How an older PC can affect your business:

• Lack of security
• Slower productivity
• Cost of maintenance
• Newer applications are unavailable
• Enhanced support (remote problem, for example) is unavailable

Modern PC’s offers many innovative and useful tools, as well as a growth in productivity, which even price conscious businesses can benefit from.  Be one step ahead of other companies and replace all computers 3 years, or older, today.

The PCI Security Standards Council’s mission is to enhance payment account data security by driving education and awareness of the PCI Security Standards. The organization was founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc.”

The PCI Security Standards Council developed PCI DSS as a comprehensive set of requirements for enhancing payment account data security, and was developed in part by the major credit cards to help create consistent data security measures on a global scale. The sets of standards include requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other security measures.

Click here for the twelves steps to implementing and maintaining PCI DSS compliant.

At Akins Consulting, we can help take the technical headache out of these 12 steps so that you can get back to doing what you do best: selling your products and services and providing quality customer service.

Here are 10 tips for using network technology to help your business work more efficiently, cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.

* Give employees secure, consistent access to information. You have an advantage over larger competitors because you can react quickly to business changes. But you can quickly lose this edge if your company network is frequently down, sluggish, or unsecured. A secure, reliable network based on intelligent routers and switches lets your employees access the information and tools they need to keep ahead of competitors.
* Deliver anytime, anywhere access to employees on the go. To stay productive on the move, your employees need to be able to reach the people and information they need—anywhere, anytime. With tools like virtual private networks (VPNs), your employees can work outside the office and still enjoy safe access to the business network.
* Create effective business processes with partners. Some large companies make efficient, secure business processes a prerequisite for doing business with them. To meet the business needs of your partners, you need a secure, reliable network.
* Make it easy to work together. Smooth collaboration between employees, partners, suppliers, and customers is a sure-fire way to boost efficiency while also reducing costs. An intelligent network lets your business take advantage of interactive calendaring, videoconferencing, unified communications, and other technologies for easy collaboration.
* Enable employees to take their phone systems wherever they go. Missed calls create project delays, wasted opportunities, and lost revenues. With a networked voice and data solution, your employees can have one phone number that rings simultaneously on multiple devices, so customers reach the right person the first time. Your staff can access all their communications from anywhere, checking for e-mail, voicemail, and faxes from just one inbox.
* Streamline customer communications. Delivering fast, knowledgeable service is the best way to keep customers satisfied. Linking your network phone system to a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is a great way to enhance customer communications. When a customer calls, a pop-up window with their records appears on an employee’s IP phone screen, computer screen, or both.
* Reduce unproductive travel time. All too often, time spent on the road is time lost. A networked phone solution that offers video calls and Web conferencing can help reduce the time and expense of traveling to offsite meetings and training sessions. Instead of spending time traveling, you can use the time to get work done with technology.
* Employ a managed service provider. Is managing a network the best use of your employees’ time? In some situations, it is advantageous to hire a managed service provider for network administration. Working with a managed service provider can free your IT staff to focus on other IT tasks and use their time more effectively.
* Improve employee satisfaction. Aging phone systems and slow networks can frustrate your employees and annoy your customers. In some cases, an employee might become burned out and decide to move on. To help ensure that employees are productive and satisfied, your business needs a secure, reliable, and fast network.
* Develop a long-term technology plan. The process of replacing obsolete hardware can interrupt your employees and bring the office to a standstill. You can minimize such disruptions by carefully determining short- and long-term business objectives and working with your network vendor to deploy technology that matches them.

Solutions from Cisco

Cisco and Cisco Certified Partners, value-added resellers (VARs), and managed service providers offer a variety of solutions tailored specifically to the needs of businesses like yours:

* Intelligent routers and switches, for a secure, reliable network foundation
* Voice and conferencing, for merging voice, video, and data into one phone system
* Security for small and medium-sized businesses, to safeguard against network threats and give employees highly secure network access from home
* Wireless mobility solutions, enabling workers to stay connected while on the go
* Advanced applications, such as Cisco Unified CallConnectors, linking your networked phone system to CRM solutions

Cisco and its partners work closely with you to identify business goals and map them to specific solutions. And Cisco Capital offers flexible leasing and financing options designed for your needs.

© 1992-2010 Cisco Systems Inc. All rights reserved.

If you’re a Southern California business owner, then you’ll want to attend! You’ll learn how to overcome technical obstacles and threats to your business, focus more on your business, and have greater peace of mind.

You will also hear stories from other small and medium-sized businesses that have incorporated solid, reliable technology into their winning business strategies-easily, affordably, and successfully.

Business owners in Orange County, California that take the time to attend and will learn how to:
- Provide more personal customer care to build loyalty
- Gain confidence that your computer systems will run properly and securely
- Help ensure that employees are connected from multiple locations and can work quickly in real time

Many other Orange County, California business owners are expected to come-by, so you’ll have the opportunity to network with peers from companies like yours! Cisco will also be available to share their improved financing programs-designed specifically for small to medium-sized businesses.

For more information, please visit Cisco Technology’s website at http://bit.ly/8ELho9.

1. Its fast.

Booting up to Windows is faster. Waking up from hybernation is faster. With a laptop, I often hybernate my system instead of shutting it off so I can get right back to the documents or sites that I was previously working on. One thing I did not like about XP or Vista was how long it would take to resume from hybernation. With Windows 7, it is very fast. It only takes a few seconds!

2. It works.

Although there have already been lots of reports about people having problems upgrading from XP or Vista, a fresh installation of Windows 7 was very easy. Would I upgrade a system to Windows 7? It depends. If the system was due for a reinstall of Windows, then I would check that drivers for Windows 7 were available and go for it. If my system was working great with lots of installed applications that I use for business, I would wait till I purchased a new system.

3. Windows XP Mode

Windows XP Mode is actually Windows XP sp3 running on Windows Virtual PC but even better. How is it better? Say there’s an application that doesn’t work on Windows 7, for example Cisco VPN client or some older Accounting software. Fire up Windows XP mode, install the app, and voila, your application is now installed on the start menu of your Windows 7! It takes a few seconds longer to launch the application but it works.

4. Its a Snap.

You can use Snap to arrange and resize windows on the desktop with a simple mouse movement. Using Snap, you can quickly align windows at the side of the desktop, expand them vertically to the entire height of the screen, or maximize them to completely fill the desktop. Snap can be especially helpful when comparing two documents, copying or moving files between two windows, maximizing the window you’re currently working on, or expanding long documents so they’re easier to read and require less scrolling. You have to see it in action to appreciate it.

5. Its Supported

All of the drivers for my laptop were compatible with Windows 7. ALL OF THEM.

6. Its Stable

I’ve been running Windows 7 on my laptop for about 2 months. One of the advantages of being a Microsoft Gold Partner is we get the latest software prior to it being released to the public. I haven’t had one blue screen of death (BSOD), you know the dreaded blue screen with a bunch of characters explaining an error and saying you need to contact your system administrator. Not one!

7. Its easy to go to open documents

With Windows 7, you can just drag your mouse over any of the icons on the bottom task bar and you see a small preview of the document or web pages. When you then drag the mouse over the small preview, the document or page is quickly, and I mean quickly, displayed across your screen. This is very handy when you have 10 web pages open and need to go back and forth between them.