Tech Experts Now Authorized To Sell, Install And Service ESI’s IP-Enabled Telephone Systems
Tech Experts recently became a factory authorized dealer for the ESI line of advanced communications business telephone systems. The ESI product line fits very nicely with our IT and computer services.
ESI telephone systems offer many features small and medium sized companies will find useful, but our primary motivation in taking on this product line was ESI’s converged voice and data platform. This is the future of business communications, and we’re excited to work with a company that is in the forefront of that technology.
What does “converged voice and data” mean? Simply, it is the combining of your data services, such as e-mail and Internet access, with your voice services, like voice mail, remote telephones and branch offices.
Here are some examples of how this system would work with your data infrastructure:
Remote telephones: Through the ESI telephone system, you can “Internet-enable” your phone system through a very secure VPN. You would then take a system feature telephone (just like the one that sits on your desk at the office) home, plug it into your high speed cable or DSL Internet at home, and the phone will connect to the office telephone system.
You have 100% of the features, services and extension capabilities at home, just as if you were sitting at your desk. This is perfect for taking orders at home, or for spending time working from home.
ESI-Link branch offices: If your business has multiple locations, you can connect ESI telephone systems together through the Internet - eliminating long distance charges between offices, or expensive tie-lines.
The systems interoperate as one unified system.
Unified Messaging: Receive your voice mails through email. This lets you forward them to others, keep copies on your computer for future reference, reply through e-mail, etc. This is a very cool feature.
Of course, the system offers a ton of other features any business would find useful. Take a quick look through these built-in features. How many would help your business?
Live call recording: With the touch of a button, record a conversation, conference call or personal reminder memo for later playback, as well as moving or copying to others’ mailboxes.
Perfect for making sure orders are correct.
Scalability: ESI Phone systems grow with your business. Most systems use the same telephones. As your business grows, you add to - not replace - your ESI telephone system.
Auto Attendant: Perfect for over flow call situations, or for a busy office. Provides extensive call routing, including directories, automatic day/night operation, off-premises transfer, pager notification and more.
Automatic Call Distribution: If you have a busy service or sales department, this is the feature for you. ACD places sales or service personnel in departments and either (a.) routes a call to the longest-idle agent or (b.) places the call on hold if all agents are busy and then immediately connects when the first agent is available. Constantly updates Feature Phone display regarding queues and wait times.
Voice Mail Delivery: You can program the system to call your cell phone when you have a voice mail, saving you from having to call in and check your voice mail.
Enhanced Caller ID: Lets you see who’s calling, screen calls going to your voice mail, and return calls with a single key press.
Verbal Help and Verbal User Guide: This is the most unique feature of any telephone system we’ve seen. A full, spoken tutorial is available at any time, as well as feature by feature help. No more looking at programming books!
These are just some of the interesting highlights. The system supports most all features you’d find on a business telephone system, at an affordable price. If you’ve been considering a new business telephone system, we’d appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about the ESI systems and how they can help your business grow.
Data Security And Theft Top IT Concerns For 2006, Continuing Into 2007
The number of personal records exposed in data security breaches surpassed 100 million this year.
So says the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, which has been keeping count ever since a high-profile data leak at information broker ChoicePoint in early 2005. It keeps track of thefts and losses of gear such as laptops, storage tapes and drives, as well as of hacking incidents and insiders who leak data.
The count climbed throughout 2006: Boeing, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Hewlett-Packard, McAfee, the University of California, and many others made headlines as a result of breaches.
Most incidents come to light because of laws requiring public notification of data loss in cases where data is unencrypted. In response, security companies are increasingly pitching encryption products for secure storage--for example, Seagate Technology is building it into its drives. Microsoft is also getting into the game: business versions of Windows Vista have a full-disk encryption feature called BitLocker.
But encryption technology still lacks usability, a panel of industry experts said at an event celebrating the 30-year anniversary of cryptography.
Meanwhile, banks and credit agencies are hawking credit-monitoring services. In September, researchers named several banks as a consumer’s best bet in terms of offering protection against identity theft.
Breaches are only one way people’s identities can be compromised. Phishing scams are getting more widespread, and fraudsters are getting trickier in their attempts to con Internet users. People with high incomes attract more phishing e-mails and lose more money to them than other Internet users, according to a November Gartner report.
Scammers are helped by an apparent influx of cross-site-scripting bugs. These Web security flaws could let attackers craft a URL that looks like it points to a trusted site, but serves up content from a third, potentially malicious site. This year, this type of bug was found in many popular Web sites and in Google’s search appliances.
Phishing shields are now common. Microsoft has built one into its latest browser, IE 7, and Mozilla offers a similar feature in Firefox 2.
Alternative approaches to combat phishing include a new DNS service, OpenDNS, whose free address-lookup service blocks phishing sites and other threats.
Yahoo added an antiphishing feature to its site that displays a custom image on the log-in screen to verify that it is indeed a Yahoo page.
But if confidential data isn’t exposed through data breaches or pilfered through a phishing scam, there’s still malicious software. Criminals are crafting more-targeted Trojan horse attacks that seek to sneak onto PCs through zero-day flaws, experts have warned. In addition, some malicious software is now designed to let cybercrooks surf into online banks with you to steal your money.
You could also be exposed while on the go. Privacy watchers warn that people carrying passports equipped with radio chips could have the information in the document read from a distance. The solution: keep the passport closed and in a foil bag.
-- from CNET News Service
Parents More Worried About TV Time Than Children’s Internet Use
About 80 percent of children responding to a recent survey said the Internet is important for schoolwork, although three-quarters of the parents said their kids’ grades hadn’t gone up or down since they got Internet access.
Forty-seven percent of the adults said they have withheld Internet use as a form of punishment. Banning television is still more popular, though.
One in five American parents believe their kids are spending too much time on the Internet, though most say the online activities haven’t affected grades either way. In a study by the University of Southern California’s (USC) Center for a Digital Future, 21 percent of adult Internet users with children believe the kids are online too long, compared with 11 percent in 2000. Still, that’s less than the 49 percent who complain their kids watch too much TV.
Internet Use Peaking
The study, meanwhile, found that although only 27 percent of cell phone owners use them for text messaging, photo transmitting and other non-voice functions, the figure grows to 54 percent among those 18- to 24 years old and 45 percent among those under 18.
The study has been conducted most years since 2000. Over that time, researchers have seen Internet use grow to 78 percent from 67 percent. Access at home increased to 68 percent from 47 percent.
Net Dropouts
In one of the few surveys to look at why people are offline, the study found the lack of a working computer most often to blame. Of the 22 percent of Americans who do not currently use the Internet, more than a quarter are former users who dropped out.
“Almost nobody drops out out of dissatisfaction,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of USC’s Center for the Digital Future. “The reason most people drop off is they change jobs or their computer breaks.”
However, more than half the former users have no intention of returning online -- the most ever. Overall, 60 percent of nonusers have no plans to go online within the next year.
Cole said the numbers raise the prospect of a permanent subclass of nonusers. “Internet penetration has largely plateaued,” he said.
Elderly Are Least Connected
Americans 66 years old and over remain the most disconnected, with only 38 percent online. For all other age groups, at least 74 percent are online, with penetration hitting 99 percent for those 18 and under, likely because most U.S. schools now have some form of publicly-usable Internet access.
On average, users spend 14 hours a week online, compared with 9.4 hours in 2000.
Thirty-seven percent of home Internet users still have dial-up accounts, compared with 26 percent for high-speed cable modems and 24 percent for DSL. Eleven percent of Internet users go online through mobile devices - not necessarily exclusively - averaging two hours a week.
Internet vs. Television
The study revealed little change in the effect on television. Thirty-six percent of home Internet users say they have spent less time watching TV since they started using the Internet, roughly the same as the 33 percent who said that in a 2001 survey.
Cole said the increased use of high-speed connections has a lot to do with that.
When people were on dial-up, they were accessing the Internet 20 or 30 minutes at a time - “generally time not spent watching television,” Cole said. “Broadband changed all that. They are on 30, 40, 50 times a day for two or three minutes at a time. It’s not a big bucket of time displacing television.”
People may be paying less attention to television commercials, though, fitting in online use during program breaks, he said.
That said, 41 percent of veteran users - those online for more than nine years - say they have spent less time watching television, compared with only 23 percent among those who have joined the Internet within the year.
The study found nearly a quarter of online users - especially newcomers to the Internet - say they spend less time reading.
The telephone survey of 2,269 U.S. households was conducted in English and Spanish from February to April and included follow-up interviews with respondents to previous USC studies.
The study has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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