BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Business Continuity Solutions Overview: How to keep your business connected with advanced satellite technology

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

When your business absolutely, positively has to be connected all the time - satellite offers "business connection protection" for disaster recovery.

 

The Importance of Connectivity

Business continuity is a vital arm of large and small businesses alike, assuring constant connectivity and resilience in today's increasingly digital world. Virtually every process of modern enterprise operations involve network interface, increasing productivity while also making the entire organization vulnerable to network disruption. Productivity, logistics, revenue and employee safety are significantly impacted when primary connectivity is down for even a short period.

While everyday factors such as human error and equipment failure cause the majority of minor disconnections, the constant threat from excavation incidents, acts of terrorism and increasingly occurring natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and fires can take networks down for extended periods of time.  Some of these risks could take your organization offline for only an hour, others for weeks, but in a competitive and highly-automated environment, even minutes of lost communication between company sites or processes can have significant results. In a recent internal study by Hewlett Packard, it was found that unexpected network downtime costs their organization approximately $900,000 per hour.

 

Download, Read or Listen to Our Whitepaper Interview with Garrett Hill

X2nSat is a business based in California that specializes in business continuity and disaster recovery solutions that utilize an affordable, business class satellite technology.

Click here to view and print a seven-page whitepaper interview I recently conducted with X2nSat CEO Garrett Hill.  In the whitepaper Mr. Hill provides a detailed overview for his business continuity and disaster recovery satellite solutions and provides a competitive comparison to related solutions.

Click the audio player below to listen to the interview now or download the MP3.

 

 

Does a Satellite-Based Business Continuity Solution Make Sense for Your Business? Call Us!

Long gone are the latency challenges that have previously prevented businesses from seriously considering satellite technology as the wireless data link they use to augment their wide area data network.

If you are currently considering 3G, 4G, LTE or WiMax wireless data as part of your business continuity or disaster recovery solutions, such as the one shown in the diagram below, please contact a recommended solution partner in your area to learn how a managed satellite solution from X2nSat can provide a 2 meg symmetrical wireless data connection that may be far superior and more economical.

 

 

Keywords: x2nsat, garrett hill, business continuity, satellite, whitepaper, disaster recovery, wireless data, 3g, 4g, lte, wimax, wide area data network.  Image: iStock

Here's Your 5-Point 2013 Office Communications Technology Checklist (to Not Get Fired)

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Sure, the economy seems to be picking up a bit but 2013 would still be a rotten year to get fired by your boss (or your customers).  

To help you keep your job (or make more money), following is a short, 5-point checklist of what you need to be looking at in the area of "office communications technology".

Please run through this checklist as soon as you can because "unified communications" is getting cheaper and sticking with outdated technology is getting more expensive.

1. Connect Your Offices Better - The same connections that connect your computers together in your office are now inexpensively available to connect your offices together in a secure environment.

Ethernet & MPLS are two technologies that allow any business owner to use to connect the local area network (LAN) of each separate office over a single wide area network (WAN) to eliminate the perceived communications barrier of distance.

 

2. Bond Better Bandwidth - If the contracts for the bandwidth you're using to connect your offices together or to connect to the internet are more than twelve months old then you're either paying too much or you're missing out on needed diversity.

Most MPLS WANs that have been around for a while are creeping along at T-1 speeds of 1.54 megs at very high prices. If you're got a T-1 based MPLS, make sure you're getting the best price and check out how cheaply you can "bond" more and better bandwidth to or around your current WAN connections.

What constitutes "better"? Cheaper and faster. While an MPLS network is still viewed by many as the most secure way to communicate critical data between locations, not all of your business traffic needs to traverse over a gold-plated WAN. Take all your business "junk" data traffic off your MPLS and route it over low-cost data connections like cable, DSL or satellite using either equipment or software that shapes and prioritizes your business data traffic.

 

3. Unify Your Phone System in the Cloud - Seriously, why is your phone system still in your broom closet, server room or basement? While a reasonable argument can still be made that owning a phone system might be cheaper in the long run than "renting" one via many current "hosted VoIP" or "unified communications" business phone system solutions, even businesses that own their own phone systems are moving them to "the cloud".

If you're a business owner with multiple locations you already know how important it is to have your multiple locations all function as one. Just as you can connect your multiple local area network computers over a single wide area network you can now connect the desk and mobile phones of all your offices and remote employees over a single phone system.

If you own more than one phone system or callers to your main phone number can't be routed to any employee or any office then 2013 should be the year that you change that. The technology to accomplish this has been real world tested for over a decade and it's finally affordable.

 

4. Become Indestructible - How many single points of failure do you have engineered into your multi-location business critical voice and date systems? What happens if your basement floods? What happens if your main telecom carrier goes down? What happens if your employees can not physically be present in one or more of your offices for a week?

If you've already implemented the first three points on this list then you're already half-prepared to become an indestructible, fully-redundant, self-healing business. To become a fully indestructible business simply go through your wide area network diagram and start "breaking connections" and blowing up servers.

If one communication path is blocked, where's the re-route? If one application or data set is destroyed, where is the backup and how quickly is it moved from secondary to primary? You'll soon see that having multiple network service connections from multiple vendors that can also provide "managed services" like remote data backup and remote hosted applications can easily make you completely indestructible without your having to buy more in-house equipment or software.

 

5. Eliminate all Desk Chairs - By completing the first four items on this list you'll have prepared all your non-human business assets for increased profitability. To properly prepare your employees to take advantage of your office communication technology upgrades, eliminate all desk chairs.

Think about it. Can your employees shake hands with new prospects or current customers while sitting at their desk? Why are they sitting at their desks anyway? Probably because there's a chair there.

If your best employees insist that there are profit increasing activities that they can only engage in while parked at their desk, make a list of all those activities so you can find, migrate or create an office software application that can allow that activity to be completed using a smartphone or tablet computer while your best employees are visiting with customers or prospects or traveling between costumers and prospects.

 

Who Can Help You With These Checklist Items? Call Us!

Office communications technology is blurring the lines between phones, computers and "the cloud". It's also getting cheaper and more complicated every day.

To help you decide whether the business communication technology advances of 2012 mandate that you spend or move money around differently in 2013 talk to a business communication technology expert. Click here to find one near you.

 

Keywords: office communication technology, application, redundant, self-healing, business phone system, cloud, hosted voip, unified communications, MPLS, wan, cable, dsl, satellite, t-1, bandwidth, ethernet, lan, local area network, wide area network, checklist. Image: iStock

The Two Biggest Business Communication Technology Stories from 2012

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Trying to get your best people out of their desks and in front of your customers and prospects?

If so, 2012's top two business communication technology stories helped make that easier.

1. Microsoft Rolls Out Their New Operating System - This is a big deal for business owners that are still running their shops on an older Microsoft operating system like XP or older thinking that they'll upgrade after they get a chance to look at Microsoft's new OS.  

Well it's time to look and decide whether you want to keep the old OS another year or whether the time is finally right to get into "unified communications & collaboration" or simply "UCC".

Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to pull all their shared computing and communications solutions together including Windows Phone, Lync and Office 365. If your business runs on Microsoft software, 2012 is the year that Microsoft removed all your "we're-not-ready-for-unified-communications" excuses.

If you want to know the "presence" of all your employees all the time and then be able to instantly communicate with them via instant message (IM), voice, video or conference using almost any end-point (phone, tablet, PC, etc.) then Microsoft has a solution for you that works.

 

2. Microsoft, Google and Apple All Target Your Tablet - While Apple re-invented the tablet by bringing out the iPad a couple years ago, most business owners could be forgiven for not buying one for each employee. In 2012 though business owners started wondering if tablet-powered employees might be the secret to increased productivity. Thoughts like these tend to proliferate when you see the three biggest tech companies all battling it out in the 2012 "tablet wars".

While business owners and their IT managers used to be devising ways to keep employees blocked out of time-wasting tablet apps, now they're thinking how do we migrate our own critical business applications onto these tablet devices and then get our employees in front of more customers?

 

How Do You Capitalize on Business Communication Technology Advances? Call Us!

Unified communications is blurring the lines between phones, computers and "the cloud". To help you decide whether the business communication technology advances of 2012 mandate that you spend or move money around differently in 2013 talk to a business communication technology expert. Click here to find one near you.

 

Keywords: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Tablet, business communication, technology, windows 8, lync, 360, presence, instantly communicate, instant message, IM, voice, video conference

Hot Holiday Party Techno Chit-Chat: What to know in advance of your next business cocktail party...

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Business owners and managers are kind of funny when they get together for drinks during the holidays.

For whatever reason, after reviewing the big deals that were won or lost over the past year, people seem to want to talk about the latest ways they're rolling out and using all the coolest new office technologies to bring in much more business in the new year.

So that you're not left in the lurch when someone turns to you and asks, "So what new office technologies are you leveraging next year?", following are some recent office technology headlines that will help you carry your end of the "my smartphone's better" holiday party techno chit-chat.

 

Here comes the Windows Phone Hail Mary! by CNN Money  

If you're a business owner that is "all in" with Microsoft as your business productivity platform then read this article to learn that industry critics think Microsoft has finally rolled out a winner in the smartphone marketplace with the Windows Phone 8. Read this article for a big picture "office suite" understanding. Here's a couple YouTube videos to help: Windows Phone 8 Rant, Windows Phone vs. Android

 

Samsung Galaxy S III Dethrones iPhone as World's Top Seller by CNN Tech

Yes, this is the phone in those mocking TV ads about Apple groupies, obsessing over their impending purchase while a happy Galaxy S III owner saves a place in line ... for his parents. In the 2012 Q3, The Galaxy S III shipped 18 million units worldwide, compared with 16.2 million for the iPhone 4S.  For more info view the "Wirefly Smackdown" on Youtube.

 

Killing the Market for Stolen Cell Phones  by CNN

Recently several U.S. wireless carriers implemented the first part of a national strategy to deter cell phone theft: a joint "blacklist" database of identifying information about cell phones reported lost or stolen. As of now, cell phone dealers are supposed check this database before honoring requests to reactivate allegedly "locked-out" phones, in order to prevent people from using stolen phones.

 

Feast Your Way through Google Business Tips  by Google & Your Business Blog

Apparently your business can use Chrome, Gmail, Google+ and Google Calendar in a sophisticated business manner and this blog writer wants to show us all the tricks. More Google business tool tips.

 

Google's "Get Your Business Online" Free Websites for Businesses  by Google

Seriously, if your business is one of the 50% of US businesses without a website by now then there's something seriously wrong with you or your business (or both). Google is giving away business websites and showing you how to put them on the web with their GYBO initiative. Click here to do it now!

 

Google Cancels Christmas (and all of December) by CNN

Is Google in a hurry to get 2012 over with?  Probably not. But that didn't stop the snarky headlines after it was discovered that a buggy app in the new version of Google's mobile operating system omits the month of December.

Which Smartphone Operating System Should Your Business Use in 2013?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

With Microsoft's recent roll-out of both Windows 8 (the updated operating system for 80% the desktop computers in the world) and Windows Phone 8 (the updated operating system for Windows phones - used by only 2% of worldwide smartphone users), business owners and IT managers should ask themselves, "Is it a good idea to match the operating system software between my desktop computers and my smartphones?"

In a word, "Yes". But which one?

Click here to read a recent CNN article that provides a reasonably decent comparison of three different smartphone operating systems; Windows Phone 8, Android 4.2 and iPhone iOS 6.

 

Small Businesses with Android, Enterprise Businesses with Window Phone, ??? with iPhone?

In the realm of smartphone operating systems I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much today as I will next year, but as a small business owner I do know that profit suffers when employees can't be as productive on their smartphones or tablets as they can be on their desktop computers.

Will an $8 "Dual Persona" App Enable Employees to Securely Use Their Personal Smartphones for Work?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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I recently attended a seminar put on by Verizon titled "The State of Mobility" which was promoted as an opportunity to meet Verizon's enterprise mobility experts and hear them speak on the current and future state of mobility strategy as well as an overview of Verizon's "Enterprise Mobility as a Service" ("eMaaS") solution.

The two -hour session began with Ed Branham and Forrest Carr covering the difficult questions CIOs and IT managers were struggling with as they attempt to decide about incorporating MDM ("mobile device management") into their enterprise operations including:

1. Should we even allow BYOD ("bring your own device") where employees use their personal smartphones and tablets to access required corporate mobility applications?
2. How do we create a reasonable MDM/BYOD policy that properly balances application access and corporate control?
3. Which MDM software solution should we implement to control mobile devices and application access? 
4. How do we make sure our data stays secure?

The session was too short to detail many answers but as the CIOs and IT managers in the seminar audience were all within shouting distance of their Verizon account executive, one could assume that Verizon is ready to have their enterprise mobility account teams solve any mobility problem a customer could envision.

 

$8 Per Month Per Employee to Instantly Resolve all MDM/BYOD Issues for any Company?

The second half of the seminar delivered the easy answer for anyone looking for an off the shelf solution they could throw at their MDM/BYOD problems today as Steven Baker and Tom Thimot presented Verizon's "Enterprise Mobility as a Service" or "eMaaS" solution.

According to the presentation, Verizon's eMaaS solution starts with device and expense management with a web-based portal that allows enterprise businesses to track all their mobile endpoint devices and make sure they're not overpaying for minutes and bandwidth. The presentation claimed that the software was "vendor agnostic" and using all Verizon Wireless cell phones was not required.

The presenters freely admitted that plenty of competitors like BoxTone, AirWatch and MobileIron existed that do MDM/BYOD but then they segued into Verizon's incorporation of a "Dual Persona" mobility solution which would solve the CIO & IT manager's MDM/BYOD problems and forever eliminate the need for any employee to ever again carry two cell phones - one for business use and one for personal use.

 

What's Dual Persona and Will Employees Trust it on Their Personal Smartphones?

"Dual Persona" refers to a mobile device application that allows a single smartphone to primarily be a personal cell phone but when the dual persona app is activated it turns the phone into a corporate smartphone that is VPNed into all the corporate mobility apps that the employee needs to do his or her job and is "fire walled" safely from the personal apps and data on the same smartphone.

Click here or the video below to view a 3-minute demonstration of the Divide dual persona smartphone application by EnterProid that Verizon has co-oped into their eMaaS solution. Click here to view a 1-minute Divide corporate promo video.

 

Pretty cool, huh?  Who wouldn't want that on their phone? It's the MDM/BYOD answer, right?  With the right dual persona app, every corporation can have a pretty simple MDM/BYOD policy like:

1. To work here you must have (and pay for) your own smartphone.
2. You must download and install this dual persona app and then manage it properly.
3. Don't worry, we won't we won't keep track of how much time you spend fooling around with your personal app during work hours (even though we can)

Now I've not discussed with any CIOs or IT managers how much this dual persona app has solved all their MDM/BYOD problems - but for lack of having a cheaper place to start - Verizon's eMaaS seems like an inexpensive place to start. Verizon's retail price point for their whole eMaas solution which includes the Divide dual persona app is $8 per month per employee.

 

Will Verizon Win the MDM/BYOD War on Price and User Self-Management?

The presenters went out of their way to reinforce the fact that Verizon's solution price is per employee where as all their MDM/BYOD competitors charge per device. It was at this point that Steven Baker pulled out all four of his mobile devices (a Blackberry, an Android, an iPad and a laptop computer) and said Verizon's eMaaS solution covered all these devices for one low price.

How Does Verizon's New Unlimited Voice/Text and Shared Data Plan Change Your Phone Bill Budget?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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Finally. One of the biggest phone companies on the planet did something that will make the life of a business owner a little easier -- or did they?

Click here to read the Verizon Wireless press release that states that they are eliminating all their different "buckets of minutes" rate plans in favor of just letting all their customers talk and text all they like for one flat monthly price.

"All you can eat" talk and text. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

If all your employees do is talk and text a lot this new plan certainly is good. Except your employees don't just "talk and text". What they seem to be doing mostly these days is "apping" it up with every data drinking phone app they can figure our how to download onto their phones.

"Cha Ching" (That's the sound of you paying for your employees' mobile data usage through Verizon's new "shared data" pricing -- which is the other half of their new pricing package.)

 

Will Your Business Wireless Phone Bill Go Up or Down?  Yes...

In effect, Verizon simply held up a mirror to its old pricing package and said, "This is the new package". Where they used to have unlimited data and metered voice and text, now they have metered data and unlimited voice and text.

To learn how this will affect business wireless phone bills I called two people I know that run business wireless expense monitoring and management companies, Moe Arnaiz from eMobus out of San Diego and Josh Lipton from Advantix out of Texas.

US Soldier Gets $16,000 Wireless Phone Bill for Data Roaming -- Is Your Phone Bill Properly Protected?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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 This story from California about a US service man getting a $16,098 phone bill from his wireless cell phone company got me thinking on three different levels.

First, I thought that could easily happen to my phone bill since I have two sons about the same age as the US soldier in the story who both use their cell phones for just about everything you can think of except talking.

Second, what was the guy really doing with his phone that jacked the bill up so high and do I or any of my employees do the same thing?

Third, are there any safety measures set up on my own business wireless cell phone accounts (I use Verizon for seven business cell phones) to prevent the same sort of "bill shock" from showing up in my mailbox next month.

 

How Much Data Does the Average Employee Use or Need Every Month?

Surprisingly little I think. I honestly had no idea (nor did I seem to think I needed to care) since I still had Verizon's "unlimited" data plan on most of my businesses smart phones.

After printing out the summary pages of my business cell phone bill for the last four months I discovered that for seven business cell phones the total was under five gigs of data per month total. The range was quite large though as my own personal data use was under 200 megs a month (just 20% of one gig) while my oldest employee (over 70 years old) used seven times what I used at 1.4 gigs.

(It took me a while to discover what "business use" a desk bound 70-year old employee would have for 1.4 gigs of data usage per month. We narrowed it down to either streaming Pandora radio for several hours per day and/or the Scrabble dictionary app.)

I was somewhat relieved to discover though that even the most data hungry power users I knew (all three of my teenage kids and even my brother-in-law who's always video-Skyping his kids from the road) used under 2 gigs a month each - a lot of data but certainly manageable - I think (right?)

 

How Do You Create a $16,098 Cell Phone Bill?

So now that I've got a handle on my own business cell phone and data usage I go back to thinking, "How'd this poor US serviceman jack up his cell phone bill to over $16,000?"  Well if you read the story, it turns out the guy used 1.6 gigs of data in just six days while on leave visiting his parents.

Price Alert: No More Free Smartphone Upgrades From the Big 3; Is it Time for Wi-Fi First of Wi-Fi Only Cell Phones?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

Verizon Wireless recently reported that they were following the lead of both AT&T and Sprint by charging their customers an extra fee to upgrade their mobile phones where in the past many mobile customers got a "free phone upgrade" every two years or so.

Following is the widely distributed Verizon statement: 

“On April 22, Verizon Wireless is implementing a $30 upgrade fee for existing customers purchasing new mobile equipment at a discounted price with a two-year contract.  This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.  While the upgrade fee is not unique to Verizon Wireless, most devices can be traded in with our green friendly trade-in program at www.verizonwireless.com/tradein as a way to save money or potentially offset the fee completely.”

It's reported that Sprint and AT&T both are charging a similar $36 fee.

 

Time for "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Employee Cell Phones?

Now I'm no revolutionary. I understand that the CEO, the Chairman of the Board and your top salespeople (and your spouse) can have any damned expensive phone and usage plan they want and, as the company owner, you're (mostly) happy to pay for it.  

But what about all those other W-2 folks hanging around your office who claim they need "smartphone mobility" to remain a critical business asset of yours?  Do they all need an exensive monthly cellular data plan and the newest phones when they spend 90% of their waking hours inside a Wi-Fi network?

Probably not. (Time to get out the savings calculator and sharpen your pencils!)

 

What's a "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Cell Phone and Where Can You Get Them?

Well just as the name would imply, "Wi-Fi first" cell phones or smart phones use "free" Wi-Fi connectivity first over "expensive" 3G/4G cellular connectivity when trying to make a phone call or data app connection. "Wi-Fi only" phones only work for cell calls or data connections when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Where do you get them? Let's just say that phone equipment makers are not exactly falling all over themselves to bring them to market. T-Mobile actually had a solution like this called HotSpot@Home that made smartphone calls over Wi-Fi but they discontinued the service back in 2010.

Gadget Review: "Call Mynah" Easily Records Cell Phone Calls via Bluetooth, No Expensive Phone Apps Needed!

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

If recording business phone calls is not a normal part of your day then the whole thought of recording your cell phone calls probably creeps you out. If that's the case for you just stop reading now.

If, on the other hand, recording your phone calls is actually an important part of your job description (maybe you're a journalist, lawyer, stock broker, court reporter, secret agent, etc.) then you'll be overjoyed to learn about "Call Mynah".

 

Skip the Wires, Extra Numbers or the High Cost Phone Apps

The Call Mynah device overcomes the problems inherent to other cell and smartphone call recording techniques that require a complicated advanced setup, extra cell phone numbers, expensive per minute third party phone apps or connecting extra wires that degrade audio quality. For more information about these other methods check out these links: RecordiaPro, online phone call recording app store or RadioShack.

Because Call Mynah is a Bluetooth cell phone call recorder, users maintain maximum control over the call recordings they make. Once the user records a cell phone call, the recording of the phone call only resides on the Call Mynah device until the user transfers the recording to another device using a USB connection.

Until the user chooses, the recorded phone call is never stored on the Internet or on a third-party vendor's phone call recording server where call recording "distribution accidents" can happen.

Check out the video below to see Call Mynah in action:

 

Other Office Options to Consider and How to Choose...

The Call Mynah device is produced by Intelligent Recording Limited (Philip Hill, CEO) and distributed out of the U.K. and California.  Check out their website for a long list of every conceivable type of office phone recording solution for single phones and home offices all the way up to VoIP phone servers and IP call centers.

What's right for your business call recording solutions? Give us a call.

Call recording is one of the most popular options that businesses are after when switching from their old phone system to a modern VoIP business phone system. But if all you're really after is call recording, dumping your old phone system for a new VoIP phone system might be your most expensive option.

Let us spend a bit of quality time sharing with you what all your call recording options look like and which ones our other customers have tried to failure or success!