ICT Solutions • June 2013 by Belgacom Group

Number 7 I June 2013

ICT Solutions ICT advice for business leaders

Belgacom Explore Network access tailored for SMEs

QR-codes and NFC Scanning for brand recognition

Ideal bonus for employees

Packs for Employees

Customers & employees go mobile

Is your company keeping up?

The ideal business tablet

HP Slim Bluetooth Keyboard For a real desktop experience, no matter where you are.

HP Expansion Jacket With extra ports for more connection options.

HP ElitePad Docking Station For charging your ElitePad or for using as a second screen.

HP Productivity Jacket An elegant protective sleeve with ports and a keyboard.

HP Mobile USB DVD/RW AC-powered, for writing and reading CDs and DVDs.

HP Multi-Tablet Charging Module For loading several tablets simultaneously.

HP ElitePad Case and Rugged Case Adds style and offers extra protection.

HP Executive Tablet Pen For taking notes intuitively.

HP ElitePad Adapters Increase your connection options.

From €

599 excl. VAT*

HP ElitePad Battery Work longer without charging (requires Expansion Jacket which is sold separately).

HP X4000b Bluetooth Mouse Remain connected while you travel thanks to advanced Bluetooth technology.

HP 10 Watt AC Adapter Light and flexible so you can charge your tablet anywhere.

Need more information or want to order? Contact an ICT Expert near you via www.belgacom-ict-expert.be! * Price valid as long as stocks last. © Copyright 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. This information is subject to change without notice.

juni 2013

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Everyone is going mobile ... your company too? Have a look at our new ICT information platform. If you are interested in ICT and technological evolutions www.ictnews.be keeps you up to date and acts as a link between the business world and ICT.

Mobility is one of the major trends of the moment. And we do not mean mobility in terms of transport but actually rather all the rest. Take all those services – from websites and e-shops to television programmes – that are brought to people via mobile appliances like tablets and smartphones. Your customers are using them more and more. Market analysts take it for granted, for example, that more tablet PCs will be sold this year than traditional desktops. It is not only your customers that are mobile these days, but your employees too. They want to be accessible and have access to their applications and data wherever they go. That includes outside the office. Furthermore, it is not just your customers and employees. Even your machines are going mobile. Yes, your machines. More and more apparatus – from vending machines to rolling stock – is equipped with mobile technology. And the evolution continues, too. This number of ICT Solutions focuses, amongst other things, on new mobile technologies and applications, like QR codes and NFC. Although the whole number is really about people’s mobility: your employees’ and – let’s not forget them – your customers’. Everyone is going mobile; is your company keeping up? We hope you will enjoy reading this. Kris Verheye Vice President Corporate Market, Enterprise Business Unit, Belgacom

In this number 3 Editorial 4 Dossier: Is your company keeping up? Mobile apps and websites are progressing rapidly. More and more of your customers use them and your employees can do as well. 9 Infographic: Mobile trends

10 Solution: A network tailored for SMEs Slow internet connections, uncertain performance and few guarantees in terms of bandwidth. That is the situation for many SMEs. Belgacom Explore aims to provide a solution for this. 12 Technology: QR-codes and NFC Besides Facebook and classic (online) advertisements, QR codes and NFC can

For questions concerning specific IT solutions you can always contact our account managers or our network of ICT Experts (www.belgacom-ict-expert.be).

also be used to promote your company’s brand recognition. 14 Solution: Alternative remuneration Tv, telephone, Internet ... this is a service package everyone needs. Thanks to Belgacom Packs for Employees, they can be provided in a fiscally interesting way. 16 Tested: Security Audits & Mobile Device Management 18 Digitips: Avoid spam 19 Digitips: Organize your inbox

A publication of Belgacom Group | Number 7, June 2013 | Publisher: Belgacom nv, a public limited company, Koning Albert II-laan 27, 1030 Brussels Concept and production: Minoc Business Press nv, Parklaan 22 b10, 2300 Turnhout | www.minoc.com

june 2013

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dossier

Not only employees but customers too are going mobile

Is your company The use of smartphones and tablets is increasing rapidly. That has two consequences for your company. On the one hand it makes it possible for your colleagues to work efficiently on the move. And on the other hand your customers will increasingly visit your website from a mobile device. How does your company keep up with these developments?

obile devices such as smartphones and tablets are everywhere at the office. And the number is only going to increase in the future. The question is how you give your employees access to the company mail, agenda, to-do lists and documents on their smartphones or tablets.

To a very large extent, that is determined by the operating system installed on the smartphone or tablet. In contrast to PCs and notebooks there is a considerable amount of choice here. Most computer users work with a Windows operating system these days. Although Apple is making substantial progress with its Mac OS alternative, the majority of desktop and notebook PCs are still equipped with one or other version of Microsoft Windows. In the world of mobile devices the distribution is completely different though. To begin with there are no less than four socalled eco-systems: Microsoft, Google, BlackBerry and Apple. We take a brief look at them all here and summarize the impact that choosing the various systems

Evernote Business Digital notes that are linked directly to the cloud - essential for any company. The business suite Evernote contains, amongst other things, an administrator panel in which you can add users and manage user rights. Employees who have already used the classic Evernote can log in with the same details and will be given a premium account with up to 4 gigabytes per month. There is also dedicated support and telephone support Android is currently the most popular operating system by a long way.

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for your company.

will have on the integration of the devices in your company. In the process we also discuss a few popular apps that could enable your colleagues to work more efficiently. And at the end of the article you will find a few tips to keep in mind if you want to develop your own app at some point, or redesign your website.

Apple Thanks to the success of the iPhone and the iPad, a lot of users have become familiar with iOS, Apple’s rather solid mobile operating system. Right from the start Apple made its iOS completely closed, so it is very difficult to move out of their ecosystem. Indirectly that also entails some limitations, because Apple forces you to use specific apps – or small programmes, you could say.

dossier

keeping up? Apple is the leader by a long way in terms of apps, both for smartphones and for tablets. Moreover, the quality of the apps is very good, compared to that of the competing platforms. Nearly all major app developers start by creating an app for iPad or iPhone, and only after that do they go on to produce versions for Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. It is very possible, for example, that the company that supplied your accounting software has a version of your programme for iPad/ iPhone, but that you are going to have to wait a while for a version for Android smartphones. There is still no official iOS app for the most widely used office package, Microsoft Office, either. You can open the most popular documents (Word, Excel, etc.) that you receive on your smartphone or tablet without any problems. But if you want to create or edit this type of document you will have to do it with one of the many alterna-

tives to Office. However, they do not always offer the full functionality of the original Office package. In short, iPhone or iPad are often the ideal partners for private purposes, but whether or not these devices can be incorporated smoothly into your business environment depends partly on the software you use now.

Google Google distributes Android free of charge to manufacturers, thereby offering an open platform that everyone can tinker with. The fact that it is an open platform also means that everything evolves rather faster, which is exactly what makes Android such a strong operating system. Google is known particularly for its services, and obviously they are some of the main features built into Android. Take Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Maps. The user is absolutely free to

BlackBerry 10 needs to ensure that BlackBerry can compete with the rest.

Timesheet Timesheet is an app which – as the name suggests – keeps timesheets: an overview of the time you spend on various different tasks. At the end of the day, week or month, the app throws all the data into an Excel file, so that you can do the rest of the administration on a computer. With Timesheet you can organize your tasks per project. The various projects are handy if you work for a number of different customers.

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dossier

Glympse Nobody wants to be shadowed, but sometimes it is a good thing to know exactly where your employees are. You can do that with Glympse, but it also maintains absolute privacy. The principle behind Glympse is simple. Those who belong to your service send a notification from their smartphone to people who can follow them. They decide themselves how long they can be followed and who should have access to the information. It is very useful for working out where your personnel or customers have got to.

install apps from third parties though, and here, too, the range is very large. More and more suppliers of business software offer versions of their packages for Android already, because it is a fast growing operating system. The major absentee is Microsoft Office, but here, too, it is a fact that you can find numerous alternatives to the Microsoft package. Many companies also wonder how good the security is with Android. That is why it is always advisable to make it compulsory for your colleagues to install specialised security software on all of their mobile devices. This is necessary not only to protect them from external threats, but also to safeguard the data on mobile devices in case of theft or loss. Besides, this advice does not only apply to Android smartphones.

Microsoft Windows is lord and master in computer land, but in terms of smartphones and tablets Microsoft missed the boat completely to begin with. Thanks to the radically revamped Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, which is very similar to it, Microsoft is on the right track now, but it still has a long and difficult way to go. Microsoft wants to close its eco-system, like Apple, and is working hard at it. In fact it wants to

TapCrowd The best way to ensure good visibility, depending on whether your company needs it or not, is your own particular app. Thanks to TapCrowd you can very easily make an app without having any programming knowledge. You choose what your app should look like from 30 templates, you decide on the number of options and the various components, and there it is. This development gives you simple control of your app, without the major cost of having a separate app developer working for you.

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bring as much software and as many apps as possible into the Store. The hope is that the company will be able to exercise more control like that, but we will have to wait and see whether that is the best strategy. The range of apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 remains limited at the moment. And that makes the devices just that little bit less interesting for consumers. They do have one big trump up their sleeves that no other mobile operating system offers: Office. Programmes like Word, Excel or PowerPoint are almost an integral part of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, and documents created in them can easily be both consulted and worked in. An indisputable advantage in business life.

BlackBerry There has been a change of the guard in the smartphone world. It has been a long time since smartphones for your mobile office have been the exclusive reserve of BlackBerry. Nearly all the members of the old guard have problems with this revolution, but it is probably BlackBerry, the standard-bearer, that has suffered the most from the rise of iPhones and Androids. So there had to be a change of tack. The result of this turnaround is BlackBerry 10, an OS that looks in many respects familiar, but that still has something new to add to the overcrowded smartphone market.

dossier

A separate app is superfluous if your website incorporates Responsive Design.

BlackBerry 10 is a completely new operating system, which means, indirectly, that many apps are not yet available for this platform. BlackBerry is working hard on this with important partners and is busy trying to catch up, just like Microsoft. Moreover, BlackBerry has one big advantage compared to all the other mobile operating systems: its own mail servers. Perhaps you still use one, in which case BlackBerry 10 is the ideal mobile operating system for getting back together again with your (possible) former love.

Mobile Internet Besides the actual hardware, your colleagues will obviously have to have a suitable mobile Internet connection. At the office, smartphones and tablets can use the company network, but as soon as they leave the car park they have to work on a 3G network, for example, from a mobile provider such as Proximus. The good news is that the cost price for these connections has dropped rapidly,

and that the connections themselves have become more stable and faster. Furthermore, there are various different subscription formulas to suit the different types of employees. After all, they do not all need an equal amount of mobile access to the company network every day, to mention just one example.

Wifi Protector

Your website goes mobile

via a locked tunnel. All incoming and

Not only do your employees work on the move with smartphones and tablets, your (potential) customers also visit your company increasingly frequently online, via a mobile device. You can take advantage of that by developing a website that adapts automatically to the device with which the visitor works. To put it simply, if the visitor surfs using a smartphone, the data on your site will be automatically rearranged so that the reading experience remains optimal. The same thing will happen when the same visitor visits your website a bit later on a PC. Then, too, the website will

The free programme Wi-Fi Protector is intended to guarantee safe use of Wi-Fi networks away from the office/ home. In fact this programme is a VPN client, which allows your laptop to make contact with the Internet outgoing data is encrypted as long as Wi-Fi Protector is keeping an eye on things. You are undoubtedly familiar with VPN services used for making safe contact with the company network. That is not the purpose of Wi-Fi Protector, which is actually intended to keep you safe in the public arena. That is why it gives you another IP address as long as the programme is open and running.

june 2013

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dossier

“The website of tomorrow is not developed for either a laptop or a smartphone, in fact it adapts automatically.”

Thanks to the cloud it is much simpler for Thau to work with temporary employees. adapt to the size of the screen and all the information will be presented in the most ideal way for the screen being used. The advantage of this so-called responsive design is obvious: you only need to carry out one modification to your site and it is immediately visible on all devices - mobile or otherwise. The disadvantage of this type of responsive design website is the higher cost of development and the somewhat slower working.

Ready for your own app?

Case Thau is a field marketing company from Herent. They ensure that their customers’ products enjoy the desired visibility in the shops. Because their employees are on the road a lot, mobile and digital working is an absolute must. Olivier Van Orshoven: “In the start-up phases it is important to have a good communication, both with the customers and with the various shop chains. In the old days everything was done by fax or by phone, but these days all our teams run around with tablets.” Thanks to these interactive tablets Thau’s employees can download shelf plans, upload reports and send through photos. This means customers can intervene fast, should modifications be necessary. Thau uses an online platform for that, which is handy for employees to share emails, documents and notes with each other. Everyone can compare agendas faster, sit in on meetings, or have a brief chat with colleagues via the cloud. Olivier van Orshoven: “Thanks to the cloud it is much easier for us to work with temporary employees, with the necessary time-saving as a result.”

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You can give your customers extra special treatment by having an app developed containing content, products and services relevant to your company. They usually enjoy a better user-experience if they can use an app, for example if they have no Internet connection for a while. It is rather easy for your company to find out how your customers use the app, too, and what information they consult or which products they order. You can use this data to provide the app users with more targeted offers, which may in turn result in higher sales. Altogether this sometimes makes the higher cost for the development of an app worth considering, even if you have to develop several versions (iOS, Android, etc.) if you want to serve all your customers. Is your company keeping up?

infographic

Mobile trends Homeworking •

53%

Internet of devices

of companies

want to invest in homeworking •

or a policy on teleworking

50 billion devices connected

worldwide by

Evolution of internet access

2020

HTML5 and Responsive Design

41,5% via the pc

•

HTML5 en Responsive Design go hand in hand: for Responsive Design HTML5 is required. Responsive Design ensures that your website is visible in perfect form on any screen format.

52%

• via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (19% annual increase till 2017)

1,000,000,000 telephones are compatible with HTML5 in 2013.

Source: IDC (2013)

Source: Wikipedia

Sale of tablets

Tablet market share Others 24,7%

• Number of devices to be sold in 2013 (forecast)

172,4 M Apple 56,2%

(41% growth compared to 2012)

Amazon 5,9% Samsung 12,2%

Smartphone operating systems BlackBerry OS 4,4%

Sales of smartphones (number of devices)

Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 5,6% 008

007

006

005

004

003

002

001

iOS 18,6%

Android 651 milions

iOS 168 milions Android 69%

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Bron: IDC (2013)

june 2013

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solution

Network access tailored for SMEs

Reliable and fast “U Slow Internet connections, uncertain performance and little or no guarantee of bandwidth. That is the situation at many companies. On the other hand, they are becoming more dependent on IT and telecom than ever, and their requirements in terms of ICT are increasing. Belgacom Explore aims to provide a solution for this.

se of our network connections had reached a permanent saturation level of sixty percent. We urgently needed more bandwidth”, says Dirk Bruggen, ICT Manager at the construction firm Mathieu Gijbels. We needed a secure network solution for sharing data, both internally and with external partners like architects. That is why the company switched to Belgacom’s Explore network.

Requirements The complaints at Mathieu Gijbels are typical of many other SMEs that want to collaborate efficiently both internally with their colleagues and externally with

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solution

their partners. Over the last few years companies have started to expect much more from their IT and telecom. Everything must be faster and ‘more’ - and information increasingly comes in digital form. SMEs evolve constantly, consequently the ICT solutions they use must evolve too. Everyday problems, such as slow Internet connections and a regular decline in the performance of applications between the various branches, just will not do. In addition, heavy dependence on the availability of internal colleagues frequently causes problems with the PCs, the LAN and network management. SMEs are definitely prepared to invest in simplification, but at the same time they do not have an overview. Explore is Belgacom’s answer to the question: “How can I organize and manage my network differently so as to improve my business?’ The Explore network offers you reliability, guaranteed bandwidth and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – or, in other words, telecom service guarantees.

SMEs The most important solution that Explore offers is connectivity: managed IP connectivity between your different sites, with various types of access and basic options for services with added value. This is the first solution Explore offers for SMEs. It establishes and manages connectivity between different sites, based on the socalled IP protocol. Every branch or site you want in your network is connected to Explore via a selected access profile that is determined in function of the bandwidth requirements. These in turn depend on the number of users and the level of availability of the servers on the site.

Mobile In addition to that, Explore also contains modules that take care of Internet access (central Internet access, with possible security via the network’s firewall) and secure teleworking. With these modules you can be connected to everyone within your organization via both fixed connections and the Internet. That is not all though; Explore also offers solutions for mobile connections and telephony in both national and international

contexts. These are provided by mobile 3G connectivity via Explore, international connectivity (connection of sites outside Belgium via the Explore network) and VoIP on Explore (a hosted IP telephone solution that integrates speech and data traffic for switchboards).

Combination The philosophy behind solutions like Explore is obvious. Besides a reliable network connection, guaranteed by Belgacom specialists, it provides an optimal combination of the telecom world, on the one hand, and the IT world on the other. Such is the case at the construction company Mathieu Gijbels: “As well as ensuring excellent communications for us now, Explore has also laid the foundations in our organization for other plans in the future, such as VoIP or camera surveillance”, says ICT Manager Dirk Bruggen. Explore is concerned essentially with the IT connections in your organization. That is very important, too, since every SME uses IT applications or the Internet - whether it is an ordinary website or a CRM (Customer Relations Management) application that needs to be available not only at each site and between the different sites, but also at employees’ homes and when they are out and about. A product like Explore can provide all that.

only on one aspect of the ICT challenges, many SMEs ask specialists for advice about rationalising their IT infrastructure and making it more cost-effective. That is the strength of Explore as a total solution: it combines connectivity with network management and maintenance contracts (SLAs). The result is a simplified and secure network, guaranteed bandwidth and a high level of availability. In addition, it is flexible and cost-effective, a solution that companies can use to plan the evolution of their systems towards convergent solutions (such as Voice over IP) and to optimize their return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, companies also need a future-oriented solution. They want to be ready for the so-called convergence of speech and data applications. At the same time they need one professional help desk that is available 7 days a week and 24 hours a day. And a service that monitors the connection and back-ups proactively. All of this makes Belgacom Explore the perfect solution for contemporary SMEs. More info on www.belgacom.be/explore-en

Business objectives The purpose is obvious. More than ever before, IT is a means to achieving your business objectives. If your aim is to find an efficient way to bring IT closer to your employees, you can do that by creating a connection via Explore. These days SMEs need a managed network to link their sites reliably and securely - to each other, to the Internet and to their employees. Companies are faced with a growing demand for ICT solutions to support their everyday business solutions - not only for themselves and their employees internally, but also for their contacts with customers and suppliers. Continuity and the security of their business operations are central to this.

Total package As internal ICT resources are expensive and external partners often concentrate

He ne ge ba en Ag de zeg vla

“The Explore network offers you guaranteed bandwidth and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for your telecom.” june 2013

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technology

Scanning for brand recognition

QR-codes and NFC on the rise You want your company to be as well-known as possible, but what is the best way to achieve this? By now everyone is familiar with Facebook and classic (online) advertisements, but what about QR codes and NFC?

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ith the current trend in digital publications, you cannot constantly resort to classic forms of communication. These days there are enough mobile technologies with which you can ensure your company’s visibility is good, without having to make much extra effort. Thanks to the ever-increasing number of smartphone users there is a whole new public available to you. So it is high time to address that vast audience in the right fashion! The faster you master the newest techniques, the more creative you can be in using them.

Scanning A very simple way to get someone’s attention is with mystery. You can use an intriguing image on a poster, for example, with a so-called QR code underneath. A QR code is basically an upgraded barcode, but then in the form of a square and with many more details. In order to read the data behind the code you need a smartphone or a tablet with an app that can analyse QR codes. So what sort of thing can you put behind a QR code? In principle it has to be an Internet address, and that means there are many possibilities. You could just

technology

have people surf to your homepage by scanning the QR code, but why not provide a direct link to your company’s Facebook page? That way you can motivate a potential customer to ‘like’ your company at the same time. And what about putting a QR code on your business card as well? It allows you to put much more information on a card, thanks to a web address with all your details. Something that is not immediately visible excites attention. So use it!

Your own creation So how exactly do you go about it? To start with, of course, you have to find yourself a QR generator that can create this type of scannable code. A brief search online rapidly shows up countless (free) options for making this type of code. And once you have the code it is up to you to be creative with it. Tip: it is a good idea to put “Scan here with your smartphone or tablet” somewhere underneath the code. QR codes are gaining in popularity fast, but because the application is not yet routinely installed on every smartphone, not everyone is aware of their existence.

good your visibility is. That means you can get feedback now where you used not to previously. If you do want to carry out this type of check, though, you must make sure that your (potential) customers are sent to the web page in question via a URL that can be monitored.

Secrets A nice additional application for QR codes is Layar. This method of scanning does not look at the barcodes, but at specific photos. You choose a zone that customers need to photograph with Layar. Then the app immediately links the photo to a database, which takes the customer to the right web address. Put the Layar logo next to the photo, with the caption “Scan this photo with Layar”. Generally speaking, a QR code is certainly the better-known of the two mobile technologies, but Layar is a worthwhile alternative if a QR code would be too obvious. So what is the big advantage of the two technologies? They are compatible with just about every type of smartphone on the market.

NFC: masses of potential A new technology that is steadily gaining popularity is NFC (Near Field Communication). This technology requires a smartphone with NFC and an NFC tag that you have to hold your smartphone against. In contrast to QR codes, the number of smartphones with NFC is rather limited, although manufacturers are increasingly embracing it in their newest devices. The idea is that you stick an NFC tag behind a page, a poster or another form of visibility. You can programme the tag with your smartphone. As with a QR code you can link it to a URL, but why not be a bit more creative? After all, every NFC tag has some kilobytes that you can use. It is up to you to come up with some cool ideas. An NFC tag is also very cheap. And what is more, it is extremely thin – ideal, in fact, to stick against or between other things. To read a tag with an NFC

Extra control You can also use a QR code as an extra means of monitoring the visibility of your brand or company. If you put a QR code on a poster, for example, you can use the number of scans to assess how

compatible smartphone you just need to touch it briefly. A distance of just a few millimetres should be enough, but a brief touch will definitely ensure feedback on the smartphone. How should you indicate the area to scan? Put the NFC logo on the scannable area to make it obvious that that zone can be scanned. And make sure that the logo is at exactly the level of the

You can easily generate a QR code on countless different websites. Scan this code now to try it out!

NFC tag, because the actual scannable zone is very small.

june 2013

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solution

Belgacom Packs for Employees

Yes, you CAN please everyone Access to the worldwide web is as normal these days as having television or the telephone. And what is more, Internet access is an essential part of the way in which we relax, work, study, etc. So makes Belgacom Packs for Employees the ideal bonus or fringe

Packs for Employees in figures

benefit.

The difference between financial

you can please everyone with a cheaper Internet connection. That

mployers and employees invariably come up against the same problem in the Belgian system: how do you give someone extra remuneration with maximum efficiency? Financial extras are by nature problematic, and other solutions, like meal cheques, expense accounts and transport are limited in volume. Yet now, especially, companies really need an extremely efficient way to give their best personnel fair compensation or a bonus. Quite apart from the fiscal challenge, it has become increasingly interesting to offer employees a flexible professional environment. It means employees can avoid wasting hours in traffic jams and in return the employer gets increased and more dynamic availability. The one key ingredient for flexible working is the correct infrastructure, and an important part of that is having Internet at home and mobile Internet. But flexible working can be a difficult business if employees have to foot the bill for these extra costs themselves.

Two birds with one stone So what if a company could offer its employees a modular package at home, including mobile or fixed telephone, tele-

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compensation and Packs for Emvision and/or Internet? The employer foots the bill for the Internet connection, while the employee can use the services for both professional and private purposes. It is the best of both worlds in fact, because the company offers its employees a series of services that they would have to invest in anyway and which therefore have genuine value. Likewise, employees get the opportunity to work flexibly. The perception of value in the eyes of the recipients is important, but that is only one of the reasons why you should opt for Belgacom Packs for Employees. Belgacom also has the reputation of being reliable, which means one less problem for your ICT department too.

ployees is amazing. Let’s just take a

Different flavours

shoulders the cost for the employee it

If we zoom in specifically on Internet offers, Belgacom offers its Packs for Employees in two flavours. Packs give unlimited Internet access, 250 MB mobile data and the top speeds we are accustomed to from Belgacom (30 Mbps download, 3 Mbps upload). The packs themselves are extremely competitively priced, but the cherry on the cake is the fiscal incentive, which makes an Internet connection over three times as efficient as financial compensation.

look at the figures: imagine that you want to give your employee a bonus of around 550 euros at the end of the year. To be able to pay your employee that amount net, you have to take the payroll tax and the employer’s and employee’s contributions into account. Once you do that the actual cost of a bonus of 550 euros turns out to be over 1,480 euros! Five hundred and fifty euros - that is approximately the cost of a year’s subscription to Belgacom Internet Everywhere Maxi. If a company comes to 458.16 euros. The employee pays 60 euros once a year for payment in kind (plus 10.41 euros VAT), which brings the total cost for the employer to less than 400 euros per year. This is a difference of nearly 1,100 euros! More info at www.belgacom.be/ packsforemployees-en

Fujitsu recommends Windows 8.

Touch the difference

www.fujitsu.com/be

Unleash Windows 8 Productivity with Fujitsu Amazing new devices from Fujitsu are reshaping the workplace – from the Fujitsu LIFEBOOK T902 convertible, Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q702 hybrid and Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q572 tablet to the versatile X Line for professional IT landscapes. Running Windows 8, they support the enhanced usability and full business feature set of the new operating system:

■ Input with touch, keyboard and mouse ■ Intuitive working – superb for multitasking ■ Security and manageability features ■ Long battery life ■ Fast working

Please contact one of our SELECT Resellers for more information: http://ts.fujitsu.com/resellerlocator/

Apps from Windows Store; vary by market

tested

Belgacom Security Audits & Penetration Testing

Reliability test The digitalization of company infrastructures has revolutionized the way we work. But at the same time uncertainty concerning the safety of the information park is growing too. Only a thorough practical test can reveal whether your IT is robust enough to guarantee the continuity of your business.

our company’s ICT infrastructure ensures that your business processes run smoothly. But don’t you wonder sometimes whether there are any security gaps, and whether all your colleagues use your systems equally safely? The best way to make certain everything is safe and secure is to have a thorough reliability test done. But if this sort of test is mirrored on the existing security infrastructure it will miss the real weaknesses and give you a false sense of security. If you want to be sure of a watertight line of defence, you need to look for a partner that can carry out tests on all possible fronts. And that is exactly what Belgacom’s Se-

curity Audits & Penetration Testing offers you. An independent team of experts runs a series of really tough tests and analyses on your systems. All the tests and the results they produce are then documented in minute detail. The vulnerabilities they reveal are assessed in terms of business risks, and advice for improvement is drawn up to suit your company. What makes this testing unique is the holistic approach, it covers everything: Internet, telephones, social media and so on. Would you think of figuring out what the consequences might be if an employee were to lose a notebook or smartphone, which then ended up in the wrong hands? Or would it occur to you to check whether illegal

access to your systems could be gained via your telephone lines? Could your employees be subjected to a social hack, whereby social engineering and phishing are combined? And if you are going to have this sort of test done, would you not prefer to have it carried out by a party with decades of experience and exceptional reliability, and make sure they are the only others to have access to the results? In a nutshell, your digital security is only as strong as the tests you unleash on it. And you cannot afford to do the testing halfheartedly. Belgacom is the reliable partner you can trust with this task. More info at www.belgacom.be/ict

Mobile Device Management

Manage your mobile park Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) is one of the hypes of the moment. Employees want to integrate their own devices into their company’s IT infrastructure, so that they have access to their professional email, business documents and applications even when they are out of the office.

or IT managers this trend is a tremendous challenge. After all, what happens if the device gets lost or is stolen – complete with confidential company information? And what about personal details and privacy? In response to these challenges, Belgacom launched a Mobile Device Management solution that can be integrated into the IT infrastructure. In addition, Belgacom now also offers a solution for managing mobile devices via the cloud. The European data centre of our partner, Vodafone, hosts the software. The advantages of the cloud

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solution are rapid roll-out, scalability and cost control - but not at the cost of security. These management solutions enable companies to connect smartphones and tablets to their business network simply and easily. All the devices can be activated, traced and monitored using Mobile Device Management. Lost devices can be blocked instantaneously and all the company data on them can be deleted. MDM solutions are also used for the removal and installation of applications on the devices as well. These solutions are available for all the major operating systems, including Android,

BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian and Windows. You can add and remove devices and secure an unlimited number of them. The installation only takes a few minutes, so your IT department can concentrate on its core tasks. Besides a ‘self-service’ mode for managing mobile devices via the cloud, Belgacom also offers the service in ‘managed mode’. A number of partners in Belgium have been selected and trained for this: GPXS Services, ARC Herentals, ARC Brussels, BKM, Business Center Wallonie, Cartronics, Essec and Vandenabeele.

Today, it’s easy to marvel at how far we’ve come. Our phones talk to our TVs to record our favorite shows. Doctors in Estonia diagnose patients in Denmark. Social networks help companies improve customer service. And yet, up to now, more than 99% of our world is not connected to the Internet. But we’re working on it. And tomorrow, we’ll wake up pretty much everything else you can imagine. Trees will talk to networks will talk to scientists about climate change. Stoplights will talk to cars will talk to road sensors about increasing traffic efficiency. Ambulances will talk to patient records will talk to doctors about saving lives. It’s a phenomenon we call the Internet of Everything—an unprecedented opportunity for today’s businesses. Tomorrow? We’re going to wake the world up. And watch, with eyes wide, as it gets to work. #tomorrowstartshere

digitips

7 tips to avoid spam If you have to believe some of the messages in your mailbox, you do not have enough free days to enjoy all the faraway trips you have won. Spam is not only implausible, it is also dreadfully irritating. So here are seven tips to avoid it.

Do not leave your email 1everywhere address here, there and Unknown is unloved, and that is not a bad thing in the case of spam. So be careful with your email address. Do not put it on your webpage and do not use it on public forums, Twitter and other places to which everyone has access. Only share your email address with organizations or people that you know and who you can assume will at least respect the privacy legislation.

an address for 2 Have ‘special sites’

What should you fill in on the forum for your new hobby, or as the registration address of that last piece of interesting software? The answer is: an alternative email address, also called a spam address. It is a long term email address that you look at less

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frequently. That gives spammers an address they can send to as much as they like, without causing you any nuisance. Use a free online account for it, so that older mails are deleted automatically.

Have more than one address

Be unpredictable

If you have followed the previous two tips then you have a little problem. There are also sites whose mail you do want to read now and then, but who send so many messages that they can take over your mailbox. You can make separate addresses especially for those few busy forums. Or you can work with folders in your inbox to which the mails are moved automatically, according to rules you set.

At least as important as being careful with your email address is choosing the right name. Spammers may be unpleasant but they are not morons (or not all of them, anyway) and they are very good at guessing names. If you can choose your own email address or alias, never choose just your first name or just your surname, always go for a combination. It is easier, for example, to guess fred@provider.be or jansen@ provider.be than fred. jansen@provider.be.

automatically 5 Don’t download images

In programmes like Windows Mail the standard settings block images from being downloaded automatically. Whatever you do, definitely do not change them to automatic download. Instead, make a list of trusted addresses that can always show images. In fact, once you open images in an email the sender can see that the image has been sent. That is how spammers find out that their mail has actually been looked at and that they should spam that address more often. In any case, there are often a lot of images in spam that you do not want to see, so this way you can kill two birds with one stone.

Ignore spammers

Use a spam filter

Nobody likes to be ignored - and that goes for spammers too. If nobody reacted to spam and nobody bought anything from spammers the flood would at the least diminish considerably. Contribute to a better world and reduce spammers to silence.

If the tips above could give you one hundred percent cover, spam would have disappeared ten years ago. Unfortunately more than ninety percent of all email traffic is still unwanted. If you continue to be bothered by spam, install a spam filter on your computer or in your organization. It is even worth asking your Internet or email provider about it; they may be able to set up a filter on their side.

digitips

Organize your inbox in five steps An empty inbox at the end of the day – that is something we would all like to have, is it not? We try to keep the daily influx of emails under control with the following tips.