Making IT Work for You
Making IT Work for You
How Technology Can Change Your Business
Neal ZimmermanDorset Connects 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Neal Zimmerman, Dorset Connects
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: 2014
ISBN 978-1-312-34167-8 Dorset Connects
6 Station Way Road Chadds, Ford, PA 19317 www.IT-Buddy.com
Dedication
This book is dedicated, as are most, to the people who helped me get through the challenge of writing it; most notably my wife, Lori
and my daughters, Danica and Sydney.
As those who know me will attest, I tend to take on too may tasks at one time, looking at them as a challenge to overcome. So, in the midst of remodelling our family room, planning summer vacation, work and all the other normal daily tasks that a family faces, I decided
to write a book!
I could not have done this without their help, patience (maybe tolerance is a better word), and love. Thank you.
Contents
Preface ... ix
About the Author ... xi
Introduction ... 1
Chapter One: A Real Disaster Recovery Solution ... 5
Chapter Two: Are You Ready For the Cloud? ... 13
Chapter Three: 5 Ways to Improve Data Security ... 24
Chapter Four: Increase Productivity through VoIP ... 29
Chapter Five: Selecting an IT provider ... 40
Chapter Six: Repairing or Replacing Computer Systems ... 53
Chapter Seven: Managing Your Business Email ... 58
Chapter Eight: Establish an Acceptable Usage Policy ... 64
Chapter Nine: Green IT Saves Money: ... 76
Chapter Ten: Extend Hardware Lifecycles with Virtualization ... 85
References ... 96
Preface
I was meeting with a client to discuss their IT strategy for the com-ing year. We were reviewcom-ing some of their key challenges and strategizing over how to best keep whatever technology was to be im-plemented aligned with their overall business goals. After about three hours and several cups of coffee, we had agreed upon an IT framework for the coming fiscal year. As I was packing up, my client looks at me and says, “You know, you should write a book.”
Business owners and managers are constantly looking for ways to cut costs or save money, especially in today’s economy. Properly uti-lizing technology is one of the best ways to improve your bottom line with just a small investment. However, many companies see IT, at best, as another cost-center, or at worst a necessary evil. I have seen firms invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into new machinery but be un-willing to spend an extra couple of hundred dollars to get a staff member a new PC, or to put in a proper firewall to guard their network from outside threats.
In order for a business to be successful they must change that par-adigm and view their technology as a tool that, if used properly, can help their business grow. Inefficient systems not only cost more to maintain and manage, but drain resources through lost productivity and decreased morale. Don’t believe me? Go ask your office manager or secretary who is struggling each day to perform her tasks with an an-cient and slow computer!
We set out to identify the best technology and concepts that you can implement within your organization within a small budget. The re-sults are a series of technology driven initiatives that “make business sense”. The following book pulls from resources across the IT land-scape. Some of the content is original while other portions have been taken from our partners such as Verizon and EvolveIP®. Contributions have also come from noted journals such as the Harvard Business Re-view.
As Information Technology Professionals, it is our job to educate and advocate technology awareness and show business owners how you can revolutionize the way you live and work. The end result, busi-ness owners get to spend more of their time managing and growing their business and not their technology.
About the Author
Neal Zimmerman is an IT Professional with over 15 years’ expe-rience managing and support technology practices for businesses of all sizes. He began his IT career developing and delivering technology training for the Wall Street Journal during a major system upgrade in the early 90s.
During the past 15 years, Neal has held network administrative and management positions with companies such as Target Training Center, Kaplan University and Skadden, Arps,. He has a Master’s Degree in Education, focusing on providing on-line learning solutions for adults. He has leveraged this knowledge to create and delivery training for business customers on a variety of applications ranging from MSOffice to QuickBooks and several proprietary programs.
For the past five years he has further honed his business acumen as a Business Technology Consultant for Dorset Connects in Chadds Ford, PA, Neal has been helping Small and Mid-Sized businesses de-velop and implement strategies and solutions for maximizing their IT budget. Whether through “cloud” services, Disaster Recovery plan-ning, security and compliance auditing, or email server migrations, he has made it a personal and professional goal to ensure that businesses are aligning their technology with their larger goals so as to garner the maximum value for their business spends.
On a personal note, he currently lives in Delaware with his wife, two daughters, two dogs and three cats!
Introduction
Do you own or manage a business? Does your company have its own internal IT staff? Have you just assumed that they have your com-pany’s best interests and bottom-line in mind to guide their technology decisions? Well, think again! Some recent encounters with clients’ in-ternal IT staff has led me to the stark realization that the IT departments of many organizations are more concerned with their own self-interests rather than what is best for their employers. Here are two examples:
Case 1: Self-Perseverance Rules
A co-worker of mine was brought in to meet with the IT manager of a local small business to discuss strategies for their email system, desktops and business continuity systems. The company was running Exchange 2003 and with the upcoming end of support from Microsoft looming in April 2014, they wanted to discuss solutions to move to a newer version of Exchange. They also expressed interest in SharePoint and Instant Messaging: a perfect candidate for Office 365.
Moving to the Microsoft hosted system would save them a signif-icant amount of money on new hardware, licensing and provide the redundancy and fault tolerance that they were seeking. When my asso-ciate presented this cost-savings option the IT Manager balked, stating that keeping Exchange in-house was his “job security”.
The conversation then moved to support needs. He was a one-man IT shop and it was clear that having someone, or a team, to back him up would enable him to take a vacation as well as guard the company against the “hit by a bus” syndrome. His response: I don’t take vaca-tions. Was there documentation of the network available should he be out sick? No, because he “had it all in my head” and “people call me when I am out”. Talk about dedication!
Case 2: Techs Love Toys
I had a phone call with the IT guy at a small law firm: he was looking to create a whole new domain for his company in order to solve an issue with SSL certificates pending in November 2015. While I will skip the technical details, his scheme involved a rather large hardware investment and weeks’ worth of work planning, documenting and im-plementing his project.
Understanding that this was going to be a very pricey undertaking, I recommended moving email to a hosted platform. This would resolve the security certificate issue that was driving this entire project, provide for backups, larger mailboxes for his users and avoid the need to have to purchase and maintain new hardware. In short, he could do for $200 a month, what was going to cost over $15,000 up front, not to mention the ongoing care and feeding of the new system. His answer: “No”.
I pressed a little, asking why he would rather spend so much up front on a system with a five to six year life span, when he could save his company thousands of dollars and provide even more functionality. He gave me what I took as a rather feeble reply, saying that he did not want to risk any slowness that might come with a hosted email server. But, more to the point, he wanted to build this new system and was willing to sacrifice a larger reward to avoid a little risk.
Not all IT professionals are so eager to sacrifice what is best for their company in favor of fulfilling their own personal technology agendas. Many IT Pros are team and business focused. However, these two cases are not an aberration by any stretch. There are plenty of tech-ies who see their workplace as a playground or personal lab, where they can experiment or train themselves on someone else’s dime. Others, like the Case 1 guy, become so entrenched and territorial, that they ex-pose their company to tremendous risk by hoarding all of the technology cards. While it is nice to feel needed, they must realize that they will be more successful if the business can survive in their absence and that taking time off only helps to keep them fresh and focused.
Business owners, both large and small, need to hold their technol-ogy staff accountable for the decisions that they are making and to question the value those choices have for the business’s goals, financial
or otherwise. This can often be done by providing a seat at the table form them during C-level meetings. Treat them as you would any other manager/executive. By involving your IT department in company plan-ning and development discussions, you keep them engaged and focused on driving your business forward, rather than on self-preservation
Chapter One: A Real Disaster Recovery Solution
Tip: Invest in a Backup Disaster Recovery System
Imagine arriving at work tomorrow and seeing your building in ruins from a fire or flood. Maybe even a break‐in, your servers and data gone. Or even more likely, a malicious employee or hardware failure brings your network and business operations to a screeching halt. Now like most businesses, your insurance company will help you get back on your feet with repairs and replacements. But, one thing they can’t help you buy back is your data. There is no “data store” you can visit to purchase all the historical client records and financial data you once owned. In fact, 70% of all small companies suffering serious data loss go out of business within 18 monthsCost of downtime
A recent study discovered that, of companies experiencing a “ma-jor loss” of computer records, 43 percent never reopened, 51 percent closed within two years of the loss, and a mere 6 percent survived over the long-termi For small and medium-sized businesses (SMB’s) in par-ticular, these statistics suggest the necessity of crafting a Business Continuity Planning (BCP) strategy grounded in a robust data backup and recovery solution.
Unlike enterprises, many smaller companies cannot afford optimal in-house strategies and solutions in service of BCP. These companies are consequently at an elevated risk of being put out of business due to any major loss of data. Loss of data could mean emails lost, accounting data lost, patient or client files lost, company records lost, client legal records or orders lost and so on.
Business Continuity Planning For Small and Medium Size
Businesses
BCP is the blueprint for how businesses plan to survive everything from local equipment failure to global disaster. Data-oriented BCP, an
indispensable component of business planning regardless of organiza-tion size, poses the following challenges. Smaller businesses generally lack the in-house IT resources to achieve these demanding planning, technical and process requirements. Therefore, many SMBs either ne-glect to implement any data-oriented business continuity plan or else approach data backup and recovery in a sporadic, rudimentary fashion that fails to conform to the best practices of BCP.
Implementing a data-oriented BCP strategy first requires designa-tion of a specific data storage medium. Magnetic tape and disks are the two leading media for data backup storage. While magnetic tape is cur-rently dominant, analyst Dave Russell of Gartner believes that “Recovery will move to online disk-based storage in the future. This will cause a major shift in the backup market during the next four to five years.”
Smaller Companies in particular will benefit from the shift, as re-cent advances in design and manufacturing lower the total cost of disk-based storage in terms of storage per bit. Falling prices, combined with the various performance advantages that storage industry analysts cite, render disk increasingly attractive. Gartner Group highlights the suita-bility of disk for these organizations by explaining that, “The need for high-performance online recovery of data, combined with the availa-bility of low-cost disk arrays, has influenced enterprises and small and midsize businesses to adopt a disk-based approach for backup and re-covery.”
Tape, in contrast to disk, is physically delicate and easily compro-mised by environmental factors such as heat, humidity, and magnetic interference. Moreover, tape cartridges must be replaced frequently (every 6-12 months). Tape’s innate sensitivity contributes to high fail-ure rates, with analysts estimating that anywhere from 42 to 71 percent of tape restores fail. Even when magnetic tape backups are successful, tapes themselves are subject to loss or theft, and may be in the posses-sion of an employee or vendor unable to reach a recovery site. Thus, even when physical backup and restoration processes succeed, tape may not prove to be as timely and appropriate a medium for data stor-age as disk. Time is a crucial consideration because each hour of server,
application, and network downtime endured until data restoration comes at a high cost, especially to smaller businesses.
Analyst Jon Oltsik of Enterprise Strategy Group also points out that tape is seldom encrypted, compounding the destructive impact of tape theft: “Very few people encrypt backup tapes, which means that they rely on the security of the backup and off-site rotation process.”
Disk offers not only lower cost encryption but also other ad-vantages. In contrast to tape, “disks are more durable, last longer, withstand more overwriting and you don’t need to clean any heads,” according to Rinku Tyagi of PCQuest. Additionally, “When it comes to backing up using disks, they are easier to manage. Disk backup sys-tems include management tools, often browser-based, for you to easily configure settings and check status from anywhere.”
HP enumerates other advantages of disk storage, noting that “Data is backed up to disk much faster than tape, which translates to less im-pact on production server availability. Disk is also a more reliable media than tape and less prone to error, which translates to less failed recoveries.”
While disk offers advantages over tape, it is not a panacea. After installing disk technology, Companies will still be responsible for mon-itoring and managing backup processes, encrypting and safeguarding backed up onsite and offsite data, restoring data to new hardware, and other functions. Without implementing a layer of governance over disk-based data backup, these Companies court the danger of failed backups and delayed restoration of data, thereby jeopardizing their chances of successful recovery from major data loss.
Smaller Companies unable or unwilling to invest in the human ex-pertise and infrastructure support systems necessary for data-oriented BCP can leverage our data backup and recovery solution, which re-moves cost and complexity burdens from your staff.
A Complete Solution That Addresses All of Your BCP
Needs
Near Real-Time Backups: An “Incremental Forever” methodol-ogy captures all changes to the initial image in increments of 15 minutes. The Incremental Forever technology not only backs up recent datasets but also allows end users to reconstruct the state of their data as it stood at the end of various 15-minute restoration points. This level of forensic and auditable data recovery may satisfy various regulatory requirements (such as HIPAA and GLBA) for data retention and data record reconstruction, and also serves stakeholders such as supply chain planners, warehouse analysts, auditors, and legal counsel.
On-site Virtual Server: If any of your servers fail, the server vir-tualization technology embedded in the Network Attached Storage (NAS) allows customer servers and applications to be restored and re-booted in less than 30 minutes in most cases. As you may sometimes endure a wait of several days in order to receive replacement servers from vendors, your NAS can have your business up and running. The NAS multitasks so that, even while functioning as a virtual server, it can continue to back up data from other devices plugged into the NAS. This technology allows you to remain in business without any signifi-cant loss of data backup, server functionality, or application downtime.
A Complete Image: An image of all hard drive partitions is gener-ated via an agent, which is warehoused on the NAS device physically located at your location. The data is stored using AES-256 bit encryp-tion and compressed. Block-level, not file-level, backups are employed, which means that data is captured at the level of 1’s and 0’s. Block level data is raw data which does not have a file structure im-posed on it. Database applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server transfer data in blocks. Block transfer is the most efficient way to write to disk and is much less prone to errors such as those that result from file-level backups. Additionally, block level backups are not affected by open files or open databases. The block-level image is an exact digital duplicate of the on-site server
Intuitive and Flexible Restoration: A good backup system should allow for quick and flexible restores.
The BCP solution allows for recovery of files, folders, partitions, mailboxes/messages, databases/tables using a quick and intuitive pro-cess. In case of a complete server failure, a bare metal restore to new hardware which has a different configuration, hardware and drivers as compared to the failed server, can be performed. The 15-minute incre-mental based backup allows restores to be done from any point in time, allowing for multiple versions of files, folders, messages/mailboxes, database/tables to be restored.
Secure Remote Storage: After imaging the servers to which it is attached, the NAS device then creates an independent 256-bit en-crypted tunnel and transmits the imaged data to a secure offsite location where it resides in an encrypted, compressed format. That remote site then replicates again to an alternate data center, creating a total of three copies of the data in three geographically distinct regions. Since the data is encrypted and only you have the key, no one has access at any of the remote storage facilities.
Transmitting data to a remote site is a key component of BCP. It guarantees that, in case of physical damage to the client’s network or NAS, or even regional disaster, the data is safe in uncompromised lo-cations. Encryption is an important step in the process of transmitting data between the NAS and the remote sites, because it greatly reduces the risk of data loss incidents that plague magnetic tape and prevents man-in-the-middle attacks during transmission. We employ the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm because it has never been broken and is currently considered the gold standard of encryption techniques and render transmitted data immune to theft.
Secure, Bandwidth Throttling Transfer: Transmission itself oc-curs over your Internet connection, and can easily be configured to minimize bandwidth consumption. The NAS leverages Adaptive Band-width Throttling, which only utilizes unused bandBand-width or allows us to set an outbound limit. UDP-based smart transfer technology utilizes a host of innovative algorithms to speed up data transport and resume from failure. This systems provides for fine control over the data imag-ing and transmission processes.
Disaster Planning and Recovery Checklist
Steps to take before an emergency
Perform backups
Perform systems inventory Move backups off-site
Update the Disaster Recovery Plan periodically Document the backups for existing systems Document the backups for new systems Maintain contact lists
Practice emergency evacuation procedures with staff
Steps to take during an emergency
For after-hours disasters, facilities management alerts the de-partment managers, who in turn use the Disaster Recovery Plan to decide the next course of action
If disaster occurs during the workday, management first ensures that employees are safe, then begins the process of restoring business operations according to the Disaster Recovery Plan
Steps to take after an emergency
Management alerts staff and begins recovery Staff gets initial assessment of losses
Staff reports losses to management
Management re-establishes lines of communication Staff prepares temporary work areas
Staff retrieves backups
Staff reports to management on when staff members can get back to work
Staff replaces any information not backed up (on as-needed ba-sis)
Contact List
Company Directory Effective as of: _________________________
The contact information below is to be used for emergency purposes only. In the event of an emergency, please contact your immediate supervisor or manager listed on this sheet. If your supervisor's or manager's name is not listed, call the 24-hour emergency response hotline for instructions
Chapter Two: Are You Ready For the Cloud?
Tip: How Small Businesses are using the Cloud
Cloud computing is now on many small business owners mind but it remains something difficult to grasp. Confusion is rampant and in some cases it comes from cloud services vendors attempting to broaden the appeal of their products.
It is critical that small businesses understand cloud computing and the benefits they can drive from online software. For the vast majority of them it is the right approach to increase productivity and cut costs.
These are some enlightening statistics garnered from a recent Mi-crosoft survey of business owners:
There are nearly all 10 million small businesses in the United States
98 % say technology is important to their success 42 % report do not have an IT department
35% are already using cloud-based software 74% will increase their online software spend
42 % of have reduced their IT workload with the cloud 38 % of can get new features faster with the cloud
60 % say cloud computing is important to improving IT collab-oration
Utilize Hosting Services (e.g.: “The Cloud”)
The goal of this chapter is to state in simple language what the cloud is, what it does, and how it can help business. Very simply put, “cloud computing” is taking services ("cloud services") and moving them outside an organizations firewall on shared systems. Applications and services are accessed via the Web, instead of your hard drive. In cloud computing, the services are delivered and used over the Internet
and are paid for by cloud customer (your business) -- typically on an "as-needed, pay-per-use" business model. The cloud infrastructure is maintained by the cloud provider, not the individual cloud customer.
Some use facilities in one location others use up to 3 backup loca-tions. Multiple locations are important during times of natural and man-made disaster. When Hurricane Sandy hit in the fall of 2012, data centers in the area were closed for up to 2 weeks. Cloud services based only in one location in the northeast had problems; those based in say West Coast, Alaska, and New York did not flinch.
Another popular use of “the Cloud” is for cloud based programs. Adobe now has its popular “Creative Suite” available as the “Creative Cloud”. The advantage of this is that you can store your files in the “cloud” as well and access your creative cloud set of programs from where ever you are in on the road, an iPad or even in a customer’s office with your password, this is called SaaS or (Software as a Service). Now not only can you access your creative cloud but your personal files are there too.
The most common platforms and programs offered over the inter-net and referred to as “Cloud Computing” are:
MSP (Managed Service Provider)
This is one of the oldest forms of the cloud and is usually part of managed services used by a remote IT provider. It permits a company’s systems to be backed up remotely, virus scanned remotely, or comb email for spam and dangerous viruses and malware, remotely, before such things even come in contact with a company’s systems to name just a few MSP services.
Utility Computing
This is the most common form of service that advertisers are refer-ring to when advertising “The Cloud”. It is simply remote storage and backup with varying degrees of security.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
With SaaS “the Cloud” allows thousands of users to sign in to one program and use it simultaneously. For the user this allows use of an expensive program for a low cost each month with little or no upfront cost. For the software provider it means only one copy of the program to service in one central location, rather than multiple customer sites.
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
PaaS is a variation of SaaS, but it is something that really brings out the capabilities of “The Cloud” to the cloud computing program-mer. With Platform as a Service, the user rents only the capabilities of the program and computing abilities they need for the project they are working on. One use for this is for saleforce.com which lets you run virtually over the cloud in a safe secured environment and charges in-crease only as your sales staff and activity inin-creases. Another use are utility heavy, hardware intensive protocols like animation programs with heavy rendering needs, users can now simply rent computing power for a few hours rather than upgrade in house equipment.
Enabling Startups
The cloud provides start-ups with the same hardware and software technologies that are enjoyed by enterprises, without the upfront capital expenses that virtually all new start-ups are unable to shoulder. The cloud’s metered-service pricing model enables start-ups to open shop and enter markets that would have otherwise been off limits. Here are a few benefits that are especially relevant to start-ups.
Reduced Upfront IT Expenditures: A start-up’s budget is typi-cally extremely limited, often sourced from the founder’s personal reserves, and designed to support innovation and growth, not upfront capital expenditures. As a services pro-vider, you’ll find start-ups are extremely receptive to the cloud because there may be no other feasible alternative to deploying IT resources. It’s entirely possible that the potential start-up you
are pitching to would be unable to open shop without cloud computing’s pricing model.
Acquisition of Enterprise-Level Software: Start-ups have his-torically been faced with the prohibitive cost of acquiring industry-standard software solutions (e.g., Adobe Photoshop). Prior to the introduction of products like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, many design professionals were unable to acquire the tools needed to hone their skills outside of the office. The cloud’s pay-as-you-go pricing model requires affordable monthly payments and makes it possible for the smallest one-person shop to utilize enterprise-level software and communi-cations capabilities with products like Microsoft Office 365 and Adobe’s Creative Cloud.
Anywhere Access: With the cloud, employees can work from home or from anywhere they have an Internet connection, any time of the day or night. This is an extremely important benefit to communicate to a potential start-up because it means that their partners, contractors, and freelancers can work from their home offices while the start-up builds the client base necessary to justify moving into an office space. This benefit also reduces the need for costly furniture and other physical-space require-ments.
Providing Agility to Small & Mid-Sized Business
Not to be confused with a start-up, small- and medium-sized busi-ness have their own unique sets of needs that cloud services can address. The key cloud computing benefits that you, as a cloud-services provider, should communicate relate to business agility. These im-provements in business agility are accomplished via implementing managed IT services that free up valuable time and lead to employee productivity. Reducing capital expenses is another key benefit for small businesses because upfront IT expenditures can be reallocated for the generating of activities such as marketing and sales. Managed IT Services: SMBs may not have the resources to re-tain an in-house IT team or dedicated IT staff member. Cloud
computing allows small businesses to outsource their IT needs while maintaining remote off-site monitoring and top-notch maintenance. They won’t need to pay internal staff to monitor hardware or software as the managed service provider offers that value as part of a migration to the cloud. As an added ben-efit, the cost of outsourcing is generally less expensive than it is to hire a single in-house IT professional.
Company Productivity: With cloud computing, small-business employees have more time to focus on revenue-generating pro-jects that contribute to long-term growth, instead of handling ad-hoc IT issues. Dealing with ongoing IT issues can be so dis-tracting that many companies have migrated to the cloud for the sole purpose of avoiding the lengthy process of troubleshooting technology. AwesomeCloud recently completed a cloud com-puting case study with one of our partners, BCG Systems; with the assistance of AwesomeCloud, BCG Systems leveraged a full cloud-based solution that enables one of their Georgia-based clients to spend far more time on strategic issues and less time dealing with technology.
Reduced Capital Expenditures: Most SMBs can’t afford large, upfront IT investments. If they can shoulder an upfront capital expense, it’s generally followed by cuts in revenue-generating activities, like sales and marketing. While not entirely cost pro-hibitive for some SMBs as it is with virtually every start-up, communicating the benefits of redistributing budgets to reve-nue-generating activities is invaluable.
Improving Security & Forecasting for the Enterprise
Larger businesses and enterprises are often in very different finan-cial situations when compared to SMBs, so their individual cloud computing benefits are quite different. In view of their steady cash flows and established budgets, pitching cost-savings to an enterprise may not be as effective as showcasing benefits such as forecasting and security improvements. To complicate matters, enterprise decisionmakers may be more sensitive to the fallout from data-security issues than to the reduction of their IT budgets.
Budget Forecasting: Enterprises, especially publicly owned en-terprises, are concerned with accurately forecasting future expenses for quarterly projections. The cloud enables even the largest organization to more accurately forecast their expenses and manage the collective expectations of their shareholders with metered services. If you’re courting a publicly traded com-pany and you have the good fortune of meeting with members of the finance team, we encourage you to make forecasting part of your pitch. Winning the support of a finance professional is a rare opportunity.
Enterprise-Level Security: Enterprises require the highest lev-els of business continuity and data security. Don’t be surprised if an enterprise is hesitant to migrate to the cloud due to per-ceived security issues. Fortunately, cloud computing is actually more secure than on-site IT solutions; however, your audience is likely to be skeptical. Be prepared to mention that the largest healthcare providers and government agencies rely on the cloud. Our data center, the NAP of the Americas, enables each of our partners to offer cloud services that provide peace of mind due to their full compliance with federal regulations such as HIPAA and PHI.
Executive Productivity: C-Level members (CIO, CEO, CFO), who need to work remotely and securely, can do so from any-where and at any time after migrating to the cloud. With the latest security solutions, the C-Level can remotely access sen-sitive data and increase their organization’s overall productivity, profitability and competitiveness.
If you’re courting a larger business, we highly recommend focus-ing on the qualitative cloud computfocus-ing benefits, such as forecastfocus-ing and security, instead of pushing ahead with a generic ROI presentation. The liability associated with a less-than-optimal security plan far outweighs the cost-savings that you can deliver
On the whole, small- and medium-sized businesses are most in tune with the agility and productivity benefits that the cloud can offer, as well as the redistribution of upfront IT expenses into revenue-gener-ating activities.
Keep in mind that start-ups will primarily benefit from reduced upfront expenditures as opposed to things like tiered security and fore-casting improvements.
Five Questions to You Decide if Your Small Businesses is
Ready to Take the Leap
Now that you know what cloud computing is and what it can do for small businesses, we have compiled five questions to help you de-cide if the cloud is right for you:
1. Do you find it difficult to budget for technology purchases? By turning to the cloud, small companies can achieve a signifi-cantly lower total cost of ownership for their IT resources. There is no need to purchase software licenses or expensive servers. Maintenance issues such as downed servers or outdated software, and the costs asso-ciated with them, become negligible since your cloud services provider is responsible for maintaining the hardware and software. Add in the cost of physical floor space to house multiple servers, plus the electric-ity required to run them, and cloud services begin to look rather attractive.
In addition, cloud computing can be priced according to your us-age of software or storus-age. If you need to ramp up and hire 10 new employees who need 10 new online software licenses, your cloud com-puting vendor can quickly and easily scale up. When you need to scale back down, it is just as easy to reduce the number of online software licenses.
2. Are you struggling to manage your individual computers and network infrastructure?
It is not uncommon for a small business to be running the email, website, file storage, backup, security management, finance, and ac-counting programs all on one server that is being managed by an overworked IT manager. Compare that situation to an application de-livered securely over the Internet, hosted on a server farm with the latest equipment, and managed and maintained around the clock by IT experts. In this case, an unexpected boost in traffic to your website will not slow down your entire network as it might with server-based, on premise applications. Your provider responds in the moment with po-tentially higher service levels and functional expertise.
One of the benefits of a cloud computing infrastructure is that cli-ent computers require less software, resulting in fewer conflicts and crashes. The cloud services work independently so software update conflicts are not a concern.
In-house IT departments often struggle to keep up with the latest best practices. Imagine having a cloud services vendor support your company’s low-level infrastructure, eliminating mundane maintenance challenges and freeing your IT resources to focus on higher-value IT services for the business. Simultaneously, you free up your network, allowing those tools remaining onsite to perform better.
3. Is it difficult for you to keep up with current trends such as mo-bility, or implement changes to your infrastructure?
Because the bulk of hardware, software, security, and maintenance are managed by the cloud services vendor, a cloud-based infrastructure is flexible and responsive, allowing you to leverage new capabilities and implement changes quickly and easily.
New software, security updates, or hardware appliances can all be provided to benefit users at a much faster rate than most in-house IT departments could hope to achieve. In the cloud, speedy deployment and swift adoption are the norm.
In addition, accommodating an increasingly mobile workforce be-comes a cinch when your company’s applications and resources are hosted online. Your users simply connect through a Web browser from
a desktop, remote laptop, or mobile device to access the full power of your online network.
Cloud-based computing also enables collaboration between and among employees, allowing colleagues to work on documents or man-age projects simultaneously. Meetings can be arranged easily due to a variety of virtual meeting services.
Finally, cloud-based applications often integrate with one another easily. Robust Application Programming Interface (API) and integra-tion tools tie many online software soluintegra-tions together, allowing, for example, Salesforce CRMTM software to interact with social media tools or connect billing services to bookkeeping software with just a few clicks.
4. Do you wish you had more time to focus on your business? A cloud computing infrastructure frees your time, allowing you to focus on your core business. With fewer servers to manage and fewer client computers failing, you’ll have time to build competitive strate-gies that give your company the tools and processes it needs to grow.
Many companies think a good IT department is one that’s fixing computers, securing networks, and ensuring the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system is working. However, a great IT depart-ment is really one that helps its business strategically use technology to advance the overall company goals.
5. Do you need to protect your company’s digital assets?
Cloud computing can provide inherent security to remote employ-ees. In some cases, employees are only accessing data and applications through hosted servers, and no data is stored locally. However, most small businesses are deciding that a hybrid solution is best, where they utilize some data or applications in the cloud and leave some remaining on company premises.
Viruses can still wreak havoc on your local computers, and mal-ware and malicious scripts can destroy your network. With these threats in mind, ensure any local data is backed up to protect your infrastruc-ture. Client computers, on premise servers, overall network, local data,
and applications must be secured, encrypted, and protected with com-plex passwords.
Regardless of how mobile users work, in the cloud or on local com-puters, their devices need to be a part of a backup system so that any locally stored information is protected. Security software to protect against viruses, malware, and unauthorized access must be installed as well.
Security is not just about protecting data. It is also about ensuring your own business continuity. Primary and secondary data centers and redundancy plans work to keep your information and applications available and secure. With cloud computing, your service provider promises an unfailing service, effectively taking responsibility for your business continuity policies.
However, it is always a good idea to understand your cloud service provider’s service level agreements and the measures they use to pro-tect your data.
Cloud computing offers important benefits for small businesses. With the promise of significant cost savings, flexible options designed for agility, and a workforce that is free to focus on its company’s core offering, it’s no surprise that small businesses are leading the charge to move their computing infrastructure and software to the cloud.
Chapter Three: 5 Ways to Improve Data Security
Tip: Properly Secure Your Network
The major cause of most business network issues are improperly configured network and security devices. Add a lack of security poli-cies and you can multiply those issues by 60%. Organizations worldwide are reporting an increasing number of network security in-cidents, which cost on average $2 million and 22 hours of downtime. Whether the result is from an innocent mistake, user ignorance or ma-licious intent, unauthorized applications and misconfigured network infrastructure not only pose significant security and financial risks, but also waste valuable network resources. Bottom line‐‐‐poor network security will cost you time and money. Without proper network de-sign and security implementation, a company will easily lose the battle and their data.
By locking down and implementing network security policies, you can lower your risk of malicious attacks and increase employee produc-tivity. Just another way to increase your bottom line.
Your data is the lifeblood of your organization, and keeping it safe mitigates the risk of productivity losses due to downtime.
According to the Director of R & G Technologies, Mimi Tan, “Data security is one of the biggest concerns for our clients, because the impacts of stolen data and lost data are felt across the entire organ-ization”.
In an economic climate so dependent on technology, a shocking 42 percent of IT decision makers react to an incident after the fact, ra-ther than being proactive and continuously monitoring their IT environment for potential threats.
When you leave your data unsecured, you’re left open to the con-sequences of natural disasters and malicious software. Certain types of malware steal information such as login passwords or personal details, while disasters such as hurricanes or power outages can result in exten-sive data loss.
Get the Right Firewall
The purpose of a firewall is to protect your private network from the outside. When shopping for a firewall, consider your IT environ-ment, security needs and vendor credibility.
Before purchasing, look at your IT environment, including how many users your network has, how much traffic you expect and your Internet’s bandwidth. Identify exactly why you want the firewall and establish technical objectives to ensure you get the best protection.
You need to determine what degree of security you’re going to need. Different firewalls and different price points will give you differ-ent levels of visibility into the information running in and out of your network For example, network layer firewalls provide less protection than application layer firewalls. However, they’re usually cheaper and can process a higher volume of traffic in less time. Conversely, because application layer firewalls examine the contents of each data packet, they provide a higher level of security, but can affect network perfor-mance when improperly configured.
Always check the credentials of potential vendors and ask for a demo before buying. Remember, the type of firewall you buy will have lasting effects on your organization, so only shortlist companies with solid financials and a stable history. To avoid additional expenses fur-ther down the line, ensure you thoroughly understand what the vendor’s firewall does before you decide to buy.
Third-Party Anti-malware
While free anti-malware provides a basic level of protection, paid products give you greater control and have a more sophisticated way of locating new viruses. Since paid anti-malware regularly update mal-ware definitions or signatures, they tend to be better than generic free tools at stopping brand new, unknown viruses. Additionally, businesses should avoid most freeware is licensed as “free” for personal use only. For example, installing AVG on an entire network without actually pur-chasing the business version, is a violation of the licensing terms.
Once you’ve shortlisted appropriate options, trial the software to see if it affects network performance. Since anti-malware runs in the background, it can interfere with your network, impacting upon mis-sion-critical systems or causing lengthy boot times. Some solutions simply won’t be compatible with your IT system, so it’s important to test the software before you buy.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
Today’s corporate environment now faces the security challenges of BYOD, where employees bring their own devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones to connect to the corporate network. Accord-ing to a study by Cisco, 66 percent of employees expect to be able to use personal devices while in the workplace.
With the breakdown of borders between work and personal de-vices, it’s important to educate staff about security issues with mobile devices. Make sure that your team understands what sort of information they have, what sort of information they're accessing, and what risks are involved with information loss or leakage of information. While it is often helpful and convenient for an employee to connect their iPad to your corporate Exchange system, what happens if that tablet be-comes lost or stolen?
Ensure mobile devices are included in your IT policy, and that you give them the same security treatment you give corporate devices, in-stalling appropriate anti-malware and encrypting where necessary. Configure the device so the user has a password, and register the device with the network so that it can be remotely wiped if it gets into the wrong hands.
An increasing number of professionals work remotely from home or while travelling, so it’s important to ensure your employees are in-formed about security risks and follow BYOD policies to protect the corporate network.
Encryption
Use encryption to make your data unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the right key. Encrypted wireless connections keep your
data-in-transit safe, while encrypted storage mediums protect stored data.
Encrypting Connections
Encrypting communications is like writing a letter to a friend but tearing it up into small pieces and then putting each of those pieces into separate numbered envelopes. Before sending them you tell your friend what order to reassemble the pieces in. If he does not know the order, how can he reassemble your letter to understand what you wrote? By encrypting the letter in this way, you ensure that it cannot be read by prying or snooping eyes.
Wireless networks are not encrypted by default. WEP provides limited security and is very easy to break into. While WPA isn’t per-fect, it does provide some level of protection. When setting up a wireless network for your business, use WPA2 to ensure you have the best protection possible.
Encrypting Devices
Use software like Microsoft’s BitLocker to encrypt storage devices like hard drives and USBs, so if your data falls into the wrong hands, it can’t be read.
Weak passwords make easy targets for hackers, so choose a strong password consisting of at least 10 characters that contains letters, num-bers and at least one capital letter, but ensure it’s easy enough to remember without writing down.
Keep stored data and data-in-transmission safe from would-be thieves by encrypting your storage devices and connections. However, remember to seek assistance if you are not confident you can configure it yourself. Always bear in mind, improper configuration can result in vulnerabilities across your network, so consult with your IT profes-sional or an external source to ensure appropriate configuration.
Safe Disposal of Hardware
When you don’t securely dispose of old hardware such as servers, computers, USB and hard drives, you put your organization at risk of data theft.
The disposal of technology is an important thing people don’t re-ally think about. You should erase your disks securely in case your server ends up in a garbage pit somewhere, so someone can’t steal the hard drives and get access to your data.
Rather than just throwing your old hardware on the rubbish heap, make sure you render the data on your drives unrecoverable. There are numerous applications such as DBAN that can wipe the data you’re your drives using US Department of Defense standards. There are also larger scale de-magnetizers to rearrange the magnetic bits on a disk platter. And if these are not available to you, take a drill with a quarter inch bit and put a hole through the disk!
To protect your data, be sure to safely wipe all information and applications off the hardware before re-selling or recycling. Also, don’t store old equipment and leave it running, and ensure only authorized people are responsible for its disposal.
How to Make Your Data Secure
When making data security decisions, your organization’s specific needs and requirements should be forefront. Solutions need to be tai-lored to your size, IT environment and security needs. Therefore, avoid fixating on the merits of a particular solution, and keep an open mind about the options available to ensure your data gets the best protection.
Chapter Four: Increase Productivity through VoIP
Tip: Installing a VoIP Telephone System
(Voice over Internet Protocol)
Take a look at your current phone system. Does it have all the ca-pabilities your business needs?
Imagine being able to forward calls to a cell phone for your em-ployees on the go. Or, what about having remote workers that are connected through just a four digit extension? Your clients will never know they work in a different area. And, think about receiving your voicemails as an email. How much time would just these features save you? Not to mention the improved client experience.
A VoIP system can supply a small or medium sized business all the features those large expensive Enterprise businesses possess. And, a VoIP system can also utilize existing telecommunication services in most cases. This includes the capabilities to utilize PRI’s and SIP Trunks the business already owns. Top level technology using existing phone services‐‐another immediate savings to the bottom line.
So you’ve heard the hype. Perhaps you’ve decided that it makes sense to consider a move to VoIP (of some kind). ..you’re not alone:
The 2011 version of a regular survey by market research firm In-zenka showed that 27 percent of the 700 companies surveyed are already using VoIP and another 50 percent are planning to deploy it in the next two years.
Why are businesses flocking to adopt this new technology? And how do you determine if the time is right for your business?
The purpose of this discussion is to provide a roadmap for busi-nesses to understand and assess their VoIP options. The roadmap lays out the primary drivers behind a business’ decision to move to VoIP, the basics of the technology, the considerations you should be aware of before embarking on a VoIP project, and the types of implementations that your business might undertake.
Armed with this information, the reader will gain the ability to de-cide if and when the time is right to start a VoIP evaluation and how to go about it in an educated matter. With the plethora of options and entry points available today, that time is most likely now.
This chapter follows some basic steps in the evaluation process: Understanding why business VoIP has become so popular Cost analysis
Basic and brief VoIP technology overview
Planning considerations - common areas of challenge
Available deployment options and a comparison of strengths and weaknesses
VoIP Business Drivers
Whereas the residential VoIP market has clearly been driven by price, features and benefits are clearly driving the business market.
Three major categories of VoIP Features and Benefits will be ex-plored in the following section:
Productivity Mobility
Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
We wouldn’t be realistic if we didn’t take cost into consideration as a business driver (or least a “decision justifier”). The above sections are followed up by a discussion on VoIP cost reduction and analysis on Total Cost of Ownership.
Productivity
Frost & Sullivan claims that productivity and efficiency benefits are viewed as key drivers for VoIP adoption by nearly 30% of respond-ents in mid-sized businesses in North America. But what are these benefits and why are they driving this quick adoption?
Some of the most commonly reported productivity enhancing VoIP features are as follows:
Find me / Follow me
Generally controlled by individual end-users, Find me /Follow me allows for call routing based on the user’s desire or availability. As an example, a user can set their extension to ring their desk phone two times before attempting to reach the user on their cell phone or at their home number or both.
This is commonly called “sequential ring”. “Simultaneous ring” is also available where all designated numbers are dialed at the same time.
Application Control and Integration
Application control and integration enables users to control their individual settings, voicemail and handset options from a typical web browser. Application integration allows users to initiate and accept calls from inside of applications that are already familiar to them such as Internet Explorer and Outlook. Users “click” to dial these telephone numbers for seamless integration and maximum ease of use.
Softphone Application
Softphones, sometimes called soft clients, allow users to treat their PC as a phone handset, using it to dial and control calls. The user inter-face is generally through a headset or other device plugged into a mobile laptop or PC. The softphone then acts as a duplicate extension of the user’s regular office phone regardless of where they are, provid-ing all of the functionality of their office system while on the road.
According to Infonetics Research, the number of seats for hosted business VoIP services is on track to more than dou-ble between 2012 and 2016.
The actual ring to number remains hidden to the calling party at all times for either application. This and similar features are typically con-trolled via a web browser application.
Anywhere Phone Number Mobility / Fixed Mobile Conver-gence
Similar to Find me / Follow me, this functionality incorporates the ability to take your office telephone number anywhere with you with via the above process or with another VoIP handset or softphone. Out-bound calls on the softphone or VoIP phone will show the appearance of coming from the office regardless of where the user is located. With this option, organizations can actually have a distributed workforce working at home or on the road and still appear to be in one office with all of the same functionality.
Unified Messaging (UM)
UM is generally considered as the merger of voicemail, email and fax, delivered to one email inbox. Voicemails come in as an .mp3 file and users “click” to hear voicemails through the audio on their PCs as well as to call back selected parties in any particular order. Voicemail .mp3 files can be forwarded in email and saved for future reference.
Conferencing and Collaboration
Browser based “click through” user set up and control for audio, web and/or video conferencing including document sharing and on-screen collaboration. No need for additional hardware, software and conference scheduling. While many users do immediately find this compelling, this will be one of the major drivers in future applications. The above features and benefits result in productivity and perfor-mance gains. While these potential gains are difficult to deny, they are somewhat difficult to specifically quantify in a financial business case for making a move to VoIP. Many business owners and financial deci-sion makers cling to the belief that if users do not have features, or are not asking for them, that there is no financial benefit in investing in them. Along with many other technology decisions, that thought pro-cess is clearly changing. Decision makers are now asking “how can I
enable my employees and partners to do more and be more productive with new technologies?” Productivity and convenience features are evaluated first and then rationalized with cost analysis.
Mobility
According to an updated forecast from International Data Corpo-ration (IDC), the Americas region – which includes the United States, Canada, and Latin America – will see the number of mobile workers grow from 182.5 million in 2010 to 212.1 million in 2015. North Amer-ica has the largest number of mobile workers in this region, with 75% of the workforce mobile in 2010. Stacy Crook, senior research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Research program says,
“Our forecast shows that the worldwide mobile worker population will increase from just over 1 billion in 2010 to more than 1.3 billion by 2015.” - IDC 2
Migration to the mobile office is an inevitable event in the future of every business. Businesses can choose to fight the trend or embrace its hold on the American worker. Employees look forward to a future of flexible work hours, flexible locations and the convenience of ubiq-uitous access to business applications. Businesses who embrace this trend can look forward to a distributed but very engaged work force with more productive time throughout the day. This trend will certainly continue with the anticipated workforce proliferation of “echo boom-ers” – a younger workforce who will become major drivers of new applications and work styles.
Because VoIP is delivered over IP (Internet Protocol), phone sys-tem features can be extended to any location with an Internet connection or WAN connection back to the host. As a result, small of-fices and home users can have the same features as users at the headquarters (or large corporations!) without the expense of local PBX equipment.
Call center operations can utilize remote workers or contractors in a single unified call center operation. In essence, the business can op-erate virtually and more productively. How far the business takes the
“virtual” office is limited only by their imagination and commitment. The productivity enhancing features discussed above are what enable easy mobility of the workforce.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
It’s safe to say that over the last decade, increased geopolitical and geo-physical events are disrupting the workforce more frequently while pressure from corporate compliance regulations have increased. This has resulted in increased business interest in disaster recovery and busi-ness continuity plans. While many busibusi-nesses have some form of DR plan for their data operations, they may not have fully vetted plans for the continued operation of their voice services in the event of a disaster. This is the fundamental difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. Since most PBXs reside at the customer premise, an on-site disaster or simple carrier outage effecting either the PBX equipment itself or voice connectivity into the premise, effectively dis-connects that location from the rest of the world. Customers and vendors calling that location are met, unceremoniously, with a “fast busy”. While it is true that many voice carriers provide line forwarding options, a manual operation must be requested by the business and ex-ecuted by the carrier for this to take place. In addition, while this plan
may temporarily relieve the “fast busy” issue, it does not provide for continued operation and availability of voice services to employees should the disaster last for any period of time. A single day without the use of their extension can effectively render information workers and salespeople completely useless. Depending on the size of your opera-tion, that cost can range from several thousand dollars to several million.
The “virtual” nature of some VoIP systems provides options to ad-dress this problem. While different types of VoIP implementations can address this issue with different levels of effectiveness (see VoIP Im-plementation Options), nearly all VoIP imIm-plementations offer some form of disaster recovery - from shared configuration between IP PBXs at multiple locations to Network-based options that do not reside at any of the businesses’ sites. In addition, the mobility features discussed above can also be considered a Business Continuity benefit. Quite simply, if a location is unavailable for a period of time, employees can simply go home, taking their phone or using a soft client to remain pro-ductive and available at their extension without the rest of the world even knowing there was an issue.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
TCO is an often overused and misunderstood concept. Many fi-nancial decision makers consider TCO as a soft or sunk cost argument
towards making an expensive technology decision. And while a poorly formed argument can surely seem that way, VoIP can offer a truly quantifiable TCO that is generally equal to or lower than the traditional TDM alternative
TCO calculations can vary greatly based on the type of implemen-tation (Traditional vs IP PBX, on site vs Hosted PBX). These variations will be explained later in this chapter. So let’s start with the general TCO of a PBX (VoIP vs Legacy PBX technologies). The general TCO of a PBX includes the following components:
Purchase price of the system (lease or buy) Installation cost of the system
Maintenance Costs (generally an annual contract of approxi-mately 15-20% of the purchase price)
MACs (Moves, Adds and Changes) – the process of adding or deleting a line, setting up a new user or feature, moving some-one, etc. (roughly $125 one-time per MAC)
Monthly telecommunications costs – Local, Long distance, etc. Internal costs – staff time managing the solution, waiting for
MACs, Training, etc.
Soft / Productivity Increases (not included)
While system and installation costs are similar, there are several key areas where VoIP will provide a better TCO than Legacy PBXs:
The first area of dramatic cost savings is in the cost of MACs (Moves, Adds and Changes). Depending on the size of an operation, MACs can be a large and inconsistently occurring expense. However, an IP telephone’s network address is tied to the device itself, not the port it plugs into (like a traditional handset). As a result, VoIP handsets can be moved from location to location, and the user’s extension and features will follow them—whether the user has moved to a different office location or taken their phone home. Users can move themselves or use a designated non-technical contact instead of calling their PBX
vendor, waiting and then paying for them to “hardwire” the new changes. At an average cost of $125 per MAC, this can add up very quickly in most businesses.
The second area of cost savings is in monthly telecommunications services cost. There are two primary reasons. First, the delivery of voice over IP allows for a converged delivery of voice (local and long dis-tance services), Internet access and possibly WAN services.
Since all services are IP based, carriers offer consolidated services over fewer physical connections to service VoIP endpoints. Depending on your local configuration and your carrier’s capabilities, this alone can have a dramatic effect on monthly costs. Second, businesses with multiple locations can experience reductions in usage between loca-tions by moving those packets over the company’s Wide Area Network (WAN) effectively eliminating carrier per minute charges for com-municating from site to site. Some providers may also “bundle” telecommunications, Internet and VoIP PBX services and fees into one package. This enables the business to consolidate many variable ex-penses into one. While we won’t automatically say this enables lower TCO as there are many variables, we will say that this current trend and commonly available products do indicate so.
Ranging over into the “soft” cost side of TCO, businesses need to consider the internal costs related to managing the PBX solution. While many firms simply outsource all work related to their PBX, there is always some degree of on-site management. In mid-sized businesses, there may be an individual or team of individuals managing the Legacy PBX solution. This knowledge is generally not required in other areas of the business. VoIP systems are obviously IP-based, and as such eas-ily fold in the domain of the IT department. A converged architecture allows for maximum utilization of available resources, and limits the businesses’ dependence on specialized, and not always necessary, PBX skill sets. Lastly, certain types of VoIP implementations can offer TCO advantages in the areas of purchase, installation costs and ongoing maintenance.
Hosted IP Telephony / Hosted PBX
In a fully centralized and managed option, a service provider will sell or supply handsets directly to the customer without the need for a local PBX. IP Handsets will get their features from the service pro-vider’s network and IP feature servers. All administration, management, network, Local and Long Distance and typically Internet services will be supplied by the service provider. Costs are bundled to provide a per user price or may be broken out by phone, features, net-work and usage. IP Feature services located in the service provider’s network allow for continuity of services regardless of the availability of services and connectivity at the customer’s location(s).
Ultimately, the option that works best for your business will de-pend on many of the features, benefits and considerations detailed in this paper and on specific niche/vertical market applications that were not detailed. While each option has its distinct advantages and disad-vantages, research shows that Hosted PBX services are increasing at a dramatic rate. For example, according to IDG Enterprise’s 4 “2012 Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C)” survey of more than 1,100 IT and business decision-makers, at least 55 percent of or-ganizations are planning to invest in IP telephony in the coming year.
A July 2012 five-year forecast on IP Telephony (IPT) and Unified Communications (UC) from InfoTrack (5) a division of T3i Group, es-timates U.S. spending on unified communications technologies will increase by an average of 10 percent per year, led by spending on hosted IP telephony services, which will almost triple between 2011 and 2016. Among U.S. enterprises, defined as firms with 500 or more employees, spending on hosted IP Telephony will grow at an average rate of 27 percent, which is almost two times faster than the average increase among U.S. SMBs (firms with fewer than 500 employees), InfoTrack says.
Why Choose VoIP for Your Business?
With clear cut advantages, compelling features and indisputable market trends and statistics, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion.
Hosted IP PBX is more than likely the best option for many organiza-tions looking to deploy VoIP or that need to replace or augment their current telephone system. It is not surprising that other types of central-ized, hosted services have also gained widespread acceptance and deployment as they share many of the same advantages over legacy services. These services include: Hosted Microsoft Exchange for email, Managed Security Services, Audio/Web/Video conferencing and Soft-ware as a Service applications from Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Microsoft. Assuming the easy decision has already been made to de-ploy VoIP, there are additional compelling advantages to move forward with a hosted solution including:
Productivity enhancement
Mobility features / Anywhere access Convenience and simplicity of use
Reliability, disaster and disruption readiness Integration with new applications
Future proofing from obsolescence Reduced operating expenses
Of course, like any other critical decision, there are various condi-tions that may affect the above. We can most likely help you evaluate your VoIP opportunities, challenges and threats. If the discussion points in this paper make sense or are intriguing to you, contact us to find out if we can assist.
