First, it will help to establish how bandwidth works. How Bandwidth is Different Than Speed Picture an escalator, going up, with a large group of people seeking to get to the second floor. As the escalator moves at a constant speed, each person ultimately reaches the top, one at a time. Now, imagine that instead of one escalator, there’s a row of them, all going up. While these escalators aren’t moving any faster, the entire group of people will get to the second floor more efficiently. This is effectively how greater bandwidth allows faster data transfer speeds without the data technically moving any faster. A larger bandwidth just means that more data can be moved at once. However, this also means that you could potentially reach a point of diminishing returns if you invest in excessive bandwidth – remember, the data isn’t moving any faster with greater bandwidth, it’s just that more of it can move at once. Therefore, if you invest in more bandwidth than your data requires, you are spending money unnecessarily – something that businesses are often prone to do. Naturally, this is something that you should avoid. How Bandwidth Can Influence Your Business Your available bandwidth can have an impact on your business, simply by limiting what you can effectively accomplish at a given time based on what is going on at any given moment. While many of the tasks that go on during the normal course of business will use a minimal amount of bandwidth, some will take up much more – including VoIP calls, webinars, backups, and other processes. However, you can avoid many complications that can result from insufficient bandwidth by taking some precautions – for instance, intentionally throttling some types of content to help conserve some bandwidth, or scheduling bandwidth-intensive tasks (like uploading a backup) to after hours, when there would otherwise be minimal use of the network. It also helps to have an idea of your bandwidth requirements. How Your Network Can Be Evaluated There are numerous ways to estimate how much bandwidth you need. An Internet speed test can give you an estimate of where your business currently stands, when compared to your approximate network traffic. Speedtest.net is a good resource to turn to for this assessment. This isn’t the only factor that should be taken into account as you look into adopting a VoIP solution, however. There are others that you need to consider as well, such as: Mean Opinion Score (MOS)As an opinion-based metric, the MOS was once completely sourced from human feedback. As it applies to VoIP, it is sourced from algorithmic analysis of three different metrics (listening quality, conversational quality, and transmission quality) to give a score between 0 (or incoherent) and 5 (excellent quality). In business, the higher the quality of your calls, the better. Quality of Service (QoS)Similarly to the MOS, your VoIP solution’s QoS is a major factor in how successful your implementation of VoIP can be considered, and is heavily influenced by your available bandwidth. JitterJitter is the term used to describe any delays in the delivery of data packets over a network, creating choppy or lagging sound transmission. These packets are usually delivered at a fairly consistent rate, which is what you want. Latency (or Ping Rate)This is the delay that […]
Improved Customer Service Regardless of whether you operate in the B2C or B2B space, you need to be sure that your clients/customers are satisfied with the products, services, and experience you provide them. The IoT can help improve these. Whether you follow the lead of some grocery stores, and outfit shopping carts with displays that offer recipe suggestions based on the shopper’s proximity to certain ingredients, or you work in distribution, leveraging smart trackers to enable your customers to check the progress of their purchases – there is effectively no limit to the ways that the IoT can be leveraged to benefit your target, and the more satisfied they are, the more likely they are to return to your services. Increased Productivity A business that, for whatever reason, can’t operate productively is one that isn’t going to be around for very long. There are a few ways that the IoT can help to boost the inherent productivity of a business. For instance, by using the IoT to monitor their supply levels throughout a production run, manufacturers can use the IoT to make educated predictions based on historical data – and that’s just one, very specific example. There are many other ways to boost productivity with the IoT’s support. Critical tasks and meetings can be scheduled around the times that IoT solutions record high levels of productivity, and rote tasks can be automated through IoT devices so employee time can be spent more wisely. A Safer Work Environment In higher-risk workplaces, the IoT can be used to help better ensure the safety of the employees you have on the job. Consider those who work in construction – wearables could be used to keep track of them on the worksite. Offices can be made more secure with video surveillance and connected smart locks to help control access. However, it is important to acknowledge that the IoT is still pretty unstandardized when it comes to its own security. This is why you will want to work with a provider like SRS Networks to ensure you aren’t trading your organizational security for (most likely short-lived) productivity. Streamlined Costs Let’s touch back on productivity once again, and discuss how some of the same capabilities can help decrease your overall operational costs. We mentioned how there are some tasks that can be automated through the IoT, but what we haven’t mentioned yet is how doing so can help save you some capital to invest elsewhere. Think about it: by automating tasks, you are eliminating the need for one of your employees to take the time and complete those same tasks. Therefore, not only are these tasks completed more efficiently, but your employees can take the time they would have spent on them to accomplish other things – effectively doubling your output. Greater Data Insights Finally, the Internet of Things can be a great tool to help you collect crucial business metrics and other data samples to leverage toward improving your operations. Whether you use the historical data you have collected through the IoT to build a predictive model, build customer profiles, or solve your other challenges, the IoT is a hugely beneficial resource to harness. While there are still some security concerns to the IoT, SRS Networks can help you select and secure solutions that will […]
There are only a few major smartphone manufacturers as the technology needed to make (and distribute) them takes a lot of capital. These major manufacturers are mostly from Asia, but have parts made in different locations all over the world. The modern smartphone features near-ubiquitous connectivity, desktop-like processing power, and enough storage to facilitate the millions of applications that are constantly being developed for the two main OSs. The best ones feature mics and speakers that are protected from water and sand, multiple cameras that are capable of 4K video, and batteries that only slowly degrade and can be active for half-a-day on a single charge. What’s worse, these manufacturers are doing it at a time when the devices they’ve created last a few sales cycles and result in their margins noticeably shrinking. This has created less competition at the top of the market, with more people using devices manufactured by a limited amount of companies. Smartphone Markets A brief look at the global smartphone market will show you that there are now only six manufacturers with a market share of eight percent or more. They are Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. Most of these manufacturers service emerging or Asian markets, while Apple and Samsung are the only truly global brands. In the United States, Apple is the largest distributor of smartphones with a 41 percent market share, with only Korean manufacturers Samsung (21 percent) and LG (13 percent) holding more than 10 percent of the market. Things are basically the same in much of the English-speaking world. In the UK and Australia, Apple comes in with 49 percent and 55 percent of the market share, respectively. Samsung is a distant second with 29 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In mainland Europe, however, Samsung’s market share is nearly twice Apple’s. Overall there are over 1.5 billion smartphones shipped every year for a market that is now at nearly three billion people. 82 percent of people in the UK and 77 percent of Americans own one. Predictably, China is actually the largest smartphone market with nearly 800 million smartphone owners. Conversely, there are some places where smartphone adoption hasn’t reached high percentages. Despite having nearly 1.4 billion people, the smartphone ownership rate in India is only around 28 percent. Other potential growth markets include Indonesia (27 percent), Pakistan (14 percent), and several coastal African nations (6-to-13 percent). Innovation of the Modern Smartphone Steve Jobs is roundly credited as the “inventor” of the smartphone. Whether this is true or not is up for debate, but people in-the-know about such things say that companies were working on something like this for a decade leading up to the iPhone’s 2007 launch date. Apple’s iPhone was the first smartphone to market, but even though it was only a dozen years ago now, the devices have changed precipitously. Innovation of technology (and of the devices) has been a major driving force in pushing the use of devices. As we stated earlier billions of people actively use (and periodically purchase) smartphones and they are always looking for new ways to use their devices. So while the fundamental technologies found inside these devices have been pretty static, any new tools, and improved specifications show up on all manufacturer flagships eventually. The best phones are no longer […]
Better Technology Makes You More Relevant – and Thereby, Competitive How would you feel if you walked into a financial planner’s office for assistance with your business’ budget and saw all of the employees working diligently at their desks, each making calculations with an abacus? Or if you were in the hospital for a procedure, and your anesthetist pulled out a mallet to prepare you for surgery? Presumably, you’d leave. While these are extreme examples, the same concept goes for any business. Technology is developed to improve workplace operations, making operations more efficient, more reliable, or more effective – if not some combination of the three. Failing to keep up with these improvements, as your competition does, will only put your business further behind the curve – making it harder to attract the clients and customers you need to maintain your revenue streams. It also doesn’t hurt that the majority of people you are trying to attract to your business are looking for a provider that can outperform the competition – something that you cannot do if they are utilizing the latest and greatest solutions when you aren’t. Today, your hope is that the opposite situation is the case – your solutions being better than theirs. Technology Can Boost Efficiency For the sake of your business’ budget, its aforementioned relevance, the overall satisfaction level of your clientele, and a variety of other key factors… your business needs to operate efficiently. The longer your operations take, the more expensive they will prove to be for your business, and the less satisfied your clientele will become – again, especially if they are comparing you to an alternative provider. There are many ways that IT solutions can prove to be a benefit in this way. Automation can reduce the amount of time your employees spend trudging through rote tasks, freeing up quite a bit of time in any department. As a result, these tasks can be completed with machine accuracy, while your employees can simultaneously be productive towards their goals and objectives. There’s Improved Security Potential in Technology You may have picked up on how a lot of cybersecurity threats now rely on the inherent vulnerability of human beings, with phishing attacks and ransomware being such popular means of attack. Why is this the case? Well, technology has improved to the point where it is often easier to take advantage of the user than it is to breach the system – assuming that the system in question has the proper safeguards implemented. While it obviously can’t be said that these safeguards will always keep your business’ data safe, there is a definite increase in the frequency of cyberattacks that target user vulnerabilities, rather than software ones. In fact, according to a survey that the Small Business Trends website maintains, phishing and social engineering were experienced by 43 percent of their respondents. According to some sources, a full 76 percent of businesses reported being the victims of a phishing attack in 2018. Why is this? Well, to be frank, many cybercriminals are reconsidering how their attacks should take shape as security solutions have improved. If the weakest point in a business’ security is the user, it makes more sense to target the user. While this means that any business needs to seriously consider training […]
Let’s Define AR Augmented reality is the real-time process of enhancing reality with information using cameras and displays. Some places where AR is well-travelled include sports broadcasts, Snapchat filters, and the world famous Pokemon Go. Some businesses have even begun creating their own AR app that’s designed to increase the immersion of the consumer with their products. AR’s Drawbacks and Opportunities A big hurdle to AR innovation has always been the reliance on devices that have small displays. The lack of technology to use AR-fueled apps leads to a lack of immersion; and, since AR is all about building immersion, it becomes a non-starter when it can’t be delivered. That’s not to say that AR isn’t useful and on the rise. Let’s take a look at some of the variables on the horizon that are sure to push AR forward fast: Connections are Faster AR depends on delivering information to users right now. With 4G LTE, developers had enough bandwidth to make it work, but with the advent of 5G, AR will now have more bandwidth to deliver information. Hardware is Improving Hardware has improved greatly and continues to do so, making it more and more capable of handling AR’s assorted demands. Higher processing power and the improvement of sensor technology will go a long way toward fueling AR innovation. Wider Adoption and Application Many organizations are coming up with various new ways to leverage AR to their advantage. Marketing agencies have used AR as a means of boosting engagement with their efforts and initiatives. It has proven useful in training applications in various industries, especially training and development – delivering information to students and workers at the time it is needed. Reduced Costs Of course, as AR becomes more common, it also becomes more affordable for a business to deploy. As more applications and devices become able to support it, its costs should only continue to trend down. It has become apparent that AR will play a big role in the future of many industries – so, what is your impression of all of this? Is AR just a gimmick, or do you see truly legitimate uses for it in the business environment? Discuss it in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe!
Communication & Collaboration Solutions This is a no-brainer, simply because you probably need these solutions regardless. If you are going to promote a remote work policy, you need to have solutions in place that will enable teamwork and productivity. Maintaining open lines of communication throughout your organization is critical, which is why using solutions designed for your business’ specific problems is the best path to take. Today there are tools like cloud-based productivity suites and Voice over Internet Protocol that can give your remote staff the tools they need to thrive. The better the tools you provide to promote collaboration, the better your product or service will ultimately be. Project Management Tools Finishing projects on time and on budget can be a pain if it isn’t well coordinated. No place is this more evident than with project managers. They need access to tools that will allow them to oversee all individual contributions and ensure they are working toward a successful end. Today, there are project management tools that integrate dozens of different types of software, instant messaging, and other collaborative tools in one cloud-based platform. By using reliable project management software, you can connect people from all over the world and create something great. Cybersecurity Keeping files safe is becoming harder and harder and costing businesses more than ever before. To ensure that remote workers are doing what they can to protect your business’ resources, they need to adhere to the cybersecurity strategy you’ve put in place. The use of multi-authentication procedures, encryption, and more can go a long way toward keeping business data safe as it comes in from multiple locations. Time-Tracking Software How else are you going to manage to make determinations on whether or not your initiatives are profitable without clear cost management? The only way to do that is to track your employees time. Time tracking also gives you the opportunity to shift priorities on the fly so that the parts of a project, or service tasks get completed by their deadlines. Managing remote workers doesn’t have to be a full-time gig. Get the technology needed to turn your remote employees into profit centers for your business. To learn more call SRS Networks today at (831) 758-3636.
How Has Technology Been Beneficially Introduced into Education? It may be easier to explore how it hasn’t been, to be honest. From official educational tools to the device that students tend to have in their pockets, technology is seemingly everywhere. Chalkboards have been phased out by digital smart displays, and laptops are more and more frequently seen as an essential learning device, as compared to the luxury that they were once considered. Some educators have leveraged this technology to connect with other classrooms across the world, exposing their students to different cultures. Cooperation and collaboration have become more common, as have breakthroughs being facilitated through the use of technology as an educational tool. The EdSurge on Air Podcast provided a few accounts from educators that contained anecdotal evidence of technology’s value in the learning process. One educator, Mimi Kasner, shared a story about how she had to work with a young, first grade student who was experiencing significant difficulties in learning how to read and write. It wasn’t until the little girl was introduced to a website that teaches the alphabet that something clicked, and the girl was overjoyed. More recently, Kasner was principal of a school where students were working on self-managed projects when they were interrupted by a fire drill. Teachers approached Kasner, reporting that students wanted the time that the fire drill took from their projects back to work on them. Sam Jordan, the education technology coordinator for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, also expressed how technology has impacted students. Using Skype, students in Alaska and students in Sri Lanka were able to communicate and learn from one another – despite nothing being done about the language barrier between the two groups. Technology has also made learning more interactive, boosting participation among students by “gamifying” the learning process. What sounds more engaging to you: listening to a teacher reciting facts from a textbook published in the mid-1970s, or turning the lesson into a role-playing scenario or other game, supported by the technology available? With technology, a student will always have access to the most up-to-date knowledge available, inherently improving the quality of their education. It isn’t just students who can benefit, either. Teachers can leverage technology in their classrooms to make their lives easier as well. For instance, an AI called Jill Watson was developed that could field the questions that students would ask regarding their class processes, answering what “she” could, and passing along those that she couldn’t, to a human teacher. Imagine how much a teacher could accomplish in the future if their students had a resource to turn to with their questions. From improved learning tools, to more accessible teaching methods, technology shows great promise in advancing the educator’s goals. However, there are some negative considerations to take into account. How Technology Can Hurt Education Like we said, we’re getting into the warts as well. Some studies suggest that technology can be just as much of a detriment to education as it can be a supplement. For instance, there’s the obvious issue – the risk of distraction. A survey that questioned 500 community members of the University of Waterloo found that very nearly half of them found their technology to be distracting, and 68 percent of teachers found the use of […]
What is a VPN? So, you have your business’ network, and you have whatever device you plan to work remotely on. We’ll assume it’s a laptop. This laptop is going to have to connect to the business’ network in order to be productive. Let’s shift gears to an extended metaphor. Just as your data is crucial to your business, a country’s political representatives are key to the nation’s operations. Unfortunately, countries aren’t immune to criminal behavior, either. So whenever there’s a credible threat, there are serious security measures taken to protect the political representative. Not only is this representative carried in protected methods of transportation, they will even be disguised to obscure their identity – so if a threat actor sees the representative, the actor won’t know what to do with them. This is an overly dramatized representation of how a VPN functions. Instead of a politician being safely ferried from one place to another, your data is securely transmitted in a virtual tunnel. With one entrance and one exit, this tunnel keeps your data from being intercepted – and even if it were somehow to be breached, the data is still encrypted, making it indecipherable. This capability to access data, regardless of how sensitive it is, without leaving it vulnerable is a vastly important one today – especially given how crucial productivity is to a business. A VPN fundamentally allows this productivity to take place outside of the office, wherever that happens to be. Ready to Implement a VPN Solution? SRS Networks can help your business adopt a VPN worthy of the enterprise, so you and your employees can work while out and about, without the fear of attack. To learn more, give us a call at (831) 758-3636.
Cell Phone Batteries Cellular phones have been on the market for much of the past 35 years or so. In the 1980s and early 1990s, cell phones were large devices that were powered largely by nickel-cadmium (NiCD) batteries. These batteries, like the devices they powered were bulky and heavy, and didn’t really last very long. They also degraded quickly, especially if they were charged while there still was a charge in the battery. Soon, as the demand for cell phones started to increase, the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries began to be manufactured. This material was lighter and took less time to recharge; and, while they still suffered from what would be considered severe degradation today, it wasn’t as bad as the NiCD degradation. As this technology was developed in the late 1990s, the market for cell phones began to expand rapidly. Smartphone Batteries For years, devices were made with NiMH batteries that could be swapped as they degrade, but as the smartphone was developed the devices began to need a stronger power source to run devices that were effectively computers in your pocket. The Lithium-ion battery was developed. Unlike nickel-based batteries, lithium-ion batteries didn’t degrade, they lasted longer and were much easier and faster to charge. The one drawback was their price, which can be seen in the price jump in devices used nowadays. Recently, innovations have helped develop what is known as the lithium-poly ion (Li-Poly) battery. This type of battery has 40 percent more power than the NiMH batteries, but costs are still too high for manufacturers to commit to a Li-Poly battery to anything but flagship devices. Future Batteries With so much changing about the way people use technology, there needs to be a concerted effort to enhance battery technology. Today, they have begun to replace the graphite found in today’s lithium-ion batteries with silicon. This improves the performance of these batteries by up to three times, but that is hardly the most interesting advancement. Some new technologies you are likely to see at some point in the next several years include: Use of rectenna – researchers are trying to capture energy from Wi-Fi or other electromagnetic waves. Using a rectenna–which is an extra-thin and flexible radio wave harvesting antenna–to harvest AC power through a Wi-Fi signal found in the air and convert it to DC to charge the battery, or power devices directly. You will recharge your device – What if you could be the source of power to recharge your devices? With the use of a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), you can harvest electric current generated by a host (a human) to power devices or recharge batteries. Solid state lithium-ion batteries – Using solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte in a battery isn’t really that new. You can find them in some wearables, pacemakers, and RFID sensors, but because of the massive cost they present, they haven’t made their way into smartphones yet. Peptide batteries – There has been a push to use biological semiconductors to charge devices. In fact one start-up, StoreDot, out of Israel, has a device that can charge a smartphone in 60 seconds. The same technology is being developed to make batteries. Sodium-ion batteries – What if we could develop a battery using one of the most abundant metals in the world […]
Communications Considering that these devices are still technically telephones, it should be no wonder that communication is big in a smartphone – and that’s before we even consider their capacity to surf the Internet and send messages. These multipurpose communication tools can keep your team on the same page, collaborating efficiently and effectively. Mobile Applications Many mobile applications can be leveraged by your employees to continue their productivity, whether or not they are in your place of business. This mobility helps deliver value to your enterprise, as web-based resources accessed through a desktop’s browser were once the only real option for a worker to leverage. Mobile apps augment the opportunity for an employee to accomplish their goals. Utilizing mobile apps has become such a common business practice that many applications used by organizations have had mobile versions developed. As a result, your employees can more successfully collaborate with each other, as well as deliver the products and services you offer more efficiently. Therefore, operations and support are improved. Presumed Detriments Despite these benefits, many employers aren’t completely sold on encouraging smartphone use in the workplace. This makes some sense, as they could presumably become a bigger distraction than they are a benefit, hurting the business. Similar things are often said about social media. Many businesses have gone so far as to forbid the use of smartphones during work hours, their reasoning being that the more time spent on smartphones is equal to less time spent on their business. This reasoning has a few holes in it. The biggest one being the unsupported assumption that time equals productivity, which isn’t necessarily the case. Furthermore, this doesn’t account for the time that a smartphone could be used to the benefit of the business outside of normal working hours. BYOD and Mobile Device Management Of course, with businesses allowing smartphones to be leveraged, they need a way to make sure these devices are properly managed. Some businesses can provide their employees with company smartphones, but many just can’t afford to do that. This doesn’t leave these companies out of luck, however… the combination of mobile device management software and a policy known as a Bring Your Own Device (or BYOD) policy allows these businesses to oversee each device that connects to their network. Depending on the policy, this can cover only the applications and data that the company requires/controls, while others extend to the entire device. These platforms enable administrators to retain control over the wireless network, enforcing permissions and keeping the company’s data secure. Think of it as a content filtering system that works on your employees’ devices, whitelisting and blacklisting applications that serve company purposes or serve as distractions, respectively. SRS Networks can help you leverage the capabilities of a mobile device in your business. For assistance in implementing mobile device management, reach out to us at (831) 758-3636.