BaldwinTel

Reduce Four Big IT Headaches With "WEM", our Wireless Expense Management Solution

By Dan Baldwin

With having to manage my own IT (information technology) in my own company since I started it, I know for sure that any IT director's job headaches would be reduced if he or she could simply eliminate:

1. Problem people, and

2. Problem equipment 

But because there would be no need for IT directors if there were no problem people or equipment, IT directors are cursed with the headaches that come with people and equipment:

3. People using equipment, and

4. The costs associated with people using equipment

 

How to Eliminate the Trivial Wireless Device Headaches

Fortunately,  a bunch of mobile device experts who love nothing more than pouring over and auditing stacks of cell phone bills and juggling mobile devices have come up with an automated solution (backed up by the human experts) to relieve IT directors of the four main trivial (but not cheap) wireless management headaches.

Click the first video below to see how eMobus has designed their "WEM" or wireless expense management solution (they call it "TEM" in the video) to resolve the wireless headaches experienced by IT departments juggling hundreds of mobile devices.

Business Implications for 4G Wireless Data Networks, Do You Need to Migrate? And if So, Why?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

 Remember the phones when we were growing up? The main one in my parent's house hung on the wall near our kitchen and had a cord long enough to use for mountain climbing. In all the years of growing up, the only "phone change" that was ever made was an "upgrade" to the "Touch Tone" dial pad.  

Was the upgrade needed? Probably not. the tones were certainly cool but most of the IVR (interactive voice response) applications were still years away. But the IVR touch tone apps did come and it would be impossible for most of us to get through the day with a rotary dial phone.

In researching this blog I discovered that touch tone was actually introduced in 1963 when I was just two years old so the technology was over a decade old before my parents switched over.

Of course this begs the question, if people can get by with rotary dial tone for more than a decade after touch tone was introduced, what's with the big rush today to adapt new phone technologies the day after the technology is released?

 

Save Time & Make More Money!

Increased efficiency and the "soft dollar" savings that follow is always the main selling point of new technologies, but is it always true?

Are Aircards Enough? What Constitutes a Proper Wireless Wide Area Network (WAN) for Business Grade Use?

By Dan Baldwin

When affordable cellular "aircards" first hit the market many years ago, many IT directors with low-speed bandwidth needs said, "Cool! Now I've got a nice easy alternative to DSL or a T-1 to back up my data network."

Within a year or so cellular aircards stuck into a wireless data router were the standard data backup for many wide area networks (WANs) across the country for those businesses that could get by with 400k download & 150k upload.

Now, fast forward a half-dozen years, and IT directors have migrated from the 400k/150k speeds of the "2G" cellular networks to the 3g/1.5g data speeds of today's 4G/LTE/WiMax cellular data networks from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

While the wireless data speeds have increased though many IT directors are still relying on aircards in wireless routers to backup their networks.

Are Aircards Enough to Power a Business Grade Data Network?

I decided to post the question to Mark Gianinni, CEO of Accel Networks, a business grade wireless data integration company that specializes in creating wireless data networks for multi-location companies across the company.  

Click the audio player below to listen to the interview. Click here to download an MP3 recording of the podcast. Scroll lower to read the transcript.

 

 

Dan Baldwin:  Hello.  This is Dan Baldwin, and today we are speaking with Mark Gianinni, the CEO of Accel Networks, who is also the co-founder.  Mark, thanks for being with us today.

Mark Gianinni:  Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Dan.

DB:  The subject of our Podcast is:  Are Aircards Enough? What constitutes a proper wireless LAN for business grade use.  Mark, go ahead and start us off by answering this question. 

How Google's Motorola Purchase Aims to Increase YOUR Business Profit

By Dan Baldwin

As a business owner you know that the most valuable commodity any of your best managers or employees command is time. You know you also secretly dream that you can "do something" that will magically give your people "more time" to do their best work (while still paying them the same amount of money.)

Google's purchase this past week of Motorola Mobility may just help you do that "something" you've been looking for to give your people "more time" to make you money.

How?

By turning the smart phone into a "magic wand" for your business.

What?

Imagine how much more money your business could make if every time your best "rain makers" encountered a productivity hurdle they could point their "magic wand" smart phone at it and make that productivity challenge disappear?

I'll use myself as an example.  Several times a year I go on business trips to see just as many business clients as possible in a specific metropolitan area. Because I'm extremely frugal (cheap), I try to fill a day with as many appointments as possible.  Because I have to drive from one appointment to the next in an unfamiliar town I used to spend hours printing out detailed directions between appointments - and then later tried to read the directions while I drove between appointments.

When I finally realized that my smart phone doubles as a "talking navigator" I saved a ton of time preparing for each trip. I likely also saved my life by giving up "reading directions while driving 60 mph!

 

What does a "talking navigator" have to do with Google's Motorola purchase? 

The navigation "application" that now comes standard with almost any smart phone is a great solution that serves almost the entire population of smart phone owners.  But what about similar "mobile business applications" that serve a much smaller business audience of smart phone owners?

Do You Need an Ethernet Over Fixed Wireless Quote to Guarantee Redundancy? (Yes!)

By Dan Baldwin 

Mobile phones give all of us a sense of security. I check to make sure my cell phone is charged and in my pocket before going anywhere in my car. In my home and office my cell phone sits right next to my office phone. Why? I can count on it to work if there's a problem with my landline.

The way wireless technology backs up our personal communications is also available to backup our voice and data network communications. How will your multiple offices stay connected if your primary broadband Internet connection experiences a service interruption - for minutes or days? What "bad things" will happen to your business during that outage?

If you're using a fixed wireless connection as your primary or backup data connection for your business you don't worry about "bad things" happening to your business during an outage because "fixed wireless" offers the ultimate in voice and data redundancy to your "landline" connections.

 

What's "fixed wireless"?

Fixed wireless is a broadband Internet connection that uses a completely redundant and survivable "second path" to connect your business to the outside world.

It connects via a direct "line of sight" microwave path from a dish on the top of your building, through the air to another dish several miles away that connects you to a really big Ethernet Internet pipe. When the landline that enters your building through the basement is interrupted for any reason you always have the second "fixed wireless" connection to use that goes through the air. 

 

Is Fixed Wireless Expensive?

In most cases, bit for bit, fixed wireless connectivity is cheaper than a similar landline connection. In addition to being cheaper the connection is generally more reliable because it doesn't go through the local phone company's "local loop".  As well, fixed wireless can be installed in just a couple days and the bandwidth can be "dialed up and down" with a phone call.

Can Competitors Get Your Customer List From Your Salesperson's Smartphone? 4 quick tips to stop this...

By Dan Baldwin

So you've firewalled your Southern California multi-location businesses most valuable content like your San Diego customer lists, Orange County sales figures and the like from attacks over the Internet, but can your Los Angeles competitors still access the information the same way your Riverside salespeople do - using their smartphone?

If you said, "No way - I've put mobile security policies in place to protect my data from mobile theft!" you may want to take a look at a new study by the online security provider McAfee and Carnegie Mellon University CyLab that suggests that two-thirds of employees aren't aware of their employers' mobile security policies.

The report also suggests:

1. Approximately 1,500 companies surveyed report that their employees don't understand how the permissions and other access settings on their mobile devices work,
   
   
2. About 63% of work-related mobile devices are also used by employees for personal activities, and
   
   
3. Where companies do not provide mobile devices, many employees tend to use their personal smartphones and other mobile devices to handle work-related tasks.

 

Four Quick Ways to Protect Your Business Data from Unauthorized Mobile Access...

1. Test for the Threat - During your next all company meeting, when your best sales person (the one most likely to get hired by your competitors) gets up to refill his or her coffee, grab their cell phone and see how long it takes you to download a customer list to the phone's removable SD card or email the list to another as an attachment.