Network Monitoring & Support in the EMV, SaaS, & VOIP Age
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Digital security, including inside network (LAN), internet/ISP connections (WAN), and cloud storage/access are becoming more and more a critical piece of even the smallest businesses. I was our in-house IT person for over 10 years, but recently have started recruiting support. My time has become more and more devoted to HR management, something not as easy to outsource. I’ve enlisted both local help for infrastructure upgrades and emergency response when I am away, as well as remote support & monitoring. Remote support & monitoring has become very accessible and affordable to most everyone. If you’ve been through some critical device failures or outages, you know the faster you are notified, the faster it can be resolved. Taking that one step further, companies like Acumera (www.acumera.com), can dispatch out a pre-designated support tech or if it’s an ISP outage, reach out to AT&T, Comcast, or your local ISP carrier notifying them immediately of the issue. They typically have better contacts at the large companies as they deal with them on a national level often with many accounts. This translates into faster problem resolutions than when we calling the standard support line and battle the phone tree.
EMV will also be upping the demand on our processing bandwidth needs. Dial-up is no longer recommended as a viable backup, let alone as a primary connection for credit and debit card processing. Acumera recommends at least a 3G cellular connection for backup failover. You may think you pay too much for your primary connection and wince at the thought of a second ISP bill, but you need to review your dependency on that pipe to the outside world. We already connect to our back office, SSCS’s Sunray ASP (www.sscsinc.com), via remote desktop. This is often referred to as Software as a Service (Saas), and when our internet connection is down, so is our ability to post daily books, push prices and pull reports. However, we have found the benefits of remotely hosted software, those being offsite backup and upgrades handled without a worry from us, greatly outweigh the occasional connectivity problem.
My next winter project (hopefully we get a winter in California this year...), is to roll out a VOIP phone system. This change, basically converts our voice calls from old copper lines to routing over our internet connection. This is what most medium to larger size companies are evolving to. Our current digital PBX system is over 15 years old and we’ve found we are outgrowing it. Currently, I am working on replacing some of our less "hardened" switches and router equipment with more enterprise grade, which have come down greatly in cost the last 5 years. One hosted solution we are looking at is from Jive (www.jive.com). Hosted VOIP solutions are nice as they only require you to have the VOIP phones and a gateway (small router) at the site. While you typically will pay more over time, again less support is needed and management is handled in the cloud. Settings/configurations are backed up constantly and upgrades are rolled out without the headache of bringing a tech onsite and incurring downtime.
Circling back around to network monitoring, solutions such as Acumera’s AcuVigil Dashboard, can constantly "tap" your network devices (ATM’s, Back Office PC’s, VOIP phones, etc.) and alert you when those devices go offline. Often, you will be notified before the site’s staff has noticed the issue or you can request that Acumera’s Network Operations Center (NOC) contact the site first to troubleshoot. Sometimes it’s just a simple reboot or accidental disconnection.
We are becoming a more and more wired world and just as you find your electrical and plumbing must keep up with business demands, so must your connectivity. Now, if only we could get an e-mail alert immediately when a pipe bursts, circuit trips or toilet clogs...
Article Provided By:
Chris Bambury
CIOMA & POC Board Member
