Curtis Franklin, Jr., senior contributing editor to the InfoWorld Test Center, recently named new NTRconnect remote access as one of the ten great iPhone apps for business users. Dropbox, Evernote and Documents to Go are other "top-notch" apps he reviewed among many others.
He wrote, "As a member of the nomadic business class, I appreciate how Apple has managed to make a device as small as the iPhone a truly useful enterprise tool..."
Change is truly at hand...ok I couldn't resist. But seriously, the diversity of devices used by webworkers and the remote workforce is daunting and accelerating for IT managers. Business users want their favorite devices and apps running on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, smartphones, desktops, laptops, netbooks, iPads...But IT needs to keep these remote systems running and ensure critical security, compliance and the achievement of environmental goals. How to be flexible and secure?
With the advent of cross-platform, proactive management tools, on-demand automation and remote support delivered via SaaS, do you see 2010 as the year non-Windows platforms will make serious inroads in the enterprise?
Congratulations to our CEO Luis Font, as Luis was named to the prestigious
MSP Mentor 250 list.
In the slowly recovering global economy at least one industry, the Managed Service Provider (MSP) vertical, is dramatically changing and thriving. In eWeek's recent IT Management column entitled "Economy Ignites Interest in Managed Services and SaaS...", Nathan Eddy reports on a study by AMI Partners that reveals small and midsize companies (SMBs) feel the economy is starting to stabilize, but "among the key changes identified in the study was the drastic increase of SMBs worldwide now showing strong interest in managed services and SaaS (software as a service) and dramatic increases in midmarket companies' plans to outsource specific IT needs such as storage, security and telecommunications." You can read the entire article here; http://bit.ly/UseNT
And Industry analysts are now forecasting strong if not "hockey stick" expansion for MSPs focused on delivering on-demand IT management, help desk and customer care to businesses of every size and in the most security-sensitive organizations, including education, healthcare, financial services and government.
We are hearing about the growth opportunities from our global MSP customers, large and small, and partners, because both the SaaS delivery model and the SMB desire for managed services is impacting their service delivery and their business models.
The delivery of IT support services via "the cloud" and several other factors including; the economy, major players such as Google and the nearly instant return on investment or as we say at NTRglobal, instant return on deployment (IROD), has caused and increased awareness and desire for more services and for deployment options
Our customers tell us that they need options for their clients that go beyond a subscription.
So we listen and invest and develop a complete set of remote support and customer-care tools for supporting mobile devices and PCs on a multitude of operating systems, including Windows, Mac, Linux and Smartphone. We offer a flexible choice of secure on-demand delivery platforms, including SaaS, customer self-hosted, virtual appliance and other flexible VIP cloud delivery solutions where straight SaaS is not an option.
SaaS, it's not just for CRM anymore
Exceptional customer service must be the backbone of businesses in today's tough climate. But the good news is that innovative technology and communication processes are available that are easy to adopt and require no capital outlay. Now the challenge of providing high touch customer service has never been easier while also dramatically reducing operational costs and enhancing customer satisfaction. These next generation support solutions add the vital "human element" to communication with customers and create a new level of attention that ultimately improves client retention and loyalty. The right
remote support solution can make this possible.
NTRglobal is a worldwide SaaS company that is making it easier for help desk and IT managers to deliver instant remote support to customers and their employees, including mobile workers, employees in satellite offices, Web commuters at home and teleworkers in the extended enterprise. NTRglobal provides the highest level of security (AES 556-bit encryption) and reliability for on-demand remote support and on-demand remote systems administration across more platforms than any other solution currently available, including Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, Mac Leopard and Linux. NTRsupport breaks down the barriers of communication and helps build a better customer experience.
Top remote support solution providers offer customers a choice in the type of deployment method s they need for their business requirements; whether they be compliance regulations, security issues or overall branding requirements while integrating to your website. You need a solution that fits your needs, not that of your supplier.
Find out if your provider offers you a choice of SaaS solutions deployment solutions including the option to host the service behind your firewall. This allows you added control you may be looking for without any of the issues related to maintenance of the application. Really a best of both worlds approach for some companies and organizations.
Another option you may want to investigate is on your licensing needs. Are you buying too many or too few licenses? With concurrent licensing, customers know their investment is not going to waste and can quickly and cost effectively scale up or down as the need arises. Make sure your solution still allows you to track the individual activity of your support operators.
With the emergence of solutions that offer secure remote support, companies have a significantly better way to troubleshoot, fix, administer and maintain their IT systems and computers remotely to troubleshoot and repair, computers, laptops and even mobile devices such as smart phones or embedded devices such as blood analyzing machines.
Using a variety of Web-based tools, including chat, remote control, VOIP and video, these solutions enable IT managers to virtually "see, diagnose and reach into" and repair devices via the Internet. This capability helps eliminate costly visits to customer locations and long and sometimes difficult calls.
Instead the customer experiences a proactive fix or rapid resolution of an issue in play. This is a powerful capability for your IT team and offers a superior support experience for customers.
Today, technology is pervasive in all aspects of most people's professional and personal lives. The dramatic increase in the adoption of devices, laptops and other computing devices has allowed increases in productivity and efficiency. However, these increases have not come without a cost. When a problem occurs, customers, employees or partners generally are not able to fix it themselves and must turn to professional support for help. And because of today's on-demand economy, technical issues are underscored with a sense of urgency to resolve the problem quickly or lose valuable business opportunity. The pressure is magnified by the increasing challenges that support staffs face coupled with the dramatic rise in the number of mobile workers over recent years.
The convergence of these forces increase the complexity and challenges IT faces. With ever tighter compliance and security mandates you are probably trying to prioritize better ways to "manage the seemingly unmanageable" diversity of network connected devices and applications. And perhaps concerns about security, performance and the unknown-makes it seem too daunting to take on one more thing.
But SaaS for remote support and customer service offer benefits that have evolved beyond the initial target market of IT service and help desk support services to deliver profitable value added services. According to IDC's research director, Matt Healy, the benefits of the solution come from being able to geographically decouple IT personnel from the task they need to complete. By doing this, organizations can effectively "virtualize" and "automate" repetitive tasks in their IT departments and see a wider range of benefits.
Best of breed support for customers and employees, including cost-cutting solutions such as remote support, enables small business to act on par with large enterprise on a global scale and perhaps differentiate based on service quality. Large organizations can benefit by automating repetitive lower level tasks to redeploy valuable engineering hours to focus on core competencies and issues that contribute to the bottom line.
Remote support via SaaS provides a free evaluation trial for you to actually utilize the service before you buy. Test for yourself how IT support and service capabilities can work for your organization, and perhaps discover innovative revenue-generating profitable services that transform into competitive advantage.
To survive in today's tough economic climate, many businesses, whether established, new or global, will be looking to drive efficiency and reduce costs in the months ahead. Coupled with budget cuts, staffing challenges and dwindling resources, operations will be impacted more than ever before. But, at the same time, keeping your customers satisfied is more critical than ever.
The emergence of virtual support
During the last recession, technology was in its infancy with the Internet being used as a place for email, chat and ecommerce. Now it offers business software on-demand for the same price or less then your monthly mobile bill, meaning that company size no longer determines the reach or rate of business growth.
With virtual, anytime, anywhere, internet-based applications businesses can prioritise which geographic markets to sell to that were previously unreachable and unprofitable in the past. Even small companies can now deliver services to customers and partners in distant places. Communication can increase and training and technical support can all be provided remotely over the web. All of these are real capabilities that can reduce or eliminate onsite travel, minimise downtime and optimise productivity for customers and overworked IT staff. Importantly, the web is all changing the way customer support is delivered.
12 Words you can never say in office (sounds very much like a George Carlin list)
Great article that brought back some of the nostalgia of spending a career in technology. Here are some observations from the list;
4. OK, how many people downloaded PointCast when it came out? We all did till it crashed the network. But it was fun for a week.
5. ASP. From the article.....During this decade, the term "Application Service Provider" evolved into "Software-as-a-Service." Both terms refer to a vendor hosting a software application and providing access to it over the Web. Customers buy the software on a subscription basis, rather than having to own and operate it themselves. ASP was a hot term prior to the dot-com bust. Then it was replaced by "SaaS." Now it's cool to talk about "cloud computing." .
We think it is still very cool to get "SaaSy"
8. In a very short time we have gone from a couple paragraph blog to a 140 character tweet, a tiny URL. What will a micro tweet consist of? A short acronym? OMG
10. RBOC. 1984= ATT. 2009=ATT. Can someone say "Deja Vu".
12. How many of you still tell someone the "www" part of your website? Come on be honest......
What are some of the other terms that you remember?
CAPEX, A Non Issue
With next-generation Internet capabilities, companies can now demonstrate and sell product, deliver virtual training and service customers almost anywhere in the world. IT infrastructure services such as remote support, network system management, on-demand storage and IT automation tools, not just point solutions such as CRM, are available as subscriptions via software-as-a-service (SaaS). This is a game changer that helps IT enhance support services "on demand" and automate repetitive time-sinking functions while enhancing security because updates can now be done automatically as scheduled. Deployment is as quick as a few clicks of the mouse because the application is available on the Internet and requires little if any training or manual deployment. Best of breed complement and easily integrate with existing products and are also easy to customize for your unique business needs. No new hardware is required. CAPEX is a non-issue.
Traditional premises IT management software deployments are time-consuming and expensive, with significant capital costs. Quoting Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of ThinkStrategies.com, "31% of software projects are cancelled before they are completed. Of those software projects, over half (52.7%) have taken twice as long or have cost twice as much as originally expected."
SaaS deployments are cheaper and faster and the best of breed have significant investment in complimentary dedicated professional services and training, integration services, security protocols and redundant server systems with robust service level agreements. This helps eliminate the need for specially trained IT staff to handle the maintenance, monitoring and software updates.