Zinc Blog

The small business has been really hit hard recently.  With around one-sixth of the workforce working online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have been doing some hand wringing about their future IT investments. Do you keep your computing resource onsite or do you look to the cloud to fill in? Today, we will take a look at this very question.

Cloud computing has seen momentous growth over the past decade, but despite this, many business decision makers have been resistant to the change. However, with stay-at-home orders now keeping employees at home for months at a time, the cloud is swiftly becoming the best option to fulfill many of their needs. Let’s review how businesses can use the cloud to present solutions to solve potential problems. 

A global pandemic is about one of the worst situations that humans can endure. It has an effect on every person. The CDC is recommending that everyone practice what is called ‘social distancing.’ The unfortunate result of this policy is that many businesses lose access to their onsite workforce. Provided that you are set up to allow your staff to work remotely, you can avoid losing huge swaths of productivity. Today we will discuss some of the considerations and the technology you will need to make this strategy work for you.

Virtual reality was once the “next big thing.” As predictions for VR were made over the decades, it showed great promise to be a truly ground changing technology for businesses to adopt, especially for remote work. So… what happened? 

Whether your motives are financial, or you are actively trying to be more environmentally conscious in your business, there are plenty of ways to encourage ‘green’ behaviors in the workplace. We’ve taken the liberty of assembling a few of them for your consideration:

Big data, or massive data sets that can be used to make inferences and reveal patterns, has become an increasingly important part of modern business and can be leveraged in many different ways. There are a few different options for storing this data available, which the use case for the data will dictate. Here, we’ll evaluate whether a “data lake” or a “data warehouse” would better suit your needs.

When you have a problem with your computer and you reach out for help, the first thing you will probably be asked is, “have you turned it off and turned it back on?” This is not because the technician is lazy, it is because a lot of problems can be fixed by rebooting your computer. Do you need to shut down or simply restart your computer? It might surprise you that turning your computer off and restarting it actually accomplishes different things. Today, we’ll discuss the difference. 

Held from Sunday, January 5 to Friday, January 10, 2020, this year’s Consumer Electronics Show took place in Las Vegas, Nevada. This event is an annual opportunity for startups and major companies alike to showcase their newest consumer-focused products. However, this year’s show has many security experts expressing sincere and legitimate concerns.

Most companies lean pretty heavily on their technology. They typically invest in tried-and-true technology solutions to cover their operational problems, while trying to find innovative tools that return higher yields on their investments. For 2020, there are a few trends most SMBs are going to want to take head on. They include:

There has been a lot made about business network security over the past couple of years. One variable you often hear about is the danger that businesses face from the prevalence of employee-downloaded software on their network. This is what we call Shadow IT, and it can be a real problem. Conversely, under the right circumstances it can be a clear benefit too. Today, we’ll take a look at Shadow IT.

Virtual assistants are everywhere. Either a device can be controlled with them, or it has the assistant built into it natively, and they are now common in the home and the office alike. In fact, their daily use in the workplace has been predicted by Gartner to reach 25 percent by 2021.

As the holiday season we just survived shows us, new technology can be a really popular topic, especially for consumers. Businesses, on the other hand, have a lot of their excitement tempered by how much of a risk new tech presents - something could just as easily be a game-changer for their operations as it could prove to be a major source of problems that ultimately creates huge issues.

The Internet has made it possible to purchase goods and services so easily that we need new people to blame when we don’t have those purchases in hand in less than 72 hours. The speed in which shipping is capable nowadays is the result of superior logistics. If your business is beginning to utilize ecommerce, or if it has trouble with the costs associated with the distribution of your goods, a fleet management system could be the solution to your problems. 

Many business owners like to crunch the numbers in order to fully understand where their hard-earned money is going. Essential business communication tools are just one of the things that are under your expense's category. However, phone service is dwindling across the globe, much in part due to the benefits associated with VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. 

It wasn’t too long ago that in order for business technology to be fixed, or to undergo general maintenance, it either needed to be brought to a specialist’s location or for the specialist to come to yours. Nowadays, this isn’t so much the case. As we continue our blog series on the benefits offered by a managed service provider, let’s consider the support options available.

I’m sure you’re familiar with those neat images that can look like multiple things at once - there’s the one with two faces that is somehow also a vase, the rabbit that is also a duck, and many other examples. Sometimes, our technology can seem to be the same way - take IT security and IT compliance. While these two considerations are definitely related, as they both contribute to risk mitigation, they are not the same thing.

In today's technology dependent world, smartphones play a critical role. How much do you really know about these devices? Sure, the devices haven’t changed a whole lot in the past decade, but what has changed? Today, we take a look at how smartphone batteries have evolved, and what we will see in the future. 

Not all that long ago, green technologies were known as such for two reasons: yes, they were beneficial to the environment, but they also came at great expense to the businesses leveraging them. This has recently changed. Now, businesses are seeing plenty of reasons to go green, from increased customer appreciation for conservation efforts and, yes, even cost savings.

When searching for value within blockchain, you do not have to look hard nor far. Blockchain’s incorruptibility encourages other potential uses in the tech community. Today we will take a look into what blockchain technology is as well as other ways we can utilize this technology. 

Information, and the transmission of it, has advanced by vast amounts since our ancestors first carved shapes into cave walls to record their hunts. Nowadays, information can be shared much more efficiently, thanks to a technology known as RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification. Here, we’ll discuss this technology and its common business-friendly uses.