The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has faced an uphill battle for adoption due to the issue of effective policy implementation.  BYOD offers employees the luxury of working with devices they are most familiar with and can foster a more productive and collaborative environment, but these benefits must be balanced against the inherent dangers of uncontrolled devices having access to your data and network. When implementing a BYOD policy, special care needs to be taken to ensure existing company goals are not compromised. An effective, comprehensive BYOD policy will promote collaborative solutions for executives, IT staff and workforce users, but must take into account the following policy concerns:

1. Security

According to Gartner, the number one concern for potential BYOD policy implementation is security. The transition from company-issued devices to personal devices requires strict guidelines defined in your security policies. Protecting communications, monitoring data usage, and addressing privacy matters are imperative measures to take. Updating and executing data encryption methods, using SSL or HTTPS for example, will ensure secure data transmission. Archiving and recording methods should also be implemented in complying with company regulations, as well as increasing overall security.  BYOD systems can attain the same level of security (or even greater) as before implementation if optimal software services are put in place.

2. Support and System Administration

With multiple personal devices operating on company premises, support and system administration policies must be established. By instigating single-point administration, changes can be replicated smoothly across users within the enterprise. To reap the full benefits of your Unified Communications platform, it is essential to enhance support for administration as well as end users. So how can you do this? First, select a platform that allows easily accessible support, either by in-house IT staff or from your chosen support provider. It is also beneficial to define clear user roles to identify specific support and administration options that are available according to the user’s responsibilities and position.

3. Device Choice

When determining your device policies, of course you’ll have to determine which devices are allowed, which ones aren’t, and why. It is also helpful to get feedback from employees during this process. You can analyze employee preference by survey, asking such questions as “what devices do you already own?”, “are they compatible with baseline security/support features?” It is helpful to be familiar with the operating system, hardware and other specifications of the various devices and device types. In the future you may want to leverage this knowledge to lay the foundation for assessment of additional devices and technologies. Feedback from employees will also help keep your IT team up to date with changing devices as the consumer market changes.

4. Monitoring Usage

Whether your business adopts a formal BYOD plan, such as implementing a BYOD policy solely for senior-level executives, or creates a more informal plan which permits all employees to use personal devices, it is imperative to establish usage guidelines. One way you can do this is to develop a list of guidelines that establish binding agreements for employees to adhere to so that you protect and ensure the safety of sensitive corporate data. This way, if employees want to use their own devices, they will agree that the device, including their personal data, could be remotely wiped if it’s lost or stolen. It should also be clear that it is their responsibility to back up any personal information they don’t want lost in that eventuality. Appropriate termination polices should also be in place, acknowledging that all company information will be permanently deleted upon leaving the organization. It may also be beneficial to establish a mobility committee to create and monitor the success of policy goals.

How Unified Communications Can Help

Unified Communications (UC) can’t take the place of effective and well thought out BYOD guidelines, but it can help keep your company contacts and other data safe and secure when an employee’s device is lost or stolen. With the right UC app, your IT administrator can rest assured that traffic is secure and data loss is prevented with encrypted data en route to any endpoint. What’s more, Unified Communications will allow your company to provide a win-win for employee choice and corporate security. With the plethora of devices available - from iPhone to Blackberry to Android and more - you don’t want to try to support each individually when you can easily provide users all their desktop communications capabilities through a single approved UC app – on the device of their choice. This gives employees freedom of choice on their device and you the peace of mind and safety of managing a user and their network credentials the same way you’d manage their corporate issue desktop. One of the most sought-after features of the app is the added benefit of hiding a user’s mobile number when they make calls and displaying only their corporate phone number on caller ID devices – a single number identifies employees both internally and to your clients. Truly remote working.
With Unified Communications they’ll also benefit from added flexibility and mobility with the following:

• Corporate presence and IM
• Click to dial from mobile applications
• Availability of the UC app from the same app store they use on their personal device
• Access to corporate directory and resources on the go

While Unified Communications won’t solve all your concerns, it can help alleviate some of the primary security challenges related to BYOD. For more information on how NEC provides the same UC experience across multiple devices click here.

As an IT manager one of your major responsibilities is implementing and overseeing voice and unified communications (UC) project management. To help take some of the load off, we put together the following list of tips, best practices and a few helpful hints may be useful. Take a look:

Plan, Plan, Plan - Be sure to assess all needs, risks and benefits of your project before developing a plan. When it comes to IT project management, some companies have defined processes in place, while others rely on the skills of an integrator or service provider to implement a process for successful UC deployment. Regardless of your internal project management skills, it’s important to understand what your provider can offer and what role they will take on in the implementation process. The right provider can save you money and time as well as help to improve your system effectiveness. A skilled integrator can become a valued partner of your organization and help increase workforce efficiency. Also be sure to leverage the expertise of a dealer with prior experience in structuring, deploying and managing collaboration applications.

Know your Provider - Some good qualities to look for in a provider are domain expertise, sophisticated knowledge, and insight in collaboration space – these will lead to enhanced creativity and resourcefulness, as well as innovation and efficiency with your UC project implementation. There is a wide variety of applications available that can provide the best solutions for document sharing, instant messaging, audio conferencing, video streaming, and presence, so look for a provider with direct experience with these applications so you can capitalize on the effectiveness of your solution. The UC project management strategy that will likely provide the most benefit is one that offers a generous amount of flexibility and can easily and successfully adapt with the changing needs of your organization.

BYOD Capabilities - Know your mobile future. Make an effort to tailor your UC project management approach to accommodate the ongoing BYOD trend. Your strategy should be capable of taking on the unavoidable technical challenges created by the emergence of internet-enabled personal devices, including mobile smart phones and tablets. Research from Comscore states that in 2011, there were upwards of 400 varieties of smartphones alone available in the United States. Focus on securing your corporate data rather than trying to become an expert on every type of device that’s available.

Redundancy - The type of strategy you have in place in the event of emergency, or, worse, disaster can determine the safety of your data. Redundancy plays a key role in this strategy – you surely want to know how long service will be unavailable in the case of an unforeseen event Unified Communications can be a great way to strengthen your disaster recovery plans, so whether initiated by you or your provider, be sure your project management approach includes an adequate back-up and disaster recovery strategy. An effective plan will ensure continuity of operations and have the ability to protect mission-critical data from being destroyed. It is helpful to consider a plan with the capability of using the replicating method to back up data and move it to a separate location through a secure and bandwidth-efficient transfer. Don’t forget the unified communications requirements for remote sites and teleworkers. Since you won’t be able to predict their user’s requirements or their role in redundancy, keep these at the forefront of your mind when devising your project implementation plan.

We hope these tips provide an understanding of what it takes to successfully implement a UC project management strategy. We can’t say enough how important preparation is when it comes to your communications strategy, so as you move forward, get a clear idea of what your goals are and then determine how to best approach your Unified Communications application. Remember: your strategy is customized for you – what works well for one business may not be the best method for all.

Whether you’ve been toying with the idea of implementing UC, or your company is seasoned in the world of UC, you’ve likely heard several myths about its implementation. We put together a list of some of the most common myths we hope to dispel.

Myth 1 – Unified Communications is something new
The concept of Unified Communications is certainly not new, the term “Unified Communications” is just a new name for a group of technologies that have been around for quite some time. As technology continues to evolve, the methods in which various organizations utilize UC to meet their needs is changing. To your business, merging voice messaging with e-mail may constitute a UC solution, but to another company a UC solution may be as involved as using a common interface to unite their entire communications infrastructure. Moving forward, think of UC as an idea or concept.

Myth 2 – Your existing system is obsolete
In many cases, you can enable Unified Communications to enhance the performance of your current systems. For example: Just because you may not have Voice over IP (VoIP), there’s no need to upgrade your phone system to Voice over IP (VoIP) to use Unified Communications. UC can still provide you with the capability to control the phone sitting on your desk, regardless if it is a VoIP or traditional (TDM or Analogue) phone.

Myth 3 – Unified Communications is expensive
The hardest thing about Unified Communications deployment is understanding how to make the most out of it – without breaking budget. In many cases you may already have what is required, so UC deployment can actually save you money in the long run, provided you have an understanding of what you want to achieve and can in turn put a strategy in place to achieve it. If you plan properly, enabling UC can heed greater performance at a lower cost since you may only need to buy one or two new services or upgrades without putting forth a large investment. For example, techniques such as centralization and virtualization can actually save you money because they require investing in fewer trunk lines and result in easier management and deployment.

Myth 4 – With UC, It’s all or nothing
Not at all. In fact, Unified Communications is made up of a lot of individual components, and most are mix and match so you can be sure to get the best unified communications solution customized to suit your needs. This unique benefit gives you the power to determine what makes business sense for your organization, and you enable the components you need to get the most out of the technology. You may rarely see unified communications purchased as a complete package. Since the breadth of what can legitimately be labeled as UC is vast, some companies choose to buy individual components that they see immediate value from, with an eye toward unifying them at a future date. This is a way to first assess the value of the individual components before assessing the value of integrating them. On the other hand, some companies may prefer to use multiple unified communications vendors to purchase best of breed components rather than purchasing a complete end-to end UC solution from a single vendor. NEC gives you the option to purchase either, or both, depending on your needs. To see what they have to offer, click here.

Hopefully this list has helped address some of your common questions about Unified Communication features, benefits and implementation. We’d like to stress the importance in selecting the right vendor so you’re not breaking the bank in your implementation. With the right vendor and proper migration planning you can upgrade so the UC features you have already invested in will continue to work for you – and improve, rather than lose value.

Smart phones, tablets, laptops, regardless of the device, the Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD phenomenon, is on the rise in organizations everywhere – even yours. Check out this infographic and you’ll see that 60% of companies already have a BYOD policy in place. Official or unofficial, BYOD is likely already taking place within your organization, so how are you navigating the changes it brings? When it comes to IT needs, it is necessary to have the means to create a network of productive and responsive people who can respond at moment’s notice. Communication is certainly key in achieving this, and technology has evolved to make way for BYOD as a cost-efficient method to do so.

Many companies started finding it beneficial to allow employees to bring their own communication devices on premises to use for work purposes. With the right policy, BYOD empowers employees to get their job done the best way they see fit. It also aids in collaboration and can increase both revenue and productivity while efficiently bridging the end user generation gap.

Tying it all together: Unified Communication, Collaboration

Advances in technology have led to the ongoing innovation of powerful, consumer-level devices carried in the pockets of millions of people. Did you ever imagine that all the power of a workstation desktop would be available on a majority of today’s smart phones? This concept grabbed the attention of enterprise software developers early on and they have continued to capitalize on creating scalable communications and productivity software that spans multiple devices.

Most of your workforce is likely already walking around with their own computing device. From smartphones to laptops to tablets, many companies have found that in allowing the workforce to use devices with which they are already familiar, you can improve productivity and lower overall operating costs, resulting in additions to your top-line. In this A.T. Kearney report, 40 percent of respondents admit they use at least one personal IT device for business purposes. This same study cites that employees who can perform their duties using tools tailored to their needs, rather than tools designed to meet company-wide standards, have a more positive attitude, are more motivated and more efficient. In order for a BYOD strategy to be beneficial, communications must be paired with technology that is aligned with the needs of your workforce.

If you’re looking for ways to empower your end users to increase their productivity, check out the CIO.com webcast that we sponsored on the topic of BYOD and the new workforce. You’ll learn more about implementing strategies to build a secure, scalable, and cost efficient business that addresses the demand for BYOD and access to unified communications.

Infographic source

If you’re implementing Unified Communications, you can likely attest that it’s a great communications facilitation tool.  But the cloud has opened new opportunities to merge communications networks with critical data needs by providing Unified Communications as a Service, or UCaaS. With UCaaS, dial tone, data, conferencing, and a host of additional features and applications can be delivered directly to your business, and all managed from the cloud. Ideally, all departments and levels in a corporation should interact with one another to collaborate toward a common goal. UCaaS helps make this possible.

UCaaS, provides a unified, centralized location for multiple communications mediums such as email, VoIP, mobile phones, office phones and home phones. In deploying UCaaS, you eliminate your business’ need to purchase and maintain on-premise servers and equipment for communications, resulting in significant up-front cost savings. UCaaS not only increases employee productivity, but can also save your organization thousands on capital costs. This Accenture report cites research from Gartner stating that by 2014, the cloud-based market will be worth $55 billion annually. Do you think your business can benefit from deploying UCaaS? We do, read on to find out why.

Increased availability and efficiency of IT staff

When you deploy UCaaS, you consolidate your communications systems, which helps leverage the abilities of your IT staff to focus on other business issues. For example, UC as a Service automatically includes updates new features that are released. What does this mean for your IT team? It means there is no longer a need for their time to be tied up dealing with testing, scheduling and installing new software updates There is also no need to budget, purchase, and install hardware upgrades, so critical IT resources can be dedicated to other projects that help your business run faster, jump higher, and be more competitive in the market.

You are also likely to have staff that rely heavily on mobility and remain accessible through their mobile phones, softphones, or other wireless devices when out of the office. UC helps employees remain productive even when they are not in the office.  Now that UC capabilities are delivered through the cloud, mobile workers can check the availability of resources in the office with a UC client on their mobile device. Knowing that status information is updated automatically, whether they’re on the phone, in a meeting, or on vacation, allows everyone to remain productive– even when they’re away.

Scales to fit your business

With UCaaS, you are putting the service to work for you, meaning you only pay for what you need. Since you’re paying for services on a per user/per month basis, you won’t be wasting resources on unused capacity. So what happens if the size of your business changes? No problem. If your business is growing, many UCaaS providers give you the flexibility to add more seats to accommodate growth. What about the flexibility to decrease if needed? Should it become necessary to reduce staff, you shouldn’t be stuck in a long term contract, and with UCaaS, you’re not. You can reduce your users on a per month/per user basis. You can gain from the elasticity of utilizing the cloud model – a major benefit of UC as a Service.

Increased Reliability

With the right design, UCaaS can offer higher levels of resiliency and redundancy than you will find with a typical on-premises system cost effectively. There are different designs to fit your business needs. For example, your data can be instantly backed up and replicated in multiple data centers for disaster-proof business communications. Be sure to select a UCaaS provider whose data center not only meets the highest requirements for physical security, but can also be monitored 24x7, offers the latest encryption and security protocols available and undergoes constant scrutiny to protect your company’s data from intrusion and security violations.

With UCaaS, Disaster Recovery applications are also an option for your communications and data. With these applications, you can choose delivery methods including: public, hybrid or private cloud models. For the highest level of redundancy you could even choose to have a 100% redundant, on-site backup of your entire communications platform, ensuring no downtime in the unlikely event of an emergency. The level of redundancy is up to you, but the increased reliability of UCaaS provides rock-solid design at a fraction of the cost you’d incur if you built it on your own.

You’ve likely assessed the impact moving to the cloud will have on your organization. We hope this has helped you take another step toward preparing for that change to allow your business to work faster, collaborate faster and communicate faster with UCaaS.

 For additional stats and benefits of cloud communications download the infographic.

We recently concluded our first annual Customer Technology Expo (CTE) in Tampa, Florida. Held back-to-back right after the NEC Advantage Conference for our dealer community, the new, expanded conference, complete with a new name, built upon the success of the NEC Users Group and added additional NEC technology to the mix. A variety of information sessions were available that covered NEC Servers & Storage with the award winning ProgramableFlow, NEC Displays, the latest in facial recognition software from Japan.  There was also a surprise appearance from our good friend PaPeRo.

Day 1

NEC Users Group president Mark Reynolds opened the conference, followed by the first keynote speaker Michael Vickers’ “Becoming Preferred” presentation.

A unique aspect of the expo is that attendees are provided with the opportunity to talk with NEC executives first-hand. The executives were in attendance to outline the company’s roadmap for the future and the importance of the North American market as we begin the transition to software and cloud offerings. 

To elaborate on how NEC is preparing for the transition, Ram Menghani, NEC Vice President of Product Management, gave a detailed outlook on the recent UNIVERGE 3C and UNIVERGE Cloud Services (UCaaS) announcements. 

 There were breakout sessions galore, with topics ranging from “Can We UC&C with BYOD?” to “Software Assurance 101,” and, as usual, the technical training sessions proved to be a big hit.

For those looking for insight into rolling out UC and the software based UNIVERGE 3C in their enterprise deployments, there were customer-led planning and implementation best practices sessions with great planning tips provided by Northwest College.

All of this was just day one…

Day 2

Day two started off with the “New Standard for Business Communications” presented by Marty Parker. No stuffy presentations here – an exciting feature of the day was a live, interactive demo of the UNIVERGE 3C Client, with a multi-continent collaboration session provided by Senior Vice President Todd Landry.

Following the demo was a series of breakout sessions which included Martha Buyer’s breakdown of E911 risks and tips on how to minimize them.

Day 3

After all was said and done, it was time for the final sessions. The Expo wrapped up with Gail Kasek’s “Outside In: SMB Solutions for Remote Workers” which was both beneficial and informative, given the number of remote workers in organizations is on the rise. All in all, the expo proved to be just what it promised: customer-led and customer focused. We are already looking forward to the 2nd annual event in 2013! To stay informed and learn more about next year's event subscribe to the blog.

Are you considering incorporating Cloud services into your organization’s technology plan? With Cloud deployment making its way into businesses in a variety of industries, moving to the Cloud can certainly leverage your existing technology. It’s ease of use and cost effectiveness are just some of the ways Cloud services are helping businesses manage not only customer relationships, but also billing, expenses and more. We are pretty sure you have some concerns before you deploy, so we compiled a list addressing some things to consider before selecting a service provider:

• Security: Regardless of how Cloud computing fits into your organization, you likely handle sensitive data, and therefore need a provider that can guarantee the security protection you need. Whether you are a hospital that needs to protect patient records, or a university ensuring student data and personal information is secure, it is important when selecting a provider to find one who will meet and exceed your industry’s standards so both you and your customers can have peace of mind. 

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Your SLA is particularly important because your service provider has some sort of control over your software functionality. Make sure you go with a provider that can spell out how your business is affected if there are middle-of-the-day service outages. Regardless of whether the outage is planned or unplanned, you can minimize your risk by looking for published SLAs that outline service guarantees and protect your business in the case of an outage.

• Deployment Flexibility: Sure, the benefits of Cloud computing are numerous, but are all of your needs addressed with its deployment? Are you a business that needs the flexibility of more than one solution or perhaps must meet requirements that can only be met through an on-premise solution? If the Cloud option doesn’t meet all of your business, bandwidth or security needs, consider this when researching providers: there are service providers out there that will give you the option of Cloud, on-premise or hybrid deployments; this flexibility may be the best choice for your business.

• Pricing: Wouldn’t you like to only pay for services that are beneficial to your organization’s needs? A Cloud-based approach enables you to only pay for what you need. Check out this pricing model and be sure that you select a provider who also supports this capability and only charges you for the services and applications your business uses. Now you’re free to think about what you will do with the capital you’ve saved by taking this approach.

• (Support/Customer Service): Your business can’t function without its data, right? So you will want to choose a provider that can give you support when you need it as well as data protection in the unforeseen event that your server is destroyed or your network infrastructure is affected. Whatever Cloud solution you favor, it is critical to select a service provider with the capability to not only backup your data, but recover it quickly in the event of disaster so that your business experiences little to no downtime. 

Regardless of where these considerations fall on your priority list, hopefully we provided insight to make your service provider decision a bit easier. There are several service providers out there, and you have the power to choose. To see how NEC measures up against the bunch in delivering you a service and supporting our customers, click below. 

According to a recent survey 36 percent of you have deployed or are in the process of deploying some element of Unified Communications (UC). If not, you’re likely in the evaluation process now, and surely you’ve seen the slew of reports touting the benefits of cloud computing.

Although the implementation and delivery of UC services continues to evolve, we remain familiar with the general benefits: increased productivity, efficiency, collaboration, connecting mobile workers, integrating communications into business processes and applications... The list goes on. Among that list is the “marriage” of UC with cloud services, which has resulted in Unified Communications as a Service, or UCaaS.

So, why consider UCaaS? The main drivers in your decision are likely to fall into one of the following categories:

• Eliminate front-loaded capital costs: You likely understand the economic benefits of cloud computing; we’d all like to reduce, and if possible, eliminate hardware costs altogether but still receive all the features and benefits of our applications. With the clear services expectations of UCaaS, you have a simplified business case to present to your CIO and CFO. For example, UCaaS provides clear per-user costs, which simplifies the service you offer your organization, and the consistent and predictable costs of UCaaS reduces repeated trips to the CFO’s office in search of additional budget for capital intensive projects.

• Standard suite of UC offerings: With UCaaS, standard UC features are offered on a per-seat basis. The monthly seat cost includes all hardware needed to support the UC functions. These software offerings typically have varying functionality (basic, standard, or premium), and include anything from IP telephony to unified messaging, audio and video conferencing, web collaboration, mobility, presence and IM, all the way to full featured contact centers. While UCaaS typically consist of a standard set of offerings, you should look for an offering that doesn’t require all users to be at the same level. The lobby phone shouldn’t cost the same as the applications delivered to the CEO. This flexibility, along with the ability to add on additional features to meet specific needs, ensures that you’re delivering a service that’s valued by the organization.

• Availability of hybrid models: This model blends Cloud and on-premise approaches to deliver a customized solution for your organization. UCaaS offerings that allow you to blend both on and off-premise components offer the most flexibility and often satisfy cloud critic’s concerns about resiliency and reliability. For organizations that want the peace of mind of a Disaster Recovery strategy, a hybrid solution could offer cloud services as a primary and a DR instance on-premise. Also, under the right circumstances, a hybrid approach could also allow you to leverage existing hardware, thus extending the life of previous investments.

• Broad service offerings: When researching your decision to implement UCaaS, you will notice the long list of providers who support UC services. The provider you choose will be critical, as they will play an active role in deployment and support of your system. Most IT organizations are looking to enhance the services they offer and extend the ability of the existing IT team. So when it comes to support, the provider you choose should offer local assistance that is available to you for installation and ongoing onsite support. The following are additional components to keep in mind to ensure the true value of UC is delivered: additional consulting and managed services, a broad range of UC offerings, in addition to the ability to integrate business applications and processes with communications infrastructure.

We hope this provides some additional insight on things to consider when looking at Unified Communications as a Service. To learn more and see how NEC delivers UCaaS click below.

What do you do when you need to deliver time-sensitive information to hundreds, or even thousands of people? Do you have a mass notification system in place to help get the word out quickly and efficiently? There are times when alerts sent to the general population of a hospital, school or business are not only helpful, but necessary. In a hospital setting, implementing a mass notification system extends beyond emergencies – doctors, nurses and administrative staff can also be alerted of shift changes or increased availability. This can be accomplished with little to no effort when a mass notification system is in place. With the systems that are available today, the same message can be broadcast to literally thousands of people. For those messages that need to be dispersed quickly, mass communication sent to personal devices is becoming very popular. Within minutes, an important alert can be sent in a timely fashion to everyone who is affected by the content of the message.

Mass Communication Alerts

Historically, the reason for a mass communication has been emergency related. Mass communication alerts have typically been sent for extreme weather bulletins or when there is a dangerous situation taking place at a specific location, such as a particular building on a campus or business site. While mass notification systems incorporate a variety of response mechanisms to allow educational institutions to improve their communications in the event of an emergency, the systems can also be used to improve the business process of hospitals as well as major corporations.

Now that alerts have become broader in scope, it is becoming more common to see alerts about:

1. Event Notification: to alert of upcoming, canceled, or even impromptu events
2. Attendance alerts: in an educational setting, this can alert parents and guardians when a student is tardy or absent.
3. News Updates: about a particular item that affects the group.
4. Building Closure: for maintenance reasons or an outage of electricity.
5. Ad-hoc meetings: when it is necessary to gather a group of individuals 

There are multiple methods of communicating messages, from text messages and e-mail alerts to delivering a voice message. Read on to determine the differences and assess for yourself which would be most successful within your organization.

How are messages delivered?

Most systems offer features which allow you to call recipients and leave a pre-recorded message. Seems simple, but on one hand, when a call is received from an unknown phone number, it is often ignored or sent to voice mail. Thus, defeating the whole purpose of the mass notification, as the event may have already taken place once the recipient retrieves the voice mail.  In response to this, some systems have taken steps to alleviate this problem and skip calls altogether and send a text message. This approach could prove more successful, since research shows that when a text is received, it is often checked sooner than a voice mail even from a known caller. It is quicker to check when the phone signal is weak and the receiver can still get the full text message. The New York Times references data from uReach Technologies, who operates the voice messaging systems of a leading wireless provider. The data states that over 30 percent of voice messages go unheard for a minimum of three days. But what about wireless subscribers who do not use or even have the ability to send or receive text messages?

This is where multi-modal systems come in and prove to be most effective. Leading manufacturers now offer multi-modal systems, which allow you to use multiple delivery methods to communicate your message. Whether you want to send a voice call, e-mail or text, these multi-modal systems can handle it all. Some systems have the ability to know when a voicemail system answers and can leave a message but also continue to contact other devices simultaneously, avoiding any downtime in getting the word out. Are you the information officer for a large school district and wondering how you will know if students, faculty and parents received your message? Or maybe you work in a hospital setting and you’re experience a staff shortage so you need to alert team members who are not currently in the hospital. How will you know if they’ve received word that they’re needed? Problem solved – when you select a mass notification system that offers full reporting capabilities so you can always keep track of who received your message.

Deploying: Premise-based vs. hosted       

        
If cost is your major concern, then a premise-based system will prove to be more cost-effective than hosted with delivering mass notification alerts. Emergency notification lends itself to utilizing larger numbers of lines and shared equipment to get critical information out to big groups as rapidly as possible, and in those cases hosted solutions may be ideal.  For ongoing, less time-sensitive communications however, a small investment in technology can lead to large returns in stakeholder experience and loyalty.  By using trunks and lines that are already paid for, in most cases there will be no additional operational expenditure to send these messages. Regardless of your preferred method, it is necessary to take the steps to implement a mass communications system, as early warning is critical since most people in these environments cannot be mobilized easily.

Are you considering relocating your data center? Or maybe you’re thinking about moving your entire organization. Either way, we know moving can be an extremely stressful (and expensive) process, and one you’d prefer not to repeat often, so we’ve gathered some helpful tips to help you address, and consequently avoid, common oversights when moving. Whether you’re moving for business or technology reasons, remember that, when moving day comes, it is important to establish and maintain focus. It is likely that everything will not go exactly according to plan. Focus, combined with a well-developed plan, will help you overcome the speed bumps, and before you know it you will be settled in your new location and back in the flow of day-to-day business.

1. Think ahead – It is never too early to begin planning for your move. Moving a company is a huge project, and it is always beneficial to develop a well thought-out game plan.  Moving is a good opportunity to take inventory, so to speak.  Are you planning to move your communication system as a whole, or use the move as an opportunity to upgrade?  Perhaps you’re considering moving to Unified Communications as a service (UCaaS). Regardless of where you stand, don’t just plan for today. Assess the needs and analyze the growth of your business up to ten years ahead, that way you get the most out of your move.

2. Location, location, location – Aside from moving to a location that is convenient for your customers, it is important to look at a low-risk location in terms of natural disaster. Also in terms of safety, avoid locations near major highways as part of risk mitigation. Conduct an analysis to determine whether the intended site is suitable to house your data center. Aside from geography, other factors to consider include power availability and budget.

3. Power – When you are moving it is important to consider what your current and future power needs will be. Some questions to consider are: Is power abundant? (This is perhaps the most important question to ask), where are you on the power grid? Are there at least two sub stations providing power to the building? Does the building have a backup generator? According to a Transitional Data Services report, in 2010 data centers consumed about 2 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S., and the same report projected that power consumption would continue a rapid growth. Any site under consideration should have easy access to abundant power from multiple sources of electricity, taking advantage of low cost providers whenever possible. When assessing your power needs, also consider the following:

• Fiber - Be sure to research how many and which fiber providers connect to the building. 
• HVAC – does the AC run only during the week? This is often overlooked but it is important to keep your server room cool during the weekends too.

4. Budget - While it is difficult to estimate a fixed budget for a project as complex as a move, you can alleviate some stress in this area by taking an in-depth look at what hardware and software your company is using. That old PBX that you’ve been using for the past 10 years might not be worth moving, so why pay to have it moved?

5. Enlist your employees - Before you begin the moving process, it is important to note which employees will be involved in the move and keep them informed every step of the way. Once you know who will be involved, determine how your manpower will be allocated: What will employees be responsible for? Be sure to announce what the company will and will not transfer with the move.

6. Data backup – Just as the IT staff should perform data backups prior to the move, you should also remind your employees to back up their personal work computers before the move as well. This will help to limit downtime once the move is complete.

7. Communications - We may be mentioning this tip last, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly. If your move is communicated poorly, it could result in customer resentment and consequently a loss of business for you. Be sure to give advance notice, not just a last minute e-mail. MARKET, MARKET, MARKET: tell your customers you are moving and how your new facilities will better accommodate their needs.

Proper planning can help you avoid prolonged downtime and business disruption, as well as the need to move more often than necessary. These tips are a good start to help you prepare for your move. As the economy continues to change, an increasing number of organizations are relocating their data centers and offices as a whole. Good luck with your move!