Suffolk Computer Consultants, Inc. Blog

Gmail is a popular option for businesses seeking to use email, one of the business world’s most popular solutions, seeing as it has a 33.7 percent market share. Many of these businesses may have found that they spend more time using Gmail than they would prefer. Fortunately, if this time is spent repeatedly writing the same message, there is a solution: Gmail templates.

In the 1980s, there was a cartoon by the name of G.I. Joe, based on action figures manufactured by toy giant Hasbro. Due to the popularity of this cartoon, they set out time each week to do a brief PSA aimed to educate kids about the dangers of certain actions. The tagline, “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.” became entrenched in the lexicon. Now, over thirty years later, kids that grew up on G.I. Joe are business owners and have come to understand just how poignant that message is. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways businesses can expand their knowledge base and use it to improve their operations using IT.

Spreadsheet-generation software is one of those tools that effectively offers all businesses some level of utility. Having said that, different business circumstances may lead to one title being a better option for your operations. Let’s compare Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets to see which one may work better for you, based on selected features and processes.

Google is actively working to improve the working experience for their G Suite customers by continuing to innovate on their many products and services. This includes revamping Gmail to create a more integrated communication platform for businesses to take advantage of. Let’s take a few moments and examine what the upgraded Gmail will offer.

Did you know that over 80 percent, eight-zero, of cyberattacks are the result of stolen access credentials? It’s no wonder that the username/password combination that we’re all used to is being actively phased out by many tech companies—including Microsoft—in favor of more secure, passwordless authentication measures.

You may have heard the term “business analytics” thrown around before. This growing field can offer businesses of all sizes some substantial operational benefits in the form of optimized performance and improved decision making. Let’s review what business analytics are, and how you can embrace them to your advantage with technology.

Microsoft has been a major player in the productivity space for decades. Their Microsoft Office platform was one of their first (and one of their most successful) products. Recently, the software giant rebranded their cloud-based Office 365 platform to Microsoft 365. Today, we’ll tell you what that means for consumers. 

It is an unfortunate truth that not much can be said about the current pandemic that’s “positive.” Frankly, it’s hard to be positive, let alone laugh, despite how important it is that we are and do. We wanted to help fix that, so we’re sharing a few benefits of the situation we’re currently experiencing to take some well-earned comfort in.

So, as the boss, you’re concerned about your employees wasting time, especially on the Internet. However, you can’t exactly keep them off the Internet, as that’s where their work is done. With distractions like social media, streaming, and literally everything else out there to draw their attention away, how can you hope to compete?

Email is one of the most common communication tools used by businesses, but not all options are as good as others. For this week’s tip, we’re recommending that you embrace hosted email in your own operations. Here’s why.

Your business depends quite a bit on its wireless connectivity, which means that your choice of router is an important consideration. Let’s review some of the key points that you need to remember as you select the router that best fits your needs.

What would you think if I told you that you could break your smartphone by setting the wrong picture as its background? Well, you had better start thinking it, as a photograph has been discovered that has precisely that effect when it is set as the wallpaper. Let’s unwrap this admittedly crazy story to get a better handle on the situation.

Voice over Internet Protocol has been one of the most dynamically growing products in all of information technology. Today, over 30 percent of businesses are using VoIP, and that number is growing fast. VoIP presents some extraordinary benefits for businesses that do business internationally. Today, we’ll take a look at VoIP’s trends and how it can be an effective investment for your company.

The small business has been really hit hard recently.  With around one-sixth of the workforce working online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have been doing some hand wringing about their future IT investments. Do you keep your computing resource onsite or do you look to the cloud to fill in? Today, we will take a look at this very question.

For the small business owner, this has to go down as one of the most challenging periods in recent memory. Many of the more fortunate businesses have shifted their operations remotely as stay-at-home orders were in place with varying degrees of success. Regardless of where your business is in relation to normal, you’ll always be looking for solutions that will both reduce costs and bring more dynamic functionality to your business. One such solution is hosted VoIP.

The influence of COVID-19 has permeated through most aspects of daily life, from the way we live, communicate, work, and for many, the way we learn. As schools must remain closed for now, that is not to say that the learning process will necessarily be suspended for all. Many institutions already have the necessary tools in place to continue their students’ education in the form of remote learning, but for many, this is uncharted territory.

The typical business network will contain quite a few critical assets that need to be protected, which means that you need to seriously consider anything you add to that network. Take the wireless network that your business uses--how secure is it, and how well does it work? Well, we have a few ways that you can ensure that the answer to both these questions is “well.”

A global pandemic is about one of the worst situations that humans can endure. It has an effect on every person. The CDC is recommending that everyone practice what is called ‘social distancing.’ The unfortunate result of this policy is that many businesses lose access to their onsite workforce. Provided that you are set up to allow your staff to work remotely, you can avoid losing huge swaths of productivity. Today we will discuss some of the considerations and the technology you will need to make this strategy work for you.

Virtual reality was once the “next big thing.” As predictions for VR were made over the decades, it showed great promise to be a truly ground changing technology for businesses to adopt, especially for remote work. So… what happened? 

Big data, or massive data sets that can be used to make inferences and reveal patterns, has become an increasingly important part of modern business and can be leveraged in many different ways. There are a few different options for storing this data available, which the use case for the data will dictate. Here, we’ll evaluate whether a “data lake” or a “data warehouse” would better suit your needs.