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Yes, I said, how’s your insurance?

February 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s been twelve years since I’ve been a property and casualty insurance agent but when a client contacted me about replacing or repairing a damaged newly purchased laptop I found that my insurance cap still fit. In short, off site a staff person had somehow damaged the screen on a three week old laptop and my initial response was to contact the manufacturer and see if they would assess the damage and repair or replace the machine. Second, I suggested that she should see what her insurance company would cover for the damage.

I have no intention of going back into the insurance business but this incident got me thinking, my client with this latest purchase now has approximately 20 laptops assigned to various staff persons who work not only from home but also numerous other official and unofficial locations and the fact the only two machines have been damaged in the last 4 years is a miracle. Whether your company has 50 staff members or one, with the large number of laptops and mobile phones in circulation the possibility of damage, loss, or theft is inevitable. Beyond the loss of data and security risks from missing devises is the cost of replacing which is always a financial hit. For large companies this is the cost of doing business but for small companies the replacement of computers, time lost while recovering data and the loss of critical information can be devastating. An insurance policy that replaces the laptop or telephone can help easy that blow.

Not only for laptops, but as a business person when was the last time you reviewed your insurance policies, I’ve made a list of several areas that you should review for the New Year:

  • Warranties: I always purchase at least 3 year warranties and support packages on all servers I install; the primary issue for me is down time. I may be able to fix a certain computer issue but if I can save time then I’m also saving my client money with less aggravation. Personally, since my laptops are my business I initially purchase 3 year warranties as I buy new equipment it reduces the headaches.
  • Business Personal Property: Many of us now work from home either as consultants, Solopreneur, or just telecommuters. What’s covered by your home owners’ policy? Do you need a separate business policy? Not just your laptop but what about printers, furniture, etc. Although some things will be covered by your home owners’ policy, I suggest that you make a list of your business assets and talk with your homeowners/renter policy Insurance agent.
  • Business Liability: Are potential clients coming to your home or office (I’ve deliberately excluded coffee shops!). If they slip and fall are you liable? Is your homeowners/renters’ policy going cover a liability issue for a business meeting? Also, if you work on client property in your home or office, “care, custody, and control”, what is the extent of your responsibility and how you are covered?
  • Errors and Omissions: Whether you are installing networks, creating and maintaining web sites, organizing someone’s office or giving financial advice please check regarding you vulnerability when working with clients whose expectation about the completed project may differ from yours.
  • Loss of Use/loss of wages: This could be a big issue in the event of a major natural disaster or local catastrophe, if you have expectations for FEMA or some governmental agency rescuing you in this scenario, I think this is another item to discuss with your insurance broker. If you are truly doing disaster planning this should be incorporated in how fast you can recover and return to business.

As I said from the beginning, the New Year is a good time to look at how you will do business for the future and disaster planning is more than is your data backed up. Here’s wishing you a happy and prosperous New Year!

Filed Under: Blog, Maintenance Plans, Network Maintenance Tagged With: , , ,

Conversations for Collaboration: Red Wire Services

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Quite often when I ask a crowd “When was the last time you backed up?” all of the hands go up but I’m always taken back by the furtive glances and occasional snickers. For a business loss of critical information can be fatal. Losses can come from many different sources ranging from hard drive and other hardware failures; theft and fires, to natural disasters including, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. There are a number of “set and forget it” systems for backup solutions but backing up is only part of developing a disaster recovery plan. Nick Webb of Red Wire Services, specializes in disaster recovery for businesses and definitely is a person to establish a Conversation for Collaboration.

Filed Under: Blog, Conversation for Collaboration Tagged With: , ,

Conversations for Collaboration: Quick and Easy Accounting

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Are you networking or collaborating? All too often small businesses participate in networking events only to increase their stack of business cards or add more names for the next newsletter mailing. With all of the networking we do how many relationships do we create? If you are only looking for possible referrals then networking can be an empty short lived experience. On the other hand, are you building relationships for the future? The past year I have spent time getting to know various technology business owners who focus on small businesses; I think these business owners are worthy of getting to know for future collaboration.

We introduce a new feature, “Conversations for Collaboration” to give you a chance to meet businesses which may be of benefit to you; our first guest is Randal DeHart of Business Consulting and Accounting.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Conversation for Collaboration

Transitioning with Office 365 and SharePoint

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The last couple of years as I learned more about BPOS and SharePoint, I began encouraging small businesses to test and experiment with SharePoint as a document management/collaboration system. To this effort, I’ve posted several notes and “How to videos” illustrating simple uses of SharePoint.

As a collaboration tool, SharePoint has many facets which were illustrated by a real estate company I visited recently. They are an Office 365 business using SharePoint to automate many of the paper shuffling aspects of their business; including maintaining an up to date MLS listing of the current market, their current sales listings, pending sales; plus a reservoir of standard forms/documents needed in the sales process. Further, they are using mobile devices (phones and tablets) to be fully interactive their SharePoint site. I was quite impressed by their ambition and understanding of the potential of the SharePoint tool.

I’m well aware that new technology requires increased understanding and training (me included) but how long did it take you to learn to saw in a straight line, bake you first “perfect” cake or knit a pair of socks.  This point is again stressed in a recent a blog posting from Robert Crane (SharePoint) evangelist, http://supportweb.ciaops.net.au/blog/archive/2011/11/02/it%e2%80%99s-more-than-that.aspx. The defense rests!

Let’s recap:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses (P-1) is designed for organizations with one to 25 employees and there are a number of assumptions that come with this option. Like with all cloud applications the fundamental selling point is that a business reduces its overhead by eliminating or reducing dependence on an in house server. Originally, the primary reasons behind the marketing of Microsoft Small Business server was giving the staff a company branded email with shared calendars and easy access to shared document. This still is the first assumption of the O-365 (P-1) option. Not only do we reduce the need for an on premises server but the mail server maintenance and spam/malware issues are handled by Microsoft and SharePoint becomes the location for shared documents. The next significant Office 365 selling point is Web Applications; i.e. Word, Excel, Power Point, and One Note, giving users access anywhere to standard Microsoft productivity applications whether they have Office 2010 installed or not. Documents, spreadsheets, or presentations are saved to SharePoint 2010 allowing all collaborators anywhere access.

I like the simplicity of this approach but I’m aware that many small businesses are not that simple. Productivity tools are designed for tasks as needed not just “bells, whistles or hype”. More directly, beyond email and simple document storage, to truly gain the full potential of this technology a little planning is necessary.

  • Download Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses (Plan P1): Service Description and really read the document. It is easy to get snowed by the technical aspects of SharePoint but stay focused on the potentials for your business needs.
  • I suggest beginning with a full review of your business processes and outline those steps: What happens when you meet a new contact? Who approves what documents? Who needs to access your inventory? Etc.
  • Literally, graphically display site pages with stake holder descriptions, processes and workflows. If you’ve organized your current website this is primarily the same process but you are looking from an interactive perspective; i.e., feel, touch, open, view, and contribute.
  • What technology features will you need to automate you process or who will need to have access to your information and how will they access it? At this point things can get difficult and it may be time to call a SharePoint professional but take note:
    • What security needs will you have?
    • Who will be accessing your site?
    • Why?
    • Will you need to create a sub site for each set of users?

Always keep in mind that the vision is yours and the structure must meet your demands; also note that those “demands” will change over time and as you, your staff, and clients become more familiar with SharePoint as it relates to your business.

Learning curve:

  1.  Become aware of the limitations for Office 365 P1. Brett Hill of Office 365 has posted a listing of major limitations which you should be aware, http://www.office365answers.com/AllArticles/ID/2344/Office-365s-P-Plan-What-you-must-know.aspx. Note: Brett states that O-365 P1, user account passwords are set not to expire (default 90 days) but that has not been my experience.
  2. This option has no Microsoft phone or ticket support thus you need to become familiar with the Office 365 Community.
  3. The biggest boon for businesses is the capacity to share with external clients and vendors; this presents a couple of issues.
    1. Who can access your site? You may invite external users to share your site or documents but they must have a Windows Live ID or Hotmail account to be able to authenticate for accessing any content. See, http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/p/12697/57469.aspx#57469. My understanding is that this will evolve in time but I want you to be aware of this issue.
    2. How to share. See. http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/the_grid/archive/2011/08/11/how-to-share-sharepoint-online-sites-with-external-users-office-365-grid-user-post.aspx. Also see and view video, http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/152/p/8008/33039.aspx#33039.
    3. Site security. Unlike on premises SharePoint that offers a secured socket layer (SSL) for external access, that is not currently available with O-365 P1 SharePoint. Please review the following community posting for how to secure specific site information, http://community.office365.com/en-us/b/the_grid/archive/2011/09/12/office-365-sharepoint-online-sharer-beware.aspx.

I encourage small businesses who are contemplating purchasing or upgrading their server to add Office 365 to their evaluation process; try it for 30 days it’s free!

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Office 365, Sharepoint Tagged With: , , ,

Google + and the Small Business: A Relationship Doomed to Failure?

September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google Plus Google's Social Media ProjectI’m sure by now everyone that is involved with promoting their business through social media has heard about Google+, Google’s social media offering. Naturally, with every new social media movement, you have savvy business owners looking to leverage their brand. (Usually for free.)  So far, however, there has been a snag for those early adopters looking to be the first businesses on Google+.

The snag in question is due in part to Google’s Real Name Policy, a controversial rule that requires all Google+ users to use their real names visibly on their account. Many bloggers have voiced their concerns over the ethics such a policy can violate, the most well written in my opinion being Danah Boyd.

The problem with businesses joining Google+ isn’t just the name policy, though. It’s also because Google has openly stated they don’t want businesses cluttering up Google+; at least not yet. Plenty of rumors on when Google will open Plus up have been flying around, and others have commented on the fact that Ford has their own Google+ business page, something that’s not supposed to be possible under the current rules.

This article by Search Engine Land covers Google’s stance fairly well, including citing whose businesses were removed from Plus in the beginning, who has been reinstated, and Google’s current stance on businesses on Google+. Right now, the current suggested strategy appears to be creating a personal profile and getting started that way, which doesn’t help anyone with a business that doesn’t hinge on their person, but rather the company as a separate entity. This article also covers the new rumors of Google opening up a new business option for Plus that could solve this problem soon.

So, where does that leave the rest of us right now? Personally, I think that while Plus has its benefits and is fun to use for the tech savvy user, there’s less of a reason for the common person to switch from Facebook at this time. The reasons for this are myriad, and mostly hinge on the fact Plus is still invite only and technically in beta. On top of that, a lot of the features popular on Facebook aren’t there, such as the quizzes, plethora of games and yes, brands offering free content to their fans.

My advice would be to sit back and wait to see how Google manages the business side of Google+ before jumping through the hoops for a business profile. Most likely is that the popular Google Adwords system of pay per click ads is going to be utilized in some way to make Plus as profitable as possible, and there could even be a buy in feature to make a business profile elite in some way. Google knows that they will have to differentiate Plus from Facebook in some way, and they are in a much better position to offer businesses comprehensive advertising and customer outreach packages than Facebook at this time.

Google has the resources to make Plus the new wave for social media, but only time will tell if they seize this opportunity for improvement and run with it, or get bogged down trying to copy Facebook, losing the few loyal followers they already have.

EDIT: Since this article was written, Google+ has opened up to everyone, and games have been added to the offering. This combined with the very recent Facebook privacy/redesign debacle definitely makes Google+ a more attractive alternative for the mainstream. I still caution that only time will tell how many people move over to the new system, and how complete that move is, but Google+ may very well be the next step in social media. More on this as the situation develops.

Filed Under: Blog, Corey's Corner, Google

Are You Upholding Your Digital Rep? “10 Easy” Steps for Reputation Management

September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Reputation management is one of the fastest growing parts of online marketing and that’s most apparent by the number of specialists and companies cropping up claiming to be experts. What they don’t want you to know, however, is that reputation management is no more difficult than the normal PR any small business needs, only done with online resources such as Facebook, Yelp, Twitter and other popular social media sites as well as the Local pages for search engines, such as Google Local.

You Want This...

Social Media is all about interacting with your customers.

At it’s core, reputation management means that you keep appraised of what people are saying online about your business and what your business says back. Managing this digital PR is what gets a bit more complex. What sites do you watch? How can you control how your digital business identity is perceived? The simple answer is that you can’t absolutely control everything that’s said on the internet. You can, however, work at doing all you can to interact positively with customers in as many ways as you can manage.

And more of this.

Reputation Management is about connecting with them.

To help you prioritize, here are some simple steps to get started managing your own online reputation:

10. Ask yourself if you’re willing to make the commitment. Reputation management is a process that takes fairly constant monitoring, and could mean you’re spending anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes on it per day. If you find that you’re not willing to put that much effort in, you’re better off hiring a specialist. Your customers won’t be appreciative of a halfhearted attempt, and you shouldn’t be satisfied with one either.

9. Devise a strategy. What do you want to accomplish with your online presence? It can be anything from wanting to gain more customers through broadcasting promotions using social media to actively making the experience for established customers better through direct interaction. Whether that interaction is through responding to reviews or inviting customers to communicate directly via Facebook is your choice.

8. Don’t Spam. It’s tempting to post every little thing that comes to mind to Twitter and Facebook using a personal account, and it can be much more damaging to indulge that urge with your business account. Try and keep your posting to a healthy balance of minimalistic and timely. Have a sale? By all means, post a short notice with a link to your site! Closed during a holiday? Feel free to wish all of your customers a happy holiday and inform them that you’ll be closed. Do not, however, post 8 different articles about semi-related topics to your industry on top of that. Your customers like to be reminded that you’re around and care about them. They don’t want to feel like you’re dominating their online lives.

7. Make sure you’re registered. Besides Facebook and Twitter, do you know where else customers go to get the lowdown on a company they want to try? (Hint: It’s usually a review site.) Do you have a Google Places listing? What about a Local listing on Bing? Is your Yelp account active, and are you listed on other places such as CitySearch? How are customers supposed to learn more about the customer experience you provide if you don’t give them a chance to see what other customers are saying about you?

6. Get reviews. As I mentioned above, customers want to see what other customers are saying about you before they want to be your patron. Seeing the good, the bad and the “meh” reviews helps them decide if you’re a good fit. So, find ways to get your customers to give you feedback! Even if you train your staff to remind new customers you’d love them to write about their experiences with you can generate reviews for your business.

5. Surveys and testimonials are your friend. There are plenty of companies that offer easy and inexpensive survey services and data collection, and many times, solid customer testimonials can come from these. (My suggestion would be to Google “Online survey tools” and then use common sense in choosing an option. When in doubt, Google the site name. If it’s not legit, someone more than likely has blogged about it.) Simply set some questions that will help you determine if your service is at the level you are happy with, and then leave your customers a chance to make a comment. You may be surprised what you learn.

4. Check your listings! Once you have a Google Places listing, Yelp account, etc, check them regularly. Reputation management at its core is keeping your online reputation as sterling as possible. Unanswered concerns written in online reviews can make you appear uncaring, or in agreement with angry customers. Not checking your listings also doesn’t allow you to utlize the good online reviews can do. Remember, critique is necessary for continued growth and improvement, and unsolicited reviews are an excellent source of honestly. (Of course, they are also an excellent source of insanity, but you should be able to weed the crazy out from the actual reasonable reviews. If you can’t, you may need more help than an article can give.)

3. Don’t Be Afraid. Sure there’s a chance that someone will give you a bad review. In fact, the more customers you ask, the better chance you’ll get a nasty review. You need to let go of that fear right now. The internet is all about having a thick skin, and those of us that deal with customers and not peers must have the thickest skin of all. Remember that you aren’t a person to these angry reviewers. You are a business, and they aren’t happy with you, right or wrong. Take a deep breath, think of the sunny beach you’d rather be on, and move on to the next tip, which is:

2. Responsibly address concerns. Whether you deal with Yelp or the reviews Google and other services collect from their users, there’s generally a way to get in contact with those unsatisfied customers. Yelp lets you privately and publicly address the problem. With Facebook and Twitter, responding to negative comments are only a few keystrokes away. Get your customer service hat on and do your best to be understanding, polite and brief.o not give in to the temptation to put someone in their place. It’s tempting to call someone out for being unreasonable in a public forum, but who does that really hurt? Them for being unreasonable or you for eagerly rising to the occasion to discredit them? Think long and hard about how you want to appear when responding to customer complaints online, and you shouldn’t hit any snags. A good resource is the Yelp Support Center. I find that their advice on how to properly respond to negative reviews nicely covers how you should deal with most dissatisfied customers online. Which brings me to my last bit of advice:

1. Above all else, be mindful! Whether you’re sharing a video on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter or responding to a review on Yelp, stop and think before you press enter. Is what you’re saying going to help your customers? Does it represent your business the way you want potential customers to see it? What will someone that’s never been your customer think? As long as you’re mindful of these questions and keep in mind that you are acting as the face of your business, you can handle your own reputation management with relative ease.

Filed Under: Blog, Corey's Corner, Customer Relations Tagged With: ,

Office 365, now what?

September 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Narrative.

I’m finally up and running with Office 365 but before I get a little more technical and describe my process, I think I need to remind everyone why we are looking at cloud technologies. For small businesses there are only two real reasons for cloud technologies:

  1. Simplify and reduce reliance on the ever changing and constant burden of hardware configuration and maintenance.
  2. Accessible tools for presentations and collaboration.

I think it is easy to get caught up in the incessant technology wars between Google, Microsoft, Xfinity, software developers (including app makers), and the vast number of hosting companies, losing sight of primary goals. I constantly harp on defining what you need (make a list if you need to), compared against what is being offered to you as well as ease of use. I realize that cost is a factor but as far as I’m concerned it’s only as a tie breaker or an interim step (be cautious here). I live is a world of serious small businesses, i.e., business consultants, software developers (Apps), voice over IP (VoIP technicians), business intelligence specialists, database engineers, web developers, graphic designers, personal trainers and coaches, web hosts, marketing coaches, WordPress educators, etc. If there is ever an idea about the depleted job market, here in middle America are those individuals trying to carve out their niche in a market place glutted by corporate and government money that doesn’t reach them. (Either because they don’t qualify or refuse to sacrifice their independence for someone else’s goals.) It is to those business people I attempt to address. Further, it those that I encourage to collaborate with, learn from and support each other.

Although there are many different types of online collaboration tools, I think 37 Signals BaseCamp, Google Premier (Google Docs), and Microsoft Office 365 offer the minimum essentials for shared collaboration: integrated email, a shared calendar, and various shared documents. If I were to rate them they would go in ascending order from basic to most integrated. Having said that the remaining question is: What do you need?

In my last post I chose Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Plan P. The key in this plan is the minimum of technical support. The minimum system requirements are Windows XP Service Pack 3 (note: Office 365 also supports Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6 plus MAC Office 2011) and if you wish to integrate with an on premises edition of Office you must have Office 2007 or 2010 installed. Microsoft provides for the downloading of Office 2010 Professional Plus as part of their plan but for those who have problems with the MS licensing scheme this is a bone of contention which I won’t attempt to explore. If you are using Google Docs or 37 Signals Base Camp or Back Pack the whole idea is to be able to work from any location or computer as long as there is an Internet connection. I have Office 2010 installed on my workstations, therefore I’m able to integrate from desktop to cloud as I work with documents whether I’m connected to the Internet or not.

The Technical

The fundamental key for Office 365 Plan P is that for $6/month, a user will need little to no technical support and the support provided is from the Office 365 Community; this is not much different from Google Apps, except not as many videos. If you need technical assistance you need to learn to read carefully and be patient.

August 12-14.

Office 365 is easily functional from trial to setup but if you are a business that operates as an online entity you must make changes to keep using your online domain name (email and website). Given this, the basic setup instructions for Office 365 is to change to the Microsoft domain servers. If you’ve worked with your ISP to setup your website or hosted WordPress site then you are familiar with this process. Feeling comfortable, the setup screen offered explicit instructions on how to make this change in several major ISP’s (GoDaddy, Register.com. Network Solutions), I made my changes before we embarked on a weekend trip. Notwithstanding that these instructions also cautioned that the process could take 72 hours. I was indignant when the process wasn’t completed by Sunday morning; playtime was over and I needed my email functional by Monday morning. Daunted I changed the DNS (domain name servers) records back to my ISP before we left for home and restored email flow through my on premise mail server. Fortuitously, I received an email which pointed me to the following site, Office 365.com: http://www.office365answers.com/AllArticles/ID/2344/Office-365s-P1-Plan-What-you-must-know.aspx. This site gives a good outline of the Office 365 Plan P program which encouraged my scrutiny of the Community site. In short, the bottom line for my efforts was to be patient and review the Office 365 Community site more deliberately.

August 26-29 (Family wedding weekend)

Made the DNS changes Friday evening upon arriving to our destination (Hotel Internet $10/day) but online email (Outlook Web Access) began to flow by bedtime. It took a couple of days before I realized I could not get the Outlook auto configuration to work unless I created a new profile. The P plan has no system for moving former data into Outlook. Hint: Make a PST backup of email, contacts, and calendar and import them into Outlook.

Lync 2010 still not working

As an on premises server administrator I’ve never been fond of “instant message” or “chat” programs because I always saw them as another avenue for introducing viruses into a network. I’ve matured, somewhat, as I’ve been introduced to visual chat in both Facebook and Google+ not to mention Skype on my laptop and mobile phone. Lync 2010 offers online chat and meeting capabilities with a simple setup. Thus, I was somewhat concerned from a functional point that Lync, for my ebonyknight.net domain was not working although all of the DNS configurations appeared to be correct. The Office 365 Community offered numerous options for manually configuring Lync 2010 clients, but after several reinstalls and manual setups my final solution was to unlicense Lync 2010 for my domain user and relicense that user and the Lync auto configuration setup.

In short, Office 365 Plan P is a good offering for professionals and small offices but Microsoft’s assumption that we are all starting from scratch is a bit naïve. Although I still support this option, it is imperative that you plan ahead, be patient, become familiar with the Office 365 Community pages, and be willing to talk to a Microsoft technology professional if you run into problems.

Filed Under: Blog, Office Tools

OK, Let’s move to Office 365!

August 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’m a traditionalist! My view of a networked office always focuses on a server for centralized management supporting a network of 3 or more workstations. The key for me is management centricity for the system, providing centralized shared file access, managed file security, network antivirus monitoring and control, file storage, housing for specialty lines of business software, and centralized scheduled backups. The challenge has always been the cost of centralization including: hardware, implementation, and maintenance. This is the cost of doing business and should be part of any technology plan. Businesses need to always be in control of their business data and that means always being in control of their technology. Control of technology means control of business image, message, and productivity.

 

Recently there has been a lot of push and hype about cloud computing services and a wide range of hosted (cloud based) offerings (Hosted Exchange, SharePoint, etc.).The salient point is to focus on the full time availability of networking/collaboration tools with increased security and productivity while deemphasizing hardware expenditures and maintenance costs. I recognize the practicality of such approaches but also am aware that this could be a threat to my livelihood.

 

My skepticism has always centered on “What if the Internet goes down?” “Where will user data be located?” “Who is in control and can I trust them?” While these questions are still valid, people have been using web based email for some time: AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., but many business people have become familiar with Google’s Gmail because it initially offered users a more secure email. In addition, Google introduced a number of free web based utilities (Google Apps) which had immediate applied functionality.

 

With anywhere access and increased security in mind we adopted Google Premium Applications for Business. The Briscoe Network Solutions email is managed as a hosted Google business application (Gmail). Although, Gmail is always in conversation view (which I don’t always appreciate), I can access my business email from any location with Internet access; which was my primary requirement along with having email with my business domain name. I set up Google calendar to synchronize with my Outlook calendar but found that I always used my Outlook calendar and the Outlook synchronization with my phone more often. Therefore, I uninstalled my Google/Outlook synchronization tool.

 

My content manager and I also tried working with Google Docs and although she was not too concerned about Word formatting, this is essential for my writing comfort as I acquaint enterprise level productivity to mean professional quality. We both found the sharing option not satisfactory for us; although we were able to set up shared documents we found that we were not always able to edit those shared docs. This was also the experience when I tried to set up maintenance task lists with clients. In short paying $100/yr. for two accounts meets the minimum needs for Briscoe Network Solutions to have a domain name email account which is accessible from anywhere whether I have my laptop or not, but not much else.

 

I was introduced to Office Live and SkyDrive sometime ago and would periodically use it for \short term storage and for document sharing with other tech professionals. Then for months my Live Id would not work on the site; this past fall after Microsoft introduced Office Web Apps my logon problem was resolved. Since November I’ve been working with Office Web Apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) and have been quite pleased that the online versions have most of the same functionality as the Office applications already installed on my laptop. More impressive is that I’m able to integrate the desktop applications with the online applications with a minimum of problems. (Don’t forget to manually save no matter which format you are working with.) Plus, sharing documents for review and editing has been easy with no major problems. With this feeling of comfort, should Ebony Knight, Inc. (our parent company) move its network utilities online to Office 365?

 

Why? As already mentioned my focus is on small businesses and I think I should drink the “Kool-Aide” I promote and support. The Ebony Knight, Inc. domain is managed by a four year old custom made server running MS Small Business Server 2008, which hosts Exchange 2007 for email and SharePoint 3.0. In addition, we host Sophos Antivirus with Pure Message for spam filtering. Further, we filer all mail through a “smart host”, Reflexion, which filters spam and virus infected emails. I don’t plan to remove our server because I’m still committed to an on premises storage, file security, and backup but my primary utilities are email and the office suite of productivity tools. How about you?

 

My questions at this point:

 

  1. How simple is the mailbox transfer from Exchange 2007 to hosted Exchange?
  2. Will hosted Exchange provide the spam and virus filtering that I’ve become accustomed to?
  3. Will document management and collaboration (sharing) remain as convenient as with SkyDrive?
  4. Will setting up hosted SharePoint easily allow for remote user access?

 

There are a number of steps for setting my Email to function with Office 365 but I’ll report more on our transference later…

Filed Under: Blog, Office Tools, Online Tools

Shameless Self Promotion

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In the course of a busy week it is quite easy to forget, gloss over, or ignore the mundane maintenance of life when fires are being quenched and walls shored up. In that same vein, I forget that while working with clients, thinking about/writing new blog posts, creating the newsletter, and hosting a monthly networking event; that maybe I need to remind everyone what we are about. After all we are a business and let’s make sure that I communicate my message rather than just flag waving. We are an IT support company providing proactive IT support with monitored and remotely managed networks for a flat monthly fee.

There are numerous IT support companies providing a whole menu of services for businesses and we are in the mix. I recently watched a Microsoft Webinar which described their small business market as businesses which had 50-200 employees/workstations. Although they recognized the businesses with 5-50 employees, the marketing focus was based on larger companies. The thought is that the larger the business the more serious they are about their technology needs and thus more willing to invest their technology dollar. Quite often this difference is couched in the term, “Enterprise Level”; meaning the bigger the business, the better. More specifically, the options and flexibility included with “Enterprise Level” product is beyond the scope or capacity of smaller companies.

Humph, were does that put me, a tech service provider who has always focused on the 3-30 client market? I got in this business because I felt that the needs of the smaller business were not being met. We began supporting Microsoft Small Business Server with the idea that this product brought “Enterprise Level” capabilities to small businesses and we are still committed to that goal. As with all technology, times change and there are many ways of providing the Enterprise Level look and feel to any business willing to invest in the time to learn. With Gmail, smart phone technology, broad band communications, and hosted applications, real time collaboration and polished business content and information access is available to all at reduced price.

When I first started the common business model for outsourced technology support had two basic models:

  1. Break Fix. The client called a tech support person when something was broken. If the business didn’t have a support relationship established they searched the phone book or called friends for a recommendation. Once a technician was on site, he/she then had to discover what the network composition was before troubleshooting the problem. Issue: How much time does this process take? If billed hourly how much does it cost?
  2. Scheduled support with hourly billing. A support relationship is established with maintenance visits prescheduled at a determined hourly rate. Normally, a minimum number or hours were determined per visit but all time on site was billable. Technicians working on site would interrupt the business work flow when updating the server, installing software or performing other maintenance tasks. All work whether maintenance or troubleshooting was done on site when the technician could arrive. Issue: How many hours are billed for system maintenance? How much down time before the technician arrives on site?

Today, improved technology allows me to monitor all networks remotely, proactively preforming maintenance tasks during non-work hours. Remote access also means that many problems can be resolved remotely not requiring an onsite technician visit and quite often with no wait for the support person to arrive.

We stay committed to small businesses that do big things with a small foot print. Our job is to assist you in your quest for better business. We remain and always remain focused on the fundamentals: Is your network stable and secure?

Call us today…

If you are a new to us, and would like to learn how to improve your IT Support while reducing costs, I’d like to invite you to a FREE Stable and Secure Baseline Assessment.*

We offer this Service to you so that you can get to know us better without any risk, so please call us today!

 

*Limited to businesses with 5 or more workstations.

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Yes! I carry my laptop everywhere!

June 8, 2011 By 1 Comment

There is no tether but I carry my laptop just about everywhere. As the world becomes more Internet friendly there is hardly a place you can’t establish an Internet connection. It’s accompanied me on trips to Canada, a family visit in Brussels, and short trips to the coffee shop. For that reason laptops take an inordinate amount of abuse, and the constant use warrants an increased need to be vigilant regarding maintenance.

How many wireless access points did you access today? Were they secured or non-secured sites? On a normal day I probably connect to 2 or 3 different locations but on a busy day I might connect to 4 or 5 different access points. What was I exposed to? Rather than just rehash obvious security concerns for accessing multiple points, I thought I would give a brief outline of basic maintenance concerns for the everyday laptop user.

  1. Anti-virus/Personal firewalls. If I surf to http://www.downloads.com and search “Personal Firewalls” I find numerous antivirus and personal firewall options. What product you prefer is irrelevant; most important is; do you have a valid anti-virus and personal firewall application? Secondly, do you know where that software came from? I identified a software download site that I know is spam- and virus-free for software downloads. Probably the most significant aspect of any security maintenance practice is knowing the sites that you visit. This is particularly significant if you are looking for music, shopping, or working with file-sharing sites. Did you really want that Google or Yahoo tool-bar?Once you have installed your anti-virus and personal firewall, spend some time becoming familiar with the application(s). If you purchased the product or if it is a trial version, when does it expire? If it is free, how/when does it update? How do you run a manual scan and/or schedule a security scan? Are updates automatic? If not, how do you update the product? How does the personal firewall manage Internet traffic through your laptop; does it look at familiar networks, does it screen certain types of application traffic, or does it prevent installation of unauthorized software? Remember nothing is completely fool-proof so caution should always be your guide.
  2. Disk Maintenance. Often overlooked is the health of your hard drive, which I place in two categories: 1.) Is your hard drive full? 2.) Have you performed any disc maintenance lately? I know your machine came with a 500 GB hard drive but that was before you downloaded several types of video and audio editing software and began storing your movies on your hard drive! The more data stored on a hard drive not only eats up hard drive space but the drive becomes more defragmented over time.

    “Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (usually those gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the operating system has subsequently deleted or because the operating system allocated excess space for the file in the first place). Larger files and greater numbers of files also contribute to fragmentation and consequent performance loss. Defragmentation attempts to alleviate these problems.”
    Source:     Wikipedia.

    In other words, the drive becomes cluttered and the computer slows because it takes longer to find specific pieces of data (think of a teenager’s room!). All Windows operating systems provide a utility for defragmenting the hard drive. The easiest way to access the hard drive defragmenter is to open “Computer” (My Computer) either from the start menu or the desktop, right click on your hard drive (normally C:), select the Tools tab, and open “Defragment Now”. In Windows 7 this task can be scheduled as long as your laptop is on during the time selected. There are a number of third party software defragmenter utilities available that claim to do a more complete and thorough job than the Windows utilities but we’ll save that for another time.

    In addition, to running defragmenter, Check Disk (Error Checking) will scan your hard drive and files system for disk and system errors and correct the file system errors and exclude bad hard drive sectors. Error Checking is also available on the Tools tab. Note: if your hard drive is failing this can be one early detection system.

  3. Battery Life: Never swear by your battery life because you will eventually be embarrassed. A pet peeve of mine is meeting with someone who halts the meeting because their battery is running low. Please always carry a power cable. In the same vein, it is practical to let the battery run down periodically for it to reset itself. Some laptops contain a “Power management” utility that will not only monitor the condition of your battery but also provide options maximizing battery life and conditioning.
  4. Backups: Those of us who are part of a server/client network with “folder redirection” enabled can synchronize our “Documents” folder with a duplicate copy stored on the server. This not only saves a copy on the server but that information is backed up when the server is backed up. Another worry-free method is real time online backup which will work no matter where you are. A number of companies offer online backup such as Mozy, iBackup, Carbonite, SOS Online backup, SugarSync, Crash Plan, iDrive, Jungle Disk, and Drop Box, to name a few. For more options take a look at Online Backup Review. We have talked about online backup before, http://www.briscoenetworksolutions.com/2010/02/are-online-backups-a-maintenance-solution-2/. I don’t intend to review backup software other than to say be clear about what you need in an online backup solution rather than just than an agreeable price. Determine during your trial and before you purchase what files you need to backup and whether to keep continuous copies over time (incremental) as opposed to just a current snapshot. It is imperative that the user interface be something that you are comfortable with; practice doing a restore during your trial period. How fast was the restore? How easy was it to find the file or folder you need to restore?
  5. Spills. Have you ever spilt coffee, tea, milk, orange juice, or water in your laptop and felt like a moron? I have. Out of embarrassment, I would never mention this but a Biznik member, Julie White, covers this matter quite well without any embarrassment.
Filed Under: Blog
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