Business Continuity Made Easy!
Continued from August 2006

Company Review (see June 2006)
Step 1 - Communication Continuity (see June 2006)
Step 2 - Data Continuity (see July 2006)
Step 3 - Process Continuity (see August 2006)
Step 4 - Workforce Continuity

Step 4 Workforce Continuity
In extreme conditions such as terrorist threat, fire/smoke, chemical hazards or other situations that negate the use of the primary facility, having communication continuity, process continuity and data continuity allows your employees the flexibility to work from alternate locations.  Many will be able to telecommute productively by utilizing their laptop or home computer.  Once you have created an environment which removes the ties to the main office for all of your communication, applications and data, your employees are able to work with complete mobility. 

Key employees such as executives, managers, and functional work groups may need to be in the same physical setting to collaborate.  Likewise, employees without laptops may need workspace and hardware to effectively perform their job roles.  In these instances, it is necessary to provide an alternate workspace during both temporary and long-term business interruptions.  The alternate workspace will allow critical business processes to remain functional while disaster recovery actions are being performed.

While alternate workspace is usually only used during true business interruptions, having an alternate workspace has been effectively utilized by companies to provide employees a place to work during seasonal business spikes that warrant the use of temporary employees and office construction/redesign.

Scott Riedel
Product Marketing Manager

Edge Business Continuity Center Grand Opening

September 26
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Reception 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
1435 Northridge Circle NE, Altoona, IA

Join LightEdge Solutions and our partners on Tuesday, September 26th for the Grand Opening celebration of this one-of-a-kind building. This $12 million facility has been built to answer to the growing business continuity and disaster recovery needs of businesses in Iowa and surrounding states. The center will provide many risk mitigation services through 10,000 square feet of data center space and over 300 disaster recovery workstations.

RSVP for the Grand Opening:
Click to send RSVP

Registration is required. Please RSVP by September 8th. Register early; late registrants may be moved to another session if the main session becomes full. Additional information will be e-mailed to registered attendees prior to the event.

Grand Opening Activities Include:

Featured Presenter
Skip Williams, a national Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery consultant with Binomial Group, will discuss the topic of Risk Management - emphasizing Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning for the small to medium sized business.

Design and Specifications of the Facility
Travis Thompson, VP of Operations for the EdgeBCC, will explain the background of the building, including: why the location was selected, how the building was designed, what kind of redundancies are in place and what risk mitigation services will be available through the EdgeBCC.

Complete Facility Tour
Travis Thompson will provide small group tours through the facility to show the details of the Network Operation Center (NOC), Disaster Recovery Workspace and the 2 independent data centers.

See the Microsoft Mobile Technology Truck
The people at Microsoft have been generous enough to loan us one of their traveling technology trucks for the event. Attendees can walk through the truck and have hands-on demonstrations of new Microsoft technology and discuss practical applications with members of Microsoft.

Reception, Entertainment and Networking
Mingle and network with other business owners and IT managers as we celebrate the Grand Opening. Use this time to discuss business continuity strategies to learn what other companies are doing to minimize risk.

Learn more about the Edge Business Continuity Center:
http://www.edgebcc.com

Read the Press Release:
Business Continuity Center Nears Completion

EdgeBCC in the News:
Clients buy disaster backup - Des Moines Register - September 1, 2006
A purpose-driven building - Business Record - January 3, 2006

VoIP Feature of the Month

LightEdge Toolbar
Many current Hosted PBX customers are familiar with the "CommPilot Call Manager" which is used to manage incoming and initiate outgoing calls, as well as the "Personal Web Portal" used for adjusting personal feature configurations. While these web based applications are effective and very functional, some users have requested a more streamlined way to access phone functionality and make changes to feature settings.

With our last Broadsoft platform update, we have released the LightEdge Toolbar. This condenses most of the necessary functionality from the "CommPilot Call Manager" and the "Personal Web Portal" into a simple toolbar that can be accessed from within Microsoft Outlook or Internet Explorer.

Search functions on the toolbar return all matching listings from both the LightEdge Group Directory and the users’ contact entries in Outlook.  Of course one-click dialing is still an option for initiating calls.  Phone numbers on web pages can be highlighted and dialed via toolbar functionality.  Incoming calls create a small pop up graphic on the lower right portion of the user's desktop with an option to send the call directly to voice mail. 

The LightEdge Toolbar is an optional add-on feature that can be obtained by emailing: phone-support@lightedge.com. 

Using the LightEdge Toolbar

Buttons on the toolbar from left to right:

• Login button - this button can be used to manually login, although most users can auto-login
• Preference Settings - high level account configuration settings
• Feature Configuration - accesses similar information to the Personal Web Portal to allow users to quickly configure the phone to their feature preferences
• Remote Office - toggles the Remote Office feature off and on based on the alternate phone number entered in the Feature Configuration area
• CommPilot Express Setting - your personal status, In Office, Busy, etc.
• Call Forward Always - toggles Call Forward Always functionality
• Call Forward No Answer - toggles Call Forward No Answer functionality
• Call Forward Busy - toggles Call Forward Busy functionality
• Speed Dial 8/100 List - displays the speed dial numbers in the user's personal list
• Call History List - displays Missed, Received and Dialed calls
• Personal Phone List - displays the user's Personal Directory
• Group Phone List - displays the company's Group Directory
• Search Bar - displays contacts from directories based on search criteria
• Links to popular sites - allows instant access to common sites such as Google, Yahoo, or CNN

The second line of the toolbar provides call control for answering/initiating calls

• Answer - answer a call
• Hold - place a call on hold
• Voice Mail - forward an incoming call directly to voicemail
• Transfer - transfer a call to another extension
• Conference - create a 3-way conference
• End - end a call
• List of active calls - display active calls

Catching the Next Wave: Software as a Service
Where is your software? How did it get there? The most likely answer to these questions is that you bought the software and installed it on your PC. Which means two things: it is only accessible from one computer and that the software had to be purchased.

Just as the name suggests, Software as a Service allows users to obtain access to software without buying it outright. The SaaS model allows them to utilize the software in a method similar to a utility - on a monthly use fee. Which means a few things for software users:

• License cost is not paid upfront, it is bundled into the hosting fee and charged as a monthly service charge
• No additional hardware is required - the application is hosted through a service provider (such as LightEdge) who provides, maintains and upgrades the technical infrastructure
• Anytime/Anywhere availability of the software
• SaaS offers nearly limitless scalability
• Implementation is generally much faster than an on-premises based installation

LightEdge is currently working with several vendors to provide the infrastructure necessary for their companies to offer a fully on-demand service and is aggressively working with other partners to establish their SaaS program. To learn more about our SaaS model and how we can work with you or your software vendor, please contact Mark Fuqua at 913-901-5315.

SaaS Partners
Perceptive Software, Inc.

ImageNow Document Management, Imaging and Workflow Software Offers Remote Hosted and Software as a Service Options

LightEdge customers looking for the bottom-line benefits of document management, imaging and workflow solutions should check out ImageNow by Perceptive Software.

ImageNow creates a direct and effortless connection between business workers and the documents they need to complete their daily activities. ImageNow lets users efficiently capture and organize virtually any document type, then retrieve a precise page with a single click from within any business application at the moment it’s needed.

Perceptive Software creates document management software that is cost-effective without sacrificing functionality. The key is patented integration that weaves ImageNow tightly into any business software application, regardless of manufacturer or platform, without need for a single line of code. Every ImageNow installation offers customers the security, speed and anytime, anywhere access to documents that are critical in today’s competitive global business environment.

From large, multi-site corporations to small businesses and everyone in between, 1,500 organizations worldwide use ImageNow to reclaim time, money and their sanity at the department level and organization-wide. The Perceptive Software philosophy is to educate users early on, equipping them with the right mix of tools and support to help them solve their business problems and achieve quick ROI.

The Perceptive Software Hosted Solutions program offers customers a hands-free way to deploy ImageNow. Remote hosted or subscription-based Software as a Service options let you free-up or reallocate your IT resources, including budget expenditures. But more importantly, you benefit from the ultimate security of the remote-hosted, state-of-the-art SAS-70 compliant LightEdge data center you’ve come to trust.

For more information and to see how organizations like yours have benefited from ImageNow, visit www.imagenow.com/hostme or call Cindy Reynolds at 913/941-7460.  

SaaS News
LightEdge Selected as Application Hosting Provider for On-Demand Software
NetSimplicity, developer of a national meeting room software has selected LightEdge Solutions as the application host for its On-Demand service. NetSimplicity believes that this will allow the software developer to sell their service to companies that could not otherwise afford the infrastructure build-out.

Read More

Managing Business Risk Lunch and Learn Series
Practical Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Activities
What can your company do to minimize potential risks that could impact your business without draining your budget? This session describes practical and effective activities that can drastically reduce your business risk, yet also increase workforce productivity on a daily basis.

Communication Continuity
How can you keep communications operational despite a business interruption?

Data Continuity
How can you protect mission critical data and make it available at all times?

Process Continuity
How can you allow anytime/anywhere access to critical business applications?

Workforce Continuity
How can you ensure that employees can work and collaborate effectively when the primary facility is unavailable?

Sign up now for the Lunch and Learn in September

For more information on Lunch and Learn topics, locations and dates, refer to the LightEdge Events Page or contact your Territory Account Manager.

Events

Quality Assurance

The Quality Assurance department continues to proactively analyze our procedures and suggest ways that each department can better service our clients. QA members have been actively interviewing new clients to ensure their satisfaction through the implementation process. This information is being compiled across many clients to determine what problems exist so we may address any issue in our procedures or training.

Knowledge is power. We can only affect positive change if we are aware of the issues that you face. Please address quality issues or send feedback regarding perceived procedural issues to qualityassurance@lightedge.com. In addition to any issues, please feel free to let us know your positive experiences so that we may share them with our staff.

The QA department is also looking into ways that we can improve our customer experience by better understanding and controlling our vender relationships as well as looking at our internal processes related to monitoring, reporting, analyzing and resolving issues.