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Is IT helping grow your business or holding it back?

Information technology is supposed to help business run easier. So why does it seem to run businesses at so many companies? From constant updates, changing demands and new hardware, keeping up with IT can feel like life on a hamster wheel, dictating the pace and growth of business rather than facilitating it. One thing I hear constantly from business owners is "I don’t want IT controlling what I do." "I don’t want to be buying new equipment every three years. I don’t want to be upgrading equipment and software every year. I don’t want IT to be a problem. I don’t want it to dictate how I grow my business." Sound familiar? Studies show information technology remains one of the largest barriers to growing businesses. Expansions often aren’t possible without new technology, which requires an investment that should go to the expansion itself. It’s time to get off the hamster wheel. ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:00+00:00

Reality-Proofing Your Business: Backup As A Service

Remember last year’s floods that turned some of our Detroit-area freeways into actual lakes? The unexpected floods of 2014 submerged streets, cars, basements – and some businesses, particularly those that weren’t prepared for the possibility. Some have never recovered. Well, as the Eurythmics sang, here comes the rain again. Spring is in the air – and so is the possibility of more torrential rains. Unfortunately, most of us don’t receive a sign from above to build an ark and keep two of everything on it when deluges or other disasters are looming ahead. It’s not literally true that “anything can happen,” but it sometimes seems that way – especially when random chaotic events disrupt our routines and our lives. The 2014 floods were a wake-up call to many businesses who suddenly started looking into flood insurance. A lot of the savvy ones started thinking about offsite data backup solutions as ...

Robert Tessanne2023-02-16T16:02:00+00:00

Expecting Technology Leadership From All Our Leaders, Not Just Hilary Clinton

This past week, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton announced her candidacy for the presidency. As with every election in living memory, we can probably expect her and her fellow candidates to attack one another mercilessly on virtually every issue imaginable. In Secretary Clinton’s case, it’s more than likely that her opponents will raise her private email server as a campaign issue like they did again today. It’s a “nerd” issue if there ever was one – but it’s still worthy of discussion. Clinton’s use of the private Clinton.com email server to send and receive official messages while still a government official raises questions of security and secrecy, and the possible vulnerability of any private network to hacking creates the possibility of espionage or blackmail. It can be said that the decision to use the Clinton.com email server for official correspondence was probably not Secretary Clinton’s most inspired decision. But it ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:00+00:00

IT: What To Know Before You Grow

Your business is growing? Great. That's always a good thing, right? It is- until you suddenly find that the work you've got on your plate has gone beyond your capacity to perform it. Even boom periods create challenges for upcoming companies. You may suddenly find you need more people, more equipment, and more space to handle that welcome upward trend. But apart from investing in laptops or workstations for new personnel, many companies don't factor in the need for new technology, until the point that they abruptly learn that they need it. The truth is that company can outgrow its tecnology infrastructure in the same way it outgrows its physical premises. What was “just right” for a five-person shop is unlikely to be adequate for fifty, let alone five hundred. While you may be able to get by with a too-small office for a while by having people work at ...

Edward Aube2023-02-16T16:02:00+00:00

Game-Changing Technologies: Here Comes The Next Wave

If you’ve been in the workplace for any considerable length of time, you’ve already seen how technological changes have had the power to rapidly and radically transform the way business is done. No matter your age, chances are a multitude of sweeping changes have already taken place in your lifetime. Some have been immediately and obviously significant and transformative – and others have taken place almost unnoticed. Think about it for a moment: Twenty years ago, fewer than a third of America’s small and medium-sized businesses had adopted email. Your “powerful” new desktop computer – if you had one - probably had eight megabytes of RAM and a 1-gigabyte hard drive. If you sent an email, you probably did it through a dialup connection to America Online or CompuServe. As primitive as these things sound now, they were game-changing technologies and they had enormous ramifications for business. If there’s anything ...

David King2023-02-16T16:02:01+00:00

Your Website Needs To Be Mobile Search Friendly- And So Does Your Intranet

Recently you or your webmaster may have received notice that your public website is not mobile friendly. Google is now beginning to rank search based on the “mobile friendliness” of pages – and the notification you received is Google’s way of warning that your site may not perform well in future search results if changes aren’t made. Smart webmasters, marketers, and site owners know that the world of search is continuously evolving, and they need to evolve along with it if they are to be competitive. But what about search abilities inside of your business? It’s a troubling fact that most business are lacking internal search capabilities when it comes to their documents, records and intellectual property. Today’s employees need rapid access to critical information, and effective search capabilities are vital. In addition, the leaders of the future will not be satisfied when working for companies that cannot provide internal information via ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:01+00:00

This Is The End: Say Goodbye To Windows Server 2003 Extended Support

It’s true: Microsoft will stop supporting Windows Server 2003 this coming July. For a few years now, Microsoft has been saying goodbye to a generation of its most successful products, including Windows XP, Office 2003, and more. Microsoft is now getting ready to play The Doors’ epic goodbye song “The End” for their extremely successful Windows Server 2003 platform in just a few months. For twelve years, Server 2003 has served companies well. More than a decade of regular updates and fixes have made it a solid, reliable platform for tens of millions of applications running on millions of servers worldwide. This July, that comes to an end. Microsoft pulled the plug on regular support in 2010, but many companies have bought time – or limped along – by depending on paid extended support. That’s all over soon. Make no mistake: This is a big deal – an infinitely more ...

Robert Tessanne2023-02-16T16:02:01+00:00

Why Would You Choose Office 365 Over Google Apps?

You need technology that can be as flexible as your business is. Growing companies are constantly challenged to find technologies that help them to simplify without giving up control, work better together and be productive anywhere. And they want to get more value for their investments. Because your company is growing, you’ve got more to do. But chances are, you still have to do it all with less cost and limited resources. To grow, you’ve got to do more with less. If you’re like many small to midsize businesses, you’re using Google’s online productivity suite. But more and more companies are turning to Office 365 over Google Apps. Why would a small business choose Office 365 instead of Google? Microsoft has released a whitepaper that discusses ten reasons Office 365 is a better choice for your organization. We’ve included a summary below Top 10 Reasons to Choose Office 365 1) Office ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:01+00:00

An SMB Serving SMBs

Too many small and medium businesses find themselves forced into the IT business. They may be retail operations, manufacturers, lawyers or CPAs, but they still end up spending hours upon hours troubleshooting their networks, managing software licenses, updating operating systems and upgrading hardware. But it can be hard for an SMB to get out of the IT business: computer repair techs and local IT companies can offer some help, but the big names in enterprise-level hosting are really only set up to handle large corporate accounts, or technically savvy users who can answer all their own questions. There is no customer service number to call if you need help or run into a snag. An SMB Serving SMBs With Red Level Networks, SMBs get everything—virtualization, disaster recovery, managed services, cloud computing, Office 365 and more—along with a consultant and partner who actually answers the phone and has someone ready to help if ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:01+00:00

A Cloud Service Provider That WANTS To Talk To You

We're all moving our data to the cloud—our music, our email, our family photos, the software that runs our lives. The cloud makes it easier to do more with less effort. But as anyone who has ever had a problem with their Gmail or iTunes accounts can attest, the clean-and-easy cloud future has one big, dirty secret: Big cloud service providers do not want to talk to you. Dave King, president of Red Level Networks, chuckles as he explains. "It's true. I don't even think they'll give you a 1-800 number. Companies like Google and Amazon, they're excellent hosts, but they honestly don't want to talk to you, as a customer. They'll give you all the resources you want, and it'll work if you can make it work on your own. But God forbid you have a question—and we all know that there are lots of questions." Dave King wanted to offer ...

Red Level2023-02-16T16:02:02+00:00