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

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

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

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

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

Usually due to budget and manpower constraints, small and midsized businesses (SMBs) often need to outsource a few aspects of their operations – and partnering with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) is one example. Just as in any other partnership, and especially since IT management is a relatively long-term deal, it's important that you establish the right business relationship between yourself and your MSP.

Business relationships are cultivated. Grown. That's what you do – at least if you want your business to flourish. The healthier your business relationships, the more productive and efficient your operations become.

Naturally, this applies to your relationship with your Managed Service Provider (MSP). Your IT is an important part of your day-to-day operations, and contributes greatly to how productive your business can become – so establishing good working rapport with your MSP is especially essential. Here are a few pointers for building and maintaining a great relationship with your current or prospective MSP partner.

Assess what your MSP can provide for you Sit down with your MSP to learn their ideas for your business, then carefully assess whether the services they offer support and augment your operations – current and planned. Look closely at contracts and make sure you understand the fine print, and carefully evaluate whether the service agreement meets your needs. Do some research about prospective MSPs (which is easy to do through the Internet) to verify their claims. Making sure you have the right fit is an important first step in getting the most out of an MSP.

Define roles and manage expectations Make sure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and understood early in the process, especially if your MSP is integrated with or augmenting an existing IT operation. This will help minimize overlapping job roles (which is ultimately unproductive for the both of you), as well as territorial disputes and misunderstandings.

Communicate constantly While your MSP will essentially manage your IT, it's still YOUR IT department. Make sure that you open healthy channels of feedback and communication. It's also recommended that you keep your MSP informed of any new directions or strategies that you feel will affect the IT operations that your MSP partner handles. It's a good idea to schedule regular planning sessions and meetings with them so that they will be able to anticipate what you need – and provide it – in line with your own goals and timetables.

Establish trust and respect your MSP's decisions Treat your MSP like you would your IT manager. Give them general direction, and then let them do what they do best: manage IT. Entrusting your IT to an outside contractor can be a difficult decision, but as long as your MSP is reliable and secure, it may very well be one of the best business decisions you've ever made.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We at Micro Doctor are continuously striving to improve our availability and service levels to our clients.  To that end this article will provide information on the best ways to reach us and what happens when you do. By providing this information, we hope to help set expectations of what you can expect to happen on a service call and help you communicate with our service staff.

There are a number of ways to reach us to report a service need. You can e-mail us at support@microdoctor.com, call us at (330) 898-2100, or enter a service request on our customer service Web portal at the following link Customer Service Web Portal. For our Managed Services clients, we also have an additional direct phone line that bypasses all call attendants and lights up the phones of everyone in our office.

By far, the quickest and easiest way to request service is to simply send an e-mail to support@microdoctor.com. Upon receipt, our Connectwise service provider management software identifies who you are by the return e-mail address in your message. It then creates a service ticket, populates it with appropriate identifying information and your description of the problem.  It is then placed directly in our triage queue without human intervention.  Within 15 minutes, our dispatcher will review the ticket, ensure that it contains all the information we need to successfully address it, ensure that it is set to the appropriate priority, and place it in the schedule of the appropriate technician in the next available time slot.  You will receive an e-mail notification when it is received into our system and when it is scheduled for service.  If you have concerns about the priority, the schedule timing, or anything else in the ticket, feel free to call our dispatcher at (330) 898-2100  x100 at any time to resolve your concerns.

The Micro Doctor Customer Service Web portal, among other things, provides our clients the ability to instantly enter a service request that follows the same procedure outlined above.  The advantage of using the portal is that you are presented with many more choices to clarify and prioritize your request.  Access to the portal is free for all active clients and you can also check the status of all active tickets, review previous service issues, invoices, and view service related reports/trends. If you don’t know your credentials to the portal, you can e-mail or call us.  We would be happy to provide them to you.

If you call our main phone number to enter your service request, you can simply press 2 to be connected to our service and support department. The person you speak with will ask you for appropriate information to populate your service request and enter it for you. It will then follow the same process outlined above.

Once the appointment time for your service arrives, the next steps it takes depends on whether it is an “on-site” request, or a “remote service” request. If on-site, the technician will have already changed the ticket from a status of Scheduled to a status of Enroute while they drive from their previous location to yours. Upon arrival, the technician will change the ticket status from Enroute to In-Progress. You will receive an e-mail at each of these status changes so you know when the technician is on the way and when they have arrived at your facility.

If your issue can be addressed remotely, the technician will change the ticket’s status from Scheduled to In-Progress once they start working on it. You will receive an instant e-mail notification of this change. If the technician requires additional information or needs to remotely access your computer, they will call you at this time to get the information or permission to access your machine. During business hours, we will always call to get permission to access your computer before doing so. After business hours, we assume there is nobody on your computer and will access it as necessary without calling unless your company has specified that we should not have unaccompanied access. In any case everything we do while logged on to your PC is tracked and documented in a log file on your PC automatically.

As your issue is being resolved, the technician will be continually documenting the actions they are taking to accomplish resolution of your issue. They will also be saving any documents generated, credentials used, or people contacted during resolution for future review. You can view most of this documentation by logging into the Micro Doctor Customer Service Web portal and either looking at the specific ticket or performing a search of your proprietary knowledgebase on the portal. This will search only information generated for your company and not other clients.

If the technician requires additional information during the course of service and they can’t reach you by phone or e-mail, they will change the ticket status to “Waiting on Client”. This means that we require additional information to move forward and you will be notified by e-mail of this status change. If you receive a “Waiting on Client” notice, please contact our office as soon as is convenient to expedite resolution of your issue. If we don’t hear from you for an extended time, we will continue to try to contact you.

Once the technician has resolved your issue, they will change the ticket to a status of “Completed”. This triggers a number of activities. It sends you an e-mail to let you know of the completion and gives you an opportunity to comment or respond. The status change also notifies our service manager and dispatcher that this work has been completed so they can begin their processes of reviewing the work to ensure that it was completed properly and that all stated goals of the service were accomplished. Once these reviews are completed, the ticket will be changed to a status of “Closed”. You will also be notified of this to give you an additional chance to comment.

The notifications that you receive can be customized on a company by company basis. Most companies like to watch the progress of their service requests, but if the e-mails become too much for you, we can configure our system to not notify you on some or all status changes as you wish.

After your service ticket is closed, all of the documentation generated during the course of the engagement is automatically collected and a subset is presented to you on your invoice.

So there it is…. The anatomy of a Micro Doctor service call. I know this process seems complex and time consuming, but in actuality, 95% of it is automated. It has allowed us to provide first class engagement documentation while at the same time reducing the amount of time it takes us to document. This has allowed us to vastly increase our operational efficiency and perform more service with fewer technicians. We pass our cost savings on to you in the form of performing more work in less time and at a lower cost.

David Daichendt
V.P. Operations
Micro Doctor, Inc.

If you think “data backup” is synonymous with “disaster recovery” and aren’t sure what “business continuity” means, you’re not alone. Most of the business owners we talk to make the mistake of not knowing the difference and end up paying the price when data is lost, a network goes down or a disaster prevents them from accessing their physical office and the server inside.

Backup

First, data backup simply means a copy of your data is replicated to another device or location. Tape drives, offsite backup and even USB devices provide data backup. Data backup is obviously important.

Disaster Recovery

However, the more important consideration is whether or not your backup solution provides easy disaster recovery or the ability for you to recover all your files, software and functionality quickly, easily and without corruption. For example, if your server died, you wouldn’t be able to quickly get back to work if you only had file-level backup. In order for you to start working again, your server would need to be replaced, all software re-installed, data re-installed and then the whole system would need to be configured with your settings and preferences. This process could take hours or even days – and that’s if you have all your software licenses and a clean copy of your data.

Business Continuity

Then there’s business continuity. This is the ability for your business to continue to operate even after a major disaster. For example, if you ran an accounting firm and your building burned to the ground, you’d be out of business if all your files were on the server only.

At a minimum you need to make sure you have in place the right backup and disaster recovery plan for your tolerance for downtime, and a plan for how your business could continue to operate if you could no longer access your building, server or data. You should review your plan annually. If you want a simple and easy way to get all of this handled, give us a call! We specialize in planning, implementing and managing these projects so you don’t have to. Give us a call at (330) 898-2100 to start your backup, disaster recovery and business continuity planning.

You’ve probably seen many articles, editorials, and marketing fliers about how great the cloud is; how it can save you tons of money, empower you to do amazing things, free your staff up to do all kinds of important projects, and more. There’s a great deal that is true and accurate in all of those assertions to be sure, even if most of the writing is intended to convince you to buy into the hype. I’m a fan of cloud computing, and have offered cloud computing for years with our web based email solutions and web hosting.

However, both as a business owner and as a consultant helping others move to the cloud, I have seen the other side of the street; I’ve seen the pitfalls and promises that don’t quite live up to the hype, and where you as a customer might be surprised or disappointed.

So for those of you getting ready to make the jump to the cloud, here’s a look at the downside. This is the list of things that you won’t hear from most IT professionals.

1. You are no longer in control

This is the hardest thing for most customers to understand. When you move services to the cloud, you are no longer directly in control. It’s a major shift in realities that most businesses have trouble adapting to; you cannot just log onto a server and see what’s going on. You have to open a ticket just like you were an end user. The business will have even more trouble adjusting to this new reality. When all the services were in house, users could call in your best troubleshooter, get outside help, and hover over the project like most micromanagers do. Now, no matter how much they might yell, or what timelines they promise, when something is wrong, you’re all at the mercy of someone else. Service guarantees are nice, but this is part of what comes from giving up control and relying on someone else.

2. You are not the most important part of anything

Related to the previous item, consider what happens when the CEO has a problem with an on-premise system. Suddenly everything else is secondary; your boss will roll up his or her sleeves to pitch in, and things can get done. With cloud services, the CEO of your company is no different from the receptionist of another company; they’re both simply users of the service, and both get equal attention. The cloud is the great equalizer — and not in a good way.

3. You don’t have any control over versions and upgrades

Cloud services typically use the latest and greatest versions of whatever software goes into offering the service. That’s one of the big appeals; you start out on the latest platform. However, just because they’re running on the latest version of your primary software application, don’t expect to get every little feature and customization that latest version of your primary software application offers as if you had installed it on-premise; cloud service providers tend to offer the vanilla, cookie cutter version and only enable the most popular features. If you want an obscure feature , make sure the cloud service offers that before you sign up.

4. You still need on-premise hardware, and an in-house IT staff or 3rd party IT provider

Sure, cloud services mean you may have fewer servers to deal with, and there’s less for your IT staff to do in support of the service, but that absolutely does not mean you can do away with all of your servers and lay off your staff. That’s good news for the IT team but often comes as a shock to the business decision makers who thought the cloud meant they could outsource IT and shut down those costly datacenters. I’ve worked on projects where the customer had to add more servers than they were shutting down to support their side of things, and this came as a huge surprise to them, because they didn’t read the documentation they were provided before the project began.

5. You’re at the mercy of your broadband connection

With an in-house server, if you have a performance problem, you add some RAM, do an OS update, or do something else to resolve the issue. If you have a performance problem with a cloud application, it’s very possible that the problem is your broadband or Internet connection. With an in-house server, the data path to your server is likely 1,000 Mbps (Gigabit Switch). With a cloud solution, the bottleneck in the path to your server is almost always your broadband connection, often 1 Mbps and in many cases, less. That’s right, 1/1000th of the speed you used to have sending and receiving data from your server. If your Cable connection is 10×1, that means you can download 10 Mbps, but can only upload 1 Mbps. Many applications don’t perform well under this restriction. But I saved the worst part for last. If the Internet goes down and you don’t have a failover connection (another broadband connection you pay for each month)…… you’re DONE. Your whole office isn’t working until the broadband comes back up. There are ways to mitigate these issues with higher bandwidth broadband connections (expensive each month) and failover connections (more expensive each month), but make sure you do the math regarding how much more you’ll need to pay to the cable company each month before you pull the trigger on a cloud solution. I’ve already been called to a number of clients to discuss their impending cloud transition and watched as their mouth dropped open when they called their “cloud” software rep on my advice to ask how much they’ll pay each month for broadband under his solution. He apparently left that out of the sales presentation.

When you’re considering a cloud service, make sure you read all the fine print, and walk through specific scenarios with the provider before you sign. Ask about service limits and what features you won’t get when compared to doing it yourself. I find the best candidates for the cloud are multi location offices or companies that need to share one common application or database. That leaves out 95% of the small businesses in the country. Bandwidth availability and cost is the other contributing factor we look at for cloud computing implementations.

 

Written by Mark Richmond, President and CEO of Micro Doctor Inc.

2/15/2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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