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A Web Conferencing, Remote Support, Remote Access, and Current Events Blog

Archive for the ‘Remote Access’ category

Technology is Seen in the Local Public Sector as a Way to Reduce Costs

February 3rd, 2012

Technology’s role in the public sector is becoming more important, shows the latest Socitm IT Trends report.

According to the report, while technology has always played an important in the public sector, its importance is now growing. The main reason is that it is starting to be seen, by council managers, as a way to reduce costs and expenses, since they are under pressure to bring operational costs down and to make the best with their tight budgets.

This, according to the report, has had another consequence: the influence of IT managers is growing as well.

“The influence of ICT continues to rise as more services are directly delivered through lower cost ICT-assisted channels. Technology is also helping reduce accommodation costs as the workforce becomes more mobile,” said Glyn Evans, Socitm President.

“However, with greater dependence on ICT, organizations must ensure processes and procedures are kept up to date, and greater attention is paid to accuracy, provenance and security of information,” he added.

The report shows that spending on contract services will increase and that organizations are making their employees more mobile, allowing them to work from home and to use their own devices at work.

The top five technologies to be adopted by organizations are mobile computing and telecommuting, virtualization, GIS, e-forms, and content management. With the top efficiency programs being self-service, shared services, remote working, document management, and virtualization.

The report also shows that the major shift has been in remote working. While three years ago the idea of allowing employees to use their home equipment to work was frowned upon, now over 90% of respondents have declared themselves happy to allow their workforce to use their home PCs to remote access their office computers.

Hosted web services are also becoming a major concern for IT managers, as well as network and data security. Appliances, such as RHUB 6-in-1 TurboMeeting (named as the Product of Year by Government Computer News recently) are often the best alternative to web hosted solutions, since appliances are cheaper and offer a higher level of security than the hosted ones.

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Posted in Remote Access, Remote Support

Tags: Remote Access

Virginia Offers Tax Breaks to Promote Remote Work

January 12th, 2012

Virginia officials have recently announced tax breaks for companies who set up remote work systems for their employees. The law will give companies $1,200 in tax credits per employee for expenses related to telecommuting, up to $50,000. Expenses concern needed equipment, such as modems, computers, internet connections and remote working systems such as remote desktop solutions or web collaboration tools.

These benefits will be offered to Virginia companies who implement telecommuting starting the 1^st January 2012. With this new law, state officials expect to reduce Virginia’s transportation problems by encouraging companies to keep their employees at home.

According to Fairfaz County Supervisor Jeff McKay, D-Lee, “it’s a lot more inexpensive to deal with our transportation problem than it is to just keep building roads.”

But it’s about more than just roads, it’s also about making employees happy and helping the environment.

“I have seen personally the benefits of telecommuting, and I think we should replicate that throughout Northern Virginia,” stated Del. Mark Keam, D-Vienna, who is backing the law.

“It’s had a tremendous benefit to us personally, because the fact that my wife doesn’t have to travel to Alexandria every day means she can be here when the kids get home from school,” he added.

These tax breaks make of Virginia one of the few states in the U.S. that actively supports and encourages remote working.

“Virginia’s been ahead of the game since Tim Kaine was governor, because he really was behind telework,” stated Chuck Wilsker, president of the Telework Coalition.

In the Washington area there are 600,000 that work remotely on occasion, with an extra 500,000 ready to start if their companies implement real-time collaboration systems and solutions which allow them to work from their homes.

With today’s technologies, remote work can be seamlessly implemented allowing employees to work from their homes as if they were in their offices. Web conferencing tools allow them to collaborate on the same project and remote access solutions allow them to access their office computers and networks from their home computers, granting them access to everything they might need to perform their work at the best of their capabilities.

Remote working solutions, such as RHUB 6-in-1 web conferencing and remote support appliance, give companies all they need to implement telecommuting and start taking advantage of the tax break their state offers them. These solutions have remote desktop and web meeting tools in the same package as well as integrated video conferencing and audio conferencing services which make communication much easier and clearer. RHUB is named a Best Product of 2011 by Government Computer News (GCN) because of its “excellent price, ease of setup and the fact that it fills a specific need.”

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Posted in Remote Access, Remote Support

Tags: Remote Access Remote Support

Does Too Much Connectivity Ruin Your Holidays?

January 4th, 2012

The holiday season has come and gone and many workers were expecting to have a break from their work during the festive season, but could they really get away?

According to a survey from Regus, 64% of US workers would be working during the last week of the year with a little more than half of them (56%) going to the office to do so, which means that some of them would be working remotely during the holidays.

Still, the same survey shows that 39% of the respondents believe that the work they will be doing during the holidays won’t be productive, while 58% believe that they will be using their time to wrap up unfinished tasks.

But do companies really benefit from having workers working when they should be spending some time with families?

As Guillermo Rotman, CEO Americas, Regus, simply put it: “Are workers choosing to power through the break really producing the best value for their efforts? Many managers believe that time off with the family can give employees a refreshed outlook and a chance to decompress before returning to work.”

But what about those that have chosen to stay at home with their families and to disconnect completely from their work? Could they really get away?

With Americans using more and more computer devices every year (a recent report stated that 63% were using at least two devices and that 15% were using four or more different devices in their daily and working lives) it might be difficult to stay away from work. Even if they don’t go to their offices their offices can come to them.

In fact, a report shows that 83% of Americans find it is necessary to remotely access their working space while they are away from the office and 74% have stated that doing so is important while on vacation.

With the proliferation of many remote access solutions, like RHUB TurboMeeting appliance, it is easier than ever to stay at home and work remotely. While remote access solutions have brought so many benefits to employees and workers around the world, the fact is that establishing boundaries between work and home has become more difficult. It remains one of the biggest challenges to all the remote workers in the world. Happy New Year!

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Posted in Remote Access

Tags: Remote Support

Appliance-based Computing: The Road to the Future

October 14th, 2011

We live in the time of the cloud. The word “cloud” seem to be everywhere and with it the promise of the cloud based products which often claim to be the future of software and hardware alike. On the other hand we also live in a time where most companies are fighting against insolvency, struggling for their cash flow and attempting to contain their costs to the best of their abilities while still looking for ways to grow and increase productivity.

Many of these companies saw in the “cloud” the holy land of low cost software and virtualized hardware and took the opportunity to renew their operations. But many, when taking a closer at their costs, have found out that cloud computing products and software-as-a-service solutions (SaaS) have higher costs than their appliance counterparts as well as increased security risks.

At a first glance SaaS solutions may seem more cost effective, but monthly fees soon turn into a never ending investment in a platform that is never really owned by the company, as opposed to an appliance solution, which requires a payment for a piece of technology that once paid is owned by its purchaser.

Appliance based solutions are also much easier to deploy than SaaS solutions because they circumvent problems like system requirements and the purchasing of additional hardware for the software to work. Appliance solutions are ready to be deployed and don’t require optimized hardware. They also don’t require professional services to install, integrate and maintain the software.

Appliance based solutions are also more secure to use that their SaaS counterparts. In the case of remote work or remote conferencing, SaaS solutions require the user to connect to a third party server, usually belonging to the software vendor. This third party server is completely out of the control of the solution users and one can never be sure who might be tapping into it or what kind protection it has against hacking intrusion.

With sensitive information on the line, an appliance solution offers its users much more control over potential security threats since one is in control of the servers used to connect the devices and through which the information passes.

Sometimes the best solutions for the future are those of the past. SaaS and cloud based solutions may offer an alternative but in the end the market belongs to the appliance solutions because of one simple detail: higher quality at lower costs.

RHUB’s 6-in-1 Turbomeeting solution is such an example. It offers remote conferencing and remote access in one single appliance, at low costs without requiring any maintenance or special deployment.

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Posted in Remote Access, Remote Support, Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing

Tags: Appliance

The U.S. IT market is Growing and so are the Buyers Expectations

July 5th, 2011

This year, IT companies are expecting to make most of their revenue from the U.S. market, a shift from previous years where most revenues came from the Chinese and Indian markets. The U.S. will also have the highest percentage of employment growth this year, says a survey by the audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG.

Buyers, according to a Computer Economics survey of 200 IT executives, are also planning to spend this year more than in the last year. The survey found out that that 60% of the respondents have the intention of increasing their operational budgets against 22% that expects to decrease them, 18% expecting to maintain their budgets.

The optimism in a recovery economy is even clearer when these numbers are compared with those of the year before in which 44% stated that they were expecting to reduce their operational budgets.

What can companies and buyers expect

In a scenario of economic recovery, companies can expect a higher level of competition. Buyers will need to find the better deals (those that offer a better price/quality ratio) and companies will have to produce better products at lower prices if they want to survive.

Buyers looking for the best deals and higher quality web conferencing and remote support appliances can expect to find them at RHUB. Not only RHUB offers the most secure products available in the market but it also offers the best deal, giving your four features, namely web conferencing, webinar, remote support and remote access, all in one box.

Most products available in the market are packaged software or hosted solutions, RHUB offers a buyers a third alternative: appliance based solution. RHUB’s appliances provide as a complete hardware and software bundled and pre-configured package that is easy to install, to use and that requires no maintenance. RHUB’s floating licensing only controls the concurrent number of meetings and participants, but there is no limit to the number of users who can host meetings. Moreover, RHUB appliances come with very easy integration with your LDAP to save your time from inputing every employee profile to the appliance.

RHUB’s appliances aren’t just great products. They are market leaders regarding quality and costs and have been recognized as one of the major players in the market.