The Challenge

When ECG (Electric Cities of Georgia) broke away from its parent company in 2009, the restructured operation needed to develop its own IT solution — including help desk support — from scratch.  With minimal technology expertise and a limited budget, Engineering and Energy Services Director Ellen Richardson and External Affairs Manager Michelle Holbrook needed a solution that would get them up and running quickly and cost effectively. They found the answer in the DynaSis's “Ascend” program, a hybrid cloud solution.

The Solution

“It was hard for us because we’d never done IT on our own. We needed someone to hold our hand and give us a roadmap to be seamless from the old company to the new,” says Holbrook. “DynaSis purchased and installed the infrastructure, and we didn’t have to think about what to buy or evaluate specifications for equipment we didn’t know very much about.”

DynaSis installed servers in three ECG locations and set up a joint-action service organization with hosted email, BlackBerry server and database support applications. DynaSis now provides maintenance and support for the entire infrastructure, both cloud-hosted and on-premises, including automated backup of ECG’s systems and data. DynaSis also provides Help Desk assistance whenever employees need it, in both the office and the field.

“Their Help Desk support is a big factor,” says Holbrook. “We had that at MEAG [Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, the former parent company] and needed that same kind of expertise. We have a lot of people in the field, and having the hosted environment and support helps them around the clock with email and other needs. The field workers have come back to us and said, ‘Those people are great,’ and praise is hard to get from those guys.”

The Result

According to Holbrook, ECG is enjoying the same level of service from DynaSis that it enjoyed from the in-house solution of its former parent company. “DynaSis had us up and ready in a month, and we didn’t have any drop-off in service,” says Holbrook. “If something goes wrong, I send an email and say, ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ and they take care of it. If one of our servers goes down even in the middle of the night, they get everything back up and running.”

No Capital Expense


Although worry-free IT is a core benefit of Ascend, it was not the only factor in ECG’s decision, Richardson says. “We didn’t have a huge capital expense up front. DynaSis purchased and maintains the infrastructure and guarantees us the best technology available for a fixed monthly cost. Considering we operate on a strict budget, the monthly fee is perfect for our situation.” Holbrook concurs, noting, “The best thing is that we know what they are going to bill us each month. We pay by the person, by the month, and that is it.”

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, Holbrook says she gives DynaSis at least a ‘’9” and would definitely recommend them to someone else. “The cost of dealing with DynaSis as a small user is much less than a do-it-yourself solution,” says Holbrook. “A lot of people have no computer expertise. There are so many companies out there for which Ascend would be a perfect fit.”

[featured_image]By the DynaSis Team

In case you have forgotten, the $500,000 Section 179 tax deduction, which was extended to 2013 through approval of H.R. 8: American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, has not been carried over for 2014. Although Congress is considering extending the bonus depreciation rules for another three years, it’s pretty obvious that they won’t extend the Section 179 deduction above its base threshold of $25,000 (with a $200,000 investment ceiling) before the beginning of 2014. U.S. business owners could easily be left in limbo for the majority of 2014―as they were in 2012―before Congress decides to take action retroactively.

A much better option, tax experts say, is for businesses to take advantage of the 2013 Section 179 tax deduction while they have it. The Section 179 deduction covers most new and used capital equipment―in fact, most depreciable assets that have less than a 20-year life. It also includes certain software.

The 2013 Section 179 Deduction Limits for 2013 (and 2012 retroactive)- 2013 Deduction Limit = $500,000

•  2013 Deduction Limit = $500,000
•  2013 Limit on Capital Purchases = $2,500,000
•  2013 Bonus Depreciation = 50%

Under the current law, bonus depreciation (which companies take on new equipment only) also ends Dec. 31. Companies can use bonus depreciation to deduct half the cost of new capital purchases in the first year.

Bonus depreciation can be more valuable than the Section 179 deduction, because the IRS limits the Section 179 deduction to business taxable income with any excess carried forward. However, if you’re actively involved in running a business, you claim losses generated by bonus depreciation against other income in 2013. Then, you can carry any still-unused losses back for two years and get a refund check from Uncle Sam.

To be eligible for these deductions, you must purchase equipment and put it into service before December 31. From assessing and upgrading IT infrastructure to upgrading outdated versions of Windows on company workstations (support for Windows XP ends in April, 2014), many firms are accelerating their purchases to take advantage of this year’s deduction.

It’s Not Too Late!
Don’t think that it’s too late to make purchases and put them into service. DynaSis’ Virtual CIOs and technicians are at the ready to help you decide which purchases are appropriate for your business and get them into service before the stroke of midnight on December 31. Call us to initiate fast-track project planning or to accelerate execution of your current plan.

[featured_image]By the DynaSis Team

I read an interesting article in Forbes online recently, about “the death of the office.” In it, contributor Jeanne Meister postulated about what the office of the future will look like. One comment struck me as especially worthy of further consideration:

“As work becomes more flexible and communication more mobile, the office is turning into an increasingly complex and even abstract concept. As we look to the future, we have to ask: Will the workplace be on-site at our employer’s property, or on-demand at a collaborative space? Or will work simply be a mindset independent of place or time of day?”

That last concept―work as a mindset that has no bearing on place or time of day, is a notion that seems increasingly likely. Already numerous studies report that the newest generation of workers, the Millennials, does not want to be tied to a specific place or time to work. (DynaSis is putting the final touches on a white paper about these workers. To request a copy when it’s ready, fill out our inquiry form, putting “Millennials White Paper” in the comments section.)

Realistically, who among us doesn’t like the idea of being freed from the constraints of time and space that a physical office places upon us? Certainly, there are people who crave the social nature of an office environment, and team collaboration and brainstorming on some projects seems to work best when the group works together physically, rather than virtually.

However, for at least some of our office tasks, having the freedom to do them whenever and wherever is highly beneficial for both employer and employee. And that, many experts predict, is what the office is becoming―a place where cloud and mobile technologies enable workers to perform some, if not all, of their work, wherever they are and whenever it suits them.

Think about it: for corporations, the savings in energy and office space alone could be substantial. In the area of employee health and productivity, the “insomnia” that plagues so many people might disappear. Workers who lie awake at night, worrying about a project, could instead get up and work on it until they were tired, and then go back to bed. This would be possible because they could also sleep late, rather than getting out of bed, groggy, to be in the office by 8 or 9am.

In 2011, Live Science published an article that postulates waking during the night for a few hours before returning to sleep (called biphasic sleeping) is natural behavior for humans. The anywhere, anytime office would enable employees to embrace this behavioral predisposition rather than fight it.

When we view the “Mobile Office” in this context, it’s evident that it’s about more than mobility. It’s about achieving functional flexibility that not only drives productivity for businesses, but also helps employees mold their jobs to suit their preferences―and possibly their innate natures. It’s about providing easy, non-technical solutions that are secure, seamless and always available, no matter where workers need them.

We’ve been testing some new technologies here at DynaSis, and we’ll be telling you more about them, soon. We’re calling our initiative Modern Office, and we think you’ll love it. Stay tuned…

By Dave Moorman, DynaSis

The current forward momentum and pace of technology is extraordinary. It now pervades every aspect of business, from customer relations management to finance, as software solutions (often cloud-based) increasingly replace manual effort.

Yet, companies on tight budgets frequently struggle to fund the improvements that will enable them to leverage technology effectively and put it to work in their firms. Or, they are afraid to upgrade to new solutions because they don’t think they have the resources and skill to manage them. In the end, they muddle along, focusing on maintaining outdated solutions and missing out on the tremendous efficiency and productivity gains that newer technologies bring.

If this sounds like your company―if there are key areas of the business where you could put technology to work for your benefit but are not―it’s time to reevaluate your stance. And, if you are not working with an IT services provider―or your current provider is more of a “Hail Mary” problem-solver than a partner in helping you select and implement new technologies―you should reevaluate that decision, as well.

The question, then, is how? With the barrage of information on big data, mobility, disaster recovery, BYOD (bring your own device) and other technology challenges, where do you start the conversation? Following are some considerations that may help you answer that question.

Know Your Organization and Its IT Needs. Conduct a thorough assessment of your organization and how it uses technology currently. Which technologies are mission-critical? Which operations are absolutely essential to your daily operations? These are the areas where IT investments will likely result in the fastest payback.

Recognize Your Vulnerability. No company wants to have its data stolen or its network hacked, but for some companies, a security breach could threaten their business continuity due to lost customer good will, legal or regulatory ramifications, and other issues. Ensuring your business assets are sufficiently robust for your level of risk tolerance should come before adding a new sales management platform or other technology tool.

Understand Your Staff and Its Preferences.  What do your workers wants from their work environment? Do you have a troop of young workers that expect (and know how to utilize) new systems and solutions, or is your team composed of mostly older employees who are uncomfortable with “new-fangled” technologies? Issues such as staff retention (younger workers) and resistance to adoption (older workers) should be considerations for your IT strategy and decisions.

Define What Success Looks Like. It amazes me how few SMBs clearly identify their metrics for success. I don’t mean having an overall goal ―“We want to achieve $5 million in revenue by 2015”―but rather the performance indicators that let a company know if it is moving toward a vibrant and prosperous future. Companies that know (and can measure) whether or not they are succeeding in propelling more business value have a better chance of achieving their goals―and of choosing the right technologies to help them along the way.

If it sounds like a big effort to perform all these evaluations, that’s because it is. But it is also essential, not only to your accomplishments with technology but also to your long-term success as a company. The good news is you do not have to walk this path alone. Entrust your top personnel―and maybe even some trusted vendors―with providing input during your journey to discovery. If you currently work with an IT provider, include them in the conversation, as they will be making the recommendations that align with your plans. If you are not certain your IT firm is up to the task, or you do not currently work with anyone, give me a call. Our virtual CIOs specialize in helping companies develop technology roadmaps that drive businesses in the right direction.

By Dave Moorman, Founder and President, DynaSis

What are your IT plans for 2014? Do you know, yet? Have you completed the budgeting process? Do your 2014 plan and budget align with your long-term IT strategy?

If you haven’t finalized your IT plan and budget for 2014, you’re not alone. According to a December 2012 survey by Spiceworks, only 53% of small and medium-sized businesses surveyed begin IT planning and budgeting more than six months out, and 25% don’t engage in formal planning and budgeting, at all. 50% of firms, per the Spiceworks survey, let individual departments make IT purchases out of their own budgets when needs or problems arise, without going through the firm’s IT manager or department.

These statistics confirm what we hear from companies, every day. We find that many SMBs engage in reactive―aka crisis-based―budgeting, with little to no planning or strategic thinking.  Or, they have a budget and plan, but it focuses on new technologies they want to adopt (virtualization is hot right now) but fails to consider maintenance expenses, such as upgrades, license renewals, replacement cycles and other issues.

During the year, these SMBs often must expand their IT budgets to accommodate unplanned expenses. For many of these firms, such approaches make management uncomfortable, but it’s easier than finding the time to draft a formal, truly comprehensive plan.

Unfortunately, failing to plan for inevitable replacements and upgrades―or not planning at all―puts companies in IT fire-fighting mode, responding to situations and emergencies as they arise. Not only does it prevent them from aligning their expenditures with strategic business objectives, but it results in cost overruns and downtime.

If your firm has already completed its formal IT strategy, plan and budget for 2014, I congratulate you. If not, take a deep breath. You don’t have to go it alone. Professional, on-demand CIO experts can help you view the big picture and develop a realistic plan and budget for both future improvements and current replacement cycles.

They can help you budget to upgrade or update equipment before it reaches the point of failure, which is much more productive and cost effective. They can help you plan to take advantage of tax incentives, make purchases during the times of year when IT vendors tend to discount their merchandise, and sign up for volume discounts and other benefits to which you may be entitled.

Many companies save enough money by having a formal, properly researched and implemented IT strategy, plan and budget to more than cover the cost of technical experts they bring in for consultation.

If you’d like to learn more, give me a call. But don’t wait too long―The start of 2014 is barely four months away.

By Dave Moorman, Founder and President, DynaSis

Earlier this year (or in 2012), you may have seen articles that talked about the explosion of "Big Data"—the industry buzzword for extremely large pools of data that are difficult to manage with traditional tools. (Some pundits use Big Data collectively to refer to the staggeringly large amount of digital data man has created—and continues to create.) There's been talk about how fast it is growing, what a challenge it presents for storage and perhaps most importantly for businesses, how companies can efficiently structure and access it when it is so amorphous. The question is, does any of this apply to you?

Although large corporations are the ones being the most impacted by the growth and dispersion of data, Big Data is a topic that should interest the owners of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well. Have you noticed that over the years, more and more of the information you archive for reference purposes is becoming fractured in a variety of places, and you are having a hard time managing it effectively? Have you ever created a proposal or prepared for a meeting and thought, "If only I could find that article I read last week, but I don't remember where I stored it and I don't have time to look"?

Big Data is growing like gangbusters—according to IBM, humans now create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. IBM also reports that 90% of the data existing today has been generated in the past two years. A lot of that is what scientists call "unstructured data," which is information that is not organized into in a formal, easily searchable, structured database.

Social media is a perfect example. In 2012, Facebook announced that it was processing 500 pettabytes of new data each day (along with 2.7 billion Likes, plus other user activities). Yet, try to search Facebook for a post you wrote a year ago and, unless you are an infrequent correspondent or can remember specific details about it, the task won't be easy. The information is still there, but it takes some effort for you to access it, even with Facebook's search tools in place. This, in a nutshell is one of the great challenges—and opportunities—of Big Data.

Here's the good news. With each passing week, more companies develop tools that businesses can use to effectively structure, store and access their data, from powerful backup programs and devices to business intelligence (BI) platforms that can mine your data for information you didn't even know you had and use it to help you make sound decisions. It's also become very affordable to use services, like hosted Microsoft Exchange (Outlook), that help you store and manage your email, contacts and other related information. (A surprising amount of data is now being stored in email archives and not written to local servers.)

However, even with these tools, it's important to have an operational roadmap for data management, including how and where you will store your data, how to get existing paper-based data into a digital format and how to decide what data is important enough to keep. Expert IT consultants can help you explore your data stores, make decisions about how to archive and access the information, and help you evaluate BI and other solutions that structure and manipulate your data to your firm's benefit.

From gaining actionable insights to reducing the incidence of fraud, efficient data management and usage results in a better bottom line for the majority of SMBs. If you would like to know more, give me a call.

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.

by Dave Moorman

For more than a decade, the media and IT experts have been touting the benefits of corporate messaging and collaboration as a productivity enhancer, but the adoption of these tools has been restricted largely to larger enterprises. Now, with the proliferation of smartphones, messaging both inside the office and out has become easier than ever, and the majority of office workers are already comfortable with at least two forms of messaging (email and texting).

As a result, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are perfectly positioned to leverage this powerful tool for their benefit. Making the concept even more attractive, third-party vendors have developed messaging and collaboration platforms specifically for SMBs. These can be deployed on a smaller scale than their enterprise counterparts with a correspondingly smaller budget.

Many business-grade IT messaging platforms go well beyond email and/or real-time communication (instant messaging or texting) to include calendar scheduling, file exchange, and even voice and video features. Once a product becomes this extensive, it functions as a full-fledged collaboration platform, enabling workers to exchange ideas and information for brainstorming, sales development, training and more.

Of course, not every SMB needs a full-blown messaging and collaboration platform. In fact, if your employees are equipped with smartphones, they may have already created an ad-hoc messaging solution of their own, texting one another from various locations to confirm meeting times, find out where someone is or exchange other basic but valuable business information.

Similarly, if you use Microsoft Outlook or Exchange (especially Hosted Exchange) you already have a feature-rich communication platform in place—you just need to explore its full functionality and evaluate the other tools with which it connects.

The point is that messaging can be whatever you want it to be – from simple text messaging or office email to a unified platform where all forms of communication flow through a centralized gateway. (The latter solution is more expensive to deploy but provides security controls that are important for protecting corporate communications.)

The key is to determine what you need and how to implement it in a manner that is affordable but enables you to begin accelerating productivity immediately. In an October 2012 report, research firm Radicati Group predicted the messaging platforms market will grow from $5.7 billion in 2012 to more than $7.8 billion by 2016. Where will your firm be during this period of explosive growth?

Give me a call and let’s discuss how messaging can drive productivity for you.

by Dave Moorman

The productivity gains companies achieve through technology are undeniable. Historians and economists confirm them constantly on a broad scale; many experts even attribute the sluggish hiring recovery to technology. The increased efficiency and productivity workers achieve with technology continues to reduce the number of employees companies need to perform core functions.

For SMBs, the challenge isn’t recognizing that technology increases productivity. Rather, it’s figuring out how best to start that process in their operation, especially when budgets are tight. For example, big enterprises are touting the productivity gains of giving their field workers iPads, but how many SMBs can shell out thousands of dollars to purchase 10 of the devices at one time?

The trick, then, is to find inexpensive ways to accelerate productivity, and then use the economic benefits of those improvements to pay for more technology tools. One way to do this is to ask your staff to submit ideas. Hold a contest and give away gift certificates to a local restaurant to the staff with the best submissions.

A few ideas that are inexpensive to implement include:

• Install a wireless network printer so field staff can print documents from their mobile devices without having to send them to desktop PCs, then open the documents and print them from the desktop.
• Add a video conferencing systems to your conference room. This enables your staff to meet with clients, vendors and field personnel remotely, which frees up travel time for more productive pursuits. As a bonus, once the system is installed and everyone knows how to use it, you’ll find that brainstorming sessions and other business-innovation drivers will happen more frequently.
• Empower your personnel to work remotely with smart, Internet-connected devices. Surveys show that many employees are happy to check email and perform other business tasks outside the office if you make it easy for them to do so. If you cannot afford to equip your personnel with smartphones, iPads, and the like, you can adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) policy that gives them access to company resources, such as email, on their own devices. Just be sure you have a knowledgeable person (in-house or outsourced) to configure adequate security policies.

Never before has technology been such a powerful enabler of productivity gains for companies of all sizes. In future articles, I’ll detail some of the more significant (but still manageable) technology changes you can implement to drive your company forward through the power of productivity.

by Dave Moorman

For many small or medium business (SMB) owners, the concept of technology purchases is associated with spending money, not saving it. In reality, it’s entirely possible to save money with technology upgrades and services—not only on the technology side itself, but also in other departments throughout your operation. These savings are in hard dollars you can count—not the harder-to-quantify savings through the increased productivity technology enables.

Here are some examples:

• Save energy through virtualization: Replacing your existing servers with virtualized servers, either on-premise servers or in the cloud, reduces your electricity consumption and cooling costs (and also saves on costly office space). According to a report the U.S. government’s Energy Star site, server virtualization can reduce a firm’s server room/data center energy consumption by 10-40%. Furthermore, if your servers are cloud-based, employees can telecommute (work from home) full or part time, saving you even more office space.
• Cut payroll expense by outsourcing technology management: Not only does the virtualization mentioned above reduce your dependence on in-house server experts, but handing off system security, maintenance and other important monitoring tasks to a third-party firm will also reduce in-house IT staff expense. Furthermore, technology has become so complex that rarely can one or two people be masters of all its aspects. As a result, only very large companies can afford to have sufficient in-house expertise for all their processes. SMBs that outsource some or all of their IT management needs reap the benefits of a large IT staff—without the expense.
• Speed your network; reduce its financial toll: Another aspect of IT where firms save money is through managed networks. Rather than pay several thousand dollars a month for a dedicated T1 connection for each office, firms turn to third-party managed service providers. Redundant Internet feeds and network management services ensure 99.99% uptime for their Internet and network connections. This speeds the flow of work and increases productivity, of course, but it’s generally less expensive than dedicated lines—especially for firms with small satellite offices. In a 2012 article that ran in BizTech magazine, Houston-based firm PSC reported saving $500,000 when it switched to managed network services.

These are only a few examples of the hard-dollar savings you can achieve through technology upgrades and enhancements. In many cases, the savings are greater than the cost of implementing the technologies. Many firms have found themselves able to equip their staffs with iPads; hold employee loyalty events, and provide other perks to personnel with the savings they have achieved through technology improvements.