A Smarter Approach to Mobile Device Management More people today use personal mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for business purposes. Such devices, coupled with greater Wi-Fi accessibility and cloud services, have empowered us with the ability to access data and do business from practically anywhere at anytime. Needless to say, many small-to-medium sized business owners have embraced the BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) revolution. The benefits are obvious; increased employee productivity, enhanced services to customers/clients, and better overall customer and employee satisfaction. But what about the potential consequences associated with this mobility revolution? Are small business owners doing enough preemptive planning to address potential risks that could arise with the use of BYOD devices? Mobile Device Management - Questions Every SMB Should Ask First, it is important that small business owners honestly assess whether their systems, networks, data, and overall infrastructure are ready for the use of an array of mobile devices. Once it is firmly established that both internal IT and components in the cloud are prepared for BYOD, solutions should then be put into practice that are concurrent with terms of use policies or any guidelines pertaining to remote/telecommute workers or the sharing of sensitive data. The following questions should be answered.

4 Essential Pieces to Any Small Business BYOD Strategy Believe it or not, once upon a time, kids at the bus stop didn’t have cell phones and the mobile device strategy of many businesses was typically you’ll take what you’re given, refrain from using it for any personal use, and the data may be scrubbed clean whenever we please.

Keep Your IT Guy and Outsource IT Services, Too Everyone in the office loves Eric. Sporting a different ironic t-shirt everyday, Eric is the one we call when technology spits in our face. Whether it's a slow system, a bug that needs to be squashed, a website issue, or a crash that results in unexpected downtime and data loss, Eric is right there. Not only does he get to the bottom of any issue but he also rights the ship like he's some sort of miracle-working captain who just happens to have a pretty wickedly funny Peter Griffinfrom Family Guy impersonation.

How to Trim the Fat From Data Center Costs When smaller businesses look to cut costs, they commonly take shortcuts that are risky to their bottom line. They may go out of their way to avoid upgrading dated hardware, buying software licenses, or increasing bandwidth. In some instances, they layoff in-house IT support, or avoid hiring new help, even as the business grows. This often leads to a very cranky and disgruntled "IT guy" with a bad attitude as he or she runs around the office putting out one fire after another – feeling overburdened and underpaid.

Click, Click, BOOM – You're in Business But Is Your Technology Ready? It's a fast business world. Brilliant business ideas can be conjured up at some hipster-filled vegan coffeehouse, a website is thrown together, and poof... in no time at all there is a living, breathing, small business venture accessible from anywhere in the world. But as your head hits the pillow at night, with visions of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg dancing in your head, understand that many obstacles will greet you on your road to entrepreneurial success. A fresh innovative idea is merely a start. For every successful startup like Groupon, there are even more that have faltered. Some great, even revolutionary, business concepts that just faded into obscurity; leaving behind nothing but tales of what could've been and insurmountable debt. Failed business technology is often a big reason for this. Many startups think big but tend to operate small-minded to keep overhead and costs down. They then find themselves completely unprepared to meet the demands of growth, particularly when it comes to their IT infrastructure. There is no one-size fit all approach to how to manage technology for optimal efficiency, uptime, and profitability. Especially given the challenges of limited budgets and the need to keep overhead down. So exactly how do SMBs make sound decisions regarding their technology infrastructure? Choices that are cost-effective enough to get their business off the ground and running without screwing them over once it truly takes off? Combine On-Site and Off-Site Support for the Best of Both Worlds Over 45% of SMBs have no dedicated in-house IT staff and no contracted IT consultant regularly monitoring and managing their technology. Roughly only 7 percent of SMBs have a full-time onsite IT technician on payroll. The rest rely on third-party on-call IT companies who appear only when technology goes haywire and disrupts business. These on-call companies can sometimes take a day or two to even show up, which means issues aren't resolved in a timely and efficient manner. And did we mention they're expensive? Most SMBs say they simply can't afford full-time in-house support. Even those who do budget for it face overwhelming challenges. They often experience a revolving door of on-site help who leave for a larger company and better salary once they've beefed up their resume. And those hires that do remain loyal often feel as if they have no reliable help and become overworked and frazzled as the business and their responsibilities grow. Discontent may even set in if wages aren't raised proportionately to the added responsibilities, or if they grow bored of doing the same mundane repetitive work everyday. But today's SMB has access to technology that won't drain resources. In particular, the evolution of cloud computing and managed services can either automate or re-assign a lot of the day-to-day caretaking of technology to remote employees, leaving onsite support available for more meaningful and potentially profitable projects. Better yet, it saves money on equipment costs. Whenever possible, a mix of on-premise and off-premise IT support is the best way to make your technology scalable and prepared for growth.

Inquiring SMBs Want to Know... What's the Difference Between a Help Desk and NOC? It's no secret that any growing small-to-medium sized business must monitor and manage its business technology in the most cost-efficient way. The tricky part is figuring out how to do this without sacrificing the overall experience of the end-user. End-users can be clients and customers or employees. Both rely on the efficiency of a firm's network, servers, and applications, and the availability of the company's data center.

Understanding Managed Services and How They Benefit SMBs Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) receive a lot of calls each day from slick sales people peddling the next technology trend that's going to save them money and revolutionize how they do business. They're all too quick to caution that if you don't listen to them, you'll fall behind the times, and eventually be swimming in a sea of debt and out of business.

Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses Downtime is bad news for any business whether big or small. A recent two-hour New York Times' downtime occurrence sent Twitter ablaze and their stock price plummeting. Google going down for one to five hours resulted in lost revenue up to $500,000 and decreased overall web traffic by 40%. We know what you're thinking. Holy crap, Google makes $100,000 an hour? Yeah... insane, huh? While the hourly cost of downtime for a small-to-medium sized business won't be nearly as large as that astronomical Google figure, downtime is often more detrimental to smaller companies. Smaller enterprises are more susceptible to downtime and are neither large nor profitable enough to sustain its short and long-term effects. Downtime Leads to Unhappy/Unproductive Employees Even the happiest of employees become dissatisfied when they can't perform basic day-to-day job functions or properly service customers or clients. While some employees may use downtime as an excuse to lean back, put their feet up, and comfortably collect their hourly pay, we're talking about those employees who come to work to actually work. And don't forget your IT guy or tech crew. They can't necessarily sit back and twiddle their thumbs when downtime occurs because they're typically taking the brunt of the storm. They will ultimately grow tired of the daily routine of having to put out fires and having neither the additional manpower nor resources to change things for the better. These things lead to high employee turnover and the expenses that come with training and re-training a revolving door of employees. Downtime Leads to Customer Dissatisfaction Customers and clients grow weary whenever critical components of your operations – or the services they either expect or pay for - cannot be accessed. Nearly 50% of customers will move on to a competitor if they encounter downtime of five minutes or more. These customers represent significant lost revenue. While some suggest this is a bigger problem in the retail sector, other types of businesses are impacted as well. Have you ever clicked a link from search engine results only to quickly bolt when the page didn't load, you couldn't complete an online transaction, or you were greeted with a "Technical Difficulties – Be Back Up Soon!" message? Did you give up on finding what you were looking for or did you wait it out? You did neither. You went back to Google and found someone else offering a similar service or product that satisfied your yearning for instant gratification. Downtime Ruins Your Reputation One of the most commonly overlooked consequences of downtime is the hit your company's reputation takes online. In this age of social media, one person's bad experience is broadcast to dozens or even hundreds of followers. Bad news spreads faster than ever and has lasting repercussions. "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." -- Warren Buffet. Protect Your Bottom Line The challenge for small businesses has always been how to minimize single-point-of-failure downtime using their limited IT resources. This is why downtime kills so many small businesses. They can't prevent it and they can't react quickly enough. Thankfully, there are end-to-end business continuity solutions available today that integrate Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) software, 24/7 access to a Network Operations Center (NOC), and advanced backup and disaster recovery solutions to alleviate this issue. Not only do these methods minimize downtime and get businesses back up and running quickly, but they can reduce the cost of technology infrastructure maintenance by as much as 80 percent. It's time that small businesses stop being victims to the silent killer that is downtime.

What You Can Learn From U.S. Regulator's Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Recommendations