Is Managed WiFi Right for You?

By: John Shepler

Broadband is everywhere now. In fact, its become an expectation. For consumers, it’s their way to stay connected when there isn’t a wire to plug into. For businesses, it’s a way to offer the benefit of connectivity to their customers and to unchain their employees from the cable tether.

What about 3G and 4G cellular?
Isn’t cellular the true way to go mobile? Over wide areas, yes. It’s hard to beat cellular broadband on your smartphone. That is, until you reach your monthly usage limit. Then it gets expensive fast. Also, many computers, tablets and other devices don’t have the radios built-in to work on cellular, even if you wanted to pay to add them to your account. The one thing most every device does have is WiFi connectivity.

Enabling WiFi
At the most basic level, you can create a WiFi “hotspot” by simply connecting a wireless access point or WiFi router to your network or broadband connection. This is how it’s done at home and in smaller businesses. As the number of users increases and the area to be covered expands, suddenly managing a WiFi network isn’t so simple anymore. You can either grin and bear the extra effort involved or you can consider moving to a managed WiFi solution.

Managed WiFi in the Cloud
Managed WiFi simply means that a service provider, rather than you, does the heavy lifting of making the larger WiFi network work. A new wrinkle is cloud managed WiFi. This allows a service provider to deploy software updates and generate reports for you behind the scenes. A comprehensive system for cloud managed wireless is the Cisco Meraki system.

What Cisco Offers
The Cisco Meraki access point features high power radios for solid coverage with enhanced receive sensitivity compared to the garden variety WiFi AP. It includes MIMO and beamforming technology to met enterprise-class 802.11ac and 802.11n standards on the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The MR34 AP also has a dedicated security radio that scans and protects against security threats, adapts to interference and automatically configures the RF settings for maximum performance.

Security Features
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has become a user demand and a major headache for the IT department. If anyone can bring anything onto the network, security goes out the window. Who knows what’s going on?

The Cisco Meraki wireless solution feature set accommodates BYOD by identifying clients and automatically applying access policies by device or user groups. The system automatically assigns firewall and traffic shaping rules, VLAN tags and bandwidth limits to enforce policies by user class. Critical apps are prioritized and recreational apps can be limited for management control.

The cloud based analytics generate extensive metrics such as user visit time, repeat visits, apps used. You can manage WAN, LAN , wireless LAN and mobile devices on your control panel. That includes everything from a single location to a campus wide solution. There’s even an iOS and Android mobile app for network management on the go.

Acquiring Managed WiFi
An excellent approach that works well for both large and small installations is to get your managed wireless solution from a bandwidth provider such as MegaPath. This way you have one supplier for all of your connections, including MAN, WAN and WiFi. MegaPath’s network operations center will continuously monitor, configure and troubleshoot your wireless network on your behalf. They also have the most up to date security features the meet the requirements of the PCI (Payment Card Industry) data security standards.

If you are considering a major wireless expansion or installing WiFi access for the first time, get the details on cloud managed WiFi now.

Here’s Why Companies Actually Want BYOD

By: John Shepler

Do you wince when someone brings up the topic of BYOD or Bring Your Own Device? It can be more than an ulcer producer for IT managers. The whole company’s intellectual property can be put at risk by employees blissfully aware of the threats. They bring in what they want and connect it to the company network. Your carefully planned security protocols go out the window. What to do?

Most companies have drawn a clear line between what belongs to the company and what belongs to the individual. Unable to manage the wild and wooly world of consumer electronics configurations, they simply lay down the law and say you can’t use your personal phone, laptop or tablet for company business. But since you clearly need technology to do your job, something has to give. In frustration, the company issues you a corporate smartphone, laptop or tablet that are only used for business. Does that put the issue to rest?

Oh, not really. Smaller companies can’t afford to pony up the capital to hand out gadgets to everyone who needs or wants them. They may simply wince and take their chances that nothing will go horribly wrong. Larger operations install firewalls and other means to protect key information and hope they will be a bulwark against data going out and intruders coming in. Meanwhile, employees continue to casually use their own equipment, both inside and outside the company, for business activities.

Why? Partly because it’s more convenient. Also because everybody likes what they’ve customized for their own use. They don’t want to be carrying two copies of everything and switching back and forth. They don’t want to have to mentally jog between different hardware and different operating systems. It’s just not human nature.

Is there anyway to bridge this gulf and make everybody happy? One answer may be found in the new XO WorkTime service. It’s a cloud based UC (Unified Communications) application that integrates your company’s communications systems with employee smartphones and laptops. In effect, the personal devices become access devices to the same resources provided within the corporate walls.

So, here’s why you actually want BYOD… as long as you keep it under your control with an app like XO WorkTime. The first big advantage is capital investment. Why should you as a company manager spend thousands or millions of dollars to build and manage a pool of equipment when your employees will do that for you at their expense. You don’t have to buy them a smartphone because they’ve already bought their own iPhone or Android smartphone.

The next big advantage is happier employees. You’re no longer on their case about turning off their personal gadgets inside the company. Less nagging, less spying, less scolding and everybody’s in a better mood. It gets even better when employees realize that they have their desk phones on their personal phones. They can roam at will and be connected with other employees and customers effortlessly.

Here’s how this works. Your company needs to be using XO’s VoIP service internally. These include IP Flex, IP Flex with VPN, SIP, Enterprise SIP and Hosted PBX services. You simply install the XO WorkTime application on every device that needs it. At that point employee devices have a dual personality. They are work phones and they are personal phones.

The personal side remains unchanged. Personal apps and information are the same as they were. They also remain outside of the company side of the WorkTime app. What happens on the personal side stays on the personal side.

What happens on the business side also stays on the business side. You can safely transport business communications using encryption and VPN tunneling. Your company applications stay in a secure, password protected environment.

Employees have their business calling plan and office number while they are in WorkTime mode. They’ll use the same calling features they use in the office from the WorkTime applications while on the go. That includes features such as simultaneous ring on desk, smartphone or home computer plus presence, IM and video. On-net, local and inbound calls are free. Long distance calls are included in the company plan and don’t count against your personal minutes.

Are you frustrated with the cost and security problems related to enabling mobile business communications? Get expert consulting to learn more about how XO WorkTime and other sophisticated hosted VoIP services can work to your advantage.