By Dave Moorman, Founder and President, DynaSis

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol (making voice calls over the Internet), has become almost commonplace. Many consumers and small businesses have adopted VoIP as their primary "traditional" telephone technology (in addition to their mobile service, of course). Some companies use VoIP and don't even know it. If your phone cord plugs into a modem and not a wall jack, you're using VoIP.

Sending and receiving calls over the Internet is convenient and inexpensive, but if you are not taking advantage of the benefits of cloud-based telecommunications, you are missing the real power behind the technology.

With a cloud-hosted telephony solution, information about your calls, contacts and preferences can be stored on secure cloud servers and tied in with calendars and other software. This enables a variety of value-added benefits. A few of the perks include:

• Find Me, Follow Me Services: Calls ring on all your phones at once or are routed to the phone where you are (simple systems do this through forwarding based on preferences you set; more advanced ones tie in with your calendar).
• Call Management: Although some personnel want every call getting through to them, others need selective call routing. Different classes of callers—or specific numbers—can be given priority in the queue, routed to specific individuals or be processed in other ways based on preferences you establish.

• Better Service: Call reports can identify if your customers get through to the right person, or anyone at all. Some cloud-based telephony solutions can connect with your inventory databases to allow customers to place reorders or request information, confirm if orders have been shipped, and retrieve other valuable information, often without human intervention at the time of the call.
• More Effective Sales Efforts: Additional reports can pinpoint how long sales people and other customer-facing employees talk on the phone with customers and prospects. Paired with closing percentages and monthly sales revenues, you can gain a real measure of staff effectiveness.

With cloud-based telephony, your "telephone switchboard" is in the cloud and it is more powerful than you ever imagined. Perhaps these features are already present in your current phone system but you are not using them. Or, you may need to upgrade to a more sophisticated but still affordable cloud PBX solution. A quick assessment of your current telecommunications environment by an IT expert will identify whether you require a new solution or simply need more training on your old one. To start the process, give me a call.

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.

by Dave Moorman

Cloud computing, as you may have heard, is an environment where a company’s data, programs and other IT assets are hosted off-site on either shared or private servers and then delivered on demand through high-speed Internet connections. This not only can reduce costs but also can enable remote productivity by giving employees access to corporate resources from home or on the road.

One objection I hear to cloud computing is security. The media has done a great job in recent years of promoting the concept that cloud computing environments aren’t secure.

Since “the cloud” is an aggregate term used to describe solutions where data, programs, and/or infrastructure are stored remotely and run over the Internet, it is certainly possible for a cloud computing solution to have security flaws.
However, “cloud” computing environments running from best-practices data centers (like the ones DynaSis operates), are remarkably secure.

The relative safety of the cloud was borne out in a report released recently by security provider Alert Logic. The company surveyed 1600 firms and compared the number of incidents reported for on-premise (in-house) installed and managed hardware environments versus service-provider solutions including virtual, managed and dedicated environments (more about these three options in a future article).

In five out of seven vulnerability categories, companies with in-house installed and managed hardware reported a higher percentage of incidents than companies using cloud service providers, sometimes by a dramatic margin. More importantly, because service providers manage environments for multiple customers, the number of incidents per impacted customer was lower in every category for service providers than for on-premise installations.

Here are a few highlights:

1. App attacks (attacks by a malicious application executing code on the system): These were experienced by 18% of on-premise installations, but only 1% of service-provider environments.
2. Malware/botnet attacks: On-premise customers, on average, experienced 29 of these incidents; compared with 6 for service-provider customers.
3. Brute force attacks (a computerized effort to decrypt data such as passwords by trying random combinations) occurred at a rate of 72 incidents per on-premise customer versus 46 for service-provider customers.

Our prospective customers sometimes express concern about “losing control” of their IT assets by moving to cloud computing or even allowing us to manage their on-premise IT infrastructure. It’s a fact that more criminals are targeting smaller firms (perhaps because they are perceived as being more vulnerable). If you become the target of a cyber-criminal, you’re already in a position to lose control of your assets. Isn’t it better to give your firm the least exposure possible?

by Dave Moorman

For several years, I’ve been hearing from customers who liked the idea of cloud computing but were worried about the security, privacy or accessibility of their applications and data. Some had a hard time envisioning what the cloud is, or how it works. How can their data and programs be segregated from those of other businesses if they are on the same server? How can a solution used by so many companies offer better delivery speeds than a pipeline used by just one?

Interestingly, once company questions or objections regarding cloud computing are addressed (by us or others), we often get a phone call from an executive or decision maker saying, “We’re ready to go to the cloud.” With the reliability and security of cloud computing established and its promise explained, some companies are ready to embrace it like a new best friend. With objections resolved, they are ready to start reaping the benefits, pronto.

In reality, just because a company’s management is conceptually and psychologically “ready” for the cloud doesn’t mean the business is. As much as we support cloud computing and the dramatic advantage it can provide to most firms, not all business models transition well to it.

Don’t get me wrong—nearly all companies can benefit from some form of cloud computing, even if it’s just hosted email and disaster recovery. But to leverage the cloud to greatest benefit, companies need to draw a parallel between their business goals, challenges and opportunities and the technologies available in the cloud. They also need to explore their current IT state and determine their “readiness” for the move. Things such as are my applications compatible, do we have enough bandwidth or have i maximized my depreciation on our existing hardware not only can minimize cloud benefits, they can increase the risks of running your business there.

That’s where cloud assessment solutions come in. Whether it’s a purpose-built program implemented by an IT services firm like DynaSis or a brief, self-administered test from a cloud hardware or software provider, a preparedness assessment is an integral component of moving to the cloud. And, if the assessment results indicate your firm isn’t as ready as you thought, the insights you’ll gain can help you refine your plans and realign your goals.

After event-management company Caldwell Group, Ltd. took a technology plunge and developed its own in-house IT infrastructure, the firm realized that the solution was not meeting its needs. While investigating other options, Caldwell Group President Polly Bermingham found a better answer in the cloud with ITility by DynaSis cloud solution. That was in 2007, and today the partnership is as strong as ever.

From Under performing to Outstanding
“At the time, we were working with a pharmaceutical firm that had huge meetings—2000-3000 attendees—so we needed a fast system,” says Bermingham. “We had spent a lot of money on a server that could take 200 hits a minute, but it wasn’t enough. We kept expanding and expanding and it just wasn’t cutting it.”

Bermingham’s frustration lead her to search for a new IT solution, and she came across a mailing piece she had received from DynaSis. She and her team began evaluating vendors and eventually chose the ITility by DynaSis solution because, as Bermingham says, “We liked them the best. Plus, we were paying more to our one IT guy for service than we would pay DynaSis for everything in a year.”

DynaSis transitioned Caldwell Group’s data and business applications—Microsoft Outlook and Office—to a cloud server hosted at its world-class data center. With the new solution, Bermingham and her employees would access their data, email and software over a secure, redundant, high-speed Internet connection. She would no longer have to worry about on-site infrastructure or data security and backups, because DynaSis would manage and maintain everything in the background.

Responding to Changing Conditions
When the economic recession hit, ITility by DynaSis enabled Bermingham to be technologically prepared. With the meetings and events market taking a tumble as companies tightened belts, Bermingham adapted without any IT headaches.

“The economy had a huge impact on the industry, so we went to a remote model,” says Bermingham. “Today, our people still work from their homes, and we are incredibly more productive. We have all our files on the server. We’ve saved so much money, and it’s not just because we went remote. It’s because we partnered with DynaSis.”

Ultimate Portability
Using ITility by DynaSis has given Caldwell Group benefits that extend far beyond the money Bermingham saved in infrastructure and office space. Her team can access their files—from any Internet-connected computer—while they are in the field or at a conference, trade show or client meeting.

“We used to have big file books we would drag around with us, but now we just get on our computers and we have everything we need,” says Bermingham. “When we have presentations, if people forget or lose something or we need something in an email, the information is right at our fingertips.”

Bermingham also touts the ITility by DynaSis solution for what she calls the “crisis management” phase of meeting management. “You have the plan, but it changes until the day everyone arrives. You need access to that information and it has to be current—almost real time. With ITility by DynaSis, we have a security blanket. DynaSis saves the day, all the time.”

Service Beyond Expectations
Bermingham says the DynaSis support staff is knowledgeable, friendly and focused and says, “They will teach you and coach you until you get it. They have made me a fan of technology.” If something goes wrong, she notes, “Their emergency service is quick and responsive. You never have to wait and you never have to call them twice.”

As evidence of the DynaSis team’s enthusiasm, Bermingham relates the story of getting a new computer. “I was trying to set it up remotely, and I couldn’t figure it out. I said, ‘Just let me bring it over,’ and in 10 minutes they had it up,” she reports.

Even though Bermingham and her team are now working with different people than when they started with DynaSis five years ago, she says the team is just as helpful as they were at the outset. “We were big fans of DynaSis back then and we still are today,” says Bermingham. “I have not talked to one person who couldn’t do what we asked. It doesn’t matter if it is 10 on a Sunday night, they will call you back. There are not many companies like that.

“DynaSis has totally lived up to our expectations,” Bermingham concludes. “There is no better decision we could make, for the service; the product; the money. I would highly recommend them to anybody, and I have.”

When the housing market took a tumble, it wiped many construction companies off the map. Determined to be a survivor rather than a casualty, Brayson Homes turned to DynaSis for help downsizing its IT needs and budget while remaining customer-focused and competitive.

DynaSis recommended its cloud-computing solution, ITility by DynaSis, as the best means for Brayson Homes to minimize IT costs and increase operating agility. Brayson Homes said yes, and now the company reports it is stronger than ever.

"DynaSis provides what we need at a reasonable, affordable rate," says Brayson Homes Office Manager Kim DeLong. "We’re still getting the same excellent service, even though we don't require the level of support we used to."

At the Office to in the Cloud
Brayson Homes has been a DynaSis customer since 2002, when the DynaSis team set up a peer-to-peer network for the expanding company. DynaSis grew with Brayson Homes, transitioning them to a networked client-server environment during the heyday of the housing boom. When the housing market collapsed quickly, DynaSis was ready to help Brayson Homes sidestep the fallout.

With ITility by DynaSis, Brayson Homes' data and applications are hosted at DynaSis's world-class data center, enabling the firm to eliminate the expense and hassle of maintaining and upgrading on-premise servers. Employees access company data and applications through a dedicated Internet-based portal, anytime and anywhere, which enables Brayson Homes to save even more money through workshifting.

"ITility by DynaSis gives us the flexibility to access work wherever we are, so we can succeed with fewer employees," says DeLong. "When I am on vacation, I can access what is happening at the worksite. We have at our fingertips what we need, as we need it, and we can produce an effective outcome for our clients."

Future-Proofing
Another benefit of ITility by DynaSis is built-in system scalability, which will enable Brayson Homes to ramp up its server capacity almost instantaneously when the economic forecast improves. "We will grow again and need more of their support," says DeLong, who is confident that when that time comes, DynaSis will be eager to assist them. "DynaSis has always been willing to listen and work towards a solution," she says. "No matter what the stage or size of our business, they have been flexible and able to provide what we needed at the time. They were efficient and effective when we were small, then got large, then went back to being a small firm."

DeLong  says DynaSis's dedication is more than an attitude—it's a mission. "They really care and want to provide services not only for today but for tomorrow," she says. "They are very proactive in reaching beyond the current boundaries to see what people and businesses are going to need—and be—in the future."

For the present, DeLong couldn't be more pleased. "Going from standalone computers to accessing our information anywhere, at the click of a button, has added tremendous value," says DeLong. "The system helps us to be more productive and efficient, providing savings for the company. I definitely would recommend ITility by DynaSis to anyone."

Electronic Health Records (EHR) organization TactusMD, Inc. is one of only a few firms that offers its doctor-clients a streamlined, workflow-based solution for creating and retrieving patient data. To allow flexibility of use, the EHRs need to be highly accessible to authorized individuals. Yet, patient privacy acts (HIPPA) and doctors' own beliefs that patient confidentiality is paramount—means TactusMD's cloud solution offering must be extraordinarily stable and secure. When TactusMD sought a new hosting environment, it found the perfect combination of accessibility, security and cost effectiveness with DynaSis.

"From a security and reliability standpoint, we wanted to bring everything into a single datacenter," says TactusMD CEO Dr. Anthony Mari. "I had met Dave (Moorman, DynaSis's President of Managed IT Services) and had heard great things about DynaSis's service organization. They are personal and professionals and that is the way I like to run our company. Dave worked with us to help architect the type of hosting solution we knew we needed to ensure success for our business."

Building Meaningful Patient Health

Even though TactusMD’s software communicates with hospitals and ties into their systems (through a third-party gateway), it is the local community doctors who actually use TactusMD EHR to record, update, access and share patient data. TactusMD’s unique ability to configure workflows for different doctors based upon the way they practice medicine, combined with visually pleasing user interface and health information exchange capability, makes trading and viewing patient data easy enough for any referring/referral doctors to review patient data in a meaningfully way.

"We offer an ambulatory health record system with the ability to trade patient data with larger enterprise medical systems and any other relevant third party healthcare software provider," says Mari. "We can hook directly into the hospital system and trade patient data in real time, adding true life saving capabilities."

TactusMD also enables universal access to patient records for the doctors themselves, via smartphone, tablet, notebook or through the hospital system. This enables TactusMD's doctors to meet the criteria for meaningful use (a component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provides a financial incentive for healthcare providers that use data in a meaningful way).

Supporting this criteria was a crucial step for TactusMD (the firm, which is still in its early growth phase and is 100% Meaningful Use 2012 Certified), but it made accessibility, security and reliability vital elements of its IT solution. TactusMD can implement an on-premise client-server solution or a SaaS cloud/hosted solution with in-house customer support. Prior to engaging DynaSis, TactusMD’s cloud solution was divided among hosting providers from Chicago, Atlanta and New York.

"I believe sharing data is key and essential in providing quality healthcare in todays market, but you have to have the appropriate security and permissions in place to allow access to third parties. Our client-partners are counting on us to keep the data not only accessible but secure," says Mari.

All-in-One Convenience

Thanks to its breadth of offerings and expertise, DynaSis was able to help TactusMD transition to a fully hosted solution with best-practices security and reliability for medical data. DynaSis hosts TactusMD's cloud infrastructure, its business and client side infrastructure, and its development servers. "Novatefch provides consistency," Mari notes.

"They provide as close to perfect uptime as anyone possibly can," he continues. "And, they are responsive. I like to be able to pick up the phone and get in touch with someone. That is a big deal for me." When speaking to the security aspects of the DynaSis solution, Mari likens it to that of a bank. "We are confident that when you log-in, there is security that will protect your ID and information."

TactusMD is in the process of developing a web-based application, and DynaSis is ensuring the firm has the right foundation as it makes code modifications for that transition. "It’s a matter of attending to the right things," says Mari. "We needed an environment to be stable as we were a developing company and preparing to scale. We started with a few servers and the relationship just grew."

Mari says DynaSis's solution is also the most cost-effective option for TactusMD, both now and as it scales up to being a larger enterprise. "It was the best business decision for us," he says. "Add to that the capital investment; the learning curve; everything would have been twice as expensive, if not more. Besides, who needs the stress of doing it yourself?"

Successfully running a meeting and event management company is a challenging pursuit. Competition is fierce, reputation is everything, and enabling communication between widely dispersed office and field workers is critical to success. After Caldwell Group, Ltd took a technology plunge and developed its own in-house IT infrastructure, the firm realized that the solution was not furthering its ability to meet these challenges—or powering its success.

Maintaining the new IT systems required expertise that in-house personnel lacked, and it took the focus away from the Caldwell Group's core business. Equally important for the company's operations, an on-premise implementation lacked the flexibility to support staff outside the office.

In 2007, Caldwell Group President and CEO Polly Bermingham turned to DynaSis for a solution. The company recommended ITility by DynaSis, its cloud-based, fully hosted solution for company applications and data. Half a decade later, both the partnership and Caldwell Group are still going strong. "ITility by DynaSis allows us to work remotely and share all our files, which makes us so much more efficient and effective," says Bermingham.

With ITility by DynaSis, Caldwell Group personnel access the firm's applications and data from any location and on any device through a dedicated, secure Internet portal. Whether staff is working locally on a corporate meeting at a trade show or halfway around the world at a pre-site visit for a corporate incentive event, ITility by DynaSis keeps proposals, contracts, menus and other documents and details at their fingertips. And, since ITility by DynaSis supports 24/7/365 access from any Internet-connected device, staff can also work at home or on vacation if needed.

A Refreshing Change

Bermingham credits not only ITility by DynaSis but also the DynaSis staff itself for helping propel Caldwell Group's success. "DynaSis team members are professional, friendly and warm, and they never make you feel like your questions are stupid, even though what you are asking might be," says Bermingham. "It's so unusual to find somebody that offers great, professional service. It is really refreshing."

If problems ever pop up, Bermingham says, the DynaSis staff "knows how to fix them and will work on them until they get them fixed." So pleased is Bermingham with ITility by DynaSis that she credits them with the firm's continuity.

"There is no better decision we could make, for the service; the product; the money," Bermingham concludes. "They keep us in business, and that's the truth."

When businesses seek IT solutions, it is important for them to understand what differentiates cloud service providers from IT technical support service providers. Cloud services offer servers to run business applications. Prior to cloud services, businesses had to buy and maintain their own hardware. This is how they work:

Cloud Computing As A Public Utility

From Wikipedia:

The most common analogy to explain cloud computing is that of public utilities such as electricity, gas, and water. Just as centralized and standardized utilities free individuals from the difficulties of generating electricity or pumping water, cloud computing frees users from certain hardware and software installation and maintenance tasks through the use of simpler hardware that accesses a vast network of computing resources (processors, hard drives, etc.). The sharing of resources reduces the cost to individuals.

But there is a catch, the cloud provides the hardware, but you still have to manage your software solutions. Even though the cloud turns the hardware component of IT into a commodity, the software component of IT, like all of the applications your business uses, still require installation, support, maintenance, and upgrades. Cloud services like Rackspace and Amazon provide you the hardware, but for everything else, an IT service provider is needed.

IT Service Providers

In order to use the infrastructure of a data center, IT Service Providers such as DynaSis install and maintain cloud application services, or "Software as a Service (SaaS)." SaaS enables the delivery of software applications over the Internet. Using a central data center (the cloud) that is connected to the Internet, IT service activities can be managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site. The cloud eliminates the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computers thus simplifying maintenance and support.

Through the combination of cloud services and an IT service provider, you receive the full IT package. IT service providers can implement business solutions that utilize cloud infrastructures giving customers a laundry list of advantages.