EVERY business needs email and of course, Microsoft Exchange is the perfect solution for most businesses, however, the cost of purchasing, deploying and maintaining a server, or even multiple servers to host email can easily exceed the budget of a smaller business and in some cases, even larger businesses. Fortunately for them, there are alternatives. Sure you could use Google Mail / gmail to handle your mail, but for most people, they want Exchange, because they already use it and love it. There are many reasons why you may want an Exchange environment.
One alternative is from Microsoft and is known as BPOS, or Business Productivity Online Suite. The basic offering is for Business Productivity Online Standard Suite and is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. These online services are designed to give your business streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security, and simplified IT management. Your business benefits from always up-to-date technologies that are deployed rapidly, maximizing your valuable IT resources and reducing your need for infrastructure investments. (As borrowed directly from Microsoft’s product description).
What does this mean for you? Well for one, it could mean that deploying a new server that handles all these functions, or updating your current machines and software and then performing the support and service functions that are required could be avoided. This solution isn’t right for everyone obviously, however it is worthy of consideration by a few select business customers. Please contact us to find out if this can apply to your business.
We are a Microsoft approved Business Productivity Online Suite vendor. Regardless of whether your business is in Greenville, the Upstate or even in South Carolina, we may be able to help you with these tools.
This information better be your own!
If you have a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone system with SIP trunking and control your own Caller ID, then you need to insure that the information sent is actually your information. IE: The phone number should be an actual number at your business, and the name should reflect the name of your business.
Congress just passed a bill known as the “Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010.”
The bill reads, ”It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, in connection with any real time voice communications service, regardless of the technology or network utilized, to cause any caller ID service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information, with the intent to defraud or deceive,” the bill reads.
Of course, you will still be allowed to block your phone number from showing up using the Caller ID block function, and not surprisingly, law enforcement would be exempt from the restrictions.
This is good for those who are tired of the “spoofed” calls from various telemarketers, and could be bad for those who use CID information to indicate they are somewhere other than where they are. I know many businesses who have set their Caller ID to show a different name & number from the one they are calling, in order to mask their information, such as an attorney, private investigator, and rehab places, not to mention family & women’s shelters.
To make a long story short, in order to be on the right side of the law, insure your business caller ID information reflects the name of the business and an actual phone number that can be used to reach the business and you should be safe.
If you want to read the bill, it can be found here: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h1258rh.txt.pdf
Homeland Secure IT provides VoIP service, sales, support and consultation to Greenville and the Upstate of SC. If you require assistance with this or any Voice over IP issue, please contact us.
The iPad from Apple (tm)
Do you run a business and want to use an iPad with it? My hold us has been that there is currently no 3G, but that is changing very soon. Until then, a person who wants to use their iPad has to find a Wi-Fi hot spot, or, they could optionally do like our friend and TV personality Amy Wood does. She uses a Verizon MiFi, a device that bridges a cellular modem with an access point, allowing you to carry this device, and have a full time cellular connection and provide 802.11b/g WiFi to your various devices, such as the iPad.
That’s the first step in using the iPad with your business. Next is to configure it to work with your Microsoft Exchange Server, which should be no more difficult than getting your iPhone to work with your corporate email (If you are reading this, you probably have an iPhone already). Once configured, this is a nice mail reader.
Okay, so that is basic stuff, but what about taking an iPad with you, accessing your Terminal Server with RDP (Remote Desktop)? There’s an App for that! Yes, several exist, including one from Citrix that may be the best, but in the App Store, just search for Remote Desktop Client and you should be in business.
You will probably want to get a dock with a keyboard so you can accomplish some real work. Okay, so now this is becoming complicated. You have a MiFi adapter, an iPad, a client for Remote Desktop, and you are wanting to type, so you get this keyboard and mouse. A netbook may be a better solution for you if you are finding that you are typing more than browsing.
Should you be serious about using your iPad, iPhone or Mac with your Windows based network, and require assistance, please do not hesistate to call us to see how we can help.
Anyone interested in collaborative efforts should go check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/a_choir_as_big_as_the_internet.html
What you will find a collabrative effort on the behalf of 185 people in 12 countries, who participated in a “virtual choir”, sending in clips (245 I believe in total!) to be arranged into one piece that is beautifully done! Overcoming the noise issue of the various submitted clips would be challenging all by itself, then mixing the audio to the desired levels, and do the video editing on top of this would be so time consuming that I would never be able to do any actual work to pay the bills.
I believe this has to be one of the best collaborative efforts that I have seen on the internet in regards to music.
It also underscores the importance of bandwidth in music / video… 185 people sending one person a ton of clips would consume great gobs of bandwidth, especially if the submitters were sending high quality audio and/or video. Here in Greenville, SC, we are trying to catch the eye of Google, who is going to pick one city in America to use as a testbed for their unbelievably fast Google High Speed Fiber. In fact, it is so fast that it exceeds the speed that most home and business LANs operate right now. That’s right, the data that moves from your work computer to your business server is probably moving slower than the 1 Gigabit Per Second fiber connection would bring internet to you!
Imagine a group of musicians in the same town, performing their parts for a track from their home, while it is being recorded in a master studio for mix down, in real-time! The latency would be overcome with time correction. Everyone would hear the same click-track…. Any issues, corrected in post. Individual parts punched in from remote too. This gets me excited!!! THAT is why I am so adamant about the #GoogleOnMain / #LuckyGVL movement! http://www.WeAreFeelingLucky.com for more info!
Of course there are bazillion business collaboration advantages to high speed internet as well, but I won’t get into those now…. It is the weekend for a few more hours – enjoy it!
Just the FAX!
If your business is like many that we provide service for, you may still require the use of a FAX machine. In fact you may have a conglomeration of devices that you use in order to have the best of all worlds, maybe your office looks something like this: A laser printer to print forms and documents cheaply, and quickly. A FAX machine to receive orders on and send legal documents. A scanner to digitize documents for storage on your file server, or to import into emails. A color / ink jet printer to print the occasional color document. Maybe a dot matrix printer that is solely used to print your checks. And then you might have a copier that allows you to duplicate quickly. You might have multiple small printers at each workstation because you sure don’t want someone printing to your checks that are loaded in a particular printer.
If that sounds like you, then this may sound familiar too: Each of the printing devices use different ribbons, ink cartridges, toner cartridges, and maybe even special papers. You have trouble finding the printer you want to print to in the long list of shared devices, etc.
It doesn’t have to be that way! With today’s printing technology, a typical business can eliminate many devices in their network, cutting down power consumption (Yes, those devices use power even when doing nothing), reducing the heat (all those power supplies and the associated electronics generate heat while consuming power), cleaning up the appearance of your facility by giving you back valuable desk and counter space, and save you gas and time trying to keep all the various inks and toners on hand.
We can work with your Greenville / Upstate business to determine if a change to your printing & FAXing infrastructure can save you money and make your life easier. Let’s look at just one way a new technology can help you. If your business moves to a VoIP (Voice over IP) solution, it can handle both incoming and outgoing faxes for you, and replace the current stand-alone FAX machine. In fact, you will no longer need to print out a document to your printer, walk to your FAX machine and FAX it off, then shred the document you just printed out. Instead, you can PRINT to the FAX server, without even wasting a sheet of paper. The document goes out directly to the source, and you never left your workstation!
What about reception of FAXes? Using a VoIP system to handle your FAX can again eliminate paper usage because incoming documents can be EMAILED to your inbox. You can then opt to print the item if you deem it necessary, save it, forward it to other people or respond with another FAX. This is powerful technology, and good for our planet!
Think of the time, money and frustration that can be saved!
I’ll talk about printing, scanning, FAXing, document management, copying and more in future blog entries, but until then, save a tree and FAX to/from your PC! Call us at 864-990-4748 and we will discuss how these technologies can help your business! Have a great weekend…
Still running an older version of Intuit Quickbooks or Quicken? Why not celebrate getting through tax season with a new version!? Homeland Secure IT is a reseller of Intuit products and can save you 20%. It doesn’t matter if you are in Greenville, the Upstate or even South Carolina, we can save you money on the product if purchased through us or online using a link we can provide.
Need help upgrading or installing? How about loading it on multiple computers, or setting up a backup of your server? We can help! Call us today and let’s see how we can help you.
Whatever you do - Don't panic...
Let me bore you a few minutes with something not so trivial about DNS (Domain Name System). DNS is where all those lookups take place that convert hostnames to IP addresses. A hostname is a name you can more easily remember than the IP address, for instance telling someone in a radio commercial to visit your website at http://216.33.19.35 would be a lot more difficult than saying www.CoolSite.com.
Think of an IP (Internet Protocol) address as a phone number. It is a numerical address that points to one particular server or device generally. While the hostname is the alias for it, and it may actually point to several IPs to help in load balancing, etc.
Putting in a DNS query (or a DNS lookup) for www.Google.com will return a series of IP addresses. Your browser will go to one of those. Consider the DNS lookup to be calling 411 for the phone number. All this takes place in the background, in fractions of seconds and when it is working correctly, the website you want pops up in your browser.
While not something that the average computer user is aware of, those in the IT field have been anticipating this for a while now. The way DNS is handled on the internet is about to change, and for the better, we hope. Currently DNS, is vulnerable to what is known as a man-in-the-middle attack, also known as a “Kaminsky exploit”, which allows a bad guy to poison the DNS lookup tables, giving false responses to your queries. This is bad.
The solution is to transition to DNSSEC, which is happening on the major (root) servers on May 5th, 2010. This is where the trouble may start. DNSSEC adds a little bit of data to the standard DNS query. This data contains a digital signature and the packet size grows to a size that may cause some network devices to reject the packet due to the size exceeding the 512 byte limit that is programmed into the configurations and firmware of some older gear.
What does this mean exactly? That some people, some organizations, etc, may experience some issues with DNS. Vague enough for you? Just keep this in mind. If on May 5th or afterwards, you experience the inability to get to websites or send mail, it could be due to DNS issues with you, or even your upstream DNS server. There’s no need to panic though because there is a fix for everything.
As always, we should you require assistance with your computer, server, firewall, or other network equipment, call us and we will take care of you.
If you would like to test your network in advance of May 5th, please visit this site: https://www.dns-oarc.net/oarc/services/replysizetest or we can do that for you if you wish.
KERRR-CHUNK!!!! Old style analog time clocks are starting to fade away... Slowly...
If you run a business that has more than a handful of employees, chances are you are using at Time & Attendance System already, and the chances are good that it is an analog time clock, the kind you stick a card into (after lining it up for the correct day and whether you are clocking in or clocking out) and it goes “KER-CHUNK!” and stamps the current time/date onto the card. If it is a really old one, then the person using it may have to not only align it properly, but pull a lever in order for it to stamp correctly.
Newer mechanical clocks will automatically feed the card into the machine and align it, then stamp it, and if you are lucky, it does it correctly, on the proper line, without over-writing the previous clock-in and hopefully with the correct time and date (If it compensated for daylight savings time without you manually changing it).
The problem with this type of technology is that it leaves a lot of room for error. First, you have to actually get your employees to punch in and out, correctly, and the machine itself has to function properly and be maintained, then there is the task of the person handling payroll actually reading the time cards and entering the data into their payroll system.
Now there are many options that can simplify your life. Let’s look at a few of those:
Web & telephone based clock in/out. These types of systems can be setup so that when an employee sits down at their terminal, they can clock in, by visiting a website or calling a phone number and entering a code. This is can be a good solution for those who have many locations, or even telecommuters. Though many offices now use this technology to eliminate the need for employees to go to a central location. It also can be used to keep track of time spent on certain jobs. The data is imported directly into your accounting software. No room for error here!
Mechanical time clocks with atomic clock: Who says the mechanical clock is totally out? They still are used in manufacturing plants with great success, but newer models will set the time and date automatically to keep the clock as accurate as possible. No more Daylight Savings Time mistakes with these.
Proximity card / badge clocks: These are becoming the new standard in time & attendance systems for many reasons. First of all it is a fully digital solution, the data is imported directly to your accounting software, there are no errors from employees mis-aligning the card, and it is a completely touch-free solution, making it perfect for any application where the spread of germs/virus is of concern. These are affordable and easy to use. Just wave your card near the unit and you are clocked in or out. If a card is lost, the user can enter their code.
Is "Buddy Punching" a concern? Not with this unit!
Biometric Terminals: The biometric or finger reader time clocks are perfect for making sure the person clocking in or out is actually the person that SHOULD be clocking in and out. In some applications, where a time clock is located in a secluded area, you will find that “buddy punching” is taking place. That is where an employee is running a few minutes late, or wants to leave a few minutes early and they call a fellow employee and ask them if they could take their card and punch them in/out. In addition to eliminating the buddy punch, this type of system also has the advantage of being completely digital, with direct input into your accounting & payroll software such as Intuit Quickbooks.
For those requiring additional security, entire hand readers are available.
Whether you are looking to replace your old mechanical time clock, or looking to implement time and attendance tracking for the first time, we can help you determine the perfect solution for your application. We are an Acroprint dealer and believe their products to be affordable, reliable and feature packed! Call us today and we will discuss your needs.
In an early blog post http://www.homelandsecureit.com/blog/2010/03/when-you-need-computer-repair-do-you-search-online-or-use-a-phone-book/ I asked what you do when you need computer service or computer repair in Greenville and received a couple emails and a reply or two in person. Most people agreed with what I said and that is, in the event of needing service, they turn to Google or some other search engine.
An article posted a couple days after mine at this URL tends to agree http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-14859-paper-cuts.html and talks of phone books being obsolete. Okay, I can buy that. But, what about the time you need your computer fixed and have no computer to look up a good computer repair shop with? It appears 411 service is free with many people’s cell phones. I checked my plan and it is not (Sprint / Nextel).
Nothing new here, just wanted to share someone else’s thoughts as well, mainly because they concur with my own.
A Cisco ASA 5505 Firewall? You need it WHEN? HAHAHA
If you are in need of a Cisco ASA 5505 or 5510 Security Appliance for your application, chances are, you are not going to be happy when you call your reseller to order one. The device is in very short supply and in most cases, back-ordered until April, May or June, depending upon the supplier. As a Cisco dealer, Homeland Secure IT is trying to secure product for our clients just as many others are. We have had one on back order for 2 months for a particular application.
Why is there a shortage? The story is different depending upon the vendor you speak with, but it goes a little something like this: During the worst of the economic slump, Cisco scaled back production of the ASA and apparently many other products as well. This is not surprising, as there is no need to build a device that is going to sit on the shelf and become outdated before it sells. But what has happened since then is that sales have increased, and the demand has rapidly outpaced the supply. Cisco has apparently attempted to ramp up production and this is where it gets sketchy… One version of the story says that a supplier of a particular component is unable/unwilling to provide it fast enough, another has it that the supplier of said component retooled and is making something else for another company and told Cisco to jump in the lake and get their component elsewhere, and then there is another story which is popular on some internet forums in which the rumor has it that Cisco is upgrading the ASA line with new software and that it requires additional RAM, which is also in short supply.
Any way you look at it, for the time being there is a shortage of the ASA 5505 & 5510 products. You could get lucky and find one at your favorite supplier, and if you do, good for you, I am only slightly jealous. However, be warned that some places have jacked their prices up, 25% and higher. If the ASA is the only product you can use, as mandated by some policy or another, then pay the money and be happy.
What about the rest of the world who doesn’t actually require a Cisco product? Fortunately for them, there are a number of products available that will fit the bill. Here at Homeland Secure IT, we offer some great alternatives, such as the SonicWall and Watchguard security appliance line. These are both very high quality lines of security products and can easily replace the Cisco ASA devices spec for spec. In many, if not most cases, the SonicWall or Watchguard firewalls will not only compare in features, but will also save you money! Call us today at 864-990-4748 or email and find out if a Watchguard or SonicWall Security Appliance is right for your application.
