Flexnet Networks LLC Blog

Are you ready for some football... technology? When you think about NFL technology, you probably think that their budget and innovative capabilities is way out of your league. Surprisingly, some of the most important parts of the game rely on technology that many of us use every day.

Today most companies utilize computers in the dissemination of their services. Whether you run an office that deploys dozens of computers and multiple servers, a busy restaurant with a full-scale point of sale system, or a contractor that only needs one computer with invoicing software, you depend on your data. Since most businesses also provide goods and services for many people that indirectly depend on it, having a plan to protect the business from potential devastation is important.

Traditional telephone lines were once extremely important for your business’s success. You had to have dedicated phone lines in your office running to each and every desk so that each of your employees had access to a phone when they needed it. Nowadays, however, virtual telephone systems have become popular with businesses of all size. How does this new way of handling your business’s communications hold up compared to the more traditional model?

Your business relies on mission-critical hardware that keeps its infrastructure running, including servers, workstations, and networking components. However, these pieces of technology require maintenance in order to function properly, and replacement every so often to keep the risk of downtime and hardware failure to a minimum. Thankfully, modern managed IT services have yielded a solution to this issue that can make managing your hardware infrastructure as easy as possible: Hardware as a Service.

Consumers can now take full advantage of a data backup system that’s both affordable and convenient, allowing them to keep their data as safe as can be in the event of a disaster. While it might not be ideal for business purposes, the average PC user can surely benefit from Google Drive’s new backup system, which takes advantage of the Backup and Sync application.

Have you ever gotten the feeling that your mobile device’s screen is just too small to be used effectively, despite the fact that smartphone screens are bigger than ever before? Well, there is a way to mirror your phone’s screen to a larger screen, like your PC monitor. Here’s how you can do this with your Android device.

Authority. Knowing what your business does well, and using that knowledge, experience, and expertise to increase your company’s position within the market is more crucial for the small business today than ever before. This is because, from a competitive standpoint, the small or midsize business is not able to sport the kind of prices that larger firms can, and still make a profit. One way an organization can utilize this talent to increase the visibility of their offering is by using webinars.

Telephone solutions have long been a part of the business environment, but it’s not always a simple process to implement, as no two organizations are the same. How many users do you have? How many telephone units do you need? How many wires will you need to run through your office? These questions, and more, make it much more appealing to consider a digital voice telephony system for your business’s needs.

Everyone knows that everything in the break room fridge needs to be replaced after a certain amount of time, but that’s not all that’s at your business that needs regular updates. The solutions you use every day will also need maintenance, for quite a few reasons.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous detectives in fiction, but without his dear Dr. Watson, he would have been stumped on occasion. There’s a good reason why IBM named its super-intelligent computer, Watson, after the famous character. True to its namesake, Watson is now being used to safeguard 40 organizations from cyber security threats.

Occasionally, some Samsung smartphone users might see something strange appear at the top of their device’s screen--an eyeball. It will show up for a brief second and then disappear. What gives Samsung? Are you spying on me? For this blog, we’ll get to the bottom of this, as well as go over the symptoms of a device that is compromised.

Are you ready to share the road with self-driving cars? According to a recent survey by the University of Michigan, 37.2 percent of drivers are “very concerned” about riding in a self-driving car, while 66.6 percent are “very or moderately concerned.” Simply put, the public isn’t quite ready for self-driving cars. Although, the gradual adoption of vehicles equipped with assisted-driving technology is already happening.

Fans of Google’s Android OS have some tough choices to make when selecting a smartphone, seeing as the software runs on so many devices of varying quality and price points. For the purposes of this review, we will take a look at and compare two current flagship devices: Google’s Pixel and Samsung’s Galaxy s7.

Every business owner needs to have a plan in place to backup their company’s data. Ignoring this basic task can lead to some pretty grim consequences, like a data-loss causing disaster. Fortunately, when it comes to backing up your data, you’ve got options.

Encryption has become a very important part of maintaining an acceptable standard of security while browsing the web and storing data. Large enterprises and organizations have been using encryption for a long time, and even the average consumer uses encryption each and every time an online purchase is made. Did you know that the protection afforded users by encryption is made possible thanks to security certificates?

Here are four of the best smartphone accessories out there, including ways to get more battery life out of your device, ways to communicate more effectively, and other portable conveniences.

If we asked you to count the number of mobile devices in your workplace, would you be able to do so? This includes smartphones, laptops, tablets, and others--anything that’s not a workstation or hardware tied down to your location. While mobile devices can be beneficial for any business, it’s still important to keep security at the top of your mind. Here are three topics that you need to be sure you’ve considered before allowing mobile devices in the workplace.

Since 2014, Facebook has quietly featured Safety Check, a crisis response tool that lets users in areas struck by natural disasters or other emergencies to confirm their safety on the social network. Originally, Facebook itself would have to activate a Safety Check, but that has changed--the power to activate a safety check is now in the hands of the stricken community.

One of the most devastating elements of any disaster is not knowing if affected friends and loved ones are safe. Safety Check is meant to reduce the fear of this unknown by giving users a simple way to confirm that they are okay, and to check in to make sure the people they cared about were safe as well. However, when Facebook retained total control over the tool’s activation, it was put into effect a total of 39 times worldwide between December of 2014 and December of 2015.

Unfortunately, this number is clearly far too low for a tool meant to chart disasters around the world. As a result, Facebook took steps to put the power to activate Safety Check in the hands of those who would need it most--the communities affected by the crisis in question.

Utilizing a two-step system, Facebook will first receive confirmation that an event is taking place through a network of third-party organizations, and then analyze the chatter put out by the community in the affected area to determine if Safety Check is warranted. This new, fully-automated process has been put to use 328 times since first being tested in June of 2016.

Disasters, unfortunately, are a terrible fact of life on this planet. It is difficult to be prepared for anything, but with tools like Facebook’s Safety Check, we can at least be informed that our loved ones are safe.

Sometimes it can be tricky to identify what will be popular in the years to come, but that doesn’t stop big data from trying. Cultural anomalies are particularly difficult to predict, but an algorithm is attempting to predict which modern novel will become the next big bestseller. Jodie Archer, author of an upcoming book titled The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, takes a critical look at what makes something popular amongst consumers--particularly in regard to literature.

A lot has been said about communications solutions, particularly in regard to the advantages and disadvantages of hosted and in-house telephony infrastructures. While businesses find that a cloud-hosted VoIP phone system is very convenient, there are others who believe that an on-site telephony infrastructure presents a certain value.