Network Solutions Unlimited Blog

As we enter the third quarter of the year, now is as good a time as ever to reevaluate how you are spending your IT budget. According to Gartner, your IT spending might actually be increasing, assuming it’s in line with what your organization wants and needs. Are you being intentional with your IT spending? Where are you investing it? Are you spending it on avenues for continued growth? Gartner’s study might yield some interesting ideas which you can call upon to inform your own spending practices.

With all the doom and gloom surrounding cybersecurity, it’s easy to get lost in the negative aspect of technology advancement. That being said, however, we do really love technology, and advancements in smartphone technology, in particular, have made amazing strides and led to great achievements in business and elsewhere. We just wanted to take today to appreciate smartphones and how incredible they are.

Business technology is far from the easiest thing to manage, and it’s mostly because managing technology is not the sole focus of companies (unless you’re us, of course). If you can’t overcome your IT challenges, your business could be held back needlessly. Let’s go over some of the common issues your organization might face with regards to technology management and maintenance. 

Your business’ operations and performance will vary depending on how you choose to invest your IT resources and budget. If you see marked improvements over the years, then you are doing something right. If things remain the same, however, perhaps you could benefit from a different approach to your technology investments. Let’s examine the subtle art of IT investment and how you should approach it.

Communications are important for small businesses, but how much do you pay attention to your telephone system? While it might have been useful in the past, chances are your team members and clients are communicating with you in different ways, rendering your telephone system, more or less, obsolete—at least the traditional telephone systems, anyway.

Compared to other options like Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, traditional telephone solutions are simply outdated in nature and scope. Let’s go over what you need to know about VoIP.

The cloud as a computing strategy is helping millions of businesses be the best version of themselves. The main reason for this is the inherent scalability that is made available through cloud solutions. Let’s take a look at how scalability benefits a business and how it works.

Some companies have been in business for so long that they are still relying on legacy applications in their operational system. This could be for many reasons, but one of the biggest is that there is simply not a better option—at least, not in their eyes. Enter virtual machines, the solution that makes these kinds of businesses possible without severely compromising on network security.

Cloud technology has shifted the way that many businesses operate in their day-to-day, offering advantages that were once a business owner’s pipe dream. Of course, there are now different ways that businesses can embrace these advantages. Let’s compare your options to determine which one better matches up to your needs.

When looking forward, it’s often useful to consider developing technologies to gauge what you might have access to in the future. Admittedly, a lot of these technologies can sound like a long shot at best (and ludicrous at their worst). However, some of these could very well transition into the business environment. Let’s consider a few out-there concepts that we might see gaining traction at some point in the future.

One of the biggest challenges facing small businesses is IT. More often than not, SMBs lack the strong IT leadership and plethora of resources that enable larger organizations to effectively manage their technology. While there are countless mistakes that SMBs can make regarding technology management and implementation, we’ve selected four that stand head and shoulders above the rest. These are the most costly mistakes your organization can make regarding its technology management.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to respond quickly and radically change operations, but despite the circumstances, productivity is still at the center of most business professionals’ minds. If we can learn more about how businesses have managed to thrive even in the face of the pandemic, we can learn more about how to succeed when things get back to “normal,” whatever that looks like, particularly in regards to technology and the role it has played over the past year and a half.

Technology has enabled some of the greatest changes in the business world, so it makes sense that your company should try to implement it as needed. Unfortunately, it can be a bit confusing, especially if you have not thought about it in recent years. Thankfully, there are three pillars that can hold up a digital transformation strategy and enable change for your business. 

As a business owner in a sector that is not necessarily dedicated to technology, chances are that you do not need to know everything there is to know about computer hardware. That being said, it helps to have a passable knowledge of the various hardware terms you might use on a daily basis. This will especially make it easier for you to talk to your technician or your service provider—whoever handles your technology.

Modern businesses need to take advantage of every opportunity they can get in today’s crowded marketplace, almost regardless of the industry they work in. One great way to gain an advantage is to put technology in place that can significantly enhance how your business works, inside and out.

With the release of Windows 11 on the horizon, it is important that businesses looking to implement it start to consider not only their hardware, but their strategy to upgrade away from their current operating system. But that’s a topic for another day—we’re focused today on the folks who don’t even have Windows 10 yet and are still stuck in the days of Windows 8.1, an OS expiring in 2023. Don’t get caught unawares without a plan to upgrade.

With remote work standing front and center for the past couple of years, it’s no wonder that a conversation has begun about the benefits and shortcomings of it. It is now clear that remote work is something that is not going away anytime soon. Let’s take a look at how businesses might retain remote operations without making too many sacrifices in the process.

While it might be terrifying to imagine a scenario in which your business were to suffer a devastating event that threatened its future, you as a responsible business owner must consider any and all possibilities. If you don’t, all of the hard work and investment you have made in your company could be for naught. Technology is one aspect of your company that must be examined with intense scrutiny and prepared for with preventative measures to keep your future secure.

Cryptoassets have been on the rise, and with it has come the term “NFT.” But what is an NFT, and why does it matter what it is for a small business like yourself? Let’s examine this concept in a bit greater detail through the use of a hypothetical situation.

Most businesses use the Internet to conduct many of their day-to-day operations, and the most-used ways that people interact with the Internet is through web browsers. That said, there are some ways that you can make sure you are using the Internet in the most secure way possible. Here are some extra steps you can take to work toward these protections.

Many people use smart speakers throughout their day-to-day lives, whether it’s as a personal assistant or to control their home entertainment system. However, one of the topics up for discussion is how secure these devices actually are and whether or not we should be concerned about them. Just how secure are your smart speakers and what can you do about their security?