5G promises insanely fast speeds up to 100 times faster than today’s 4G mobile Internet. As the demand for mobile continues to grow, driven by trends like remote working, 5G looks set to transform working practices for businesses in 2020 and the years to follow. After a slow start characterised by hype over substance, 5G is finally becoming a realistic platform for many smartphone, application, communication and content developers. However, the jump from 4G to …
Microsoft Teams Phone System is a cloud-based phone system which is perfect for businesses with up to 300 users and enables you to call any phone number. It is integrated into Microsoft Teams, the new hub for productivity within the Office 365 suite now used by more than 13 million people on a daily basis. With Microsoft Teams Phone System, any business can benefit from an all-in-one communication and collaboration solution that includes calling, chat, online …
Organisations are increasingly choosing to replace their traditional enterprise video conferencing with something that helps them thrive. They’re tired of working with a complex web of services that is time-consuming, expensive to manage, and frustratingly difficult to use. 64% of enterprise organisations say their use of video conferencing has increased this year 96% of people say they have had a video meeting start late because of technical issues Source: Connected Intelligence: Video Conferencing Insights into …
Microsoft has announced that Skype for Business will be retired in July 2021. The announcement, made by on the official Microsoft blog, has been on the cards since it first floated the move back in 2017. There is now a major incentive for both new and existing customers to move to Microsoft Teams. To help that process along, from September 2019, all new Office 365 customers will be onboarded to Microsoft Teams with the option …
Phone number porting is the process of moving a telephone number from one provider to another or from one type of service to another (e.g. private hosted cloud, hosted VoIP or on-premise SIP), but staying with the same provider. ISDN to SIP is the most common porting process. There is also porting between SIP providers and from other resellers within the same SIP provider. 1) What You Need to Do There are various paperwork and …
In today’s business world, the ‘always-on economy’ drives increasing demand from both staff and customers who expect to be able to interact quickly and collaborate more effectively. How can businesses meet the demand for better and more frequent meetings, save money and embrace the principles of greener, low carbon business operations? More Meetings? Traditional meetings are costly. Travel time is often non-productive ‘lost time’; long journeys cause fatigue and, when combined with the cost of …
So, you’ve got tons of bandwidth available. Now, what about your firewall & network security? In this article, we look at how Security as a Service (SaaS) improves business network security and reduces costs. Over the last couple of years, the impact of Gigabit Internet connections has been enormous, with service providers offering a variety of fibre gigabit internet connections (some better than others). Businesses have quite rightly jumped at the opportunity of increasing network …
Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, content, and apps together in one place. In this article, we explore how using Microsoft Teams phone system might just be the technology of choice for businesses looking to replace an existing, legacy phone system. In these days of flexible working, hot-desking and external sales teams working from mobile phones or tablets, real-time effective inter-team communication is vital. Business owners and IT managers are starting to …
Hacking – A Growing Problem Phone hacking is becoming an increasingly common practice. It occurs when criminals hack into business phone systems and make unauthorised calls to Premium Rate and International numbers. These attacks can result in extremely high costs if your phone system is not monitored. They can also leave your business exposed and vulnerable to further attacks. And, with the added threat of Social Engineering (whereby criminals attack voicemail boxes to place call) …
If someone said to you the words ‘Video Conferencing’, like most people I would expect you to immediately think about a camera and a screen on the wall with someone at the other end talking away. So when considering what VC system to choose, most people concentrate on those 2 items. I’d like to challenge this way of thinking as I personally believe they’re way down the pecking order in terms of importance. When discussing VC …
We are very pleased to announce that we are now Cyber Essentials certified. This involved a full assessment of our systems which has been independently verified to standards set by the National Cyber Security Centre. What is Cyber Essentials? The Cyber Essentials scheme is a cybersecurity standard against which organisations can be assessed and certified. The scheme is based on the ’10 Steps to Cyber Security’ which was launched by the government in 2012. Within this, the …
This subject is frequently a shocker…. Even the most diligent of IT managers can get stung by unexpected or ‘rogue’ devices appearing in their network, innocent or otherwise. All you have to do is read the headlines to know that the conventional approach to IT security is failing. The rising number of security incidents globally reached 1,792 with nearly 1.4bn data records being compromised and billions of dollars lost along with reputations irreparable damaged. That is a year …
Should I go Hosted VoIP/Hosted UC? …This is a question we hear every day of the week. Hosted VoIP/UC providers do a great job of telling you all the benefits and brainwashing people into thinking it’s the only way forward, but not discussing the downsides. It’s worth mentioning at this point that we at Marlin Communications are agnostic, as we have 7 VoIP capable platforms in our portfolio, which can be installed in a range of hosted, virtualised, …
In a time when Cyber-crime is growing at an astronomical rate, are your employees the biggest risk when it comes to cyber-breaches? The biggest strength for most companies is their human capital and it is usually seen that most of their employees did something at least once that could have left their company at cyber-risk. Its commonly seen that employees prioritize personal convenience over security protocols when it comes to transferring and storing of data, …
A Quick Overview With so many businesses buzzing around trying to figure out the what/who/where/why/when around GDPR, Marlin Communications have been getting heavily involved in the network security aspects of this heavily enforceable change. For the benefit of anyone who’s been living in an isolation chamber for the last 6 months, here’s the main headlines around what GDPR can mean: Customer data that is not adequately protected according to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) could lead to fines of €20 million …
With just one year for organisations to be compliant with the new law that comes into force on 25th May 2018, cyber-security should be top of mind for businesses of all sizes. Whether it’s cybercrime or human error, high profile security breaches are seldom out of the news and of course, there are many from smaller organisations that go unreported. The disruption to business, even closure in some instances, and the loss of reputation that …
In exciting news recently, ShoreTel have been acquired by Mitel, accelerating Mitel’s growth and moving them to #2 position in UCaaS market globally. What does this mean for ShoreTel customers? In a customer assurance statement from Mike Bee (CEO, Mitel), the ShoreTel platform will continue to be cultivated and developed, as part of their growth strategy. Ultimately, the merger with ShoreTel is for it’s platform & people, including it’s truly multi-tenanted cloud platform, it’s CPaaS …
Get it while it’s hot! Marlin Communications are pleased to announce that we are offering free project management for all customers looking to migrate from ISDN to SIP. Depending on the complexity of your existing set up, this could save you between typically £600-£2,200 of professional services. The benefits are obvious, but for those who have had their head in the sand for the last couple of years….. Lower line rental – Save money on your ISDN line …
In this educational piece, we look at what the law says regarding call recording and financial transactions and how Oak’s solutions can help you tick the right boxes. Compliance is a murky subject. A casual glance presents the uninitiated with a series of rules and regulations that can seem at once critical and yet apparently contradictory. Some state that certain financial transactions must be recorded, whilst others, so it seems, demand that financial details be …
The growth of cloud technology over the last few years has been remarkable. In short, cloud is fast becoming the new normal. By the end of 2015 it’s estimated that 90% of UK businesses will be using at least one cloud service. The reason for this kind of rapid growth is quite clear: cloud helps businesses address their objectives. But when the internet is flooded with technical information about how cloud works, what the different …
