Category: mobile computing

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Cloud and Digital are Transforming Business

Businesses, whether small or large, must change how they operate. They need to find ways to leverage the technologies and influences shaping society. Transformation is essential for companies to face today’s rapidly changing environment and embrace the opportunities it provides. This means mapping out a strategy and prioritizing activities which will fundamentally shift the operation towards greater intelligence and agility.

Digital transformation is about changing how businesses operate at a foundational level. It involves transforming processes and capabilities. This is done to leverage digital technologies across all strata of the business. 

Change in business is an ongoing process and not a one-time activity.

Transformational change is enabled in large part by cloud technologies. Cloud computing solutions are in high demand. They allow businesses to scale easily and affordably. They also provide the mobility and remote access that workers require. 

More fundamentally, cloud computing services improve collaboration by users. They also enhance collaboration by applications. This improvement enables seamless integration of functionality and data from various sources.

Microsoft Azure platform provides infrastructure and services previously available only to larger businesses and enterprise IT departments. Noobeh, Mendelson’s cloud services team, uses Microsoft Azure to deliver SQL data warehouses for structured data. It provides data lakes for the storage of unstructured and different data types. The Azure Data Factory and Microsoft Fabric are used to transport, transform, and weave it all together.

Converged wired and wireless networks and smarter telephony solutions deliver location and usage data that were not previously available to most IT departments. Today’s imaging technology can easily reduce a picture to searchable and identifiable metadata. The introduction of IoT brings an even further integration of data from virtual and physical realms. This enhances potentials for intelligence. It also improves understanding and interaction.

Mendelson Consulting recognizes that true transformation is guided by the vision and objective but is supported through operational efforts.

The collection of data for inspection and analysis is the first requirement. Only through the proper establishment of processes and workflow is the required information developed.

Mendelson Consulting partners with businesses to define the scope and strategy for advancing into the digital future. They take fundamental steps to introduce greater agility in platforms and services. These platforms and services support an ever-changing business environment. They also ensure visibility, which drives greater business intelligence and operational insight.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Better QuickBooks Hosting with Noobeh

QuickBooks hosting is a type of service that allows small businesses to access their QuickBooks Desktop accounting software and data from anywhere with an internet connection. QuickBooks hosting fits into the modern cloud computing world by providing small businesses with a flexible and cost-effective way to manage their accounting and financial operations.

In the past, small businesses would need to install QuickBooks software on their own computers and maintain their own IT infrastructure to manage their accounting and financial data. This requires a significant investment in hardware, software, and IT staff, and makes it difficult for the business to scale their accounting operations as their business grows.

With QuickBooks hosting, small businesses can avoid these challenges by moving their accounting operations to the cloud. Yet not all QuickBooks hosting providers offer the same level of service or protection for your data.

Most QuickBooks hosting providers run the QuickBooks software and store the QuickBooks data on their own servers, renting space on the servers to its business customers. In most cases, many businesses will share the servers, which increases risk.

Noobeh works only with private environments where customers do not share servers or other resources. Each customer has their own private account and environment which is accessible to only their users via the Internet. This eliminates the need for small businesses to maintain their own IT infrastructure and allows them to scale their accounting and business operations up or down as needed.

QuickBooks hosting from Noobeh provides businesses with a number of other benefits, including:

Increased Security: Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure deliveries have advanced security measures in place to protect customer data from unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats.

Enhanced Collaboration: Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure allows multiple users to access and work on the same QuickBooks data at the same time, which can improve collaboration and productivity.

Automatic Backups: Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure performs regular backups of customer data, which can help ensure that important financial data is not lost in the event of a disaster or system failure.

Anytime, Anywhere Access: Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure allows small businesses to access their accounting data from anywhere with an internet connection, which can be especially useful for remote or distributed teams.

Totally Private: Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure runs on the Microsoft Azure platform and uses private Microsoft accounts, keeping things absolutely private for your business.

Noobeh’s QuickBooks on Azure hosting is a modern cloud computing solution that can help small businesses streamline their accounting and financial operations, reduce costs, and improve their overall efficiency.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Business Data Loss is a Growing Problem

The portable computer was the secret business weapon of yesterday and is today’s essential business tool. The processing power, portability, storage, and connectivity available with laptops, tablets and smartphones has created a seamless extension to the office. Business users can work with their applications and data from just about anywhere. While mobile devices are valuable when it comes to conducting business, they also pose additional security risks. Increased efficiency, mobility, and accessibility can also mean an increased potential for a data breach or business data loss.

The workforce of today is mobile enabled. Business users, owners and managers, accounting advisors and business consultants can access all the information and analytical capability they need to perform their jobs and make informed business decisions, capturing and collecting important information while keeping productivity at the highest levels no matter where they are.

“87% of businesses rely on their employees to use their personal mobile devices to access company apps”, according to a post by Perillon. Some studies have estimated that as much as 80% of the data a company has (like customer files, contracts, financial data, product specifications) might be stored on portable devices. This means that mobility comes with risk, which is why Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh cloud services utilize cloud-based platforms and services to keep data safe and secure.

According to business data loss statistics compiled by Businessdit.com, the two most common causes of data loss are hardware failure (40%) and human error (29%). Overall, malware causes 35% of all data loss, taking advantage of the 21% of files that businesses are not protecting at all.

The stats show that it takes approximately 206 days on average to even detect a data breach, the costs of downtime and losses average around $1,410 per minute for small businesses, and 22% of SMBs close after a ransomware attack.

Data loss or theft can create big business and legal problems, too. Customer or client privacy may be compromised, sensitive information may be exposed, and confidential plans may be made public if a business doesn’t take steps to secure mobile data.

“The average cost of a data breach in 2021 was $4.24 million. That’s a huge increase from the $3.86 million cost in 2020. And it’s only going to get more expensive in the future. Companies need to be prepared to deal with the fallout from a data breach, which can include everything from legal costs to damage to their reputation.”

Businessdit.com

There’s an old saying that there are only two types of businesses: those who have lost their data and those who will. Imagine the potential chaos, risk exposure, reputation damage and the expense of losing your valuable business data or having it exposed to unauthorized parties.

While computing mobility delivers a host of advantages to the business and the user, care must be taken to ensure security, privacy, and confidentiality of the business information and protecting against business data loss.

Increased exposure to liability is a reality for any mobile business, and the risk is only multiplied by the number of systems a company has in the field. Smart businesses reduce risk by deploying secure yet versatile platforms for their workers that allow data to be stored and protected in centralized environments rather than on individual computing devices.

Via the cloud, businesses of all kinds are reaping the benefits of new and innovative service delivery, achieving the freedom and functionality a mobile working model demands. Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh cloud services have the cloud solutions and managed IT services that provide the mobile capability businesses need, but with the additional protection, additional security, and ongoing management that the value of the data demands.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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Good Housekeeping for Healthy QuickBooks

QuickBooks desktop software is very easy to install and use, and that is precisely why it is the standard for small business bookkeeping and accounting. QuickBooks is simple to use.

Getting QuickBooks on your computer is also simple. You can just buy the software from wherever – your QuickBooks solution provider, a retail outlet or an online store. Then you download it to your PC and run a setup application, and voila! It’s there on your PC ready to help you do your books.

When just a single user needs to use QuickBooks, things are very straightforward because there is no networking to worry about and no multi-user access required. On the other hand, there are many businesses using QuickBooks that experience a lot of frustration with trying to install QuickBooks on a network and managing the software that must be installed on multiple computers.

Other than networking QuickBooks desktop software, it seems that the majority of issues users experience can be attributed more to poor software habits and a lack of PC housekeeping

QuickBooks desktop software has been engineered over many years to be as simple to use as possible, but at the same time has grown to be a product with lots of features, add-ons and extensions.  People have found ways to make QuickBooks do things it wasn’t really designed to do, which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. When it works, it works great.  When it doesn’t work, it’s beyond frustrating.

Yet there are a few things that QuickBooks desktop users should be doing regularly to keep their QuickBooks software and data in good working condition. While these items are very important to keeping your QuickBooks system working for you, they will never overcome problems with your network, the server or any of the workstations connected to it.

To solve these networking, software management and other IT platform issues, I recommend moving to a virtual cloud server on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. NOOBEH’s QuickBooks on Azure service is just that… your QuickBooks software and data running securely on your own private cloud server in your own account on the Microsoft cloud, fully managed and supported by experts. With NOOBEH’s service, you don’t have to worry about server failures, network problems or hardware problems any longer, and we eliminate the issues surrounding multi-user, multi-location, and remote access for QuickBooks.

When it comes to PC housekeeping and other chores, I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping the QuickBooks company file in good condition

What’s the accounting and financial data worth, after all?  A little time spent taking care of the file can save on a lot of time and headaches trying to recreate or reenter the data. A QuickBooks company file is a database and is a complicated framework for keeping track of all sorts of related information.  Anyone who has used QuickBooks desktop products for a while understands that the data file can get messed up for a variety of reasons, and it can mean lost time, work and revenue when it isn’t working correctly.

What many users don’t realize that QuickBooks has built-in utilities to check and fix data problems in the company file, so it makes sense to periodically use them to check for problems.  Like a check-up with the doctor, these utilities can help diagnose issues with the data file before they become big issues. They are easy to find in the software… simply go to the File menu and select Utilities.

Run the file Verify any time the file starts to act slow or if QuickBooks crashes when the file was open, and if the Verify tells you there are errors, you should run a Rebuild to fix them. Note that a rebuild may have to run multiple times to fix all the issues in the file, and even then, may not correct everything. Some manual work may even be required to resolve all errors.

You should also back up the company file to a “portable” type file periodically, and to then restore it for use.  This doesn’t need to be done very often, maybe once a year or so. This process can not only validate the integrity of the file, but it also helps condense and condition the file.  Conditioning the data file periodically can help prevent data corruption and/or loss of data.

A very important housekeeping item for QuickBooks desktop is the file backup. Backups don’t just make copies of your company file for safekeeping, which is important to have, but when you run a backup with complete/full verification, the process also reduces the file size of the TLG file. For QuickBooks, the TLG file is a transaction log, and when it gets too big the file can perform poorly and even get corrupted.  Run backups more frequently if you have a lot of transactional activity, or less often if there is not so much going into the company file.

When you do the file backup, it is a good idea to consider where the backup will go. Keeping the backup files on your PC is convenient, but it also does nothing to protect your data if your PC gets hit with malware or has a hardware problem. Put the backup file in a protected location that isn’t stored on your PC, like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or even a removeable USB device. You can’t put your live QuickBooks company file in this type of location, but you can store the backup files there. This way, if your PC does have a problem, you’ll have backups of your company file that you can use to get yourself back in business.

Close the company file and exit QuickBooks occasionally, please

Users who leave their computers on all the time are not allowing the computer to run periodic power-on self-tests, which means the machine or operating system could have an issue that isn’t recognized until computer restarts.  For this same reason, programs and their data files should be closed when not being used – so they can run through their own startup and validation routines before you use them.  Also, leaving the program open means it is active on the computer, and leaving the data file open means that it’s available (available=vulnerable).  A random by passer accessing the computer, a program crash, a machine crash… loss of power or a furry kitty running over the keyboard could each result in catastrophic damage to the application and/or data.  It’s just better and safer if the files and programs are closed when not being used.  Maybe use a screensaver with a password, too, or at least lock the keyboard when the machine is on but not in use.

QuickBooks and VPN / WAN are not awesome together

Just because a user can connect their remote PC to the office network doesn’t mean the PC will work like it’s in the office.  In the office, it’s a Local Area Network where the machines are all cabled together and communicate with nearby machines (e.g, Local). The speed of LAN communications is fast enough to allow multiple computers to share a QuickBooks company file in multi-user mode.  When there is a remote PC to connect, businesses often elect to utilize a VPN to provide local area network access to the remote computer. This turns the Local Area Network connection into a Wide Area Network connection, where the network has been extended to include the remote computer.

Unfortunately for QuickBooks users, the WAN connection is NOT fast enough to allow the remote user to open QuickBooks and use it like others in the network.  QuickBooks multi-user access is designed to work on a local network where local means the machines are in the same locale and on the same LAN. This is why many companies elect to use remote-access/remote-control software to access to QuickBooks desktop remotely.

Use NOOBEH QuickBooks on Azure to get remote access, managed service, update support, and the ability to run any other applications or add-ons your business needs. When QuickBooks desktop and the other software a business uses are hosted on the company’s Microsoft cloud server with NOOBEH, the QuickBooks application and the company files are all on the same environment so it works exactly as it is supposed to for all users no matter where they are located.

Use Automatic Update

New features and enhancements are provided, new technologies and operating platforms must be supported, and security and privacy must constantly be addressed in the software. What this all means is that software products necessarily change over time and users will be expected to update their products or lose out. While some IT departments may desire to prevent software from updating itself, QuickBooks users should recognize that the software’s proper function often depends on timely updates. Especially when payroll or banking is involved, it is important to keep the software current.

QuickBooks has a feature that allows the software to automatically download and install updates as they are released by Intuit. Leaving this feature turned on allows the software to check with Intuit periodically to see if there are updates available. If so, they are downloaded and readied for installation on the computer.

Updates are changes made to an edition and year version of the software. Upgrades, on the other hand, are changes from one year version to another (2021 to 2022, for example) or a change in QuickBooks edition (like Premier to Enterprise). Automatic updates manage the changes to the currently installed edition/year version, but do not upgrade the software.

Customers using NOOBEH’s QuickBooks on Azure service have their QuickBooks updates and their QuickBooks upgrade installations managed for them, as well as the other applications installed on the customer’s private cloud server.

Doing maintenance on your QuickBooks software and the company file can help keep them free from poor performance and potential corruption

It’s worth spending a little time on chores occasionally so that you avoid what could be a costly problem down the road. Some good housekeeping to keep your QuickBooks healthy is just good business.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Microsoft 365: Stay Updated or Lose Connectivity and Support

Microsoft Office is a staple of business software, setting the standard for productivity applications across the globe. Unfortunately, popularity often means “target” and the bad guys out there are gunning for your system, looking for vulnerabilities they can exploit. This is among the reasons to make sure your Office applications are staying up-to-date with the latest fixes and security features. The easiest way to do this is to turn on automatic updating for Windows via Microsoft Update so that your system gets Office updates for earlier versions of Office you might have installed, such as Office 2010 or an Office volume license install.

Security updates aren’t the only reasons to keep your systems up to date. Sometimes an update addresses compatibility with other applications or services. In recent days, Microsoft has reminded businesses of the roadmap for Microsoft 365 services where certain versions of the Office and Microsoft 365 applications will stop communicating with the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft Outlook for Windows

Effective as of November 1, 2021, older versions of Outlook for Windows (starting with Outlook 2007), will be unable to connect with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services, including hosted Exchange mailboxes. Versions that are only a little bit out of date might work, but are likely to experience connectivity issues with the back-end services. Here’s the list of retired versions of Outlook for Windows:

  • Office 2007 All Versions
  • Office 2010 All Versions
  • Office 2013 Versions prior to 15.0.4971.1000 of Office 2013 (Service Pack 1 with the October 2017 Update)
  • Office 2016 MSI Versions prior to 16.0.4600.1000 of Office 2016 (With the November 2017 Update, KB 4051890)
  • Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise;(formerly Office 365 ProPlus) 1705 and older
  • Microsoft 365 Apps for business(formerly Office 365 Business) 1705 and older

OneDrive sync on Windows

Microsoft is now aligning the OneDrive sync on Windows systems with the Windows operating system support lifecycle policy.  In short, OneDrive sync on Windows will only be supported on supported versions of Windows beginning in January 1, 2022, If your version of Windows is no longer being supported, then the OneDrive sync on those machines will no longer receive updates or fixes of any sort.

  • Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 10, 2023
  • Windows 8 reached end of support on January 12, 2016

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 8.1, you will no longer receive feature updates but will receive security fixes until January 10, 2023.

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 7 (and are participating in the Extended Security Update (ESU) program), you will continue to receive critical and important security updates until January 10, 2023. Extended Security Updates don’t include new features, customer-requested non-security updates, or design change requests.

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 8, you will no longer receive updates or fixes of any kind, as Windows 8 is no longer supported.

Businesses concerned with keeping their systems up and running should take care to ensure that PCs and servers are updated with current, supported operating systems and application software. Ignoring PC updates and Windows upgrades can create unnecessary disruption and leads to lost productivity and lost profits. For PCs, Windows 10 or 11 is the OS to be running. For Windows servers, Server 2019 is the most current version.

Mendelson Consulting’s NOOBEH Cloud Services team knows how important it is to keep your core operating software and applications current, compatible and supported. That’s why we only deploy modern servers and current operating systems on the Microsoft Cloud platform, ensuring our hosted clients have the foundation they need to keep workers performing and operations running.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Considering Deploying Microsoft365 for Your Entire Organization? Success is in the details.

Technology is ever advancing, and even the smallest of businesses must keep in step to remain competitive. Efficiency is the key to modern, effective operations, yet keeping teams aligned and working towards the common goal can be tougher than ever when members are remote working. Microsoft solutions can help the business increase productivity and modernize their operations, and at the same time provide stronger security and enhanced protection.

For just about every business, it makes sense to consider using Microsoft 365 services. But there are a lot to choose from, and not all services work as you might expect, so here is a little information that might help with making service selection a little easier.

Does it make sense to implement Microsoft Teams for intra-company calls, meetings, and collaboration?

Teams is great for calling your co-workers, sharing screens, presenting content, and collaborating in workgroups or with the whole company. But be warned that Teams meetings don’t work for everyone, particularly those outside your organization or for users that don’t have useful Internet connectivity.

  • To use Teams with people outside the company, or even for users that don’t have Internet connectivity, you’ll need to also have a calling plan for each user.
  • A calling plan allows Teams to connect a phone number to the Teams meeting, creating a means for non-Teams users and those without internet to connect to the meeting audio.

Should you migrate employee email inboxes to MS365 (Outlook Desktop and/or Outlook Online)?

Using Microsoft for email services make a ton of sense, especially with the advanced phishing and threat protection that comes standard with the service. It is pretty much foolproof for most businesses and is a great value. If your business is migrating to Microsoft from a legacy email platform or from a different mail provider, there are a few things to consider.

  • Many companies use their desktop Outlook email folders as a sort of file cabinet, storing and categorizing emails for future use. In older MS Exchange environments, Public Folders were also used, enabling company-wide access to certain email folders and the file attachments within.
  • MS365/Office365 email services don’t support public folders, and every email box comes with a storage quota. If the business is used to saving lots of emails, then it might create difficulties with mailbox management.
  • Outlook Desktop still has limitations on the file size it can reasonably handle. This means that Outlook, when connected to hosted Exchange mail (Microsoft365), should run in cached mode, keeping only recent data in the Outlook file on the computer and leaving the rest of the mail on the server. Mail on the server is still available for search by Outlook; the program will simply search in the local data file first.

Can you, or should you, migrate your company’s files to the Microsoft cloud?

Keeping your files on the “cloud” is a concept that sounds convenient, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds. In this case, the idea is to migrate files from PCs and servers to Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint, where the files can be available to all users regardless of where the user is working from.

  • Putting a big hard drive on your PC or server can be relatively inexpensive. “Storage is cheap” we hear quite often. Yet all storage facilities are not alike. It might be a cheap option to add a big hard drive or USB drive to your local system but paying for storage space on the web becomes a different deal. You may find that safe, protected storage for your files is not quite as inexpensive as you thought, especially over time. When you must pay every month for the storage you use, you rapidly realize why file housekeeping is essential.
  • File and folder permissions do not translate from your Windows file system to a SharePoint or OneDrive. You must create your own groups and set file and folder permissions as you want them AFTER the data is uploaded to the cloud platform.
  • Once the files are in the cloud platform, each user must determine what and how the files will sync with their local computers. There may be an option to “sync on demand” (depends on device platform) that can allow users to selectively sync files to/from their computers, but the fact remains that the data is being downloaded to the local computer so that it can be worked on. This still means that the local computer must have the necessary software installed, and the PC should be protected with backup, anti-virus and anti-malware and MFA.
  • Database files cannot work in a web file location. This means that programs that have associated database/data files must still have their files located on a network server for users to access them. QuickBooks, tax software, trial balance software, workpapers and fixed assets, inventory management or manufacturing, and more may require the server to serve the application and/or data to the users. This means that servers and networks and the need to manage the network and the individual computers remains in full.
  • If all other data is stored on the cloud platform, then you now have data and resources to manage both places.

What does the new Microsoft365 Cloud PC mean for small businesses?

  • The new Cloud PC from Microsoft365 can solve a tremendous problem for the very small business in that it can become the IT infrastructure and it is fully cloud platform.
  • Cloud PC is meant to replace your local PC as your operating environment. Rather than installing software and storing data on your local device, the idea is that your software gets installed on your Cloud PC and your data is stored, ideally, in your OneDrive, or maybe on the drive of your Cloud PC.
  • This makes the Cloud PC a perfect solution for that single user that needs to run their QuickBooks or other applications from anywhere.
  • The thing with the small business Cloud PC is that it cannot be networked. It may be able to “see” and work with your local device hard drive or even mapped drives that your local device is connected to, but it isn’t able to work with a network server or share like a local PC would.
  • This means that you may be able to store and retrieve files from servers or other drives on your local PC or network, but you won’t be able to access databases or other server or network-based applications that need the network to function.
  • This also means that you can’t share data on one cloud PC to another cloud PC… they aren’t networked together.

Why NOOBEH’s Cloud Service model is better

There’s a reason why businesses adopt NOOBEH QuickBooks on Azure services, and the benefits are as great as ever. Businesses work with NOOBEH and our QuickBooks on Azure services because we have the flexibility to do what the business needs, and to offer a comprehensive approach that doesn’t leave applications, services and data hanging around on local networks or unprotected computers.

Where the Microsoft365 Cloud PC is a great answer for the single-user, NOOBEH’s cloud servers are designed for multiple users needing access to common applications and/or data. Multi-user QuickBooks desktop applications, Sage or AccountEdge, MISys Manufacturing or Acctivate Inventory, ShipGear or Starship, Fedex or UPS and much more… we host the applications that businesses use every day.

NOOBEH keeps the applications and data securely running on private Microsoft Azure cloud servers. Centralized, server-based management of applications and data means that software does not have to be installed and maintained on individual computers, so the need for local PC backups and anti-virus and malware protection is also minimized. All users work on the same version of the same software, and everyone accesses the same data in real time. Version control issues and sync problems are entirely avoided when everyone is working in the live system with live data, and Microsoft’s Azure platform ensures that issues due to transient hardware failures are a thing of the past.

When the company has workers that must operate from their local computers, NOOBEH can enable a solution to keep SharePoint in sync with the cloud server, ensuring that workers on and off the server are able to reach the most current version of the files. Users working in QuickBooks can interact directly with SharePoint files and folders by using the native Windows File Explorer where users operating on their local PCs access SharePoint via OneDrive or via the web. This approach delivers the best of both worlds to businesses who need more flexible modes of operating.

Contact us today to find out more about how we can help your business do more in less time, improve efficiency and work more effectively with a system that works where and when you need it.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J