Archive for category: News

Video Conferencing for the Small and Medium size companies.

One of the best ways for businesses and employees to stay connected with each other is through the use of innovative technology. This is also great news since everyone also wants to save money and do something that can help benefit the environment. That is exactly the idea behind using remote video conferencing. This can end up not only helping business people to become more productive, but will also end up saving time and potentially a lot of money. Here are some of the ways remote conferencing can help.

1. Video Means Employee Connections:
   Many, over 15% of office based employees work out of their homes multiple days per week. Because of this, video conferencing is highly valuable for employees who work from home a day or two. Video conferencing also provides immediate connection – It enables workers to get in touch within seconds. Rather than waiting for a quarterly meeting to come around, you can add insight into daily operations whenever you need immediate feedback. See last week’s blog post on what systems are free!
2. Video and Facial Expressions:
   Live, online video meetings encourage employee participation through face-to-face expressions, unlike the traditional conference call in which everyone just talks into an office phone. Facial expressions and body language can be helpful if seen. They can encourage engagement, leading to more focus and participation in the business at hand. This also allows for strategy sessions and key meetings to be recorded and used as training for future hires.
3. Video Means Less Travel Costs:
   With travel costing so much, video conferencing offers an enticing cut in the need for so much travel. Video links allow you to foster open communication with clients regularly, while potentially limiting travel to the most important of meetings. Not only are your travel costs reduced, the hours spent sending staffers all over the country is reduced as well, cutting down on lost time and productivity. Less travel on team meetings, customer meetings and training … all equals cost savings.
4. Video Gives You a Competitive Advantage:
   The time and money you don’t spend on travel means you can gain a competitive advantage. When you provide a medium for your team to collaborate, share knowledge and communicate via video in real time, you’re fostering personal relationships between your company and your clients. This encourages client loyalty and reduces the time you spend going back and forth with revisions, quality checks and changes.
5. Increases Productivity:
   Most of the better video conferencing systems now have the ability to help users share and edit all kinds of documents and files. All of this can happen in real-time.
6. Huge Reduction in Carbon Footprint:
   Another interesting thing about the benefits of the type of conferencing is the potential to reduce your carbon footprint. Less car and less airplane travel reduces pollution.

Bottom Line:
Using a Video conferencing solution is one of the best things you can do for your business. Not only does it allow you to have a global presence, it is also great for your employees. This will end up saving your company time and money in so many ways, reducing your business travel and improving productivity.

As strange as it sounds these days, there was a time that if you wanted to start, or grow a company, and you needed telecommunications services (phones, voicemail) you had to think about physical facilities (closets), network circuits, and buying your own hardware.

Today, however, none of that is necessary. It is possible to just log into your favorite hosted service provider (Amazon, 8×8, etc.) and pay for the services you use.  It doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of upfront costs and best of all you don’t have to become an expert in all things telecom – you can focus on your business.

The -aaS market (as-a-Service) didn’t exist many years ago. You couldn’t just buy infrastructure-as-a-service you needed to invest cash up front.  This has led us to the increased discussion around OPEX vs CapEx.

Definition of OPEX

The trend in the telecom and IT industry now is to go “OPEX”.   So what exactly is OPEX?  It stands for Operational expenditure and refers to expenses incurred in the course of ordinary business, such as sales, general and administrative expenses (and excludes things like taxes, depreciation and interest).

Accounting treatment:  Operating expenses are fully deducted in the accounting period during which they were incurred.  If you pay $1,000 a month to a service provider for phone services the full amount shows up as an expense the month you pay or consume that service.   This shows up as a line item on the P&L.

Operating expenditures include maintenance and repairs, advertising, office expenses, supplies, professional fees, utilities such as telephone, insurance, property management, property taxes, travel, commissions, salary and wages, and other similar items.

Definition of CAPeX

Capital expenditures are expenditures (usually large 1 time items) creating future benefits. A capital expenditure is incurred when a business spends money either to buy fixed assets or to add to the value of an existing asset with a useful life that extends beyond the tax year.

Accounting Treatment:  CapEx expenditures cannot be fully deducted in the period when they were incurred. CapEx assets are depreciated (or amortized) over time.

Capital expenditures tend to be major investments in goods, which show up on the balance sheet and are depreciated over the life of the asset, typically 3 – 7 years.

Example:  Once you have purchased a capital good (such as a PBX), you’re stuck with it.  As anyone who has purchased a car understands, even if you’re no longer excited about owning it, the finance company still expects a monthly payment. However, if you rent a car, you are committed to it only as long as you want to use it – and once you’ve paid for that use, you have no further financial obligation.

So what should a Telecom Manger do?

As an IT or telecom manager what you deploy today may not be what you want in 3 years from now. What once required dedicated real estate, dedicated employees and lots of upfront cost can be fulfilled remotely via the cloud with a subscription fee for the service.

Organizations have more options to obtain the latest and greatest technology. They can focus on their core competencies and transition many of their CapEx investments to OPEX spending, freeing up cash for those investments and other projects that drive revenue and growth.

Organizations usually want to direct their investment toward revenue-generating activities. This is why many organizations prefer to lease rather than purchase — they don’t want to tie up important capital.

Final thought:  It’s no longer as simple as “on premise equipment” = CAPEX and “off premise cloud” = OPEX”. More flexible, OPEX funding arrangements are available for most IT architectures from on premise to hybrid to public cloud. An on premise “private cloud” infrastructure can be sold as OPEX, to provide an off balance sheet transaction. Combined with Managed Services from a quality vendor, it provides the infrastructure and administration for a predictable monthly fee, and allows you to focus on your core tasks.

The big Wireline and Wireless providers continue to shrink

The wireline and wireless market continues to contract.   It started in 2001 and has been a steady downward consolidation since.   Yesterday (April 15^th) Nokia agreed to purchase Paris based giant Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 billion.

The big 3 now are:

• Nokia/Alcatel combined ($28B revenue)
• Ericsson ($29 B revenue)
• Huawei ($27 B revenue).

The next closest company in size in this space is less than $10 billion.   Still respectable but a long way from the days when Lucent and Nortel and others dominated the telephone equipment market.

The combined Nokia/Alcatel Company will rank a strong second in mobile equipment, with global market share of 35 percent, behind Ericsson at 40 percent and ahead of Huawei’s 20 percent, according to Bernstein Research.

Posting on the Nokia Web site:

NOKIA AND ALCATEL-LUCENT TO COMBINE TO CREATE AN INNOVATION LEADER IN NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES FOR AN IP CONNECTED WORLD

Nokia Corporation
Stock Exchange Release
April 15, 2015 at 08:00 (CET +1)

NOKIA AND ALCATEL-LUCENT TO COMBINE TO CREATE AN INNOVATION LEADER IN NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES FOR AN IP CONNECTED WORLD

Helsinki & Paris, April 15, 2015 – Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent announce today their intention to combine to create an innovation leader in next generation technology and services for an IP connected world. The two companies have entered into a memorandum of understanding under which Nokia will make an offer for all of the equity securities issued by Alcatel-Lucent, through a public exchange offer in France and in the United States, on the basis of 0.55 of a new Nokia share for every Alcatel-Lucent share. The all-share transaction values Alcatel-Lucent at EUR 15.6 billion on a fully diluted basis, corresponding to a fully diluted premium of 34% (equivalent to EUR 4.48 per share), and a premium to shareholders of 28% (equivalent to EUR 4.27 per share) (see Appendix 1), on the unaffected weighted average share price of Alcatel-Lucent for the previous three months. This is based on Nokia’s unaffected closing share price of EUR 7.77 on April 13, 2015.

It’s 2015 and the Nortel SL100 / CS2100 continues to be a reliable telephony system at many Hospitals, Universities and Government facilities. But where do you find support for these old systems? Many business and government entities are finding that increasingly challenging. At First American Business Solutions we have been supporting the SL100/2100 for years and as a matter of fact, over the past year our practice in this space as even expanded! Here is what’s new: 24/7 Monitoring, On-site training and OEM (Genband) maintenance coverage.

First ABS can now provide full and complete coverage on the SL100/CS2100. Here is a run-down of the full service portfolio:

• Monitoring – With VPN, a buffer box or SEB access we can monitor Critical and Major alarms around the clock. We can email or text messages to your phone automatically immediately upon receipt of an issue. We also provide reporting statistics on a quarterly and annual basis.
• 3rd level Tech support – We have highly trained and skilled SL100/CS2100 3rd level technical engineers available 24/7 for remote resolution.
• Feet on Street Repair – We cover most U.S. locations with our nationwide footprint of smart-hands technical labor that can be dispatched to site. Because of the limited number of qualified SL100 engineers in the market at First ABS we pair a qualified Nortel field engineer (“smart hands”) with a SL100 remote engineer to resolve issues physically at our customer’s locations.
• Maintenance (7×24 on-call with SLA support) – We sell annual maintenance support agreements to our SL100/CS2100 customers that bundle several components together: block of engineering hours, feet on the street, inventory management, monitoring and a health check. Our SLA is a response time driven. We will have a qualified engineer working a problem within a committed time frame.
• Training – Most of our customers want practical hands on training. Customer telecom engineers can shadow our trainer and learn by observing and doing. We also work in formal reviews while on site. Generally we sell a 3 day hands-on training module but can work with you on custom material.
• Full Time – Staff Augmentation (M-F 8-5) – First ABS can provide a full time on-site SL100/CS2100 engineer. These agreements are as short as 3 months but generally done on an annual basis.
• Genband support – We are a Bronze partner of GENBAND, which affords us the opportunity to leverage the company’s product enhancements and software updates. With this core level of OEM support, First ABS can provide our customers with GenbandCare offers including:
  • Support Plan – Tech support
  • Support Plan – Tech support with NBD Advance Parts
  • Support Plan – Tech support with 10 day parts
• Software Upgrades – Need to upgrade from SE06 to SE09? We can purchase the upgrade from the OEM and perform the software upgrade with our qualified staff.
• Parts – We have an extensive inventory of SL100/CS2100 parts. This is custom quoted depending on the exact part, line card, etc. needed. Many times we can ship it the next day.

In a nutshell, First ABS is able to provide any and all needed support for these carrier class platforms. Please give us a call and let us know how we can support you SL100/CS2100 legacy carrier grade platform!