• VoIP versus Digital Phone Service
• What is remote backup and why should I consider remote backup?
• Why Do I Need Hosted Exchange?
• What are the Advantages of IP vs. Analog Video Surveillance?
• When Should I Consider a Digital Phone System?
• How Can I Easily Maintain a Backup of My Important Data?
• What Makes Digital Phones A Good Choice?
• How Important is it to Backup My Business Data?
• How Can I Easily Backup My Data?

VoIP versus Digital Phone Service

In these recessionary times, digital phone service can significantly reduce operating costs and provide more services or features. ‘Should I VoIP or should I use a digital phone service’. Done smartly, on a private network where the service provider controls the connection from end to end, digital phone service can be extremely effective while improving your business communications and bottom line.

VoIP is an acronym for Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP has been a buzz word for some time now, and many businesses can now take advantage of IP or digital based telephone service without compromising quality or availability. What many businesses do not know is that most major phone companies have been using IP to deliver voice for many years. A traditional phone service might start with copper wire, however; the carrier will switch over to a digital signal running on fibre wire.

It is important to understand that when VoIP uses the Internet to route the call from the caller to the destination, there can also be a loss of voice quality. The Internet is an uncontrolled interconnection of networks, and it is not unheard of to have some transit providers limit the quality of these types of calls. VoIP service such as Skype or Vonage, while perhaps adequate for residential or away from the office applications, are not really a business class phone service. There are many desirable features in a digital service such as twinning with cell phones, answering a call at many locations, consolidating lines and using unified messaging.

A digital phone service provider with a private controlled network can deliver these advantages with the VoIP quality and reliability needed by a business.

When choosing your digital phone service provider, ensure that they do in fact control their own network to provide a business with a secure and reliable phone service. If an existing voice service provider doesn’t control the network, how can they guarantee the level of service you’ll receive?

[back to top]

What is remote backup and why should I consider remote backup?

From a strategic perspective, your data represents the core of your business. You have invested a lot resources and effort in developing your business data.

“Unstructured” conventional backup methods, such as, CD/DVD and external hard drives, are often unreliable due to factors such as human error, high failure rates, lack of knowledge that a problem exists and high maintenance costs.

Remote backup uses your internet connection to automatically back up data from a server, laptop or desktop onto a remote network storage device.

Advantages of a remote backup service:

• Much less vulnerability to human error;
• Scalable backup capacity;
• Encrypted storage away from your office;
• Continuous data backup and protection;
• Easy to use and manage, restore anywhere;
• Confirmation of successful backup;
• Web accessible from anywhere; and
• Peace of mind 24/7.

A properly implemented internet based remote backup service is the clear winner.

[back to top]

Why Do I Need Hosted Exchange?

Affordability - Hosted Microsoft Exchange allows you to lower the Total Cost of Ownership by using an ISP's hardware, infrastructure, and personnel.

Productivity - Exchange allows your team to enjoy business class email services and to collaborate more efficiently on projects through the ability to share calendars, tasks and important contacts.

Anytime, Anywhere Access - Exchange allows everyone to access  important data and communications from any Internet connection or on their mobile device (e.g. - Smartphone, BlackBerry, iPhone).

Security - A hosted solution will ensure you always have the latest security patches and updates. Also includes safety measures such as data encryption and "remote device wipe" for lost or stolen mobile devices.

Filtering - More than 90% of email is junk and can be automatically discarded before you ever see it.

Make the most of your IT - You don't need a dedicated IT department just to get your company on the fast track to enterprise-level communicating.

[back to top]

What are the Advantages of IP vs. Analog Video Surveillance?

With the development of IP based digital video surveillance, businesses now have very powerful tools to ensure the protection of persons and property. This new technology offers many advantages over the older Analog systems. In addition to much greater ease of data access and recovery, the new IP based surveillance has following advantages:

Power

Powering an analog camera can be costly and difficult. Coaxial cable must be installed to transport the video then power cabling must be fed to each camera. IP cameras can be run from the Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard, which means cameras can be run over the same cable that transmits data and power.

UPS Integration

An additional advantage of using PoE enabled Cameras and LAN Switches that is often overlooked is the fact that protection against power loss can be implemented much more cost effectively and simply than for analog CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television). Traditional analog CCTV cameras require power at each location, with the result that providing backup power for each camera can often be very expensive. However with an IP camera system using PoE, power is injected centrally at the network switch. One or two UPS’s supplying that switch automatically provides backup power to all the cameras. Often it may be the same UPS already in place for the PC and servers.

Interlacing

Analog technology has a significant problem with interlacing, causing moving objects to blur. An IP camera can progressively scan moving objects more clearly. There are no separate interlaced lines, so this method provides a much clearer image.

Intelligence

IP video technology allows the cameras to have many more ‘built in’ features. For example, cameras can be programmed to only record on movement, thereby vastly reducing network load and storage requirements. Other features include sun and backlight compensation, dual lenses technology, internal digital storage, audio and SIP telephony.

Scalability

IP video technology provides simple and inexpensive scalability for future expansion. One camera at a time can be added and pulled back to a central server. You only have the cost of an additional camera. An analog system requires a separate camera and server at each location.

Resolution

Analog cameras cannot provide resolution above television standards, which corresponds to 0.4 mega-pixels at 4CIF. Many analog systems run at a much lower resolution due to technical and cost restrictions, operating at 0.01 mega pixels. Network Video technology can provide a resolution up to 15 times the quality of analog video! The latest cameras now can process video up to 3Mbitp/s.

[back to top]

When Should I Consider a Digital Phone System?

There are many circumstances that would cause you to look into replacing your phone system with a new digital phone system, for example:

• Need to connect remote offices using one phone system
• Staff need to work from home as an extension of the office
• Want advanced functionality – such as automated dialing, roaming extensions, multiple device ring, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), etc.
• Want to pick up voice mail via email (unified messaging)
• Long distance costs are too high
• Cell phone costs are too high

Digital phone systems can provide cost effective solutions to all of the above. They take advantage of IP networks to deliver more functionality at a lower cost than traditional analog phone systems. Some newer IP systems can also integrate analog lines for a failover. New extensions or additional lines can be added in minutes avoiding the costs and delays involved with dealing with phone companies. The most important reason is likely lower cost. The ROI on a digital phone system is typically less than a year.

[back to top]

How Can I Easily Maintain a Backup of My Important Data?

With sales contracts, accounting records, marketing materials, business contacts, and emails all being stored in digital format, it has become increasingly important for all organisations to regularly back up their business data. In the event of hardware failure, restoring data from a backup is obviously a much less expensive option than rebuilding from scratch. Since most businesses have an Internet connection, why not use your existing Internet connection to maintain a copy of your important files at a remote location.

Backups are easily accessible and can be scheduled to automatically run during off-hours. This maintains a copy of your important files that can be restored at any time, from any location. Even if someone walks off with your computer, you still have access to your important files. Sophisticated compression and encryption methods can be used to provide fast and secure backups. Companies without proactive backups and recovery policies and solutions can suffer greatly if a major disaster results in loss of data. It is often cited that many businesses fail as a result, or at a minimum experience tremendous difficulties recovering from even a partial loss of their business data.

[back to top]

What Makes Digital Phones A Good Choice?

Digital Phones have become immensely popular because these services can deliver voice communications at a fraction of the cost of traditional telecommunications.  The latest generation of digital technology is also engineered to deliver excellent sound quality and reliability. Some of the advantages of a digital phone system:

• One system can handle multiple locations and workers at home resulting in dialing an extension or transferring calls across offices or cities
• Reduced long distance costs
• Reduced number of lines when consolidated over multiple offices
• Comprehensive features such as true unified messaging from mobile to  fixed desk phone to email
• Multiple device call routing extends business out of the office
• Integration with office tools such as CRM and Outlook
• Excellent cots savings and ROI
• Easy Installation and  provisioning
• Excellent sound quality

[back to top]

How Important is it to Backup My Business Data?

With sales contracts, accounting records, marketing materials, business contacts and emails all being stored in digital format, it has become increasingly important for all organizations to regularly back up their business data. However it has been found that most organizations do not maintain backups of all their important data. This applies to centralized corporate data and very commonly to data maintained on individual laptops and desktops. Everyone, at one time or another has hit the “delete” key only to regret it soon afterwards. In the event of data loss, restoring it from a backup is obviously a much faster and less expensive operation than rebuilding from scratch..

[back to top]

How Can I Easily Backup My Data?

Since most businesses have an Internet connection, why not use your existing Internet connection to maintain a copy of your important files at a remote location. Backups can be scheduled to automatically run during off-hours. This will automatically create a copy of your important files that are easily accessible and that can be restored at any time from any location. Even if someone walks off with your computer, you still have access to your important files.

Remote backups can also be used as an archive source. Have you ever been to a client’s location and realized that you forgot an important file. If you are using a remote backup site for your files, you could use anyone’s computer and Internet connection to retrieve that document.
Sophisticated backup schemes make it practical to backup large amounts of data over relatively slow connections. Full backups may only need to be done once and can be done offline. Subsequent backups can be incremental or differential where only changed files are transferred. A differential backup will backup all files that have changed since the last full backup. An incremental backup will backup all files that have changed since the last backup, regardless whether it was a full or incremental backup. Compression and encryption methods are used to provide fast and secure backups.
Companies without proactive backups and recovery policies and solutions can suffer greatly if a major disaster results in loss of data. It is often cited that many businesses fail as a result, or at a minimum, experience tremendous difficulties recovering from even a partial loss of their business data.

[back to top]