Computer Systems & Networking in Orange County with Marc Winger, Zephyr Networks

Our job is to make sure your systems work right. You rely on your computers now a days, you rely on the internet, you rely on all these things. So, that is our job. To make sure you guys are working the way you need to be working. What has changed now is that we are trying to make people see value in their computer work. So every time I spec out a new computer for somebody, I’m always struck by when you go through something with a Dell configuration or something like that.

A lot of the money that’s being spent on there all seems to go to Microsoft for software. So you have the operating system and that’s $200 to the total and then you add Microsoft Office and that adds another $195 to the thing. So the whole computer cost like $900 and almost half of it is going to Microsoft. You cant complain about Microsoft, but what I’m seeing in a value level is actually something that’s working and it’s improving on a constant basis and is actually now a competitive solution for a lot of the Microsoft stuff.

Now, a lot of you in here have your own domain names and a lot of you don’t. So what I’m going to suggest here is to use Google apps to step up to that next generation where you can have your phone, your tablet, your whatever tool that you have that connects to the internet and it gets your email and it synchronizes it. It doesn’t like keep a copy on each one.

Every action that you have synchronizes. So the big step moving forward now a days is that all your internet connected devices are all synchronized and work together. So for example, with Google apps, if I’m working on a presentation for Business Growth Innovators and I happen to be a t a client and I’m waiting for a little blue bar to move across the screen, I can edit that thing on my iphone and edit that presentation or change it. At home I can do it on a computer but I don’t have to move it around on a thumb drive because it’s all on the internet.

You can do that now. It’s becoming a compelling alternative to Microsoft. Without too much further a due Google apps pretty much allows you to do that anywhere you go and you can collaborate. For example, I gave Jane my iPhone to write down something and at the end of this whatever she writes down I’m going to open up that file on my computer and read it. And I’ll be able to read it. If I want to use Microsoft word I can. If I want to use the built in Google docs solution I can read it there. I can open it up in any of those situations.

The whole program is called Google ops and there is a free version you can get for ten users or less which will encompass most of the people here. So you’ll be able to use Google ops for your company and that’s ten users and ten emails by the way. You’ll get most of the benefits of which Google ops will offer. What they’ve done now is Google docs, which is like doing a word document or an excel document or a spreadsheet and a word processing document has all been combined in something called Google drive. Now Google drive is a lot like drop box.

Basically what drop box is a personal hard drive that’s in the cloud for you and you can put a file on there and it replicates to the cloud and you can put it on your laptop or on your desktop or however. Google drive does exactly the same thing and as Sean said, you can share it. If I have a document that I want Jane to see, I put it up there and click share with Jane. She will then get an email that says, Marc shared this document with you and she can open it and edit it to make sure I didn’t misspell accounting or something like that. In the Google ops, gmail is the main thing. But, it can be Marc@ZephyrNetworks.com or DavesFlowers.com or whatever it is.

So for those of you who are using AOL.com or Gmail accounts for your business accounts, in my humble opinion it’s time to start moving toward an alternative to using those emails and use your business.com. Because it looks so much more professional. It makes a huge difference if somebody is just starting to work with you and they see that professional looking email address it really does make a difference in how people look at you. It’s either this guys just a pretender because he’s using an AOL address , but if he’s using an address that’s mycompany.com, it shows another level of professionalism. The fact is to someone like me who’s in the industry it makes a huge difference. It is super easy with the Google ops solution and it’s free except the setup time.

You can do most of it yourself, it’s really not that difficult to do. So what they’re saying in the past is that you have the thumb drive or your hard drive and things could go wrong there. With this solution if I made a Goggle doc and then smashed my laptop, all of my docs would still be on my Google drive. I would be able to get another device and t would synchronize back down. I don’t even need to synchronize. I could go to a coffee shop or something like that and get that information. The collaboration feature is something where two people can open the same document and edit the same document or spreadsheet or just open it and view it and you can work together to solve a problem.

All this is really free at this point and time. There are so many other features. There is a voce chat feature so if you are working internationally you can do a video conference thing like Skype that’s built right into it. So it’s really easy to use and it’s really functional. You can do up to 10 people on one conference. Essentially you could put a presentation up on the projector screen and share it with everyone in your company and whenever anything changes everyone is immediately updated with the new information. It’s just one person in there making the change and you don’t have to email it to anybody or anything like that.

It’s already there, it’s shared and it’s easily accessible. It’s accessible on a phone, an ipad, it’s accessible anywhere. The email does the same thing. The Google ops is a web based email but it’s not really the same way anymore it keeps a copy of it on other devices not just the one it was created on. If you are still comfortable with Microsoft Outlook you can now synchronize that with Google ops. So, really what they’re offering you is a platform at no cost at all for small businesses to really collaborate and do what some of the big business out there are doing and it makes it really easy. It changes the whole way I see businesses working.

So I’ve made a wholesale change moving our emails to Google ops or just using Google ops to share with one another and so as a business we’re seeing the value ourselves. With that I feel compelled to share this with people because it works and it’s really easy to use. In a business situation it’s a great way to communicate with the people around you. Now in our business a lot of sales reps come and go which is the nature of sales reps so you want to be able to wipe the business information off their phone. In our business we provide the phones for anyone in the field.

So I can go onto the Google control panel and hit wipe off all the information that relates to Zephyr networks from this phone and it’s done immediately. So it a way to control the people that work for you and make sure that private information is limited to those authorized to view it. A huge difference between Google and Microsoft office is that they had 2000 then 2003 and you had to keep upgrading and they would change their format. With Google ops the format stays the same and the upgrades are made without you even knowing.

It comes with 5GB of storage which is the free version and just in the email. Most peoples email are maybe one GB. So it’s more than you’ll use. So once again it’s on every device; PC, laptop, iphone, ipad, tablet etc. The cost of us moving you over to Google ops is actually inexpensive. We’d be happy to train you on it because there is so much in depth there that I could really go into in a short presentation. However, there is a lot of real detail that you can find.

When I would use Outlook and I couldn’t remember an email address for a company in Westminster I would just search for Westminster in Outlook. Does Google work the same way?

Well as you know Google is terrible at searching…Just kidding. When you have Google ops open, there is always the Google search bar at the top of the page. So you type in Westminster and you’ll find everything in Westminster. When you first learn how to find things in Google, it’s the same thing with Google ops. You would type in; contact, Westminster. You’ll find out that it’s actually better as you get to know it better. Outlook has improved in that area, but in finding what you are searching for Google is 10x better.

Are you an investor in Google?

I own no Google stock and I wish that I did.

Zephyr Networks LLC. is a full service, performance based computer systems, networking and internetworking solution provider. We work with small to midsize companies to provide proactive technology solutions, and preventative maintenance to reduce the long-term cost of computer hardware and network systems as well as enhance end user productivity.

Zephyr Networks helps our clients to effectively integrate technology with a focus on end user productivity. We deliver world class consulting and education services by working face to face with end users, securing critical infrastructure, and building electronic relationships. We achieve these goals using standardized “best practices” methodologies and our own set of proprietary tools.

Zephyr Networks, Inc. has been in business since 2000 and we are headquartered in Newport Beach, California.

1000 North Bristol Street #17-129
Newport Beach, CA 92660
Phone: 800.884.7559
Fax: 949-544-2901
www.zephyrnetworks.com