Blog

Stepping back from all the activity around the show, it’s pretty stunning how far the service providers have shifted towards the channel.  15-20 years ago, a couple dozen of us spent all our time at these shows trying to convince providers that together, we could offer a much stronger solution to businesses.  The response wasRead more

It is pretty clear that the cloud companies are really gaining traction.  From our first 11 meetings, year over year growth consistently up 30-50%.   For years, there’s been more talk than action.  We’ve definitely crossed the inflection point.Read more

We’ve got a team down in New Orleans this week meeting with all the carriers – stay tuned for updates from the front lines!Read more

September 23rd 8:00AM – 10:30AM – breakfast starts at 8 Why come? Learn how technology can change your business Eat Astro Doughnuts and other tasty treats See our new space Meet our new people Try our new coffee machine See why ARG is a Top Workplace NOTE: This seminar will not be an ARG commercial. Read more

ARG will work with you to create a plan and by using our industry knowledge. We will do your homework for you. ARG has already conducted market research and gathered information on over 25 different Hosted Voice providers. We allow you to focus on your core business and provide the information you need to make the best decision for your organization.

Implementation Engineers at ARG have the privilege of acting as liaisons between Client, Carrier and Vendors during events that can be deemed stressful by clients. We work as an extension of client staff that has knowledge of carrier infrastructure, cabling, switching, routing and how they interact with each other in telephony. The Implementation Engineer positionRead more

With Over 40 Datacenters in the Washington, DC Metro Area, How Do You Chose the Best One for You? Looking for a datacenter is a lot like looking for a new home. You are, in fact, looking for a new home for your servers and other IT equipment. Unfortunately for the datacenter seeker, there areRead more

Microsoft Office 365 comes packed with some powerful tools that increase productivity and the ability to collaborate.  When it comes to collaboration, Microsoft has developed Lync which includes a free voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) audio feature that allows you to use the internet to talk to your conference participants. This is a great value butRead more

You may think that you have a great conferencing rate.  Maybe you do, but maybe, after all the fees are include, your effective rate is not that great. ARG is the expert at evaluating your total conferencing costs.  For example, ARG recently evaluated a client’s bill.  They thought that they were getting a great deal. Read more

Verizon is now offering an additional gigabyte of sharable data when customers activate or upgrade a new smartphone on one of the carrier’s MORE Everything plans. In order to take advantage of this deal, you’ll need to be on a MORE Everything plan that uses at least 1GB of data. From VerizonRead more

ARG goes viral as our own Cassie Diehl accepts the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and challenges Sarah Feugill. ALS_IceBucket Experience the #IceBucketChallenge phenomenon that’s spreading ALS Awareness across social media. Challenge your friends and family today! Twitter: http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge-twitter.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/icebucketchallenge YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23icebucketchallenge Instagram: http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge-instagram.html Stay tuned for Sarah’s response!Read more

ARG builds relationships. Our team focuses on building those relationships with our clients,our carriers, and with some of the top IT support, VARS, PBX Vendors, and Cabling crews in the area. •We treat every customer as a team member and we work on your issues as if they were our own. •Many of our staffRead more

Recently you may have seen allegations that a major wireless company was engaged in a billing scheme we in the industry refer to as “cramming.” Let’s talk about what cramming is first, then how ARG can help make sure it never happens to you. Cramming is a derivative another piece of telecom jargon – “slamming.”Read more

ARG pursues trouble to resolution and then gets an RFO or reason for outage to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  This can be tricky as many of the responses we get from carriers are less than accurate and sometimes less than appropriate.  We thought we’d share some recent examples of what we received initially andRead more

Our Client Services Team opens 400+ tickets per month Each tickets averages 12 updates 8 minutes each – 1 ticket with us saves you 1.5 hours of your day! We have access to management level escalation teams with our carriers to help push tickets when needed Our carriers give us more resources – We haveRead more

A large state university, in the process of adding additional trunk group level routing to their very robust native SIP implementation, realized by chance that the provider had unexpectedly published an obscure DID number in error as the main listed number. While ARG applied executive level escalation to rectify the error, we also immediately suggestedRead more

It is beginning to look like real space- we have flooring, the glass is in, the furniture is about to arrive… and most importantly we have access to the coffee pots again!  Take a first look at ARG’s new expansion space- including room for our staff, a TON of new conference rooms, and more.  WeRead more

Backup, DR (disaster recovery), recovery as a service – all terms that most of us in the DC metro area are intimately familiar with after the last few years of weather anomalies such as the hurricane, earthquake and derecho.  We all know we need to put our valuable data somewhere and service providers are liningRead more

Everyone knows that moving into a secure data center grants their organization an added level of survivability and redundancy that the server room down the hall just doesn’t provide.  Data centers are purpose-built facilities that have all of the familiar features like raised floors, redundant power, redundant cooling, and physical security that would rival manyRead more

It has been a big week for ARG.  We were recognized as a 2014 Top Workplace by the Washington Post, we are under construction expanding our office space to accomodate our growth, and we have a seminar on cloud services tomorrow- a far cry from the long distance services that we represented initially.  On theRead more

ARG is delighted to rank 4th among small businesses in the Washington Post Top Workplaces. We were also thrilled to see so many of our clients on the list for small, medium, and large business. Congratulations to them as well for this great accomplishment! Large Employers: George Mason University Mid-Size Employers: CustomInk (#3) Walker &Read more

McLean, VA – June 22, 2014 – Fairfax County based ARG, Inc is Top Ranked Small Business in Virginia ARG, an information technology consulting and brokerage firm, ranked 4th overall in the Top Workplace Small Business category, and was the top rated small business in Virginia.  ARG has been recognized for its unique culture and unsurpassedRead more

Another issue has been uncovered in Apple’s iOS 7.1 that allows someone to bypass the Touch ID, PIN or passcode security completely. More hereRead more

We have a customer that was having sporadic issues with voice quality. When testing, the carrier said they were good, the Shoretel vendor also said they were good and our client services team was stuck in the middle translating telecom into English for our customer that really did not care whose fault it was. OurRead more

Microsoft dealers and ARG clients have spoken loudly that the conferencing experience using the MS VOIP audio is hugely inferior for conference calls and just does not work well for business. One person with latency can ruin the call for everyone. ARG solutions eliminates that issue at a low per minute rate with no commitmentRead more

ARG’s 2014 Picnic was a huge success, despite some injuries as we got out to enjoy the beautiful May weather and our coworkers. More than a few ARG employees are limping a bit today from uber competitive kickball and there may be a few food hangovers from the pie eating contest you can read more about the winners on our blog.

Our experience has shown us that the average bill that we analyze is inflated up to 30% with conferencing add on fees. Depending on the provider, these fees vary and are hidden within the call detail of each bill. For example, some providers are charging conference minimums fees, which means a call must bill aRead more

Here is the ARG team at one of the beach houses in the OBX but never fear- we are still here to take your calls. Our hotline is live and staffed by Dana, Chris , Erica, and Laura who will be delighted to hear from you and help resolve any issues you have!Read more

Millions of times a day, companies are exposed to employees’ risk behaviors that could result in multimillion dollar lawsuits. What could an employee do without even breaking your existing company’s policies that could bring your company to its knees? Here are just 2 of many examples: A lumber wholesaler, settled for over $16 million afterRead more

ARG cited in this article about how cloud computing is changing the industry.Read more