Advance planning and coordination are key elements to a successful relocation or upgrade, and we work closely with our clients to prepare a critical time-line covering each item that will affect the outcome of the move. The planning of the technology move should begin at least 90 days before the move date, especially the notification with the phone and Internet carrier, as often their systems take 5 to 6 weeks to accommodate new/moved circuits. Being agents for TelePacific, AT&T, Paetec, Cbeyond and every other major phone and data service provider, as well as, being veterans in the relocation of mission critical technologies, we make sure your move across the street or across the nation is smooth for you… and seamless to your customers.

The following lists some of the considerations for a relocation:

1. The proper type and quantity of telephone lines / circuits needed for the new location, as well as Internet, i.e. regular telephone C.O. lines, Digital PRI, T-1, DID, DSL, and high-speed connectivity for data transmission and Internet access. Backup resources as needed.

2. Test and evaluate existing voice and data cabling in the new location to determine if it will meet the needs of your telephone and data processing equipment.

3. Size, ventilation and electrical must be evaluated for the Server/Telecommunication Room (MDF Main Distribution Frame) layout. Connectivity from the MPOE Minimum Point Of Entry (sometimes referred to as the DEMARC, or point of Demarcation) to the MDF must be evaluated, as well as any IDF Intermediate Distribution Frame locations or needs.

4. Consideration to relocate, and upgrade if necessary, the existing telephone and voice processing equipment and install them at the new location.

5. Consideration to relocate, and upgrade if necessary, the existing data, network and server equipment and install them at the new location.

6. Planning for relocation of Local and Wide Area Networks.

7. Evaluate to what extent the new location may need video surveillance cameras and recording.

As the age old saying goes, “People don’t plan to fail they often just fail to plan”. Never underestimate the value of a good relocation plan.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

Toshiba has been leading the way in the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) segment. The Strata CIX and soon to be released Toshiba IPedge offer robust private voice networking, Strata Net, as part of the Toshiba family of telecommunications products. Based on QSIG, an international standard, Strata Net allows multiple Toshiba systems to share voice mail systems and attendants, have common features and a coordinated numbering plan, have customized employee directories, and route calls simply and easily throughout the business. Toshiba has had the foresight to port its mature, QSIG-based networking to VoIP with the same feature set and interactions. This allows you to create a single, seamless network even if you need to mix internet and ISDN technologies. For each location, you can choose the best technology for bandwidth, voice quality and security without having to abandon any of your investment.

Using the internet to transport voice between locations is sometimes seen as “free”: close but not quite. The internet allows you to eliminate costly dedicated circuits between locations: leased by the month and by the mile. Instead, you provide each location with high-speed internet access and the telephone system provides the intelligence for one system to find and communicate with the other systems across the internet. Unlike dedicated circuits whose bandwidth is unavailable even if no conversations are in progress, VoIP only consumes bandwidth as needed.

The internet is inherently unmanaged, meaning that the end user can exercise no control over prioritization, routing or bandwidth control. With a large number of calls, voice quality can deteriorate. This is less important for conversations between employees than it is between your customers and your employees. In recent years, managed wide-area technologies like MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching) have emerged to allow you to control quality factors and still not require dedicated circuits. They cost slightly more than high-speed internet but still less than dedicated circuits. Older offerings like Frame Relay operate on virtual dedicated circuits that impose arbitrary restrictions on the various locations’ ability to communicate with each other. For occasional calls between employees and for voicemail retrievals, the internet is usually quite adequate.

Toshiba has taken all this a step further and uses the same hardware that supports Strata Net to support VoIP telephones. This allows you to use any excess hardware capacity to support at-home workers or road warriors with the same high quality phone service they would expect in the office.

The good news is that the technology is here and we at smplsolutions know that it works.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

You’ll want to start with an anti-virus program that provides real-time system monitoring and virus behavior monitoring. Also, make sure whatever anti-virus you go with is certified by the ICSA Labs. We suggest staying away from some of the top sellers like McAfee and Norton, because they’re known for slowing systems down. ESET’s NOD32 is a great product that provides all the necessary functionality. Its lightweight, which means it won’t bog down your system. It’s also recommended by Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy. You can try a trial version of ESET for free, or contact smplsolutions or ESET in order to purchase the protection.

If you’re strapped for cash, there are free anti-virus solutions out there. We recommend AVG Free. Please remember that free solutions are not as effective as most paid solutions.

Now that we have your main line of defense squared away, let’s move on to your secondary defense. As I said before, no single company can keep up with all of the new threats being unleashed on us every day. We recommend secondary scan software like Malwarebytes or SUPERAntispyware. These products are free and require that you either manually run them or setup a scanning schedule. We suggest scanning with either of these programs once a week. The free versions of these products do not provide real-time protection and you shouldn’t need (2) programs monitoring your system at all times as this can cause conflicts and slow your system down.

Last but certainly not least, you need to keep your operating system and software updated. Keeping Windows updated is one of the most important ways of keeping your system safe from malware. Make sure Automatic Updates is turned on. You can check this by going to Control Panel, Security Center then click on Automatic Updates. It’s also extremely important to keep other software updated like Adobe products and Java. If you’re not sure what software may need updating, we recommend you use Update Notifier. It’s a light weight program that will scan your computer for all the installed software and will display a list of updates. Update Notifier makes it easy to make sure all your software is up to date in one easy location.

If you follow these steps, you’ll be about as safe as you can be. Its a little bit work but its well worth the peace of mind you’ll receive when you know your computer and, more importantly, your files are safe.
Mike – CSR Level II – smplsolutions 949-544-8640

This type of investment protection is important when considering your next telephone system. Technology has gotten to the point where almost anyone with a server and some talented programmers can offer telephone services. Some of their ideas are very clever and have great appeal but there is no track history to say whether the company or the product will last and, if it does, whether the next version will completely abandon the product you buy today.

There should be no need to completely abandon your current system to enjoy things like VOIP, Strata Net private networking, Unified Messaging, and a modern call center (ACD). Toshiba remains committed to this migration strategy. A Strata CIX100 or CIX670 and its digital or IP telephones purchased today should continue to serve you well into the future.

You should also be comforted that the core of your telephone system is based on proven technology. The phone system will continue to work when the data network goes down, when the mail server takes the afternoon off, even when the lights go out. The comfort is in knowing that your business will continue to function and that you will be able to call for help. When the lights are on, the network is up and the mail server is back, you can enjoy all the newest toys and productivity tools… as well as your Toshiba phone system.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

With a dynamically allocated SIP voice and data (Internet) circuit, an on premise router dynamically provides voice channels as needed, and utilizes the rest of the bandwidth for data. This efficient management of bandwidth allows a single T1 to do what traditionally required separate voice and data circuits. Small and medium size business can now take advantage of the features that only larger companies could afford in the past. Another big advantage is getting the major benefits of a PRI T1 – Caller ID (CID), Direct Inward Dial (DID), and Automatic Number Identification (ANI). These “PRI” centric features enable more advanced call handling and are not only provided by SIP, but the SIP voice trunk does not require the more expensive “PRI” card for the hardware system.

SIP trunking saves capital expense on the initial hardware purchase, and saves monthly cash flow on the phone/Internet bill, while enjoying the benefits provided by a digital line PRI, such as CID, DID & ANI. For further information on any of the topics mentioned here, please feel free to contact me.
David Case – smplsolutions – 800-943-7675

We met with many other members, learned about their challenges and strategies for surviving in today’s economy. Much like most other industries, they have their common-ground challenges but also have some unique challenges as well…

An assisted living facilities’ success depends on a high client satisfaction rate and repeat/referral business. The main reoccurring theme I kept hearing during this conference was: “To achieve success in this industry, your organization must have great communication and be proactive with client issues.”

One of the ways they accomplish both of these actions is to empower their employees with the capability of solving most of their own problems without having to go through the executive administrator. Sometimes this can be a culture-changing task; especially if your administrator is the type that enjoys solving every little problem on their own.

Here’s a great example I heard by one of the many talented speakers at this conference…

One of your clients is unhappy about an experience in your facility. They complain to their caretaking relative and this relative comes by to visit you to discuss the situation (such as “my mother is unhappy – she says one of the nurses is stealing her clothes”).

Instead of dismissively responding to the client by saying “I’ll look right into this and report back to you Mrs. Smith”, the administrator should proactively say “take a walk with me down to the nurse station; we’ll get to the bottom of this together.”

This instantly involves the client and the staff together and the communication is much more accurate. The nurses can respond directly to the problem and usually explain very quickly what has transpired (i.e. your mother’s clothes aren’t missing; they’re in her closet behind her suitcases).

With this type of communication shift, the issue is solved much faster, the clients feels more important and (here’s the biggest part) you’re now training your employees to resolve problems on their own because they know eventually it’s going to come back to them anyway!

We also learned what one of the assisted living community’s biggest pain-points are within their facilities – call station response rates. This is where solutions from Toshiba, IdeaCare and Cornell come into play. The integration of nurse call, emergency response, the telephone system, overhead speakers, wireless devices and software used to control, track and report on all the events are the key to customer satisfaction ratings and word-of-mouth referral business.

Although there are many different configurations, with many facility/customer benefits, one which stands to be mentioned is implementing and integrating wireless into the assisted living facility. On this wireless it is possible to then have nurse/assistants with wireless phones which are integrated into the nurse call system so that no matter where they are in the facility, they can see who is “alarming” and who needs assistance. No longer is there a need to return to the nurse station or look for alerting lights in the hallway in order to know who needs assistance. And in some cases, the nurse/assistant would be able to communicate immediately with the client over the wireless phone. Not to mention the wireless Wi-Fi can serve the dual purpose of providing the caretaking relative, friends, family and kids who are visiting the client guest service Internet connectivity – either free or for a small fee – as a facility value add.

As a company we look forward to bringing helpful, beneficial and profitable solutions to the assisted living business.
Mark Byrne – Account Manager – smplsolutions 949-544-8619

With the popularity of the iPad and other similar devices to follow in the near future, such as the Cisco Cius, the need for business to secure these mobile endpoints is going to become imperative. Where business traditionally only saw employees using company provided/issued laptops, mobile devices, etc. more and more we are seeing a graying of the line between company provided and employee provided devices. Rather than being the exception, we are today seeing many employees offering to use their personal device for both personal use and for business use. These devices as endpoint security risks need to be addressed too.

I won’t go into the technical detail of the AnyConnect product in this blog, but I will note that it is a robust client which has several features/options in deployment, including: Virtual Private Network (VPN), Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), IronPort Web Security Appliance, cloud-based ScanSafe web security, malware threat defense, endpoint validation, and more.

For enterprise mobility endpoint security, AnyConnect should be seriously considered. More information is available at the following link http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps8411/tsd_products_support_series_home.html
David Case – President – smplsolutions

Most new installs of integrated voice and data T1s have the bandwidth “dynamically allocated”. This means that if a voice line is not in use, that bandwidth is available for data traffic. An integrated T1 can allow a smaller company to take advantage of the features a full voice PRI provides enterprise customers (such as direct-dial numbers and caller ID with name) as well as the reliability a T1 data connection provides. This allows a small business to appear larger and makes growth easier, since growth primarily means adding capacity, not re-vamping services.

SIP is the future for telephone service and preparing for it does not have to be a painful transition. The providers of integrated services all offer a SIP, PRI or analog handoff – this means that it will work with your current phone system regardless of whether it is already SIP enabled. If and when you are ready to upgrade your phone system to one that accepts a SIP connection, it will be a relatively painless change order with your carrier.

Around six months from the end of the contracts with your voice and data carrier(s) is a good time to begin to think about transitioning to a different product or carrier. Telepacific, Cbeyond, Paetec, XO, and several other carriers all use the same basic SIP network architecture and are price competitive. Many of these packages come with an array of a la carte value-added services that vary by provider. Which carrier is best for you depends on your specific situation.
Mark Gallagher – Sales Concierge – smplsolutions: 949-544-8612