Tag Archives: Sanjeev Aggarwal

About 2121 days ago Wireless Networks

Telecom Services for Business by the Bundle

Bundled telecommunications services that pair not only local and long-distance voice service, but Internet access and wireless services, have become wildly popular among small and mid-size businesses. A survey by Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass., found that three-quarters of North American small and mid-size businesses use some type of bundled services — usually local voice, long-distance voice, and broadband access. A bundle is often easier to manage through one service provider and can be cheaper for businesses. But the bundled-communications market “lacks maturity right now because it’s very basic,” says Michael Voellinger, vice-president of business intelligence for Destin, Fla.-based Telwares, which helps businesses manage and negotiate their telecommunications services and contracts. More than just phone lines Small and mid-size enterprises need more than just phone lines and Internet connections as they digitize and put their businesses online. VoIP, Web and e-mail hosting and managed security services such as data backup and firewalls are all becoming integral to businesses. Telecom companies have the opportunity to act as the virtual CIO for small and mid-size businesses, which would increase commitments and revenue from smaller enterprises. But the telecoms “don’t seem to be jumping on this train very quickly,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice-president of small business IT infrastructure solutions for AMI-Partners in New York. While many of the larger telecom companies offer additional services, most are not bundled or heavily marketed to the small and mid-size business market. Aggarwal expects telecommunications firms to see decreased revenue from local and long-distance services as businesses move to VoIP services. Telecom providers have been reluctant to push VoIP because it digs into their traditional telephony market. But they are likely to push the service more aggressively over the next several years, says AMI-Partners. The research firm predicts the VoIP market will increase from $416 million this year to $1.57 billion in 2010. AT&T, which has 3 million small business customers, says that wireless voice and data are increasingly important for small businesses and that services such as enterprise application management, ecommerce development and hosting, and enterprise messaging and collaboration are also growing. “These used to be only for the big guys, but AT&T has customized the applications to make them more manageable – from both technology and cost standpoints – for small business owners,” John Regan, AT&T’s vice president of small and mid-size business marketing wrote in an e-mail. Qwest serves the small and mid-size market well with hosted VoIP services, Aggarwal says, but does not offer many services outside of the traditional telephony market such as security. You may need to ask for bundled services Because telecom providers don’t bundle or promote more advanced services to businesses, customers sometimes don’t know they are available. It has also been difficult for telecom companies to offer services in a uniform package because of the large number of mergers in the industry, which has distracted the telecoms from providing top-notch services, Voellinger says. In some cases, just having bundles offered isn’t going to help small businesses understand how the services can help them, says Forrester Research analyst Michele Pelino. Telecom companies “have to educate on the value and the capabilities of these services,” she says. Businesses may be locked into multi-year contracts with bundles, so if they are looking to try out a new service through their telecommunications providers, it may be better to order it separately, Pelino adds. It can also be difficult for telecom providers to bundle services because requirements for small and mid-size business vary so widely, Pelino maintains. “It’s not just about size at this point,” she says. “It’s about the needs of the company.”

About 2182 days ago Wireless Networks

Unified Messaging in the Mobile Age

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Small and mid-size businesses have always been short on one job category: administrative assistants. That’s why unified messaging — technology that deposits messages from all points of contact into a single, electronic, easily accessible inbox — is so liberating. Employees are more productive and easier to reach when they can control communications with clients and vendors through a single inbox. Unified messaging, in some form, has been around for years. But now, providers are adding mobile phones to the services they can link to a single electronic inbox. They’re also tailoring services to small and mid-sized businesses — which might be reason enough for you to consider unified messaging if you haven’t already, says Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president of infrastructure solutions at AMI-Partners, a technology research firm. “Unified messaging needs to be an important criteria for businesses looking for new solutions,” Aggarwal says. “I think the first thing is just receiving e-mail and voice mail in a single mail box. Once they get that, start looking at text messaging and SMS capabilities.” Leave the office, stay in touch Employees today don’t necessarily work the same schedule in the same office every day and leave work behind when they go home. Unified messaging makes it easier to work from anywhere at anytime. Employees can receive e-mail, fixed-line voice mail, mobile voice mail, mobile text messages and faxes online or through one phone call. Before, checking all five channels of communication required two phone calls, one trip online, and a trip back to the office to check the fax machine’s paper tray. “Having access to a fax or having access to a key e-mail or having access to one of your customers from your cell phone and being able to get that from anywhere you dial into is another highly productive feature that enables a small business to appear larger, more efficient and more productive,” says Ron Comerford, AT&T business marketing product manager. AT&T is one such company that offers a unified messaging solution for small and mid-sized businesses. Keep work flowing Not only can employees check for messages on any communication channel, but they also can respond via the most convenient channel. In other words, if you log into your unified messaging inbox and hear a voice mail on your office phone, you can respond via e-mail or phone. If the content of the message is important to someone else, you can forward it. And if you want to listen to it later when you’ll be away from an Internet connection, you can save it to your desktop. Respond to customers faster Conventional wisdom holds that a responsive company keeps its customers. Unified messaging makes that goal much easier to accomplish. Imagine that you’re on the road when an upset customer leaves a voice mail on your office voice mail. With unified messaging, you can immediately learn about the customer’s problem and address it now — not when you get back to the office two days later to discover that the customer has taken his business elsewhere. Save money Unified messaging may be an ideal add-on to voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service, which has become a popular money-saving way for small and mid-sized businesses to bundle their data and voice connections. And many providers offer hosted VoIP and unified messaging solutions so companies don’t have to maintain the systems locally. “For the smaller companies, less than 20 employees, they can access the same type of functionality without having those complex systems on premises,” Aggarwal says. “They can go with a hosted voice service that provides some unified messaging.” A few caveats As you’re shopping for a unified messaging solution, remember these key caveats: Not all solutions offer the same features. Some will integrate mobile lines, while others will not. Not all offer features such as text-to-voice and voice-to-text transcription. Not all solutions offer true integration with Microsoft Outlook or other e-mail clients. You may need to set up your unified inbox to forward messages to Outlook if you want to access them there. Hosted solutions will keep all of that electronic data on their own servers — to a point. After you use up your allotted disk space, you must remove messages and archive them locally. Image files (for faxes) and audio files can take up quite a bit of disk space, so be sure you’re able to invest in some extra storage if you’ll need it.

About 2578 days ago Computer Security

Service, Not Servers

Don’t tell Joe Walker that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. The headquarters of his company, Elcometer, a manufacturer of testing equipment for paints and coatings based in Rochester Hills, Michigan, was hit by lightning three consecutive years starting in 2001. In the first two cases, the resulting electrical surges knocked out the building’s power and completely fried every electronic device–including the company’s computer servers, which stored critical information such as inventory numbers and customer contacts. Both times, business ground to a halt for 10 days as the company’s tech team scrambled to restore the systems. In August 2003, yet another fierce electrical storm roared through southeastern Michigan. Once again, Elcometer’s electricity was out for days. But this time, commerce continued without a hitch. What was different? Six months earlier, Elcometer had gotten rid of its computer servers and instead began accessing all of its sales, inventory, and accounting data online. As a result, employees were able to work from home or from terminals at a nearby Kinko’s. “It was a huge difference,” says Walker. “All I had to do was get my Internet connection back up and running to get back in business.” Walker is on the leading edge of one of today’s most important technology trends–the transformation of software from a product to a service. While computer software has been growing faster and smarter, the industry’s business model has been pretty much stuck in about 1990. Developers ship out disks and CDs encoded with their latest release or upgrade, often charging hefty licensing fees. Customers install the software on their local servers, which must be constantly maintained and upgraded to run this ever more sophisticated software–a vexing game of catch-up that usually means keeping a team of tech pros on staff. And when the server goes down so does business.  But that process is becoming as outmoded as VHS recorders. Instead, software makers are making their tools available on the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis for a monthly subscription fee. Known as on demand, or software as a service, this model has long been familiar to customers of companies such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com. But now nearly all software makers are offering on-demand versions, making it possible for businesses to abandon their servers and instead keep all of their data–from e-mail to e-commerce to human resources–on the Web. In 2005, companies spent more than $4 billion on hosted software, a number that is expected to grow to more than $10 billion a year over the next two years. While those numbers represent a small portion of the $190 billion global software market, the Yankee Group, a research firm in Boston, forecasts that more than 50 percent of the software purchased by small to midsize companies in 2008 will be from software-as-a-service providers. “This is an evolution in how companies use software, especially small and midsize companies that finally have access to applications they couldn’t afford before,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, a senior analyst with Yankee. The key benefits of working with these on-demand providers are high speed and low cost. To buy and install a traditional accounting or customer-relationship-management system often means waiting months and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. With software as a service, you can be up and running within days, or even hours, of signing a contract. Since the vendor is hosting both the application and the data, getting started can be as simple as typing in a username and password. What’s more, on-demand customers generally pay monthly subscription fees, rather than large, one-time licensing fees. A Yankee Group study found that the total cost of operating an on-demand software package is less than half that for an equivalent traditional system. In 1999, before the company experienced its first lightning strike, Elcometer used Great Plains, now owned by Microsoft, as its in-house accounting system. But with Y2K looming, Great Plains was requiring its customers to spend $1,500 for an upgrade. Elcometer also needed to upgrade its servers to handle the new software and hire an IT manager to manage it. “I was looking at spending $130,000, plus license fees,” says Walker. When he factored in the need to safeguard his company’s data from future lightning strikes–or other unexpected events–the decision became obvious. He switched to NetSuite, which charges an up-front fee of $5,000 plus $99 a month per user. “Now, we don’t have any servers, we don’t have to download the latest updates, and NetSuite fixes any bugs while I’m asleep,” Walker says. On-demand software is especially useful for companies that have computers and data spread out among multiple locations, since everyone from salespeople to CEOs can access their systems from any broadband Internet connection. Businesses that operate in different time zones or countries no longer have to worry about supporting their traveling employees around the clock. Managing an e-mail server, for example, was particularly troublesome for Fred Aryan, president of LaserShip, a delivery company in Vienna, Virginia. With 150 employees spread out among 15 locations along the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to Atlanta, keeping everyone’s computers up to date with the latest patches and spam filters was becoming a nightmare. That’s why he switched to HyperOffice, an on-demand provider of e-mail and collaboration software based in Rockville, Maryland. By adopting HyperOffice, which charges about $7 a user per month, Aryan figures he’s saving $80,000 a year between software license and hardware maintenance costs. “And that doesn’t count getting rid of all the service headaches,” he says. The downside of on demand, of course, is that your business becomes dependent on access to the Internet. Aryan says he struck a deal with HyperOffice to compensate him if his system experiences any downtime (see “What to Ask For in an On-Demand Software Contract“). Security is another concern. Keeping servers in-house may be a pain, but it also means that sensitive accounting or HR data can be locked down behind a firewall. Can the Web offer the same assurances? On-demand vendors insist it can. NetSuite and HyperOffice, for example, either maintain or partner with deluxe data centers complete with the latest in data security and backup technology. Employees can gain access only through secure logins. Elcometer’s Walker admits that he was nervous about keeping his data on the Web. But he’s thankful that the decision has saved him from worrying about the nagging problems of maintaining his hardware–not to mention the weather. Resources The consulting firm ThinkStrategies offers tips on making the switch to hosted software, as well as a list of vendors, at saas-showplace.com. The consultancy OpSource offers white papers, an ROI calculator, and other resources at opsource.net.

About 2729 days ago Search Engine Optimization

Small Businesses Spending More on Internet Advertising, Tech

Dec. 13, 2005–Small businesses are spending more for the latest business applications as they strive to cut costs and build a customer base, but many still leave their systems vulnerable to threats, according to a new report. Analysts at Boston-based Yankee Group surveyed 700 small and midsize businesses, and found that spending on applications and services has surpassed 2004 levels, as companies advertise online and improve their websites. More than 60% said they have saved money and increased productivity by using applications available over the Internet instead of buying desktop software. But many small-businesses computer systems remain vulnerable to hackers and natural disasters that can destroy important data, the analysts found. So far this year, businesses have spent $4.4 billion on Web hosting services to give their sites e-commerce functions, including taking orders, processing payments, and providing customer service. This was a 6% increase over last year. By far, the fastest growth in spending was on Internet advertising, which soared almost 50% to $1.3 billion. Sanjeev Aggarwal, senior analyst with the Yankee Group, said small and midsize businesses are using services from Google and Yahoo that allow potetnial customers to search for businesses within specific Zip codes. “The whole notion of using the Internet for local advertising has become much more common, espcially for small businesses like beauty salons and restaurants that serve a local market, Aggarwal said. Another growing area is software-as-a-service, whereby companies pay a subscription fee for an application rather than buying a software package and installing it their network. “This is especially popular with small busiensses because it doesn’t require physical infrastructure like servers, which leads to lower upfront costs, Aggarwal said. Subscriptions are common for accounting, human resources, and customer relationship management applications. But Aggarwal said most computer systems at small and midsize businesses are vulnerable to cyber threats. Survey respondents said they are struggling with the costs and time required to secure their networks and store duplicate data in safe locations. And Aggarwal said IT personnel at small businesses are generalists and cannot fend off today’s sophisticated spyware and viruses. “Maintaining quality data back ups and checking for network security weaknesses is too complex for generalists, said Aggarwal. “Today, you might have less than an hour to respond to a virsus or other threat.