businesses are able to manage. This flips on its head the old paradigm in which traditionally new technologies would be rolled out to businesses first, before they would find their way to consumers.

This trend, plus the increasing sophistication of young workers today and their frustration with the tools available to them at the office, is pushing some companies to adopt a "bring your own device" or BYOD policy at work. They are not alone. According to research by technology analyst group Gartner, end users, not the IT department, will soon be responsible for 50 percent of business IT procurement decisions—ultimately bringing and running their own systems on company networks. Meanwhile, according to management consultants Accenture, around one-third of today's younger generation of workers (a group called "millenials") not only wants to use the computer of their choice at work, but also wants control of the applications they use too.

The benefits companies cite to adopting a BYOD policy are many, among them:

• Savings on capital expenses and training costs in using company equipment—compensating employees instead via other means such as flexible work hours, subsidized purchases, insurance, and other benefits.
• Less management headache—effectively letting employees decide what to use releases the company from some overhead and management responsibilities.
• Improved employee satisfaction—by giving employees the freedom to use devices and applications that they prefer.

However, before you consider letting employees bring their own personal technology to the work place, be aware that there are also disadvantages, and sometimes very real dangers in doing so. These include:

• Non-standardization of hardware, operating systems, and applications. If your business operations require that some equipment is integrated with others, then BYOD can in the long run actually increase IT management costs and decrease efficiency.
• Exposing your network to malware or security vulnerabilities and breaches. When your employees bring their own devices to work, you lose important control over their security. Consumer devices often don't employ comparable bullet-proof security technologies mandated by businesses.
• Leakage of confidential or proprietary information. Employees will naturally do what they want with the data on their devices, even if it doesn't belong to them, or it's against company policies. Employees can also lose precious company data when they misplace or damage their personal devices.
• Lower economies of scale in procurement. Essentially because everyone is buying devices on their own, you miss out on the chance to consolidate purchases and lower purchase costs for everybody.

Have you adopted a BYOD policy at work? Thinking about it? Worried about this trend? If you need to understand BYOD better so you can define a policy for your staff, contact us and see how we can help.

With today's advancements in technology, and the constant lowering of prices as technology achieves mass adoption, VoIP is now within easy reach for most businesses—even small businesses. Read on to find out why you should consider switching to VoIP for your phone and office communication systems today.

If you are running a business, then there is no reason you shouldn't be using Voice-over-IP, or VoIP, to reduce telecommunications cost, streamline operations, and improve the flexibility for your organization today.

VoIP, simply put, allows telephone communications to run over your data network or the Internet. The benefits of this setup are many, and the following are just a few.

1. VoIP allows companies to maximize investments already made in their network infrastructure. The same network which handles the flow of data such as web access and email can now accommodate voice as well—no need to add and maintain additional wires and devices.
2. VoIP can allow you to dramatically reduce the cost of communications, especially for interstate or international communications—everything can go through the Internet instead of incurring expensive long distance toll charges.
3. VoIP allows your employees to be more productive and efficient by giving them the ability to receive and make calls anywhere with a data connection, using their laptop, mobile phone, tablet, or virtually any device connected to the Internet.
4. VoIP increases the number of features you can use with your phone system. For example, it's easier to add extensions to your phone. You can provide a local number or extension for all your staff without additional costs or cabling. You can also set up sophisticated auto answering routines and call routing. You can marry voice messages with email and faxes all in one inbox.
5. You can use VoIP as a tool for real-time collaboration—along with video conferencing and screen sharing. You can employ presence technologies that come standard with VoIP phones and VoIP communication systems. Communicate with colleagues about your presence or receive info on the status and whereabouts of your staff.

Previously, all these benefits were only available with a big price tag and a critical limitation—the unavailability or unreliability of the company's Internet connection—but not anymore. With the great strides made in technology and the wide availability and affordability of broadband connections over the last few years, VoIP is now readily within reach for many businesses—large or small

VoIP is certainly a technology that has come of age. It's cheap, ubiquitous, and easy-to-use, and any business should have VoIP in their toolset. If you are interested in learning more about how VoIP can help your business, contact us today to find out more!

Small businesses struggle with limited resources to make ends meet while continuing to provide the best service and/or products to their customers and clients. The emergence of cloud computing has allowed these businesses to breathe easier and better manage their resources and IT requirements.

As the IT industry continues to evolve, the latest transformation is the move to cloud computing. The emergence of cloud computing has definitely changed the way many organizations manage their operations – especially for small businesses, who are currently the leading adopters of the cloud.

Focus on Main Business When companies move their business management systems to the cloud, the cloud provider takes care of managing the infrastructure. Managers can focus on the needs of the customers and the business instead of being sidetracked by IT issues. IT staff can focus their time on new ways to build revenue generation instead of costing the company money.

Save Capital Expenditures With cloud computing, the company doesn't need to invest in servers to run new versions of the applications needed to run the business. Desktops and laptops can be used for a longer period of time when business management applications are accessed via the web. With most cloud applications, the business only pays for the services and software they need, adjusting user counts as the business grows.

If you are interested to know more about cloud computing and how it would impact your business, please feel free to contact us. We will be happy to sit down with you to talk about the solutions that work best for your company.

Wireless hotspots are convenient – but not terribly secure. While allowing you to work from anywhere, they can also expose your device and data to security threats. Read on to find out how to protect yourself.

Wireless internet access, or WiFi, is now so common that it can be found virtually anywhere—in airports, shops, restaurants, and other public spaces. The near ubiquity of these wireless "hotspots" can be a great boon for many of us who need Internet access to check on emails for work or updates from friends on our favorite social network.

Unfortunately not a lot of people know about the risks these wireless hotspots potentially pose. Here are 8 ways to ensure you can surf securely from wireless hotspots:

1. Disable your WiFi adapter when not using your wireless device. This ensures that your device does not connect to any wireless hotspot without you knowing it.
2. Connect only to secure hotpots. In many places, open networks implement no password and no encryption, potentially exposing everything you send out from your computer to malicious hackers. Therefore, whenever possible it's best to connect in places where some encryption—either WEP or WPA, is employed. Often your device will show a lock icon to identify secure, password protected and encrypted hotspots vs open and unsecured ones.
3. Use VPN or Virtual Private Networking. VPNs allow you to establish a secure channel of communication to your office network over the public Internet.
4. Use only secure software. The use of software is also something you should be aware of—some browsers , instant messengers, email clients, and online services are more secure than others. So use the more secure ones such as those that implement some sort of encryption or similar methods whenever possible.
5. Disable sharing. If your device or operating systems share resources such as folders, printers, and other items, consider turning them off to lessen the possible entry points into your system which malicious hackers or software can exploit.
6. Use a firewall. For example, most modern desktop computers have a firewall built in which acts as a barrier between your device and malicious software and hackers. These can bar from entry or filter out any attempts to access to your system without your approval.
7. Encrypt files. If you have sensitive files on your computer, consider encrypting them so you can avoid having them fall into the wrong hands if your system does get compromised.
8. Remove sensitive or confidential information from your device before using hotspots. This is the safest way of ensuring that your valuable data isn’t compromised when connecting to hotspots.

Wireless hotspots can be great for anyone traveling on business or for those always on the road. Being proactive regarding the security issues that you might encounter can go a long way in ensuring your safety and privacy when using them. If you or others in your business need to go online using hotspots, we can help you set up your machines for secure access by implementing security software, consulting on software security, and more. Contact us today to find out more.

For smaller companies and businesses who are constantly on the lookout for great free finds on the web: here are a few nifty and free online tools that might potentially help you, both in saving costs and boosting your productivity and efficiency.

It is a constant challenge for small businesses to meet ever-changing and ever-evolving IT requirements while balancing a budget and keeping costs reasonable. And with software applications being one of the major factors that contribute to IT maintenance costs, it is always welcome news to come across free tools that work well and efficiently despite the lack of a price tag.

ThinkFree Online Office One of these applications is ThinkFree Online Office, which is a cloud application that enables you to create and edit documents in common formats. It also comes with free 1GB of storage and allows you to work from anywhere, since the documents are stored online. And with its own app for Android users, ThinkFree is particularly advantageous to people who need to work on the go.

ReqMan Another free cloud-based application that can prove useful is ReqMan, an online project management tool. You can use this to manage and track your different projects using various templates the service provides. And since it's in the cloud, mobile personnel and staff who are given access to your ReqMan account can work even when they're out of the office.

Gliffy Gliffy is a free tool that you can use to create all sorts of technical illustrations – diagrams, floor plans, flowcharts, and more. The basic plan is free, but you also have the option to subscribe to their more fully featured plans for a minimal fee.

ScheduleOnce For managing schedules, calendars, and the like, ScheduleOnce allows you to keep better track of all your appointments, meetings, and deadlines through a single tool. It integrates with your calendar on Google, and then allows other people to see your open times when they can schedule a meeting with you. Think of it as a one-stop-shop for your scheduling needs.

If you want to know more about these tools and how you can best utilize them, please feel free to contact us. We’ll be happy to guide you and help you make the most out of these types of applications to improve your efficiency and bottom line.

Wondering what the most-discussed health care IT topics were in 2011—and what they'll likely be in 2012? ID Experts compiled expert opinions and found them to be much the same: mobile devices, patient privacy rights, and data breaches. Below are several of the items from ID Experts’ top 10 list, and additional items and details are available here.

• Mobile devices could create problems due to data breach risks—because while 81 percent of health care providers use mobile devices to collect, store, and transmit secure information, only 49 percent secure the devices.
• Class-action lawsuits will rise as patients sue health care providers for failing to secure their personal information, creating significant risks and increasing costs for organizations affected by these lawsuits.
• As more health care providers use social media, the exposure of personal information will increase, forcing health care providers to develop social media plans to prevent employees exposing patient information through personal social networking sites.
• Economic realities will force health care providers to outsource many functions including billing to third parties and business associates, and that will create weak links in data privacy and security.
• The use of mobile devices—tablets and smartphones—will continue to grow in the industry, meaning health care providers will need to balance usability with security.

Data breaches and patient privacy rights were some of the most popular health-care IT topics in 2011, and that's unlikely to change in 2012. Below we review some related topics to help ensure that you stay clear of potential hurdles in the coming year.

Medical identity theft resulting from data breaches are causing patients much distress, emotionally and financially—and this often results in patients switching providers. That can hurt health care providers financially, since the average lifetime value of one patient is more than $113,000, according to a study by Ponemon.

Additionally, security and privacy breaches can lead to class-action lawsuits, which will increase in 2012, according to Kirk Nahra, a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein LLP. This was certainly the case in 2011, and shouldn't change in 2012. The result will inevitably be increased costs for affected health care providers.

That will likely lead to two major changes in the industry. First, security and privacy training will become paramount. Although many health care providers already have related procedures in place, in many cases their staff members ignore them. Since most breaches are caused by human error, training will likely become more common.

Additionally, health care providers will likely utilize cyber liability insurance. Cyber Data Risk Managers has said this will be particularly true as health care providers continue to implement their electronic medical records (EMRs), as breaches can be both costly and damaging to the organization’s reputation, as noted above.

Managing IT can be a big challenge for any kind of company, especially smaller and medium-sized businesses who have fewer resources to work with. But with the steadily growing popularity of cloud computing, more and more organizations are deciding that it may help them make operations much more efficient.

As the economy rebounds, businesses need to be ready to stay competitive while keeping costs under control. Small and medium-sized businesses must maximize the productivity of resources without compromising the end product or service. Cloud computing is helping more and more small and medium-sized businesses balance costs and resources.

Lower Costs The cloud is generally more cost effective, and spreads payment out over time. Monthly payment for subscriptions for applications allows businesses to pay only for services used each month. Updates and maintenance costs are usually included in the subscription cost. Companies save on dedicated IT support – as well as the cost of the electricity, space, and hardware that run the applications that manage your business operations.

Ensure Availability Another plus for the cloud is that it is more reliable and dependable. Few companies can afford to frequently update their hardware and software, so when problems arise, they have nowhere to turn. With the cloud, the application provider pays for the specialized staff to keep hardware and software running smoothly.

Secure Data Speaking of dependability, the cloud is also a better place to store your data. Depending on your subscription, you can arrange for regular backups of data to secure servers in case of any sort of incident – hardware failure, natural disasters, and more. With data backup through the cloud, you are better assured that you can always access your data no matter what happens.

If you are interested in knowing more about how cloud computing can help your business function more efficiently, please feel free to contact us so we can sit down with you and develop a custom solution based on your specific needs.

Find out what Desktop Virtualization is all about and how it can save your business time and money by simplifying client computer management. Read on to find out more.

There is growing interest in Desktop Virtualization with its promise of improved manageability, security and efficiency for the business. Simply put, Desktop Virtualization is new technology that separates the system software such as the operating system and applications from the underlying hardware.

Desktop virtualization allows the hardware, like a laptop or a server, to run multiple operating systems. Imagine having your Mac running Microsoft Windows and Office, or your Dell running OS X and GarageBand for example. To stretch the concept even further, operating systems and applications can be housed on remote machines – such as a server farm in Texas – which you access via the web. The applications are not resident on your computer at all.

Desktop virtualization shifts the burden of managing the system software from you or your in-house IT teams to someone else—people who can do a better job managing and updating your Windows and Office software than you can. If you have a fairly large organization managing a large number of machines, centralizing support allows the organization to gain from economies of scale—ie less people to manage more machines at less cost. Leveraging the computing power of server farms with faster machines also allows employees to get more value out of aging desktops and laptops.

Enabling anytime, anywhere access to applications and data, Desktop Virtualization connects your employees to the tools they need no matter where they are. As organizations support more and more remote employees, using desktop virtualization technology gives them access to their Windows desktop anywhere in the world, at any time, on any device.

Are you supporting remote workers or is your hardware slowing down your employees? Let's talk about Desktop Virtualization and how you can try it for your organization today.