RESULTS held our 4th annual RITA Client Conference Luncheon on April 9. We provided updates on the growth of the RITA family to 64 customers with over 1100 users; presentations were given on our network assessment process and daily operations with our Core Values in mind and utilizing B.O.B. Guest speakers J.R. Reilly and Kathy Gustafson shared valuable information on the importance of cyber liability insurance. Click here to download the Cyber Claims Study white paper.

A recent study by Symantec Corp. reveals that cyber espionage attacks on small businesses rose 300% in 2012 from 2011, Silicon Republic reported. Companies with fewer than 250 employees fell victims to 31% of such cyber-attacks in 2012. Cyber-criminals will continue to formulate new ways to steal information from businesses of all sizes, Stephen Trilling, chief technology officer of Symantec, said.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/32301-cyberespionage-attacks-on/

Please contact us if you would like more information on how RESULTS can help alleviate this threat.

Meet RESULTS’ First Quarter RITA Award Recipient: Ian Kearney. Selected from a list of six nominations, Ian has continually taken on work that is above the service desk levels and into our engineering levels for our customers. His consistent “stepping up” to help fix issues and work with others is an example of the RESULTS core values, and he is always willing to do what needs to be done. Ian continually goes above and beyond his responsibilities and comfort levels in order to deliver the best possible solution improving the individual experience to RESULTS’ most critical customer, the end user. Ian started working at RESULTS when he was 18, and he recently completed his Associates in Computer Science from Metropolitan Community College. He lives in south Kansas City and enjoys watching films and supporting Sporting KC.

Please send us your nominations for the Second Quarter!

 

Lenexa, KS, March 5, 2013– RESULTS Technology, Inc. has landed on Nine Lives Media’s sixth-annual MSPmentor 501 Global Edition, a distinguished list and report identifying the world’s top 501 managed service providers (MSPs). This year’s report has been expanded extensively to include:

• New: MSPmentor 501 Global Edition
• New: MSPmentor 100 Small Business Edition (top MSPs with 10 or fewer employees)
• MSPmentor 200 North America Edition
• MSPmentor 50 EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Edition
• MSPmentor 25 AANZ (Asia, Australia, New Zealand) Edition
• New: In-depth data tracking mobile device management (MDM), managed cloud services and other recurring revenue opportunities for MSPs.

“RESULTS is honored to be included in the list. This is a reflection of our commitment to our clients, employees and core values” said Patrick Murphy, Vice President, RESULTS Technology, Inc. “RESULTS is committed to providing worry free managed services. IT’s who we are.”

The MSPmentor 501 report is based on data from MSPmentor’s global online survey conducted October-December 2012. The MSPmentor 501 report recognizes top managed service providers based on a range of metrics, including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed.

“MSPmentor congratulates RESULTS on this honor,” said Amy Katz, president of Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media. “Qualifying for our MSPmentor 501 Global Edition puts RESULTS in rare company.”

MSPs on this year’s global 501 list lifted their combined annual recurring revenues 24.5 percent to $2.54 billion. Together, those MSPs now manage more than 5.6 million PCs and servers, and nearly 400,000 smartphones and tablets, according to Joe Panettieri, editorial director, Nine Lives Media.

MSPmentor, produced by Nine Lives Media, is the ultimate guide to managed services. MSPmentor features the industry’s top-ranked blog, research, Channel Expert Hour Webcasts and FastChat videos. It is the number one online media destination for managed service providers in the world.

About RESULTS
RESULTS Technology provides world-class IT Support to companies that want to launch their businesses to a higher level of performance and achievement. We are dedicated to helping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) achieve their long-term goals through the best application and management of information technology. RESULTS Information Technology Administration (RITA™) is the family of Managed Services that provides our clients with the peace of mind that their network and the invaluable data it holds are properly maintained and secure.

Contact:
RESULTS Technology, Inc
Patrick Murphy, Vice President
913-928-8300 or pmurphy@resultstechnology.com

About Nine Lives Media
Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media, defines emerging IT media markets and disrupts established IT media markets. The company’s IT channel-centric online communities include MSPmentor, The VAR Guy and Talkin’ Cloud.

Contact:
Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media
Joe Panettieri, Editorial Director
212-204-4206 or joe.panettieri@penton.com

Facebook, beloved by many, is an ever-changing and evolving entity. One of the latest updates is the introduction of Graph Search, which makes it easier for users to find each other based on their likes, photos, comments, etc. Before this new feature is turned on, it would be beneficial to you to perform a profile audit.

There are three main parts to this audit, which will ensure that your personal profile is ready for Graph Search. Bear in mind that this is for your personal account, not your business Facebook Page. This audit is ideal if you would like a more professional looking profile.

Step 1. Check who can search for you The whole idea of Facebook is to be social, however you may not want to be found by every man and his dog on this platform. You can check who can search for your profile by:

1. Clicking the Lock icon in the top-right hand side of the screen.
2. Selecting Who can contact me?
3. Looking at Who can send me friend requests? By default it is set to Everyone, but you can change this by pressing the downward facing blue arrow.
4. Looking at Whose messages do I want filtered into my inbox?

Step 2. Check your Activity Log The Activity Log is essentially a journal for Facebook. It covers everything you have done on Facebook, and provides you with a quick way to edit your profile. You can access it by:

1. Clicking on the Lock icon in the top-right hand side of the screen.
2. Selecting Who can see my stuff?
3. Click on Use Activity Log.

Depending on how active you are on Facebook, it could take a bit of time to look through your activities. If you see something you don't like, or would like to change, press the pencil at the right-hand side of the activity. This will allow you to edit the post, remove it from your timeline or delete it. Note, that if you remove it from your timeline, the information won't be deleted.

If you press the Lock icon you can change who can see the post/activity on your timeline too. It would be a good idea to look through your whole timeline and ensure that any unprofessional comments, links, likes, etc. are either deleted or removed from your timeline. It wouldn't be a good idea to make your profile completely private however, so ensure some posts - maybe ones related to your business, hobbies, interests, etc. - are still visible.

Step 3. Check who can see future posts Facebook has included an option that allows you to set who can see future posts on your timeline. This will lessen the need for a future account audit. You can set this by:

1. Clicking on the Lock icon in the top-right hand side of the screen.
2. Selecting Who can see my stuff?
3. Pressing the downward facing blue arrow under Who can see my future posts? and setting it to the desired level of security.

In order to ensure your profile is optimized for Graph Search, carrying out this audit would be a great idea. As we stated above, you don't have to make everything private, after all, this is a social network. Just make sure that anything that is unbecoming of the professional you are is removed or hidden from prying eyes. If you would like a little help ensuring both you and your business are ready for the next big Facebook feature, contact us today.

There are numerous tech buzzwords that surface each year, one of the more common in the past couple of years is virtualization. Being able to take physical systems and replace with a cheaper, often more efficient, virtual version, is something many businesses appreciate. Up to this point, most solutions have focused on desktops and servers. We predict that the next gadget to virtualize will be the smartphone.

Traditional smartphones are individual packages. The operating system and user are physically tied to the device. If you think about it, there are really only a few phones out there, and millions of people probably have the exact same one that you do. They differentiate their phones from others by the pictures, apps, videos, etc. stored on the device and the way they have personalized their phones.

Should you lose your phone, that data is likely lost, and you are faced with a potentially high cost to replace it. The two major operating system developers - Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) - have started to implement virtual backup solutions. Your contacts, apps and some personalization settings are backed up to the cloud and connected with a user account. When you enter the account information, you can quickly get the most important information from your phone back.

Combine this with the various cloud storage services that allow users to store their information, pictures, etc., with access from nearly any device. This integration with the cloud has enabled users to rely less on physical devices, and points to a potential virtualization concept: Non-dedicated devices.

The idea of non-dedicated devices is that you can use any device, regardless of manufacturer or OS, to access a system you can call your own. Imagine if your phone runs out of batteries. You borrow a friend's, log in using your username and password and that device instantly becomes personalized to you.

Could this work? There are currently three identifiable virtualization trends that point to non-dedicated mobile devices becoming  a reality:

1. Increasing adoption of cloud services by mobile uses - Many mobile users have cloud storage apps installed on their devices and store some form of mobile related information or data on it. What's more, these apps are cross-platform meaning you can access them on iPhone, Android, Mac or Windows.
2. Heavy personalization of mobile devices - OS developers have started to store more information in the cloud. Google, for example, can store your contacts and basic personalization choices - e.g., wallpaper and apps, pictures, and even your calendar, in the cloud. Make changes on your mobile and you will see these on your computer too.
3. Ability to access whole work systems from a mobile device - There are apps for both Android and Apple devices that allow users to access and control their desktops and work systems directly from phone or tablet. This has decreased the need for users to be chained to their desk just to be able to do work.

It wouldn't be hard for an enterprising company to develop a system that integrates these three, already existing functions into a device. The only major stumbling block we can see is that current OS developers don't necessarily get along all that well. We predict that this virtualization will become a possibility on individual systems (Android and iOS), in the near future, but across systems may take longer.

We'd like to know what you think of non-dedicated devices. Would you use one? Are there any other problems you can foresee? Let us know today.

A new report suggests that 2013 may be the year of the great electronic medical records (EMR) vendor switch given that many EMRS are falling short of providers' expectations.

To come to that conclusion, Black Book Rankings polled roughly 17,000 active EMR adopters - and found that as many as 17 percent may switch out their first-choice EHR by the end of the year.

The reason: In light of Stage 2, provider demands are increasing, and EMR users are reporting that many EMRs aren’t living up to expectations. In fact, those polled cited numerous cases of software firms underperforming badly enough to lead them to lose market share.

As a result, 31 percent of survey respondents indicated they were "dissatisfied enough" with their EMR to consider switching. Of those users, the reasons cited for the potential switch were as follows: The EMR did not meet the practice’s needs (80 percent); the practice had not adequately assessed its needs before choosing the EMR (79 percent); the EMR design did not fit the medical specialty (77 percent); and the EMR vendor was unresponsive to requests (44 percent).

Eighty percent of U.S. doctors believe virtual assistants would drastically change how they use electronic medical records (EMRs) within five years, thereby freeing time for them to spend with patients.

That information came from a survey conducted by Nuance Communications, a speech recognition company that has brought virtual assistants to consumers.

According to the survey, one in every three doctors spends 30 percent or more each day on administrative activities - and these activities could be eliminated or redirected using voice-enabled virtual assistants.

Also according to the survey, 73 percent of physicians believe virtual assistants would improve health care by helping them coordinate care between multiple caregivers, and 65 percent believe virtual assistants would allow them to provide more accurate, timely information to support care.

In particular, physicians surveyed seemed interested in intelligent and voice-driven, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) - a technology that uses sophisticated reasoning patterns beyond speech for ordering medications, laboratory tests and radiology exams.

Many businesses need help managing their IT-related vendors and RESULTS is in a unique position to deliver that service effectively and efficiently.

In the traditional IT model, the corporate IT department (and perhaps other departments) managed many providers, including:

• IT services company, such as a Managed Services Provider (MSP)
• Internet provider
• Domain host
• Website developer
• Security (network, website)
• Cloud applications (SaaS)
• Copier vendor
• Telephone provider
• Teleconferencing/Videoconferencing provider(s)

In this old model, the MSP (RESULTS) was one of many vendors, and you acted as the central hub between all of them. But the old model isn’t working anymore. The IT world is experiencing a great deal of convergence. For example, telephone providers are pushing hard to internet access and teleconferencing. Website developers also offer apps. Businesses are adopting more services and solutions from the Cloud and, as they do, the number of vendors for you to manage is growing exponentially.

RESULTS will analyze your vendor performance and manage your renewals. We will help introduce better vendors to you as current contracts and agreements expire. We provide services specific to your business simply by better use of the vendor tools you invest in.

Working with RESULTS for vendor management empowers you by saving your time and money, ensuring you the best providers of goods and services. You can react more quickly and efficiently when dealing with just RESULTS, making outcomes more predictable and easier to control. Finally, you may find vendors are more responsive when your MSP (RESULTS) manages more than one of their clients’ accounts – there’s strength in numbers!

“RESULTS is unique in that they do what they say they will do. When issues arise, RESULTS responds timely and addresses them.” MM, Mount Carmel Living

“Our IT is completely managed by RESULTS, and we are hands off without any need for in-house support.” JW, Grimes Consulting

“RESULTS folks do what they say they will do. They have honesty and integrity.” DJ, Kupferle

“RESULTS always has been willing to customize for us and I don’t see that from other providers. If we had to equate what RESULTS does for us to a salary, that would be one expensive person!” DJ, MannaPro

“The responsiveness and willingness to tackle projects in a systematic, well planned process makes RESULTS unique.” JH, TravelPlex

“RESULTS Services are unique to me. I benefit from their local presence and value added offerings like backing up data via virtual server.” TM, ProShred

“The RESULTS staff worked with one of our employees for remote access due to the severe weather, enabling her to log in. That’s service and I really appreciate it.” TG, CommCare

A SSAE 16 audit is a process in which an independent accounting firm assesses the internal controls of a service organization and issues both a service auditor’s report and an opinion based on the assessment. Service auditor reports are referred to as SSAE 16 reports because they are defined by Statement on Standards of Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). After June 15, 2011, SSAE 16 became the new standard for reporting on controls at service organizations, essentially replacing Statement on Auditing Standards no. 70, simply known as SAS 70.

The SSAE 16 audit report provides our customers in-depth information regarding the controls and procedures we have in place that affect the managed services they are receiving. This transparency assures our customers and their auditors that RESULTS provides confidential, secure and quality managed services.

RESULTS will provide a copy of our SSAE 16 report to our customers, and to prospective customers upon signing of a nondisclosure agreement (NDA).