We live in interesting and scary times at the moment. Many of our customers are having to resort to working from home. But business must continue. We are going to write a series of blog posts this week on tips to help. The first blog post will be about ways to access your applications and hold meetings remotely. This is where having things in the cloud is a boon. Most applications now have cloud access including CRMs, accounting, and Microsoft Office products. If you don't have your tools in

It’s a brand new year.  People are looking at ways to start the new year off right. They are organizing their data, cleaning up files, and looking at current office setups.  One of the things we are finding customers looking at is Cloud based hosting of their critical files. Which for me can either be a very good idea or opening Pandora’s box. First off, let’s make something very clear.  Cloud basically means a computer somewhere else.  There is no magic involved.&

If you have have not heard about it yet, you will in the future. IOT is the Internet of Things. Basically this is all the equipment, appliances and cars out there in the world that can access the internet. The reasoning behind this is a good one - maintenance of appliances and vehicles, systems to turn them on and off, etc.  However, they have now become a great back door for Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. Last week, DYN, one of the main DNS server hosting companies was down because of a

It's time for another ACT Tip.  This week, one of our clients upgraded to ACT V16 so they could utilize some of the great new features.  One of their newest sales staff was using the web based version and loved the flexibility.  He could access his details from a customer site and didn't have to carry his "heavy" laptop.  His next purchase is going to be a small tablet, but in the mean time he has been happy with just jumping on a browser when at a client site.  Until

Years and years ago, I presented a session at a conference and called it My Nirvana model.  The drawing to the left is what I presented at the time.  Basically the premise was having a model to find the proper platform for your business application.  The arrows on the chart meant the price went up based on various parameters. The key point I was making with the presentation though was to not only worry about the platform but to ensure you were asking the right questions in

Recently, two of my customers suffered huge business losses because their applications were unaccessbile on their cloud solutions.  I am not a proponent of putting everything in the cloud for just this reason.  These clients were ones who went down this path because someone else suggested that putting every business process in the Cloud was a “good thing.”  Well, yes, until the cloud is not available. For one customer, it cost them over $50,000 to be down for a day.  A

This image is a screenshot of all of us during a video staff meeting. We're using Google Hangouts and headsets.  All of us have webcams - which pretty much come with newer laptops. Seeing each other in person is SO MUCH MORE effective than just participating on a phone call. The participants are in Chattanooga, Pikeville and Phoenix - but in reality we are all together in the same moment - and that's priceless.  We may never go back to just phone call meetings.   [caption id="

Google Drive is the new "Google Docs" where you can store and share spreadsheets, documents, PDFs, etc.  One of the options I bet you haven't tried or noticed is the ability to create forms.  These forms can be used to capture information that can be sent or stored on a spreadsheet.  Surveys are a good way to demonstrate this capability.  This blog article will get you started. Google Forms can be used to help plan events, send surveys, give students a quiz, or collect other