As Travel Becomes Costlier, Online Meetings Look Better

In these economically challenged times, the cost of travel hasn’t improved one bit. In fact, it’s just getting more expensive and often less convenient to travel across the country for team coordination, client presentations and other face to face activities. Some of this is critical to the business, but is all of it? Couldn’t you do a better job if you could collaborate more often without the time and expense of business travel?

Many companies have found online meetings to be both a money saver and productivity improver. It works especially well if you can just call a meeting anytime you feel the need to get together, without having to worry about the cost involved. You can do that with GoToMeeting. You pay one low monthly fee. You have as many meetings as you like, anytime you like. No need to coordinate with a service provider. This is a service that makes calling meetings about as simple as sending out emails.

How easy is GoToMeeting? You can set up instant meetings with a single click. You also have the option to have one-time scheduled meetings or recurring meetings. It’s just like setting up a weekly review in the conference room except that the participants can be anywhere, even traveling. Those participants can join your meeting from a Mac, PC, iPad or iPhone. The cost to them is nothing. Even the apps for their devices are free.

All someone has to do to participate is click on the meeting link you provide them via email, instant message, or even over the phone. You’ll need to give them a meeting ID verbally if you invite them by phone. Each attendee chooses whether to pick up the audio portion of the meeting by phone or by using the microphone and speakers built into their computer. Use your own toll free service or purchase integrated audio conferencing from Citrix Online Audio.

What can you do in your online meeting? It’s both an audio and visual experience. The audio conferencing allows everyone to talk and listen. While you are presenting, you can mute the participant's mics to prevent background noise. You can also record your meeting sessions for future review and reuse.

The visual portion uses your computer screen. You can chose to share your entire desktop or a specific application. There are drawing tools, multiple monitor support and the ability to transfer keyboard and mouse control and instantly change presenters. You can have a chat feature enabled for discussion while someone is presenting.

After the meeting is over, you can post it to a website or third-party video host to share with others. Review the attendance report and schedule future meetings.

The basic GoToMeeting service lets you hold as many meetings as you want with up to 15 attendees each. Need more than that? Consider GoToWebinar that also includes GoToMeeting and supports from 100 to 1,000 users, depending on the plan you buy.

Are you intrigued by GoToMeeting as a way to have more meetings for less cost, but not sure if it will do everything you have in mind? No problem. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days before you buy. Chances are, you’ll consider this the best business deal you get all year.

Bonded T1 Solution Increases Bandwidth

T1 bandwidth at 1.5 Mbps has been a staple for smaller business applications. For many businesses, a solid 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload is more than adequate. Some businesses can even use an Integrated T1 solution to deliver both telephone and Internet service on the same line. But other businesses are finding that T1 bandwidth is becoming a bottleneck to productivity. They need and want more bandwidth.

So, what is the easiest and most cost effective solution? A straightforward approach is to add another T1 line. This doubles your bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. But don’t just run out and order a second T1 line just anywhere. If you want to two T1 lines to work as if they were one larger line, then you’ll need to get them from the same supplier and request a bonded T1 solution. Bonding is a technical process that combines the bandwidth of the otherwise independent T1 lines.

Why would you not want your lines bonded? One reason is redundancy. If the two lines are bonded and from the same source, chances are that a fault that takes out one line might well take out the other as well. You’ll be left with no bandwidth at all until repairs are completed. Fortunately, this is usually a matter of hours at most for top tier T1 line service providers. Even so, by keeping the lines separate and from totally different carriers coming in on different wire bundles from different directions, you stand a good chance of an outage being limited to one line or the other.

Redundant lines are easiest to implement when they feed different networks. Say, half your users are on one line and half on the other. Or, you can use a device called a TRUFFLE from Mushroom Networks to combine two or more broadband lines to create one larger bandwidth. If you lose one input to the TRUFFLE, the others keep feeding the network.

Another situation where a bonded T1 solution makes sense is delivering larger amounts of bandwidth to locations where fiber optic service isn’t available or is way too expensive to bring in. You can bond 3 T1 lines to get 4.5 Mbps, 4 T1 lines to get 6 Mbps, 5 T1 lines for 7.5 Mbps, 6 lines get you 9 Mbps, and bonding 7 T1 lines will deliver 10.5 Mbps. That’s equivalent to basic Ethernet network speeds and is more than enough for applications like video conferencing and broadband Internet access for medium size companies.

Bonding this many lines often makes a lot of sense for companies located in rural areas or just far enough from Metro Ethernet service that fiber isn’t practical. That includes WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) and rural medical centers, as well as office buildings of all types. T1 line service is available just about anywhere you can get telephone service and is provisioned on the same type of twisted pair cable that brings in analog or digital phone lines.

Finally, a bonded T1 solution can provide short term connectivity while fiber optic service is under construction. In most cases, the copper wiring to support bonded T1 bandwidth is already in place. A service provider only needs to install customer premises termination equipment and provision the service. Once fiber has been brought in and turned up, you can discontinue the bonded T1 connection or keep it as a backup service that will be unaffected by faults in the fiber optic network.

Can you business benefit from a fast, reliable T1 based bandwidth service? Check prices and availability for a bonded T1 solution now. If you have an older T1 line contract, you may find that you can get more bandwidth for the same money today.

How Bandwidth Can Affect Productivity

Many companies are finding themselves in a decision process about how much bandwidth to order. For the most part, it’s so many dollars per Megabit per second throughput. There are ways to actually get more Mbps for your bandwidth dollar, and I’ll tell you about that in a second. First, though, let’s see if there is a relationship between your network bandwidth and employee productivity.

If your only bandwidth connection is a broadband Internet service that employees use to sell personal items on eBay or play Farmville when the boss isn’t looking, you might argue that less bandwidth would be a productivity enhancer. In fact, you’d be better off disconnecting from the Internet completely. But most companies can’t do that anymore. They are completely dependent on both internal data transfers and connections to the Internet in order to conduct business. Still, what is the right level of bandwidth to install?

Let’s use an analogy to see if we can figure this out. Suppose you have a office full of sales agents. This is certainly true of insurance firms and real estate brokers. It’s also the case with many other types of business. Now, let's install one wall telephone for every two dozen agents. How much sales volume would you expect to be generated?

In such a case, you’d probably find that the telephone set would never get cold. There’d be a line of agents urging whoever was on the phone to wrap up the conversation and give others a chance. If these were salaried sales people, you’d be losing money in buckets. If they were commissioned sales people, the ranks would soon thin out from a steady stream of resignations.

Obviously you want to manage the productivity of your scarce resource, which is the skilled sales agent. You’d give them each a phone and perhaps both a desk phone and a cell phone. How about the number of outgoing phone lines? You’d install enough lines that there would rarely, if ever, be a busy signal.

This is an easy example because there is a clear connection between sales agents being able to make phone calls and the amount of revenue the company generates. It’s also generally acknowledged that high producing agents are far more expensive than telephones and phone lines. But what about other employees? Does this analogy translate to other activities?

Of course it does. It’s just when you have dozens or hundreds of employees doing all sorts of tasks, it’s harder to nail down the cost of lost productivity. You should try, though, because the loss is there just the same. Any time someone has to wait for a file transfer or access to a Web site they need to do their job, you have minutes of productivity vaporizing.

Multitask, you say? Sure, people do that all the time. If they know that it takes 15 minutes to download a particularly large image file, they might do something else while they wait. But what if it takes 15 seconds? Chances are they’ll sit back and relax or converse with someone at the next desk. Worst of all, what if your network performance is so variable that you have no idea if you’ll get that file in 15 seconds or 15 minutes? Do you start another task only to be immediately interrupted or cool your heels only to find that you’re doing nothing for the better part of most hours?

The problem is probably more insidious because these are extreme examples. In most cases, the wasted time is probably more like seconds than minutes per task. But multiply that lost time by the number of employees every day for a month and you might be surprised by how much it costs. Now, compare that cost to what you are spending on bandwidth per month and see if your telecom bill still looks outrageous.

To go a step further, consider how much more you might accomplish as an organization with more sophisticated tools that are also more dependent on Internet or cloud network connectivity. It’s a tradeoff between the cost of automation plus ongoing bandwidth & maintenance charges versus the cost of bodies in seats to accomplish the same thing. It makes no difference if your bandwidth costs are a few hundred dollars a month, a few thousand or tens of thousands. It’s what you are accomplishing for the money spent that counts.

Now, as promised, I’ll let you in on a little secret about the cost of bandwidth. It’s not the same for everyone. Pick out 10 companies, each with a T1 line or an OC3 fiber optic service, and you’ll find they’re paying 10 different lease prices. Why? Partly this due to the fact that the price of bandwidth is always changing but line leases are for a fixed time period. You also pay less if you sign a 3 year lease than if you hedge your bets and only commit to a 1 year lease. But the biggest cost differences come from what type of bandwidth service you order and who you buy it from. This can result in a factor of 2x or more in the cost of the same Mbps from one company to another.

How can you be sure you are getting the best rate on your voice or data bandwidth services? More competition is better, so using a broker who has relationships with dozens of service providers helps insure that you didn’t miss a big price break because you only got quotes from one or two carriers.

Also be sure that you compare all means of connectivity appropriate to your business. Did you know that you can get twice the bandwidth for the same money if you order Ethernet over Copper versus T1? They’re both professional grade telecom services, but one is cheaper than the other if it’s available for your location. There are copper, fiber and wireless options available for most businesses. Some services offer broadband and telephone on the same connection for a cost savings.

If you are losing money because your systems are bandwidth limited or you suspect you are paying more that you should for a particular level of service, then by all means get current competitive bandwidth quotes and see what’s available. You can do this quickly and easily through the Telarus telecom brokerage service and get complementary consulting help as well.

What Is Lowering Gigabit Ethernet Bandwidth Pricing?

If you have recently gone out for quotes on Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, you may have been surprised by how much prices have dropped the last few years. That’s one pleasant surprise for organizations that need higher levels of business bandwidth for cloud computing access, e-commerce, medical image transmission, video distribution and the like. But is this for real and what is driving these prices lower?

Yes, it’s for real alright. In fact, bandwidth services across the board can be had for a fraction of what you may have paid when you signed your last service contract. That applies to everything from T1 lines to DS3 connections and on up through OCx SONET/SDH fiber optic bandwidth. It also includes competing services like Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gig E. Plus multi-location cloud networks like MPLS. They’ve all dropped in price. But the cost per Mbps is often most dramatic for Ethernet services.

What’s behind the lowered prices? Two factors can be credited. First is the move from traditional switched circuit transport technologies to packet switched IP networks and services. Second is new levels of competition.

Both legacy service providers, the telephone companies, and new competitive carriers have built-out extensive networks based on IP or a networking technology that embraces IP, such as MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. You can thank the Internet for that. The enormous volume of equipment and services to support near-universal demand access to the Internet has decreased the price of Ethernet and IP networking to a fraction of what it costs for competing technologies. The entire world is going to packet switched networks based on Internet Protocol.

When every LAN is running Ethernet, it just makes sense that the most efficient way to connect all those local area networks is with an Ethernet connection. Ethernet over Copper lets you do this from typically 3 Mbps on up to around 50 Mbps. Ethernet over Fiber is good for 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and even 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet is becoming a requirement for medium and large companies depending heavily on high productivity enterprise software or distributing media content, such as video. At the very highest levels, even 10 GigE is no longer out of the question.

The move from legacy telco technologies to IP based fiber optic networks has brought new players into the marketplace for WAN networking services. These competitive carriers have built their own regional or national fiber optic networks and established colocation facilities and points of presence in most major cities, even some mid-size cities. They can often bring their own fiber into business locations and bypass the telephone companies completely. Now instead of one option for service, you may have several or more even at the Gigabit Ethernet level. That spells competition and competition leads to lowered prices.

Could your organization benefit from the recent cost reductions in high bandwidth networks services? Don’t shake your head no until you check current prices and availability for Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth services and other bandwidth offerings. At the very least, your next service lease could cost you less than the one you have now.