Video Conferencing – 10 Benefits For North Bay Small Businesses

In this day of escalating travel costs, increased pressure to “go green” and virtual staffing, you may have thought about finding  a reliable, quality video conferencing system.   But you may have thought there were no solutions tailored to the Small or Medium Business (SMB).  Well, the technology has made its way down to the SMB market.  And there are several cost-saving reasons you should try to take advantage of this technology

But just in case you aren’t sold on the idea of using a business video conferencing system, let me detail the benefits it can bring to your North Bay SMB.

Save Money

By holding virtual meetings you can save on travel and related expenses. No longer do you need to gather everyone into one room to hold a productive meeting or training workshop. Each participant and attend from the comfort of their home or office using nothing more than their Internet-connected computer.

Conserve Energy

Because people won’t have to consume gas or airplane fuel to get to your meeting, you are conserving energy. On many levels, holding your meetings virtually is a “green” activity.

Go Paperless

Many interactive video conferencing solutions offer document-sharing features. Therefore, you can share, collaborate and distribute documents without killing one tree or using one drop of ink or toner.

Multimedia

Sometimes, providing a multimedia presentation at a live workshop can be a challenge. You need all sorts of equipment to make the presentation visible to everyone who is attending. But, when you deliver this same presentation using a video conferencing system, there are much fewer parts to coordinate. Basically, if it works on your computer, then you can share it with anyone who is attending the video conference.

Better Collaboration

Have you ever tried to get several people to collaborate on a document? Handing out copies and then reconciling the different versions can be frustrating, as well as time-consuming. With online video conferencing, everyone can look at the same document at the same time and pitch in their comments in real time.

Improved Communication

Without having to travel to meetings, attendees will be more likely to be less distracted by travel fatigue and coordinating their trip back home. And, many of the features that are available actually enhance communication more than gathering folks into a room.

Decreased Operational Costs

Some business video conferencing systems will actually save you money on telephone expenses because the audio will be transmitted over the Internet.

Meetings on the Fly

When you use interactive video conferencing, you can organize a meeting between people much more quickly. No longer will you need to book a room, arrange for travel and other things that can make meeting planning take so long.

Increased Access to Prospects and Clients

With video conferencing you can provide many more opportunities to engage with your prospects and customers, as well as resellers, agents and others. You can provide webinars that are much more robust than even in-person meetings can be.

Improved Productivity

Now you can have a much more productive virtual and geographically disperse workforce. Video conferencing can enhance the cohesion of your business when its members are spread out.

Video conferencing systems are now affordable to the SMB marketplace.  Your North Bay business might want to look into this emerging technology to gain these benefits and more.

Sponsored by
PlanIT Solutions www.planits.com
email dquintana@planits.com

Hello North Bay Businesses!!!

Welcome to the premier blog for the North Bay business owner, C-Level Executive, and IT Guru.  (And anyone else with a vested interest in the San Francisco North Bay’s business fortunes.)  The goal of this blog is to “provide business ideas with a focus on technology.”  And not just that — but to solely focus on the North Bay’s unique economic climate, and how new or changing technologies can specifically help Small and Medium businesses.  (We know that’s a mouth full.  If you have any ideas how to get those ideas in a shorter sound bite let us know.) 

Come here to get information, not just on the latest “gadgets,” technologies, or business systems – but how they can possibly affect YOUR North Bay SMB.

Thanks for visiting!  Here’s to a better 2010 than 2009.

Sponsored by
PlanIT Solutions www.planits.com
email dquintana@planits.com

Can You Prevent Data-Loss Threatening Your Small Business?

In my role as a North Bay based computer support and repair professional I see small firms taking major chances with data that if lost, could be the end of the firm overnight. But it need not be that way for YOUR small business so read on!

Why data-loss could threaten your business

When starting and running a business there are so many things to think about and so many issues to deal with, Data Backup and Recovery often takes a back seat. In fact, a large proportion of small businesses either have no disaster recovery plan at all, or if they do, it is insufficient.

The subject of backups and disaster recovery can seem daunting – one reason many small business owners shy away from it – yet an effective plan need not be complicated or expensive. Following some simple steps will help you decide what the risk to your business is and what you can do to mitigate it.

Ask yourself, what would happen if your office burned down tomorrow

This may seem melodramatic and hopefully it will never happen but it is a good example of complete data and systems loss from your main office location, and something akin to it could happen at some point. So imagine what you would need to do in order to get your business back up and running. For many businesses that backup their data using an external hard-drive located on the desk next to the computer, the situation would be dire since all their backups are also in that office.

Prioritize your data

If you only have small amounts of business data, you might be able to back it all up regularly onto a disk and take it home. But once you start building up larger quantities, you will need to decide which data is absolutely business critical, which is merely important, and that which you could do without if you really had to. Make sure you include accounts, customer data, emails, databases and company documents.

Treat your data accordingly

For business critical data, it is essential that you back it up regularly, in several places, and that you get that data off site after each backup. There are various options including taking external drives home, tape backups and online backup services. For less important data you might decide that you are happy with just on-site backups since you are only really worried about recovering from something like a broken hard-drive.

Consider backup hardware for business-critical functions

Theft, fire or flood can mean you cannot use your current computer, possibly permanently. If this would cause business losses you cannot afford then consider having some backup hardware which you can move onto quickly. Depending on your company size and complexity, it might not need to be anything more than a home PC or laptop.

Conclusion

Effective backup and recovery plans are essential for any business, of any size.  Backups which turn out not to work or take weeks to restore can be useless so it is worth employing the services of a local IT Services company to help you develop a backup system which works for you, and to check your system is backing up what you need and that it will restore your data in an emergency.

Sponsored by
PlanIT Solutions www.planits.com
email dquintana@planits.com

Cloud Computing – 10 Benefits For Your Business

Cloud computing represents a new model for delivery and consumption of IT services based on the Internet, usually utilizing scalable and often virtualized resources as services over the Internet.  In other words, “moves” your “data center” IT hardware and software to a Service Provider.  That way, you pay only for what you need — no need to overbuild for projected growth.  It also provides “plug-and-play” flexibility, allowing you to add and remove users at will.

So, what are the business benefits to the North Bay Small and Medium Business (SMB)?

Ten benefits of cloud computing for your business:

1. Focus on your core business activity. Cloud computing provides more automation and managing of your business technology, allowing you to focus more on your core business activities.

2. Reduces Cost. With cloud computing, your business pays incrementally, only for the services they use, reducing overall business costs.  It also allows you stop paying energy costs associated with idle data center time.

3. Employee Mobility. Your employees can access important applications, data, and files to conduct business from wherever they are, rather than having to remain at their desks.

4. Easy Implementation. Since there is not a need for hardware purchasing, software licenses, or implementation services, your company can get cloud computing services started very quickly and easily.

5. More Secure Data Sharing. Cloud services allow your company to share internal data over the cloud, rather than making your internal data center itself available to through the internet to outside parties.

6. Increased Storage Capacity. By utilizing the Internet with virtual cloud services, your company can store much more data, than it would be able to on private computer systems.

7. Flexibility. By using a shared resource, agile and automated distribution of computing resources among the users in the cloud allows for more flexibility.

8. Environmental Benefits. Cloud computing reduces hardware consumption, energy costs, and carbon dioxide emissions.

9. Easily Customized. Cloud computing gives your business the opportunity to build custom applications on a user-friendly interface. In a competitive world, your business needs to stand out from the rest. Customization will help you do this.

10. Enhances collaboration. Multiple users can collaborate easily on shared web documents. Since all the documents are hosted on the cloud, anyone in your company with an internet connection can log into the web and start collaborating.

Verizon Communications Case Study:

According to Fari Ebrahimi, senior vice president and chief information officer for Verizon Services Operations, by implementing an internal cloud computing process, Verizon improved IT performance by 400 percent and reduced their IT costs to one-third of what they were. In lieu of this information, Verizon decided not to build any new data centers, but to actually decrease them.

Cloud computing is an excellent solution for the North Bay SMB looking for better utilization of resources, flexibility, security, lower costs and environmental sustainability.

Sponsored by
PlanIT Solutions www.planits.com
email dquintana@planits.com