Bruce’s Business Tips Clouds, Promises, and Your Business

APRIL 2013

At Dynamic Edge, we do things differ-ently, because we understand the pain of working on a slow machine, only to have it freeze up right before that criti-cal “Save.” We’ve all had bad experi-ences with 1-800-TechSupport. And we also know that, to rescue someone from a computer emergency, you have to go Beyond Tech Support.

After thirteen years of providing tech-nology services to all types of busi-nesses, we’ve learned that very few things are as frustrating as persistent computer interruptions. So we’ve built

a company of people, who want to help people like you find cost-effective solu-tions to pressing technology issues. With a team of highly trained and certi-fied individuals, we can handle your toughest technology challenges – with-out burying you in tech-talk.

From Network Design and Installation to Custom Database Construction, to Web Development, Smartphone Appli-cations and much more, Dynamic Edge delivers powerful results through our people-centered approach.

WHO IS Dynamic Edge?

“When you’re having a technology crisis, the last thing you need is a fast-talking, know-it-all who doesn’t let you explain a prob-

lem; and then acts like you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

IN THIS ISSUE:

Bruce’s Business Tips: Clouds, Promises, and Your Business!

POWER UP: BYOD or COPE? Should employees bring their own device, or should the company provide one?

Windows Shortcuts! Stop being your own worst enemy! Get more productive and stop us-ing the mouse so much!

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Check out extended content @: www.dynedge.com/april_news

I just met with a potential client who shared a horror story about a server out-age that locked them out of their data and kept them from accessing their X-rays for 7 full work days. Should they move to the cloud? Maybe.

A lot of people have been asking me about the cloud lately. They want to know if it’s right for them. It’s true, for some, the cloud can help you improve efficiency, save money, and create redundancy in your computer systems. But timing is the key to whether your business should make the switch or not. Let me share with you some of my findings over the last 6 months of helping customers navigate these changing times.

So, first, who is the Cloud wrong for?

1. Businesses without access to multi-ple sources of really fast internet

2. Businesses that just went through a big, expensive hardware upgrade

If 1 and 2 don’t apply to you, the three ways fitCloud can help your business are by lowering hardware costs, creating redundancy, and serving multiple lo-

cations.

Lower Hardware Cost: If you are

preparing to purchase a new server, it’s a good time to consider the cloud.

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SARC is a non-profit organization dedi-cated to the development and support of research for the prevention, treatment and cure of sarcomas - a cancer of the bone and connective tissue of the body.

SARC was founded by physicians special-izing in sarcoma collaborating to advance the care of their patients. The operations office is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. However, the collective leaders of SARC consist of respected sarcoma physicans located across the country, working to-gether to develop new strategies to im-prove the outcomes for sarcoma patients.

SARC collaborators meet twice annu-ally to discuss the latest therapies and concepts for new clinical trials.

Other important SARC initiatives include the Career Development Award to foster innovative research by new investigators as well as the completed development of a research database to collect prospective data on these rare cancers

www.dynedge.com/april_news

Product Review: The height of cold and flu season has passed. However, the germs seem to be lingering, as we are still seeing some spo-radic sickness. Here’s a reminder on how to help stifle the flu in your office.

The four surfaces that need cleaning

the most are:

Phones

Desks

Keyboard

Mouse

These are items you touch all day, every day. Germs and dirt from your hands and mouth get transferred easily on to these items, creating breeding grounds for harmful bacteria.

You might say, “But I’m the only one touching my keyboard!”

When a sick person sneezes, coughs, or blows their nose near your desk, the bac-teria goes airborne and settles on sur-faces. If you touch those surfaces, then touch your face, you can get sick. The flu virus lives on surfaces for up to 48 hours.

To lessen your chances of picking up colds and flu, we recommend cleaning your mouse, keyboard, phone, and desk daily with disinfecting wipes, along with washing your hands regularly and not touching your face. Also, don’t let anyone sneeze in your mouth.

You can also make your Stick n’ Find beep and light up for help finding an item when you’re really warm, but still aren’t seeing it.

So how can you get some Stick n’

Finds?

They cost $50 for a two pack on www.sticknfind.com. Pretty pricey, but for the right person, these things could be worth their weight in gold!

Oh, and iPhone users, make sure you have “Find My iPhone” set up through iCloud. Give Bryan a call if you need help with that!

Sick of Getting Sick?

Ultra Small Bluetooth Location Stickers

It seems like the technology of today has made it impossible to make day ruining mistakes like getting lost, forgetting ap-pointments, or missing your favorite TV show.

Well, add losing your keys to the list of things that will never ruin your day again.

Stick n’ Find is a little Bluetooth transmit-ter that you can stick on anything you think you might lose, like; Your keys, your wallet, the remote, or even your cat.

Just make sure you don’t lose your Smartphone (as if we are ever detached from our smartphones long enough to lose them), and you can track down any of these items easily!

Just fire up the app (pictured to the right) and any Stick n’ Find within a 100 foot radius shows up on your radar!

11 Best Windows 7 Shortcuts!

Each time you reach for the mouse, it costs you productivity. The more you can keep your hands on the keys, the better. The Windows Key allows you to do a bunch of time saving, mouse killing com-mands.

Here are the best ways to use it:

Win+Home: Clear all but the active window.

Win+Space: All windows become transparent so you can see through to the desktop.

Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window.

Shift+Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window vertically.

Win+Down arrow: Minimize the win-dow/Restore the window if it's maxi-mized.

Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor.

Shift+Win+Left/Right arrows: Move the window to the monitor on the left or right.

Win+number (1-9): Use the program pinned to the taskbar in that position

Win+T: Scroll through programs on the taskbar.

Win+(+/-): Zoom in/out.

Win+P: Adjust presentation settings for your display.

We recommend a couple options; Dynamic Edge can put a dedicated server at your office, fitCloud:Onsite, that will host your on-premise, private cloud. Or, Option 2, you can host your server(s) in one of our temperature controlled, secure data centers. With both options, you access your data and software the same way you al-ways have. We own the servers and upgrade them every few years. You just pay a monthly fitCloud infrastruc-ture fee on your Fixed IT bill. Oh, and you never have to buy a new server again!

Redundancy and Disaster Re-covery: fitCloud can be a great op-

tion to address redundancy, making sure your servers are always accessi-ble. Can you currently do business during a power or internet outage? When your server is in our datacenter, your servers are always up. Even if your business burns to the ground, all you’ll need is a laptop and a cellular 4G hotspot to be back in business. We will help you navigate the decision between moving everything to the cloud and creating a mix of onsite and cloud hosted servers depending on your needs.

Multiple Locations: If one of our

offices is without power, we need to make sure our other offices and home users are still able to get work done. Recently, the Ann Arbor area had a Comcast internet outage that lasted 8 hours. Because we use a fitCloud phone server instead of a local phone server at our headquarters, Nashville and Royal Oak’s phones still worked. We didn’t miss a call.

If you are wondering if your business should move to fitCloud, give me a call today to schedule a Cloud Readiness Assessment!

~Bruce

sonally and professionally. COPE is cer-tainly more controlled and secure, but for a business with a limited budget, buying devices for every employee can add up pretty quick. If you go the COPE route and are large enough to buy in volume, you can likely negotiate substantial discounts.

Security Concerns With BYOD: If

you have client information that must be kept secure or other industry specific regulations regarding the security of client data, then COPE is likely your best ap-proach. It takes out any gray area of whose data is whose. Plus there is a cer-tain comfort level in being able to recover or confiscate any device for any reason at any time to protect your company without any worries of device ownership.

Advice For BYOD Companies: De-

spite the numerous advantages of COPE, most small businesses will still choose BYOD because it can save them money. Here are 2 of Lawrence Reusing’s (GM of mobile security at Imation) important rules for BYOD. Consider these when creating your mobile device policy.

1. Assume employees will use personal devices on the corporate network even if they are told not to. 50% of employees use personal devices to take confidential data out of compa-nies every day.

2. Assume employees value conven-ience more than security. If your poli-cies are inconvenient, employees will work around them.

APRIL 2013

Is Microsoft’s New Cloud based Office Licensing Model Going To

Affect Your Business?

The evolution of phones and how we use them is forcing many business owners to

make a tough choice; BYOD or COPE?

“Bring Your Own Device” vs. “Corporate Owned, Personally

Enabled”

The Typical Solution - BYOD: Ac-

cording to the CDW 2012 Small Business Mobility Report, 89% of small-business employees use their personal mobile de-vices for work. But the headache involved here is how do you support and secure all of these devices? The scary thing is that most small businesses don’t even try! The CDW survey found that only 1 in 5 small businesses have deployed (or plan to deploy) any systems for managing and securing employees’ personal devices.

The Alternative - Is COPE Any Bet-ter? A minority of small businesses has

implemented a Corporate Owned, Person-ally Enabled (“COPE”) policy instead. They buy their employees’ mobile de-vices, secure them, and then let employ-ees load additional personal applications that they want or need. And the employers control what types of apps can be added too. And the “personally enabled” aspect of COPE allows employees to choose the company-approved device they prefer while permitting them to use it both per-

Fixed IT - Saving the World, one computer at a time.

If your business is using a “pay-as-it-breaks” computer service, I’d bet your issues are never actually getting fixed, are they? You keep having the same problems over and over. Right? With Fixed IT, we proactively monitor and protect your system, so it doesn’t break in the first place.

Consider your computer saved.

Should Employees

Use Their Own Mobile

Devices For Work?

Microsoft announced earlier this year that they are going to place all of their Microsoft Office desktop and cloud-based Office 365 software appli-cations under one umbrella in a renewed effort to push their cloud-based

subscription model.

Microsoft will still sell their existing desk-top versions, but these will not be as “fully featured” as the upcoming cloud-based versions (note that any Microsoft software that ends in 365 is their cloud based soft-ware). It’s becoming very apparent that whether you’re a home user or a large company, Microsoft wants you to buy the cloud version of their products going for-ward. If you don’t want the cloud version on a monthly subscription, you’ll have to settle for a dumbed down version of the product instead.

Here’s what this potentially means

for your Business:

The new “Office” family covers all dif-ferent editions of Microsoft Office, from Student and Home Editions to the most powerful tools that Microsoft offers.

You will now be able to shift your budget dollars from one time or annual license purchases to an ongoing monthly operating expense, thus eve-ning out cash flow.

Things should be getting easier for you to manage. Whether you are starting

from scratch or updating software li-censes for your office, you’ll be able to get everyone running on Office, Ex-change, Sharepoint, Lync, Word, Excel and even Skype under one single li-cense.

Microsoft is also preparing a half-dozen bundles for Office and Office 365, many aimed at small business.

Purchasing the right software (or soft-ware subscription) can be tricky busi-ness. That’s why you have us! You should always work with your Client Liai-son for software upgrades.

Bruce’s Business Tips ...Continued from Page 1

MEET THE DYNEDGERMEET THE DYNEDGERMEET THE DYNEDGER

Sean Lynn

Before coming to DE, Sean got his com-puter experience under fire. He joined the Marines right out of high school, and after some training,

he was building and supporting commu-nication systems for our military in Iraq. He left the Marine Corps after 8 years, as a Sergeant. Now, Sean has a wife, 2 kids, and a much less stressful job as a Consultant at DE.

On the Lighter Side...

Even though it seems sports and com-puter geeks never mix, Sean is the ex-ception to that rule. While all of his co-workers are talking about Yoda and 12 sided dies, Sean spends his free time memorizing situational batting statistics for the entire American League. Dave Dombrowski frequently calls Sean when he’s considering roster moves to get his opinion. In fact, in 2004, Sean talked Dave into pulling the trigger on drafting a little know pitcher out of Old Dominion University, based on some linear re-gression statistical analysis he com-piled. No one else in the world thought this kid would be a major league player, but Dombrowski trusted Sean, and he drafted Justin Verlander anyways.

The most underutilized key on the keyboard?

Hands down, the Windows Key.

340 Harrison Street | Nashville, TN 37219 | 615.526.2626 | help@dynedge.com | www.dynedge.com