XFER Blog

Thanks to mobile devices and remote access, businesses around the world are freeing their employees from the tethers of their desks and allowing them to work remotely. Some companies have employees that work remotely all of the time, which presents the question of how you keep them connected to the workplace, productive with their time, and part of your business’ culture. This week we’ll go over some tips to help your remote employees be as successful with their time as possible.

The cloud is a great tool that lets businesses take advantage of goods and services in never before seen ways. How does your organization use the cloud? Developers are trying to leverage the cloud to best assist businesses just like yours with their day-to-day functions, all the while improving flexibility and access to important information. Here are five cloud-based applications that your organization can benefit from.

Depending on your business’ operations and industry, there’s a solid chance that your company has some sort of investment in cloud storage. Over 85 percent of businesses today use some type of cloud platform, and many of them use a multi-cloud approach to their organization’s IT. At the center of this trend is cloud storage. This month, we take a look at the types of cloud storage and how one (or more) of the types can help meet your business’ needs.

The cloud has proven to be an extremely useful tool for the modern business. Not only does it provide anywhere-anytime access to applications, processing, storage, et al; it also delivers those products as a service, allowing you to budget for recurring costs rather than major upfront ones. This provides your organization with functional, supported, and secure computing environments that eliminate a lot of the support costs that traditional computing environments require. It sounds like a perfect scenario for small and large businesses alike, but things aren’t always what they seem, as a lot of cloud users have found that they have incurred several hidden costs by using cloud platforms. Today, we take a look at these hidden costs.

Cloud computing is an ever-growing industry, and it’s only going to grow more popular as time goes on. More businesses than ever have started to adopt the cloud in at least some capacity. Is your company one of the few that haven’t yet moved to the cloud? If so, you’ll want to at least consider it, as your business could gain considerable benefits from doing so.

Paper documents can hold businesses back for several different reasons. For example, have you ever tried to move to a new office and drag along countless heavy filing cabinets? What about digging through folders just to find one specific document? It’s difficult to sort them in the first place as it is. Technology has made this job much easier, providing businesses with tools to better manage and maintain their wealth of paper documents in the form of a digital cloud environment.

Generally, small businesses will only have, at the most, a couple of servers in the office that are dedicated to storing or sharing data across an in-house network. These machines are absolutely critical to the success of your organization, as without them, you wouldn’t be able to access or store important information. If you want to optimize the way your server infrastructure is set up, however, virtual cloud-based servers can offer a significant benefit for your organization.

The office telephone has been a staple in the business environment for generations, but the extent that each organization uses their telephone will vary. Factors like the number of users, telephone handsets, and wiring required will influence how much use you get from your telephone solution. However, these questions don’t have to be as difficult to ask if you consider the many benefits of a hosted phone system.

If we asked you to think of a business technology that doesn’t take advantage of the cloud in some capacity, would you be able to come up with one? Cloud computing has become a part of almost every business endeavor, and for good reason. SMBs can leverage the cloud for any number of services or solutions, including email, data storage, server virtualization, and so much more.

How much has your business invested in its communications technologies? If your business is like many others, it relies heavily on the functionality of its organization’s communications platforms. You might have a VoIP system filled with features, but are you taking full advantage of them? Here are three ways you can get the most out of your VoIP solution.

Efficient utility software deployment has been a priority for businesses for much of the past three decades, but today’s software developers are beginning to more frequently offer their titles as a service, giving end users the ability to utilize powerful software solutions from anywhere, for what is often a reasonable monthly payment. The dissemination of useful computing resources from the cloud, whether it’s a private cloud server, or a public cloud platform through a reputable cloud provider, can be of great benefit to your business.

Your business’s productivity suite, be it Google Apps for Work or Microsoft Office 365, is a critical component for your success. These services, when implemented in the cloud, can be major game-changers, and it’s thanks to the convenience of mobile data and application access that have led to such vigor in the development of the cloud.

In an infamous 2012 survey by Wakefield Research, the ignorance of the general public regarding cloud computing was revealed: 51 percent believed that stormy weather interferes with cloud computing, and 29 percent thought that the cloud was an actual cloud. Furthermore, what may elude many computer users is the fact that a process known as virtualization is actually what’s behind cloud computing (not atmospheric conditions).