Cloud On The Cheap

Larger companies are working on strategic initiatives to move their in-house data centers to the cloud. The advantages are both financial and the ability to work from just about any location, fixed or mobile. But what about smaller operations? Is there any way to gain some of these advantages for the SMB?

Here’s a cloud app that you may be overlooking because it was around long before the cloud was cool. You probably don’t even think “cloud” when you hear the name. Yet, cloud it is. The application? GoToMyPC.

GoToMyPC? Isn’t that the software that lets you remotely log into your computer? Indeed it is. Think about it, though. How much difference is there philosophically between bringing up the screen from your desktop PC while you are sitting at a restaurant, and then running all the apps that are back at the office, and running those same apps from a private cloud?

In this case, you have created your own private cloud without the need to contract for Infrastructure or Software as a Service.

The idea behind GoToMyPC is that you most likely have one major computing environment but would like to be able to use it wherever you happen to be. For smaller companies that primary computer is likely a PC running Windows or a Mac running OS X. Out in the field you may be accessing that computer with a laptop, notebook, netbook or even and iPad. Yes, if you are a GoToMyPC subscriber, there’s a free app for that in the iTunes App Store.

GoToMyPC might rightly be called a remote desktop. What it does is replicate the desktop of your base computer on a remotely located computer or iPad. You see just what you would if you were sitting at your desk. You can then run applications, look up data and even transfer files back and forth between your office PC and your remote PC.

How does it do that? The answer is in downloadable software that runs on the PC you want to access. It gives screen, keyboard and mouse access to the computer that you are logged into somewhere else. All of this is done over encrypted links so that you don’t lose security just because you are operating remotely.

Since this system depends on the computer you want to access rather than some server in the data center, you’ll need to leave your office machine on in order to gain access. But, hey, if you wanted to access any other cloud application the servers powering that app would have to be up and running. Strictly speaking, there is a GoToMyPC communications server that relays encrypted data packets between host and remote computers. You know, a cloud based server.

The PC to PC version of GoToMyPC has more features than the Mac version, but both give you remote access to either a Mac or PC from a Mac, PC or iPad. GoToMyPC has the ability to let you access up to 20 computers remotely. Larger companies can get a professional or corporate version that adds more users and an administrator. A thousand users? No problem. The corporate version is just what you need.

Does this sound like something you could make good use of? Why not try it free for 30 days and then see if you can live without it anymore. If you find you can’t, it’s an affordable business and professional tool that expands the capability of the computers you already have. Get started with your 30 day free trial of GoToMyPC right now.

MegaPath Merges Integrated and Hosted Voice

Telephone switching has migrated over the decades from the local telephone company to the enterprise and now out to the cloud. MegaPath is building a bridge from in-house phone systems to cloud telephony by adding hosted services to their Integrated Voice services. This could be the cost effective transition you’ve been looking for.

If all you are doing is buying a few analog business lines from your local phone company and running them through a small business phone system you got at one of the big box office stores, you’ve pretty much got what you are going to get. Small companies have a way of growing to become medium size companies, however, and a two or four line system with a half dozen desk sets is quickly outgrown.

This is where most businesses call in a local phone system dealer who installs and maintains a particular brand of business phone system. With an in-house PBX (Private Branch Exchange), you’ll be adding more outside lines but now you have the opportunity to shop around. You can get your analog lines from a competitive provider or move up to digital trunk lines to save money once you get more than 6 to 12 lines.

MegaPath, a major competitive carrier with a nationwide service footprint, has a service called Integrated Voice specifically tailored to SMBs with their own PBX systems. They provide the outside lines that connect your PBX system to the world. The interface can be traditional analog lines for smaller systems, T1-CAS or ISDN-PRI digital trunks for medium and larger systems, or SIP Trunking for the newer IP PBX systems that support enterprise VoIP.

The Integrated feature of Integrated Voice is that you get both telephone and broadband service over the same dynamic DSL, T1 or Ethernet connection. This is a bit different from simply adding a third party VoIP service to your broadband service. With Integrated Voice, the combined data/voice is carefully managed to ensure that voice packets have priority over data packets so that using your computers won’t cause the telephone calls to break up. Any time a phone wants to make or receive a call, the bandwidth for this is reserved from the Integrated pool. Bandwidth not used for phone calls is automatically assigned for broadband Internet access.

Integrated Voice services are popular with small to medium size businesses because nearly every business needs both telephone lines and broadband Internet access. You can pay for these separately or have a more efficient and cost effective solution that combines the two.

Hosted Voice is a different animal. With hosted services, you no longer have a PBX system on your premises. Instead, you use a much larger PBX that is located at your service provider. It’s as if the service provider has become the new phone company. All you have in-house are telephones. These can be traditional phones that connect to an adaptor called a voice gateway or SIP Phones that are designed to connect directly to your network.

Hosted Voice services, also known as hosted PBX, are popular with companies that haven’t invested in their own PBX system or want to avoid the capital outlay for a needed upgrade and the ongoing maintenance headaches. All of those issues move to the service provider. As a user, you don’t perceive that the phone system is in the cloud rather than in the basement of your building. You may also enjoy advanced features such as remote worker, find me/follow me, simultaneous ring, auto attendants and hunt groups that weren’t available on your old PBX system.

MegaPath has been offering both the Integrated Voice and Hosted Voice services. What they’re doing now is giving businesses the chance to add Hosted Voice features to their Integrated Voice service as an overlay to their lines or trunks. This offers the opportunity for companies to gain more features almost instantly without the headache and expense of completely redoing their phone system right away. It’s something of a hybrid cloud approach where some of the equipment is on-site and some is in the cloud at the service provider’s facility.

Are you interested in upgrading your current business phone system with more advanced features or getting a better price on phone lines and trunks? If so, check out Integrated and Hosted Voice Services for business locations to find the mix that works best for you.

IP Transit vs Peering vs DIA

We live in a world of networks and networks of networks. The Internet is the ultimate example of networks upon networks upon networks. All of these networks need some way to communicate. For that, you have the choice of IP transit or peering.

Network to network communication would be unnecessary if the Internet was constructed the way most people envision it. When we think of the Internet, we think of one giant network that links everyone to everyone. It generally works that way for the end user, but the notion of a monolithic universal network is an illusion. Look inside the Internet and you’ll find it to be a collection of large, medium and small networks that all work together to get packets from one point to another. Let’s see what that takes.

At the top of the heap are Tier 1 networks. These are huge international IP networks that have points of presence in key locations around the world. Tier 1 networks are indeed the superhighways of the Internet. But like all highway systems, they don’t go everywhere. In order to create an Internet, you need to connect these superhighways together.

The connection process is called peering. The name suggests that this is a connection between equals or peers. That’s exactly right. Huge networks have huge amounts of traffic. If two of these networks peer to exchange traffic on an equal basis, then each network effectively doubles its reach. Network A has access to all the customers on Network B and vice versa.

Tier 1 networks peer on a settlement free basis. In other words, the networks are interconnected via high capacity routers and the traffic flows back and forth at will. Settlement free means that there are no toll booths at the border. Neither network pays the other because they are getting equal value through peering.

Not all networks are the same size. Smaller networks, called Tier 2, have less capacity and less reach than Tier 1 networks. Tier 1 networks aren’t about to peer with Tier 2 networks at no charge because the smaller network would be getting a lot more value from the arrangement than the larger one. What Tier 2 networks can do is ban together and peer among themselves to create a much larger entity that can compete with those Tier 1 networks. If they want access to the Tier 1 networks, they can pay a settlement charge based on the traffic imbalance. That charge is called IP transit.

Internet Service Providers have a choice when it comes to accessing the Internet. They can spend the capital and maintenance cost to build out their networks to the point where they can peer with other large networks, or they can just purchase IP transit services from a large network and avoid the investment in equipment and personnel.

Very small networks or medium size companies with their own internal networks will choose to buy Dedicated Internet Access rather than IP transit. You need to be a network operator with an assigned AS or Autonomous System number (ASN) that identifies each network on the Internet in order to qualify for IP Transit services. Some large organizations with connections to multiple networks may fit this definition, as well as large scale ISPs.

Everyone else, from local WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) to SMBs (Small to Medium Size Businesses) simply purchases Dedicated Internet Access by the Mbps or Gbps of bandwidth. Operation of the Internet is left to those networks who specialize in that service.

What type of Internet connectivity makes the most sense for your business? It depends on whether you are a large ISP, a content delivery network, a large corporation with international locations, or a network of retail stores. Why not compare pricing options for IP Transit, Peering, or Dedicated Internet Access, as appropriate? Complementary consulting services are available to help you sort through the possibilities.

Broadview Networks OfficeSuite Brings The Cloud To SMB

As a small to medium size business, you’d like to embrace cost saving technologies like Enterprise VoIP, private IP networking and cloud services. But, oh, the investment to get into this game. You take another look at Internet-based services, but have serious concerns about quality and reliability of service. If only small to medium businesses without huge IT staffs could get the good stuff. But, wait, you can!

You can, indeed, upgrade to the latest in sophisticated telecommunications services without the big investment in dollars and staffing to do it all yourself. Broadview Networks has exactly the service you need in their OfficeSuite. It IS your office at one or many locations. You get the functionality of an enterprise-grade PBX or key telephone system. You get easy administration to add stations, sites and users through an ordinary Web browser. You get the ability to connect satellite and regional offices across the country with your main office using the same system and network. You get seamless communications with home-based employees and mobile professionals who have the same features and functionalities that are available on their office phones. You even get Internet access.

What you don’t get is grief and capital expenditures. OfficeSuite is a hosted VoIP system. That means that all the expensive and hard to maintain switching and server equipment is located in a Broadview Networks facility. They have the telecom talent to keep everything working 24/7 and enough resources to ensure that you can scale up your operation any time you want. What you have in your facility is telephones and computers connected to your 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet LAN.

Now, be careful here. Not all hosted PBX solutions are the same. Some try to minimize costs by pressing the Internet into service as a telephone trunk line. Broadview Networks operates its own private network built on a redundant fiber-optic backbone. The difference between sending sensitive traffic, like telephone calls, over the wild and wooly Internet and sending them over a carefully controlled private network is the difference between take-what-you-get and dependable high quality performance. Broadview Networks can interconnect multiple locations through their converged MPLS network that maintains strict quality control on voice and data streams.

With advanced technology and quality networking, OfficeSuite offers not only the usual telephone features, but exciting extras that can improve your productivity. Hot Desking lets employees move around the office and between locations. They simply log in to a phone like they would log into an Internet account. Click to Dial lets you click on phone numbers in your Microsoft Outlook contact manager to immediately activate a speakerphone and call the contact selected. Get voicemail notifications and messages from any phone and receive messages through e-mail, even on your smartphone. Decide where to send calls if you can’t pick up. Inbound callers reach your Auto Attendant that prompts them to user extensions and company directories.

Are you ready for a more sophisticated phone system, or perhaps one that is easier to manage and doesn’t require you to run to the bank for a capital loan? Then get complementary consulting and quotes on OfficeSuite and other quality hosted PBX phone systems. You’ll likely find that trying to be your own phone company is more trouble that it is worth.

Covad Offers A Nationwide MPLS VPN Network For Business

Businesses with many office locations nationwide are getting a new secure networking option. Covad has just completed its Intelligent Network Platform designed to expand WAN networking capabilities at lower costs than you may be used to paying.

Covad has designed its MPLS VPNs for the small to medium size businesses and larger distributed enterprises that need to solve the problem of how to interconnect multiple business locations. That may be franchises, field offices, warehouses, retail locations, factories, hotels and other buildings. There are two problems to be addressed with any multi-location networking scheme. First is how you reliably and securely link all of the sites together. Second is how you do that cost effectively.

MPLS is becoming the new standard in private line communications. Previous solutions have included Frame Relay networks and T1 point to point telecom lines. MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching, which hints at its power. This is a system that will transport whatever protocol you require, be that switched circuit telephone calls, enormous data downloads, or broadcast video. It’s a network cloud in the sense that it has the capability to connect any location to any other location. You simply specify what that connectivity is going to be and the network operator takes care of enabling those connections.

Covad describes its MPLS network as a VPN or Virtual Private Network. Being a privately run network, it is inherently more secure than a public utility such as the Internet. You can’t get data on or off the network unless you are a Covad customer. MPLS is not the same technology as the Internet. Special label switching routers are needed at every ingress and egress point to attach and remove the labels that are used to get data packets where they are intended.

Another advantage of MPLS networks is that they offer a means to prioritize packets to establish CoS Class of Service and QoS Quality of Service for traffic management. You know that if you send voice or video down the Internet, you are taking your chances on the quality of the real time transmissions. That’s because every packet is treated like every other packet and it’s just your bad luck if some node become congested and disrupts your data flow. As a managed network, MPLS networks can ensure that each packet gets the bandwidth and minimized latency that ensures high quality voice and video transport.

Do you need to network multiple locations with ensured quality at reasonable costs? If so, you need to investigate your options with Covad and other MPLS VPN Networks for Business.