Recent Blog Posts

Why Are More Things Being Automated? Much of the western economy is theoretically based on the idea of competition. To succeed, businesses have to do whatever it is that they do better than their competitors. Automation provides a business the ability to streamline operations and reduce their costs, mostly by cutting payroll. They do this by automating repetitive jobs and replacing the people who are doing these jobs with machines. The shocking part of this isn?t that businesses are doing what they are doing to get ahead, it’s that people don?t properly understand what a business is trying to do. No matter what politicians and business owners say, the purpose of any business is to turn a profit. Only by making money can the successful business consider giving back to their community. The answer to ?why are more things being automated?? is simple: efficiency and cost reduction. How Does Automation Help Business? Automating certain parts of a business can make a lot of difference. For example, a business needs to sell their product or service in order to take in revenue. Sales, as those who have worked in sales could tell you, is not a walk in the park. Traditionally, it has been long hours of gathering leads–making contact with these leads repeatedly to ascertain if they are actually a good fit to buy your products or services–getting turned away a lot–finally selling the product/service to a client–finalizing customer expectations/demands–starting workflow by filing work orders–following up on every sale to ensure every step of the process is being handled (billing, procurement/manufacturing, delivery, etc.)–following up with the customer to ascertain whether the product/service is working as expected and if they?d like to expand on their investment–starting the whole process over again. There is software created to streamline a lot of these processes for the sales professional, and many businesses of all types, utilize this software to do just that. Making it easier on a company?s sales team to provide good customer results only strengthens their ability to create sales. Automation makes this all possible, and it cuts out a lot of the costs. All the points of contact every sale would need without sales automation software would likely cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, not just thousands. That is cost savings and that is the primary reason businesses are looking to automation to enhance their operations. How Could Automation Be a Bad Thing for Workers? Before we answer that question the facts are that automation will create millions of new jobs. That is true. The problem that workers are running into, however, is that those millions of jobs are created in completely different fields than the ones being automated. Take truck drivers for example. There is a push by many in the tech industry to create self-driving trucks that will be able to significantly cut down on shipping company?s operational budgets. Once these trucks prove that they can work for long-haul shipping, companies won?t need to hire truck drivers and the tens of thousands of dollars they cost these companies each year. The jobs created by automating these jobs are in the development of applications for powerful new software needed to run, direct, and manage these fleets of driverless trucks. Not many long-haul truck drivers are proficient […]

Understanding IT Risks Your risk management is a very important balance to strike – not only will it allow you to prepare for potential issues preemptively, you can also take the opportunity to reconsider your plans if the impending risks are greater than you?re comfortable with. After all, if adopting a solution ultimately hurts your productivity or overall success, it can hardly be considered a solution, can it? This is precisely why risk management is a critical process for any business that plans to be successful. How to Successfully Manage Your IT Risks Like any business process, risk management has a few steps that should be followed in order for an optimal outcome to be attained. These steps can be summarized with the acronym PEARS: Predict, Evaluate, Arrange, React, and Scrutinize. Predict In order to properly prepare for one of your risks, you have to see it coming. Commit some time to consider which risks are the most probable, and at what point the associated issues are likely to arise. Evaluate Once you have narrowed down your risks to the most probable, you should estimate the impact each would have. Are they potentially cataclysmic, or would they result in minor annoyances? Arrange With these impacts in mind, you need to order your risks in order of their severity (and resultantly, their priority) so you can address the most important ones first.  At this point, you can devise a strategy to approach them, which we?ll review in more depth later. React At this point, you are prepared for your hypothetical risks to become reality. If they do, you need to stick to the plan you have made thus far. There are a few different ways that you can approach this: Avoidance – You could simply decide to take the steps necessary to avoid the risk, with little regard to the costs of doing so. While applying safeguards is often an effective way of avoiding a given risk, it is usually resource-intensive to rely on as your only method of risk management. Reduction – Similar to avoidance, this method entails the use of your resources to circumvent risk. However, instead of eliminating the risks entirely, this approach is geared more towards making risks more easily managed and less impactful. Transference – You may have the option to shift the risk to an area that can better handle it or finds it less risky. This might be another department in your business, or a solutions provider who is more experienced in handling such matters. Acceptance – This strategy relies on you to have the foresight to accept that risks are possible. The idea here is to not be caught by surprise when a risk materializes so that you can better handle it in the moment. Scrutinize After your particular risk has passed, you should evaluate how well your preparations did in reducing the resulting impacts. Were your mitigations effective, and how could they be improved for the next time? White Mountain IT Services Can Help with Your IT Risks As a managed service provider, we?ve had a lot of experience with IT risks and mitigating them. We can help you identify your risks and determine the best ways to address them. Combining the processes described above with our expertise, we?ll find the solution that suits your […]

OLED Foldable Screens OLED displays are a step up from your traditional light-emitting diode (LED) displays. LED technology puts off light when an electric current flows through it via a process called electroluminescence. As electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, energy is released as photons. The color of the light emitted varies depending on how photons cross the energy gap of the semiconductor. An OLED display operates in a somewhat different manner. The electroluminescent anode is made of an organic compound that is situated between two electrodes. As the electrons move and recombine, light is emitted through the organic layer. It?s already visible light, so there?s no need for a charge of targeted energy to create the backlight. OLED generally displays deeper black levels that help with image contrast, all while being produced much more thin and flexible than traditional OLED devices. The past five years have seen many manufacturers make great strides toward OLED displays. Some of them even use a passive matrix design (PMOLED) or an active matrix design (AMOLED). The difference between these two is that PMOLED has control over each line of pixels sequentially, rather than the transistor accessing pixel function directly like with an AMOLED display. Bendable Displays By default, the organic compounds in the OLED anode is able to be manipulated in pretty much any way, as long as the transistor used to carry the energy formed by the electric current is flexible as well. Once this had been determined, all the scientists had to do was find a substrate layer that can flex while keeping its integrity. This is the reason why glass can?t be used in flexible screens. More flexible OLED displays contain a flexible plastic substrate that provides both strength and flex required to be a foldable device. Foldable Options Motorola and Apple have already been rumored to have foldable smartphones available on the market in the near future, but others are seeking to take advantage of this trend. Here are some of the other options you might see this year: Samsung Galaxy Fold     On April 26, 2019, the Samsung Fold will become the first foldable smartphone to reach the US smartphone market. This device carries an antenna that can reach 5G speeds, as well as a foldable screen. The unfolded screen measures 7.3 inches with a dynamic AMOLED display. Folded up it reaches 4.6 inches with a super AMOLED display on the front of the phone. There is no word on how the software will integrate with the two displays, but the Galaxy Fold will feature a 64-bit, octa-core processor and 12 GB of RAM. With 512 GB of internal storage and a battery that clocks in at 4,380 mAh, the Galaxy Fold will be an impressive addition to the Smartphone market. Huawei Mate X     Chinese manufacturer Huawei will be taking an alternative approach to the foldable smartphone market with their Huawei Mate X. The foldable display isn?t protected; rather, it?s used. The display is measured 8 inches, but when it?s closed, the display is wrapped around the device. This provides some interesting functionality, particularly when taking pictures. There is a viewfinder that can help you take pictures, which completely eliminates the need for a front-faced lens. The specs for this device include a […]

Development The first version of Microsoft Word, like many pieces of Microsoft Windows, could be characterized as ?borrowed?. Bill Gates and the late Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, hired a pair of programmers that had previously developed Xerox Bravo, the first ever WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processor. The developers, Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie released the first version of Word in 1983 for Xenix and MS-DOS operating systems. They followed with several new versions over the next few years, none of which were overly popular. As Microsoft (and personal computing) grew in popularity, developers for other OS platforms began to build graphic user interfaces. Microsoft followed suit, releasing Microsoft Windows in November of 1985. After a few versions of Windows, Microsoft released the first GUI-run Word platform for Windows 3.0 in 1990. At the time, WordPerfect was the most popular word processing application on the market, but Corel (the developer of WordPerfect) didn?t produce a WordPerfect version for Windows 3.0. As a result, the 1991 version of Word, called WinWord 2.0, was a major success. Additionally, Word was developed for the rival Macintosh operating system. This proved to be advantageous as well. It was easily the second most utilized word processing program available for the Macintosh OS. This strategy led to more people using Word across multiple platforms than any other word processing program. Microsoft Office The Microsoft Office productivity suite is well regarded as the most dynamic productivity tool in modern computing. The first version of Microsoft Office was released in 1990. It consisted of the Word 1.1 word processor, the Microsoft Excel 2.0 spreadsheet program, and the Microsoft PowerPoint 2.0 presentation builder. At the time it was the most comprehensive enterprise productivity suite on the market for both PC and Mac. One of its main competitors, Microsoft Works was also a productivity suite with a word processor, spreadsheet program, and presentation software, but it was marketed to individuals at a reduced price. It was discontinued in 2007 when Microsoft started offering the Office suite at a lower price point. With Microsoft Office adding email capabilities in July of 1991, Microsoft Office became the go-to productivity suite for the business professional. Then came a new build of Windows, Windows 3.1, which was the industry-leading OS. By outpacing its competitors with their operating system, the Office platform was now entrenched as one of the main business software tools of the early 90s. Word Innovation As Microsoft continued to develop and release industry-leading software, Microsoft Word started to gain features. No longer was there interoperability between the Macintosh versions and the Windows versions of Word. When Windows 95 launched, so did Word 95. No longer available for Macintosh, Word 95 was the first Word product to be developed exclusively for Windows. Word 97, introduced late in 1996, added Clippit (known as Clippy), which was an assistant as well as several new features, including new toolbars that provided a streamlined experience. It was also part of the first Office suite that included product activation, which would become the standard way to license software for much of the next two decades. Word 2000 added HTML tools and the very first Internet-based collaboration features. Since there was a great deal of trepidation that software would have problems working […]

Technology for MeetingsOrganizations use meetings to discuss important events, developments, and operations, so it?s important to keep in mind that you can augment these meetings to improve their quality through the use of technology. Conferencing software, video chat, and other options can make your meetings more efficient and effective, providing benefit for your organization. You can even use interactive whiteboards and cloud-based solutions to allow employees in disparate locations to collaborate with one another. Software Integration with APIs (Application Programming Interfaces)Integration has grown to be a key part of the workplace, a trend that seems to be setting the tone for the future. APIs have given software solutions more opportunities to connect and integrate with new and existing solutions than ever. The future will surely provide even more opportunities for your organization to leverage APIs and integration to the best of your ability, and with so many businesses relying on an assortment of software solutions (like time management, conferencing, productivity suite, and others), you can bet that any and all integration between these software solutions will be key to their continued success. Connecting with an IntranetAll of your organization?s assets should be centralized in a single location so they are easy to find, expediting productivity and making things convenient on the user?s end. An intranet can be the solution to any organization?s decentralization issues. You can place any important files, accounts, applications, or solutions in one location for ease of access. Think of it like a portal to all of the important information your business has, ready for your employees to utilize. Take Advantage of Cloud-Based ServicesThe cloud is an incredibly important part of many companies? business models, and it?s easy to see why. With access to data and applications in the cloud being so accessible, organizations can give their employees the option to free themselves from the desk, opening up opportunities to get work done out of the office. As long as the user has the right devices and permissions, productivity is not limited to the workplace. White Mountain IT Services has its fingers on the pulse of the latest innovations in modern office tech. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.