January 2012
In this issue:

HTS Referral Program

The highest compliment you can give us is the referral of a new client. If you know of anyone who could benefit from any of the services we provide your company, please keep us in mind.

Learn how you could earn a $100 American Express gift card in return for your referral!
 

Be Ready in the New Year
It's a new year. It's a time for new beginnings and new opportunities. Everyone is optimistic and motivated to achieve new goals. But what would happen if a winter storm knocked out power to your building? What would you do if your staff were struck with an illness? How would you react if your office was burglarized and your equipment stolen?

Take some time at the beginning of this new year to answer questions like these. Create a disaster recovery plan so that interruptions and disasters don't slow you down — and so that you always stay safe and prepared.
 

Just for Laughs

Quote of the Month

"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success."

 — Dale Carnegie

I wanted to let you know that on Friday, January 27th, Heartland Technology Solutions will be closed for our annual company retreat in Kansas City. This Friday-Saturday event is our only opportunity to gather the entire company in one location for updates, education and planning.

Our Client Care Team have rearranged schedules so that there are no planned service visits on Friday. However, our managed services desk will still be in place for remote monitoring and services for our WorryFree clients. We have also staffed the phone lines so that we can help with emergency needs that you might have or be able to take your message. If there are other folks in your organization that might need this info, I would appreciate it if you can forward this newsletter to them.

Thanks so much for your understanding about this slight interruption in our daily schedule. The retreat is an important part of our overall mission to continue to improve our service to you through highly trained engineers and a salesforce up to speed on the most efficient ways to increase the productivity of your network.

— Jane Cage, COO
417-623-5553
jcage@heartlandtechnologies.com

Throughout the year, we have held multiple webinars to introduce you to new services or solutions that can help increase the IT efficiency within your organization. We bring in vendors, industry experts, or even our own team to present on these solutions and we always record these for you to view On-Demand at your convenience should you not be able to attend the live presentation.

Here are our favorites from the past year for your viewing pleasure.

Do you have control of your network usage?
Dan Schmitz from SonicWall took us through the features of the Next Generation Firewalls and introduced the new Application Control and Visualization features.

Is your phone system holding you back?
Susie Green with Mitel explained how Mitel communications solutions can help reduce costs and solve the challenges of communicating both inside and outside your organization.

Does your Disaster Recovery solution have you prepared for a disaster?
HTS Senior Business Consultant Joddey Hicks described the importance of being prepared for a disaster, and how to develop a plan so that your business can recover should something happen.

Improve communication with Unified Communicator Advanced
HTS Telephony Manager Jeff Penland and Mitel Partner Sales Representative Susie Green explain and demonstrate how the Mitel UCA solution can drastically improve your organization's communication abilities, whether in the office or away from your desk.

You can watch the rest of our On-Demand Webinars and check out what we have coming up in 2012 here. Hopefully you will be able to make a few of them!

Excel can be a powerful tool for your business, but it can also be daunting with its formulas, charts, and formatting. This month we’ll take a look at two simple but very useful formulas, and how to make them work for you.

You can also view the quick video version of this tip, that demonstrates all the methods of summing and averaging numbers.

Learn how!

Anyone who manages a network is embarking on an exciting ride. Maybe you've already strapped on your seat belt and are underway, riding through:

• A steep climb in Internet traffic and network access from smartphones and tablets
• Increased traction in cloud services and virtualization
• The growing popularity of IP voice and video
• Challenging twists and turns in security, including international hacking

We'll do a flyover tour of the ride at 30,000 feet, then take a ground run for 2012. Keep reading for the Technology Trends and Must-Haves of 2012

Don't forget our upcoming webinar!
Our next webinar, "Bring Your Own Device: Optimize your IT resources and budget", will be on February 7th, 10:00 AM CST.

Stoneware is the first and only cloud-computing solution that is your desktop built in a browser. Students and teachers can securely access all of their IT resources – data, file directories, Windows, web and hosted applications – any time, from anywhere, using any machine or OS.

Join us on Tuesday, February 7th at 10:00am CST as Stoneware’s Rob Hart explains how Stoneware can help you optimize your current IT resources and help you budget for the future, as well as a live demo of the application.

www.heartlandtechnologies.com