Have any question?
Call (516) 403-9001
Call (516) 403-9001
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is one of the best looks at some of the best consumer technology that is coming down the pipeline over the next couple of years. Most of the technology won’t be readily available for a few years, and a lot of it may not even come to market, but one aspect of the event that is interesting is that for the first time it is completely virtual.
Every January, massive crowds show up in Las Vegas for CES. Since March of 2020, however, there have been many conferences postponed or moved online in attempts to avoid having massive crowds in one location. Despite the technology available to make this work, it radically depreciates the value of a conference. Today, we will briefly discuss the conference’s role in business, how CES 2021 will work, and some of the tech coming out of an all-virtual CES.
Conferences have an important role to play in business. Not only does it give multiple businesses the opportunity to show off the goods and services they’ve been working on, it also gives their people the opportunity to see what their competitors are doing, network among their industry peers, and to learn about the new innovations that are happening inside their market. For many businesses, they are some of the only opportunities available to gain the exposure they require to keep going. That’s not to mention the workshops and breakout sessions typically given by industry leaders and experts.
As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has made large gatherings rather tricky (and very risky), so many conferences have tried their best to forge ahead virtually. CES 2021, which is one of the largest conferences attended by technology professionals every year, had to move to the Internet. You may think this would be fitting for an expo of innovative technology, but it has come with some logistical challenges.
How do you get 1,800 companies to coordinate online with 150,000 attendees? Streaming video. Companies from all over the world who normally would have a station in Las Vegas, are instead focusing on introducing their products and services virtually. Here are some of the trends of the three-day exhibition.
Obviously, people are having a hard time getting a handle on the COVID-19 pandemic as infection rates are up across the globe. Not surprisingly, there was a fair share of COVID-related devices. There were smart masks that connect to your phone and monitor your breathing and the quality of air in your immediate area. There were numerous introductions of touchless appliance fixtures using both motion sensor technology and voice recognition. There was a robot designed to use UV-C light to destroy viruses on surfaces, and a wearable air purifier.
TV innovations are always popular with CES attendees and a virtual conference doesn’t change that. One of the most innovative televisions was from LG, which introduced a 55-inch transparent TV that is built into a bed frame. They also introduced a 48-inch bendable display that can curve on demand.
CES 2021 saw two separate companies come out with new rolling displays for smartphones. LG introduced their rollable phone, they are calling LG Rollable as of now, that they plan on launching this year. Chinese company TCL also came out with a rollable phone that extends and contracts the display as you need it.
Everyone knows that 5G is probably the most important technology for 2021 (besides arguably COVID-19-themed tech), and despite what telecoms have been marketing, the technology is just now starting to be implemented. Companies discussed how 5G will improve the speed of society and provide new options for telemedicine and education. 5G is one of the core technologies needed to build smart cities, which is gaining plenty of traction as the technology gets deployed.
Fueled by 5G, one technology that has been emerging for some time, and that had a prominent place in CES 2021 is the driverless car. This is one of those “future” technologies that is very close to happening. There was even an event that explained that the tech is so close that people should start talking about the rules of governing autonomous vehicles.
Despite having to do it over the Internet, CES 2021 went off as planned. It may not be ideal, but it proves that innovation can’t be stymied by a global pandemic. Did you see something interesting from CES 2021? What do you think is the most impressive tech coming out of CES 2021? Comment below and return to our blog for more useful technology content.
2020 was… well, 2020… so it really isn’t any surprise that those businesses that made it to 2021 aren’t quite out of the woods yet. The many difficulties and challenges that 2020 brought will carry over into this year, many of them pertaining to information technology and how businesses utilize it. Let’s take a few moments to anticipate how these IT challenges will manifest this year.
In the recent past, remote work was almost seen as a taboo subject—many businesses either discouraged it or neglected to implement any organized policies in the first place. Even amongst those businesses that did adopt some form of remote work, only 20 percent or so of their employees were able to work remotely.
2020 changed this considerably, as many businesses hastily adopted remote work as a means of remaining operational. Some businesses—if they were able to do so—completely transitioned to remote work.
These shifts have necessitated numerous changes to be made so that businesses can ensure their workforce’s productivity and safety simultaneously. These changes won’t go away anytime soon if projections are to be believed.
Moving forward, companies will need to ensure that the correct security protocols are implemented, and processes carried out, particularly because many users will likely be working on their personal devices. This means that implementing remote monitoring and management solutions will be an important step for businesses to take from here on out.
With the prospect of remote work preserving productivity, it becomes important to protect it from other negative influences. The fight against downtime should be a matter any business takes very seriously… after all, its clients will expect 100 percent uptime, and anything less than that will quickly erode the trust they have.
After the year we’ve all just experienced, that trust is something no business can squander.
In addition to having trustworthy technology, businesses must also make sure that their team members are receiving the requisite TLC. Technology solutions aren’t the only component of your business subject to downtime: fatigue and burnout can each have a considerable impact on morale and output. Considering this, these factors also need to be addressed.
The past year flushed many business’ budgets down the proverbial toilet, which will carry over into this year by some measure. Money is bound to be tight. As a result, any proposed investments need to be scrutinized for the return they provide to the business.
We predict that this will lead many more businesses to the cloud as a means of acquiring the services and solutions they need. In addition to this, we expect automation and tools like it to be given much more consideration.
One way or another, 2021 will see some considerable changes to how businesses do their business. MSPNetworks can be here to help you see them through, and beyond. Learn more about our solutions and how they can benefit you by calling (516) 403-9001 today.
How confident are you that your business could survive a data disaster of any size and scale, from a single misplaced file to a complete loss of your entire onsite infrastructure? Being prepared to recover from any version of events is key to your business’ success. Let’s discuss this concept, which is widely known as IT resilience.
Resilience is a kind of umbrella term, covering three more specific business IT concerns and consolidating them into a single concept. These three concerns are:
These three concerns each must be attended to for your company and its IT to be truly resilient… where these issues can be experienced and overcome, and your business can fully recover and resume operations as usual. Ideally, your resilience will be high enough that your customers could conceivably go without even noticing that an issue took place before you had already resolved it.
To best understand the process of making sure that your IT infrastructure is sufficiently resilient, let’s look at a different example.
How often do you cross a bridge? For that bridge, resilience is extremely important, as it will need to hold up against a lot of pressure to successfully do its job. This means that a lot of consideration and care need to go into its design and construction. Supports need to be able to handle the amount of traffic with precautions put in place, safety concerns need to be addressed for the bridge to continue functioning, and so many other concerns need to be seen to. The same can be said of your business’ hardware and software.
How well can the bridge resist intentional sabotage as well? If it’s easy for someone to make it more vulnerable to issues, “resilient” is hardly the right word. Tying this back to your infrastructure, how much cybersecurity is in place to protect it?
Finally, what’s the plan for the worst-case scenario, like if the bridge were to fail? What strategies have you prepared to deal with the immediate effects and the ramifications moving forward? Are you prepared to divert traffic to maintain operations? How well, and how quickly, can the bridge be repaired for traffic to continue? This kind of disaster recovery preparation is something that you need to have completed for your business.
Each step of your processes and procedures needs to be examined to ensure that your strategies are sufficiently prepared for the potential events that could impact them. For instance, in terms of your disaster recovery strategy, where are your data backups stored? Keeping them in the same place as your original data is not resilient at all, as it could just take one disaster to lose it all.
Plus, even though there needs to be some ranking in terms of importance, you need to make sure that all your business’ IT is protected. All your data and its storage infrastructure, your business location, and yes, your employees, all need to be considered as you reinforce against disaster. Will it be cheap? No—but experiencing a disaster will be far worse.
True business resilience requires a very in-depth process, and as such, it requires the skill of an experienced IT professional. This is a hurdle for many businesses, with many currently relying on the skill of one or two of their employees to handle their IT needs and provide the support necessary—or seeking out external assistance from an outside provider.
The fact that resilience also isn’t one-size-fits-all, but more individualized to each business’ solution, is another complication. Neither an internal team nor a call-in, one-off provider can usually manage this challenge. However, for a managed service provider like MSPNetworks, this all is firmly in our wheelhouse.
Instead of offering all our clients the same solutions and assuming they’ll work, our team approaches things from a more personalized angle. After a comprehensive audit and review of your situation, we’ll work with you to design and implement an infrastructure and strategy that mitigates your weakness and leverages your strengths.
We can supplement your existing IT or step in as an outsourced department, whatever you need to keep your technology secure and available to your business regardless of the situation. To learn more about our services at MSPNetworks, and how they can boost your IT’s resilience, reach out to our team by calling (516) 403-9001.
As much as we hate to admit it, the first thing that many people still think of when they hear the term “tech support” is the experience that comes with an antiquated approach to technology services: the break/fix method. Fortunately for us, we are seeing many businesses make the better decision, and turn to the clearly superior option, managed IT.
Therefore, as a managed service provider, we know that all we have to do is wait.
When business computing really took off in the 1970s, break/fix IT made sense. Businesses were able to deploy standalone microcomputers or distributed mid-range server systems that operated through remote terminals. Then, in the ‘80s, the personal computer combined the benefits of the two, and really highlighted the benefits that computers could offer a business. When Windows 3.1 was introduced to business users in the 1990s, the computer’s place in business was cemented in forever.
For all this time, computers would have their issues… but it just didn’t make sense to call in for repairs or put an internal IT team on it. If it could still operate somewhat, that was good enough. Should the computer break down completely, IT was brought in to fix it.
Yes and no. Of course, this situation has always presented all the issues that have led many businesses away from the break/fix strategy today. For instance:
So, break-fix services were unpredictably expensive, and generally prevented any innovation or future planning for the client’s benefit, so issues had the tendency to repeatedly return. However, it wasn’t as though there was another option to compare it to at the time, either.
That option came around in the mid ‘90s, when the amount of technology in the office and its overall complexity increased greatly, with the introduction of fax machines, printers, and other hardware. Computers took much longer to repair when broken. The Internet exploded in popularity, adding an additional element of complexity.
This all meant that break/fix services soon became too inefficient to support businesses properly. Computers were no longer a convenience, but a legitimate necessity in the office, not to mention the other tools and devices that became key components to their processes. Downtime had evolved into something potentially devastating for operations, and expenses ran rampant.
As the new millennium came along, the modern managed service model was brought to the fore. This was thanks to an assortment of developments in information technology, including improved Internet, cloud technology, and automation. Using these tools, some IT providers saw a new opportunity and shifted how their services were delivered.
Gone were the days of waiting for operations to be in jeopardy before doing something about it.
Now, IT providers have the capability to remotely access and monitor a client’s network from afar, allowing them to more efficiently identify potential issues and mitigate them at effectively all hours—often, before a client ever encounters an issue. The biggest change, however, was how this approach was able to impact the way that managed service providers were able to charge for their services.
Rather than charging at an hourly rate, the nature of the service allowed it to be billed at a very inclusive monthly rate. This simplified matters for the client, as a set-rate service is far easier to budget for. As an added benefit, this also motivated those providers who made the switch from the flawed break/fix approach to deliver a better service to those who signed on to their services.
With managed services having been around and innovated upon for about two decades, there are even more opportunities for businesses to improve their processes and achieve greater goals. Break/fix is still around, too, but more and more businesses are seeing the comparative benefits of the managed service model and making the decision to switch. Managed services are a source of confidence. You no longer need to be concerned that your technology will bring issues into your business, because someone is there to take care of it for you.
Every so often, a new method is introduced that changes a foundational paradigm. Despite the relatively short time frame that business IT has been around for, managed services did just that… and therefore, break/fix services will eventually be—for all intents and purposes—phased out.
If you want to keep up with all the methods that will improve your business’ operations, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 today!
Augmented reality has been one of the most cited emerging technologies for the past few years. It was the technology that was supposed to fuel Google Glass, the failed attempt at creating a pair of revolutionary smart glasses. Since then, there hasn’t been much press about AR in the mainstream media and not much is known about major tech companies’ attempts to improve AR technology.
Augmented reality is an interactive experience where the resources of the smartphone coupled with AR software produce objects over the display of a device. Examples include the first down line they superimpose on a football broadcast, the filters that many messaging apps have integrated, and the immensely popular mobile game Pokemon Go.
Of course, these mostly are novelty uses, but businesses have made big efforts to incorporate AR technology into their marketing efforts over the past few years. IKEA famously uses AR technology in their IKEA Place app. It allows people to forecast what a room in their house would look like if they purchased a piece of furniture.
Google, understanding the extraordinarily useful applications of AR, launched their ARCore platform in March 2018. ARCore features three innovative technologies that provide mobile application developers the tools they need to build AR apps. They are:
This platform is allowing more developers than ever to integrate real time information into their applications for the user’s benefit. This has resulted in record growth for the technology in 2019, and that is only scratching the surface.
Google is not the only company that is all in on AR. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook are also making serious commitments to the technology. This is leading to a major boost in application development.
In the future, AR-fueled applications will be used in dozens of industries for hundreds of purposes. In fact, more than 100 million users have already used AR-enabled shopping applications. You will have to expect that as 5G wireless technology gets rolled out that number will be dwarfed by the number that will over the next few years.
Subscribe to our blog to ensure that you don’t miss any of our great technology content.
We hope we aren’t dating ourselves too much by mentioning computer punch cards, but they were once the means of inputting data into a computing device… at least, until the now-ubiquitous mouse and keyboard came into the scene. This variety of interfacing with our devices now seems to be one of the few ways to practically use them. However, other interfaces have emerged - do any of them stand a chance of unseating the keyboard and mouse?
Honestly, it really all depends on how (and if) the interfaces that are being developed are practically adopted. Here, we’ll go over how these interfaces are likely to be developed and how technology may be influenced in the future.
As you’re reading this blog right now, there’s a pretty fair chance that you accessed it using a keyboard and mouse. Despite other interfaces, like touch gestures and voice responsiveness, being popular on many new devices, there are still plenty of devices that leverage the mouse and keyboard combination. However, this is not to say that there aren’t other upcoming interfaces that we are already seeing more and more. Take augmented and virtual reality, for example. These two interfaces are being seen more and more commonly, making it more likely that they will be leveraged for practical work purposes sooner than later. The same can be said of digital assistants and their capabilities to streamline many of the day-to-day operations that would otherwise take up your employees’ time.
The whole point behind a user interface is to make it easier for a user to, for lack of a better term, pick up and play with whatever solution they happen to be leveraging. It was precisely this phenomenon that made the smartphone such a successful technology, as the highly hands-on UI made the devices remarkably intuitive to use. However, we may not even need to touch our devices at all in the near future. One of Google’s many ventures, Project Soli, is dedicated to creating a touch-free manual interface that uses radar to “read” the gestures of a user.
This kind of user interface could likely lead to a more three-dimensional version, similar to what can be seen in films like Minority Report. In fact, the researcher who assisted in creating the movie, John Underkoffer, has made strides towards the practical creation of such an interface.
Another potential route for UI to take in the future, haptic holograms, can be seen in the Iron Man franchise. Instead of the “typical” holograms, which function as little more than projections of light, haptic holograms can be manipulated by the user - allowing them to be edited, reorganized, and reexamined. As seen in the movies, these holograms could even mimic physical computing components, like keyboards. This suggests that the need for these physical components may not be quite as much of a need as it would be a preference in the relatively near future. Putting it simply, we find this idea pretty darn cool - and this is just the tip of the UI iceberg.
Yes, you read that right… the future of UI will likely allow us to use computers with only our minds. Advancements in bioelectronics and what is known as Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology have enabled us to scan a user’s brain waves and have a computer translate these waves into actionable commands.
Tests are already in progress to apply this technology to robotic limbs, motorized wheelchairs, and other accessibility tools. There is also research being pursued to enable us to use BCI technology to control the many devices and household utilities in our lives.
BCI has also been heavily featured in solutions to help restore a person’s capacity to communicate, or simply to augment it. There are implants that now allow a user to use their mind to type, while others are in development to directly convert brain waves into text. Astoundingly, there have been experiments conducted that have pretty much granted human beings the gift of telepathy. A subject in India was instructed to think the word “hello.” This thought was then converted into binary code and emailed to France, where it was reformatted into brainwaves and received by a second subject.
BCI has even been used to record dreams. Admittedly, these recordings aren’t of the highest quality, but the fact of the matter is that we have recorded dreams.
OF course, it should go without saying that practically using BCI for computing is a long way off, so you don’t have to give up your mouse and keyboard just yet. However, it is also a little fun to imagine how these advanced interfaces could potentially be used to improve the human experience sooner than later. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But, what do you think? Are any of these applications of advanced user interfaces of particular interest to you? Discuss it with us in the comments!
If your business is one that depends on transportation, you know that coordination is extremely important. With consumers’ reliance on a company’s distribution arm, today’s companies are turning old practices on their heads and utilizing a more technology-driven approach to effectively manage their company’s transportation initiatives. This technology is innovating quickly and could mean a major transformation for businesses before too long. Today, we’ll go through three innovations that are working to change how transportation-dependent companies do things.
The first technology that we want to talk about is fleet management. Fleet management is actually a makeup of several different types of software that has been combined to create a comprehensive fleet management platform. The fleet management software includes an easy-to-use centralized dashboard. In this dashboard you can find all the information that needs to be known about your fleet, including:
Since fleet management software is designed to manage large numbers of vehicles, drivers, and combinations of the two, having one outfitting your distribution or transportation section of your business is a complete game changer. Not only can you tell who is driving what vehicle, you can see what it will ultimately cost to run the routes, providing actionable information in which to make decisions.
An ever-growing part of modern-day technology, the Internet of Things, is beginning to revolutionize the way companies are able to track their assets. Since any manufacturing company relies on its procurement processes and its distribution, the IoT is a major benefit to manufacturers. With IoT-enabled asset tracking solutions integrated, you can remotely track your equipment, vehicles, and inventory on both ends to more effectively manage your assets.
IoT-enabled asset tracking provides the following features:
If your business has problems with route inefficiency, costs of doing business, or any other logistics-based aspect of your business, utilizing asset management software powered by the Internet of Things can be a good solution for your company.
Finally, we get to the creme de la creme of transportation innovation: the driverless vehicle. It’s been years since the first driverless car was tested and today there are working trucks shipping products on southwest U.S. highways. While today’s driverless trucks aren’t advanced enough to make dock-to-dock runs, navigating the open road is no problem. Uber subsidiary Otto completed the first-ever autonomous delivery, delivering beer from Fort Collins, CO to Colorado Springs, CO. In the next few years it will be a viable alternative to hiring shipping companies; and, beyond may just make the truck driver an endangered species. Some of the main benefits of driverless trucks include:
Since there is a long way to go until autonomous vehicles will be the predominant form of shipping used by most businesses, finding out what solutions can work today to help you benefit your company is important. Call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001 for more.
Even if we’d like it to last forever, business technology can’t possibly do so for a number of reasons. Due to the fact that businesses and their technology are constantly upgrading and changing, it’s almost a certainty that you’ll have to upgrade your technology at some point, whether it reaches its end-of-life event or just simply becomes obsolete for your organization. In fact, failing to update your infrastructure from time to time can have serious negative side-effects for your business.
We’ll show you why solutions eventually reach their EOL and how to handle this event when it arrives.
Why Do Services and Solutions Have an End-of-Life?
All good things must come to an end. For example, you probably can’t remember the last time you used an actual rotary phone (if ever), and there’s a very good reason we don’t carve messages in stone or drive horse-and-buggies around anymore--there are better, more efficient options for these solutions. While they may have been game-changing for the time they existed, there was always an effort to improve and innovate. This process continues for as long as people can dream of making better business decisions and improving their operations. After all, if there’s one thing that all businesses can agree on, it’s that faster and more efficient solutions are better than old, outdated ones.
Technology in general has improved substantially over the past several decades. Computers that used to fill up entire rooms are now dwarfed in power by the devices we carry with us in our pockets. Of course, this change was gradual and occurred over a rather long period of time. The same level of change can be seen in automobiles. The first automobile was built in 1885 by Karl Benz, but it took another 15 years to introduce a proper steering wheel and 24 years for the addition of a radio. 1958 saw the addition of the seatbelt, but it wasn’t until 1970 that it became a front-seat requirement. Considering just how far vehicles have come in this span of time--driving themselves, connecting to space radio services, and warning drivers if doors or seatbelts aren’t used properly--it’s quite easy to see just how out-of-date a revolutionary (at the time) vehicle like the one Benz produced is in today’s society. The same aspect can be applied to business technology.
How to Approach Your Business’ IT
You don’t always have to wait until the end-of-life event for your technology to upgrade it. We recommend taking the following steps for replacing your IT:
MSPNetworks can help your business implement the right technology at the right time. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.
Learn more about what MSPNetworks can do for your business.
MSPNetworks
1111 Broadhollow Rd Suite 202
Farmingdale, New York 11735