This leaves a very small number of manufacturers holding down a large chunk of the smartphone market so they don?t have the overwhelming pressure to push the needle as much as they once did. In fact, many of the top manufacturers have actually invested in developing more in-house processes for the manufacturing of components that are actually spending on innovation. That?s not to say that there isn?t any innovation going on, but all in all, the things that manufacturers are doing with their smartphones aren?t much different than they were five years ago. Let?s take a look at one specific element of smartphones that is starting to get some new perspectives: the form factor. Changing the Form Factor Only over the past few years have smartphone manufacturers considered changing the form factor of the phones that they produce; and only then, it?s just a couple of manufacturers doing it. This is because a lot of companies don?t have the market share to do interesting new things with their devices and rely on standard products to be able to turn a profit.  For example, just before they ceased their smartphone division, the South Korean company LG released a phone called the LG Wing, which had two displays, but one was opened horizontally to create an interesting form factor that was like nothing that anyone had seen before. Then, as mentioned, it didn?t sell well enough to keep LG from shuttering their smartphone division permanently. Larger manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei have been first to market on smartphones with foldable screens. The foldable phones use a flexible OLED display to allow the devices to fold up. This tech seemed pretty improbable to catch on until Samsung released the Galaxy zFold in 2019. Around the same time Huawei Mate X launched. Each had a high-quality OLED foldable screen, but featured different mechanisms to make these bigger screens compact enough to be considered a smartphone. A year later Samsung doubled down with the Z Flip, which was effectively a flip phone from the early 2000s, but when you opened it up it was a flagship smartphone.  The next innovation is the ?rollable” phone. Using these pliable OLED displays, some manufacturers have played with the notion that the best way forward would be to keep the traditional form factor of a smartphone, but hide an expanded display inside the chassis of the phone. If a user wants to use a larger screen, they would toggle the screen to unroll and, voila, it will unroll to unveil a much larger screen. It remains to be seen when (or if) these expandable screens will get to market (or be a worthwhile innovation). One thing is for certain: smartphone manufacturers will continue to rely on the trusty form factor that has worked for them for over a decade.  If technology interests you, be sure to visit our blog weekly for articles aimed at expanding your business technology acumen. 

Let?s break down three examples of how engaging with a managed service provider, or MSP, allows you to accomplish this. An MSP Ensures Your Employees Have the Tools They Need Let?s say you were trying to chop down a tree. Do you think it would be faster to use a rusty, dulled hatchet, or a well-maintained chainsaw? This is the difference that a managed service provider can make for your business by equipping your team with the proper software and equipment and ensuring it is kept in top working condition. With this support at their backs, you can be confident that your team will not be held back by their tools, allowing them to accomplish more in their day and ultimately bring in more revenue as a result. An MSP Can Supplement Your Existing IT Team and Reduce Downtime Considering how closely profitability is tied to productivity, it should come as no surprise that downtime is a direct threat to your business? ability to make money. This is precisely why it is so important for every business to have access to information technology services and expertise. However, not every business is in the position to have a dedicated in-house team, and even if they can, it may not be large enough to sufficiently provide the benefits that any IT resource should. An MSP can help solve that problem by acting as either a supplement to your IT team or an entirely outsourced IT department, depending on your needs. In doing so, an MSP like White Mountain IT Services can help ensure that work is consistently being done, helping to ensure your profitability. An MSP Can Identify and Streamline Expensive Redundancies Let?s return to our tree-chopping example for a moment. Let?s say that your well-maintained chainsaw served you well enough that you were able to hire and equip employees to chop these trees for you, so you hired a small team of five. Meanwhile, you?ve also invested in 30 more chainsaws and are paying to have all of them regularly maintained. While a little bit of strategic redundancy is a good way to ensure business continuity, there is a line between ?pragmatic? and ?wasteful.? An MSP can use their insight into your business and its IT resources to catch if any of your business? IT is showing a similar pattern. Are you paying subscription costs for unused software? Are you relying on multiple services when a single one exists that provides everything you need? With an MSP like White Mountain IT Services in your corner, these opportunities to streamline your business can be embraced. Reach Out to Find Out How We Can Help You! White Mountain IT Services provides a wide range of managed IT services that businesses around New Hampshire can directly benefit from. Learn more about what we can do for you by giving us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Let?s talk about how AI is now being trained as a means of stopping more phishing attacks from darkening the doors of your email inboxes. What is AI, and How Can It Help Stop Phishing? AI is just a very, very complicated computer program that collects data and parses it to make predictions, improving its predictions over time based on previous errors. Not only can it go through this process much faster than a human being, it can also do so more objectively and without the human error that a user is inherently prone to. This makes AI an excellent candidate for identifying and mitigating attacks like phishing. Let?s go over the four ways that it does so. AI can dig deeper into an email to spot signs of phishing. While it is still critical that you and your team are able to catch the surface-level signs of phishing, a system that puts AI to work can take a much deeper look at an email to identify attacks that are more effectively hidden?like if a message has needed to jump between too many IP address before arriving to the inbox, for instance. AI can detect atypical behavior based on a message?s contents. As time passes, you?ll receive more and more messages. An AI-powered security system can analyze your existing messages to identify patterns in how different contacts tend to communicate, helping spot behavior that is out of the norm. AI can also detect atypical behaviors based on a message?s context. Similarly, an AI-powered system can pull from past messages to spot other areas of concern in those that are incoming. These are largely the same ones that you and your team will be spotting, AI can just spot it before you ever receive the message. AI can take organizational patterns into account. By augmenting your email with AI-based protections, the system can actually spot any incongruous or otherwise suspicious interactions between users, acknowledging if an intern or entry-level employee is speaking oddly to a C-level business leader. Does This Mean Your Team Can Relax About Their Phishing Awareness? Absolutely not.  Not only does phishing spread through more means than just email, presenting itself in effectively every form of communication, these AI platforms are not perfect at spotting such attempts. Your team needs to be able to spot it regardless, if only as a final stopgap between a threat and your business? assets. White Mountain IT Services is here to help you secure your business as well. Learn more about our assortment of cybersecurity services and solutions by calling (603) 889-0800.

Prevent Accidents One of the most glaring problems of not keeping your workspace clean is that many times the accidents that happen inside a workplace can be avoided by simply cleaning up the work area. The more unnecessary items that are strewn about, the more likely something can go wrong. Clutter can cause serious accidents that can result in injury, destruction, or worse.  Improve Productivity That one messy person at your job swears up and down that their mess doesn?t hamper productivity. They know where everything is and their system is foolproof. This is a shortsighted and selfish view. The truth is the more organized people are, the more efficient your business will run.  Much Better Handle on Inventory Organization makes inventory much, much easier. The more squared away your workspace is, the more apt your business is going to be strong on inventory control. This not only helps supply chain management, it can also give insights into what products should be tagged for promotion or sale.  Improves Morale A clean and tidy workspace is a morale boost, pure and simple. The more clutter that employees have to deal with, the more inefficiency and havoc a workplace will have. Keeping things clean and organized has a marked effect on the way that people view their work and will most certainly reduce stress.  What You Can Do to Improve Workplace Cleanliness Here are three strategies that businesses can implement to improve workplace cleanliness: Label everything – By marking all tools and materials, a business can not only get more organized, it can speed up work considerably.  Implement routines – Earmarking some time at the end of the day for worksite maintenance can be a good practice to get your whole team working toward a common goal. Report safety risks – Accidents can be a major problem for businesses, regardless of what your business is. By having a system in place for employees to report safety risks, your business can have the added transparency to ensure that situations are handled before there are problems.  At White Mountain IT Services, our technicians are experts in getting technology set up and managed so that there isn?t any unwanted clutter. If your IT could use some added organization, give us a call today at (603) 889-0800. 

Why You Should Use a VPN A VPN gives your employees a secure connection to your business network through the use of an encrypted tunnel. This is an absolute must-have for any organizations that have employees who work remotely at least part of the time (which, as we are sure the pandemic has influenced, is many, many companies). This encryption provides your network with a way to protect its data from being harvested and collected while it?s moving to and from the safety of your business? network. There are different types of VPNs, however, and they are not all going to be a perfect fit for your organization. Let?s go over what you should consider for your business? needs. What You Should Look For in a VPN Commercial VPNs are a No-Go We?re sure you?ve seen them, the sponsorships that commercialized VPNs get through partnering with YouTube personalities and channels. Solutions like NordVPN and ExpressVPN might feel like decent choices, and while they aren?t bad, necessarily, they are certainly not what your business needs. The biggest benefit of using a consumer-based VPN is anonymizing web browsing by connecting you to a generic proxy, whereas a business-grade VPN will do so much more, including securing your web browsing by connecting users directly to your business network. Ensure You Have High-Quality Encryption The better your encryption, the more secure your network will be. Thus, it stands to reason that you should aim for the highest encryption grade possible so that even if hackers do manage to steal data, it?s protected by only the most powerful systems available. We can set you up with a VPN that meets the standards expected of any modern business. Make Sure It?s Easy to Use Finally, a VPN must be easy to use if you want it to be effective. Your team should be able to use it with minimal to no trouble so that they will see the value in using it. It won?t seem like an inconvenience, which will be crucial in order to get everyone on board with it. White Mountain IT Services can help you find the best VPN out there for your business? specific needs. To learn more, call us today at (603) 889-0800.