We are super excited to announce our next seminar in the new 2011 Seminar Series. This will be an exciting seminar related to Cloud Computing with a special focus on the SMB market, where most of our customers are served. Here are the details:

Everyone is talking about cloud these days. And no one is saying the same thing. With so much conflicting information out there, it’s hard to figure out what type of cloud solution, if any, is right for your business. For these reasons, Ascend Technologies is hosting a FREE BREAKFAST SEMINAR to understand these new technology opportunities. 2011 is being called the year of the private cloud adoption. But may companies are still either developing or re-examining their cloud strategies. We will discuss the following “cloud” aspects at this live seminar:

•  What is the business impact of cloud computing?
•  Is the cloud right for my organization?
•  What startup costs are there?
•  How secure is my data?
•  How do I get started?

This seminar will provide a logical framework, best practices, case studies & customer interaction to ensure that your small business cloud project starts and is structured for long term success. We are calling all “end users” to get your perspective on cloud based solutions and to vigorously interact with the group panel on this topic. More than half the seminar timeline will be alotted to end user interaction ensuring practical answers are provided to this often confusing logic.

DATE: Tuesday, March 16, 2011
TIME: 8:00 AM EST
LOCATION:
Gwinnett Center
Meeting Room 5-A
6400 Sugarloaf Parkway
Duluth, GA 30097

MAIN SPEAKER:
David Roberts
Founder, Ascend Technologies, Inc.

droberts Ascend News Updates

I am posting to let all customers and interested parties know that we have just completed our new 2011 Seminar Series planning. In a nutshell, we are simply doing a live seminar each month of the 2011 year covering topics including: Cloud Computing, Managed Services, VoIP, Cutting Communications Cost, and others. Most of the events will be held at the Gwinnett Center off Sugarloaf Pkwy. The first event is titles “5 Ways to Cut Communications Cost” and is held on January 11 at 8am. Invites will go out for that seminar first to our primary customer base and be extended to other parties in our CRM system a couple weeks after the first invite. If you are interested in locking in a seat for one of these free seminars, please email to sales@ascendtechnologies.com. Once we confirm our entire schedule for 2011 with exact dates, we will post here as well.

droberts Ascend News Updates

The following information is regarding the BICS (building industry consulting services) program for ensuring that your new or existing building is ready to receive new facilities from the local ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier or AT&T) so that new voice & data services (T-1/MPLS/POTS/etc.) can be delivered to the facility. Based on customer demand and the lack of knowledge surrounding this topic, I have decided to add this post to help our current and future clients when dealing with facilities to a new or existing building for the purpose of providing T-1 type services to a facility. Historically on new construction this is a GC responsibility yet many do not know the details or who/how to engage the right people. For existing moves that do not yet have facilities to the building, responsibility falls on the customer direct. This is normal of say a customer taking over a warehouse environment that never had facilities and using it going forward for more traditional office space and will be utilizing T-1 type carrier services in that space going forward. Please see the attached document as a “how to” guildeline in the Atlanta area. Other cities are most likely similiar but the contact information and ILEC would certainly be different.

BICS Document - bics-program-for-building-facilities

droberts Ascend News Updates

New legislation has extended the original benefits of the Section 179 tax deductions. The following info is available at www.section179.org as well as many additional components, calculators, etc. We also have a Section 179 calculator right on the Ascend Learning Center for deduction calculations.

Update:

What is the Section 179 Deduction?? 

Most people think the Section 179 deduction is some arcane or complicated tax code.  It really isn’t, as the following will show you.

Essentially, Section 179 of the IRS tax code allows businesses to deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment purchased or financed during the tax year. That means that if you buy (or lease) a piece of qualifying equipment, you can deduct the FULL PURCHASE PRICE from your gross income. It’s an incentive created by the U.S. Government to encourage businesses to buy equipment and invest in themselves. It is sometimes referred to as the “SUV Tax Loophole” or the “Hummer Deduction” because many businesses have used this tax code to purchase qualifying vehicles (like SUV’s and Hummers.)

Essentially, Section 179 works like this:

When your business buys certain pieces of equipment, it typically gets to write them off a little at a time through depreciation. In other words, if your company spends $50,000 on a vehicle, it gets to write off (say) $10,000 a year for five years (these numbers are only meant to give you an example.)

Now, while it’s true that this is better than no write off at all, most business owners would really prefer to write off the entire equipment purchase price for the year they buy it.

In fact, if a business could write off the entire amount, they might add more equipment this year instead of waiting. That’s the whole purpose behind Section 179… to motivate the American economy (and your business) to move in a positive direction. For most small businesses (adding total equipment, software, and vehicles totaling less than $500,000 in 2010), the entire cost can be written-off on the 2010 tax return.

For businesses adding even more than $500,000, the write-offs are still substantial. See the following graphic for an example of the savings that is currently available to you after the ‘Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010′ passed in September 2010.

droberts Ascend News Updates

We have added a new Section 179 financial calculator to our Learning Center. The primary purpose of this is to offer our current clients and future clients a way to calculate how a given technology purchase will affect the organizations annual tax liability. Section 179 is a government tax program to incent primarily small business’ to make capital purchases that will help their organizations run more efficiently on numerous levels. Most all capital solutions offered by Ascend Technologies are covered under the Section 179 approved equipment list. For further details, you can visit www.section179.org.

droberts Ascend News Updates

We have now released a significant amount of new Learning Center articles across a broad range of categories. We are releasing a marketing campaign this week to ensure all customers are informed of the information availability in the new Learning Center to ensure they use it to the fullest. We have focused on areas of interest that our customers have shown interest in including many categories that are non technical related. A full variety of Vertical Market information has also been created to ensure we focus directly on our customers daily business models specifically. We will continue to update and add articles in the Learning Center over the coming weeks and months so check in regularly and search by topic, keyword or category.

droberts Ascend News Updates

Thanks for visiting our new website and more specifically our new RSS Feed. The purpose of this feed is to engage both our cusotmers and those looking for answers and interaction on specific technology solution topics. Our RSS page will primarily focus on technology related to the voice/data/security markets as it relates to customer solutions and more specifically the evaluation of those solutions as it relates to our clients ROI.

Over the past 10 years at Ascend we have made many numerous changes in the marketplace in an effort to better adapt to the constantly changing technology community. As solutions continue to change rapidly we will continue to use new ideas to engage our customers and make that information more readily available to our clients through forums on our RSS page, blogs and our new Podcast which will focus on digging deeper into technology solutions for our clients.

Please register and visit often as we will make interaction on our RSS site a regular habit and use this valuable tool to engage our clients interested in digging deeper into the technology that will in turn have a positive impact on their business. Thanks again for visiting and let us know if we can help in any way. Your feedback is much appreciated.

droberts Ascend News Updates