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MSPNetworks has been serving the Farmingdale area since 2010, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Remote Work Has Been Around for Longer than You’d Think

A lot of people aren’t aware that working from home is not a recent innovation. It can arguably be traced back over a million and a half years, when our ancestors would work relatively close to their dwelling places. Throughout our history, work has shifted away and back again to the remote methodology. Let’s look back through the years to see the progression of how people worked, based on the technology that was available.


Working from Home Was Largely the Norm

In the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution, especially in the medieval period and the Renaissance, working from home was how people worked. European peasantry lived in structures called “longhouses” with their livestock and workplaces contained inside with them. In fact, it wasn’t until 1760 and the Industrial Revolution that working someplace else was a common option.

Even then, factory managers often operated out of small buildings adjacent to the factory that were built to reflect many of the comforts of home.

The Shift to Office Work

The office as we know it today didn’t come around until the early 1900s, as technologies like electricity, telephony, and typing became available, with Ford Motor Companies adopting the now-traditional 9-to-5 workday in 1926.

By the 1960s, clerical work had taken over much of the job market, and with it, an intense obsession with productivity. Managers of the time kept detailed notes of how long it should take to carry out activities that today aren’t even considered. In case you were wondering, turning in your swivel chair should take you 0.009 minutes, as a guide from 1960 dictates. The cubicle, the epitome of removing distractions in the workplace, was first designed in 1968.

Technology Helped Encourage Remote Practices

However, in the 1970s, a variety of factors were introduced that made the prospect of remote work more appealing. For instance, rising concerns over the environment brought up the concept of remote work, and technology was developed that enabled remote productivity.

Once the Internet was introduced in 1983, remote work was considered a legitimate option again. With Wi-Fi’s development in 1991 and various professional and governmental innovations over the next few decades, we now have the means to support remote operations for so many—and thank goodness we do.

MSPNetworks is here to help you leverage the various tools that your business can use to support its operations on a remote basis. To learn more about these tools and how you can best use them today, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

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What Are the Most Important IT Solutions for an SMB?

While all a business’ technology solutions are important, some are bound to take priority over the others, especially when certain ones become an industry-wide focus. A recent survey evaluated the top concerns of small-to-medium-sized businesses for the coming year. The results of the survey identified a few telling trends regarding the priorities that SMBs hold now, and for good reason.


Techaisle, a market research and industry analysis organization, collected and consolidated data to identify where SMBs and small businesses specifically saw their biggest business issues and their technology challenges and priorities. Let’s bear down specifically on the answers provided by the small businesses to see if your internal priorities and concerns match up to theirs.

Issues

According to the survey, a small business’ largest concerns are all what one would generally expect of any business. Here they are as the survey identified them:

  1. Attracting and retaining new customers
  2. Increasing profitability
  3. Increasing business growth

These were the highest priorities for the survey’s respondents. The areas of least concern, as the survey identified, were: 

  1. Improving workplace productivity
  2. Improving effectiveness of sales and marketing
  3. Focusing on new markets

Oddly enough, these areas of lower concern could directly benefit the efforts of their top concerns if perhaps prioritized more… but I digress.

Priorities and Challenges

Speaking of the priorities that the surveyed small businesses presented, the trends therein were exceptionally clear. Nearly as clear, is how directly these priorities line up with the IT challenges that these businesses face.

Here are the top four priorities and challenges, respectively:

  1. Cloud / Cloud security
  2. Mobility solutions / Customer experience
  3. Collaboration / Maintaining current IT infrastructure
  4. Managed services / Budget constraints

What this tells us is that businesses largely have the right idea of how they can use information technology to help address their biggest concerns. By adopting relatively new approaches to IT services and their delivery of them, like cloud solutions and managed services, businesses can better increase their profitability and scale upwards through bringing in more people to sign on.

The IT challenges that the surveyed businesses specified are also well-managed by implementing precisely what they have prioritized. It makes sense that, with cloud ranking as their number-one priority, cloud security is correspondingly elevated. Similarly, with customer service standards to uphold, the ability to collaborate with the rest of the team needs to be a priority.

Finally, the budgetary limitations and the maintenance requirements play even more deeply into the adoption of managed IT services, which help relieve both concerns for businesses.

There’s a lot more that a managed service provider can deliver to a business, and we’d be happy to discuss it with you further. If you have any more questions or want to learn more about managed services and what they entail, give the professionals at MSPNetworks a call. Reach out to us today at (516) 403-9001.

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Efficient IT Goes a Long Way

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing businesses to rethink their operational strategies, many businesses have had to make a quick digital transformation. Many businesses have accomplished this before the stay-at-home orders, but with employees working from home, we thought this was the perfect time to take a look at four tools businesses can use to improve their work-from-home strategies. 


Analysis, In Real Time

Making prudent and qualified decisions is more important now that it has ever been before. To be able to make informed decisions, many SMBs are looking to their analytics platforms. By being able to look at how aspects of your businesses are functioning in real time, you can quickly change strategies that need to be changed in order to keep your business running efficiently.

Additionally, many analytic systems can be structured near the edge of an organization’s computing network, giving them more insight into how data is flowing in and out of their network.

Other benefits include:

  • Managing location data - Directs decision makers’ strategies by determining the relevant data for multiple locations.
  • Anomaly detection - Helps decision makers detect outlying data sets to avoid impulsive decision making. 
  • Improved marketing - Assists decision makers to make decisions based on demand when it otherwise wouldn’t be noticed.

Voice Over Internet Protocol

VoIP is one of the most useful tools for teleworkers. It provides strong communication options, highlighted by an enterprise-grade telephone system, for pennies on the proverbial dollar. Additional available options that can help remote workers such as instant messaging, text messaging, and audio and video conferencing make VoIP a powerful tool for businesses looking to sustain levels of productivity with workers out of the office. 

Automation

One of the best tools for cutting costs is process automation. A lot of businesses are trying to effectively identify processes within their workflow where they can automate mundane or repetitive tasks. By having the type of consistency automation brings to these types of tasks, businesses can utilize their human resources on more revenue-building assignments.

Tasks that can be automated include:

  • Tasks that involve moving information around
  • Frequent and mundane, but necessary tasks
  • Tasks that frequently interrupt focus on business-critical tasks

Making the investment to automate parts of your business will assuredly save your organization money. Best yet, by automating these tasks now, once operations return to normal, you will keep seeing the cost savings you do today. 

Online Sales

There are a lot of businesses that have implemented some semblance of ecommerce prior to this event, but if you haven't, or if you have a limited ecommerce platform, you could see a major bump in revenue from investing in your ecommerce platform. In retail, companies are seeing double and even triple times the sales through their ecommerce solution than they did only a few short weeks ago. Prioritizing your online sales will go a long way toward keeping revenues up while your storefront is closed.

For the small business these can be lean times. Knowing what technologies and strategies to implement will go a long way toward getting you through this period. For more information about technology and how it can work for your business during the COVID-19 period, call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001. 

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Rethinking Your Budget for a New Reality

With the COVID-19 outbreak forcing businesses into unenviable situations, it’s probably not surprising that business owners and decision makers are looking at what expenses they need to cut in order to keep their businesses afloat. Today, we’ll discuss the trends we are seeing and how managed IT services can be a godsend in situations like this.


Inevitable Cuts

While technology has helped millions of businesses from all over the world stay relevant during the pandemic, we’re seeing that IT is one of the elements of a business that is seeing the most spending reduction. After all, most businesses have to cut some costs just to make everything work. Furthermore, analysts are saying that after the outbreak ends, the remaining recession will actually cut IT expenses by two or more percent for the next year. For an industry that has seen spending rise by five or more percent for each of the past eight years, that is problematic.

To sustain profitability businesses will need to free up as much capital as they can during times like this, and many businesses including ones that operate in the hospitality and manufacturing industries are already seeing massive declines in revenue. This suggests that their 2020 and 2021 spends will probably be less than their 2019 spends. 

This means that many businesses will be cancelling their planned technology projects, especially if they are non-essential. They are using this capital to improve their liquidity and to fund the transitions necessary to support their newly remote workforce. 

Telework and How Managed IT Services Can Help

If your business is looking to make some cuts to your operational technology, choosing the right IT service provider can be a great solution. Not only will you be able to maintain your current IT infrastructure, but a managed IT service provider (MSP) can help you find and implement the solutions you are going to need to get through this situation. 

Let’s start with the remote workforce. Before the pandemic only around eight percent of full-time workers were able to have the flexibility to consistently work from home. With states mandating people stay at home during this situation, telework has exploded. If your company was one of the few that provided telework options before the stay-at-home orders hit, you probably have had a much easier transition to supporting a completely remote workforce. Most businesses, however, didn’t, and are seeing that setting this up properly isn’t terribly cheap.

The challenges of supporting a staff that works remotely aren’t necessarily the same as you would have envisioned. Many businesses didn’t provide the work-from-home flexibility out of the fear that they would lose substantial amounts of productivity (and therefore revenue). While this is still somewhat of a concern, most workers that work remotely understand what their responsibilities are and go above and beyond to ensure that they aren’t the weak link. It's been said multiple times over the past several weeks, but if you have an employee that does not work well from home, it's a pretty good bet that he/she wasn't working that well from the office, either. 

One consideration that does have to be made, however, is how to secure your endpoints and data-in-transit. If this wasn’t already a main consideration of your disaster recovery policy, it will be now. Working with remote access and virtual private networks can go a long way toward mitigating the risk your company will see. An MSP can quickly help you find solutions that will not only keep your data safe and protect your existing infrastructure, it can provide you with new and affordable tools to leverage to keep your business compliant of the regulations your business falls under. 

What’s more, with the use of a state-of-the-art monitoring and management platform, the trustworthy MSP continuously monitors your network and infrastructure to ensure that everything is working properly, efficiently, and securely. In times like this, when there are files coming in and flowing out of your network, knowing that you have professional technicians versed in contemporary knowledge of threats and inefficiencies, alike, can be a huge benefit for your business.

Finally, an MSP does all this (and more) for a fraction of the cost of paying an onsite IT department (who would be working from home right now anyway). An MSP will help you reduce downtime, keep your network and infrastructure working effectively and securely, and do it for a static monthly cost. This allows you to cut your IT support costs and have a number that won’t change from month-to-month.

If you would like more information about how managed IT services can help your business in this time of crisis call MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001. 

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Understanding IT Acronyms You Hear in the Office

Technology can be complicated, and it doesn’t help when all you hear is an alphabet soup of acronyms used to describe it. As professionals, this kind of jargon has become a second language to us and it is easy to forget that not everyone will recognize these acronyms. For your reference, we’ve assembled some common ones you’ll probably hear us use.


-aaS

This means “as-a-service” and is typically preceded by another letter or letters, like “IaaS” (for Infrastructure-as-a-Service) or “DRaaS” (Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service). This means that a given business need is available from a service provider at a monthly, budgetable rate, with the provider managing whatever the solution in question is on an ongoing basis. This approach has grown in popularity amongst businesses, who benefit from the sustained nature of the given service delivered.

BI

BI, or business intelligence, is the culmination of data analysis to better understand business trends. While enterprises have put it to the most use, business intelligence and big data are slowly being introduced to businesses of all sizes to help them boost their operations. 

BYOD

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, is a strategy that many businesses use to cut costs and boost their employee satisfaction by allowing their staff members to use their own devices in the workplace, rather than ones provided by the employer. With the right precautions in place, BYOD can prove to be very beneficial for the business’ budget.

DoS

A Denial-of-Service attack (and sometimes, a DDoS, or Distributed-Denial-of-Service attack) is a form of cyberattack where a system’s operations are overwhelmed by an onslaught of incoming traffic. The interruptions that this causes can create significant challenges for a business.

EOL

When a solution reaches its EOL, or its End-of-Life, it effectively means that the developer is no longer updating its security to protect it and, by proxy, its users. This makes it of significant importance to keep apprised of the status of your solutions and have plans to migrate away from any that are approaching their EOL dates. Windows 7 reached its EOL not too long ago, for example.

IoT

The IoT is shorthand for the Internet of Things, the assortment of non-traditional devices that feature an Internet connection to boost their capabilities. While the IoT is a fascinating development in technology today, it also presents many challenges to your organizational security that must be addressed.

LAN

A LAN, or a Local Area Network, is a network used to share resources between computers contained within a limited distance. This is present in many offices, especially those that share printers or access to other pieces of connected equipment.

MFA

Multi-factor authentication, sometimes referred to as 2-factor authentication, is the practice of requiring an additional means of verifying one’s identity as one requests access to an account or a resource. By identifying a user with a username, the traditional password serves as the first factor of authentication, while the second requirement might demand a PIN number dictated by an application, or even biometric information.

SSL

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is a protocol for encrypting data between a server and the device a user has. Used to protect data as it passes from client to server and back again, SSL is what turns HTTP into HTTPS in a web browser.

UPS

Disasters are nothing to fool around with, which makes the inclusion of an Uninterruptible Power Supply so crucial to your infrastructure. Many pieces of computing hardware need to go through a process to safely shut down, so a sudden power outage is a dangerous prospect. A UPS gives them the juice needed to safely power down, protecting your business’ hardware.

VM

A VM, or a virtual machine, is an interesting piece of technology. Rather than installing an entirely new piece of hardware, a simulated version is introduced into an infrastructure, allowing users access to an additional solution set. This enables you to make use of additional resources without investing in additional hardware.

VoIP

As the acronym for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, VoIP describes an approach to telephony that cuts out a large chunk of the costs associated with office telephones. In addition, VoIP solutions come with many business-friendly benefits included, while they would ordinarily come at a cost.

VPN

A VPN is a virtual private network. A virtual private network effectively creates a tunnel that encrypts data as it makes its way to its destination, protecting it along the way. It is an excellent solution for a business, especially one that utilizes many remote workers.

WAN

WAN, or wide-area networks, are used by organizations that have multiple locations over a wider area by connecting multiple small networks into one larger network. 

To learn more about these solutions, and many others that we can help you to implement, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

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A Brief Introduction to Database Management Systems

Data is one of a business’ most important assets, and as such, it needs to be kept in such a way that it remains organized and utilizable. This has led to widespread use of databases in businesses, which has necessitated the use of database management systems. Let’s take a closer look at these systems, and why they are so crucial.


For a frame of reference, let’s imagine that our database is actually a library, and all of the books inside are actually our data. Following this analogy, the database management system (or DBMS) is like the Dewey Decimal System… it keeps the contents of your database/library organized and usable.

The Function of a DBMS

As you may have already figured out, the database management system helps you secure and organize the data stored in your database. By allowing you to better keep track of your database’s activity, you maintain more control over your database.

This control, paired with the added convenience of the DBMS, offers you a variety of benefits. These benefits include.

  • A DBMS allows you to restrict access to data that an end user has.
  • Users have a simpler time finding the data they need.
  • It eliminates the need to restructure data to use different programs.
  • Administration procedures can be unified.
  • A DBMS makes data processing more economical.
  • Data inconsistencies between file systems are eliminated.
  • A DBMS allows for simultaneous data access between multiple users.

So, when all is said and done, a DBMS can simplify your users’ tasks, without sacrificing your control or data security.

If you want to optimize your business’ productivity and efficacy, MSPNetworks is here to help. Call (516) 403-9001 today to discuss your particular needs with us.

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Defining Shadow IT and Its Risks

IT administrators are pretty particular about what software is used on the networks that they manage. This is not because we have any vested interest in the software itself, it’s because of the inherent reliability of the software they manage. They’ve tested it, they manage it, they know it. When an organization starts dealing with employee-downloaded software--especially if there is no procedure in place to report additions to IT--they can quickly lose control over the network. 


The software that isn’t properly vetted (or even reported most of the time) is called shadow IT. Since it’s the IT administrator’s job to oversee the data security and overall effectiveness of your company’s technology deployments, shadow IT can present them with a bunch of risk.  IT administrators hate risk. Today, we’ll take you through the good and bad of shadow IT.

Shadow IT is Bad

Most of the people that work with a computer have been working with similar technology for a long time. While they aren’t IT experts, they know what software works best for them. That experience will often result in them downloading software that hasn’t been approved by their company’s IT department or outsourced IT service vendor. This software, while useful for the user, may be a major problem for an organization, for several reasons.

The main issue is that any software that is downloaded may come with adware, spyware, malware, vulnerabilities, and other nefarious code that can put a business at risk. Worse yet, that software isn’t known to your IT admin, keeping it from the routine maintenance it needs to keep it from being a vulnerability. If your business carries vulnerable software, it can create a breachable hole in your network. So, while you may not see continuous problems, risk is magnified. 

What are the risks? Here are a few:

  • A lack of security - Without the visibility and control over network-attached resources, IT management becomes much more difficult. If there is a potential that a piece of software can put a hole in your network, you are compromising the network’s security.
  • Problems with performance - If the tool that’s implemented doesn’t mesh with the system it’s installed on, the app’s performance--and thus the user’s--will be compromised.
  • Compliance problems - If your organization needs to meet certain compliance standards, the presence of unmanaged software makes it almost impossible to meet said standards.
  • Data loss - If IT management doesn’t know that a software is on the network, it won’t be covered by organizational backup strategies, meaning work completed using shadow IT apps won’t be backed up.

The minute you understand the risks, it becomes clear why IT admins typically don’t like shadow IT at all.

Can Shadow IT be Good?

Risky behavior can be a major problem for a business. It can also result in significant reward. According to a study conducted in 2019, there is a shift in the way that IT admins are looking at shadow IT. This is mainly the result of organizations looking to improve productivity and to use available capital more effectively. For the detrimental risk that shadow IT can bring a company, there is an opportunity to save time and cut costs.

The study, which included 1,000 IT professionals, showed that a whopping 77 percent believe that embracing shadow IT solutions can help a company innovate quicker than their direct competition. That’s not all.

  • 49 percent said that shadow IT boosts productivity.
  • 45 percent said that shadow IT helps promote employee engagement.
  • 40 percent said that shadow IT helps promote adherence to IT security requirements.
  • 40 percent said that shadow IT would help reduce employee turnover.

Effectively, two-fifths of IT admins said that shadow IT’s detriments could be ignored. That’s not to say that I know any IT administrator that would be totally okay with having unsupported applications on company-owned machines. Not one would deliberately put a gaping hole in their organization’s network to boost productivity. 

What they would promote is the use of shadow IT that is brought onto the network through employee-owned devices. This practice is being shown more leniency now more than ever. After all, IT admins can’t possibly be responsible for every piece of software brought onto the network by employees. They bring laptops, and tablets, and smartphones, and IoT devices, and with all those devices, there are bound to be programs that IT admins typically wouldn’t want on there, but would accept if it kept decision makers happy and productivity high.

If you would like to learn more about shadow IT, what constitutes shadow IT, or have any other software and maintenance questions, call our knowledgeable professionals today at (516) 403-9001.

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Holy Moly It’s 2020: 50 Years of Technology

Today is the first day of the third decade of the 21st century. For some, it’s just another year, but for others it seems almost impossible that we’ve reached this point without floating cars and manned missions to Jupiter. Fifty years ago, some of the technology that is used in the course of doing business was simply fiction or conjecture. We thought it would be neat to take a look at some of the technological changes made since 1970.


Using our time machine, we want to travel through time to identify some technologies that have been invented in the past 50 years. The microchip (microprocessor) was invented in 1959, so that doesn’t quite fit the criteria of our list. Multi-location networking was also a thing as the ARPANET had just rolled out the year before. These technologies were the predecessors for some of the best tech we’ve seen developed over the past 50 years.

We start in the 1970s... 

1970s

Like most of society, the technology world was changing rapidly in the early 1970s. In quick succession, computing went from something that businesses and individuals only thought of in passing to a revolution that could change the world. New technologies that we would laugh at today were just reaching the market. Here is a brief list of some of the technologies that debuted in the 1970s:

  • Automated Teller Machine (ATM) - Introduced automated banking.
  • Intel 1103 memory chip - It was the first memory chip produced by Intel that introduced their dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). 
  • Intel 4004 microprocessor - Intel also released the very first microprocessor.
  • Email - The first emails were introduced and sent over the ARPANET.
  • Xerox Laser Printer - The Xerox 9700, the first laser printer was developed.
  • SuperPaint - The first computer used for digital imaging manipulation was introduced.
  • Mobile Networking - ARPA developed the first wireless network out of a van in San Francisco and tested out early versions of VoIP. 
  • The First Cell Phone - Motorola introduced the cell phone in 1973.
  • Groundwork for the Internet - European researchers created “networks of networks” in a process called internetworking.
  • Local Area Networks (LAN) - Using ethernet, Xerox created the first commercial LAN. IBM and Datapoint also introduced solutions.
  • First Mass Storage - IBM introduces their 3850 mass storage system. It stored up to 236 GB of data. 
  • Business Networks Expand - Packet-switched business networks like CompuServe, Telenet, and Tymnet are introduced, connecting business terminals to servers. 
  • PC Wars - Apple’s first commercial personal computer, the Apple II was released in 1977 as were the Commodore PET, and the Tandy/Radio Shack PC called the TRS-80. 
  • LaserDisc - The forerunner to the CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disk, the LaserDisk was expensive, but offered superior audio and visual quality than the tape-based systems of the time. 
  • WordStar - One of the most popular word processors of the early PC age. 
  • Introduction of Online Services - Services such as MicroNet (also known as CompuServe Information Service) and The Source started what could be described as a precursor to the Internet. These services provided early versions of what you would find with AOL and Prodigy in the early 90s. 
  • Business PCs - VisiCalc, a software that automated the recalculation of spreadsheets effectively turned the growing PC market into a business PC market overnight. 
  • The First Malware - In 1979 the first Internet worm was created as a way to search for idle processors on the ARPANET. 

1980s

After the immense amount of technological invention in the 1970s, innovation was the name of the game going forward. In the 1980s, many of the systems that were lauded as revolutionary got a new look, and many of the technologies expanded, especially for businesses. Here are some of the computing technologies that were introduced--or improved upon--in the 1980s:

  • 3½-inch Floppy Disk Drive - There was a 5½-inch disk drive, there was a 3-inch, 3¼-inch, and the 3.9-inch floppy drive, but Sony developed the 3½-inch drive that Hewlett-Packard started putting in their PCs. It quickly grew to become the standard. 
  • Hard Disk Drive for Microcomputers - Seagate Technology’s ST506 was the first hard disk drive created for microcomputers. The drive held 5 MB of data, five times your average floppy disk. 
  • Business Workstations - Both Apollo and Sun Microsystems created hardware that would run resource-intensive graphics programs used for engineering and scientific research. 
  • MS-DOS - Microsoft Disk Operating System, or MS-DOS, was released for IBM computers. 
  • Lotus 1-2-3 - The first software suite that offered a word processor, spreadsheet program, and a database. It helped businesses get the tools they needed in one single software suite. 
  • Apple Lisa - The first personal computer that came with a functioning graphical user interface (GUI).
  • Bernoulli Box - The Bernoulli Box was the first hard drive that was removable. Disks ranged from 5MB to 230MB.
  • CD-ROM - The CD was already catching on in the mid-1980s when the CD-ROM, a construct that could store 550MB of data caught on and was the standard for years to come.  
  • Apple Macintosh - Apple’s Macintosh was the first mainstream mouse-driven computer, that came equipped with several applications that set the standard for personal computing of the time including MacWrite (first to use WYSIWYG) and MacPaint, which was the first mouse-based drawing program. 
  • Flash Memory - Flash memory, which can be quickly erased and written over several times was invented in a Toshiba lab.
  • PC Limited - Michael Dell dropped out of school to focus on a business where he built IBM-compatible computers from stock components. It soon became one of the most successful computer retailers in the world. 
  • The Internet - U.S. Internet protocols are improved by the formation of NSFNET, the last step in what would become the Internet. 
  • GSM Standard - Setting a standard for mobile networks, and introducing text messaging, the mobile revolution started in the late 1980s in Europe. 
  • Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - The result from Robert T. Morris sent a nondestructive worm through the new Internet causing major damage. He was tried and convicted and had to serve community service for hacking the Internet.
  • Macintosh Portable - It may not have sold well or been a success by any measure, but it did start computer manufacturers in their quest to build portable computers; something most users today completely appreciate. 

1990s

The 1990s saw a complete shift in the way that people used technology. Businesses, schools, and home users increased their use of computing technology and the growth of the Internet, which brought with it extreme prosperity followed by a crash that threatened the economies of some of the most technologically-savvy countries in the world. Here is a look at some of the technologies introduced in the 1990s.

  • High Performance Computing and Communication Act - The U.S. Congress created the National Information Infrastructure that spent nearly a billion dollars on various networking initiatives that were aimed at improving commercial and individual access to the Internet. 
  • NSF Lifts Internet Restrictions - Soon after the National Science Foundation (NSF), the entity that oversaw the modern Internet, removed its restrictions, giving businesses and individuals access to Internet-based materials. At this time the Internet service provider (ISP) is introduced as well.
  • JPEG - The JPEG compression standard for images was introduced. 
  • Solid State Drive - The first commercially available solid-state drive was introduced by SunDisk (today SanDisk).
  • Personal Data Assistant - Before there was Siri and the Google Assistant, there were devices that aimed to help people keep organized. Apple’s Newton and Palm’s Pilot are two examples of mobile computing platforms aimed to help users.
  • Intel Releases Pentium - Pentium was the fifth generation of the “x86” line of microprocessors. The new processors made programs run faster as multi-instructional computing became more necessary. 
  • Microsoft Windows NT - It was the first 32-bit version of Windows, making it a powerful option for IBM and IBM-compatible machines. 
  • Mosaic - The first true Internet browser, it had provided users a new level of access to Internet resources. 
  • The First Online Ads - As people started to join the “world wide web” en masse, online ads were a rare occurrence. As you know, today, the Internet is one large billboard.
  • CompactFlash - SanDisk introduced flash disks which were then incorporated into many consumer and professional electronic devices. 
  • Zip Disk - Understanding the need for more data storage, Iomega introduced the Zip Disk that provided users the ability to get 100MB of storage on a disk not much bigger than the standard 3.5-inch disks that had become standard. Over time Zip drives could store up to 2GB before the technology became antiquated.
  • Browser wars - Half of Mosaic's team broke off and started Netscape, while Microsoft used the source code of the Mosaic browser to create their Internet Explorer browser. The two browsers went head-to-head. Netscape thrived for a short time, but since IE was shipped with every Windows OS, it was hard for them to compete. Today, Microsoft has scrapped IE and features the Edge browser, while Netscape failed and became the basis for Mozilla’s Firefox browser that is still popular today. 
  • The ThinkPad 701C - Manufacturers had been trying to make a laptop computer for several years, but the ThinkPad 701 gave users a full desktop experience in a portable machine. 
  • Java - Sun Microsystems introduced Java, which let a program run on any system, opening up development for modern PCs from just the major players in computing. The language JavaScript was developed at the same time, but stands independently despite sharing the same handle. 
  • Online Services - AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe had been the major players for much of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, giving users a “walled garden” experience of the web, but with the development of Microsoft Network (MSN) it opened up the web much more to the end user.
  • Windows 95 - The first modern OS that focused on an Internet-connected experience. It also introduced the concept of plug and play, a great innovation for allowing peripherals to connect without having to initiate setup from a driver disk. 
  • CD-RW - An optical disk used for data storage and could be written and written over several hundred times; a feature not many people actually took advantage of.
  • Visual Studio - Programming new software became big business and essential to the sustainability of new web-based platforms. Visual Studio 97 helped push this along. 
  • Digital Millennium Copyright Act - A law passed by the U.S. congress that began to crack down on the sharing of copyrighted intellectual property over the Internet.
  • Wi-Fi - The establishment of Wi-Fi expanded the ability for computers to access networks and the Internet without wires.

2000s

As the millennium approached there were fears that the software developed wouldn’t work when the calendar changed. Millions of dollars were spent ensuring the world wouldn’t stop. After Y2K (as it was called), the 2000s would produce some of the most amazing technology the world had ever seen; and, would change the way people look at the world, forever. Let’s take a look at the list:

  • The Camera Phone - Japanese manufacturer SoftBank introduced the first cellular phone with a built-in camera. 
  • USB Flash Drive - The USB flash drive, jump drive, or memory stick was just a way for people to take data on the go, but it has turned out to be the basis of many other technologies as well. 
  • BitTorrent - A peer-to-peer file sharing service that allows users to upload and download files, typically media. It has seen controversy as lawyers of the music and movie industry have claimed that BitTorrent facilitates the theft of their clients’ intellectual property. 
  • iTunes - iTunes introduced the sale of new music through a digital medium. Unlike the peer-to-peer sharing, iTunes was set up as a store for music. 
  • Myspace - Myspace might not have been the first or the largest social network, but it was the most important in the early 2000s. Facebook soon entered the market and is now one of the world’s most important and divisive companies. 
  • Google - Google’s IPO was a seminal moment for the Internet as we know it. Already a popular search engine, Google cracked the code for how to monetize search results online. Today, it is one of the largest, and most lucrative companies in all of tech.
  • AWS Cloud Services - The retail giant Amazon launched its Amazon Web Services providing companies the computing hardware they need in the cloud. Services like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure followed. 
  • Netflix - A streaming movie service that has changed the way people look at media. 
  • Apple iPhone - In what was one of the most important technology inventions in decades, Apple released the iPhone, which may have not been the first smartphone, but it sure seems like it was.
  • Bitcoin - The first cryptocurrency was the result of a blockchain created by a person (or people) that goes/go by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Releasing the source code as open-source software has resulted in thousands of other cryptocurrencies, as well as many innovations using the blockchain ledger technology.
  • BDR - Before backup and disaster recovery, there was mostly tape. When the cloud-based network-attached storage solutions came to be, businesses had a better solution to protect their data. 

2010s

The more that technology was innovated upon, the less was going into developing new technology. After the launch of the iPhone, there was a definite trend in the way that people began to look at their tech. If it wasn’t mobile or simple to use, it had no function. Let’s take a look at how those ideas came to pass in the 2010s:

  • IBM’s Watson - The world was introduced to Watson when the AI defeated some of the very best humans at Jeopardy! Unfortunately, that is the end of lots of people’s exposure to Watson. Watson has subsequently been used in several fields to improve efficiency, education, cooperation and more. 
  • Apple iPad - Just as they did with the iPhone, a few years later Apple introduced the iPad. The tablet computer that was completely touchscreen and used the same App store found on the iPhone was the beginning of one of the largest consumer electronics booms since the advent of the TV. 
  • Adobe Creative Cloud - Just as Amazon Web Services and Azure provide virtual hardware services, Software as a Service (SaaS) started to expand rapidly at the beginning of the last decade. One title (of the many) was Adobe Creative Cloud, which gives users access to all the creative Adobe software through a monthly subscription service. 
  • Arab Spring Protests - For the first time in human history, social media became the center of a series of organized protests that resulted in regime change, election transparency, and more. 
  • Spotify - A music streaming service competes directly with other streaming services like Google Play Music, iTunes, and more. This Netflix-style model is proving to be a huge selling point for users.
  • The Internet of Things - Smart devices started popping up quickly and with exponential growth now find themselves almost everywhere. 
  • Virtual Assistants - Using AI, the development of Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Google Assistant have started integrating technology into moment-to-moment situations.
  • Ransomware - A devastating strain of malware that locks down a user’s files and demands a ransom payment. It has affected millions of users, thousands of businesses, and some municipalities.
  • Net Neutrality and Its Repeal - Trying to find an equitable arrangement on who controls the Internet has been nothing but contentious over the past decade. As it stands today the ISPs hold the power, but for much of the past decade the FCC did. Stay tuned.

Technology has come a long way in the past 50 years, and it will be interesting to see where it goes in the next 50. Is there anything we missed? If so, share it with us in the comments section below. Happy New Year! 

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How to Adjust Your Business for Collaboration

Collaborative work is pushing organizations forward faster today than ever before. With the use of more dynamic and option-rich technology, your organization can benefit from the improved productivity that comes from enhancing your collaborative strategies. Today, we look at some of the technologies used by organizations that prioritize collaborative work.

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Analytics Can Fool You

Businesses today are doing more than ever to utilize the data they take in, and it shows. They are operating with more knowledge about their business, and thus are able to successfully create a usable knowledge base that, for some, will allow them to predict positive and negative market dynamics fairly accurately. After seeing how this platform can positively affect individual businesses, many other businesses are taking to the strategies. The problem that many businesses encounter, however, is that they are woefully unprepared to utilize analytics; or, they read too far into them. Today, we’ll take a look at data analytics and confront some of the problem's businesses are having.


Are You Prepared?
The first thing that you have to understand about the placement of a data analytics system is that you need to have a reliable silo of information in which to work from. If you don’t set this up properly, the analysis will not be thorough enough to properly represent your business’ operations and will therefore not be as reliable as you would typically want this type of analysis to be.

To get reliable analysis through analytics, you will first want to set up a data warehouse. A data warehouse is essentially a database that is fed by your existing databases. By having all of your business’ information in one spot, it will make your analysis, whether it’s conducting analytics or intelligence reports, more accurate and reliable.

Reading Analytics
Once you have your analytics platform set up properly, you are ready to run reports. There are a couple really simple, but crucial, mistakes people routinely make when reading their analytics reports.

  1. Correlation Doesn’t Always Mean Causation - There are times when you will be looking at two metrics and they are so amazingly similar that it can’t possibly be a coincidence. You then discover that the two seemingly correlated variables have no direct (or indirect) relationship with each other. It’s important that you don’t read into every similarity.
  2. Make Sure to Keep Everything in Context - When you are actively using analytics and you start making headway in one facet of your business, it can be intoxicating. Make sure to not transfer a false optimism that other numbers will react the same way if the indicators say they won’t.
  3. Just Too Much - Whether you are just tracking too many metrics, or you are tracking some that are completely meaningless for your situation, wasting time with certain metrics is just convoluting your practical understanding of your business. Scale it back for more success.
  4. The “Wow” Factor - Metrics that report very positive or very negative situations will always be alarming, but if they are reported very infrequently, you can consider them outliers and exclude them in your overall report.

It’s great when you decide to let the data your business collects work for you. If you would like some information about how to integrate data analytics into your business’ call the IT professionals at MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001.

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Using Technology to Build Your Customer Relationships

Your relationships with your customers and clients are reliant on one thing more than any other: communication. In order to optimize this communication, many businesses are leveraging technology solutions, and are enjoying a variety of operational benefits as a result. Is your business one of them?


How Powering Communication with Technology Directly Benefits Your Business
Choosing the right communications is one of the most important decisions that any business can make, as the decision you make influences many levels of your operation. On the one hand, there’s the internal side of things, where the different members of your organization can keep each other in the loop. On the other, your business needs to also maintain clear communications with your clients, offering them the value they’re seeking from your services.

The technology you use can offer some assistance in accomplishing as much.

From the solutions that allow you to more effectively communicate with your clients directly, to the potential cost savings that this technology can offer (thereby allowing you to pass these savings along to your increasingly loyal clients), there is plenty of upside to augmenting your communication practices via the right technology solutions. Here, we’ll explore some of the options available for your business to utilize.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
CRM systems are a fundamental solution for any business interested in leveraging their technology as a means of improving their relationships with their clients and customers. These systems enable companies to better keep track of each of their customers and their interactions with them by centralizing all of this data into a single dashboard. This makes tracking this information far easier than if it were to be scattered about inboxes and voicemails.

Furthermore, these solutions offer integration with many other business applications that further simplify many key processes, like billing and acquiring signatures. They can even provide insight into social media behavior, allowing you to optimize your client acquisition strategy. A CRM solution can increase customer and client satisfaction by a reported 35 percent, making it an invaluable tool.

Automation
Managing your relationships with your business contacts and prospects is a formidable task, simply due to the fact that there are so many moving parts and processes when it is done correctly. It also doesn’t help that many of these relatively simple processes could potentially be overlooked, hindering your progress toward your business objective. Automating these processes can help to fix that.

Let’s consider a simple hypothetical example: let’s say that you offer a few industry-related products. Instead of having a sales representative man the phones, you can leverage automated workflows to expedite the process. Once your customer clicks “submit” on the order form, it’s possible for your sales team to be notified of what was sold, accounting to start invoicing the order, and your CRM system updated with the information… all without you needing to lift a finger. This allows you to focus more energy on your new customer, providing the highest quality service you can.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Solutions
This approach to telephony has a few benefits, but today, we wanted to focus specifically on one: its portability.

One of the keys to fostering a positive relationship with your business contacts is to be available to them. How often have you reached out to someone, only to have to wait for a response back? You don’t want to be the cause of this irritation when someone reaches out to you.

One of VoIP’s biggest benefits is the fact that it can be leveraged from anywhere an Internet connection can be made, and many options offer a mobile application. Using a VoIP solution, your calls can be directed to your smartphone, enabling you to answer when your contact calls, proving your business to be reliable.

MSPNetworks can help you implement these solutions so that you can work on your business relationships. To learn more, call (516) 403-9001 today.

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3 Reasons You Want Experts Handling Your IT

For a moment, I want you to stop and consider something: Who do you turn to when your business’ toilets suddenly stop working? Who do you call for when the lights stop working? Most likely, an expert… so if you turn to the pros for these needs, why would you do anything different for your IT?


Here, we’ll present the value of turning to the IT experts that we have here at MSPNetworks for your business’ technology needs. These values can effectively be broken down into three essential qualities that our services - known as managed services - are built around.

Predictable Productivity

Regardless of a business’ size, this is a primary concern: are they able to sustain their operations at a rate that means that they can remain open? This is one of the reasons that productivity is such a big buzzword in IT - the influence a given solution can have on a business’ productivity can easily make or break it over time. Try asking your employees how much they can accomplish if their computers don’t work - they’ll probably tell you how important an operational solution is to your business in no uncertain terms.

With a managed service provider (or MSP) like MSPNetworks managing your solutions, you can be sure that your technology is maintained. This way, your employees won’t find themselves stymied by technical issues out of their control.

Protection

Let’s face facts for a moment - business owners today have a lot to worry about. Once upon a time, a business could be protected by storing their documents in a safe and keeping the combination a secret. However, in today’s increasingly collaborative world, the safe has been made impractical. This means that your data needs to be both accessible to those who need it to meet the productivity standards we discussed above, as well as secured against cyberthreats and other risk factors, like data loss.

An MSP like MSPNetworks can implement the various solutions needed to ensure that this balance is achieved, allowing you the security to focus on your business. With the confidence that our services and solutions--including integrated security measures and business continuity with backups--can provide, you can breathe easy, knowing that your data stores are secure.

Professionals Pulling For You

As you may have noticed by now, most of the qualities of an MSP’s services that we’ve discussed thus far revolve around you receiving the managed support that gives providers like MSPNetworks their self-explanatory title. However, that only scratches the service. When your MSP’s team is made up of experts like ours is, you not only have professionals providing your business with support… you have professionals supporting you.

Unlike many other IT service options, the more successful our clients are, the happier we are. After all, that means that our solutions worked for them, only reinforcing the proof that our options are the right ones to leverage. Furthermore, you can be sure that if you do experience a problem with your business technology we’ll come correct to fix it. Again, our success is determined by yours - so if something doesn’t work, that’s a problem for us… and frankly, our professional egos aren’t going to let us overlook a problem like that.

It only makes sense to turn to an expert for issues that you want taken care of correctly, for these reasons, and many more to boot. This is only more apparent when your information technology is involved. The “expert touch” is a real thing, and can make a real difference.

Interested in finding out the difference that an expert touch can make for your IT services? Reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

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How IT Benefits a Small Business’ Growth Potential

When we discuss our service offerings, we understand that it can all seem like a little much, especially to the small business that - up to this point - has never needed all these fancy solutions to operate effectively. However, there are a few considerations that the business this scenario applies to needs to account for. For instance, is it certain that these solutions are unnecessary?


As it happens, probably not. On top of that, these solutions will only make doing business easier for you.

Apart from size and scope, what’s all that different between your operation and that of a large business? Not all that much - which means that you both are going about business in similar ways. At least, you probably should be.

If you still aren’t convinced, we’ve assembled a few common IT-based tools and solutions and reviewed the benefits each can deliver.

Web-Based Payments
Balancing out all of your business-essential tasks, it’s probably safe to say that ‘collecting payments’ ranks pretty high on that list. Any organization that provides goods and/or services needs to be reimbursed for those goods and/or services in some way if they are going to last very long. Accepting payments online can help encourage this by eliminating the need for a patron to visit your place of business to hand over a check, potentially reducing the time that your invoices are left outstanding.

Of course, to implement this intelligently, you will need to make sure that this is implemented securely. Many security solutions integrate this requirement, so we can help advise you on the right platform to use and assist you in managing it.

Communication
Promising something to your business’ audience is one thing. Ensuring that you can pull it off behind-the-scenes is another. The right technology solutions will help your team keep clear communications with each other, whether it’s a project management system, company email account, or an internal chat interface.

You may be surprised to discover how many time-wasting issues can be avoided just through the mitigation of miscommunication, thanks to simpler and more informative referential information. Progress toward goals, potential and imminent complications, and other key milestones are all made much easier to keep track of.

Social Media
While many see social media as an activity that is inappropriate for businesses, it can actually be highly beneficial to your strategy to leverage it in some ways. Not only can it be a highly effective marketing tool, it can give you some improved insight into what your clients or customers are looking for, thereby helping you shape your strategy.

Then there’s its potential to be used as a line of communication with your audience. Someone seeking customer service would find it easy just to send a brief message to your business on social media, as long as someone is keeping an eye on the account and responding to these messages.

Being too quick to discredit social media can have an impact on a business’ success. Leveraging it to assist your operations can as well, but with a much more preferable outcome.

Cloud Computing
There are many applications for cloud computing that businesses of all sizes could benefit from considerably. The ability to securely access data enables a team to access their data and collaborate on it from effectively anywhere, a highly useful prospect for many businesses. Alternatively, the cloud can be used to host a comprehensive business backup as an ace in the hole in case of disaster.

If you’re reconsidering how you implement IT solutions in your business, give us a call at (516) 403-9001. We can help you shape your strategy to fit your precise needs.

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Retaining Workers with Technology

The right technology can be a catalyst for change. While the right kind of change can be enough to drive innovation and push the limits of your business, the wrong kind of change--namely, employee turnover--can put a halt to productivity and force you to trace your steps back down the old, familiar path of onboarding and training. How can you use technology to retain top talent and reinforce the right message amongst your employees?


Today we’ll examine some of the biggest business technology innovations that can help your organization keep its talent happy and its culture healthy. These recommendations will take into account the physical workspace of your company and how technology will influence the user’s satisfaction.

Provide the Technology to Fit the Workspace
Depending on the business, you might have a space that is conducive to a more mobile type of working style. Give your employees the technology to take advantage of their workspace, whether it’s a desktop or laptop. While the traditional work desk is still quite common in the workplace, open offices are gaining traction, and open areas where employees can work when they need to get away from others to focus or hunker down on a task can be provided to ensure employees can work on their own terms while still maintaining productivity.

Make It Easy for Employees to Use their Devices
A Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy can be a great boon for your business. For one, it keeps your organization from investing in company devices when they aren’t needed. You can just have your employees use their own devices for work purposes as long as they adhere to your organization’s policy regarding data security. The ideal BYOD policy will respect your employees’ ability to work as needed while also maintaining the right to remotely wipe devices and apply permissions to whitelist or blacklist apps.

Properly Maintain Technology Systems
Nothing is more irritating for workers than technology that doesn’t work. Even a task like checking your email can be held up by a workstation that is too slow or not configured properly. To this end, preventative maintenance and management is critical, as you can make sure technology stays in proper working order before it becomes a major issue for your employees. If you can’t take proper care of your technology, employees will wonder why you can’t make their jobs a priority for your business, and it can reflect in their work performance.

MSPNetworks can help you both implement and maintain technology in a way that is effective for retaining employees. To learn more about our remote monitoring and management solutions, as well as Bring Your Own Device policies, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

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Tip of the Week: How to Calculate the ROI of Anything

All businesses are part of their respective markets, and depending on that market, the business will implement technology solutions designed to help them best cater to their business. However, you should only implement technology that can yield a satisfactory return on investment, or ROI. We’re here to help you get the most return on your investment as possible.


Return on investment is basically a way of saying that whatever you’re investing in is actually creating results for your organization. It’s the difference between spending a considerable amount of time on a task with an expensive technology or spending even longer without one. It’s working smarter, not harder. It all comes down to calculating whether the investment you’ve made on a technology solution generates enough revenue to justify making the investment it in the first place.

Here’s how you too can calculate the return on investment for just about any technology solution your business might consider down the line.

Basic Return on Investment
At its most basic level, return on investment boils down to the following equation:

ROI = ((Net Gain) / Cost) * 100

Net gain is determined by a couple of factors, including how much you spend and how much you wind up with afterward. Therefore, if you spend $20 and make $40, your net gain would be $20.

ROI = (20/20) * 100 = 100%

This places the ROI at a 100%, effectively doubling the amount of money you’ve invested.

Net Gain and Costs Aren’t Always Easy to Determine
Of course, net gain for businesses isn’t always going to be this easy to figure out. You have all kinds of operating costs, implementation costs, payroll, opportunity cost, and so on, all of which can directly influence how much return on investment you will get from a particular solution. If you are thinking about implementing a new piece of technology, you’ll have to think about how much time is spent on a task now, how much time could be saved, and what the initial cost of implementation will be.

This might be overwhelming to some, but it’s not impossible to figure out. After all, you have the technology experts at MSPNetworks to rely on. For help determining if your next IT implementation will yield a positive return on investment, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

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Developers Are Building Blockchain-Based App for Health Records

Many industries depend on their IT working properly to function as intended, and healthcare is among them. Prior to 2009, information technology had failed to take root, but with the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), the health industry is much more involved and reliant on IT than it has ever been before.


Electronic medical record technology is partially responsible for this rapid adoption, as it has made record keeping much easier for the healthcare industry. Since healthcare is quite a private industry, a system that can store patient and insurance data in a central location that can easily be accessed is critical to its success. This is one of the most important reasons why the healthcare industry suffers from some of the largest and most expensive data breaches out there, exposing countless medical and financial records for millions of patients.

Hoping to find a better way to keep data safe and secure from external threats, healthcare professionals are looking to alternative ways to store data so that it’s located in an environment where it is both secure and easy to distribute. When you take into account all of the other problems associated with healthcare, such as standards of care and rising costs, it’s clear that finding a way to keep data secure and accessible, while also not stifling innovation, is critical.

The Blockchain Might Be the Answer
An emerging technology called blockchain could be one of the best ways to solve the healthcare technology issues the industry is currently presented with. Many people know of blockchain as the tech that makes cryptocurrency possible, but it’s being looked at to solve a lot of issues associated with healthcare technology. The distributed ledger and technology behind it make it ideal for sharing information to a certain extent. Developers know that doctors, insurance agencies, and patients need access to this information, and the blockchain can provide this while guaranteeing data integrity. While it isn’t all great for the blockchain’s use in healthcare, there are various benefits that the blockchain can provide:

  • Medical records: Once a medical record is completed, it is placed as a node into the blockchain. This effectively guarantees the authenticity of the record. The distributed nature of the blockchain allows the patient control over their medical and insurance information rather than have it be hosted by the care provider.
  • Consent: Blockchain-based applications for consent management can potentially create a standard for these practices. A doctor or insurer might need access to records, so a patient can provide their consent through the blockchain as it’s needed.
  • Medical rewards: Patients might be able to reap rewards and enjoy incentives for using this blockchain technology for their health records. This would be able to promote the solution to the rest of the industry, allowing for reduced costs in the long run.

While the blockchain might still be a developing technology, it could save the healthcare industry lots of time and resources in the future. What are your thoughts on these developments? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog.

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Tip of the Week: How Technology Covers a Business’ Needs

If you look around your company, there’s a good chance that it has a lot of technology that you completely take for granted. No matter if you run a small retail store, a factory, or a multi-location office, your business needs IT to function properly. Today, we will take a look into several ways your organization can use technology to improve your business.


Customer Service
The relationships you forge with your customers are some of the most rewarding you will build in business; and, unmistakably the most crucial. When businesses fail to support the products and services that they sell, they have a much harder time sustaining positive consumer relationships. There are plenty of technologies that can help a business improve customer service. One such technology is customer relationship management software. Not only does it provide a ticketing system to get customer complaints and concerns in front of decision makers, it also provides several options to help manage support work.

Today, companies are routinely utilizing social media, including social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to engage with their customers. These platforms in particular give the business the chance to promote their knowledge base, their products, and also hold a public conversation about their products and services. While this may not always work out in the business’ favor, it has proven to be a great outlet for businesses looking to engage in substantive conversations with customers and prospects.

Productivity
In order to be a successful business, revenue needs to flow; and, in order for that to happen productivity has to commence. No matter what your businesses, some value has to be created for you to be doing what you are doing. As a result, companies are looking to make investments in technology that will help build their revenue streams. That’s why you see many of today’s businesses, regardless of their industry or size, using technology to facilitate a boost to their organizational productivity.

One solution that is very useful for any service business is time-tracking software. Typically, this comes as a part of a scheduling solution. Software like this allows managers to assign time for certain tasks, while being able to review how long projects and service delivery takes, providing a way to best monetize the time their employees spend and streamline work processes.

Moreover, many of today’s most useful technology-based solutions for productivity are filled with collaborative options and hosted in the cloud. In utilizing cloud-hosted software solutions, companies are giving their employees the flexibility to do more. Cloud-hosted apps typically are available on any device and are scalable to ensure that the company isn’t paying more than it needs to for the productivity solutions they need.

Finance
It would be an understatement to say that money is a major consideration when it comes to business. Decisions are made every day with the bottom line the major consideration. Technology solutions can help small business owners better manage their finances. They can utilize online invoicing services to help them collect payment and reduce expenses.

The use of software to manage payroll and accounts receivable not only makes those inherently frustrating tasks much easier, they allow them to be handled with care. These are, after all, crucial aspects of your organization’s ability to conduct business. By having software solutions that provide the ability to streamline your organization’s revenue streams and expenses, business simply runs better.

Security
Let’s face it, security is crucial to the sustainability of every single business. Whether it is network security or physical security, if people are free to do other people harm with impunity, there is total chaos. With solutions that include antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and spam blocking, technology can keep the business’ IT safe.

On the other end of things, IT-fueled physical security is a big hit with organizations of all types. With digital cameras, biometric security locks, and more solutions keeping a constant eye (or eyes) out, you can ensure that your workplace, your employees, and your assets are properly protected.

Nowadays, organizations also have to worry about their wireless networks and mobile access. Today there are plenty of solutions aimed at enhancing your business’ mobility, while keeping the increased amount of enemies out of your business’ network and infrastructure.

Growth in the use of technology has been leading the way for quite some time, and, with all the new solutions on the market, this trend doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Call the technology professionals at MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 to talk about getting an assessment to see how you can improve your business through technology.

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Is Election Technology Solid or Simply Antiquated

Election Day in the United States is coming up quick on November 6th. It doesn’t matter what your thoughts or opinions on U.S. politics are--the fact remains that millions of Americans will be using the technology available at polling places to cast their ballots, and if this technology isn’t secured properly, the integrity of the voting system will be at risk.


Technology Found at Most Polling Places
Most polling places in America are using technology that is quickly approaching 15 years old. To put that in perspective, let’s think about some technologies and products today that haven’t even reached ten years old yet.

  • Google Chrome
  • Airbnb
  • Spotify
  • Kickstarter
  • 4G
  • Mobile GPS
  • Instagram
  • The iPad

A co-founder of a nonprofit group called Open Source Election Technology, Greg Miller, has this to say about election technology: ”You have equipment that was introduced in 2005. In that time frame, how many times have you changed your mobile phone? And how many times have we replaced our laptops?” In essence, Miller describes election technology as “...obsolete hardware [and] software that relies on a diet of spare parts.”

The other co-founder of OSET, John Sebes, takes a different approach by showing just how vulnerable the systems are to manipulation. Most polling places have a portable media device, like a CD or USB drive, that must be used to transport the results to another location for the tally. The machines that count the votes are usually outdated in terms of both hardware and software. Sebes initiated a live demonstration for a national news network to show how he could influence the results of an election between two fictional candidates named Thorfer and Varda. Thorfer won with 3,000 votes while Varda received only 100, yet Sebes was able to use malware to switch the tallies around, creating a fraudulent winner. While some computers used for this purpose are secured, others are not so much.

Furthermore, there is some inconsistency in regard to whether or not polling places keep a paper backup of the vote in the event a recount is needed. This includes some of the “battleground” or “swing” states where small numbers of votes can sway the final outcome much more than in other states.

How to Minimize the Issue
The easiest way to resolve this problem is one that is just impossible to pull off. The United States Constitution specifies that each state is responsible for maintaining its own set of electoral procedures, meaning that any attempts at consistency will be made impossible. There are other ways to make progress regarding election system security, even if some of them are more low-tech than anything else.

Temporarily Cease Online Voting
Some states allow online voting for those who are abroad or are unable to make it to the polling place for whatever reason. Some even allow for email ballots. Unfortunately, security for these methods is subpar to say the least, and it should be suspended until it can be secured properly.

Use Physical Backups
Ordinarily, we would suggest that all backups be saved to the cloud. In this case, we’re dealing with something a bit different, as digital assets can be hacked. A physically-generated paper backup of the voting records is less susceptible to being tampered with, and it allows for cross-checking any results.

Invest in Improved Voting Equipment
Since the devices used in the voting process are over a decade old, it’s clear that updating this infrastructure is not a priority. Some have suggested that Congress get involved to expedite the process, creating funding opportunities to improve machines and replace older devices, but this hasn’t happened since 2002.

What are your thoughts on the current state of election technology? Let us know in the comments.

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