Posts filed under 'News'
Differentiators – Why IVDesk Wins for Clients Every Time!
Sometimes I forget that when we compete with a prospect’s current situation, whether that’s with a Manager Service provider or their internal staff, we actually provide a dramatic amount of other things they never could…
Disaster Recovery, Redundancy, Expertise, Scalability, Variable Cost IT, the list goes on and on!
Continue Reading Add comment June 30, 2009
Virtual Freedom: Offices on the Move
We at IVDesk were going to put together one of those handy “Top 10″ lists of the best reasons to go virtual in your business. It seemed like a great idea, but after we talked with our virtual clients all around the country, we kept hearing the same thing over and over – Freedom. So, we digress. Let’s go straight to number one!
What does freedom mean to you? Making your kids soccer game? The ability to see more clients? Increasing your workforce without increasing your overhead? All of the above? If you are reading this, chances are you could use a little more time to do what you want, when you want. We might have the perfect solution for you.
If you are new to the ‘virtual’ world, or you can’t quite grasp how your company could operate without a physical location to call home, that’s okay. It isn’t for everyone, but we think you’ll be surprised at just how easy and cost-effective it can be. Today’s economy has business owners thinking of new ways to stay competitive and profitable.
How can IVDesk help your business?
REDUCE YOUR OVERHEAD
Fortune 500 companies and small businesses share one big headache – overhead. All businesses have it, and all businesses want nothing more than to get rid of it. Rather than focus on cutting labor, think about cutting expenses instead. All the major expenses of having a physical office can be reduced drastically with a virtual setup. Lease payments for extra space, office equipment and utilities can add up quickly. Your variable expenses now become one fixed monthly cost. Your accountant might just send you flowers.
Let’s do a quick comparison to see how we can boost those financial statements:
|
Instead of this… |
You can have THIS! |
| One hour with your ‘computer guy’ | One month of 24/7 support |
| Less than a week of office space | Completely mobile office |
| Electricity or water (you get only one) | No extra utility bills |
| One half of a Microsoft Office license | FREE Microsoft Office for all users |
| A couple tanks of gas to/from office | Just stay on the couch |
We could go on, but we want to highlight just a few ways IVDesk can truly reduce expenses – and we didn’t even talk about increased productivity!
ATTRACT QUALITY EMPLOYEES
We know it’s hard to find good help. How do you compete with corporations offering expensive benefits to attract high-level employees? You can offer them something better – flexibility. Being able to work away from the office allows them to get more work done, in less time, and have a life. Time with family, squeezing in a golf game, working outside the confines of 9 to 5 – these are things that matter more than a few dollars.
A virtual office allows you to expand your search for quality employees across the globe. You aren’t limited to the local offering of help because we can setup a remote worker just like an employee down the hall. Share files and applications, collaborate in live online meetings, print to the same printers, even talk on the phone over the internet. With a convenient per-user/per-month pricing structure, you can now hire temporary contract help anywhere in the world.
LOOK BIG – EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT
Some consumers have a real sense of comfort working with a ‘bigger’ company. With a virtual office, you can appear to be a major player, even if it’s just you and your reflection running the company. Access to advanced technology gives you the ability to work with clients anywhere, anytime. This gives you an advantage over your competition, which is stuck in the office.
FREEDOM
There’s that magic word again. With our remote hosting services, you need a computer and an internet connection. That’s it. Home, office or coffee shop – it doesn’t matter where you choose to setup shop – you are ready to do business. Achieving balance between work and home has never been easier. With IVDesk, you can take care of business and get back to life.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Your software applications, your network and your employees are installed and hosted on our state-of-the-art secure servers. We take care of your data with daily backups, 24×7 support and unlimited storage. Your data is accessible anytime, anywhere.
No expensive servers.
No special connection software.
No long-term contracts.
We understand embracing a new way to operate your business can be difficult. Whether you need to take small steps and try us out, or are ready to sprint to the finish line, we can help. You are in complete control of your system.
With years of research and development, IVDesk has the tools to help you succeed. One call can truly give you more time, more money and less stress.
Please visit www.IVDesk.com, or call us at 800-711-1438, to find out how easy freedom can be.
1 comment March 16, 2009
The Small Business Solution You May Not Know About
If you own a small to mid-size business or are in the process of researching the endless tasks at hand to start your own business, chances are technology isn’t at the top of your list. When trying to keep your business afloat and your priority is meeting the payroll each month, last night’s failed backup probably doesn’t cross your mind. Capital is tight, the economy is struggling and here you are wondering why you should be reading about technology. Read on – it just might change the way you do business.
In order to consider a different way to handle your IT needs, you must think outside the proverbial box. Let’s face it, hardware and software companies do not cater to small businesses. The cost of servers, backup drives, software licenses and support is enough to make a business owner cut corners on technology just to keep the office running.
IVDesk offers a better solution for small business.
- Remote access to your data from anywhere, anytime.
- Microsoft Office licenses are included.
- Predictable IT costs with a per-month pricing structure.
- No upfront capital for equipment, freeing up your money for other things.
- High security computing protects your data better than in-house technology.
- 24-hour support is just a phone call away.
- Lower IT costs by virtually eliminating the need for local support.
- Disaster recovery for worry-free computing.
- Spam filtering is customizable and protects you from that unwanted email.
- Mobile phone compatibility syncs your data so you are never out of touch.
- Unlimited storage with no hidden charges.
- Website hosting is included to cover all your web needs.
- Shadowing users allows your employees to work together on a file at the same time – no matter where they are.
THE NEW WAY TO SETUP YOUR OFFICE
IVDesk was founded to help small businesses affordably streamline office technology. Imagine having secure access to all of your applications, all of your data, 24×7 support, access from anywhere at any time and lower software, hardware and support costs. IVDesk offers all this for a per-user/per-month fee so your technology budget will finally be predictable. All you need is a PC and an internet connection.
NO SERVER NEEDED
Save the money you would spend on a server and all the expensive backup needs, appliances and support required to maintain it. IVDesk is your server…only better. We host your applications, email, and even your website. We check every file and email for viruses, load necessary updates, backup your data every day, and welcome your remote employees with a secure and stable connection. If you have a question, you can call us anytime.
SOFTWARE MADE SIMPLE
Trying to keep up with software versions and licenses is time consuming. The expense of Microsoft Office licenses alone can bust a budget. IVDesk includes the Microsoft Office suite in the monthly fee. All your other applications can be hosted, distributed to employees and maintained. We keep track of your software for you. Compliance will never be an issue again. Employees simply login and instantly have secure access to their programs, files and email. Serve clients anywhere, anytime.
PROTECT YOUR DATA
How secure is your data? Your data is just as vital to the operation of your company as the mega corporation down the street. The high cost of the technology and expertise required for security makes it an area most small businesses neglect. IVDesk has invested in the top technology so you don’t have to. We protect you from the outside world by securing your connection, encrypting your data, storing it with a redundant systems, then we back it up daily and weekly. Don’t worry if your physical location is down, we keep your data safe and accessible. Each employee is setup with individual permissions for applications and files for security within the office. IVDesk takes security very seriously and limits access to your data from within our office as well.
GET OUT OF THE OFFICE
Purchase parts in your pajamas or balance budgets over breakfast. Small businesses need flexibility. We know you can’t get it all done between 8 and 5. It’s not a good feeling when you are sitting in your hotel room scrambling to get your presentation finished for tomorrow’s meeting when – poof – your server decides to disconnect you. You don’t know what’s worse, losing the connection or knowing there is nobody to help you get it back. Telecommuting should be a viable and helpful option for small business employees. Instead it can be cumbersome and frustrating. IVDesk allows employees to logon any hour of the day and when your “computer guy” is fast asleep, we are ready for your call should you need a little help. No more glitchy connections with your server. You can work from home, hotels, coffee shops, client locations…anywhere with an internet connection.
SUPPORT WHEN YOU NEED IT
IVDesk never sleeps, gets sick or takes vacation. Your employees have support staff available 24×7 with one phone call. Working remotely, on your schedule, has never been easier.
FREE YOUR CAPITAL
The expense of setting up an office with a reliable network is overwhelming. Once you acquire the equipment and the software licenses, you must then manage and maintain it. Hardware becomes outdated seemingly overnight. Software is constantly being updated with new versions or releases. IVDesk can save you the hassle and handle it all for you.
Take a look at a small business with 20 employees and the costs incurred upfront to setup a very basic in-house network. These are conservative estimates.
Upfront Capital Needed for Technology:
|
IT Needs |
In-House |
IVDesk |
| Server (hardware/software) |
$9,000 |
$0 |
| Backup (hardware/software) |
$2,500 |
$0 |
| Microsoft Office |
$7,000 |
$0 |
| Anti-virus Software |
$2,000 |
$0 |
| IT Support |
$40,000+ annual or $150/hr outsourced |
$0 |
| TOTAL: |
$60,500 |
$0 |
And that’s just the basics. Because we structure our pricing on a per-user, per-month basis, there is no need for upfront capital to invest in equipment or support. Your IT budget is now stable and predictable.
IVDesk has devoted years of research and experience to build a smarter solution for small to mid-size businesses. Call us anytime to see how we can help you.
IVDesk is the new way to do IT.
Get out of the IT business and back to YOUR business today.
Contact information: Randy Olson 612.605.9677 Email: rolson@ivdesk.com Website: www.ivdesk.com
Add comment March 16, 2009
Give Your Employees, and Yourself, a Raise with Telecommuting and Remote Access
Telecommuting is an employee benefit that your company should examine – especially with the rising cost of fuel. Employers giving their employees the ability to telecommute can end up putting the employee’s gross wages back in to their employee’s pockets. In addition, telecommuting and remote access can increase productivity across an entire organization – sometimes in very dramatic ways.
Consider this example: with gas at $4/gallon (UPDATE: even with lower gas costs, the savings are great!), an employee with a commute longer than 15 miles each way to work could save $750/year. The employee spends 1/2 hour in the car each way, and driving an inefficient vehicle they would see a savings of $8/day for the days they work from home, plus they gain the extra hour that they would normally spend commuting. If an employee were to do this twice a week, the annual savings are pretty staggering:
· More than $750 saved annually in fuel costs (not including automobile maintenance, parking, etc).
· More than 96 hours NOT spent in the car commuting to/from work.
Whether you double the efficiency of the vehicle or half the price of fuel, the math still works out to some dramatic time and cost savings for the employee.
From the employer’s perspective, allowing people to telecommute can contribute to employee retention and overall productivity. If you examine a small company with 50 employees and assume that the average number of sick days that each employee takes each year is 3, this means that annually the company is losing 1200 hours of employee productivity to sick days. If we were to assume that in 25% of these cases the employee was taking care of a sick child/family member or they wanted to work a 1/2 day, telecommuting would give more than 150 hours back to the company in time that they otherwise would have lost.
Implementing full remote access within you company could lead to some other huge benefits. Allowing sales staff to work from home after meetings or after hours may decrease conversion times and increase sales – putting more money in everyone’s pockets. Accounting and Law Firms that rely on revenue from billable hours will be surprised by the boost that full remote access can have to the bottom line – often times it is more than 50+ additional billable hours that these firms see from some employees.
Randy Olson provides companies with IVDesk, a completely hosted computer network solution that allows employees to work from everywhere, all without having to purchase any expensive hardware or software.
Contact information: 612.605.9677 Email: rolson@ivdesk.com Website: www.ivdesk.com.
Add comment March 16, 2009
The Hybrid Cloud Computing Solution for Mid-Sized Companies
There’s a dramatic change that the IT industry is partway through that will continue to move the landscape and swing the pendulum back to centralized IT services yet still provide local access to data for larger locations. This change is being talked about and portions are being implemented, but, we need to step it up! Think about what the best situation might be when you’ve got large and small locations across the globe all needing access to the same applications, data, and services. Historically, companies have had IT departments deliver this in many different, and sometimes bizarre ways.
Companies today handle this by leveraging telco solutions & WAN infrastructures, replicated environments, clusters of servers, etc. Very expensive, tough to maintain, and ultimately fragile in their ability to provide consistency to the buisnesses. The interesting thing has been that legacy equipment has really hampered the ability to deliver to this diverse corporate need. Wouldn’t it be better to be able to serve each location as if it was at the same location as the data center? Not just for one application but for all the applications that each location and department needs. And remote sales offices, we need to support them as well.
Many in the industry have proposed a variety of solutions that seem to address some of these needs. Virtualization, SANs, Cloud Computing & Hosting, SaaS, and other key technologies play into this but individually, miss the mark. So, what make sense, is deliverable, cost effective, and provides for all different location sizes. A Hybrid approach will do it.
What if you served all the computing needs from a central hosted location (two if you need the additional redundancy)? What if you provided for each location level based on need and viewed all IT pieces of functionality as services? What if the result was tremendous utilization of computing assets, higher service levels for lower TCO, and consistent delivery of what the business wants from IT? Can we really do that?!
The answer is a complete “YES”! Here’s the way we think it works and fulfills all those needs.
Think about this:
- Centralized computer services located in industrial strength and secure hosting locations
- Enterprise and Department Applications delivered via Virtual Application services and Published Applications
- All Enterprise and Departmental Applications run on centralized VMs and pushed to clients on demand
- Centralized SAN storage for all data
- Large company locations served with local SAN/NAS services replicated to the central location for backup and redundancy and remote access
- Mid-sized and Small company locations served with Virtual PCs and Published Desktops
- Remote staff, work-at-home staff, roaming staff, served with Published Desktops
- All work-group services (Exchange, disk storage, video conferencing, voice services, etc.) served as a hosted service on demand
What this Hybrid approach provides is a best-of-breed for all users at all locations and an extremely high utilization of computing assets. This dramatically increases the value that the IT function provides business with an increased cost effectiveness never seen before. Optimization of hardware, software, management and monitoring, staffing resources, and applications provided to staff when and where they need it without complicated implementations on the business side.
So what are the real advantages in business terms?
- High utilization of expensive computing and network assets
- Complete “Green IT” implementation associated with maximizing utilization and reduction in waste
- Reduction in capital expense requirements associated with IT
- Centralized management, maintenance, and application support and delivery
- Dramatic reduction in complicated updates for all systems
- Disaster Recovery built in for all office location no matter their size
- Predictable cost structure
- Flexibility in moving any locations, large or small
- Reduction in expensive telecommunication costs
- Dramatic increase in service levels to all locations and users
By changing our mindset and the paradigm in which we live, we can combine these very mainstream technologies and really deliver on what the business world has always wanted from IT: Consistent Service at Cost Effective Levels. Provide what the business wants and needs without all the extra expense and staff levels. Finally, have IT as a service utility that delivers like a utility: Consistent, Always Up, Predictable Costs, and Service when you need it.
This approach is what we’ve continued to embrace within our IVDesk service offering consistently delivering more then customers expect and leveraging our Fortune 500 infrastructure to really provide what customers want. Remarkable Service and Predictable Costs letting you get back to your business and out of the IT business. The new “Hybrid” is coming!
Bill Sorenson
CEO
www.IVDesk.com
Add comment February 19, 2009
IVDesk Disaster Recovery Service – Using Cloud Computing for REAL Disaster Recovery
Ok, the worst case scenario for mid-sized companies: You’ve got two or three critical systems that run your daily operations and if they’re down, you’re out of the water. You can take an outage for maybe 4 hours without too much impact, but after that, production stops, customers don’t get served, and you’re just racking up expenses.
But… You’re not big enough to have a Hot or Cold site, you don’t want to duplicate the infrastructure for a second site, you don’t want to have the capital expense of a fully replicated hosted system, so what do you do?
The outage happens and everyone scrambles. Very tough situation.
How about a very cost effective alternative? IVDesk’s Disaster Recovery Services leverages the 8 year history in Cloud Computing and Hosted Applications that IVDesk has been involved in. Here’s how it works:
1. We install your core applications on our equipment utilizing Virtual Servers.
2. We take a copy of your production data, and test the applications using our IVDesk Virtual Desktops, fully hosted at our Tier 3 data center.
3. We validate all the processes, data, and setup any number of users, so that those accounts are ready to go should there be a disaster.
4. We schedule remote backup of the associated production data and apply that data as it come into IVDesk each night. This way, the IVDesk Disaster Recovery Service has up-to-date data every day.
5. We schedule tests when you’d like to bring up the IVDesk version of the application and data.
6. We wait for your call, in case of an emergency.
Currently, IVDesk hosts hundreds of applications for companies across all industries and provides 24 x 7 Helpdesk support all based on a monthly fee per user. Leveraging this infrastructure allows IVDesk to offer the same Fortune 500 backend environment for Disaster Recovery Services for your company. We provide straight-forward setup, daily backup and application of data, and testing when you need it.
So what happens if you call an emergency? IVDesk staff will activate the users and provide a secure remote desktop session running your application. You can then connect from any Internet connection anywhere and immediately get access to the application. You’re live NOW!, not hours or days from now. All your users need is an Internet connection and they’re in. Once the disaster is over and your environment is available again, we fail back by moving a copy of the application data to your equipment, test, and cut back over to your site. You can run indefinitely on IVDesk, so there isn’t a time-frame that you’re under to recover back locally.
Easy setup, low setup and monthly fees, and available when you need it for testing or a disaster situation. The cost effective Disaster Recovery Service from IVDesk. Move your DR needs to Cloud Computing today! To find out more, contact Randy Olson at 800-711-1438.
Contact: Randy Olson, VP of Sales IVDesk
800-711-1438
http://www.ivdesk.com
Add comment October 23, 2008
