Would you like to focus on improving your business results instead of managing your phone system? Is your current phone system lacking some functionality that new phone system provide?  Would you like a new phone system without a large up front capital cost?  

1. Inform and remind team of purpose just before meeting

By informing attendees just before they are not only less likely to forget it but they will also come with any material or information needed to support the discussion topics.

2. Minimize participants

Invite only those who are truly needed. As the number of participants goes up so does the tendency to get bogged down. Often, those who are not needed will show up to obtain any information resulting from the meeting.

3. Establish and follow an agenda

As a rule, every meeting should have an agenda that has at least three points; the topics, the time allocated for each topic, and the “talker,” the one who is taking the lead for a given topic.

4. State the purpose and intended outcome

Meeting leaders should not assume that everyone automatically understands the meeting purpose and the desired outcomes. By stating them clearly at the beginning, it will get the meeting started quickly and keep it on track.

5. Attempt to involve each team member

Meetings can often get off balance when a few attendees do all the talking and dominate the discussions. The meeting leader should attempt to involve each member to ensure that group synergy occurs.

6. Use diagrams, pictures and graphics

The adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is no truer than in meetings. They can reduce meeting durations by as much 28%. Whenever practical, encourage participants to use diagrams, pictures and graphics instead of handing out pages full of text.

7. Park important but unrelated topics

There may be times when an important topic, which is not on the agenda, will come up. Rather than divert the focus of the meeting, it may be better to list (park) the topics for another meeting.

8. Record action items, actionees, and due dates

Many times meeting discussions are very interactive but if the results are not translated into action items may fail to be productive. Almost every meeting should conclude with a) a description of actions to be taken, b) who has accepted the action, and c) when the action item is to be completed.

9. Issue a brief written meeting summary

Taking a few minutes to document a meeting can go a long way. By summarizing a) who attended, b) main topics discussed, c) conclusions reached, and d) actions to be taken, information will be easily recorded and disseminated. Meeting summaries should be kept to one page containing “bullet-type” statements.

10. Periodically measure the effectiveness of the project meetings

When project meetings begin being held many meetings will often be the most ineffective due to new participants, circumstances, unfamiliarity with roles, etc. By periodically measuring a meeting’s effectiveness, they can often be brought to a higher level of efficiency.

Source: IT Business Edge

LightBound can help with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, cloud services, Storage as a service, and disaster recovery needs.

1.      Commit to leadership first and everything else second

Gartner and Korn/Ferry’s research reveals that the highest performing CIOs are effective because they embrace the idea that everything they need to accomplish will be achieved through people, by people, and with people. They don’t pay lip service to that idea. They live it. They lead.

2.      Lead differently than you think

A high-performing CIO is an incredibly complex and creative thinker. Yet when the time comes to lead, they don’t rely on their superior ‘smarts’ and analytical skills to come up with the best possible solution. They act collaboratively.

3.      Embrace your softer side

Effective CIOs manage the paradox of gaining more influence by letting go of control and allowing themselves to be vulnerable. In turn, that vulnerability enables them to create deep, personal connections — connections that provide the ability to inspire people both inside and outside their organization.

4.      Forge the right relationships to drive the right results

This skill may not be surprising. High performing CIOs spend a greater percentage of their time and energy managing relationships that exist sideways: with internal peers, external suppliers, and customers. They purposely invest in horizontal relationships which form the foundation to drive extraordinary results.

5.      Master communication

The best CIOs know that their colleagues - especially the people who work for them - are always watching. These executives understand they are always on stage. They take advantage of that situation by constantly reiterating core messages and values. Through their focus on clarity, consistency, authenticity, and passion, they make sure their message is not only understood but also felt. They want to communicate a feeling that compels people to take the right actions.

6.      Inspire others

In exchange for a regular paycheck, most people will give an adequate performance. But they will only give their best work if they believe they are involved in something greater than themselves. The best CIOs provide a compelling vision that connects people to how their enterprise wins in the marketplace and that their contributions are meaningful and valued.

7.      Build people, not systems

By developing people all around them, these CIOs increase their capability and capacity to deliver results. They also know that leaving behind the next generation of leaders is the best thing they can do for the organization — it will be their lasting legacy.

Source: IT Business Edge

LightBound can help you with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, cloud services, storage as a service, and disaster recovery needs.

Give Presentations

Tired of lugging your bulky laptop around just to give presentations? With the VGA Adapter and supporting software, business users can make use of the much more portable iPad for this task. A number of software supports the VGA Adapter, such as the free Presentation App, or Apple's own Keynote. Getting the presentation onto the iPad will probably require the requisite files to be synced in advance, though some of the presentation software supports alternative means of moving the files over. And unless you create the presentation on the iPad, you will probably want to first check that the transferred files display as expected.

As an added bonus, Apple has also promised a future update that will allow Keynote presentations to be streamed via AirPlay to an Apple TV.  While not terribly useful for conference rooms where projectors are still predominantly VGA-based (the new Apple TV is HDMI only), the capability offers compelling value in certain scenarios – such as being able to conduct a presentation using a large-screen plasma or LCD at a trade show using an iPad.

Use as a sales brochure

Rather than lug along a stack of heavy sales brochures or other printed documents, why not just load everything onto an iPad? All it takes is some preparation to convert the requisite promotional materials as image files for viewing under the default Photos application. File them appropriately in separate folders, and you now have a veritable compendium of your company's products or services in the palm of your hands.

Access desktop files

Ever left the office for a meeting and then had to turn back because you needed some documents on your office desktop? Or you simply didn't have the time to fire up your laptop to take one more look at a spreadsheet? Well, a number of solutions are available today that allow you to synchronize your work-related files with a cloud-hosted solution. From there, these files can then be accessed from your iPad using the appropriate free apps.  LightBound can help with virtual storage and even hosted desktops as a service.

Increase productivity

Different kinds of software are available to maintain productivity, including Microsoft OnNote to maintain a list of ideas for new blogs and articles, as well as a plain text application for general note taking and to maintain your to do list. Discovering you can read and edit the OneNote Notebooks using MobileNoter on the iPad, while Simplenote allows you to do the same for the notes on your desktop. Because everything is automatically synced to the cloud, you doesn’t even have to remember to perform a manual synchronization, or leave your laptop on.

Use as an external monitor

There are a number of apps that you can get for your iPad that will transform it into a wireless monitor to extend your display area. There are a few solutions available, and one called DisplayLink app, which in tandem with the company's free iPad client software, allows you to use the iPad as an 1024x768 monitor for your Windows 7 laptop with full Aero support.

Cacth up on reading

The iPad with its larger display is very well suited for catching up on some reading when traveling, or while waiting for the clients to arrive.  Aside from the bunch of dedicated ebook applications such as iBooks and Kindle for the iPad, there is also a large number of RSS news readers that can help you keep apace of developments in your industry. Finally, iPad clients of both Read It Later and Instrapaper are available for you to catch up on Web pages flagged for reading from your desktop.

Access company email

One very practical feature of the iPad is its ability to connect to not just POP servers, but also to an Exchange Server or IMAP-based mail server. Users are not only able to access and read their e-mails in the latter two scenarios, but are also able to perform basic folder management and filing tasks. Moreover, the iPad's large screen and ability to render HTML e-mails in high fidelity allows users to tackle their inbox at practically the same productivity level as from a full-fledged workstation. Finally, a recent iOS update has made it possible for an iPad to connect to more than one Exchange Server for users that require this functionality.

Take your office with you

With apps offering the ability to edit and review Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, workers can literally bring their office along with them. While these software do represent an additional cost, and might not have all the desired functionality, they do work well in a pinch. In addition, they also price cheaply in comparison to desktop software.

Organize your schedule

There are many types of calendaring software that allow you to manage your work and personal schedule for the iPad. Schedules planned on Microsoft Outlook can be synchronized wirelessly to your iPad, or when synchronizing via iTunes – many of the apps also support syncing to cloud-based calendaring services such as Google Calendar.

Manage Social Media

The 10-hour battery stamina of the iPad means that you can leverage it for your social media interactions without constantly worrying about it running out of juice. Businesses are now aware of the importance of engaging their customers on an individual level via sites such as Facebook and Twitter. And while enterprises have the budget to pay dedicated specialists to perform these tasks, the responsibility in SMBs usually falls on the shoulders of employees in the sales and technical departments. On this front, the iPad makes an excellent platform, with dedicated clients for just about every social network out there. Safari works well, too.

Source: IT Business Edge

LightBound can help you with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, cloud services, storage as a service, and disaster recovery needs.

Business Challenge

Many enterprises today have data living on the edge. Mission-critical data is created and stored on individual laptops and workstations, far outside the reach of traditional data center-centric approaches to backup and recovery.

This presents a challenge not only for data protection but also for long term data retention, and for eDiscovery requests. Current approaches can impose onerous demands on users and their systems, overwhelm network bandwidth and still do not deliver fast data recovery.

LightBound’s software offers a better approach to tracking and protecting data at the edge.

LightBound Solution

LightBound extends the power of our singular approach to data management to your laptops and workstations. LightBound Workstation Backup and Recovery software is a lightweight solution that provides cost-effective, efficient, reliable, and secure data protection for data at the edge.

LightBound Workstation Backup and Recovery solution delivers the following capabilities to simplify and protect data at the edge:

• Block-level incremental backups to ensure changed data is protected over thin networks.
• Remote, silent installation that ensures 100% coverage, without the need for local end-user or IT involvement.
• Enterprise-class features like data compression and encryption built in for data transfer efficiency and security over the network.
• Self-service file-level recovery capability for end-users.
• Integration with LightBound Storage Policy to create archive copies that can be used for long term retention and eDiscovery.

LightBound can help you with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, and disaster recovery needs.

How is your team positioned to collaborate, share information, and communicate with your customers at any time or place? While mobility is an indispensable business tool, the two most common challenges for small and mid-sized businesses are cost, and the communications complexity it creates.

These complexities fall in three categories:

1)  Device fragmentation, with employees using a range of mobile devices from smart phones and PDAs, to tablet PCs and laptops. 

2)Reachability, with employees having multiple office, mobile and home phone numbers, multiple voice and digital mailboxes, and diverse device dependent capabilities. This makes it very difficult to reach the right person with the relevant information to 'close a deal', whether this entails making a sale or solving a customer or operational problem.

3)Connectivity options, in addition to cellular: Wi-Fi hot spots in hotels, café's and airports, and possibly your own locations (e.g. warehouse, conference room); wired connections in hotels and in guest offices; and wired or wireless connections at home offices for teleworkers or those in need of periodic remote access.

Many of these challenges can be met by bringing together your business and mobile communications capabilities through Unified Communications.  The emergence of Apple's iPhone and iPad as well as Android-based devices has further expanded the value of mobility from voice, email and text, to include access to a broad range of applications, leveraging broadband wireless connectivity.  The expanded mobility options when coupled with Unified Communications have created an unprecedented opportunity to differentiate yourselves and enhance the service to your customers.

• Imagine your mobile users having a communication experience that is consistent whether they are in the office or away...on wireless or wired connections...using voice or data communications.

• Imagine the productivity gains if employees could use their laptops, desktop PCs, or smart phones as an extension of their office environment - anywhere and anytime.

• Imagine having unified mailboxes including missed telephone calls, email and fax. Imagine allowing your employees to recapture the estimated 30 minutes every day, currently wasted looking for information or trying to contact customers, colleagues and partners.

• Imagine no further than a cloud- based Unified Communications service.

From a user's perspective, Unified Communications provides a single control panel from which to access directory information, launch and or receive calls, participate in conference calls, initiate instant messaging sessions, track the availability of coworkers and manage his/her availability. The availability of coworkers is indicated by a 'presence' icon associated with the user, indicating whether he/she is talking on the phone, on the road or whatever. Unified Communications provides a consistent user experience and a set of collaborative capabilities that make mobile users much more effective, wherever they may be or whatever devices they are using.

Put simply, mobilizing your business through Unified Communications can transform your operations and your customer service. For example, your call center is no longer constrained to a single geographic site, with agents being able to work at multiple sites or even from home. You will now be able to track down and engage the specialist that can best meet your customer's needs, drawing on a geographically distributed pool of specialists.

There are a few important steps you can take immediately.

1)Invest your capital in the right mix of mobile devices for your people.

2)Don't waste your capital on legacy premise-based telephony systems, and instead roll out cloud - based Unified Communications. This avoids bolt-on Unified Communications solutions promoted by traditional vendors. It also has the benefits of easier deployment and scalability, substantially lower operational costs and no technology obsolescence. In fact, taking this approach can ensure you have 100% of the enterprise level features you need at a cost savings of 50% or more.

3)Leverage mobility to enhance customer service by extending call center operations to any employees who can help address a problem or opportunity.

You have a great opportunity with your next business phone purchase to drive customer service to new levels through the confluence of communications technologies as a platform for differentiation. Several studies have shown that customers are willing to pay a 10% premium or more for great customer service, so making such a change can quickly impact your bottom line. Effectively adding mobility and Unified Communications capabilities into your solution can accelerate that payback. You can access the full suite of Unified Communications capabilities from your laptop, anywhere you have internet access.

If you would like to more information about LightBound's VoIP PBX services, please Contact Us or go to www.lightbound.com  and click on the Voice tab.

Hybrid IP-PBX Capabilities:

▪ Unlimited extensions and voicemail

▪ Multiple auto-attendants (IVR)

▪ Unlimited call queues (ACD)

▪ Telecommuters – even for call queues

▪ Uploading of professional voice prompts

▪ Scheduling - time and date settings

▪ Music on hold wiht upsell messages

▪ Parking, paging, and call forwarding

▪ Integration with Outlook and CRM software

▪ Customisable caller ID

▪ Click-to-call from your website

Would you like to focus on improving your business results instead of managing your phone system? Is your current phone system lacking some functionality that new phone system provide?  Would you like a new phone system without a large up front capital cost?  

If you answered yes to any of these questions click here to learn about LightBound's VoIP Hosted PBX Solutions and how to get three months of free service. 

Data Backup and Recovery

LightBound’s backup service is an exclusive single-platform architecture which delivers what you really need: reliable data protection, multiple recovery options and sophisticated data retention capabilities, allowing maximum return on investment. The LightBound Backup and Recovery solution is designed for fast, easy deployment within your existing infrastructure.

Backup and recovery is usually about maximizing Returns on Investment. It is a fine balancing act between meeting

data retention needs and recovery objectives, while deriving maximum value from limited infrastructure and resource investments. In the last few years, exponential data growth, newer faster technologies and geographical expansion

have upset this balance and made it extremely difficult and cost prohibitive for IT to continue meeting ever aggressive data management demands.

Self-Managing Software

LightBound’s Backup and Recovery solution delivers what you really need: reliable data protection, multiple recovery

options and sophisticated data retention capabilities, allowing maximum return on investment. The LightBound Backup and Recovery solution is designed for fast, easy deployment within your existing infrastructure. Compatible with a wide variety of applications and platforms, LightBound will work with your team to install CommVault agents on machines needing backed up. Connectivity will then be established from those machines to LightBound’s Backup Storage Infrastructure. These deployments provide easy-to-use data protection and retention that supports corporate and federal policies. Because the software is self-managing, there is no need to waste time double-checking backup copies.

Configurable

Most other backup offerings start by managing devices. LightBound’s Backup and Recovery solution starts from the data and enables you to define what you need to do with the data, such as how many copies you need, for how long and when to retire it. Then the LightBound Backup and Recovery solution does the work for you—managing the devices transparently to ensure efficient, cost-effective use of storage while preserving simple, one step recovery. Granular, object-level recovery is included so we can find the data, select it and recover. You do not have to start by finding the tapes or scanning jobs, the LightBound Backup and Recovery solution tracks the data location to let you focus on the data.

Ensures Completion

Completing backup and recovery jobs is often the key challenge for backup administrators. Typically, much time can be

wasted verifying that jobs have run—and completed—and then diagnosing the network, server or storage problem that

disrupted operations. The LightBound Backup and Recovery solution provides advanced retry and failover resume capabilities that help jobs to complete even when failures occur.

Value

In today’s world, information may be the single most valuable asset a business can own. Your intellectual property, sensitive files, and other information must be kept safe. Therefore, you need a data backup partner you can trust – one that provides you with scalable, secure, and powerful resources. With LightBound, that is exactly what you get.

Give us a call and let LightBound help you with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, and disaster recovery needs.

Grand Opening of Tier IV Data Center-6/16/2011

Join Us for TechPoint Thursday & The Grand Opening of the LightBound's Data Center

Cocktails and hors d' oeuvres will be served.

Guest Speakers include:

• Jack Carr/LightBound President
• Scott Dorsey/CEO & Co-Founder of Exact Target
• Jeff Ready/Scale CEO   

Date: June 16, 2011

Time: 5:00 - 7:00 pm

VoIP offers some big benefits that must be considered when weighing the decision of VoIP versus traditional phone service. A major advantage of VoIP is that you will have access to additional features and services. With VoIP using Internet technology, you are be able to take advantage of sophisticated features such as unified messaging, which lets you use a single system to view any type of message, including voicemail, email, fax, or video mail.  Perhaps the most compelling argument in favor of VoIP for most people is the potential savings. Those who make lots of long-distance calls may spend hundreds of dollars a month for ordinary service, especially if international calls are a frequent part of the equation. VoIP will keep your long-distance bills to a minimum.

One must take into account the security risks when making the final decision and adding up the pros and cons. Being aware that the same IP risks are involved with VoIP as any IP device - such as with computers.  Though phone "viruses" have not emerged, there has been increased activity from Internet attacks which can result in gaining access to the VoIP server or gateway device which may enable others to make Long Distance or International calls on your account, costing you thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges.  Although it's not overly complex, there are several steps and some configuration involved to insure safe and secure VoIP usage.  Having a VoIP Service provider that understands these risks, can help insure a safe and "best practice "implementation.

As an added benefit to our voice customers, LightBound has begun offering an Account Code feature that can be implemented with your voice service for an additional layer of protection.  This feature is offered to our customers at no cost on any of our voice services as a part of our best practice policy.  Account codes can be enabled on the account and can be set as a requirement for: International long distance calls only or Domestic long distance calls only or both International and Domestic long distance calls.

Make no mistake VoIP is becoming the new "traditional" voice service. Understanding the risks should be the first step in a successful transition, and you'll find the rewards will be well worth it!

If you would like to more information about LightBound's VoIP services, please Contact Us or go to www.lightbound.com  and click on the Voice tab.

The LightBound Backup and archive solution meets these challenges head-on with a robust and common content archive interface approach. Its interface integrates with a range of data sources using HTTP/REST based environments to intelligently collect data, simplify management, and reduce the costs of data retention. Most requirements for enhanced security, encryption and compliance are exceeded.

• Unify Data Retention – Reduce complexity with a single platform featuring encryption, compression, deduplication, retention and data aging managed from a simplified interface for data retention.
• Integrated enterprise search, compliance and e-discovery options boost the value of the data retained within the LightBound archive solution.
• Consolidated Backup with Archive – Integrated single pass backup and archive provides content preserved views of data while taking advantage of storage management features.
• Reduce Management Costs – Administrators can easily deploy, setup, and manage large scale distributed data environments easier than ever while enabling LightBound software as the broker to the collection and retention of data.
• Support Heterogeneous Hardware Platforms – Traditional approaches are tied to specific hardware platforms that limit flexibility. LightBound software unlocks the use of all hardware throughout the lifecycle of the data archive.
• Enable Retention Lifecycle Management – Provide analytics and reporting throughout the creation, retention and deletion of all content.

Use Cases

Big data growth impacts all industries and departments, for every use case across the globe.  LightBound software's powerful architecture provides flexible options to address the diverse needs of some of the highest growth vertical markets, such as:

• Healthcare

   PACS

   Patient Records

• Digital Media

   Digital film

   Broadcasts

   Streaming video and audio

• Financial Institutions

   Financial transactions

   Applications

   Checks and deposit images

• Insurance Companies

   Insurance claims

   Photos

   Policies

Give us a call and let LightBound help you with your virtualization services, server hosting, off site data backup service, cloud services, and disaster recovery needs.