Atlantech Online is continuing to set the standard for quality fiber connectivity and service for businesses in Montgomery County, MD and the greater Washington DC metro area. Atlantech recently expanded its coverage by installing and lighting fiber that can be used for business Internet and telephone service at the Shady Grove Development Park (SGDP). The SGDP consists of the addresses 15819-15887 Gaither Drive and 9246-9298 Gaither Road in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) has become the most popular approach to business telephone service for business in the United States. Phone service is the fastest growing part of our business and in almost all engagements with customers, VoIP is what they are choosing. 

36% of businesses have made the switch to cloud phones, according to a recent survey. That means though many have switched, many more customers remain to migrate from analog or PRI phone systems to a VoIP-based system. 

Internet-based phone technology is now 20 years old. In fact, the first time Atlantech Online offered VoIP service to a customer was way back in 2002! That's over 15 years ago! Though progress was slow at first, it is now common knowledge that VoIP offers more potential benefits to businesses than ever before. Topping the list of benefits is cost savings, but in more and more cases, I see customers switching because of the greater flexibility in meeting the needs of their mobile and remote workforce.

One of my biggest pet peeves is paying someone a fee for something that really doesn't add any value to a product or service that I'm purchasing. One of the clearest examples of this is a relatively new cottage industry that has recently started up in the telecom community. It is the building riser management company. I understand why landlords are seeking help for managing the risers in their building. But, the exorbitant fees that are frequently associated with building riser management does not meet the needs of the tenants, resulting in extra, unnecessary expense and friction in provisioning telecom services. If you're considering moving into a location which uses building riser management services, make sure you consider the cost.

Riser management companies generally have a monopoly on a building’s infrastructure. New tenants can pay ten times more to connect to the internet in a commercial space which uses a riser management provider. Many commercial tenants pay these exorbitant fees since they aren't aware they have any other options to connect the new office space to Internet or phone service.

But, you do have other options.

The frenzy to wire buildings during the Gold Rush of the Dot Com era, resulted in many commercial office buildings having conduit full of cabling and telco rooms full of equipment that couldn't actually be used. The roll call of dead telecom carriers left this graveyard of gear as a symbol of their excess spending. As a result, riser management companies offered a seemingly attractive arrangement for commercial real estate landlords to untangle the mess. But, I think these managed service agreements, are just another example of landlords falling victim to sometimes unseen risks and unanticipated costs.

As a commercial landlord, your top priority is maintaining a safe, productive space for your business tenants. A poorly maintained cabling infrastructure can create the risks of physical hazards, such as fires, and threaten the constant data connectivity your clients need. It makes sense to maintain clean cabling and modern hardware in your building’s telecom risers.

However, giving a riser management company a monopoly on this service can hurt your tenants or even cause high-quality prospective tenants to lease from a competitor.

There are a lot of ways to evaluate the top community colleges in Washington, D.C. to find the right fit. Academic programs, location, scholarship opportunities, and culture can all play a role in the selection process. However, technology is an essential part of the college experience you probably never considered.

An investment in technology indicates a growing school with a solid financial footing. Every career in the modern workforce involves using technology in some fasjion, so college students need technical training to become well-rounded career candidates. Community college technology can enhance the student experience by providing a platform for communicating with professors, students, and online learning.

Does your business need to be proactive to prevent a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack? Would you leave your store or home unlocked? Would you leave your work laptop open and unattended if you left the premises to go retrieve something from your car? Why do I keep asking these blatantly softball questions?

All kidding aside, recent Akamai analysis of the DDoS threat landscape revealed that this type of attack is up 16% in the past year alone. When you drill down into how criminal actors are evolving, the stats get grim. Attacks against applications have increased by 38% in the last year.

The February 2018 “GitHub” attack was the largest DDoS attack on record—more than twice the size of the Mirai Dyn attack which took down Amazon, Netflix, and other major websites in October 2016.

New forms of DDoS are cropping up all the time, including the previously unused “Memcached” technique used in the GitHub attack.

Phone systems are a big investment with a long-term impact for small businesses. If you get the wrong system, you could have problems. If you go cheap, you could suffer additional expenses when you try to scale for growth. If you go expensive, you could pay for a lot of bells and whistles you don't need, which would put a strain on your budget.

Some of the features that you'll typically get with small business phone systems are:

Modern businesses are hungry for bandwidth.

IP traffic is increasing exponentially as organizations are required to support an increased number of:

• Cloud-Based Applications
• Collaboration and Conferencing Tools
• Browsing and Streaming Demands
• File Transfer, Storage, and Backup Requirements
• Mobile and Internet of Things Devices

These expanding bandwidth requirements translate to more complex and costly network administration needs. When coupled with increased cybersecurity threats such as DDoS attacks, organizations are in need of simple and secure ways to administer high-performing networks.

A survey of small business security professionals revealed that distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks cost an average of $50,000 for mitigation, reduced employee productivity, and lost revenue.

If your organization has the problem of 50 grand laying around and can't find anything to do with it, just sit back and wait. Hackers will help you out with that issue.

How common are DDoS attacks? According to one research team’s estimate, one is launched every 23 seconds. And that interval is shrinking. As a 20+ year old ISP, Atlantech Online has been on the front lines of network security issues and worked diligently to reducing risk for us and our customers. This has become even more crucial since becoming a Telephone company, as well, in 2005. 

Lower cost is one of the most common reasons businesses switch to a Cloud Private Branch Exchange (PBX) phone system. Cloud-based business phones can be significantly less expensive than PRI Lines or other on-premises deployments. However, there are many other benefits of cloud communication tools besides lower cost.

According to the CompTIA 2018 Cloud Computing Trends Research survey, the top business benefits of cloud adoption include:

• Simplicity and speed in adopting new features
• The ability to add new capabilities
• Modernizing legacy IT environments
• Avoidance of software upgrades and licensing fees

These benefits can all facilitate business agility, which is a competitive advantage. With a Cloud PBX phone system, organizations can achieve flexible scalability. Unlike with traditional PBX systems, new features can be added immediately without having to purchase equipment or pay licensing fees. A single Cloud PBX phone system can expand from 150 users to 300 without having to add new features.