“Not today!” you exclaim as your email goes down right in the middle of sending your bid to a big developer. You see profits disappearing into cyberspace while productivity in the office grinds to a halt.

Fortunately, a call to your trusted IT support person, your nephew, will get the email fixed. You are lucky to have someone like that. Or, are you?

The profits and productivity lost from using a POP3 or IMAP4 email connection could be substantial when you add up the $75 per hour you pay your nephew and the opportunities and productivity lost to down time.

The better alternative to POP email is hosted Microsoft Exchange. The cost is minimal, $10-$12 per user, per month. It works great with Timberline Office and even better with Outlook. The combination of Outlook and Exchange lets you: 

• Securely access email remotely – via the Web or mobile device
• Manage and access your contact information anytime
• View and manage one calendar that is always synced from any computer or smartphone
• Share documents, your calendar and contacts with team members
• Relax knowing your data is secure, backed-up, and available with guaranteed uptime

Here’s what a growing design-build firm said about moving their email to hosted Exchange:

“The email is fabulous! I didn’t have any idea what we were giving up using our POP server, but the difference is night and day, especially when you’ve got smart phones.”

So, ask about moving your email to Exchange and your Timberline applications to TimberCloud. Then, say goodbye to email emergencies with their lost opportunities and productivity slowdowns. And, say goodbye to your nephew until the next family reunion. He’ll find a better job.

Do you have any concerns about hosted Exchange for email? Please share them with us.

For more information about this and other topics discussed in this forum please contact Kent Sorensen or visit Ledgerwood Associates online.

The boss is glaring at you, the controller, and says, “Cut the IT budget for next year or we’re out of business!” “How in the world am I going to cut IT costs and worse, tell the boss he needs new servers?” you say under your breath.

Don’t despair. There IS a way to reduce your IT budget AND avoid the costly server upgrade. It’s called “Hosting”, a variation of Cloud computing. Hosting is where you put your construction software and data offsite on another company’s servers and access it from anywhere you have an internet connection. Moving your software and data to the Cloud by hosting is like using other people’s money, only it’s other people’s servers.

With hosting, you get the benefits of new servers without the big investment and ongoing costs of server maintenance. You don’t change software. There is no costly conversion. There is nothing new to learn.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Reduced investment – Someone else buys the servers
• Reduced IT costs – All you pay is a low monthly fee
• Reduced Headaches – Someone else does the backups and fixes problems

Here’s what a local design-build company told me after moving their software and data to the Cloud.

“Putting our Timberline applications on the cloud saves us money and eliminates all of the usual IT problems… [and] the data security of the cloud means I can sleep at night.”

The construction company owner above once ran into a burning building to rescue his server. Now his software and data are housed in a secure data center.

Moving your applications and data to the Cloud with hosting can be done at any time. Just make sure it gets into the budget for next year. The benefits, lower IT costs and fewer headaches, make it a no-brainer. And, you can be a hero:

Budgeting Hero Checklist

• Do I need to upgrade my servers next year?
• Do I want to reduce my total IT costs?
• Do I want fewer IT headaches so I can focus more on what I do best?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, hosting can solve the boss’s budget crisis and make you a budgeting hero.

Click here for more information about Timberline Hosting, or call me, Kent Sorensen, at 480-423-8300.

I want to know what you think. What are some of your concerns about hosting?