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BYOD, Are You Prepared? Questions You Should Ask
by Jack Safrit, CEO, Axxys Technologies
No, I’m not talking about having a party but rather one of the hottest topics in technology today. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is becoming an absolute factor in almost every business today. Your employees, vendors, and guests all probably bring some type of personal communication device or their own notebooks to your workplace every day. Many employees are using their own devices to connect to your business networks, if for nothing more than the receipt of your corporate email. So why is BYOD a hot topic?
Many companies provide their employees laptops and smartphones to serve as their business computing and mobile communications devices. The business owns those devices, and as a result, the business can control the security of those devices and any business data that the user had downloaded to them. When Blackberry was a standard, Blackberry server handled many of the business security concerns present in mobile devices. Today, we see that burden of security falling back on the business and their IT departments as many employees are bringing their own smartphones, tablets, and notebooks to the office or are connecting to your business network remotely to do their work. And while that ability has certainly may potentially make them more productive, it certainly has made it more difficult to control access.
Questions you need to ask about BYOD at your business
What happens when a user loses their smartphone or tablet? Have they lost your vital, business confidential information also?
Are your employees using more and more of your bandwidth by connecting to the Internet with not just their computer, but also their smartphones and tablets.
Are they using their personal devices to text, to listen to music, or to surf the Internet – activities not related to their business role?
Is your IT department receiving more calls from employees asking for help to connect those devices to your network or to fix a problem with those devices? How many different types of devices is IT having to support?
Are you responsible for the non-business information that is on those devices or flowing through your network if your policy is to allow employees to use them in business or if you reimburse them for some of their cost?
Do you have a policy in place that allows your IT department to remotely “wipe” those devices if lost or stolen to protect any corporate data like contact info, confidential emails, executive schedules that your employee may have downloaded?
Consider these Solutions
Decide what you want your IT providers or IT department to support. Their time is valuable and working on personal devices can be a distraction to business critical work.
Establish a policy for personal devices and let users know that your business information is yours and you will take steps to protect that information – no matter where it resides. Axxys has all employees agree to allow the company to do a remote wipe of any device they use. This permission is a condition of employment and is designed to protect our information and the information of our clients.
Make sure your company has appropriate Internet usage rules in place and that all employees understand proper Internet behavior and usage.
Consider standardizing or which devices are allowed for business use. Some are more secure that others and the shorter the acceptable list is, the more efficient IT can be.
Finally, the November 15, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal dedicated an entire page to the BYOD concern. (See link: Is It Better for Businesses to Adopt Open or Closed Platforms?)
As always, feel free to ask an Axxys team member if you need advice on this subject.
Are Your Emails Falling Into A Black Hole?
Reprinted with permission from the HP Small Business Center
It’s so frustrating: you regularly send out emails and then sit staring at your computer, waiting for some sort of response. Don’t you sometimes get the feeling that you’re just sending words out into a black hole?
Of course, you can never "ensure" that emails are going to be read or acted upon. It’s a sad result of the information overload we suffer from. People who sit working at their computers for hours every day might have the time, energy and interest to open the numerous messages which fill their inbox—or they might not. So what is it exactly that tips them over the delicate, crucial line between “read” and ”leave for later/delete”?
The answer is that most recipients of emails often decide whether or not to read them because of two things: the “subject” line and the “from” line.
- They must recognize who the email is coming from
- They must see a benefit or reason to open it
So consider these useful tips before you send your next mail:
1. Keep it short
Would you immediately open and read an email with this subject line?
"When you get the chance, it would be great if you could possibly get in. . ."
When an email arrives in your inbox, only about 70 characters are displayed. The rest usually gets cut off. That’s why the crucial information contained at the end of this subject line (“. . .get in touch with Paul to set up a meeting before he goes on holiday”) will not be seen by most recipients.
2. You want action
When busy people receive an email that says “When you get the chance,” they are going to deal with other, more urgent-sounding emails before yours. By the time yours gets read, Paul will be lying on the beach.
You need to write a subject line that gives the crucial information at the beginning—and starts with an action word. For example, in this case you could write, “Set up final meeting before holiday.” Other examples could be, “Advice for next steps required” and “Server down—save documents now.” Try to grab the recipient’s attention with just a few words.
3. Don’t sound like spam
So, what characterizes spam subject lines and might trigger Outlook to send an important mail to your junk? Choice of words and punctuation.
Certain words have the unmistakable flavor of spam and will send your email straight to junk. Examples include: cheap, promise, order now, guarantee and amazing, but there are hundreds more. Of course, you can’t always avoid them, but just bear the point in mind.
4. Be intriguing
Asking a question seldom fails to grab attention, so instead of writing, “First draft of my analysis ready in half an hour,” try: “Time to read first draft?” or, “Report—could you read first draft?”
5. The “from” line
The decision to open an email is not only based on curiosity but also on trust and recognition—this is crucial. Your subject line must be punchy and attention grabbing. The “from” line should therefore include a name your reader will recognize, proving your email comes from a trustworthy source.
6. Time it right
There are better and worse times to send out emails. The first and last days of the work week are not good, as people are either drowning in their inbox or trying to leave early for the weekend. Otherwise, there are no set rules; you just need to try it out and see what works for your type of communication.
The combination of recognition and good subject line copy will help your emails have a better chance of getting read. If you manage to instill in your recipients the magic combination of trust and curiosity, it will be your emails which get read—first.
NOTICE: Hard Drive Shortages to Affect System Prices Into 2012
by Axxys Technologies
We wanted to alert to an issue that has arisen due to the recent flooding in Thailand. As many of you know, a great deal of technology is built and shipped from Thailand, including hard drives used in a majority of PCs and notebooks and some servers made by HP, Dell, IBM, Sony and Toshiba.
Because of this, the market is experiencing a fluctuation in the cost of hard drives on an hourly basis. Technology distributors and manufacturers will not be receiving the regular high volume shipments of hard drives that we have been accustomed to.
Currently, the research analyst firm IDC is predicting that this disaster will affect hard drive pricing for at least another eight months.
That said, if you are adding PCs, laptops, workstations or servers to your office, please be aware that any quotes for products should be signed off on as quickly as possible. This will assist Axxys in being able to turn in product orders with distributors in an attempt to secure these systems at that the best possible price before pricing shifts occur.
While Axxys cannot control vendor and distributor pricing during a shortage such as this, please be aware that these price increases may need to be passed on to our customers. If a significant price change occurs between the times a quote is approved and the product is ordered, Axxys will inform the client of the adjusted costs.
We understand this may be an inconvenience for you, as much as it is for us, but we promise to keep a vigilant watch on the market and make the ordering process as easy as possible until the factories in Thailand are fully operational again.
We appreciate your understanding and look forward to working with you as always.
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