IVDesk and Property Management Companies

IVDesk crosses almost all vertical markets as far as customers.  We’ve got legal, accounting, distribution, medical, real estate, etc. customers who’ve outsourced their complete IT needs to our cloud computing solution, IVDesk.  I’d like to just profile the benefits we’ve seen for our customers in the Property Management area.

We currently run a number of different applications in this business segment and have customers with properties across the country.  By utilizing a central service like IVDesk for all your needs, your staff can access exactly what they need from any Internet connection, any where.  No more having to get back to the office, faxing in copies of documents, writing out information to later enter, it’s all available at all times.  Also, we see that some Property Management software providers are offering hosted application options.  These may be an option for you but we see many companies continuing to use their existing installed software instead of increasing their costs.

With IVDesk, we install that purchased application and run it centrally for you.  Everyone can access it from anywhere just as if they were in the office.  And you get the full functionality of the existing product, not a watered down hosted version.  Also, Email, Word, Excel, and all your files and folders are available within IVDesk.  Everything’s there.

Lastly, every IVDesk users gets full access to the Helpdesk to assist with anything.  We’re there, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help with complex or simple things.  Sending out a mail-merge and can’t remember how to do it, give us a call.  We’re there for everyone on your staff.

It’s time to take a look at changing they way you’re working and letting IVDesk provide the solution for you.  Contact us at www.IVDesk.com and we can help get started today.

Bill Sorenson
CEO
bsorenson@ivdesk.com

Cloud Computing for Larger Companies – The Hybrid Approach

It’s interesting to continue to read the main stream technical / business journals that have articles on Cloud Computing, SaaS, outsourced application services, etc., and see that the approach is becoming more common sense in relation to what a company can do.  We’ve seen this migrate from dramatic opinions one way or another back to the “best” approaches.  I wrote about a Hybrid approach for larger companies back in the Spring, and we’re now seeing this implemented around the world.

So what does this really mean to the IT department in larger companies?  It’s pretty straight forward if you think about each section of end customer need based on their requirements.  Departments need access to applications that don’t go down.  IT Service areas need to be able to maintain those systems.  Global companies need straight-forward, cost-effective, access to centralized systems.  And, everything needs to be up “almost” all the time…

The best way to solve these situations for companies relates to breaking down the different areas and systems by customer type and system type.

These are:
1. Enterprise wide high use systems (Email, SAP, Central Order Processing, etc.)
2. Large Departmental Applications (Accounting, Customer Service, CRM, …)
3. Enterprise wide File and Folder usage (Company wide information)
4. Departmental File and Folders (Typical departmental needs)
5. Web based systems (used by any customer group)
6. Individual Private File and Folder needs (the typical My Documents)

As we look at these requirements at the 50,000 foot level they appear straight-forward.  Historically, IT departments are created to have centralized systems to serve these needs.  Central application and database services, central file storage for all, central web applications, central email.  One centralized large group that manages everything.   But, as we all know, there are issues…

With a large centralized environment, concerns over the cost of disaster recover are huge.  Additionally, with a Global footprint for the company, internal customers are not served best by on time-zone IT implementations.  Poor service results.  From the IT side, the issues develop around limited maintenance availability, on-call hours for key staff feeling more like working 20 hours a day, and overall high risk to the corporation.  No great answer here.

If we move back to the thoughts of a Hybrid approach for this, what can we come up with that utilizes mainstream technology and satisfies user’s demand for uptime, speed, responsiveness?  The answer is and has been in front of everyone’s eyes all along.

Break the systems up based on Section and deliver them in the best and most cost effective manner, PERIOD!  Take the egos out of the IT department and develop a customer service mentality, PERIOD! Utilize scarce resources effectively to deliver the best for your internal and external system users, PERIOD!

1. Enterprise Wide Systems –  These are perfect for the Cloud.  Whether they utilize a web front end or are hosted and delivered in a thin client method (Citrix, Terminal Services), these belong in the cloud.  It can be a shared redundant cloud, a “Private” cloud, what ever makes the most cost effective solution, but get them in the Cloud.  What this does is moves the infrastructure out onto the best environment available for the applications.  Servers (Virtual and/or Physical) can be turned up quickly, load balanced, replicated, and redundant.  Applications can be delivered quickly and with great customer satisfaction based on the thin client model and still managed by staff from anywhere.  Perfect!

2. Large Departmental Applications – Again, put them in the Cloud.  Deal with them as if they were Enterprise Applications and your users will love you.  Always available from anywhere, always up, delivered in a thin client method so that they can run when as where needed.  Cost effective and rock solid.  Perfect!

3. Enterprise Wide File and Folders – Split and Replicate only those needed.  If we all view the amount of data that really is needed at an Enterprise level, it’s small.  Might be 50 – 100 Gig that everyone needs access to.  Could be via a document management solution or just replicated files based on whether the location runs local desktops or virtual desktops.

4. Department File and Folders – These also are based on the dispersion of users.  If they’re all local to a location, local file and folders replicated for backup and redundancy are perfect.  Disbursed locations, centralize those files and folders and provide virtual desktops to access them.

5. Web Based Systems – Always, always, hosted in the cloud.  Redundant data, application, and web services as needed but always hosted.  Let’s not think that “we” in the IT department should be building an empire around application infrastructure.  It’s not cost effective, it doesn’t serve the enterprise, and it doesn’t take into account what’s best for the users.

6. Individual Private Files and Folders – These should be where ever your desktop is.  If it’s a typical local desktop, then they should be mapped to a disk location at that physical location.  If it’s a virtual desktop, then these are in the Cloud.

How do we make the decision on who gets a local typical desktop and who gets a virtual PC or virtual desktop?  Good question.  We believe it’s completely based on physical size (number of computer users) at the location.  Less then 200, they’re getting a virtual desktop, 200 – 300, depends on local IT support, over 300, local desktop.

And here’s why this works so well.  With smaller offices of less than 300 people, having distributed servers, file and folder disk, mail services, etc. just doesn’t make sense.  It’s expensive, not redundant enough, and takes too much local IT resources to support.  Users have more down time and less confidence in their ability to have access to key systems.  By having these as all virtual, everyone has access to what they need with minimal IT local infrastructure and minimal IT support needs.  Additional PCs, Macs, thin clients can be made available to anyone who has an issue.  System doesn’t boot, grab another one and plug it in.  It really is self service for local IT.  With redundant connectivity, this solution is always up and available for the local users.

Over 300 people at a location moves to a little more gray area.  Although you can sure run everyone virtual, there tends to be a need for more local IT support related to on-site hardware, routing, edge devices, etc.  If there’s local staff, users could have the option of either way.  Make sure centralized management of Group Policies and implemented, but this group could have full desktops.  Again, management of local installed software takes time and money so weight that against the hosted version.

To wrap up, remember, there is a Hybrid approach where all applications/services are looked at and the best solution selected.  Best must include costs, accessibility, redundancy, and other customer needs.  Move the Enterprise and Departmental applications to the Cloud, move Files and Folders to the closest location for the user (Cloud for virtual PCs, local for local PCs), and realize that the Cloud and the services offered never make sense to duplicate at the corporate level.  Outside of the Fortune 100, there’s no reason to become your own Cloud.

Bill Sorenson
CEO
bsorenson@ivdesk.com
www.IVDesk.com

IVDesk Runs Laserfiche Hosted!

We just brought up a new customer that’s using Laserfiche for document management.  They’re a financial services firm and do a large amount of scanning of statements, tracking of financial information and relating that to customers.

We are using the Remote-Scan product that allows straight-forward integration of scanners at the office locations to connect directly with Laserfiche.  No VPNs needed, just load and go.  Great product!

The IVDesk solution allows customers to host their applications with us and we provide the whole outsourced cloud computing solution.  Laserfiche is another success story to simplify the client’s needs for local hardware and technology.  We run it all.

Great solution!

Thanks,
Bill Sorenson

SaaS, HaaS, ?aaS – IVDesk is really Service as a Service!

With Software as a Service (SaaS), Hardware as a Service (HaaS), Other things as a Service, the idea’s the same, deliver the solution in smaller increments and an outsourced manner that financially supports the customer. Cost effective solutions with expertise that your company doesn’t have internally. Makes sense.

When we at IVDesk look at this and what we bring to the table day after day for our customers, we really see something different. Yes, IVDesk is SaaS, your applications are delivered and run remotely in a fantastically strong environment with redundancy, etc. Yes, IVDesk is really HaaS as well, local hardware can be included (it’s only PCs, Macs, WinTerms, etc. anyway), and all the Server hardware is part of the service. But really, those are not the differentiators. Other people offer some of that. So what makes IVDesk different and so successful?

Differentiators – IVDesk Verses Managed Service Providers

As we continue to add new clients to IVDesk we get asked many times to compare our hosted IT service with a Managed Service Provider (MSP).  At initial glance, it looks somewhat similar but under the covers… it’s another thing all together!

Things we have in common
1. We both take responsibility for a customer’s IT infrastructure.  MSPs will setup, monitor, update, and manage a client’s local Servers, PCs, and Network.  At IVDesk, we’re responsible for those things as well, although on our equipment.
2. MSPs can provide Helpdesk services to a client.  Many times it’s a single point of contact on-site, if it’s everyone, there’s additional fees.  At IVDesk, anyone in the company can call us, anytime, from any computer.
3. MSPs may off the Microsoft Office Suite on a per month basis (SPLA Licensing).  At IVDesk, all those are included in the monthly per user fee.
4. With an MSP, if a local server “breaks”, they dispatch someone to work on it and fix it.  Until then, the customer is down.  At IVDesk, we have dramatic redundancy so that there are not single points of failure.  Hardware can “break” but there’s always a redundant piece of equipment so downtime is minimal in an emergency.

Thanks we don’t have in common (those Differentiators!)
1. No Capital Costs – Never buy another server with IVDesk. You only pay a monthly fee per user for the number of users that month.  You grow it goes up, you shrink it goes down.  No big dollar outlays for equipment
2. PCs last dramatically longer – Since all  your applications run inside IVDesk, the PC that’s needed doesn’t need to be as powerful.  Not at all.  We have customers who even use refurbished Windows Terminals (WinTerms) to get IVDesk session.  They’re about $30 a piece.  Typically, a PC can last 6 years or so and using the $200 refurbished PCs are great too.
3. Disaster Recovery – With IVDesk, all your applications, data, backups, email, everything, is off-site and protected in a large data center.  Very secure, very redundant, very strong.  You have a local disaster where you can’t get into your facility, your employees can work from any Internet connection anywhere.  With MSPs, you have to come up with and pay for other solutions that always include dramatic downtime.  Not good for your business.
4. Dramatic Redundancy Built-in – Within the IVDesk environment we have replicated servers, disk, email servers, application servers, network, etc.  There are always problems with hardware at some point but with the dramatic redundancy, the customer never suffers.
5. Staff Expertise and Redundancy – Our Helpdesk never goes to lunch, doesn’t go on vacation, and is cross trained so that each client gets the support they need.  No waiting, no “we’ll get back to you”, we’re always there. 
6. Scalability – With IVDesk you can add a new location quickly and get new users up and running with a phone call.  Your new application needs new servers, we provide them.  You start scanning your documents, we’ve got room for them.  All without capital costs to you.

So when our prospects/future customers compare IVDesk with Managed Service Providers, we focus on what the differentiators are.  What makes IVDesk a better solution, how are we different, and why do we have so many long term clients.  We’ve been providing the IVDesk cloud computing solution for over 8 years now and continue to see customers dramatically impacted by getting out of the IT business and back to their business.

Give us a call today to get a peek at what we can do for you!

Bill Sorenson
www.IVDesk.com
bsorenson@ivdesk.com
Search YouTube for IVDesk and hear what our customers say!
612-605-5461

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!

eWorkPlace Initiative Started in MN – Give your employee’s a raise!

Give Your Employees, and Yourself, a Raise with Telecommuting and Remote Access

Minnesota has started an eWorkPlace Initiative focusing on increasing company’s bottom lines by encouraging remote workers and technologies that support remote offices, just like IVDesk! (www.eworkplace-mn.com)

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, 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.

Moving to the Cloud – How a Conversion Works with IVDesk – continued

Continued from previous Post

The Pilot runs for as long as needed.  With small clients it can be a day, with larger ones a week or more.  The goal is to get the applications tested and fix/adjust anything identified.  It’s a trial “Live” day and we treat it as such.  Support’s available for the users, the Pilot group has gone through IVDesk training, and everyone’s ready to go.  We check off applications as they’ve been tested and work through the details.

Once the Pilot is complete, we affirm the live cut-over date and schedule the cut-over items: Training for users, final setup of a secondary Internet connection, Email cut-over requirements, data migration/cut-over scheduling, etc.  Most of this occurs during the last week or so of the turn-up and is scheduled fairly tightly.  We do special things for Internet connection failover, large data migration, application data/database migration, and other items as needed.  Our focus is on a smooth cut-over timed best for the client.

Last couple of items to give you an idea about are the cut-over day and the first Live day.  We’ve gotten everyone though the straight-forward training and prep week, and have scheduled MX record cut-over time and are capturing live data copies.  Friday (usually) afternoon comes and we show up on site to touch each PC, do some basic clean up, finalize capture of user settings locally, data, favorites, etc., and get what we need.  For some server applications this can be very detailed.  We’re on site until we’ve got everything and then route the data and details to the data center.  This can be remote or via physical data moves as needed.

Over the weekend we import all the data, email, databases, etc. and have key Pilot users testing on Saturday.  Everything is there by now, all users a live, email’s flowing, and we’re just finalizing every desktop for each user.  We login as each user and go through an exhaustive setup of sets to insure that the first Live day will be good and solid for all users.  No one wants surprises.

Monday comes and we’re there with donuts/bagels when employees arrive.  We want to make sure that first experience is solid and answer questions as they arive.  We’ve tested everything by now but they’ll be a few small things that we address on site.  Depending on the size of the customer and complexity we may be there a few hours to a few days.  What ever is needed.  We want it smooth and will do what we need to to make sure it is.  Users can call the Helpdesk at any time or grab local staff while we’re there.

After the initial Live on-site time, users contact the Helpdesk by phone or email and get immediate help.  We can quickly shadow their sessions and work with any issues as they arrive.  We can help set users up at home or on the road (very easy) and are available when ever they need it.  At their finger tips…

That’s it.  Kinda detailed here but very smooth to our customers.  You can see a few talk about it on YouTube by searching for IVDesk and hearing it from their own experiences.  Not a lot to worry about, we Pilot everything, and our goal is to make it smooth.  Once a customer is up, things are very straight-forward for them.

Let us talk with you about getting out of the IT business and saving you time, capital, money, and your sanity!  Give us a call to talk about how we can help.

Thanks
Bill Sorenson
www.IVDesk.com
612-605-5461

Moving to the Cloud – How a Conversion Works with IVDesk

I thought it would be good to go over how a typical LAN/WAN Network environment moves to a Cloud Computing solution like IVDesk and how this goes smoothly.  This will help take some “fear” out of a conversion and show what we see as best practices that have been developed over the last 8 years of moving customer to the Cloud.

We start our process with a typical “Kick-off” meeting to gather details across the board.  This includes information on all applications in use, existing server hardware, Internet connections, existing network infrastructure, all vendors utilized support across the company, and existing user information.  This process helps document the current environment and provides a “Requirements” document and test plan basis for our Pilot phase.  If we know about it and run it we can test it.  Pretty straight-forward but starts to build on our process of documentation for the customer.  What’s running on what and where, who’s running it, where’s the data, databases, files and folders, and how’s it being managed today.

Our next step is an internal analytical process where we look at server applications and figure out virtualization in relation to how we want to run things.  Normally, the client isn’t involved here but our staff comes up with how each application will run, which will be on virtual servers, what will be physical servers, what will run on the desktops.  Again, pretty straight-forward but detailed.

Once the plan is complete and all the installation CDs, etc. have been gathered, we begin the process of building the environment for them.  We contact the large application vendors and review their migration documentation and strategies, talk with staff, etc., and document the process for each app.  Most of the time this is pretty straight-forward as each vendor has helped their customers move from older servers to new ones, so we’re no different.

At the same time we’re adding all the user information into AD, setting up security groups as needed, verifying email information and groups, and basically setting up the company.  This again is smooth as we’ve done it so many times.  Some applications have AD interaction so that gets setup as well. 

Next, we build the “Pilot” environment.  Setup desktop servers for users, VMs with applications, Physical servers as needed, and literally build the company’s IT infrastructure.  We take a backup copy of their local data and use it as a snapshot for the Pilot.  We verify basic application usage internally and setup the formal Pilot testing and validation, using the “Requirements” and test plan developed early on to make sure everything’s covered.  There will always be some straggling information or settings but this is handled during this Pilot phase.

Continued on next Post

Thanks
Bill Sorenson
www.IVDesk.com
612-605-5461

Moving or Expanding? Cloud Computing Makes it Easy!

Another wonderful benefit of moving your environment to the cloud involves the flexibility and easy of expanding your business to new locations or moving.  Many times a physical move of the office can cause dramatic issues with technology and applications being used.  You have to plan to move the servers, applications, network, infrastructure, connections, PC, printers, everything, and without any downtime.  Most often, companies buy additional equipment to move their main applications first, mirror them, then cut over as the physical move happens.

Very expensive and prone to failure and long outages.  IVDesk customers, who have all their applications, data, and desktops hosted in the cloud, never have those issues.  Opening a new location or moving is simple.  The new location Internet connections come in (we setup the router), and they physically move their PCs.  Everything else is just the way it was.  No need to touch the applications, servers, security, etc.  Everything is there, always.  Talk about a relief!

Our customers continually have access to all their applications from everywhere.  A physical move or an expansion only needs to have Internet connectivity and everyone works, just as they do from anywhere.  All their desktops are there, applications, data, everything.  Nothing could be easier!

Join the group of companies that are taking advantage of IVDesk’s 8+ years of experience running hundreds of applications in the cloud.  Excellent customer service, low monthly fees per user, and not capital costs involved.  Get moved today and start taking advantage of ALL the benefits of a great IT solution.

Predictable Pain Free Computing.

Bill Sorenson
CEO
www.IVDesk.com