Working from home to avoid the snow

Let's face it. February was no picnic. The extreme cold and windblown snowstorms left most people with one thought - "I don't want to go outside". Luckily there are days when I don't have to. With a laptop and a connection to the Internet I am usually more productive at home in a cozy pair of baggy sweat pants than I am at the office.

While my laptop boots up I grab some coffee and then VPN into the company network. I open Outlook and use the LightEdge hosted Voice-over-IP toolbar to enable Remote Office mode on my phone. Instead of ringing at my desk and reminding everyone in the vicinity that I'm at home, all of my calls are rerouted to either my home phone or my cell phone. Any outbound call that I make is initiated through the LightEdge toolbar - so no matter what phone I use the caller ID shows as my office phone. If I can't manage to grab my cell phone by the 4th ring, well then my voice messages show up as a WAV file in my e-mail's In-box.

As soon as I log onto the network, I get a crisis Instant Message from my boss through Microsoft Communicator. Communicator is a secure Instant Message tool which integrates with Exchange and my phone to let people know my status. I'm listed as Online unless I have an appointment scheduled in Exchange or am currently on a call. The message I get explains that I need to make an update on one of the sales rate cards.

So, I log into our sales SharePoint portal which organizes all of our pricing information, contract documents and marketing collateral. I make the appropriate changes to the rate card and then check it in to the site. Now everyone can see the changes, but if anyone is interested in what changes have been made they can quickly pull up the previous version or review the revision notes.

As the administrator for Microsoft CRM, our sales and marketing contact manager, I quickly pull up the application and review the sales opportunities that are expected to close this month. I run a few reports to make sure that all the sales channels are tracking with the appropriate numbers.

As the day winds down, I jump on a conference call for a department status update. Because it was scheduled in Microsoft Exchange, everyone gets a reminder and joins the call on time. We take turns describing our in-progress activities, and when it comes to my turn I invite everyone to a Web Share session to show the new design proposal for the EdgeBCC website. With a little constructive feedback, we leave the call and I call it a day...

...connected, productive and warm because I didn't leave the house.

Scott Riedel
Product Marketing Manager

LightEdge News

Other News

Kansas City Chemical Plant Explosion Disrupts Power:
No LightEdge Services Affected
On Wednesday, February 7th, an explosion at the ChemCentral plant in Kansas City occurred 2.5 miles away from the Bryant Building which houses equipment terminating LightEdge services for the Kansas City market. Many businesses in the area lost power for a short time including the Bryant Building. Several short interruptions in power were handled effectively by the UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) connected to the equipment in case of power failure.

LightEdge staff was on site at the time of the explosion and monitored the equipment to ensure that no LightEdge clients were affected by additional power interruptions caused by subsequent explosions.

>>Read the story

Best City for a Data Center Information Week recently ranked the best and worst cities for Data Centers, based on labor, land, power and risks associated with both natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The Midwest scored highest with Ames and Des Moines, IA falling in the top 5. The research by The Boyd Company, centered on the annual operating costs of a 125,000 square-foot data center manned by 75. The results indicate that the Midwest is gaining national attention due to its low costs associated with construction, professional labor and power. In addition, the Midwest is not a high-risk target for terrorist threats and is associated with localized natural disaster threats which can be easily overcome through proper design and construction. >>Read the story

The Best Cities for Data Centers       Annual Operating Costs       1. Sioux Falls, SD $9.7 million 2. San Antonio, TX $10.3 million 3. Ames, IA $10.4 million 4. Tulsa, OK $10.5 million 5. Des Moines, IA $10.5 million 6. Omaha, NE $10.5 million 7. Colorado Springs, CO $10.7 million 8. Albuquerque, NM $10.8 million 9. Denton, TX $10.9 million 10. Champaign, IL $11.1 million Data: The Boyd Co.

Still Keeping your Server in the Closet?
OK, it's not uncommon. You start your business with a few servers and then over time you add more, until you have a closet that is cramped and inundated with aging technology. Suddenly one day you realize that all of your critical process are being run out of a 5' x 5' room with little ventilation and few if any redundancies. Compare the server environment that you are using now with a professionally managed data center environment to see what a difference a data center environment can make.

Data Center Solutions

Collocated Servers (Rack Space and Cage Space)
Place your equipment in a dedicated or shared rack within the facility or a dimensional cage space depending on your company's needs. Your company's IT staff will still retain full control of the equipment but your company will receive the benefit of a Fortune 100 environment and the business continuity associated with the EdgeBCC.

Dedicated Servers
Rather than buying your servers, you can utilize our rack server or IBM BladeServer environment to increase cash flow by transitioning your IT from capital expense to monthly operational expenses.

For more information on Server Hosting for your business,
contact your Territory Account Manager, 877-771-3343

Converge your Phone and Internet to lower costs
Are your employees constantly bumping their heads on Internet bandwidth? Many of our customers are taking advantage or our Converged Access telephony to cost-effectively increase their company's bandwidth for Internet and also drastically reduce the amount spent for monthly phone service.

A converged access package includes a single T1 or multiple T1 lines which carry all of your company's Internet and all of the company's e-mail. By consolidating voice and internet traffic through a single connection, not only receive more bandwidth for your business but are also able to benefit from reduced telco lines and bulk-rate long distance.

The LightEdge Converged Access Trunk is completely flexible to your growing voice needs. It can be used as a permanent voice solution, or be part of a "cap and grow" transition to full Hosted PBX VoIP. The "cap and grow" model allows companies to grow over the capacities of their existing PBX without additional capital expense or gradually migrate users as the PBX reaches it's end of life.

• Reduces or eliminates telco lines
• Completely transparent migration
• Does not require new phones or retraining
• Eliminates long distance charges between affiliated "on-net" sites
• Long-term transition to fully hosted PBX
• Carrier-grade reliability and support
• Quality of Service (QoS) measures in place to distinguish and prioritize voice traffic to ensure call quality

For more information on Converged Access for your business,
contact your Territory Account Manager, 877-771-3343

Daylight Saving Time Starts March 11th
On March 11th, for the first time since 1987, the schedule for daylight saving time will change. Based on a new federal bill designed to save energy, this initiative has the potential to disrupt businesses that are not prepared for the earlier switch to DST. We're not talking about planes falling out of the sky or the stock market crashing as was predicted with Y2K, but there could be annoying and possibly disrupting consequences if everyone's clock is off by an hour.

LightEdge Solutions has been aware of this situation and has prepared accordingly by working closely with our vendor partners to apply the appropriate patches on our hosted platform, network components and our VoIP platform.

Our VoIP platform provider has addressed the DST changed through a series of patches that will be installed by our voice engineering staff in advance of the time change. LightEdge has also prepared a configuration change that will be pushed out to all phones to ensure that the DST changes are accepted. This will require you to reboot your phones to receive the change. A notification will be sent to all VoIP customers when these configurations have been installed and the phones can be rebooted for the change.

Summary

• Dedicated and Collocated Servers
  • You are responsible for patching the operating system for the servers that your business is using. Refer to the operating system manufacturer's website for the necessary steps to prepare for DST.
  • Dedicated Outlook Customers will need to install the appropriate Outlook patches in addition to the operating system patches.
• VoIP Phone Customers
  • After receiving a notification from LightEdge Solutions regarding the configuration changes you will need to reboot every IP phone on your network.
• Office PC's
  • If you are on Vista, XP (SP2) and are using Outlook 2007 - you are in good shape. Vista and Outlook 2007 natively have the DST fix. XP (SP2) should have received the update in mid-February through the "automatic update" feature. If you have turned off the automatic update, go to update.microsoft.com.
  • Windows 2000 and NT users - use the update tool provided by Microsoft. (see links below)
  • Millennium, 98 and 95 users - sorry folks, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Go to Control Panel, then to the Time/Date settings. Deselect the automatic changed for daylight savings time and then change the time appropriately.
  • Mac OS X Tiger was patched in a February 2006 update, but OS X Panther may be patched here.

Helpful Links

• Preparing for Daylight Savings Time changes in 2007 - Microsoft
• Daylight Savings Time Help and Support Center - Microsoft

Low Tech Ideas

• Print your Outlook calendar
• Consider appointments between March 11th and April 1 as suspicious. If something doesn't look right, confirm the appointment with the other party to ensure that you arrive promptly.

Notifications

Internet Express Clients
As of March 1st, all traffic to www.netexpress.net will automatically be routed to www.lightedge.com to consolidate our web sites. Valuable information from the support area of the Internet Express website has been either moved or linked to the LightEdge website to allow you to continue to use the functionality or review the FAQ's and documentation.

To access the information, click IE Support or select Internet Express Support Page from the Support dropdown at the top of the LightEdge website.

Getting to know MyLightEdge
Looking for information regarding your LightEdge services? Just beneath the logo on the main page of our website is the login for MyLightEdge, our 24x7x365 online support portal. Through your MyLightEdge portal you can quickly view and submit trouble tickets, access PDF help files, add and remove administrative accounts, change passwords, view and track usage and call up graphs and statistical information about your LightEdge services.

If you haven't been in MyLightEdge for a while, it's worth the time to take a look at the reporting details that are available to you. If you are the administrator for your company and you've never been in MyLightEdge, contact our support department to get access and take a look at what you've been missing.

Example of a Collocated Hosting Report

Example of a WAN Network Latency Report

Example of adding a new Mail Account