MSPNetworks Blog

Businesses spend a lot of time thinking about new technology solutions, but new organizations in particular need all of the tools they can get to be competitive in the competitive marketplace. The cloud is one of those tools that will continue to grow alongside your business provided you take measures to keep it flexible enough to change as needed. We’ll help you understand how the cloud can be great for new businesses, as well as some of the solutions you can take advantage of through it.

The Cloud for Communications
All businesses need a telephone system of some kind. The traditional telephone infrastructure used by older organizations got a lot of mileage, but it’s unnecessary for the modern office. In traditional business telephone solutions adding users can be irritating and expensive. Cloud-based communication solutions like Voice over IP allow you to add extensions while taking advantage of everyday features that you would get with a more traditional telephone system. The benefits include eliminating an unnecessary service in traditional telephony while consolidating your infrastructure to use your bandwidth for communications.

The Cloud for Data Storage
The cloud allows for easy access to data storage. This gives your team the capabilities to access the same files from anywhere at any time as long as they have the correct permissions. Cloud-based data access promotes flexibility in devices used for work purposes as well as productivity by enabling employees to work as they see fit. Of course, permissions are something that must be paid attention to, as the more people who can access data, the more likely it is that something goes wrong with it. A good rule to follow is limit data access by user role.

The Cloud for Application Access
Some businesses have critical applications installed on every workstation, but this can be expensive and time-consuming. For one, you have to install this software on all devices they are needed on. This means you need multiple software licenses for each instance of the software running, whether it’s in use or not. Storing applications in the cloud gives your business more opportunity to apply patches and updates as needed, as well as making account management much easier.

How does your business use the cloud to its advantage? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to reach out to us at (516) 403-9001 for more tips on how you can leverage the cloud to your organization’s benefit.

Even if we’d like it to last forever, business technology can’t possibly do so for a number of reasons. Due to the fact that businesses and their technology are constantly upgrading and changing, it’s almost a certainty that you’ll have to upgrade your technology at some point, whether it reaches its end-of-life event or just simply becomes obsolete for your organization. In fact, failing to update your infrastructure from time to time can have serious negative side-effects for your business.

We’ll show you why solutions eventually reach their EOL and how to handle this event when it arrives.

Why Do Services and Solutions Have an End-of-Life?
All good things must come to an end. For example, you probably can’t remember the last time you used an actual rotary phone (if ever), and there’s a very good reason we don’t carve messages in stone or drive horse-and-buggies around anymore--there are better, more efficient options for these solutions. While they may have been game-changing for the time they existed, there was always an effort to improve and innovate. This process continues for as long as people can dream of making better business decisions and improving their operations. After all, if there’s one thing that all businesses can agree on, it’s that faster and more efficient solutions are better than old, outdated ones.

Technology in general has improved substantially over the past several decades. Computers that used to fill up entire rooms are now dwarfed in power by the devices we carry with us in our pockets. Of course, this change was gradual and occurred over a rather long period of time. The same level of change can be seen in automobiles. The first automobile was built in 1885 by Karl Benz, but it took another 15 years to introduce a proper steering wheel and 24 years for the addition of a radio. 1958 saw the addition of the seatbelt, but it wasn’t until 1970 that it became a front-seat requirement. Considering just how far vehicles have come in this span of time--driving themselves, connecting to space radio services, and warning drivers if doors or seatbelts aren’t used properly--it’s quite easy to see just how out-of-date a revolutionary (at the time) vehicle like the one Benz produced is in today’s society. The same aspect can be applied to business technology.

How to Approach Your Business’ IT
You don’t always have to wait until the end-of-life event for your technology to upgrade it. We recommend taking the following steps for replacing your IT:

• Evaluation: Take a look at your business’ IT from a big-picture perspective. How does your business want to make progress? Is your technology able to meet this progress? An inventory system for your technology helps considerably in this regard, and it can help you keep track of which upgrades are coming when.
• Emphasis: Once you know where your business wants to be in the near future, you need to take micro-steps in the right direction. If the budget exists for this, then you need to consider which equipment should be prioritized, as well as whether or not you can afford them. Consider how many opportunities are being missed due to the upgrade not being done, as well as how close the system’s EOL is. There might even be a warranty on it that is preventing your business from reaching a specific goal.
• Execution: Once you’ve figured out what your greatest needs are and how you can afford them, you’ll have to put your plans into motion. This might mean completing the upgrade process in its entirely or separating it into portions.

MSPNetworks can help your business implement the right technology at the right time. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

For the modern small business owner, there are situations that you are forced to deal with that are frustrating; but, in the course of doing business would be considered normal. Then there are other situations that arise where, every step of the way, the figurative floor falls out from under your feet and you are forced to react quickly. Some of these circumstances can be pretty spooky for your business. This Halloween, we’ve decided to outline three scary circumstances your business may have to deal with, and how to keep your cool.

The Walking, Talking Dead
Unfortunately, employees sometimes do things that force a business owner or manager to terminate his/her employment contract. Other employees leave if they have problems with management or find better opportunities elsewhere. Unfortunately for the business, a clean break may not be possible, and a disgruntled former employee can make things extremely difficult for your business.

One way that a former employee can virtually haunt your business is through the use of social media. If it was a rough break, a former employee can slander your business on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as social media designed for employer reviews like LinkedIn and the anonymous review site, Glassdoor. This may be nothing more than a hindrance, and typically no one is going to pay a solitary source much mind, but if multiple complaints of the same nature start popping up on social media, you might spook the high-end talent out of considering working with your business.

Residing Evil
Another way former employees can hurt your business, is if you let them. When they leave, you have to remember to ensure that any account authorization they had access to is deleted. There have been cases where former employees will make their way onto their former company’s infrastructure or network and corrupt things, either manually or with the help of malware.

Typically, those who would go ahead and effectively hack their former employers’ systems, know what they are looking for, and use this access to make it more difficult for a company’s business to run efficiently. As long as your IT administrators have a plan on how to remove former users and do so immediately after the employee is let go, this may not be much of an issue.

Some former employees have deliberately built in a way into a network away from the procedural protocols outlined by IT administrators. In these cases, a full network audit is necessary to ensure that any trace of the worker is removed promptly. Any other result keeps the potential for jaded former employees to do some pretty disgusting things to your company’s network.

Trick or Treating
While some former employees want to take it out on their former employer, some former employees will want to steal company data, client data, or intellectual property. In fact, in one study done by security experts Symantec, data showed that nearly half of all fired employees had kept some sort of confidential corporate information. While this may not be a massive deal, 40 percent of them planned on using that data at a new job.

While organizations may not be able to completely avoid this from happening, there are some courses of action that can be taken to ensure that this data isn’t used against their own company. Make every employee sign, and enforce, a non-compete agreement, while also utilizing access control systems to ensure the people who don’t need certain information, don’t have access to said information. Giving people fewer chances to make off with data is a great way to keep people from taking it in the first place.

Business can be scary sometimes, and the last thing you need is for your bottom line to be hacked and slashed because of your former employees. At MSPNetworks, we can help you protect your data and network from all manners of threats; and; help make sure that former employees don’t haunt you long after their gone. To learn exactly how we can help you, call us today at (516) 403-9001.