Tag Archives: Apptix Inc.

About 1873 days ago Business Software

Are Managed Services Right for You?

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You’re at the helm of a small software company and you feel overwhelmed by what you need to organize. First of all, there’s business communication, collaboration amongst your staff and clients that needs to happen, maintenance of your servers, and the list goes on. You know that in order to keep yourself profitable, outsourcing through a managed service might solve your problems. However, you wonder about security and control issues and if using these vendors can really save you the money they promise. Using managed network services, especially in this downturned economy, is a choice many small and mid-sized businesses make daily. Turning to managed services for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), network management services, e-mail, and collaboration can substantially lower in-house IT costs and can cut time spent upgrading and maintaining servers for the small business. In addition, these vendors include professional 24/7 support that will react in a timely fashion if the system is down. Although deploying these managed and hosted services may feel that you’re sacrificing control, managed service vendors often offer physically digital secure data centers where data is continually backed up. In most cases, the managed service can offer more security for their data than what the small business can. Pros of using managed network services Lower IT Cost — According to Michele Pelino, analyst for Forrester Research based in Cambridge, Mass., businesses in the retail, production, wholesale, and transportation vertical markets use managed services to control their IT costs and keep their IT staffs streamlined by outsourcing their voice and data operations. In addition, managed services providers offer the software-as-a-service (SaaS), in which vendors provide software applications on a per user monthly plan. Simplify Operations — Rather than outlaying tremendous efforts in money and time in server maintenance and software programs such as Microsoft Outlook or Exchange, managed network vendors can relieve this stress on the company’s bottom line. Danny Essner, director of marketing for Intermedia, a New York-based provider of managed business e-mail services for small and mid-sized businesses, says that small businesses get “the best of both worlds” by having all of the benefits of using managed services with none of the direct costs of maintaining these servers and upgrading this software. Security — Says Maysoon Al-Hasso, the vice president of marketing for Apptix, a Herndon. Va.-based provider of managed messaging and collaboration solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, “We offer control without all of the hassles.” Managed service vendors provide anti-spam and anti-virus protection at all price levels and in the case of Apptix, their servers are housed in data centers with Cisco firewalls with 24/7 human and technical protection. Cons of using managed network services Lack of Support — The managed service provider may not place you high on the priority list when you call the Help Desk. Make sure you check the vendor’s record of support before you deal with them. Maysoon Al-Hasso of Apptix recommends businesses to call the support desk on a Sunday at 8 p.m. to see if they are ready to take care of you. Security — Check that your provider is as professional as they say they are. What kind of computers do they use as their servers? Intermedia uses Dell servers and has made a significant investment in their Cisco network, but other vendors may not have this level of server and back-up protection.  Conclusion Invest the time to see if your company is the right fit for a managed service provider and educate yourself on how using these vendors can possibly resolve your IT issues. The old days of enterprise software that is a significant annual investment are past and now businesses want SaaS service that provides them scalable options. For instance, if your company grows, it’s a lot easier to click a button to move up a service tier than it is to invest in another server. SIDEBAR: Managed Service Providers for Small Businesses Apptix with over 186,500 subscribers, Apptix differentiates itself through its messaging, voice, and collaboration solutions. They sell business communications services such as Hosted Exchange, Hosted SharePoint, Hosted IP-PBX and also offers hosted VoIP solutions. Apptix is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Hosting and Application Services. Intermedia.net offers Microsoft exchange hosting, SharePoint hosting and e-mail archiving and compliance. In February 2008, Intermedia launched Secure Mail, which encrypts email and is industry compliant. They also offer two control panels: HostPilot and MyMailboxManager for greater mobile access and shared calendars to increase productivity and collaboration. USA.NET Hosted Microsoft Exchange works with companies from five to 60,000 users who can benefit from USA.NET’s tiered approach to e-mail and e-messaging services.  Offers a scalable solution that fits your business and it is the only hosted e-mail provider that is Microsoft Gold Certified and SAS 70 Type II Audited.

About 1964 days ago E-mail

Seven Reasons to Host Business E-mail

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Rather than dealing with the headache of managing their own e-mail system, small and mid-sized businesses are moving to managed hosting services mainly because of lower cost and increased reliability. Managed service vendors, such as USA.NET, Apptix and Intermedia.net, allow remote workers to stay connected via BlackBerry services and also offer several layers of technical support, so businesses won’t lose any daily efficiency. Using managed e-mail services is part of the larger software-as-a-service (SaaS) business trend, in which vendors provide software applications to clients on a per user/ “pay as you go” plan. The alternative is operating your own e-mail servers in-house and dealing with the multiple security patches, upgrades, and other compatibility issues. Steve O’Brien, senior director of service development for USA.NET, says small and mid-sized businesses turn to hosted e-mail services because they want to reduce their capital expenditures, they don’t have a large IT staff, and they want to keep up with evolving security threats — such as viruses. In addition, he adds, IT departments are overwhelmed and hosted services allow the business to get the benefits of a network infrastructure without the headaches. Reasons for using managed hosting services There are many reasons why small and mid-sized businesses decide to outsource their e-mail to a managed service. Here are seven of the most popular drivers: Reliability — With a hosted e-mail server, companies don’t have to worry about lost productivity when the system goes down. For instance, USA.NET guarantees 99.9 percent performance reliability. Affordability — Hosted e-mail services provide tiered solutions for their clients, so companies can tailor a per-user price point. These solutions also help companies stay within their technology budgets since they know what they’ll spend quarter to quarter, depending upon their service plan. Security — Clearing spam, phishing schemes, and viruses are all part of the cost of doing business these days. Using hosted e-mail makes daily e-mail hygiene more convenient by providing tiered, multi-layer protection while offering all customers firewalls and 24/7 monitoring. Support – Like many of its competitors, USA.NET offers tiered support levels and monitors its clients to let them know about any issues through automatic server checks and up-to-date reporting if anything is amiss. USA.NET also offers dedicated account managers so companies have a point person if there’s a problem. Mobility – Mobile workers can check their BlackBerry or PDAs and have the same stored folders on these devices as they do on their desktops. Their mobile devices are also updated when the rest of the “home” e-mail system is. Collaboration — With a hosted solution, small and mid-sized businesses can link, send, and store folders and can work with other users while still keeping their distribution list, calendars, and work groups even when they switch devices. Compliance — Hosted solutions ensure that complex upgrades, patches, and virus protection are in place so that clients get their business done and don’t worry about their e-mail integrity. Compliance is extremely important in the financial service industry which must ensure the safety of all its customers’ financial information. Conclusion According to Matthew Cain, analyst for the Gartner Research Group, based in Stamford, Conn., the trend for 2008-2012 will be more competition among the e-mail hosting companies as businesses decide to use hosted e-mail services. Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google will join the current hosting players and will try to gain market share since they have built-in economies of scale and can offer more services and collaboration solutions. Cain says that the current crop of hosted e-mail vendors will have to differentiate themselves to remain competitive. One thing remains certain: businesses that outsource their e-mail and instant messaging services can concentrate on servicing their clients, building their products, and keeping their workforce efficient. SIDEBAR: E-mail Hosting Services for Small Business USA.NET Hosted Microsoft Exchange works with companies from 5 to 60,000 users who can benefit from USA.NET’s tiered approach to e-mail and e-messaging services.  Offers a scalable solution that fits your business and it is the only hosted e-mail provider that is Microsoft Gold Certified and SAS 70 Type II Audited. Apptix with over 178,000 subscribers, Apptix differentiates itself through its messaging, voice, and collaboration solutions. It sells add-on services such as Hosted Exchange, Hosted SharePoint, Hosted IP-PBX, and also offers hosted VoIP solutions. Intermedia.net offers Microsoft exchange hosting, SharePoint hosting and e-mail archiving and compliance in three web hosting tiers for ColdFusion, Linux, and Windows users. Also offers two control panels: HostPilot and MyMailboxManager for greater mobile access and shared calendars to increase productivity and collaboration.

About 2025 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

BlackBerry Applications for Business

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Suffice it to say, the BlackBerry has become an indispensable tool for millions of small and mid-size businesses, largely in part to its reliable push-mail solution that delivers messages to your phone as soon as they arrive in an inbox. But in order to maintain its competitive edge, the Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion understands it needs to open up its doors to third-party applications to help businesses remain productive while on the go. “There has been phenomenal growth in applications available for the BlackBerry platform,” confirms Tyler Lessard, director of independent software vendor alliances at Research in Motion. “We are signing new partners every day and being approached constantly by people who are looking for ways to increase the mobile capabilities of their applications using the BlackBerry solution.” The following are a few recommended applications that can help you and your employees stay in touch, keep organized and remain competitive, wherever business takes you. Be sure to check with your cell carrier for availability and pricing. TeleNav Rather than purchase a separate GPS unit to help you navigate from point A to B without getting lost, or finding relevant location-based info, a GPS-enabled BlackBerry lets you have it all on one device. Small and mid-size businesses “especially benefit from services like TeleNav because they save on travel time and they reduce the need for road warriors to call in for guidance,” says Carmi Levy, senior vice president for strategic consulting at AR Communications, a Toronto-based marketing communications firm. “[Employees] work more independently, consuming less office time and spending more time in front of customers.” eOffice from DynoPlex eOffice lets you easily access and manage all your documents, wherever and whenever — all stored remotely on your office PC, through a password-protected virtual hard disk on the Internet. As if it were stored locally on the smartphone, you can now retrieve, review, edit, and save documents — such as Microsoft Word or Excel files. “Attachments are an increasingly frequent reality for anyone who sends and receives e-mail, and although the basic BlackBerry OS allows Office files to be viewed, the experience is severely limited,” says Levy. “DynoPlex’s eOffice is often good enough that users can leave their laptops at home and travel lighter on business trips.” SpinVox This voicemail-to-text service can save you time because there’s no need to dial in to pick up your voice mail. Instead, an accurate transcript of the voicemail message is text messaged to you automatically so you can simply read the message on your BlackBerry. After all, you might be in a meeting and unable to answer that important call from a client, your boss, or a member of your staff. Well, now you can discretely glance at a text message which has the content of the voicemail message on your phone. Nuance Voice Control from Nuance Communications Consider it an alternative to using your thumbs to type your way through all of your BlackBerry’s functions — such as making calls, drafting an e-mail or adding a calendar entry — as you can use the power of your voice to take command. Your spoken words are transcribed into text for, say, an e-mail message, or you can choose to send your voice clip as an e-mail attachment. “Voice-activated control and navigation can remove the last barrier to on-the-road productivity — the tiny keyboard — from potential objections to wider mobile deployment,” explains Levy. WebMessenger from Apptix This all-in-one instant messaging (IM) client supports a broad range of services, including AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. For small and mid-size businesses with mobile employees that need to routinely interact with the home office in real-time, “the presence awareness offered by an always-on IM client can be a compelling driver of productivity,” says Levy. “Road warriors can get answers to their questions more quickly, which allows them to spend more time servicing customers and less time waiting around.” Other BlackBerry applications to check out: “We find that organizations are interested in applications that access [small business] CRM and accounting packages such as Goldmine, ACT, and Quicken,” says RIM’s Lessard. Impatica Showmate allows mobile professionals to deliver PowerPoint presentations directly from their BlackBerry smartphone. MobiMate’s Worldmate Live and Handmark’s PocketExpress can greatly enhance personal productivity and efficiency while traveling with tools that include flight status updates, rental car information, and world weather. Virtual Reach’s Viigo is an RSS reader that can track, download, and display critical pieces of regularly updated content, such as news, stock values, and sports.

About 2209 days ago Business Software

Technology to Solve the Boring Meeting Dilemma

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If you hate meetings and think they are a waste of time, you’re not alone. Eighty percent of employees say their meetings are unproductive and waste valuable working hours, according to a survey of 2,000 workers in 13 countries by recruitment firm Robert Walters last year. Analysts suggest some common sense ways to make meetings more productive. Have someone guide the meeting. Avoid going off on tangents. Ban BlackBerrys from the room. But beyond that, there are dozens of firms that offer software collaboration tools that promise make meetings quicker and more productive. Software lets workers collaborate on reports The argument for tools that automate your meetings goes like this: In a typical meeting, attendees spend time before preparing individual PowerPoint presentations. Each presentation takes time. After the meeting, those presentations are scrapped only to be recreated the next week. In contrast, with a collaboration tool, employees can all contribute to a discussion or even collaborate on one presentation at their own leisure during the week. A presentation on sales trends, for instance, can include data from all the salespeople in the field. That way, there is only one presentation to deliver at the meeting, rather than several salespeople each delivering an individual report. Moreover, the presentation is a living document that can be updated after the meeting as well. For example, DreamFactory, a Mountain View, Calif., firm recently released Carousel, a software program that lets employees collaborate on “dynamic reports” before and after meetings. “You can eliminate PowerPoint preparation and save a lot of time,” says company president Eric Rubin. DreamFactory charges $25 per user per month for the application. Meeting over the Web cuts down time Meanwhile, WebEx chief marketing officer Rick Faulk says just having a meeting over the Web rather than in-person tends to shorten meetings as well. “If you get everyone in a physical room, you generally spend the first 10 or 15 minutes chatting,” Faulk says. “There’s a funny dynamic with meetings happening online: People tend to get right down to business.” Patti Phillips, president and owner of The ROI Institute, a 10-person consultancy in Birmingham, Ala., finds a mix of two applications work well to limit meeting times. Phillips uses Microsoft’s SharePoint software as a collaboration tool so employees can check in throughout the week and hash out issues. “People pop in and check calendars,” Phillips says. For meetings, though, Phillips uses Elluminate, a WebEx-like conferencing tool that lets remote and in-person employees participate in meetings. “If there’s an article we want to share we can do it so everyone can see it at the same time,” Phillips says. “It’s a great way to bring people together in different locations.” Phillips pays about $50 a month to use SharePoint as a hosted application from Apptix, Herndon, Va. Elluminate’s sticker price is $180 a month for five seats, but Phillips says she pays less. More to meetings than technology While Phillips is pleased with her expenditure, Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist with consultancy Eisenstodt Associates, Washington, D.C., warns that all the technology in the world won’t necessarily make meetings any shorter. “Let’s say we have one major issue that needs to be discussed by 10 people,” she says. “Because there is dissension, [technology] could not save time in the long run because people are going to grumble and sabotage and do all the things people do in an office environment.” Eisenstodt instead advises small businesses to allow employees to have a discussion before a meeting perhaps via such collaboration tools so that all of the pent-up anger won’t be released for the first time during the meeting. Even Rubin acknowledges that his technology will not, in the end, take the place of a face-to-face meeting: “You will still need to get everyone together to work through the issues.”