Advantages to Outsourcing Business Class Email

This past weekend my business partners and I went away on our annual corporate retreat to discuss our existing business model and to evaluate each of our products and services.  We each agreed that our most popular solution is one that we don’t spend a lot of time promoting, our premium email solution. There are several advantages to businesses that chose to outsource their email to us, in this post I plan to cover a few of these bullet points.

I am also including a presentation that I put together regarding our solution, click on the play button below to start the presentation.  If you would like to learn more about business class email solutions, please feel free to drop me a note and I will be glad to schedule a time w/ you to discuss your needs in more detail

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These are just a few of the high points from my presentation:
  • You Get Our Team of Experts - When you turn to a hosted solution, it’s as though you suddenly have an entire staff of experts working for you—serving as an extension of your IT department and allowing your in-house team to focus on the other critical aspects of your infrastructure.
  • Our Cutting Edge Technology - Since hosted solutions, like ours, focus on their specific area of expertise, we can stay on top of the latest advances in their industry. We also have the resources to implement and maintain a variety of technologies.
  • Reliable Access - We guarantee 100% satisfaction. If you’re not satisfied, we’re not satisfied. This is why we won’t force you into long-term contracts. If we fail you, we’ll give you your money back and help you take your business elsewhere.
  • No Setup or Maintenance Concerns - When you turn to a hosted solution like ours, you immediately have a fully equipped, top-of-the-line system that will be continually updated and maintained. This saves you thousands of dollars in server hardware, software, upgrades, and the expertise to run it all.
  • Reduced Costs - You can take these system deployment and maintenance expenses out of the budget. You will always benefit from the latest in hardware and software technology, managed by experienced engineers, with no additional costs and no unexpected fees.
  • Scalability - When your company grows, your infrastructure must also grow even faster. Since hosting providers, like Pleth, have extensive hardware and software resources, we can scale smoothly and easily. Cloud hosting, in particular, is especially designed for scalability—since you use only the infrastructure resources you need.
  • Scalability: Cloud Computing Advantage - We’re always ready for your growth. Thanks to the elastic nature of cloud computing, we can automatically add hardware and adjust settings from the cloud so that you don’t miss a beat—and you only pay for what you need, and nothing you don’t.
  • Automatic Backups & Data Recovery – As Hosting Providers we know that you have entrusted us with your invaluable data—so we design their systems to protect that data. We have the resources to implement exhaustive backup and data recovery systems. We back up your data every night, in multiple geographic locations, in our top-tier data centers. And if a user accidentally deletes an email or email folder, you can restore it easily through our control panel at no cost—even up to 14 days after the data was deleted.
  • Storage & Transmission Security - Businesses can spend thousands of dollars to protect their data—or they can save thousands by turning to a hosted system like ours. We integrate extensive security measures to protect your data from physical threats—such as theft, overheating, power outages, and fire—as well as technical threats from hackers or prying eyes. Our data centers are designed to protect your data from all physical and technical threats. And to secure your data during its journey through cyberspace, our system uses DoD standards-based protocols, as well as extended SSL encryption, and we meet all PCI DSS data security requirements for information security.
  • Automatic Software Upgrades - When you choose hosted apps like ours, you don’t need to worry about downloading and installing software upgrades or security patches. Your system will always be up-to-date. We stay on top of upgrades and security patches around the clock, so you’ll always be using the latest versions of all system software. And we partner with leaders in the security industry, to give you the strongest level of protection available.
  • Data Access - With hosted apps like ours, you benefit from having a wide range of data access options. This flexibility helps your employees to be more productive, compared to employees who are limited to using only a specific computer or specific software. Location is no longer an issue. You can access and manage data from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device. And your data transmissions are secured, to avoid any possibility of data leakage.
  • Federal Regulations & Compliance – We stay on top of the regulations so you don’t have to. We provide the storage, compliance, and retrieval features needed for audits, legal requests, and other business needs. Our optional archiving service is designed to meet e-discovery, regulatory, and industry guidelines for data retention, and is ideal even for companies that need to adhere to the highest levels of compliance.

Palm Announces the Pre

This is probably the prettiest thing I have seen in a long time, besides my wife of course!  This is the new release from Palm that is due out sometime in 2009 from Palm.  They will have a GSM later but upon it’s release it will only be available for Sprint users.  I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on this thing!  Other big news from Palm at CES this year had to do w/ their new operating system.  Click on this link to learn more!

Staying in Touch w/ Business, Clients, etc…

Pleth, LLC | Web Site Design, Managed Hosting, Email Hosting, Email ServicesOne of the most important aspects to being in business, especially a service industry like I am is staying in touch with clients, whether it be their contact information, meetings, birthdays, account information, etc.  Recently I have had a couple of friends that are in business ask me how I manage my Calendar, Email, Contacts, Notes, etc., so I figured I would post an entry here for their benefit, hopefully it will help others as well. It has taken me a while to arrive at the solutions I use to stay in touch with my business and as you will see below it’s a process that’s evolving around my Pleth Premium Email Solutions Account and it’s seamless integration into other tools.. 

My Desktop Application

I am a Microsoft Outlook power-user, have been for a long time now, I guess since the 90′s.  I use Microsoft Outlook to read email, manage my calendar, contacts, meetings, tasks, notes, and journal.  I run Outlook from the desktop of my primary development machine and it stays open all day long as I interact with clients and work from my tasklist that I build each morning first thing from the messages in my inbox.  I do this routine each day religiously.  I know that there are critics out there that either don’t use Outlook or have another system in place that they rely on, and that’s fine w/ me as long as they have something that they are comfortable with and it helps them maximize their work day that’s fine with me, I do however recommend Outlook as an email client when asked by friends, clients, and family members.  I know it’s not cheap and doesn’t come bundled on a lot of the systems shipped today but for me it’s the best money spent.

When I am going to be out of the office…

If I know I am going to be out of the office for a daytrip I will usually carry my laptop with me and connect to my email via Gmail.  I have setup Gmail to download my Pleth Premium Email Account’s messages, (yes, Pleth Premium Email Solutions will even work with Gmail’s interface if you are interested, drop me a note and I can fill you in on this), this typically keeps me in the loop with client communications.  If I need to create a task or calendar entry I just key that info into my Treo Smartphone or I will login to my pleth premium email account interface and add it there.

My Mobile / Wireless Email Solution:

For my wireless solution I run Pleth Premium Email solutions on my Palm Treo using Cingular (AT&T).  I have it set to check for new messages every 2 minutes or so and it keeps me very attached to my clients no matter where I am at (with the exception of meetings, church, etc.).  When I return home from my trip I will simply synchronize my Treo with my Outlook and magically everything is up to date.  Rarely have I ever seen this process fail.

Emerging Technology in the Pleth Premium Email Interface:

I have been beta-testing some emerging technology that we are just about ready to roll out to our clients that does something very cool.  This technology runs on your primary desktop machine that runs your primary Microsoft Outlook installation that you typically work from.  What this software does is it works behind the scenes to synchronize your Calendar, Tasks and Notes with your Pleth Premium Email account’s web interface…  That’s right…

Let’s say I am on my way out of the office and I need to jump in and add a task to my workload in Outlook.  I simply add the task to outlook and jump in the car and head to my destination.  Upon arrival at my destination I simply log into my Pleth Premium Account interface and the task I just added before leaving is already in my tasklist.  It’s the coolest thing I have seen in a while and a feature that I know our clients are excited about having.

Stay tuned to my blog for news and information about this cool feature and it’s upcoming release as an add-on to your existing Pleth Premium Email Account.  For information on Wireless and Desktop Solutions running our Premium Email Solution, visit our website: Pleth | Plethware Desktop & Wireless Support Documentation

AT&T Treo 680 with Pleth Premium Email

Pleth, LLC | Web Site Design, Managed Hosting, Email Hosting, Email ServicesOne of the tragedies for me of this holiday season was the death of my Cingular 8525 Smartphone.  I absolutely loved that phone, I had it all, I was a pioneer in exploring the whole Mobi platform where I could view television from my phone wherever I was at.  I also had gotten pretty handy with the slide out keyboard that a lot of power users have struggled with, I was just content with my phone.  It started locking up on me for no reason about a month ago, I would just hit reset and move on.  Then about a week before Christmas it just started freaking out on me pretty bad, the Windows Mobile Operating System refused to work right, it had stopped syncing a while back as well, but in just operating the phone as a standalone it would lock up on me during phone calls and not allow me to hang up and the screen would go to bits sometimes to where it wouldn’t be reliable to use.  On my birthday (the 21st) I got up to use it and it just wouldn’t respond, we tried everything, os reloads, hard resetting the phone, etc. and it wasn’t working right. 

I went to my local Cingular Corporate Store and they helped me find a suitable replacement for it, a Blackberry, my partners Greg and Steve both use Blackberry’s and have been extremely happy with them so I thought, “what the heck”, I gave it a shot.  I brought it home and got pretty attached to it right away but had some issues with it syncing up with my Outlook (remember, I am a power Outlook user from way-back).  I kept looking at the price tag on this phone and realizing that I didn’t in my heart feel that I was getting my moneys worth out of it so I carried it back to Cingular and traded it in for a Treo 680 (I have owned Treo’s before and been very happy). 

I brought the Treo home and plugged it in and it immediately synced up with Outlook 2007 on Vista and over the holidays I enjoyed getting familiar with my Treo all over again.  I have to admit that I am a happy camper, still miss the 8525 a little bit but the Treo is far better for what I need it for and that’s business communications.  I was able to shoot out emails and text messages with no problem while out of the office.  I still have some customization stuff to do with it so that it’s 100% what I need but should be able to wrap that up this week while all of our clients are still shut down for the holidays and it’s quite around the office. 

One thing that I did notice right off the bat was how easy our email solution was to plug into the Treo, and how well it interacted.  The Pleth Email Solution is a premium email solution that we offer our clients for a small monthly fee.  I was able to setup my phone (not remembering our own settings off the top of my head) in under five minutes and was off and running.  Oh, and another really cool thing that Cingular does w/ the treo’s that I didn’t realize was that they automatically configure the outgoing mail server for your email client, all I had to do was configure our incoming server and it was off to the races.  Very happy camper here!

Palm Pushes Linux Smartphone to Next Year

Wow, this is news to me.  I am anxious to see how this will even look, much less what all it will allow you to do.  I have owned the Palm Treo phones that ran the Palm OS and the Windows OS and I must say that I think that is probably the best phone that I have ever owned. 

Link to Linux News: Business: Palm Pushes Linux Smartphone Release to Next Year