Tag: mobile access

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Mobility Solutions to Support the Booming Home Health Services Market

The market for home health care services is growing rapidly and is not likely to slow any time soon. The expanding need is due in large part to the aging of the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and ‘64.  The boomers were once the nation’s largest living generation, defined by a notable increase in births in the United States following World War II. As this generation ages, it is creating a boom of sorts in the home health services industry.

Roughly 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, and increasingly these seniors wish to continue living in their own homes rather than being moved to nursing homes or assisted living facilities.   According to AARP, nearly 90 percent of seniors want to stay in their own homes as they age, referred to as “aging in place.” Most seniors (up to 82 percent) would prefer to stay in their homes even as they need daily assistance or ongoing health care.  Few seniors say they would prefer to move to a care facility, and even fewer identify living with extended family as a desirable option.

The rate of home ownership among boomers is higher than with the rest of the population today, which is one of the primary reasons for increased demands for home care services.  Reports reflect that 81% of seniors today own their own homes, compared to 68% for the rest of the population. The majority of these seniors live alone or with a spouse – we’ve already established that living with extended family isn’t a frequent choice, possibly due at least in part to reduced home ownership rates. There are also suggestions that the reduced economic status of later generations has similarly reduced the capacity for extended families providing the long-term care for their seniors.

Projected to double by the year 2050, the number of Americans requiring daily help with living at home is expected to grow from the current 12 million to 27 million.  Older adults will make up almost 20 percent of the population, if not more.

These and other factors are driving rapid growth and expansion in the home health care field. Projected job growth for home health providers and personal care aids is expected to reach a whopping 70 percent by 2020. Larger than any other occupation grouping in the country, direct care workforce is projected to exceed teachers from kindergarten through high school (3.9 million), all law enforce and public safety workers (3.7 million), and registered nurses (3.4 million). Between 2010 and 2020, the fastest growing occupations in the country are projected to be Personal Care Aides and Home Health Aides.

Home health care businesses providing in-home senior care, hospital after-care, veteran care and numerous other specialized and general services are supported by a number of specialized software solutions designed to meet the specific needs of this segment of the healthcare industry.  The software used to support the business generally includes specific functionality for managing client and patient records, caregiver and provider information, scheduling and dispatch, payroll and HR, billing, and other back office and accounting processes.

Many of the industry-specific solutions available on the market address different or unique aspects of operating the home health care business, integrating data from their system with separate accounting and finance applications (such as QuickBooks desktop editions) for the rest of the functionality needed.  This allows the developer of the line of business application to focus on the valuable features and capabilities that will make the practice more efficient, compliant and profitable, leaving general accounting processes (payroll, accounts payable, general ledger and reporting) to the accounting software.

With greater frequency, the applications servicing the home health care industry are SaaS solutions, crafted with online access and mobility in mind.  This industry in particular has a specific need for remote and mobile access to information, as it is a “field service” operation at its core with healthcare rolled in.  The requirements to manage not just scheduling and services, but to deal with compliance, privacy and other factors involved with healthcare information complicates matters, placing an additional focus on the security and mode of access to the software and information.

Businesses using solutions such as Kinnser ADL, Shoshana Rosemark, Kaleida eRSP and Generations Homecare System rely on the software to streamline their operations.  Not only designed to support a remote and mobile workforce, these application services also provide business owners and managers with the ability to access essential business data at any time.  At issue is the rest of the software and systems which support the business operation and its processes.  Word and Excel or other productivity tools are almost certainly used at some level, and QuickBooks is in use, too.  These applications and their data typically reside on the desktop computer or local network.  As desktop applications, these solutions deliver the best power and performance for the business in terms of features and usability.  While some users may consider moving to web-based versions of these products, those who favor performance and functionality over framework often return to the feature-rich desktop applications that do the full job required.

In order to give business owners and remote workers the access they need to desktop applications and data, secure remote access solutions are required.  When the software and systems reside in the locked office of the business, the people operating outside aren’t usually able to access them in a way that is useful – or useful for more than one person at a time.  Remote control solutions that broker access to a PC cannot provide the multi-user support, application security or overall performance that most businesses require.  Attempts to implement simple RDS solutions or use similar products to create access often expose the business to unnecessary risk and limited capability while introducing heavy technical and licensing expenses.

With an offsite option, where the applications and data reside with the commercial hosting provider, business owners and line managers benefit from being allowed to focus on operations and not on managing the underlying software and systems. The business outsources the provisioning, management and protection of primary IT resources to support users, software and data, but the business should retain the capability to administer their own cloud as personnel changes impacting information access can occur at any time.

Whether their software and data are hosted on-site with existing equipment or offsite with managed hosting, home health care businesses need to have an easy-to-use solution for administration of user accounts, application access and secure filespaces.  For the home health care business, this is critical functionality that can mean the difference between spending too much time in the office handling general business and software matters versus meeting with clients and managing caregivers and revenue-generating activities.  In a fast moving, fast growing and highly mobile business, getting to information at anytime from anywhere using any device means being able to meet booming business demand.

Make Sense?

J

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-84.html https://www.ioaging.org/aging-in-america http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers/ http://www.iyhusa.com/AginginPlaceFacts-Data.htm http://economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org/2012/01/13/homeowners-by-age/
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Securing Business Data When Mobility is the Target

driving1-ANIMATIONToday’s workforce is a mobile workforce. Technology has enabled businesses to allow their employees to reach beyond the office walls, doing business and operating effectively from just about any location.  SaaS, online access to business data, and smart phone technologies have brought flexibility in working models previously only imagined by the workforce tethered to business locations and office computers. Yet this flexibility comes at a price if the business is to keep up with securing and protecting data assets as readily as it extends access to them.  The bad guys are well aware that mobile computing and remote access working models are growing in adoption with businesses, and are finding ways to take ever-greater advantage of the situation.

Teleworking, which is not quite the same thing as telecommuting, is on the rise and it doesn’t look to be a trend that will slow down any time soon. According to GlobalWorkplaceanalytics.com, “telework is defined as the substitution of technology for travel”.  Those who work sometimes from an office, but sometimes not, are teleworkers. Working at the office during the day and then taking work home at night makes you a teleworker. The primary tool of the teleworkforce is the smart phone – the mobile computer with built-in connectivity and enough processing power to handle many basic office workloads.

  • 50% of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telework and approximately 20-25% of the workforce teleworks at some frequency
  • 80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to telework at least part-time. Two to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot that allows for a balance of concentrative work (at home) and collaborative work (at the office).
  • Fortune 1000 companies around the globe are entirely revamping their space around the fact that employees are already mobile. Studies repeatedly show they are not at their desk 50-60% of the time.  http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

The number of teleworking employees is on the rise, and so is the variety of devices used to facilitate mobile working.  Smartphones, tablets and phablets and, of course, laptop computers are used by mobile workers – often in addition to the company-supplied desktop in the office. The variety and number of computing devices per user is growing. Knowing this, businesses must take increasingly expansive steps to strengthen and secure remote access systems and business data, yet many organizations are just beginning to fully realize that the mobility they extend to their users is part of the reason for the increasing number of data breaches and attacks against business information systems.

Cybercriminals and their crafty programs are often able to steal important information or access a network by first infecting computers and devices used for telework.  Many of the devices available to the attackers are not company-owned, but are introduced to the system by contractors, vendors and employees (BYOD or bring-your-own-device users).

Even if the device isn’t a vehicle delivering a nasty payload into the network, data breaches may still occur when business information is stored on an improperly secured device. Most people who work with computers have some recognition of the potential for virus attacks and malware, but far fewer recognize the threat potential of attacks against mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and even fewer may implement meaningful protections on those devices.

“To prevent breaches when people are teleworking, organizations need to have stronger control over their sensitive data that can be accessed by, or stored on, telework devices,” said Murugiah Souppaya, a NIST computer scientist. [1]

Providing guidance and information to the public on such topics, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is revising its publications on telework to cover growing use of BYOD and how contractor and vendor devices are increasingly used to access company information resources.  Two new publications – one for organizations and one for users – are now available for review and comment.  You can find them here.

“As one of the major research components of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) has the broad mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology through research and development in information technology, mathematics, and statistics.”  [NIST Information Technology Laboratory Mission]

The rising number of threats, attacks and breaches caused by compromised devices used for teleworking is nothing to take lightly, and protecting against them shouldn’t be approached as a merely perfunctory obligation. Organizations must create and consistently update policies and requirements relating to protecting information accessible by remote workers if they intend to reduce business risk and provide assurances to stakeholders and customers that the information is adequately guarded.  But it doesn’t stop with the policy; businesses must also make an effort to properly educate their users (employees, contractors, vendors, etc.) on those policies, ensuring that all parties involved understand the responsibilities and requirements and strictly adhere to them.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

[1] http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/attackers-honing-in-on-teleworkers-how-organizations-can-secure-their-datata.cfm
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Mobile Device Security is a Moving Target

Mobile Device Security is a Moving Target

mobile-devicesAs businesses mobilize their workforces and processes the volume and variety of sensitive data passing through and sitting on mobile devices increases dramatically.  Even though the business owner or IT manager may recognize the importance of mobile data and device security, doing something useful about it is altogether another issue.  New considerations enter into the picture frequently, turning mobile security into a moving target. Protecting the business – the organization, its employees and its customers – requires adopting mobile security strategies that cover a broad range of issues.

First of all, is there any means of monitoring the activities of the connected or mobile devices?  Knowing which devices are interacting with your information would seem to be an essential part of business information security, yet smartphones and tablet devices often fall under the proverbial radar of IT or business management.  Actually, business management is likely among the base of users with the very mobile devices in question.

Are there ways to limit what information is accessible via these mobile devices, and is that data encrypted?  Consider also that data is sometimes at rest (like when it is just sitting on a hard drive) and sometimes in transit (like being uploaded/downloaded/transmitted over the wire).  In either state, the data should be encrypted in order to be more secure.

Is there a standard set of apps or services that users can enable, or is it pretty much personal choice?  Too often a user will innocently install a malicious app on their device, exposing the business to a variety of potential threats.  Creating strict policies around app selection and use is a really good idea, and finding a way to actually enforce them is even better.

The big issue is separation of work and personal apps and content.  Especially in small businesses where personal devices are the norm (well, not just in small business… Hey Hillary!) it is quite a challenge to create any useful separation between personal and business use.  The mobile device is often adopted as a personal choice of the user – who elects to invest their personal mobile device in their work – so exacting any real level of control in how the device is used is tough.  The security of the information is only as good as the security of the device, meaning that it is usually up to the device owner to decide if a password or pin is required.  Unfortunately and for the sake of convenience, there is often little or no real security on the device meaning there is no real security around the information on the device in the event that it becomes lost, stolen or compromised.

There are a lot of things that the business can do in order to improve the security of their business data in a mobile device environment.  Here are a few of the basics:

  1. Have defined procedures for what happens when a device is lost or stolen; make sure they’re followed
  2. Have a way to do a remote wipe of the device
  3. Make sure all devices lock after a period of inactivity, and that they have password or pin protection
  4. Have a mobile device use policy, and make sure all employees understand why it matters and agree to it.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

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Confusing Value Propositions: Cloud Platforms and Hosted Applications

it-balancing-actConfusing Value Propositions: Cloud Platforms and  Hosted Applications

When a service provider is in the business of selling computing resources – like bandwidth, processors and memory, and disk storage – it makes a lot of sense to also leverage the value of software products and systems which drive consumption of computing resources.  In short, they market and sell software that runs on the platform in order to get folks to buy the platform, no different from selling desktop and server software in order to sell the hardware to run it.  It’s just that these days the hardware and networking components are often referred to as the “platform” or maybe “the cloud”.

Let’s face it… cloud computing platforms are just no fun if there’s nothing to run on them, and a hard drive has little value when there isn’t anything stored on it.  Once there is something there – an application, data… something – then the part has actual value in terms of driving revenue.  This is the difficulty and the basis for confusing value propositions when it comes to offering and delivering services in the form of a hosting platform.  Once again: platforms are just no fun if there’s nothing to run on them.  Is the value is really about the applications, not the platform? Or is the value in the platform, because it’s necessary for running the applications?

The truth is that both are essential parts of the entire “solution”, and the value of how the solution is packaged and offered is purely up to the purchaser to determine in terms of applicability to the business.  When it comes to hosted application offerings for businesses, there isn’t a single one-size-fits-all approach that will work.  Sometimes people want to purchase from different vendors and put their own solutions together, and sometimes folks want turnkey delivery of whatever they need.  Even channel partners and value-added resellers are finding that, with diminishing margins and aggressive competition prevalent in the market, removing the time-consuming aspects of solution delivery becomes paramount to achieving some level of profitability on the work.

What this means is that providers are looking for ways to increase the overall value and usability of their solutions, and when it comes to platform services there are only two directions to look: automation to support self-service, and application software delivery to drive consumption and usage on the hosting platform.

So now we’re back to the applications again.  There’s no way to avoid them, but there’s no great way for platform companies to engage with them, either.  Working with business application software is sometimes complicated, often annoying, and can be exceptionally time-consuming and resource intensive. And there are few licensing models which make it really easy for hosts and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to work together.  Then, of course, there is the desire for exclusivity on one side or the other.

Software companies don’t generally want to select a single platform provider for their software for a very simple reason: they don’t want to limit their potential user base.  Now that Windows platform is available just about anywhere – on local computers, on mobile devices, from platform and infrastructure hosting providers – how does the ISV make a decision on a single delivery channel or model or provider?

Some lean towards working with hosting providers to create branded, point-deliveries of the application.  Too often, however, this approach removes the ability for customers to benefit from other applications or integrations, eliminating some of the value of the solution and certainly curtailing benefits for integrating partners of the ISV.

Host it themselves?  The last thing most software developers want is to be responsible for hosting and maintaining some other guys’ software products; they have enough to worry about with their own offerings.  If the solution is standalone, maybe this approach works.  But there are few solutions made for the desktop which don’t have some strange integration point with MS Office apps, Adobe reader, Internet browsers or other things prevalent on the user desktop.

There isn’t any proven or easy path for software developers, IT suppliers or small business customers looking to create mobility and managed subscription service around desktop and server applications, and there is likely never going to be a single story line that all will follow.  This is among the reasons for the popularity of the “hybrid” cloud approach and growing importance of managed application hosting and ISV-authorized delivery models.  Yet even key providers in those areas have a tough time really communicating what they do in a way that is meaningful to the buyer.  Are they selling a platform, applications, or both? Folks in the industry know the jargon and how to use it, and are often skilled at adjusting their language in order to obfuscate or confuse certain sticky issues regarding software licensing in the cloud and other similar aspects of hosting.  It’s no wonder that many customers remain confused as to what, exactly, they’re being asked to buy, and where the lines of flexibility and responsibility are drawn.

The applications justify the platform, and there are possibly multiple platform approaches to delivering the app. It is a confusing situation for business buyers of IT as well as for their resellers and suppliers, and the increasing number of options for how businesses approach purchasing and using information technology makes it unlikely that the process will become as simple as some suggest.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

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Turning a Product or Service into a Solution: the Value Add of a Reseller

Turning a Product or Service into a Solution: the Value Add of a Reseller

There is quite a bit of chatter on the web and among IT resellers about how opportunities to serve business customers are diminishing, yet business adoption of cloud computing, managed services, and mobile technologies is growing tremendously.  It seems that use of technology is increasing, but the opportunity for “traditional” IT resellers and channel partners to make money by selling IT-related products and services is diminishing.  This is not new, and is simply a finer form of the problem that has been revealing itself for years.  In order to provide value, suppliers must provide businesses with solutions to business problems rather than just trying to sell them products and services with a hefty profit margin.

Whether it is a physical item like a computer or an intangible item like consulting services, businesses will buy if they see value in it.  In the eyes of the consumer, the value is likely tied to far more than the item at hand; the value tracks to some expectation of business benefit to be achieved now and in the future.  Businesses will pay for solutions to problems they experience more readily than they will pay for shiny things or big ideas, and it is this truth that many “value added” resellers tend to forget even though it is part of their business description.

For many years channel resellers have struggled with competitive elements that reduce revenue and profit potential on core products and services.  When computer hardware prices dropped years ago and businesses found that going through distribution or direct to the manufacturer was often a more affordable path than buying through a reseller, the resellers re-trenched and began providing more value in terms of solution architecture, training and implementation support, and system management services.  As the delivery chain for information technology continues to compress and more products and services are delivered direct-to-consumer, the pressure for resellers to discover their “value add” grows even more severe.

The days of simply reselling technology products to make a living are quickly coming to an end. There isn’t enough profit margin available to eek out a living just selling hardware and software, and it takes a large volume of subscribing customers to reach any significant revenue level by reselling commoditized cloud services. Yet the customers are there to be won if the offerings represent solutions to defined and recognized business problems – solutions that introduce quantifiable business benefit rather than creating more business problems – and where the reseller plays an integral part in making the selection a successful one for the customer.

While it may seem that business cloud computing, hosting services and SaaS solutions all come with easy-to-read instructions, do-it-yourself installation and painless upkeep, the truth is often very different. Some consumers realize this when they go shopping for solutions and come up with more questions than answers; some only figure it out after they have made the wrong decision. Either way, these businesses could use the help of a professional who will provide the added value of taking time to understand the problem to be solved, consider the variables which exist in the client organization, and clear a path which takes the customer business to a better place.

Cloud computing and SaaS may be changing HOW businesses purchase and use technology, but it is not changing WHY they do it.  Businesses buy IT because they think it will solve a problem – they have expectations. The reseller can find and provide the added value: the reasoning (meeting expectation) for selecting the solution, why it is the right choice for the customer organization, and how they will ensure that the solution delivers the benefits described and expected.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

Read  more about Helping a Small Business Customer Choose Your Solution

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The Business Cloud: Hype versus Reality

The Business Cloud: Hype versus Reality

There is no doubt that cloud and mobile computing models are driving technology adoption as well as changing the landscape of how consumers and businesses purchase and use IT.  Accompanying any great shift – which in this case is fueled not simply by cloud technologies but by social computing – are the purveyors of propaganda and hype.  Cloud computing and social media won’t make you popular, is not always safe or free, and it doesn’t whiten your teeth. What it can do is help businesses increase agility, collect and use information better and reduce the cost of change. There are many benefits to be achieved with cloud computing models, yet many providers continue to play on the hype rather taking the more difficult road of communicating how their solution actually solves real business problems.

Gartner research tracks this type of activity, producing reports offering assessments of the “maturity, business benefit and future direction of over 1,900 technologies”.  In the Gartner 2011 Hype Cycle Special Report, entries were grouped into 76 different “Hype Cycles”, revealing the similar patterns of “over-enthusiasm, disillusionment, and eventual realism” that comes with every new technology or innovation.  Hoping to provide guidance business IT decision makers, the report intends to inform businesses about when they should consider adopting technologies or IT models in order maximize the value of the approach.

Yet the market is bursting with definitions for “cloud computing”, and services providers offer their wares with varying levels of service and capability.  It’s really difficult to compare one private cloud solution to another, as they are all seemingly offering the same value proposition described in the same language – and none of it really describing what the solution is, how the business takes the greatest advantage of it, and what disruption can be expected along the way. Layer on top of that confusion a big heap of expectation, and the belief that cloud computing technologies are somehow different from “real” on-premise systems in that they are not subject to the same potential for breakage, failure, or unexpected cost.

elastic-2

For example, even though Amazon may use the term “elastic”, cloud computing does not automatically create a stretchy and eternally-dynamic resource that can grow without end.   There are still limitations and costs associated with growth.

There is also a great deal of hype around applications and their performance in cloud environments.  When a piece of software is poorly designed and crashes frequently on a local computer or network, it is just as likely that the application will perform poorly in the cloud. It’s simply a reality of software that even great products that are designed to run exactly the way they are being run don’t have a guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. With cloud computing models, however, there may be a service provider working in the background to manage the systems and keep things running.  You simply might not notice the failures and hiccups as much, but they are still there.

And not all cloud services mean everyone is sharing servers and infrastructure.  While the term cloud generally applies to multiple scaled systems, it doesn’t mean that everyone shares everything and benefits from tremendous levels of redundancy and fault tolerance. In most cases, a solution described as a “private” cloud means that the service has been customized for the unique needs of the organization, and that there are resources of certain types allocated exclusively to the use of that customer. On the other hand, a private cloud may mean that the system elements are all contained within the business infrastructure, providing “cloud” type of services but being delivered from company resources.  There are a wide variety of ways to describe these configurations and approaches, and quite a bit of inconsistency in use of terminology.

The best thing for a business owner to do now is to just ignore the term “cloud” and simply consider how the business might leverage resources from service providers to gain more IT capability at reduced costs, and how outsourcing certain technology needs allows a greater focus on internal innovation and improvement.  Centralized management, improved security, disaster recovery, and increased mobility are all benefits to be realized with the right business cloud implementation.  Just because it is to be an outsourced solution does not mean that the business organization should not still architect and understand the solution they will depend on.  If this level of participation and understanding is not in place, the solution is unlikely to deliver the resulting benefits expected and hoped for.

Outsourced IT service, remote access and server-based computing aren’t new concepts.  It still requires using common sense and reasoning when considering any change in business technology and the innovative application of IT in a business – this cannot be outsourced.  When it comes to cloud computing… to put it bluntly, just avoid the hype and stay away from unrealistic marketing and sales messaging.  If it sounds too good to be true… it probably is.  Technology hasn’t come that far.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J