by Dave Moorman

Unified Communication (UC)—the convergence and integration of communications technologies to optimize business processes—is a concept that has been making the rounds in technology circles since the mid-1990s. However, today’s UC is light years ahead of the original definition.

UC got its impetus during the transition of business telephone systems from landline-based PBX systems to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol—phone calls over the Internet). The idea was that since email and instant messaging (IM) traveled over the Internet, those communications could be integrated with telephony. This would enable someone in a company to reach another staffer, either in real-time or at a later date, by whatever means—email, IM or voice—was most expedient given that person’s location and availability (this function is called presence). In reality, some of these solutions worked well; others barely worked.

Today, the core concept is basically the same, but the way it is implemented has changed dramatically for the better. Companies now have UC systems that integrate voice, email, instant messaging and video very successfully. These location- and task-aware systems deliver communications based on a recipient’s location and designated method of delivery based on the situation and communication type. For example, assume the system knows the recipient is in a meeting, If a message is non-urgent; it will deliver it via email. Urgent issues generate a text message or desktop pop-up.

UC platforms incorporate video conferencing and other collaboration tools and, perhaps most importantly for productivity, business process integration. In other words, UC is no longer about finding a particular person. It can also be about finding any of several people who has knowledge of a particular issue, feature, product, etc.

The search can be database driven as well. For example, a customer calls into the company’s phone system and is identified by the integrated CRM (customer relations management) platform as a repeat purchaser of bulk widgets. If the customer’s representative isn’t available, the system could send that customer to email or voicemail—or it could refer him to another representative in the bulk widgets department, based on the likelihood that the customer is low on widgets; his total billing with the company over the last year, or any other criteria the firm establishes.

From connecting company personnel with subject matter experts to finding a last-minute presenter for a Webinar, UC can be an incredible driver of business productivity. To learn more about UC and what it can do for your firm, please give us a call.

by Dave Moorman

The recent devastation wrought by "Superstorm Sandy" has reminded us all that no one is invulnerable to disaster. New York City saw an unprecedented (nearly 14-foot) storm surge, and businesses from North Carolina to Connecticut found themselves with sand and water pushed into their buildings—and power to their businesses disrupted.

It doesn't take a disaster of this magnitude to suspend business operations, and groups such as the Institute for Business   Safety (IBHS; ibhs.org) are making news daily with pronouncements about the detrimental impact of even minor disasters. So great is the concern that the federal government, working through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has expanded considerable effort (and tax dollars) developing powerful tutorials and tools to help companies engineer disaster recovery and business resiliency plans.

Yet, even though most firms have some form of business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan in place, statistics show the majority aren't sure how to implement it and/or don’t run test scenarios. A majority also have not taken advantage of the benefits that cloud computing and virtualization offer for BC/DR.

A complete BC/DR plan incorporates many elements, starting with a business impact analysis and followed by policy/goal statements, recovery strategies, and development of not only a BC/DR plan, but also a program for maintaining and testing the plan on a regular basis. (The FEMA tutorials mentioned above are an excellent start along this journey. The IBHS has some great templates as well.)

As FEMA points out and DynaSis has long maintained, an IT recovery plan and program is an integral component of any business continuity and disaster recovery plan (BC/DR). Although it may take months, or even years, for businesses to develop an enterprise-wide BC/DR plan that addresses operations at every level, BC/DR programs for the technology side have become easier, more affordable and more self-sustaining than ever before.

Cloud-connected backup hardware, preloaded with management, testing and recovery software, makes it effortless for companies to protect their technology assets and access them on-premise or remotely. For many firms, data archives are the single most important business asset—and the foundation of the BC/DR plan.

If you’d like to learn more about the newest technologies in data backup and recovery, as well as end-to-end programs that can have you and your employees and colleagues up and running in minutes, call DynaSis for a no-obligation, no-pressure consultation.

If your office is located in Atlanta, Georgia, there is absolutely no reason you can’t work from Paris, or perhaps a beach in Cabo. After years of going to the same place, at the same time, just to sit at your desk, the habit becomes second nature. We get comfortable with a routine. But there are downsides of these strict habits. For example, even if you get sick, would you think twice about coming into the office to accomplish your daily to-do’s?

We go to great lengths to protect our office environments, even if it can pose a risk to our health and our coworker’s health. These risks aren’t just unhealthy, these routines can become stale and result in loss of time and money. There are better, affordable alternatives to a strict office-only work environment.

Remote Working

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work away from the office. Normally, all it takes is a username and password. If you can login to your e-mail. You can remotely login to your desktop and work on any device, like your iPad, and work anywhere there is an Internet connection.

The benefits of being able to access your work environment, untethered to your desktop, are staggering. Suddenly, you will be able to make your kid’s dance rehearsal, take a sick day without risking the office’s health, and travel to the destinations that were too far to justify the time off. With the ability to work remotely, geography becomes much less of a barrier to action.

Increased Productivity

Traditional office environments are an expensive luxury. Rent, equipment, IT management, and all of the bells and whistles that are required to maintain a healthy work space are extremely costly. Remote work environments are much more affordable in comparison and you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maintaining a smaller office space while having the ability to work remotely offers employees the best of both worlds.

Not only will a remote desktop environment save you money, it will also make employees more productive. Gone are the days of writing ideas down in a notepad. Why bother with that extra step when you can just login and get to work on it? At any time in the day, employees have the ability to be productive. That’s why Microsoft doesn’t think remote working is a nice add-on, they call remote working a, “business imperative.”

In the past 5 years, businesses have learned how to get by with less, but sometimes the constraint is unsustainable. Budgets, especially in IT, have been disproportionately affected by the big squeeze, but eventually people will have to upgrade their aging infrastructures and look to strategic business capabilities (SBC's) to get back to growth.

Businesses are demanding better IT services and functionality, while offering minimal to no increase in their total IT spend. In response, IT service providers like DynaSis have continued to innovate and create new IT solutions to meet the demand, but the solutions can change the very core of their daily business. The question that needs to be considered is whether businesses are willing to adapt to the new landscape.

Getting Ahead Of The Curve

In many cases, technology change has outpaced the ability of IT departments and staff to change along with it. To take advantage of technology innovations, rather than becoming a victim of them, businesses must challenge traditional ways of thinking and working. But at the same time, they must reduce or maintain operating costs.

Most businesses do not have the IT knowledge necessary to determine what they need to do in order to get ahead of the curve and gain a competitive advantage. Instead of trying to hire a single person who can handle IT, what if they relied on another business who could do much more, with less?

IT As A Utility

Similar to the utilities companies that provide your power, computing has itself have become a utility too. Why continue to maintain IT in-house, when you can get much better by tapping into a larger, more efficient IT resource like DynaSis? Outsourcing IT has become the natural evolution of the IT department. A cloud provider has more technology, expertise and resources to transform your business. We do nothing but manage IT for businesses so we can design the best solutions at the lowest costs. The goal is to add new technologies like Mobility, Business Continuity, Security and Disaster Recover to enhance your organizations competitiveness in the market place. Doing this and it being cost neutral is what we do.

You don’t have to worry about where the technology is going and how to keep up. Instead, you can think about what your business can do with all of the new potential.

If you would like to tap into the power and efficiency of managed IT services, feel free to give us a call. DynaSis will get you ahead of the curve.

Small businesses have been outsourcing their IT for decades, but the recent economic slump has stoked the fire. Thousands of small businesses have found that outsourcing IT services provides them with better, more affordable IT services and support than they could have ever managed internally.

IT services can be customized to fit every businesses unique needs and processes. Some people just need to outsource their maintenance while others might bring in outside experts for a full system upgrade. But there is one IT component that all businesses should be utilizing no matter what: cloud services.

Cloud Services

Through cloud services, businesses can access e-mail and office software from anywhere, even at home or on the road. Servers and Applications are centralized in data centers by a Cloud IT provider so that client’s can increase their capabilities without having to invest in new hardware, infrastructure, or the training of new IT personnel.

With the cloud service, consumers do not need to buy expensive hardware or software upfront. Instead, they can pay for specific cloud services like e-mail. Since the e-mail servers are housed in high security data centers, you never have to worry about running low on storage or forgetting to backup your system. Security, backups, and storage are baked right into the services so you never have to worry about them again.

E-mail Cloud Providers

Most people already use cloud services without even realizing it. Mail applications like Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, and Yahoo provide e-mail to millions of users and they never have to worry about upgrading their hardware or software in order to upgrade to the next version. You can access those applications from any smart phone, tablet, or computer. Your e-mail is always available and working so that you can access it anywhere, anytime, and from any device.

With the world moving towards more reliance on technology for their day-to-day activities, experts who know how to handle your IT systems are more important than ever before. Your costs for maintenance will be greatly reduced without the liability of buying software and hardware. Powerful IT service providers like DynaSis give you access to the best available technologies so that you can move your business forward into the future.

Workshifting—the ability for employees to work anytime and anywhere, whether at home, at a coffee shop, or in line at the grocery store—is a concept whose time has come. Not only are employers now able to support workshifting at a variety of levels, but surveys indicate employees want to workshift, even if it's only checking business email first thing in the morning. In fact, a 2011 survey of mobile workers (those with access to mobile business devices outside the office) indicated that 35% of them check business email before doing anything else in the morning—even before getting dressed.

Workshifting at a basic level enables employees to get morning distractions, such as answering overnight emails, out of the way before they reach the office. It lets them put formerly unproductive time, such as time on the train or in line at the coffee shop, to good use.

A large percentage of workers perceive that this approach makes their jobs easier and less stressful, and it certainly boosts corporate productivity. Perhaps even more importantly for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in a tight economy, 37% of non-workshifting employees in a recent survey indicated they would take a pay cut if they could work from home.

Some companies are already hiring 100% workshifted employees. These individuals come into the office only when needed for a presentation or other group effort. They are allowed to perform their work wherever they see fit. It's the newest form of telecommuting and it's catching on in businesses of all sizes.

This trend has seen greater adoption by larger enterprises than by the SMB sector, and the reasons are evident. Workshifting almost always involves letting employees use their personal devices—home PCs; smartphones; tablets. SMBs are overwhelmed by the complexities of setting up user policies, access restrictions and other safeguards for mobile devices, yet they do not want to put the business at risk.

Fortunately, managed services like ITility by DynaSis can bridge the gap for SMBs, because the secure Citrix portal used for both staff and management access works on any Internet connected device, but stores no information on it. It's a utility workers use to open a window to corporate data, and when it closes, the gate goes down. Business owners or their designates have full control over access permissions, but DynaSis handles all the configuration issues. It's truly as simple and safe as it sounds.

For more on the benefits of workshifting, we invite you to browse the resources we offer here. Check back often as we will keep adding more.

Have you ever been so frustrated at a piece of office equipment that tossing it out of a window seems like a reasonable option? The machines that give us unprecedented productivity can also bring grownups to their knees. Let’s face it, we've all banged a keyboard, shook a monitor, or kicked the desktop tower during these times of frustration.

What else is there to do?

You can always lease the machinery instead. Sick of spending unnecessary amounts of time and effort, thousands of businesses gave up maintaining their office printer/Fax/copier over a decade ago. Today, Xeroxes are only a small part of a much larger system. Instead of outsourcing that one piece, your entire IT infrastructure can be leased or bought via subscription, saving you time and money while giving you access to unprecedented opportunities.

ITility by DynaSis by DynaSis - The Future Of IT

While businesses gave up banging their heads on the copy machine, they continued the struggle with their computer infrastructure. Every day, thousands of SMB’s around the United States struggle to maintain their aging, depreciating computers and servers. Instead of focusing on their core competency, improving customer relationships, and expanding business, they are forced to expend resources just to keep their current systems operational. These businesses are in essence running their own utility power plants instead of tapping into the existing computing grid.

Do you worry about how you receive your electricity?

IT can be like any other utility. Other people more qualified  can build, maintain, and scale your IT system. You never have to worry about it. Simply flick a switch and you have what you need, when you need it. Like your Xerox, IT infrastructure can be leased or acquired via subscription instead of bought. You never have to worry about how IT works, hiring IT personnel, or making sure your system can properly scale. Through DynaSis, IT systems can be scaled up and down on a monthly basis, per-user.

The days of building your own utility power plant are over. Stop kicking your desktop, there are professionals at DynaSis who can troubleshoot it for you 24/7/365. While we build you a system that provides access to more power than ever before, you can focus time and energy on the things that make your business great. All you need to do is flip the switch and we’ll be there with desktops, servers, and software in tow.

According to Wikipedia, green IT is alive and strong:

The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry; reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product's lifetime, and promote the recyclable or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste. Research continues into key areas such as making the use of computers as energy-efficient as possible, and designing algorithms and systems for efficiency-related computer technologies.

And Google has launched a major green initiative with $350 million on the line:

Whether we’re deciding how best to invest $350 million in renewable energy or wondering how technology can help Amazonian tribes protect their land, questions are at the heart of our green efforts. Our search for answers often leads to changes in operations, sparks innovative research or reveals opportunities for collaboration. Our learning process is ongoing, but the questions we ask — and the answers we discover — bring us closer to true sustainability.

Spending money for the sake of being green, like installing $15k solar panels that will take 100 years to generate a return, is at least impractical and at worst more wasteful than the “green” label might imply. A truly green solution saves you money because it is more efficient, and therefor, less wasteful than alternatives. You may want to reduce CO2 emissions to save the environment, or you can think that being green is just a marketing label, but would like to save money. Either way, you can save money and gain power by taking advantage of virtualization technologies. Virtualization is considered a green IT solution because it reduces both cost and CO2 emissions.

The problem with current IT configurations is that businesses are unnecessarily paying for an inefficient system. Most computer servers run at an average of 15% utilization. The other 85% sits idle consuming energy, producing nothing in return. Virtualization dynamically allocates resources among servers to increase utilization and efficiency. You can save CO2 and money by deploying a virtualization solution and open up new possibilities. Add in Telecommuting to your strategy and you see an increase in employee availability and productivity. Whatever green means to you, it is great to have a concern for the environment and how you might effect it. To DynaSis, green IT means increasing efficiency while using less power, providing telecommuting where applicable and leveraging technologies to do our part. So does green IT exisit? We think so!

Virtualization is a high tech sounding word, but for most businesses it translates into a great way to save money, increasing reliability and improving your bottom line. The goal of virtualization as a technology is to centralize administrative tasks and support while improving scalability and efficiency. It’s serves as a way to do more with less. You will have:

1. Less Hardware

Hardware investment is one of the most expensive components of a businesses IT infrastructure. After thousands of dollars spent, the hardware depreciates and becomes obsolete in a blink of an eye. Virtualization allows businesses to centralize their hardware so that more software can be run on fewer machines. Without the steep cost of investment, your money can be spent on other forms of IT that offer a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

2. Better management and support

Less machines means less support to keep everything running. Not only will you need less support to tend to your IT, but those who do will have far more power at their fingertips. With the servers virtualized, your support team will be able to accomplish all of their IT tasks remotely and closely monitor all of the activity. Spending less time on servers means having the ability to spend more time   users. Since virtualization does not rely on the performance of any one machine, it can be easily moved about. Therefor, upgrades, patches, and installations can occur seamlessly without the need to turn machines on and off. Scheduled down times becomes unnecessary.

3. More Flexibility

Having a virtualized infrastructure gives businesses the ability to easily evolve their technology. Scalability is inherent in virtualized environments. So downsizing and growing will not dramatically impact the cost of your IT. In fact, decreased cost and downtime will shore up resources for new technologies that provide more benefits.

4. More Security

Less support and less machinery increases your overall security. Since your IT is controlled in a defined space with a small group of people, monitoring network activity for malicious activity is easily manageable. When anomalies are detected, isolating, quarantining, and fixing the problem will ensure that it does not effect all of your IT operations.

Simple IT

Virtualization is a technology that boasts that less is more mentality. By using less hardware servers you have the ability to receive more power, flexibility, and security. All the while, you are also using less money to get you there. At DynaSis, we are a proud provider of virtualization support and services. Anything that helps to make your IT profitable is our bottom line. It’s as simple as that. Check out our Ascend Hybrid-Cloud Solution to see how we can upgrade your infrastructure leveraging virtualization.

91% of Americans use a cellphone regularly. Though that is a huge percentage, it might not come as a surprise.

More importantly, how do the other 9% not use cellphones?

If you asked someone 50 years ago whether they would need to take their telephone everywhere they went, some might have said yes, others would have shrugged apathetically. Today, most people get distraught over leaving their cell phones at home for even a short period of time.

Computer technologies are experiencing the same evolution as cellphones. An entire work environment, your files, applications, and desktop no longer needs to be tethered to an office space. Instead, work can travel wherever you go. If your kids get sick, you can take care of them at home and still be productive. While you might enjoy leaving your work in the office, there is much more freedom in having the ability to work from anywhere, anytime.

Mobile Solutions

Mobile solutions come in many flavors. There is application hosting, server hosting, and hot desking. Some people only need access to one application, while others might need access to dozens.

Application hosting is simple. You take the program that is on your computer and you install it onto a server in a cloud datacenter. After the data is migrated, the application can be accessed on any device at anytime. So if your accountant or CPA is traveling, they can still access Quickbooks and run payroll.

Application hosting is for very specific needs, but maybe your needs are a little more complex. Beyond a single application you need e-mail, calendars, and communication services to be accessible anywhere. DynaSis offers MS Exchange hosting within their world class data centers so you can ensure high speeds and 99.999% uptime. For document sharing there is Sharepoint hosting, but if you want to have complete flexibility you need a hot desking solution.

Hot Desking

Hot desking opens up the entire desktop environment so that employees can sign onto their “computer” anywhere using a secure, encrypted connection. ITility by DynaSis by DynaSis provides the entire range of mobile solutions and cloud management. Hot desking gives you flexibility, increased security and reduces your need for office space and IT management.

You may not be remotely working yet but the advantages are hard to turn down. Through hot desking, you save money with less personnel managing IT and less office space required because of reduced hardware. Employees can tap into the infrastructure anywhere, anytime, and on any device and become more productive than ever before. In 20 years, you will be left wondering, “Who still needs an office to do work?”