“You know what?  We sell HVAC parts.  IT is not our business.” said a prospective client recently.  “There’s got to be a better way! I lie awake at night concerned about myriad “gotchas” in my present IT environment, such as,

Security – Without proper barriers, confidential corporate and customer information is vulnerable to infiltration.

Disaster Recovery – No real back-up system means any lost data was lost for good or too expensive to recover.

Stand Alone PCs – Computers, and therefore staff, have difficulty sharing and streamlining information.

Protection – Regular cleaning and attention is required to address issues related to inadequate virus protection.

Limitations – Without the proper tools, management is unable to take advantage of business intelligence that could differentiate my company in the marketplace.

Application Hosting – Trying to manage an internal server means time and focus away from the business itself.”

“Joe” is now a client and couldn’t be more pleased with the solutions we put in place.  And he is now sleeping better.  Drop me a line if you want to hear more on this case, or others.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Just received this from our friends at Evolve IP:

Research firm Gartner Inc. predicts virtual desktop revenue will hit $65.7 billion as adoption reaches 49 million units by 2013. That’s just around the corner, and even though many channel partners are caught up in the cloud computing craze, they may be missing out on the virtual desktop opportunity. That’s because virtual desktop technology, while simple to grasp, is difficult to deploy. From hardware and software to networks and data centers, there are so many moving parts that it would be understandable if most VARs and agents said, “Thanks, I’ll pass.” But don’t write off virtual desktop sales altogether. Instead, consider the technology’s benefits and the industry’s available resources. The key is to make the process easy on you.

The case for virtual desktop is straightforward. If a company employs dozens of remote and traveling workers, or if many of its employees use laptops, it makes sense to store the operating system and applications such as Microsoft Office in the cloud. The programs don’t run locally on the desktop (or laptop, thin client or mobile device) and that has several implications:

• First, because the applications are housed in a data center, a business’s IT staff controls what employees may and may not access; security is tight.
• Second, if a fire or flood, for instance, hurts the company, operations will continue as normal (for employees not located in the affected facility, anyway).
• Third, if an employee loses a laptop, there’s no confidential information on the device — all of the data is in the cloud and can only be accessed by authorized users. The company just has to replace the computer.
• Fourth, virtual desktops cut costs. In a January 2011 report for DataCore Software Corp., analysts noted that virtual desktops lowered total hardware expenses to about $32 per desktop, rather than costing hundreds of dollars in a non-virtual environment. Similarly, research firm IDC found virtual desktops reduce hardware and operating expenses by up to 50 percent, and energy bills by up to 80 percent.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

I arrived Sunday afternoon to Boston’s Logan airport to join the TUG gathering at the local Hilton made up of 2 special interest groups (“SIGs”) for 2 days of discussions, presentations and simple conversations about the use and application of Infor’s A+ and SHIMS ERP software within the distribution model.

Monday morning kicked off with brief presentations from each of about a dozen sponsors.  In addition to Matrix, several sponsors of note included SDSI, MaxRecall, Unilink, Avalara and EpaCube. Here’s an excerpt of my presentation to convince the groups that choosing Matrix as their cloud services partner is a good idea:

Matrix is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina with data centers in Columbia and Milwaukee. We are a member of The Climatic Group, a $100 million a year collection of companies with about 140 employees in locations throughout the Southeast. Matrix has been focused on delivering cloud services since 2001.

We own and manage our data center in Columbia, which is built on IBM, Dell and Cisco hardware. Our Milwaukee operation is similarly outfitted and is collocated in a Cogent data center facility in the downtown area.
We have clients and client users coast to coast, giving us a national footprint.

On to this thing called “Cloud Computing”: Let’s say it’s the mid 1990s. Advisers are telling you you’ve got to get on this thing called the Internet. You need a website, to be able to send and receive files and to get messages, called “email”. Looking back, would you say those advisors were right? In fact, the Internet powered a fundamental shift to how businesses operate.

In fact, just yesterday 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube. 293 billion emails were sent. And the average teen sends almost 4000 texts per month. Do you think the “Digital Natives” of our population get the cloud value proposition? These are provocative stats that point to real, measurable opportunities and challenges!

Right now, another major transformation is taking place. It’s going to change the way everyone in this room does business. It probably already has for many of you! It’s called cloud computing, and you must know about it if you want to stay competitive. It’s going to give you far more power with fewer headaches and at less cost. For this discussion, I’m calling any information delivery via the Internet cloud computing.

As business owners and managers, you know your specific pain points. Most of them add cost to the bottom line. Some of them keep you up at night.

Cloud computing is such an important toolset for growing companies to address these pain points that over 80% of software development firms have plans to put their products in the cloud within the next 18 months, including Infor!

Here’s how Matrix and other cloud computing services firms are changing the world. Now I know the most, if not all, of you understand the cloud value proposition, so bear with me for a few seconds.

Let’s say you now have your ERP application and all or many of the necessary ancillary applications running on servers that require floor space, power, cooling, regular maintenance, upgrades, etc. And, you had to buy servers big enough to handle the scale you thought your business MIGHT achieve over the life span of the hardware – 3 to 5 years.

Since Matrix supplies ALL of the servers, operating system licensing and related infrastructure and the only thing our clients need to purchase are workstations, laptops, thin clients, all these problems basically disappear. We deliver a virtual desktop with all of your applications and data via the Internet for access by a web browser on your tablet, Mac, PC, thin client, etc. Add employees? We scale the system quickly to handle the additional load. Your needs change? Just reduce the number of subscriptions.

So why haven’t all of you adopted cloud solutions? Easy, the cloud computing industry is a messy place right now, and will probably remain messy for some time to come. It’s challenging to know which cloud services providers to trust and how to get cloud-based services to work with on-premise software or other cloud-based services.

Matrix recognizes these barriers and has made a business decision to focus on the distribution model and ERP software application delivery. Central to our strategy is to understand the components critical to firms like yours. These critical components have been and continue to be a key part of the vetting process we apply to all of the systems and technologies we employ to deliver the cloud computing experience to your users. The result? Your users enjoy a more reliable and secure computing experience that most closely matches what they’re used to.

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Company “A” has 80+ users who rely on FACTS ERP application to sell widgets from their 10 branch locations. Their pain? Performance and reliability. By putting FACTS in the cloud, Matrix was able to save “A” at least 100 man days by eliminating several single points of failure AND general system slowness.

Company “G” made a conscious decision to move their SX.e system into the Matrix cloud to reduce direct costs while at the same time creating ahighly scalable environment in preparation for the restart of the building industry in Texas.

And last, company “L” was courting several large “Fortune 1000″ clients who were reluctant to do business with them. The prospective clients saw significant procedural, security and systemic weaknesses associated with L’s housing of their server farm in the breakroom of their facility in a hurricane-prone area. By placing their FACTS system in our data centers they addressed all of the perceived issues and them some.

We have 22 instances of Storefront running for A+, SX.e and FACTS customers from North Dakota to New England to Alabama. This is the simplest proof that the cloud represents enhanced security and greater reliability at a lower total cost.

In closing, cloud computing is here to stay. When you’re ready to consider a cloud-based service why not talk to a provider who is a long time member of TUG and understands the distribution model. Please consider Matrix.

Overall attention to the cloud model, and Matrix specifically, was very good.  I had a great number of folks ask me about our various services with a lot of commentary about their intentions to move some or all of their environments to the cloud.  Of those, 5 are considering doing something by the end of the year.  I will be working through discovery sessions with them over the next couple weeks.

Finally, I was also able to catch up with Phil Maehr and Dennis Turano of MCS, our partner in the Northeast.  Infor reseller Aktion Associates also showed interest in partnering with Matrix in order to bring their clients a cloud alternative.  Long time customer Bob Brown of Two’s Company also attended.  Chatting with Bob is always fun and provocative. 

Thanks to Gary and Karen Brown of Conferences By Design, and their very able crew for putting on this productive event!

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Yes, The Cloud has an excellent option to traditional on-premises phone systems for your business.  I’m not talking about Skype or similar services here.  This is a video for a service by Alteva Communications that will knock your socks off!

Click here to view the video!

Drop me a line if you’d like more information.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Email plays a big role in the way people do business. Whether you work from a fixed location at an office desk or from a mobile device on the go, the kind of email you use can define your level of productivity. Are you sure that the email system you are using is the right one for you?

Whether you work from an office or are productive while on the go, email most likely plays a big factor in the way you go about your business. Unbeknownst to many, some types of email systems have certain limitations that by extension can also limit the level of productivity of your business, and especially for people in the organization who must also work while out in the field.

One major issue for many people is synchronicity. Many people need their emails to be accessible on their mobile phones, PDAs, or other mobile devices, and they need them to be properly synchronized with their desktop workstations. The need to constantly update conversations and email threads from mobile devices to desktops with certain types of email can prove to be tedious and unproductive– and some email system types don’t include this ability at all.

Depending on the way you use your email, especially when on the go, having full access and full control of your account can define how productive you and others in your organization can be. Besides providing a much better degree of synchronization and integration with mobile devices, certain types of email systems also have features for sharing and collaboration features that allow you to set schedules and share files from your mailbox, as well as central storage for emails that allows you to access your account seamlessly with any mobile device, regardless of where you are located.

Of course, having a full-featured email system might not be best for everyone. The key is to know whether adapting a more bare-bones system is cost-effective for your business (especially in the long run). Sometimes the top of the line may be needed, and sometimes all you need is a bit of tweaking on your less fully featured system. Not sure which is best? Call us and we’ll be glad to sit down with you and assess what kind of email system is best suited for you and your business.

Following are some musings about my week in Chicago, while I ponder the possible impact to my travel plans by hurricane Irene.  Monday and Tuesday were spent in a “UC” training class presented by Alteva Communications of Philadelphia.  UC, or Unified Communications, is quickly becoming a focal point of the Cloud phenomenon due to its integration and blended presentation of voice, email, data files, tasks, etc.  I think Alteva has the most convincing story with respect to their UC model, their infrastructure behind it and the people selling and supporting it. 

My fellow trainees represented sales organizations from New York, Massachusetts, California and Pennsylvania.  All are convinced that we are entering a formative time for the cloud services model.  One, Louis Hayner of Alteva, stated that the time is now for succeeding with the cloud value proposition – security, reliability and scalability.

The ChannelPartners Event gave me the opportunity to participate in a number of educational sessions, including understanding and applying TCO (total cost of ownership) analysis to the cloud model.  Specifically, educating the consumer on the “real costs” of doing business as usual (on prem) verses in The Cloud.  While I didn’t hear anything new, I did take away some very interesting insights into getting the message across to the prospective client.

I also participated in a session about agent compensation.  I took away some good information about contracts, renewals and commission levels.  As importantly, a great deal of agent psychology was shared with the group regarding how to consistently motivate them to sell my products.

Finally, the show gave me the opportunity to forge existing partner relationships with Mike and Tom McCrossin of BCN Solutions Express out of New City, New York and Matt Foster of CarolinaTel of Greenville, South Carolina.  New partner discussions were also prevalent, including Dan Baldwin of Orange County, CA, Mordie Weintraub of Boston, Tom Dalloo of Detroit and Bill Sowers of New York.

Tom Colton is Vice President of Business Development at Matrix. He can be reached at 803-978-2051 or Tom.Colton@Matrix-IBS.com

Someone, somewhere could be talking about you or your company, and—depending on what’s being said—it can be either helpful or damaging to you or your business. This is of special concern in the online world, as the proliferation of websites and social media tools make it easy to share opinions with the world. In this article we point you to tools and online resources to help monitor and manage what’s being said about you or your business—and thereby build or defend your reputation.

Besides your own eyes and ears, there are plenty of tools—for free or for a price—available to help you monitor your presence online. The simplest of these is your familiar search engines such as Google or Bing. By simply searching online, you can find where your name or your company’s name appears in various websites. With Google in particular, you can set up “alerts” which will email you when a specific word or term appears in their website index.

What words or terms should you use? Start with your name, or your company name, then try the name of your products and/or services, and maybe even the names of your employees, directors, and other stakeholders. It might also be helpful to search for the competition as well. As results come in you can refine your search by expanding or narrowing the scope of terms you would like to search or be alerted on. If you want to be able to search across all different search engines and not just one or two, you can use Monitor This.

Next you can use specialized website or social media monitoring tools to search only specific sites or services as opposed to the entire Internet. One example is Greplin, which allows you to search all of your accounts or accounts that you own. This is very helpful to be able to execute highly filtered searches on specific information in your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, or your blog. Another option is Rollyo, which allows you to set up your own specialized search engines that cull content from public or open websites of your choosing.

Other more generalized tools include RSS feed readers—which allow you to consume news or information feeds from news sites or blogs. Examples include Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Pluck.com. Other generalized tools include those that monitor specific newsgroups or message boards like BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, and MSN Money. Still others track changes to content of specific sites (Copernic Tracker, Website Watcher and WatchThatPage.com), as well as their domain information (DomainTools.com and BetterWhois.com).

The really interesting new services actually give you an explicit idea of the status of your reputation—especially if you are a relatively well known name or your business has an established brand. In this category are sites like Amplicate, which monitors general feelings or impressions about brands, businesses, or services; Klout, which tries to measure the influence of individuals based on their social interactions; and SendLove.to, which focuses on celebrities and media personalities.

There are literally dozens more tools you can use to monitor and manage your reputation online. To find out more, a great resource is here at the Duct Tape Marketing blog. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to let us know!

For companies interested in trying out cloud-based services, email maybe something worth trying. Here’s a breakdown of two options from two industry giants that may be worth considering.

Google Apps
Google Apps is a service from Google that started in 2006, with the introduction of Gmail—a hosted email service, and which later incorporated other apps such as Google Calendar, Groups, Talk, Docs and Sites. Google Apps allow customers an independently customizable version of these Google products under their own domain name. The entry level option is free, but the package offered for Businesses is a paid service with an annual fee per user and additional storage space.

1. Storage. Gmail, Google Apps’ email service starts with a sizable 7GB of free storage. Business users get 25GB. Bear in mind however that this storage space is shared with any data you have in other Google properties such as Picasa Web Album and Google Docs. Extra space can be bought however starting with USD $5 per year for an extra 20GB of storage. E-mail attachment sizes are limited to 25MB.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Gmail can be integrated with the overall excellent Google Calendar application. Google Calendar allows you to easily share personal calendars with colleagues, or create shared calendars used by groups of people (such as a calendar to track meeting room reservations, marketing events and others). Google Calendar also offers a built-in, but somewhat underpowered task management tool. Tasks can readily be added with due dates, but not readily shared or cannot be nested or linked with other tasks.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. Gmail’s spam filtering features a community-driven system. Email tagged as spam by users help identifies similar messages as Spam for all other Gmail users. Generally the system works well, although some have complained that it can get over aggressive in its filters. In terms of security and reliability—Gmail has been criticized in the past with showing ads in its free Gmail service that display based on key words in the user’s messages—potentially violating their privacy. Its paid service offers however the option of disable these ads. Reliability is generally good with very few, but widely publicized disruptions in service.
4. Usability. Gmail offers a host of unique usability enhancements that make it different from most other mail services. For one for a web app it loads really fast, as Google has been known to studiously optimize web page loading performance for their products. Another is that it offers a threaded view of messages by default. It also uses a starring/labeling system to tag and segregate messages instead of using folders. Another interesting enhancement done recently is the ability to sort messages by “importance” where it learns based on your usage over time what email messages it thinks you think are important.
5. Mobile access. Gmail offers a version optimized for mobile devices, as well as support for a variety of devices for their native mail applications such as iOS and Android.

Overall Gmail is a solid mature choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud and are not afraid of being on the bleeding edge of cloud services and technology.

Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365, like Google Apps, offers a host of applications such as online versions of productivity tools which we all already know and use such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Most however work best when they are used in conjunction with your desktop-installed Office applications. Focusing on email, Office 365 offers a Hosted Exchange service, which transforms the mature, business-proven on-premise application to an on-demand service. Compared to Google Apps, it is quite new—being introduced only last June this year, although its suite of products in an alternate form has been around for much earlier.

1. Storage. Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange email service gives users 25GB of storage. Attachment file sizes are limited to 35MB. Additional storage can be purchased for $2.5 per GB per user per month.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Exchange integrates a mature feature set for personal productivity including calendaring, resource management, and task management. As an example tasks can be grouped, color coded and easily sorted. Emails can be converted as tasks and so on.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. This is an area where perhaps Microsoft easily outshines Google with Exchange’s roots as an enterprise-class application. It offers spam protection, antivirus and others via Microsoft’s Forefore Online Protection for Exchange technology. It offers other features such as more full features user management, identity access management, mail archiving, etc. If you are in a highly regulated industry like financial services or healthcare these features may be essential for your business.
4. Usability. While the web apps of Office 365 is not as fast loading or as slick as Google, it does offer familiarity. Modeled after their desktop brethren, or directly integrating with them—they offer a smoother migration experience for users specially if they have been weaned on Outlook.
5. Mobile access. Like Gmail Microsoft made sure to support a variety of devices on launch, as well as integration with a variety of devices—specially enterprise stalwarts like Blackberry mobile phones.

Overall Office 365 is a solid choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud but may be hesitant with changing the apps your users already know and use. Also if you are a business with strict policies related to security and compliance—this service may be something your auditors and IT people may be more comfortable with.

Interested in learning more? Can’t decide which to try? Let us know and find out how we can help get you the right balance between your existing IT systems and infrastructure and the cloud.

Smaller businesses usually face the difficulty of having their voices heard in the market today. While traditional marketing and advertising methods cost a lot more than many of these firms can afford, an effective alternative has arisen that is both efficient and cost-effective: marketing through social networking.

One of the most difficult challenges smaller businesses face is having a bigger presence in the market. While many of these companies offer good, quality services at much more affordable rates, they are many times overshadowed by larger firms that have bigger budgets to spend on marketing, advertising, and the like.

Things have changed, though, with the advent of social networking. What was once a simple, social, get-to-know-each-other tool between people on the internet has now evolved into a tool that small businesses can take advantage of in order to get their voices heard.

The gist of social networking for business is the simple concept of reaching potentially millions of people at a mere fraction of what is normally spent on advertising and traditional marketing. The wide reach of social media allows businesses to find their voices and showcase what they can do. The playing field then moves from an unfair balance of advertising budgets to a battle of service quality and value for money, as it should be – and many smaller firms can compete effectively in this arena.

There are many ways to tap into the social networking phenomenon to boost your online presence and aid in your marketing. If you are interested in knowing more about this, please contact us and we’ll be glad to assist you in developing strategies that fit your specific requirements and needs.

Part of establishing a proper security cordon around your business data is having the right hardware – like a router/firewall – to get the job done, and done well. Resorting to cheap and basic equipment might cut it for simple personal or home use, but it’s not ideal for business applications.

In business, protecting important information and data is paramount. This is why it is recommended for any sort of business to invest in a security system that will prevent any cyber-attacks that might be launched against you.

Unfortunately, though, it’s lost on many that a security system is not just made up of one single thing – software, better staff, better hardware, et cetera. A good and solid security system is composed of several factors working together to create a virtual chain that envelops your business and keeps it safe.

And one of the most underestimated links in this chain is the router/firewall. Many businesses are content using the most basic and cheapest option available on the market, without realizing that their security chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And if you make do with a cheap router/firewall, odds are you’ll get what you pay for – not much.

While basic routers might work fine for homes or individual users, it is a much different scenario when it comes to business operations where basic just doesn’t cut it. Plus, there’s more at stake with business data, so why take the risk with cheap routers that lack the proper security features?

With viruses, malware, and the cyber thieves behind them continuing to grow and evolve, it is important that you understand what it takes to protect your system and your data – and invest in the best solution. Remember that it can take only one incident, one infiltration, to bring your whole business down.

We realize that every system is different and every business has its own specific needs, so if you want to know more about getting the right router/firewall for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us.