Hosted email, long the domain of large enterprises, is becoming much more common (and essential) for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). With hosted email, a firm’s email archive is saved on a remote (cloud-based) server rather than on a local (company) server or users’ individual machines. As with their local variations, hosted email solutions also incorporate calendar and contacts features, and sometimes other collaboration tools such as chat.

Microsoft Exchange is by far the world’s most popular corporate email solution (51% of all business email, per Radicati Group), so traditionally, companies looking to free themselves from the complexity and aggravation of running an in-house Exchange server have looked to hosted Exchange. However, Google’s Gmail service, offered for businesses as part of Google Apps, is making inroads. If you are considering transitioning to hosted email (or moving from hosted Exchange to Gmail) following are a few factors to consider.

Migration: One of the reasons companies don’t engage in technology upgrades is fear of migration difficulties. Veteran hosted Exchange providers will have deep experience helping companies migrate their precious data stores (email; contacts; calendar) to a hosted environment. Google’s approach is largely “self-guided” and, in our experience, companies that transition their email stores to Gmail sometimes find the process arduous, even with professional help.

Remote Access: Workers want access to company email while at home or on the road, either from their mobile devices or a remote PC. Although Gmail is renowned for its accessibility, most hosted Exchange providers also offer a portal that employees can use to read and send email from any device with Internet access.

Mobile Integration: Here, the best choice depends on which devices you support. Exchange is supported either natively or via a third-party app for Windows, iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Gmail runs natively on Android, via Active Sync on Windows Mobile, and through a third-party app on iOS, but support for BlackBerry is minimal.

Security: Although Google offers users numerous options for keeping their email accounts secure (read a good article with tips for stronger security here), the reality is that Gmail is a target of hackers, as is the mobile platform natively associated with it (Android). Of course, any email account can become a target if employees share it indiscriminately. However, having a company’s email domain (e.g. abccompany.com) hosted on the domain of a third-party provider makes it harder for a hacker in possession of only the email address to figure out how to access that account.

Reliability: Reputable hosted Exchange providers operate world-class data centers with redundancy and multiple Tier-1 Internet connections. They guarantee―and deliver―99.999% uptime (the equivalent of six minutes of downtime each year). Google doesn’t have the long history of continuity that many providers have, and it suffered a partial outage as recently as April 2013. Furthermore, many hosted Exchange providers offer an automated, redundant backup service to guarantee email stores are never lost. To enjoy that benefit in Google Apps, you’ll need to install, run and manage a third-party app.

To learn more about hosted Exchange and/or email security and backup (available for on-premise Exchange servers, too), give us a call.

Anyone who reads about cloud computing on the Internet (or elsewhere) will eventually come across a discussion of private versus public clouds. This information is somewhat confusing, because the definition of private cloud varies. Initially, a private cloud was a cloud environment hosted behind the firewall of a corporation for its own benefit, with all infrastructure—network, data server, etc. owned and operated by the company and its technical staff.

However, in the years since cloud computing appeared on the horizon, many cloud providers have begun offering private clouds, as well. Here, the provider dedicates a server specifically to one company and may also establish a dedicated network connection for that server. This model is also referred to as a "cloud server" (this is the term DynaSis uses).

We're not going to discuss in-house private clouds here, because they are simply not practical for anyone other than very large firms. They require an enormous amount of technological expertise to manage, and unless a company has cloud security experts on staff, they are very difficult to secure properly. Recently, IT expert Jason Bloomberg offered some excellent arguments against private, on-premise clouds in his new book, The Agile Architecture Revolution: How Cloud Computing, REST-Based SOA, and Mobile Computing Are Changing Enterprise IT.

So, what about private, hosted clouds? With a private cloud run by a third-party provider like DynaSis (a cloud server), your company doesn't share server resources with other companies. If you are running high-bandwidth or memory-intensive applications, it is a good idea to have a cloud server. If you want to move all your corporate assets (applications and data) to the cloud but are worried about ensuring security for your IT assets, a cloud server with a dedicated access portal (like our, ITility by DynaSis Solution), will give you the peace of mind you need.

However, if you're only looking to host Microsoft Exchange in the cloud, then a public cloud scenario will work just fine. In general, both public and private cloud resources tend to be more secure than the on-premise IT setup of the average small or midsized company (unless they are using managed security services). Your choice of cloud environment should depend upon your needs, not your fears. Adequately assessing your current and future business plans—and choosing a high-quality IT partner that runs a best-practices data center—are the best first steps you can take when walking towards the cloud.

DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today announced it has completed its implementation of Digital Veins and Hosted Microsoft Exchange for Atlanta new home builder JEH Homes. Recently named one of the Top 10 Homebuilders in Atlanta, JEH Homes chose DynaSis to provide a comprehensive solution that would support its growing operations.

“Over the last nine months, we moved to a new office and realized we needed a new IT solution—someone bigger, with better customer service, that could meet our needs on a higher level,” said JEH Homes Controller Christina Campbell. “DynaSis is providing us with an overall complete IT solution—support for hardware; software; servers; technical issues; they cover it all. They are a one-stop shop for us.”

For the solution, DynaSis transitioned JEH Homes’ email to hosted Microsoft Exchange, providing company personnel with remote access to corporate email on their laptops and desktops. DynaSis also provides JEH Homes with Digital Veins, which provides them with proactive, 24/7/365 system monitoring, management, remote issue resolution and system updates, plus round-the-clock Help Desk, which JEH Homes’ users can access through a dedicated portal on their PCs. As a final piece of the puzzle, DynaSis on-site assistance for problems that cannot be resolved remotely and also consults on any upgrades and other improvements that would benefit JEH Homes’ utilization of technology.

“With our former IT company, we were lacking customer service, and everything they did was a Band-Aid-type fix, and then we would have the same problem two weeks later,” said Campbell. “DynaSis seems more knowledgeable. If an issue comes up, they diagnose it very quickly and are extremely quick to fix it so we can stay on track.”

“Companies such as JEH Homes, with sales people working in the field, need trustworthy, reliable access to IT wherever they are, so they can be productive,” said DynaSis’ JEH Homes Account Manager, David Arber. “If their system is down, they aren’t writing contracts—and the company is not making money. Our focus is on ensuring JEH Homes employees have fast, uninterrupted access to the information they need, no matter when or where they need it.”

The practice of BYOD (bring your own device), where employees are allowed to use their personal devices for corporate functions such as email, has become incredibly popular. Unfortunately, new statistics are underscoring the fact that it’s a very dangerous practice if businesses don’t treat it with respect―and the problem is getting worse.

Per a June 2013 Mobile Security Survey Report from Internet Security firm Checkpoint, personal mobile device (PMD) usage on corporate networks is surging―96% of respondents said the number of PMDs on their networks is growing; 45% said they have five times as many PMDs on the network as they did two years ago. More than half of these firms (53%) reported that sensitive customer or corporate information is stored on mobile devices, up from 47% the year before. (This figure is probably low―in May 2013, CTIA-The Wireless Association reported that the percentage of employees using personal devices for company business is at least twice as high as the rate at which their employers report it.)

Given that 85% of companies store the majority of corporate data and intellectual assets on their networks (per the April 2013 BYOD and Mobile Security Report from the 160,000 member LinkedIn Information Security Community), having so many personal devices on a network could result in a serious data breach. For many firms, it already has. The Checkpoint survey also found that 79% of businesses experienced a mobile security incident in the past year. For 52% of them, the cost to mitigate it was more than $100,000.

In other words, if the age of Bring Your Own Disaster hasn’t arrived yet, it is looming on the horizon.

These statistics aren’t meant to scare you away from adopting BYOD. The productivity gains and cost reductions are undeniable. For example, Intel’s 2013 IT Performance Report indicates BYOD saves its employees an average of 57 minutes a day. VMware reported in February 2013 that it saved $2 million by going “all-in” with BYOD. Undoubtedly, cash-crunched, productivity challenged small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will reap big rewards, as well.

However, these same SMBs are also less likely to have the IT resources to implement and enforce a BYOD policy, so mobile security is a real concern. Numerous companies are touting end-to-end mobile device management platforms, many of which are complex and expensive to maintain. DynaSis proposes a simpler solution―make it easy for employees to access the corporate information they need, but hard to transfer it to their PMDs.

A remote workplace solution―where personnel access corporate networks through a secure portal and all data remains on the corporate network―is a great start. Add another layer of protection with firm, “no second chances” BYOD policies about data management and then wrap it all up with extra protections such as remote lock and wipe, and you will have eliminated the majority of BYOD challenges.

But don’t wait too long before you take action. Even if you don’t have a BYOD policy, employees are probably using their personal devices for company business without your knowledge. In the absence of a clear policy, they are also more likely to perform dangerous behaviors, such as altering security settings on their PMDs, sharing corporate passwords, logging onto unauthorized networks, and performing other risky behaviors.

With the “Great Recession” more than six years old and corporate hiring still not picking up substantially, many experts are suggesting that the current unemployment situation has become the new normal. When the economic crisis hit, companies and their employees had to learn to do more with less, and in most cases this meant working more efficiently. Leading the way was information technology (IT), which has been a key driver of productivity increases since the 1990s.

To reduce expenses, Corporate America not only expected existing employees to make better use of the technology that was available to them, but it also leveraged IT to perform certain tasks that previously had been handled by humans. Effectively, technology enabled companies to become leaner and more competitive, and it’s now evident that they intend to stay that way. As a result, most of these firms simply do not need the same number of employees that they had before the recession began.

This shift had a positive effect on the bottom lines of these tech-savvy firms, but not all businesses reaped such gains. In some cases, companies that were not attuned to technology before the Great Recession tried to cut expenses by trimming technology spending, and in doing so they missed out on one of the greatest periods of productivity growth in the world’s history.

The good news is that it’s not too late to put technology to work as a productivity driver. Such advances as remote IT management and software as a service (where companies lease the right to use software that is hosted in the cloud) make it very affordable for even the least technically oriented firm to catch up with the IT leaders.

If your company isn’t leveraging the full potential of technology, I urge you to explore some of these solutions, soon. Proactive adoption of technology is the new paradigm, and your competitors may already be a step ahead of you.

Many companies, especially those with dispersed workforces or client bases, have discovered the economic benefits of video conferencing, also called telepresence. Those that haven’t might want to consider the environmental benefit of this valuable business tool, as well. Although each company’s reduction in carbon footprint from video conferencing might not be much (especially if it is a small or medium-sized business), cumulatively, the effect is profound.

A report commissioned by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and sponsored by AT&T provides solid support for the benefits of this technology. The study, which included an in-depth analysis of 15 corporations, each with four telepresence-enabled conference rooms, developed benefit scenarios for the business community as a whole that are pretty impressive. Specifically:

• Telepresence can eliminate the creation of millions of metric tons of CO2
• An individual business implementing four telepresence rooms can reduce its CO2 emissions by 2,271 metric tons over five years. That’s an amount equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from more than 400 passenger vehicles.
• US firms could potentially reduce CO2 by nearly 4.6 million metric tons (cumulatively) over a 10-year period. Such a reduction would be equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from nearly 880,000 passenger vehicles.

Add to these benefits the proven economic value of video conferencing, and the argument in favor of this tool becomes even more compelling:

• US firms (cumulatively) could save more than $15 billion over a 10-year period.
• Average payback on a telepresence unit is as little as 15 months.

Furthermore, not requiring employees to travel reduces stress, increases productivity and improves work-life balance.

Here’s the best news: telepresence systems have become affordable to implement. Companies that deploy them save money, have happier employees and have a great environmental story to share with their clients. For a demonstration of how telepresence can work for your firm, give me a call at 678.218.1769.

Many service providers talk about “best practices” and “excellence” in IT Service Management. However, few introduce to their customers (or adhere to, themselves) a documented framework for best-practices planning, delivery and support of IT services. Officially called the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®), this widely accepted framework is a cohesive yet constantly evolving set of best practices for Service Management. To ensure it is both complete and current, the ITIL draws on the experience and expertise of private and public sector companies that have successfully achieved the goals for excellence outlined in the framework.

How It Works

Rooted in the move from mainframe computers to distributed computing and dispersed resources, ITIL helps companies break down the IT silos that tend to arise in organizations and ensure consistent application of processes for technology delivery and support. For every new and existing business service, ITIL promotes the importance of a Service Lifecycle to drive organizational effectiveness and efficiency through predictable service levels. (For the purposes of this model, a business service is defined as any operation that provides value to users and is supported by technology services and infrastructure.)

1. Service Strategy—Understanding who the IT customers are, the offerings needed to meet their needs, and the capabilities and resources required to develop and execute these offerings successfully.
2. Service Design—Ensuring that the design of new and modified services and their related processes cost effectively meet customer expectations.
3. Service Transition—Successfully building, testing and implementing the processes necessary to ensure the customer enjoys the desired value from the service. This phase of the lifecycle also addresses change management, validation and testing, and other important variables.
4. Service Operation—Delivering the service and ensuring its health on an ongoing basis, including minimizing disruptions, detecting problematic trends, and otherwise managing service access.
5. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)—An overarching concept rather than a separate step, CSI provides the mechanism for an IT team to measure and improve upon the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery and process execution.

ITIL offers enormous benefit to companies that adopt it, because it fosters consistent, repeatable processes that can be measured and continually fine-tuned, not only to maintain excellence, but also to adapt to changing customer needs, emerging business opportunities and challenges and other important factors.

Mega-corporations, manufacturers and technology giants such as IBM, HP, Wal-Mart, Sony, Pfizer, Boeing and Citi have embraced ITIL and wouldn’t operate for a single day without it. More importantly for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), any business working with a qualified IT partner can implement the ITIL model without excessive expense or difficulty.

DynaSis fully supports and adheres to ITIL, not only as a tool for fostering excellence in other SMBs, but also in the daily practice of our own operations. We have helped many of our clients develop and execute best-practices IT solutions using these guidelines.

Ready to get started? I’d love to tell you more about what ITIL can do for you, or schedule your company for a DynaSis Technology Assessment, which is the first step toward achieving the business service excellence of your dreams.

For many small to medium-sized business (SMB) owners, disaster recovery and business continuity (DR/BC) are nebulous concepts to be dealt with "when there is time." The problem for many (more than 50%) is the "right" time never comes, leaving them unprepared when disaster strikes. Yet, in the past year, many SMBs are realizing that disasters can hit anywhere, and they are realizing that they cannot put off planning forever.

Although preparing a DR/BC plan is admittedly not a "no-brainer" process, it doesn't have to take hundreds of hours to complete. Perhaps the most important part of this effort—and something you can do without developing bulky manuals and detailed schematics—is determining your "magic numbers" and then taking action to ensure you can meet them.

Three numbers—Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Maximum Tolerable Outage (MTO) will give you a good idea how quickly you need to recover your business—from critical client and decision-making data to core business processes—to ensure your firm doesn't collapse after the dust of a disaster settles. Once you know this information, you'll be in a better position to plan an effective recovery.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The minimum time within which you would like to restore your data, applications and critical IT-related processes after an outage.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The amount of recent data you could tolerate losing in the event of an outage—which equates to the frequency of your backup snapshots.

Maximum Tolerable Outage (MTO): The longest amount of time your business and its employees could function without access to data, email and applications before the outage puts your business and/or client relationships at risk.

Calculating your RTO, RPO and MTO require you to run a business impact analysis, identify processes that must be operable for you to function, and evaluate the strength of your client relationships (and their tolerance for outages). You'll also need to investigate your vendors and supply chains to see what their disaster plans are and whether you have alternate choices. DynaSis recently published a practical guide to help you in this quest; click here to view our white paper on the topic.

However, you can calculate a rough approximation of your RTO, RPO and MTO through simple visioning exercises. Make a list of clients you could not afford to lose, then estimate their tolerance for a service outage (you know how patient your big clients are). Consider the type of work you do, and decide whether or not it requires instant access to recent data and if employees could perform that work remotely.

Then, evaluate whether your crucial data—like email and client information (contacts /contracts/RFPs, etc.)—Is stored in the cloud or only at your location. Finally, consider whether your business processes can be completed remotely, and whether employees are cross-trained sufficiently that some could step in if others were tied up with disaster crises.

Many companies that make these rough projections are surprised to discover that their tolerance for outages and disruption is very low. They also realize that even if their physical location is not functional, they could maintain client relationships and operate at a minimal level—provided they had access to their information.

If this is the case with your calculation, I invite you to call me. We can perform an in-depth risk analysis that pinpoints your vulnerabilities and makes recommendations for improvement. Given that more than two-thirds of SMBs are located in areas prone to disasters, and the frequency and impact of disasters is increasing (per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), disaster recovery for most companies is no longer a matter of "if." It's a matter of "when."

Your network runs pretty well most of the time. Sometimes, it seems a little slow, but usually, it works well enough to keep business humming along reasonably smoothly. Your network is in good shape, right?

If this sounds like your business, think again. Nine out of 10 corporate networks have some type of problem, from security flaws to improperly configured devices that slow down network speeds. Network hardware has become so adept at resolving or bypassing conflicts and other glitches that one or two problems alone might not cause an outage.

But when the right combination of issues occurs, BAM! Down goes your network. If you have myriad problems, untangling them all and finding the source of the outage can take hours—or days.

Fortunately, there is a technique that can identify problems with your network, hopefully before they take your network down or compromise its security and that of your systems and business assets. It’s called a network assessment, and it’s a service that can be run as an automated process, in the background, with little to no impact on your users.

So, what does the network assessment tool do? It tunnels through your network, identifies and creates an inventory of all its connected devices, and scans for anomalies. Problems it will identify include:

• Rogue devices (such as unauthorized network access points or connections).
• Outdated permissions, insecure passwords and other points of weakness.
• Installed applications across the entire network.
• List of servers on the network, including configuration details.

Network assessments gauge the security and composition of your network, enabling a comparison against your current expectations and objectives for the future. Additionally, this information is valuable for more than simply exploring your network and its ecosystem. It also helps you determine if users have installed software outside of company licensing agreements, pinpoint devices where users are not following password reset policies and more.

Network assessments usually include a collection of reports (ours do) that explain what the evaluation uncovered and make recommendations for improvements. With those in hand, you can decide to take action internally or hire outside specialists to alleviate pressure points and reconfigure questionable or misconfigured devices.

Network assessments aren’t designed to evaluate network health (e.g. service availability; application performance). That’s a separate operation that works in tandem with the network assessment to ensure your network is 100% optimized to power your business. When you’re ready to learn more, we’d love to hear from you.

When LPS Labs, a U.S. manufacturer of chemicals for industrial, aerospace, military and telecommunications facilities worldwide, looked to replace its managed services provider in 2011, the company had specific requirements in mind. According to LPS Labs Network Administrator Sam Torke, the firm wanted a responsive, proactive firm with a local footprint and a team that had the IT expertise to evaluate their requirements and help plan future improvements. They found what they wanted, and more, with DynaSis and their Managed IT Services.

Going Local
“Having a local presence was very important to us,” says Torke. “We found three or four companies that said they had both a local and national footprint. Some presented themselves as being local, but when we met with them, there was no team. There was one person in a conference room and we never saw anyone else.”

“With DynaSis, when we did a site visit, we actually met the people who would be helping us. Everyone was really customer oriented and they had the broadest offering that matched our needs.” Nearly two years later, Torke says, he couldn’t be happier about the decision.

“Right after we started our contract with them, we installed a new firewall,” says Torke. “We have also virtualized servers and workstations, and they have been right up to task on everything we want to do.”

A Higher Level
Torke says that working with DynaSis affords him a higher level of expertise than he had previously enjoyed, as well as access to a wider pool of talent. “There is only one of me and there are a dozen of them,” says Torke. “It’s been a big improvement for us, their ability to handle complicated issues. They have resolved some very complex problems for us.”

Shortly after DynaSis began working with LPS Labs, Torke relates, the firm ran out of IP addresses, which limited employees’ ability to access the Internet. “Everybody was screaming, but the solution to the problem wasn’t immediately obvious,” Torke says.

“I needed more eyes to look at the situation from a broader perspective and find a solution. DynaSis pointed out right away that we didn’t have enough IP addresses. We went from one subnet to five subnets and everything has worked out great since.”

Self-Service Problem Resolution
As part of its Managed IT Services agreement with LPS Labs, Novatefch provides Help Desk support, maintains and updates the company’s server infrastructure, and maintains and manages its backups and disaster recovery appliances. LPS Labs has a dispersed workforce that accesses the company network via a VPN connection, and the DynaSis Help Desk provides problem resolution for all the firm’s remote workers, as well.

“In the past we wanted our users to go through a web portal to our helpdesk, or to send an email to our helpdesk,” says Torke. “With DynaSis, we now have a self-service model that lets personnel go directly to the DynaSis Help Desk when they have a problem.”

LPS has an assigned DynaSis Technical Account Manager to help them assess the current IT environment and develop a roadmap for the company’s needs in the future. “We’re now looking at document and workflow management solutions, and our DynaSis Technical Account Manager is working with me on this and helping me set realistic expectations.”

When asked how likely he would be to refer DynaSis to another company, Torke rates DynaSis a 10 on a scale of one to 10. If someone else asked him for a reference, he says, “I would tell them that you won’t find anybody better.”