MSPNetworks Blog

The strangest year in our lives is coming to a close and the holidays figure to be just as strange. With the COVID-19 pandemic still roaring away, there probably won’t be a lot of the events that are typical this time of year. That doesn’t have to ruin the time of year, however. Today, we thought that we would take a look at five cool tech gadgets and services that won’t break the bank, but will also be a cool addition under the tree or for your secret santa. 

#1 - Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug²

It’s probably an understatement to say that people like their coffee. It’s probably more correct to say that people need their coffee. Even if you don’t like coffee, you probably like hot drinks. For anyone who likes hot beverages the Ember Temperature Control Smart Mug² is a great choice. With this device you can set how warm you want to keep your beverage and it stays that warm for over an hour; enough time to finish that cup of joe that would have gotten cold and been thrown out. 

The mug has a built-in battery and comes with a charging coaster. The Ember Mug² comes in 10 fl oz or 14 fl oz options and can be found on Amazon for around $110.

#2 - Google Nest Hub

The days of the smart home have just begun. Despite being available for a few years now, people—many of which have spent most of this year at home—have begun to install smart gadgets in their homes. Eventually this is the way everything is going, so if you know someone who, like millions of other people, are starting to piecemeal a smart home, the Google Nest Hub is a great tool. 

The Nest Hub is marketed as a digital picture frame, but unlike the one you got your Grandmother for Christmas in 2010, the Google Nest Hub provides the ability to watch videos via YouTube or Netflix and, best yet, it functions as a controller for all of your home’s smart devices and accounts. The Google Nest Hub can be found in the Google store for around $90.

#3 - Wireless Headphones

Another gift that has been around for a few years now, but is to a point that even modestly-priced options have some value. There are a lot of different kinds of wireless headphones. There are on-head headphones, there are earbuds, there are even wireless headphones built into glasses and hats.

Some of the most popular options for high-end sound include: Bose SoundLink around-ear wireless headphones II, Apple Airpods 2, and Google Pixel Buds. Some more affordable options we like include: Anker Life Q20 and the Xiaomi Airdots S.

#4 - Streaming Subscriptions

These days, seemingly everyone has some type of streaming service that they pay for, but getting them all can be really expensive. If you know someone who would like the content on your favorite streaming service, you can give them a gift. In fact, some will give you the option to pay for a year subscription for a discount. 

Some of the most popular are: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Premium and more. As more and more companies get into the streaming service game, it will be nearly impossible to have all of them. Depending on the service you gift, you are looking at about $80-to-$150 for a year’s worth. Personally, we’re pretty excited about HBO Max, since Warner Bros. is releasing all of their 2021 theater releases on the service on the same day they hit theaters. 

#5 - Courant Wireless Chargers

Most modern smartphones come with wireless charging capabilities. Even Apple finally put wireless charging in the new iPhone. There are chairs, cars, and many more items that provide wireless charging today. If you are looking for a sleek and useful wireless charger, the Courant Catch:3 is one of the best on the market. Not only does it provide a wireless charging station it also provides a place to store your stuff. The manufacturer also offers dual charging hardware and simple mat chargers. 

Solidly made and ready to go right out of the box, it can bring some style and function to any room in the house. 

This may not be a typical holiday season, but that doesn’t mean that the joy of giving gifts needs to get impeded. What gadgets or services are you looking to give the people in your life? Leave suggestions in the comments section below and check back to our blog for more great technology information. 

Let me ask you a quick question: when was your critical business technology last updated? When do your software licenses expire? When did your printer last have any maintenance performed on it?

If you’re unsure of the answers to these questions, you need to have a better handle on your IT inventory. Let’s go over why, and how we can help.

Here’s the thing: for your IT to work to your favor, you need to maintain total control and awareness of it. You effectively need to know everything about every piece of hardware you possess—when it was purchased, who initially set it up, when and by who it last received maintenance.

After all, your IT required some significant investment on your part… doesn’t it make sense to invest in protecting it? Keeping a record of this kind of information is a very important part of protecting it, as this record can help you form your decisions in the future.

MSPNetworks can help you there. Not only do our professional IT technicians expertly deploy and manage the solutions our clients rely on each day, but we also maintain detailed documentation of every component of their infrastructures as well as a running record of all the actions we take to keep them up and running efficiently. Using advanced diagnostic tools, we identify and mitigate any shortcomings, ensuring your systems are fully updated with all appropriate patches applied.

Of course, doing so will cause us to generate extensive documentation. For instance, here are some of the records we keep:

• All network-attached devices you have, from your networking devices to every company-owned endpoint and peripheral that attaches to it.
• The proper configuration for each of these devices.
• The date that each of these devices was installed.
• The licenses that your business needs to maintain, and the status of the ones you have.
• A comprehensive history of any service that each of these devices have received.

Tracking this information helps to guide us as we manage our clients’ critical technology solutions so that we can deliver the greatest benefit to their operations. This record also assists our staff in identifying and diagnosing future issues that could potentially impact a client’s IT.

Experience These Benefits in Your Own Business

If you would like to find out how managed IT services could assist your operations, reach out to our team. MSPNetworks is always available to answer your questions and give you more information about our services. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

Let’s be real. For most small businesses during this period, it’s been extremely difficult.  If you were somehow able to sustain operations during this time, you most likely had to make some serious alterations to the way that you normally do things. Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the technologies that you probably already have, and how you can change the way you use them to benefit your business as concerns spike over COVID-19. 

Working With What You’ve Got

When the pandemic first hit, and many states mandated that businesses close or move their operations offsite, not many people had the foresight that the situation would last as long as it has. Of course, the situation was new to almost every living person, but as far as business goes, many organizations chose to close up shop and wait it out. As the days turned into weeks, however, it became evident that if they didn’t do something they could stand to lose it all. For those businesses, and the businesses that went to a remote workforce right off the bat, the transition was filled with issues. How can I pay my bills? How can I get everyone set up with the technology they’ll need to be productive? How can I ensure that my staff is capable of being productive from home? What other choices do I have? 

For most businesses that chose to lay off their workforce at the outset of this thing and suspend operations, they were given a lifeline from the paycheck protection program (PPP) and were able to function at a limited capacity for many weeks. Does this mean they didn’t struggle? No. But with the subsidy, many hired back their best workers and made it through by replacing the productivity they would get from their additional staff with automation. Since payroll is a major expense for any company, in times when you need to keep your finances as liquid as you can, automation helps. 

Many of the automated tools that were added included payroll processing tools, operations management tools, and invoicing tools. These tools are designed to keep businesses from having to deal with actions that usually take up time and money, and are often outsourced. Other parts of the typical business, including employee collaboration, supply chain management, and project management can be improved dramatically through the use of automated tools. 

Security In Uncertain Times

Another part of the business experience that has seen less attention due to all the other things that are going on is cybersecurity. In fact, despite more business being conducted online than ever before, cybersecurity spending is conclusively down. It was actually one of the first places small businesses looked to cut when they realized that they were going to see a drop in revenues.The cybersecurity industry, which as a whole has been growing at about five percent per year for the past eight years is only expecting growth of just over one percent this year. 

If you are relying on a remote workforce, it stands to reason that you would want to provide them with the best chance to succeed. The numbers suggest that many organizations, despite reducing their overall cybersecurity outlay, are holding fast to their endpoint and intrusion protection spending. This means that with the uncertainty of when--or if--the world will return to normal, businesses acknowledge that by securing their network endpoints, their organizational risk goes way down. 

We should mention that no automation is going to stop cybercriminals. While newfangled IT solutions use AI to better identify and eliminate threats, most of the threats that will be a problem for your business in the foreseeable future will be from phishing scams. If your workforce works remotely, this risk is exacerbated by the fact that most people work from their personal devices and not from company owned hardware when they are out of the office. You will want to keep your phishing identification training strategies going and keep them frequent. The last thing that you want is for a remote employee to trigger a major malware attack on your company’s network because you didn’t properly train them. 

The future of business is one that is done over the computer. That much is clear now. If you need help with your business’ technology, you want to talk about what strategies are best, or if you just want to make sure you are doing the right things, call our knowledgeable team of IT technicians today at (516) 403-9001.

For the months that COVID-19 has been around, everyone has done all they can to hold on to their business. They have closed down, they have closed their offices and forced their employees to work from home, they have borrowed money and scaled back or eliminated their 2020 plans. It would be nice if all that sacrifice would pay off, but the frustrating reality is that there is going to be a lot of sustained discomfort for a lot of business owners. Let’s take a look at some things small business owners should consider as they reopen their businesses. 

Navigating the New Normal

Small businesses make up a large percentage of today’s functioning companies and employ a moderate amount of the workforce, so their importance to the economy is unquestioned. The problem facing many small businesses today is a lack of capital to meet the expenses their operations demanded before people started getting sick and the stay-at-home orders came down. There isn’t the demand, there are health questions, and ultimately, not enough money to go around.  

Most small businesses have already canceled their planned investments for the year. This alone has an effect on the whole economy. Vendors, who may or may not work for small businesses will feel the pinch. Recessionary business is not easy to navigate for anyone, but there are things you should do if you want to navigate the economic downturn.

Honest Assessment is the Key

The ability to take an honest look at where your business stands will be the most important factor to getting the help that you need. Familiarizing with your profit/loss statement and how it compares to 2019 should be your first step. Hard numbers may lack nuance, but they tell most of the story. Take a look at your business’ assets and the operational costs that go along with them. Unfortunately, big drops in revenues mean that you will ultimately have to take a long look at your human resources. When everything is on the table, the next steps will hopefully become clearer. 

After everything is laid out, assess the damage the pandemic has caused your business. Can you afford to sustain your business the way it was before the shut down? If so, good for you, your business is in the minority. In fact, according to the NFIC only five percent of small businesses have prospered during the pandemic. Apparently, they make masks, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer. 

Get the Help You Need

A big part of navigating this period for the small business is getting the help you need to stay afloat. Most governments have some sort of economic relief package in place for small businesses to utilize. In the US, the Cares Act has made several programs possible including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provides low-interest loans of up to $10 million to eligible businesses. If there is help to be had, it is a business owner’s responsibility to seek it out.

If your business doesn’t qualify for government assistance, it can be really difficult, and if you are initially denied funding, you need to keep looking. There are many places to get the help you’re going to need. Long nights are a part of owning a business, and today it’s important that you work on mitigating risks to your business’ future.

Use Automation to Your Advantage 

The worker’s “worst enemy,” automation can and probably will be a big part of your business for years to come. Your business probably already has the tools in place to be able to use automation in some way. When you automate some of the repetitive and menial tasks, your staff can focus on revenue-generating endeavors, improving productivity. The technology professionals at MSPNetworks can help you decide where automated tools best fit in. 

Your business is going to have to adjust and you are going to make some hard choices to get through the pandemic in one piece. If you want to talk to New York IT experts about how technology can play a big role in the sustainability of your business, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

With more people than ever working from home, their ability to receive the support they need to keep their devices in top working order is crucial. As a result, many businesses have turned to managed IT service providers to maintain their employees’ computers. MSPs like us utilize a tool called remote monitoring and management software (RMM). Let’s discuss what it is and why it is so useful for managing your company’s IT. 

Consider the following scenario from the perspective of one of your employees:

You’re working from home, trying to get your tasks done for the day. There’s still plenty to do on your schedule, and you’re swiftly approaching deadlines for many of your responsibilities. Suddenly, your trusty laptop starts crashing, and try as you might, you can’t seem to get anything working.

So, what do you do?

This is obviously a challenging situation on numerous levels. Not only are you unable to get any work done, you’re also isolated away from whatever support resources are usually present in the office. As a result, any issues you may encounter are made much more challenging to resolve.

However, this fortunately doesn’t have to be the case.

By working with a managed service provider like MSPNetworks, you can benefit from the improvements that modern solutions can provide to the IT support process. Rather than encountering a problem and waiting around for it to be fixed, you can continue working, confident that the MSP has any challenges handled.

Using the technology at our disposal, we can remotely keep track of your computers, even while your workforce is working remotely. Should an issue arise, our team of trained IT professionals will detect it and do everything within their considerable abilities to mitigate it. Often, we can have the issue sorted before you even realize that one was present, all thanks to our use of remote monitoring and management software.

Of course, to leave the benefits at that would be to sell an MSP short. In actuality, the nature of remote monitoring and management can provide a much wider range of benefits, such as:

• Low-profile RMM solutions can be configured ahead of time and installed in the background, doing even more to preserve productivity. Once installed, our software can help protect the data of both your clients and your employees by ensuring that critical patches are professionally installed, and that a technician is always just a few clicks away.
• The management portion of our software can be used to attend to assorted support matters beyond troubleshooting, enabling us to install and manage the software that your users will need, such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol telephony), productivity solutions, and other business-essential tools.

At MSPNetworks, we can assist you with all of your IT needs, regardless of where your employees are currently stationed, enabling your team to accomplish more during a time that would once have made work impossible. To learn more about our services, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Productivity is—generally speaking—the core goal of any modern software solution. Today, we wanted to go over a few tools that can boost your productivity and efficiency right now.

Cloud Collaboration and Storage

As many people continue to work remotely, many businesses have faced the challenge of supplying these employees with the resources needed to be productive. Plus, there needs to be some consideration into how their home networks differ from the one in the office, particularly in terms of their security.

Cloud solutions can offer the security and access that your team members need to collaborate on their work. So, if your workplace still isn’t using the cloud to its fullest potential, you should prioritize these changes.

Instant Messaging

With instant messaging tools in their toolkit, any team can more easily conduct the brief conversations that so often take place throughout the day. Instant messaging is more efficient, which helps those involved in these messages keep their productivity levels high. This is thanks to the conditioning that we have all received from messaging and texting in our daily lives.

The other benefits of messaging include its availability. With workstations and mobile devices alike supporting instant messaging solutions, your team is essentially guaranteed to have access wherever they are.

Project Management

As your team is divided amongst their homes, a project management solution can help to keep them productive. As they are no longer working in the same place, your team members may start to lose the sensation of being part of a team. As a result, your team may start to slip out of collaborative habits. A project management tool can help prevent this by showing your entire team how their activities play into the overall success of the business’ endeavors.

Video Conferencing

Finally, your communications are greatly benefitted by a video conferencing platform of some kind. This solution can enable your remote workers to participate in meetings almost as effectively as they could while at the meeting table, supported by capabilities like screen-sharing and other collaborative features. While it isn’t a perfect replacement for in-person collaboration, it is about as close as we can currently get.

To learn more about these solutions and the processes of implementing them, reach out to the professionals at MSPNetworks by calling (516) 403-9001.

As an owner of a small business, there are a whole lot of issues that you have to confront every day. Besides the normal issues, there are always situations that pop up without warning. When your business is small and more easily manageable, they are easier to steer one way or another When your business starts growing rapidly, however, turning things around can get more difficult. This can turn into roadblocks to progress. Today, we will look at some of the issues that a small business owner will encounter when their business grows fast.

How Big Is Your Business?

Entrepreneurs have a tendency to look to other business owners to find what works and what doesn’t. Of course, your business functions independently and will react its own way to any solutions you enact for its problems. Once you get to a point where your business has moved out of the tinkering stage and you’ve figured out the best way to move forward, you should have a pretty good idea about what to expect. With such a high percentage of businesses failing before they can see any substantial growth--or because of prematurely investing in your business’ growth--it is important to know where your revenue is coming from and how to forecast its continued expansion.

For the small business owner, this takes more than working in your business. It takes working on your business. Unfortunately, it is a luxury few small business owners have time for. That’s why you have to make time to do it and begin to delegate responsibilities early. That way you can spend more time making sure that your business is moving in the right direction rather than doing things that keep you from doing so. 

How IT Fits In

IT plays a huge role for small businesses, but as a business grows, it becomes even more imperative. This is because IT presents solutions to solve operational inefficiencies. All businesses feed off of their ability to produce goods and fulfill services in a timely manner. The more IT a business comes to depend on, however, the more IT your business will likely demand.  

Small businesses may start out with a server or two, but as it grows into a medium-sized company, the infrastructure demand will grow rapidly. That’s not to say that there will be a huge shift in the way that you use your IT as you grow. Most medium-sized businesses still utilize the same technology, just on a much, much larger scale. 

Management of Growth

Some entrepreneurs have a difficult time when their role shifts from team leadership to company leadership. In fact, many businesses see a plateau in growth due to a reluctance to innovate and properly delegate responsibilities. The fact is that once your business gets to a certain point, your main value should be leadership, not proficiency at completing role-specific tasks. In fact, if you are too involved in the day-to-day running of your business, and you have hundreds or even thousands of subordinates, things can get pretty dicey. It can even stall a business at a time when it should be advancing and looking to break into new markets and diversify its revenue streams.

The ability to hire people with complementary skills--and to trust those hires to do good by you--is an important part of business growth. Sad to say that most entrepreneurs favor hiring people that are like them, but the most successful companies work because they have the different perspectives needed to create products and services that people want, fulfil those roles efficiently, and know how to move business forward.

Lean on Outside Experts

Sometimes, when your business gets to the point where it isn’t functioning as a small business anymore, the best thing to do is to scale up or back. The easiest way to accomplish this is through outsourcing. There are people in all manners of work that you can lean on to do a job that you wouldn’t need a full-time employee for. These services typically come with favorable financial terms and can be contracted until they complete a job and then let go when they are no longer needed without the problems that accompany turnover in human resources.

At MSPNetworks, we work with small and medium-sized businesses as an outsourced company, and we believe that we provide substantial value through our managed IT services platform. If you would like to talk to one of our consultants about getting what you need to keep your business moving forward, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

If you are an entrepreneur, changing the way that you look at your business can be pretty difficult. Many businesses start out with not much more than a ray of hope, so if your business is doing well, you must be doing something right. When demand makes you think bigger, your technology spend becomes a major priority. Let’s take a look at some of the changes a growing business has to make. 

You’ll find that a lot of businesses succeed because the people running them are able to adapt to the challenges tossed their way. Whether that is learning from particular case studies or an intuition that makes you know you were made for this, you know that problems come from every angle. Technology smooths those angles out. Here are a few tools worth talking about:

Hosted VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol, further to be referred to as VoIP, is a telephone system, sure, but really what it is, is a financial correction. Why continue to waste money that could be better spent advancing your business? A VoIP system is a telephone system that uses your company’s bandwidth to deliver enterprise level call, text, and conferencing services. 

A cloud-based, professionally maintained VoIP system can solve a lot of communications problems many could see with traditional phone systems. They include:

• Price - VoIP customers have the obvious cost reduction of eliminating their reliance on the telephone company. 
• Scalability - A VoIP system makes adding and removing lines easy. A new phone can be up and running within minutes. 
• Mobility - VoIP systems typically come with soft phone options that can turn any smartphone into a VoIP phone. 
• Options - Any option a traditional telephone system can have, a VoIP platform offers. With VoIP you can get comprehensive communications tools that can be integrated with your business’ other operational systems. 
• Hardware - Hosted VoIP systems typically use top-of-the-line hardware systems to ensure reliability. 

A new Hosted VoIP system covers a lot of your business’ communications and can be a great tool for the growing business. 

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an end-to-end piece of operational management software that can function as a liaison between a business and their customers or potential customers. The CRM comes in many forms but their purpose is always to streamline and facilitate action on the operational end and offer support on the consumer end. Some of the features found in the CRM include:

• Contact management 
• Lead management 
• Relationship tracking
• Account management
• Quote and purchase management
• Procurement/Vendor management
• Workflow automation
• Sales process automation
• Service automation
• Campaign management 
• Business analytics

...and more.

Why do you need these options? Because as your business grows, you will have less and less time to do all the things that need to be done. So as the amount of oversight that is needed to ensure that your sales team are doing the right things, your marketing team are doing the right things, your production staff are doing the right things, customers are getting value, and are properly supported when they don’t, increases, the reliance on automation will increase. The CRM automates a lot of the departmental interoperability, thus delivering an efficient and collaborative workflow that supports administration, staff, and customer, alike. 

The CRM’s tools can be combined with payroll software, supply chain management software, service delivery software, and more to provide businesses the resources needed to support a business’ end-to-end operations. Growing businesses need to focus on efficiency and opportunities, and one of the best ways to get opportunities is by having a significant web presence. 

Online Presence

Brand awareness is extremely important for modern businesses. In fact, it is right up there with convenience as the most important variable that consumers say plays into their decision to choose a product or service. With this in mind, having a web presence is more important than ever. Getting a website made isn’t enough anymore. Today’s businesses not only need to focus their marketing efforts locally using traditional methods, they also need to invest time and effort into their web marketing.

Many businesses have started using social media to start the conversation as it gives a business access to a customer base that they may not have access to in normal situations. The conversation that starts on social media by sharing knowledge via blogs and other pieces of content, responding to user problems with direct interaction, and promoting the good work that you do through case studies and other testimonials, can quickly become a great way to engage an audience that is looking for answers to their own problems. By linking your webpage to your social media accounts, you will increase traffic, which increases sales opportunities. 

If your business is growing, you need to get out ahead of it by accepting that investing in technology is the way to go. If you would like to talk to one of our expert IT consultants about the technology your specific business needs, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

A business’ budget is the biggest authority over it. As a result, each business needs to spend some time adjusting their operational investments to put itself in the best position to reach its goals… a process that a managed service provider’s help can make much simpler. Let’s review some ways that an MSP can help a business get that much more out of its investment into its IT.

To begin, let’s review how you can optimize your costs (particularly your IT-related costs):

• Digitizing and automating your processes to help eliminate waste and boost efficiency.
• Negotiations can be made for services and solutions, allowing you to reduce your costs.
• Streamlined and standardized resources enable more to be accomplished for a smaller investment.

A managed service provider can enable a business to do all three of these things. For instance, here are just a few services that can help you to optimize the technology-related costs that your business generates.

Vendor Management

Vendors are an important player in a business’ operations but interacting with them can take away from the time you need to spend on your other essential tasks. We can take care of these interactions for you, allowing your focus to remain upon your actual operations. This offers a few additional benefits too, as we likely already have experience working with these vendors and can therefore get some better deals with them on your behalf.

Proactive Maintenance

While technology is an insanely valuable tool for businesses, there is no denying that it comes at a high cost to these businesses as they implement it. In addition to the costs required to acquire and implement it, its maintenance can quickly introduce additional and unpredictable costs that significantly add to the total. The proactive maintenance that an MSP provides and the preemptive issue resolution that can be accomplished enables costs to be saved.

Cloud-Based and Remote Services

Today’s business technology is built in such a way that the services and solutions that are available can be more easily scaled to their needs. As a result, a wider range of businesses can use the tools that support healthy operations—with improved support tacked on—in a financially sustainable way. By working with us, these tools can be embraced and used in the most effective way. This ultimately delivers the most amount of value to the business possible.

With MSPNetworks on your side, your business can accomplish more without overreaching its capabilities. To learn more about how our services could help your business function better, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

A lot of people aren’t aware that working from home is not a recent innovation. It can arguably be traced back over a million and a half years, when our ancestors would work relatively close to their dwelling places. Throughout our history, work has shifted away and back again to the remote methodology. Let’s look back through the years to see the progression of how people worked, based on the technology that was available.

Working from Home Was Largely the Norm

In the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution, especially in the medieval period and the Renaissance, working from home was how people worked. European peasantry lived in structures called “longhouses” with their livestock and workplaces contained inside with them. In fact, it wasn’t until 1760 and the Industrial Revolution that working someplace else was a common option.

Even then, factory managers often operated out of small buildings adjacent to the factory that were built to reflect many of the comforts of home.

The Shift to Office Work

The office as we know it today didn’t come around until the early 1900s, as technologies like electricity, telephony, and typing became available, with Ford Motor Companies adopting the now-traditional 9-to-5 workday in 1926.

By the 1960s, clerical work had taken over much of the job market, and with it, an intense obsession with productivity. Managers of the time kept detailed notes of how long it should take to carry out activities that today aren’t even considered. In case you were wondering, turning in your swivel chair should take you 0.009 minutes, as a guide from 1960 dictates. The cubicle, the epitome of removing distractions in the workplace, was first designed in 1968.

Technology Helped Encourage Remote Practices

However, in the 1970s, a variety of factors were introduced that made the prospect of remote work more appealing. For instance, rising concerns over the environment brought up the concept of remote work, and technology was developed that enabled remote productivity.

Once the Internet was introduced in 1983, remote work was considered a legitimate option again. With Wi-Fi’s development in 1991 and various professional and governmental innovations over the next few decades, we now have the means to support remote operations for so many—and thank goodness we do.

MSPNetworks is here to help you leverage the various tools that your business can use to support its operations on a remote basis. To learn more about these tools and how you can best use them today, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

While all a business’ technology solutions are important, some are bound to take priority over the others, especially when certain ones become an industry-wide focus. A recent survey evaluated the top concerns of small-to-medium-sized businesses for the coming year. The results of the survey identified a few telling trends regarding the priorities that SMBs hold now, and for good reason.

Techaisle, a market research and industry analysis organization, collected and consolidated data to identify where SMBs and small businesses specifically saw their biggest business issues and their technology challenges and priorities. Let’s bear down specifically on the answers provided by the small businesses to see if your internal priorities and concerns match up to theirs.

Issues

According to the survey, a small business’ largest concerns are all what one would generally expect of any business. Here they are as the survey identified them:

1. Attracting and retaining new customers
2. Increasing profitability
3. Increasing business growth

These were the highest priorities for the survey’s respondents. The areas of least concern, as the survey identified, were: 

1. Improving workplace productivity
2. Improving effectiveness of sales and marketing
3. Focusing on new markets

Oddly enough, these areas of lower concern could directly benefit the efforts of their top concerns if perhaps prioritized more… but I digress.

Priorities and Challenges

Speaking of the priorities that the surveyed small businesses presented, the trends therein were exceptionally clear. Nearly as clear, is how directly these priorities line up with the IT challenges that these businesses face.

Here are the top four priorities and challenges, respectively:

1. Cloud / Cloud security
2. Mobility solutions / Customer experience
3. Collaboration / Maintaining current IT infrastructure
4. Managed services / Budget constraints

What this tells us is that businesses largely have the right idea of how they can use information technology to help address their biggest concerns. By adopting relatively new approaches to IT services and their delivery of them, like cloud solutions and managed services, businesses can better increase their profitability and scale upwards through bringing in more people to sign on.

The IT challenges that the surveyed businesses specified are also well-managed by implementing precisely what they have prioritized. It makes sense that, with cloud ranking as their number-one priority, cloud security is correspondingly elevated. Similarly, with customer service standards to uphold, the ability to collaborate with the rest of the team needs to be a priority.

Finally, the budgetary limitations and the maintenance requirements play even more deeply into the adoption of managed IT services, which help relieve both concerns for businesses.

There’s a lot more that a managed service provider can deliver to a business, and we’d be happy to discuss it with you further. If you have any more questions or want to learn more about managed services and what they entail, give the professionals at MSPNetworks a call. Reach out to us today at (516) 403-9001.

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing businesses to rethink their operational strategies, many businesses have had to make a quick digital transformation. Many businesses have accomplished this before the stay-at-home orders, but with employees working from home, we thought this was the perfect time to take a look at four tools businesses can use to improve their work-from-home strategies. 

Analysis, In Real Time

Making prudent and qualified decisions is more important now that it has ever been before. To be able to make informed decisions, many SMBs are looking to their analytics platforms. By being able to look at how aspects of your businesses are functioning in real time, you can quickly change strategies that need to be changed in order to keep your business running efficiently.

Additionally, many analytic systems can be structured near the edge of an organization’s computing network, giving them more insight into how data is flowing in and out of their network.

Other benefits include:

• Managing location data - Directs decision makers’ strategies by determining the relevant data for multiple locations.
• Anomaly detection - Helps decision makers detect outlying data sets to avoid impulsive decision making. 
• Improved marketing - Assists decision makers to make decisions based on demand when it otherwise wouldn’t be noticed.

Voice Over Internet Protocol

VoIP is one of the most useful tools for teleworkers. It provides strong communication options, highlighted by an enterprise-grade telephone system, for pennies on the proverbial dollar. Additional available options that can help remote workers such as instant messaging, text messaging, and audio and video conferencing make VoIP a powerful tool for businesses looking to sustain levels of productivity with workers out of the office. 

Automation

One of the best tools for cutting costs is process automation. A lot of businesses are trying to effectively identify processes within their workflow where they can automate mundane or repetitive tasks. By having the type of consistency automation brings to these types of tasks, businesses can utilize their human resources on more revenue-building assignments.

Tasks that can be automated include:

• Tasks that involve moving information around
• Frequent and mundane, but necessary tasks
• Tasks that frequently interrupt focus on business-critical tasks

Making the investment to automate parts of your business will assuredly save your organization money. Best yet, by automating these tasks now, once operations return to normal, you will keep seeing the cost savings you do today. 

Online Sales

There are a lot of businesses that have implemented some semblance of ecommerce prior to this event, but if you haven't, or if you have a limited ecommerce platform, you could see a major bump in revenue from investing in your ecommerce platform. In retail, companies are seeing double and even triple times the sales through their ecommerce solution than they did only a few short weeks ago. Prioritizing your online sales will go a long way toward keeping revenues up while your storefront is closed.

For the small business these can be lean times. Knowing what technologies and strategies to implement will go a long way toward getting you through this period. For more information about technology and how it can work for your business during the COVID-19 period, call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001. 

With the COVID-19 outbreak forcing businesses into unenviable situations, it’s probably not surprising that business owners and decision makers are looking at what expenses they need to cut in order to keep their businesses afloat. Today, we’ll discuss the trends we are seeing and how managed IT services can be a godsend in situations like this.

Inevitable Cuts

While technology has helped millions of businesses from all over the world stay relevant during the pandemic, we’re seeing that IT is one of the elements of a business that is seeing the most spending reduction. After all, most businesses have to cut some costs just to make everything work. Furthermore, analysts are saying that after the outbreak ends, the remaining recession will actually cut IT expenses by two or more percent for the next year. For an industry that has seen spending rise by five or more percent for each of the past eight years, that is problematic.

To sustain profitability businesses will need to free up as much capital as they can during times like this, and many businesses including ones that operate in the hospitality and manufacturing industries are already seeing massive declines in revenue. This suggests that their 2020 and 2021 spends will probably be less than their 2019 spends. 

This means that many businesses will be cancelling their planned technology projects, especially if they are non-essential. They are using this capital to improve their liquidity and to fund the transitions necessary to support their newly remote workforce. 

Telework and How Managed IT Services Can Help

If your business is looking to make some cuts to your operational technology, choosing the right IT service provider can be a great solution. Not only will you be able to maintain your current IT infrastructure, but a managed IT service provider (MSP) can help you find and implement the solutions you are going to need to get through this situation. 

Let’s start with the remote workforce. Before the pandemic only around eight percent of full-time workers were able to have the flexibility to consistently work from home. With states mandating people stay at home during this situation, telework has exploded. If your company was one of the few that provided telework options before the stay-at-home orders hit, you probably have had a much easier transition to supporting a completely remote workforce. Most businesses, however, didn’t, and are seeing that setting this up properly isn’t terribly cheap.

The challenges of supporting a staff that works remotely aren’t necessarily the same as you would have envisioned. Many businesses didn’t provide the work-from-home flexibility out of the fear that they would lose substantial amounts of productivity (and therefore revenue). While this is still somewhat of a concern, most workers that work remotely understand what their responsibilities are and go above and beyond to ensure that they aren’t the weak link. It's been said multiple times over the past several weeks, but if you have an employee that does not work well from home, it's a pretty good bet that he/she wasn't working that well from the office, either. 

One consideration that does have to be made, however, is how to secure your endpoints and data-in-transit. If this wasn’t already a main consideration of your disaster recovery policy, it will be now. Working with remote access and virtual private networks can go a long way toward mitigating the risk your company will see. An MSP can quickly help you find solutions that will not only keep your data safe and protect your existing infrastructure, it can provide you with new and affordable tools to leverage to keep your business compliant of the regulations your business falls under. 

What’s more, with the use of a state-of-the-art monitoring and management platform, the trustworthy MSP continuously monitors your network and infrastructure to ensure that everything is working properly, efficiently, and securely. In times like this, when there are files coming in and flowing out of your network, knowing that you have professional technicians versed in contemporary knowledge of threats and inefficiencies, alike, can be a huge benefit for your business.

Finally, an MSP does all this (and more) for a fraction of the cost of paying an onsite IT department (who would be working from home right now anyway). An MSP will help you reduce downtime, keep your network and infrastructure working effectively and securely, and do it for a static monthly cost. This allows you to cut your IT support costs and have a number that won’t change from month-to-month.

If you would like more information about how managed IT services can help your business in this time of crisis call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001. 

Technology can be complicated, and it doesn’t help when all you hear is an alphabet soup of acronyms used to describe it. As professionals, this kind of jargon has become a second language to us and it is easy to forget that not everyone will recognize these acronyms. For your reference, we’ve assembled some common ones you’ll probably hear us use.

-aaS

This means “as-a-service” and is typically preceded by another letter or letters, like “IaaS” (for Infrastructure-as-a-Service) or “DRaaS” (Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service). This means that a given business need is available from a service provider at a monthly, budgetable rate, with the provider managing whatever the solution in question is on an ongoing basis. This approach has grown in popularity amongst businesses, who benefit from the sustained nature of the given service delivered.

BI

BI, or business intelligence, is the culmination of data analysis to better understand business trends. While enterprises have put it to the most use, business intelligence and big data are slowly being introduced to businesses of all sizes to help them boost their operations. 

BYOD

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, is a strategy that many businesses use to cut costs and boost their employee satisfaction by allowing their staff members to use their own devices in the workplace, rather than ones provided by the employer. With the right precautions in place, BYOD can prove to be very beneficial for the business’ budget.

DoS

A Denial-of-Service attack (and sometimes, a DDoS, or Distributed-Denial-of-Service attack) is a form of cyberattack where a system’s operations are overwhelmed by an onslaught of incoming traffic. The interruptions that this causes can create significant challenges for a business.

EOL

When a solution reaches its EOL, or its End-of-Life, it effectively means that the developer is no longer updating its security to protect it and, by proxy, its users. This makes it of significant importance to keep apprised of the status of your solutions and have plans to migrate away from any that are approaching their EOL dates. Windows 7 reached its EOL not too long ago, for example.

IoT

The IoT is shorthand for the Internet of Things, the assortment of non-traditional devices that feature an Internet connection to boost their capabilities. While the IoT is a fascinating development in technology today, it also presents many challenges to your organizational security that must be addressed.

LAN

A LAN, or a Local Area Network, is a network used to share resources between computers contained within a limited distance. This is present in many offices, especially those that share printers or access to other pieces of connected equipment.

MFA

Multi-factor authentication, sometimes referred to as 2-factor authentication, is the practice of requiring an additional means of verifying one’s identity as one requests access to an account or a resource. By identifying a user with a username, the traditional password serves as the first factor of authentication, while the second requirement might demand a PIN number dictated by an application, or even biometric information.

SSL

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is a protocol for encrypting data between a server and the device a user has. Used to protect data as it passes from client to server and back again, SSL is what turns HTTP into HTTPS in a web browser.

UPS

Disasters are nothing to fool around with, which makes the inclusion of an Uninterruptible Power Supply so crucial to your infrastructure. Many pieces of computing hardware need to go through a process to safely shut down, so a sudden power outage is a dangerous prospect. A UPS gives them the juice needed to safely power down, protecting your business’ hardware.

VM

A VM, or a virtual machine, is an interesting piece of technology. Rather than installing an entirely new piece of hardware, a simulated version is introduced into an infrastructure, allowing users access to an additional solution set. This enables you to make use of additional resources without investing in additional hardware.

VoIP

As the acronym for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, VoIP describes an approach to telephony that cuts out a large chunk of the costs associated with office telephones. In addition, VoIP solutions come with many business-friendly benefits included, while they would ordinarily come at a cost.

VPN

A VPN is a virtual private network. A virtual private network effectively creates a tunnel that encrypts data as it makes its way to its destination, protecting it along the way. It is an excellent solution for a business, especially one that utilizes many remote workers.

WAN

WAN, or wide-area networks, are used by organizations that have multiple locations over a wider area by connecting multiple small networks into one larger network. 

To learn more about these solutions, and many others that we can help you to implement, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

Data is one of a business’ most important assets, and as such, it needs to be kept in such a way that it remains organized and utilizable. This has led to widespread use of databases in businesses, which has necessitated the use of database management systems. Let’s take a closer look at these systems, and why they are so crucial.

For a frame of reference, let’s imagine that our database is actually a library, and all of the books inside are actually our data. Following this analogy, the database management system (or DBMS) is like the Dewey Decimal System… it keeps the contents of your database/library organized and usable.

The Function of a DBMS

As you may have already figured out, the database management system helps you secure and organize the data stored in your database. By allowing you to better keep track of your database’s activity, you maintain more control over your database.

This control, paired with the added convenience of the DBMS, offers you a variety of benefits. These benefits include.

• A DBMS allows you to restrict access to data that an end user has.
• Users have a simpler time finding the data they need.
• It eliminates the need to restructure data to use different programs.
• Administration procedures can be unified.
• A DBMS makes data processing more economical.
• Data inconsistencies between file systems are eliminated.
• A DBMS allows for simultaneous data access between multiple users.

So, when all is said and done, a DBMS can simplify your users’ tasks, without sacrificing your control or data security.

If you want to optimize your business’ productivity and efficacy, MSPNetworks is here to help. Call (516) 403-9001 today to discuss your particular needs with us.

IT administrators are pretty particular about what software is used on the networks that they manage. This is not because we have any vested interest in the software itself, it’s because of the inherent reliability of the software they manage. They’ve tested it, they manage it, they know it. When an organization starts dealing with employee-downloaded software--especially if there is no procedure in place to report additions to IT--they can quickly lose control over the network. 

The software that isn’t properly vetted (or even reported most of the time) is called shadow IT. Since it’s the IT administrator’s job to oversee the data security and overall effectiveness of your company’s technology deployments, shadow IT can present them with a bunch of risk.  IT administrators hate risk. Today, we’ll take you through the good and bad of shadow IT.

Shadow IT is Bad

Most of the people that work with a computer have been working with similar technology for a long time. While they aren’t IT experts, they know what software works best for them. That experience will often result in them downloading software that hasn’t been approved by their company’s IT department or outsourced IT service vendor. This software, while useful for the user, may be a major problem for an organization, for several reasons.

The main issue is that any software that is downloaded may come with adware, spyware, malware, vulnerabilities, and other nefarious code that can put a business at risk. Worse yet, that software isn’t known to your IT admin, keeping it from the routine maintenance it needs to keep it from being a vulnerability. If your business carries vulnerable software, it can create a breachable hole in your network. So, while you may not see continuous problems, risk is magnified. 

What are the risks? Here are a few:

• A lack of security - Without the visibility and control over network-attached resources, IT management becomes much more difficult. If there is a potential that a piece of software can put a hole in your network, you are compromising the network’s security.
• Problems with performance - If the tool that’s implemented doesn’t mesh with the system it’s installed on, the app’s performance--and thus the user’s--will be compromised.
• Compliance problems - If your organization needs to meet certain compliance standards, the presence of unmanaged software makes it almost impossible to meet said standards.
• Data loss - If IT management doesn’t know that a software is on the network, it won’t be covered by organizational backup strategies, meaning work completed using shadow IT apps won’t be backed up.

The minute you understand the risks, it becomes clear why IT admins typically don’t like shadow IT at all.

Can Shadow IT be Good?

Risky behavior can be a major problem for a business. It can also result in significant reward. According to a study conducted in 2019, there is a shift in the way that IT admins are looking at shadow IT. This is mainly the result of organizations looking to improve productivity and to use available capital more effectively. For the detrimental risk that shadow IT can bring a company, there is an opportunity to save time and cut costs.

The study, which included 1,000 IT professionals, showed that a whopping 77 percent believe that embracing shadow IT solutions can help a company innovate quicker than their direct competition. That’s not all.

• 49 percent said that shadow IT boosts productivity.
• 45 percent said that shadow IT helps promote employee engagement.
• 40 percent said that shadow IT helps promote adherence to IT security requirements.
• 40 percent said that shadow IT would help reduce employee turnover.

Effectively, two-fifths of IT admins said that shadow IT’s detriments could be ignored. That’s not to say that I know any IT administrator that would be totally okay with having unsupported applications on company-owned machines. Not one would deliberately put a gaping hole in their organization’s network to boost productivity. 

What they would promote is the use of shadow IT that is brought onto the network through employee-owned devices. This practice is being shown more leniency now more than ever. After all, IT admins can’t possibly be responsible for every piece of software brought onto the network by employees. They bring laptops, and tablets, and smartphones, and IoT devices, and with all those devices, there are bound to be programs that IT admins typically wouldn’t want on there, but would accept if it kept decision makers happy and productivity high.

If you would like to learn more about shadow IT, what constitutes shadow IT, or have any other software and maintenance questions, call our knowledgeable professionals today at (516) 403-9001.

Today is the first day of the third decade of the 21st century. For some, it’s just another year, but for others it seems almost impossible that we’ve reached this point without floating cars and manned missions to Jupiter. Fifty years ago, some of the technology that is used in the course of doing business was simply fiction or conjecture. We thought it would be neat to take a look at some of the technological changes made since 1970.

Using our time machine, we want to travel through time to identify some technologies that have been invented in the past 50 years. The microchip (microprocessor) was invented in 1959, so that doesn’t quite fit the criteria of our list. Multi-location networking was also a thing as the ARPANET had just rolled out the year before. These technologies were the predecessors for some of the best tech we’ve seen developed over the past 50 years.

We start in the 1970s... 

1970s

Like most of society, the technology world was changing rapidly in the early 1970s. In quick succession, computing went from something that businesses and individuals only thought of in passing to a revolution that could change the world. New technologies that we would laugh at today were just reaching the market. Here is a brief list of some of the technologies that debuted in the 1970s:

• Automated Teller Machine (ATM) - Introduced automated banking.
• Intel 1103 memory chip - It was the first memory chip produced by Intel that introduced their dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). 
• Intel 4004 microprocessor - Intel also released the very first microprocessor.
• Email - The first emails were introduced and sent over the ARPANET.
• Xerox Laser Printer - The Xerox 9700, the first laser printer was developed.
• SuperPaint - The first computer used for digital imaging manipulation was introduced.
• Mobile Networking - ARPA developed the first wireless network out of a van in San Francisco and tested out early versions of VoIP. 
• The First Cell Phone - Motorola introduced the cell phone in 1973.
• Groundwork for the Internet - European researchers created “networks of networks” in a process called internetworking.
• Local Area Networks (LAN) - Using ethernet, Xerox created the first commercial LAN. IBM and Datapoint also introduced solutions.
• First Mass Storage - IBM introduces their 3850 mass storage system. It stored up to 236 GB of data. 
• Business Networks Expand - Packet-switched business networks like CompuServe, Telenet, and Tymnet are introduced, connecting business terminals to servers. 
• PC Wars - Apple’s first commercial personal computer, the Apple II was released in 1977 as were the Commodore PET, and the Tandy/Radio Shack PC called the TRS-80. 
• LaserDisc - The forerunner to the CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disk, the LaserDisk was expensive, but offered superior audio and visual quality than the tape-based systems of the time. 
• WordStar - One of the most popular word processors of the early PC age. 
• Introduction of Online Services - Services such as MicroNet (also known as CompuServe Information Service) and The Source started what could be described as a precursor to the Internet. These services provided early versions of what you would find with AOL and Prodigy in the early 90s. 
• Business PCs - VisiCalc, a software that automated the recalculation of spreadsheets effectively turned the growing PC market into a business PC market overnight. 
• The First Malware - In 1979 the first Internet worm was created as a way to search for idle processors on the ARPANET. 

1980s

After the immense amount of technological invention in the 1970s, innovation was the name of the game going forward. In the 1980s, many of the systems that were lauded as revolutionary got a new look, and many of the technologies expanded, especially for businesses. Here are some of the computing technologies that were introduced--or improved upon--in the 1980s:

• 3½-inch Floppy Disk Drive - There was a 5½-inch disk drive, there was a 3-inch, 3¼-inch, and the 3.9-inch floppy drive, but Sony developed the 3½-inch drive that Hewlett-Packard started putting in their PCs. It quickly grew to become the standard. 
• Hard Disk Drive for Microcomputers - Seagate Technology’s ST506 was the first hard disk drive created for microcomputers. The drive held 5 MB of data, five times your average floppy disk. 
• Business Workstations - Both Apollo and Sun Microsystems created hardware that would run resource-intensive graphics programs used for engineering and scientific research. 
• MS-DOS - Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, was released for IBM computers. 
• Lotus 1-2-3 - The first software suite that offered a word processor, spreadsheet program, and a database. It helped businesses get the tools they needed in one single software suite. 
• Apple Lisa - The first personal computer that came with a functioning graphical user interface (GUI).
• Bernoulli Box - The Bernoulli Box was the first hard drive that was removable. Disks ranged from 5MB to 230MB.
• CD-ROM - The CD was already catching on in the mid-1980s when the CD-ROM, a construct that could store 550MB of data caught on and was the standard for years to come.  
• Apple Macintosh - Apple’s Macintosh was the first mainstream mouse-driven computer, that came equipped with several applications that set the standard for personal computing of the time including MacWrite (first to use WYSIWYG) and MacPaint, which was the first mouse-based drawing program. 
• Flash Memory - Flash memory, which can be quickly erased and written over several times was invented in a Toshiba lab.
• PC Limited - Michael Dell dropped out of school to focus on a business where he built IBM-compatible computers from stock components. It soon became one of the most successful computer retailers in the world. 
• The Internet - U.S. Internet protocols are improved by the formation of NSFNET, the last step in what would become the Internet. 
• GSM Standard - Setting a standard for mobile networks, and introducing text messaging, the mobile revolution started in the late 1980s in Europe. 
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - The result from Robert T. Morris sent a nondestructive worm through the new Internet causing major damage. He was tried and convicted and had to serve community service for hacking the Internet.
• Macintosh Portable - It may not have sold well or been a success by any measure, but it did start computer manufacturers in their quest to build portable computers; something most users today completely appreciate. 

1990s

The 1990s saw a complete shift in the way that people used technology. Businesses, schools, and home users increased their use of computing technology and the growth of the Internet, which brought with it extreme prosperity followed by a crash that threatened the economies of some of the most technologically-savvy countries in the world. Here is a look at some of the technologies introduced in the 1990s.

• High Performance Computing and Communication Act - The U.S. Congress created the National Information Infrastructure that spent nearly a billion dollars on various networking initiatives that were aimed at improving commercial and individual access to the Internet. 
• NSF Lifts Internet Restrictions - Soon after the National Science Foundation (NSF), the entity that oversaw the modern Internet, removed its restrictions, giving businesses and individuals access to Internet-based materials. At this time the Internet service provider (ISP) is introduced as well.
• JPEG - The JPEG compression standard for images was introduced. 
• Solid State Drive - The first commercially available solid-state drive was introduced by SunDisk (today SanDisk).
• Personal Data Assistant - Before there was Siri and the Google Assistant, there were devices that aimed to help people keep organized. Apple’s Newton and Palm’s Pilot are two examples of mobile computing platforms aimed to help users.
• Intel Releases Pentium - Pentium was the fifth generation of the “x86” line of microprocessors. The new processors made programs run faster as multi-instructional computing became more necessary. 
• Microsoft Windows NT - It was the first 32-bit version of Windows, making it a powerful option for IBM and IBM-compatible machines. 
• Mosaic - The first true Internet browser, it had provided users a new level of access to Internet resources. 
• The First Online Ads - As people started to join the “world wide web” en masse, online ads were a rare occurrence. As you know, today, the Internet is one large billboard.
• CompactFlash - SanDisk introduced flash disks which were then incorporated into many consumer and professional electronic devices. 
• Zip Disk - Understanding the need for more data storage, Iomega introduced the Zip Disk that provided users the ability to get 100MB of storage on a disk not much bigger than the standard 3.5-inch disks that had become standard. Over time Zip drives could store up to 2GB before the technology became antiquated.
• Browser wars - Half of Mosaic's team broke off and started Netscape, while Microsoft used the source code of the Mosaic browser to create their Internet Explorer browser. The two browsers went head-to-head. Netscape thrived for a short time, but since IE was shipped with every Windows OS, it was hard for them to compete. Today, Microsoft has scrapped IE and features the Edge browser, while Netscape failed and became the basis for Mozilla’s Firefox browser that is still popular today. 
• The ThinkPad 701C - Manufacturers had been trying to make a laptop computer for several years, but the ThinkPad 701 gave users a full desktop experience in a portable machine. 
• Java - Sun Microsystems introduced Java, which let a program run on any system, opening up development for modern PCs from just the major players in computing. The language JavaScript was developed at the same time, but stands independently despite sharing the same handle. 
• Online Services - AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe had been the major players for much of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, giving users a “walled garden” experience of the web, but with the development of Microsoft Network (MSN) it opened up the web much more to the end user.
• Windows 95 - The first modern OS that focused on an Internet-connected experience. It also introduced the concept of plug and play, a great innovation for allowing peripherals to connect without having to initiate setup from a driver disk. 
• CD-RW - An optical disk used for data storage and could be written and written over several hundred times; a feature not many people actually took advantage of.
• Visual Studio - Programming new software became big business and essential to the sustainability of new web-based platforms. Visual Studio 97 helped push this along. 
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act - A law passed by the U.S. congress that began to crack down on the sharing of copyrighted intellectual property over the Internet.
• Wi-Fi - The establishment of Wi-Fi expanded the ability for computers to access networks and the Internet without wires.

2000s

As the millennium approached there were fears that the software developed wouldn’t work when the calendar changed. Millions of dollars were spent ensuring the world wouldn’t stop. After Y2K (as it was called), the 2000s would produce some of the most amazing technology the world had ever seen; and, would change the way people look at the world, forever. Let’s take a look at the list:

• The Camera Phone - Japanese manufacturer SoftBank introduced the first cellular phone with a built-in camera. 
• USB Flash Drive - The USB flash drive, jump drive, or memory stick was just a way for people to take data on the go, but it has turned out to be the basis of many other technologies as well. 
• BitTorrent - A peer-to-peer file sharing service that allows users to upload and download files, typically media. It has seen controversy as lawyers of the music and movie industry have claimed that BitTorrent facilitates the theft of their clients’ intellectual property. 
• iTunes - iTunes introduced the sale of new music through a digital medium. Unlike the peer-to-peer sharing, iTunes was set up as a store for music. 
• Myspace - Myspace might not have been the first or the largest social network, but it was the most important in the early 2000s. Facebook soon entered the market and is now one of the world’s most important and divisive companies. 
• Google - Google’s IPO was a seminal moment for the Internet as we know it. Already a popular search engine, Google cracked the code for how to monetize search results online. Today, it is one of the largest, and most lucrative companies in all of tech.
• AWS Cloud Services - The retail giant Amazon launched its Amazon Web Services providing companies the computing hardware they need in the cloud. Services like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure followed. 
• Netflix - A streaming movie service that has changed the way people look at media. 
• Apple iPhone - In what was one of the most important technology inventions in decades, Apple released the iPhone, which may have not been the first smartphone, but it sure seems like it was.
• Bitcoin - The first cryptocurrency was the result of a blockchain created by a person (or people) that goes/go by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Releasing the source code as open-source software has resulted in thousands of other cryptocurrencies, as well as many innovations using the blockchain ledger technology.
• BDR - Before backup and disaster recovery, there was mostly tape. When the cloud-based network-attached storage solutions came to be, businesses had a better solution to protect their data. 

2010s

The more that technology was innovated upon, the less was going into developing new technology. After the launch of the iPhone, there was a definite trend in the way that people began to look at their tech. If it wasn’t mobile or simple to use, it had no function. Let’s take a look at how those ideas came to pass in the 2010s:

• IBM’s Watson - The world was introduced to Watson when the AI defeated some of the very best humans at Jeopardy! Unfortunately, that is the end of lots of people’s exposure to Watson. Watson has subsequently been used in several fields to improve efficiency, education, cooperation and more. 
• Apple iPad - Just as they did with the iPhone, a few years later Apple introduced the iPad. The tablet computer that was completely touchscreen and used the same App store found on the iPhone was the beginning of one of the largest consumer electronics booms since the advent of the TV. 
• Adobe Creative Cloud - Just as Amazon Web Services and Azure provide virtual hardware services, Software as a Service (SaaS) started to expand rapidly at the beginning of the last decade. One title (of the many) was Adobe Creative Cloud, which gives users access to all the creative Adobe software through a monthly subscription service. 
• Arab Spring Protests - For the first time in human history, social media became the center of a series of organized protests that resulted in regime change, election transparency, and more. 
• Spotify - A music streaming service competes directly with other streaming services like Google Play Music, iTunes, and more. This Netflix-style model is proving to be a huge selling point for users.
• The Internet of Things - Smart devices started popping up quickly and with exponential growth now find themselves almost everywhere. 
• Virtual Assistants - Using AI, the development of Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Google Assistant have started integrating technology into moment-to-moment situations.
• Ransomware - A devastating strain of malware that locks down a user’s files and demands a ransom payment. It has affected millions of users, thousands of businesses, and some municipalities.
• Net Neutrality and Its Repeal - Trying to find an equitable arrangement on who controls the Internet has been nothing but contentious over the past decade. As it stands today the ISPs hold the power, but for much of the past decade the FCC did. Stay tuned.

Technology has come a long way in the past 50 years, and it will be interesting to see where it goes in the next 50. Is there anything we missed? If so, share it with us in the comments section below. Happy New Year! 

Collaborative work is pushing organizations forward faster today than ever before. With the use of more dynamic and option-rich technology, your organization can benefit from the improved productivity that comes from enhancing your collaborative strategies. Today, we look at some of the technologies used by organizations that prioritize collaborative work.

Businesses today are doing more than ever to utilize the data they take in, and it shows. They are operating with more knowledge about their business, and thus are able to successfully create a usable knowledge base that, for some, will allow them to predict positive and negative market dynamics fairly accurately. After seeing how this platform can positively affect individual businesses, many other businesses are taking to the strategies. The problem that many businesses encounter, however, is that they are woefully unprepared to utilize analytics; or, they read too far into them. Today, we’ll take a look at data analytics and confront some of the problem's businesses are having.

Are You Prepared?
The first thing that you have to understand about the placement of a data analytics system is that you need to have a reliable silo of information in which to work from. If you don’t set this up properly, the analysis will not be thorough enough to properly represent your business’ operations and will therefore not be as reliable as you would typically want this type of analysis to be.

To get reliable analysis through analytics, you will first want to set up a data warehouse. A data warehouse is essentially a database that is fed by your existing databases. By having all of your business’ information in one spot, it will make your analysis, whether it’s conducting analytics or intelligence reports, more accurate and reliable.

Reading Analytics
Once you have your analytics platform set up properly, you are ready to run reports. There are a couple really simple, but crucial, mistakes people routinely make when reading their analytics reports.

1. Correlation Doesn’t Always Mean Causation - There are times when you will be looking at two metrics and they are so amazingly similar that it can’t possibly be a coincidence. You then discover that the two seemingly correlated variables have no direct (or indirect) relationship with each other. It’s important that you don’t read into every similarity.
2. Make Sure to Keep Everything in Context - When you are actively using analytics and you start making headway in one facet of your business, it can be intoxicating. Make sure to not transfer a false optimism that other numbers will react the same way if the indicators say they won’t.
3. Just Too Much - Whether you are just tracking too many metrics, or you are tracking some that are completely meaningless for your situation, wasting time with certain metrics is just convoluting your practical understanding of your business. Scale it back for more success.
4. The “Wow” Factor - Metrics that report very positive or very negative situations will always be alarming, but if they are reported very infrequently, you can consider them outliers and exclude them in your overall report.

It’s great when you decide to let the data your business collects work for you. If you would like some information about how to integrate data analytics into your business’ call the IT professionals at MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001.

Your relationships with your customers and clients are reliant on one thing more than any other: communication. In order to optimize this communication, many businesses are leveraging technology solutions, and are enjoying a variety of operational benefits as a result. Is your business one of them?

How Powering Communication with Technology Directly Benefits Your Business
Choosing the right communications is one of the most important decisions that any business can make, as the decision you make influences many levels of your operation. On the one hand, there’s the internal side of things, where the different members of your organization can keep each other in the loop. On the other, your business needs to also maintain clear communications with your clients, offering them the value they’re seeking from your services.

The technology you use can offer some assistance in accomplishing as much.

From the solutions that allow you to more effectively communicate with your clients directly, to the potential cost savings that this technology can offer (thereby allowing you to pass these savings along to your increasingly loyal clients), there is plenty of upside to augmenting your communication practices via the right technology solutions. Here, we’ll explore some of the options available for your business to utilize.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
CRM systems are a fundamental solution for any business interested in leveraging their technology as a means of improving their relationships with their clients and customers. These systems enable companies to better keep track of each of their customers and their interactions with them by centralizing all of this data into a single dashboard. This makes tracking this information far easier than if it were to be scattered about inboxes and voicemails.

Furthermore, these solutions offer integration with many other business applications that further simplify many key processes, like billing and acquiring signatures. They can even provide insight into social media behavior, allowing you to optimize your client acquisition strategy. A CRM solution can increase customer and client satisfaction by a reported 35 percent, making it an invaluable tool.

Automation
Managing your relationships with your business contacts and prospects is a formidable task, simply due to the fact that there are so many moving parts and processes when it is done correctly. It also doesn’t help that many of these relatively simple processes could potentially be overlooked, hindering your progress toward your business objective. Automating these processes can help to fix that.

Let’s consider a simple hypothetical example: let’s say that you offer a few industry-related products. Instead of having a sales representative man the phones, you can leverage automated workflows to expedite the process. Once your customer clicks “submit” on the order form, it’s possible for your sales team to be notified of what was sold, accounting to start invoicing the order, and your CRM system updated with the information… all without you needing to lift a finger. This allows you to focus more energy on your new customer, providing the highest quality service you can.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Solutions
This approach to telephony has a few benefits, but today, we wanted to focus specifically on one: its portability.

One of the keys to fostering a positive relationship with your business contacts is to be available to them. How often have you reached out to someone, only to have to wait for a response back? You don’t want to be the cause of this irritation when someone reaches out to you.

One of VoIP’s biggest benefits is the fact that it can be leveraged from anywhere an Internet connection can be made, and many options offer a mobile application. Using a VoIP solution, your calls can be directed to your smartphone, enabling you to answer when your contact calls, proving your business to be reliable.

MSPNetworks can help you implement these solutions so that you can work on your business relationships. To learn more, call (516) 403-9001 today.