OneDrive for Business vs. SharePoint

OneDrive for Business vs. SharePoint
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

One of the most common questions I get when working with our SMB customers is should I use OneDrive for Business, SharePoint or both? Our typical customer is using the Office 365 Business Premium license which includes (in addition to the Office Suite, Exchange and Skype for Business) OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. Our customers are coming from environments where they may be storing files locally on their machines, accessing files on a network drive on a local server, or

Security Matters – Leverage Microsoft Office 365 + EMS
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

Security is a business need that is part of almost every discussion with our SMB customers. The Wall Street Journal reported that “29% of SMBs were victims of a cyber-security attack in 2012, 72% were not able to fully restore their company’s computer data, and 30% of ransomware victims had to pay to regain their data.” (Simon, 2015) When thinking about implementing a security solution, there are dozens of products from a variety of providers, but

How Windows 10 Helps with Cyber Security
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus was absolutely accurate when he stated “change is the only constant in life,” and the cyber threat landscape is no exception. In our day-to-day business lives, we’ve almost become accustomed to hearing about security breaches, email phishing scams, ransomware or other cyber-attacks. According to the Cost of Data Breach: Global Analysis conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach (per incident) is upwards of $3,500,000. So how do we protect

Common Technology Mistakes SMBs Make and How to Avoid Them
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

There’s no question that small business owners wear a lot of hats and are often forced to do more with less. The following are potential technology pitfalls we see common in the SMB space.

Price Shopping for the Least Expensive Option

As an outsourced technology provider, we often see the following scenario when working with SMB organizations. A small business owner needs to purchase new computers for his employees, enable his sales team to access company files

3 Ways to Safeguard Your Business
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

SMB organizations today face a constantly evolving set of potential threats, from data security breaches to downtime from unexpected events. Business owners and decision makers are asking questions like:

With our growing dependence on the cloud, how do I keep my data protected?
As my data grows, how can I make sure it’s being backed up in a cost-effective manner?
If an unexpected event occurs, like a fire or flood, how long would it take to get our business back up and

Protect Your Business from Ransomware and Other Threats
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

SecurElement support has seen an influx of SMB organizations infected with email-based threats including types of ransomware such as CryptoLocker, CryptoWall and Lockey. Additionally, users are reporting seeing fraudulent emails consistent with wire transfer scams. It is vital to understand how these types of applications gain access into an infrastructure and how to prevent users from allowing access.

Ransomware (CryptoLocker) Type Threats – the most common email-based threat aimed at extorting money from users, Ransomware or CryptoLocker encrypts

End of Support for Exchange Server 2007
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

Microsoft Exchange was introduced into the marketplace over 9 years ago and included some pretty advanced features. High availability architecture which included local continuous replication (a second copy of data stored on the same server as production), cluster continuous replication (a clustered failover solution utilizing a non-shared server) and standby continuous replication (replicates data from a standalone server or clustered server to standby recovery server). Additionally, Exchange Server 2007, “also marked the start of the transition to building

Barracuda Essentials for Microsoft Office 365
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

Barracuda Networks recently rolled out a complimentary product for Microsoft’s Office 365 licensing called Barracuda Essentials for Office 365. As a Microsoft Cloud Partner as well as a Barracuda Partner, we were very excited to learn more about this offering as well as position it to our customer base. Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 provides multi-layer security for email threat protection, archiving for compliance, and backup and recovery for Office 365 SKUs.

So before we delve into the nitty gritty

Skype for Business
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

Today’s modern business is one of instant and ever present communication in which employees have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. Customers expect prompt attention with answers to their questions and issues quickly. In our business, customer service is at the forefront, and I rely on technology to access resources that enable me to provide the best level of service for my customers. The Microsoft Office Suite complete with Skype for Business enables me to communicate and collaborate with my team

IT Spending in 2016
by Kate Smith, Director, Sales & Marketing

A good metric for any strong economy is spending, and a strong indicator of business growth and stability is IT spending. When thinking about what SMB organizations will spend technology budgets on for 2016 I immediately think of cloud technologies including Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. As an always on, always available computing environment is now the norm, it’s imperative that SMB organizations keep pace with technology advancements to fuel growth.

According to Gartner,