Cobra Blog

New Apprenticeship will offer sweet reward says London IT firm

2011-09-22T16:59:00.001+01:00

A recognised shortage of IT workers in the UK has prompted a North London IT business to ‘grow its own’ workforce for future expansion rather than recruit staff from overseas, thanks to a new Apprenticeship and a partnership with its local college.

Edgware based IT company, COBRA, who are an IT support and solutions specialist for local SMEs in and around North London, havetaken advantage of funding support from the National Apprenticeship Service to employ nineteen year old Dean Beckett as the company’s first recruit on the Advanced Apprenticeship in IT.

Developed by the National IT Partnership, part of the Microsoft Academy, in association with the computing trade association, CompTIA, the seven month training programme is being delivered in partnership with the College of Haringey, Enfield and North London.

Leading to a Level 3 national qualification with a pathway to significant continuing professional development opportunities, Apprentices are trained to strip down and repair computers, change faulty parts, troubleshoot and diagnose software and hardware faults on a PC and understand the basics of a server network.

According to e-skills, the Sector Skills Council for the IT and Telecoms industries, the demand for employees with specialist computing skills has outstripped supply for the first time in two years. Vacancies for ICT staff rose to 101,000 positions in the third quarter of 2010, while the number of ‘ready candidates’ declined to just over 100,000. The increased demand reflected the fact that ICT staff are less likely to be unemployed than workers in other sectors. Unemployed ICT workers fell to 3.1% compared with 8.3% for the workforce as a whole.

Responding to the challenges faced by businesses, COBRA has developed a ‘Pick n’ Mix’ approach to IT. This provides clients with a completely bespoke and organic approach, as opposed to more traditional ‘boxed in’ IT support packages.

Commenting on the new Apprenticeship, David Share, Managing Director, COBRA, said:

“Succession planning is crucial for any business and we see Apprenticeships as a foundation of the UK’s future economy. We want to develop home grown talent and skills over a sustained period, so we can recoup the rewards that skills investment will bring. It’s our intention to offer more opportunities to young people.”

Research has shown that companies investing in training are 2.5 times more likely to survive during an economic downturn or recession. In a nation-wide poll carried out by Populus in 2009, the overwhelming majority of employers (92%) felt that apprentices made a valuable contribution to the business within six months of them completing their apprenticeship or earlier. The survey also found that businesses believed that investing in apprenticeships made them more competitive (80%), provided higher overall productivity (76%) and contributed to lower staff turnover (80%).

PHOTO CAPTION:
David Share, Managing Director, COBRA (left), intends to expand the firm’s ‘Pick n’ Mix’ IT support and solution proposition with the help of new IT Apprentice, Dean Beckett.

Business owners reluctant to sign up to IT Support Contracts

2011-08-23T14:26:00.002+01:00

We have had an interesting month here at Cobra....

New customers have come on board who are now paying for user, workstation, server and network support on a monthly basis. Good news for us and good news for our customers as they felt that they had no choice but to outsource their IT to a qualified IT Support Company and quite rightly so. In order to maximise on internal efficiency, system uptime and cost, outsourcing all of their IT to us just made sense.

However, by contrast we have also seen a few potential customers decide not to sign up with us. Although I do not take these circumstances personally as in these instances they were not even looking at a competitor! However, it is worrying, especially for those who are reliant on their server network, that they do not see IT as a beneficial or important enough overhead to work into their budget.

It is extremely important that your IT is monitored, managed and supported by a professional IT Services company. If servers are not installed at a site then you can get by from using an ad-hoc service from an IT Company. However, in this instance, the majority of files are being saved on user workstations. Should these systems go down, what then? Who do you call? Do you get out the yellow pages?

What about companies who do use a server to manage their customer information and emails. Should this technical device crash or for a serious problem to occur, who do you call? What do you do when your business is down because of lack of IT Support. You will be losing money minute-by-minute from the business not being able to operate and all to save a few hundred pounds a month.

These circumstances are factual and the answer to this is, pre-empt these situations. Sign up even for just basic network monitoring and user support on a monthly contract. It is not expensive and when a situation does occur, those business owners will be thankful to be able to benefit from the levels of service an IT Support Contract buys you. Plus with the knowledge that a service is being paid for, businesses will actually use their new resources for a number of different reasons; IT advice, IT project management, IT consultancy, IT strategy, even IT budgets and they will feel that at last, not only do they have an external IT Department at their fingertips, but their company is supported, managed and recoverable from a business continuity standpoint.

Don’t wait until something breaks and don’t let your company fall into a potential operational pitfall, speak to your preferred IT Company and get yourself supported.

The changing methods and impact of communication in our IT-integrated world

2011-06-17T15:20:00.001+01:00

Before the existence of the internet there were not too many methods of communicating in a fast and efficient way.

If you were not face to face with a person, you would make a telephone call or perhaps write a letter and although we still use the telephone, or more favourably in the last 10 years, our mobile phones, letters are becoming much more of a legacy way to formally communicate.

With emails, it is an almost instant receipt, much unlike the use of paper letters, hence the reason for many businesses to migrate to a “paperless” office, which of course has its own advantages and disadvantages. With voice communication, if the intended contact was not available at that specific moment, a voicemail or answer-phone message was left. A significant improvement to this is the use of email messages that can be sent through to a user notifying them of their missed call. This is a major step forward from the previous voicemail approach and now there are even text-transcription-emails whereby the voice message you leave is actually transcribed into text and emailed to the intended recipient. Continuing with the importance of email communication, when a user logs in to their PC, a categorical list of messages are available (rather than sifting through paper mail-in trays) which can also be stored and filed for as long as is required. This can be achieved via simple web-hosted email, or more advanced Exchange Email using Business Servers.

Email communication is in essence, a much easier and more manageable way to communicate with the world and undoubtedly the most important and fastest way for businesses to communicate.

With the increasing development of mobile integration over the last 5 years, emails can now be sent and received from mobile devices, which is extremely necessary when away from the office. For businesses, having a way to communicate with staff, customers and contacts whilst using the ability to synchronise with their PC email client is also a useful and practical tool to stay connected in an organised way.

Moving forward with technology and the internet, documents and emails can be shared and accessed using local server networking, Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections and remote working. With more savvy businesses realising the need to move to a server infrastructure enables all company information to be stored and accessed without infringing on confidentiality or security.

Of course, the growing concern about the internet is security and people often wonder if their data will be safe from unauthorised access to it. However, security on the internet is forever growing with bigger and more sophisticated ways to protect you and your information by such technologies as firewalls, proxy servers and again VPN. Other worries are that data may be lost or significant industry-specific retention and archiving periods are not maintained, however enterprise-level backups can be implemented at a local or network level for any size budget and can be set to meet both a user, company or regulative-body need.

The use of social networking is also an effective and fast-growing-respected method of communication, especially due to that fact that companies and individuals can socialise online for free and more importantly to businesses, companies can advertise to a vast audience extremely quickly. Of course, social networking opens up its own world of privacy and security issues which is becoming ever more evident in recent twitter-related news stories.

Ultimately, the way people communicate today is within the digital framework and although it is important not to forget the days when postal strikes and mail delays brought businesses to standstill, it is important to understand that the requirements to sustain our increasing dependency on electronic communication will mean more advanced levels of security, faster and higher rates of infrastructure implementation and more pressure on IT companies to ensure data and communication is safeguarded without impacting on future scalability and performance.

For more information on our IT Planning and how we can scale your digital company, visit http://www.cobrasupport.net/smb

Organic IT - what is it?

2011-04-07T11:07:00.004+01:00

You're probably thinking, great more "organic" nonsense and now it's coming from an IT Company! Well, it's actually not nonsense as ultimately you save money by investing in IT solutions naturally over a period of time.

Setting up a new business or even growing an existing one is extremely difficult and being able to rely on your IT for productivity and resiliency is important. The sad thing is that many businesses treat IT as a second priority because they believe it's the most expensive component of a business. Consequently they find it difficult spending money or even justifying spending money on more modern technology and are forced to use old systems with little or no support.

However, this doesn't mean you have to spend tens of thousands of pounds on an upgrade and that is what we try to ensure. We work with you to advise, plan and implement your IT naturally (organically), both suitable for today and for future growth. Then when it's time and you are ready for an additional IT layer, we then work with you again to implement this solution, but only at the required time.

Organic IT is therefore a perfect way to gradually scale your IT, whether solution-based or infrastructure, naturally, over time and only when needed. It enables you to reduce your costs initially by using a phasing structure, but enables you to still get to where you need to at the end, over time, just not immediately. That's what saves you money initially and also in the long run, which is what Organic IT is all about.

Visit www.cobrasupport.net/organic for more information

IT Consultants and When To Use Them

2011-02-19T13:33:00.003Z

Every business owner understands how difficult it is finding that perfect candidate who can pretty much do every task you throw them for a salary that won't empty your pocket.

However, with increasing unemployment and candidates willing to take any job for perhaps lower than their previous salary, a business owner needs to think "Am I making the right decision with employment".

PAYE is extremely expensive and I am positive all business owners feel the burn at the end of the month when they see their cash flowing to the HMRC for their employee contributions. The question is, can you hire a consultant to not only do the job better, but in the long run, more cost effectively?

Hiring a consultant is a perfect way to meet initial costs for specific jobs but ensuring the work can be done by a seasoned professional. One issue with an employee is that they are able to perform the roles for the job they were employed to do, but the time to train them to undertake work that a consultant has a skill set in doing is something that is too time costly. Not to mention potential issues with existing customers not being supported if those employees are detracted from their daily tasks to learn immediately required new skills.

I am not suggesting internal continual professional development and training should not be actioned as it should, but when a specific piece of work for a customer needs to happen, it makes sense hiring a consultant who is able to tackle the role without too much management from the business owner and, more importantly, their chargeable rate although sometimes quite expensive, is only an initial cost which can for the majority of times be claimed back from the customer.

IT consultancy is an ideal way for companies to hire very experienced professionals to tackle specific, technical tasks that they have the requisite knowledge in. It is also a good way of forming long-standing relationships or even Venture Partners that you can rely on for future work, plus your customer will be happy knowing that the task at hand is being handled by a professional.

At the end of the day, a business owner simply needs to know the following: The work can be done, the work can be done well, the work can be done without costing too much money and that their customer will be happy.

The answer to the above is find a consultant who is able to undertake the specific task that you need, whether that be through an existing contact, online outsourcing website or consultancy firm. Then hire them, brief them on the work, ensure that they follow the job sheet and then act as the intermediary management between them and your customer.

You will find a lot of success with this method and in the long run, using a consultant at those required times does keep the costs down, especially if you can bill your customer for their time. Plus, if you retain the consultant on your books for future work, you would have already formed a good working relationship to work together effectively and efficiently next time.

For more information on our IT consultancy and what we can offer, visit www.cobrasupport.net/consultancy

Small Business IT Planning - The Importance of Being Earnest

2010-09-24T20:08:00.001+01:00

Small Business IT Planning is a very serious topic for small businesses but many small or growing companies do not fully prioritise their IT growth.

It is fair to say that without IT a business could not function, so there is no excuse thinking IT as a second priority. From a sole-trading plumber who emails his customers daily, all the way up to a larger company who relies on internet orders from their website as a main profit margin. Without IT, every business would suffer and therefore any small business should factor in IT planning into their business model as a primary responsibility.

It is very easy for small businesses to setup an IT infrastructure and most startups follow this course of action:

They purchase a standalone PC to act as their "file server", a couple of laptops and printers, POP3 email from a cheap email host and use the wireless router supplied by the Internet Service Provider in their Small Office or Home Office. Although this in itself enables the small business owner to set off which I am not denying is a good start, at some stage this basic and fairly cheap IT setup will begin to show holes in security, productivity and scalability. Consequently, many small businesses end up investing in large and sometimes unnecessary architecture as they believe that this is their "next step" under the advisement of an IT Company, who may really just want their money.

I firmly believe that IT Planning can not only save a company money, but can become a far more organic strategy to accompany the natural growth of a company. Of course, this does usually mean investing in a server which is more than a few hundred pounds compared to a PC File Server. However, a good IT Company who has experience with IT Planning will prepare a small business with their insight into their growth, phases showing how the IT infrastructure will begin, its stepping-stone upgradability, what the end result would entail and the cost implications across the board.

This method provides flexibility with cost and natural scalability which is extremely important for any growing business. No business should run before they can walk and therefore the IT of a company follows in concurrence with this notion.

In short, if you are starting business, speak to an experienced IT Company who understands a small business' needs as they will provide you with a really good starting point to get your IT off the ground and the infrastructure itself will be far more secure than a DIY approach. Secondly, if you are a growing business and have begun to realise that it's time to upgrade and step out of the initial IT implementation, speak to a Small Business IT Planner as they will be able to advise you on the correct, organic next steps, as well as provide you with phasing and implementation costs, together with full support as you grow.

Which Browser Should I Use?

2010-09-14T23:38:00.005+01:00

Assuming you are using Microsoft's Windows operating system there are a plethora of browsers that you could use. Now that Microsoft has been forced to offer alternatives, rather than insist its usually native Internet Explorer (current version 8) upon you, there are at least a dozen others. Each of them has its own positive and negative features as can be seen on my 4 preferred choices below.

1) Google Chrome

This new browser comes into its element as a speedy, compact & minimalistic unit. It doesnt have tonnes of standard extra (mostly unused by the domestic user) features and allows a lot of space to become free on screen. It is very fast to download and install and loads webpages very quickly. It deals with most websites, including flash based ones and secure sites such as online banking pages. It very rarely crashes by comparison, it now features extensions to enhance its capabilities and it even combines the seach function with the URL bar at the top.

2) Mozilla Firefox

This open source, highly customisable web browsing experience is slowly capturing more and more of the market (both domestic and business). It is also fairly quick to install initially and runs relatively quickly however it is not as fast as Chrome.

Over the last few years of its existance, users have literally written thousands of addons, in the way of utilities, games and general extended capabilities. This browser is probably ideal for you as a user if you are looking to integrate all of your web needs, software needs and gaming needs securely in 1 place. Be wary though, if you overload it with a lot of addons it can slow down considerably.

3) Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 8 has been the peoples choice, until the 2 recent contenders above. It still benefits from the majority vote although it is bulky, unneccessarily slow and comes with a host of extra often not really needed by many users. It is a very secure browser which is good for identifying problem website containing bugs or viruses. It also has some very nifty features (Also featured on the above 2) these include tabbed browsing and private browsing.

4) Safari

Apple's native browser recently spilled onto Microsofts system and retains its good looks and minimal yet effective features. It looks great, however with heavy use it slows down and becomes sluggish. You are also not able to customise it very much, you get what you are given basically.

Conclusions:

For security: use Internet Explorer
For design and style: use Safari
For expandable features: use Mozilla Firefox
For speed and a much faster internet experience: use Google Chrome.

Watch this space....Google are also releasing an operating system hoped to rival Windows in the near future. That should be interesting!

Keeping Your PC or Laptop Healthy

2010-09-14T23:34:00.004+01:00

6 months or a year have now passed, you're constantly trying to avoid the egg timer or blue circle and you are finding enough time to make a coffee whilst doing simple tasks such as opening a small word processor document or your outlook emails. Perhaps it is just taking ten minutes to boot up the machine?

So how do you stop yourself from pulling your hair out in desperation? Well actually there are a few simple things you can try.

No doubt someone has mentioned defragmentation to you at some point, this is fine to perform however this alone will make very little difference. Plus, if you are running low on hard disk space then you need to have at least 30% free space in order for Windows to actually perform a defragmentation. There are other, better degragmentation tools that you can use such as Defraggler by Piriform. The user interface is much easier to use, the software diggs far deeper to get all of those fragmented files into ordered pieces, plus it's much faster than the Windows own inbuilt program. However, this should be the last step after all others have been carried out to bring order to your chaotic hard drive. I mean, whats the point of reorganising files you dont even want or need?

The first thing you should do is make a list of programs you don't use and uninstall them. Such favourites are the computer manufacturer's programs that arrived with the machine and which utterly bloats your machine. Old games and pieces of software you no longer use are also vital to unintall. Once these have been removed, you should also take a look at which programs are starting up with the machine unneccessarily and then stop them from doing so. You can do this by going to the startup folder within Windows Programs section and deleting these or, if you are a bit more techie, delete the keys manually from the registry or use the startup tab from within msconfig. However, unless you are a good techie or a trained IT Professional, we don't recommend standard users doing this as your machine may not start up again.

A tool that is excellent at removing temporary files, temporary internet files and cookies (all of these seriously clog up your machine both in space and available memory resources) is again by Piriform called CCleaner. This nifty piece of software is brilliant and we use it for cleaning up client machines as well. It has a tiny footprint and really does clean all those temporary files and potentially spyware/malicious files from your machine.

Increasing your page file additionally helps as well as this method uses hard disk space for memory placement, rather than using your actual hardware memory. This frees up your physical memory to be allocated elsewhere. However, you are limited to the size of the drive that the page file resides on, which is normally the main operating system drive (usually C Drive).

Lastly, which is always recommended is a memory (also known as RAM) upgrade as the more memory you have, the more resources your machine has to use which ultimately makes a much faster experience. 32-bit operating systems are limited to between 2-4GB of memory but 64-bit operating systems can have up to 192GB of memory which is the case for Windows 7 Ultimate. The limits do depend on what version of Microsoft Windows you are running so check the following page for more information http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx

Operating systems are simply very large pieces of software and they carry a lot of baggage (and gather more) over time. It is no wonder with all the security updates, hack releases, addons, installed programs and further customisable options that your pc or laptop is slowing down. Sometimes it's time to move on to the next operating system or purchase a new laptop. However, the steps above can not only save you money but will make your laptop go that extra bit further.

If you wanted a preferred IT company to perform a cleanup for you, then they will be able to tell you what they will do and what you can do to keep your machine clean and speedy.

Why using an IT company in your local area will pay you dividends

2010-06-01T20:20:00.000+01:00

Any good business knows how vital it is to rely on local services for advice and support. It is only at the times you need help the most when on-demand, on-your-doorstop assistance is absolutely obligatory for business continuity.

We have very good relationships with businesses in our North London area because we understand the importance of being able to rely on local businesses for different skill sets. Any successful business will actively seek to collaborate with the best companies, always within a budget and from a company with the most effective response time. Many of those, including ourselves, prefer to work with local businesses in order to form on-going professional relationships, to benefit from a resource of services available very quickly and enjoy high levels of services provided.

The key factor that we have found when dealing with businesses, notably small businesses within our local area is that the quality of the services are extremely high. We as an IT Support and Solutions company therefore pride ourselves on the quality of our customisable IT Support and Solutions to our local small and medium businesses. We do this so that we can provide our local business communities with professional, scalable services on-demand, at cost, as well as grow the relationships exponentially.

The beauty of using an IT company in your local area is that at the times you need them the most (and from experience, unless undertaking a project or large consultancy, these are during emergency support periods) they will be available to you on-demand providing you with very high levels of service. More so is that the cost of using a local IT company massively outweighs using an IT company in another city or county even if they have lower support costs. This is due to travel cost implications which greatly impairs the time-to-fix duration and which consequently keeps your business out of action. All in all, when you put these factors together, using a local IT company will actually save you money because cost negotiation is much better achieved on a good relationship, the quality of the service will be far higher and the time to resolve the issues will be much speedier.

When is it time for a computer upgrade?

2010-04-25T13:00:00.003+01:00

This week our support team have received a large number of telephone calls and emails from customers experiencing considerable computer problems. Some of our customers’ issues have been ranging from profile errors where the desktop has been altered at a system level, operating system blue screens on first boot or during usage, corrupt system and personal files, unable to copy, paste, delete or even run programs to other serious error messages.

It is not often that hard drives go wrong, but when they do, they meticulously go wrong and especially in laptops and desktop computers on their third year of life. With manufacturers warranties lasting only a year and unless you have paid for extended hardware support from computer suppliers, it is likely that you will not be covered should your hard drive become inoperable. Plus should that day happen, all of your data will be at risk and may not even be recoverable.

So when is it time for a computer upgrade? Well the answer is not to wait for the entire computer to fail! Pre-empt this and if you feel your computer is sluggish, making strange grinding noises or you are receiving windows error messages, contact a computer specialist and ask them to perform a survey of your computer. They will be able to perform diagnostic tests to measure if the hard drive is degrading and then, if necessary, advise you on how to migrate your data to a new hard drive as well as installing and managing this for you.

Although the cost of replacing hard drives in computers and laptops is not excessive, you are still looking at around £200 for a new hard drive to include time for installation and data migration. Of course, this is reasonable if you prefer not to spend more on a new machine, but the time to upgrade your computer would be at this point. Considering technology has improved dramatically over the last 3 years, purchasing a new and up-to-date machine will provide you with another 3+ years using the latest hardware and software, as well as making your overall experience much more rewarding.

If you are looking to clean up your existing computer, improve its performance, speed or even if you are experiencing serious errors, contact us today for a free on-site consultation. Our team will help identify the root cause of your computer problems and recommend either a part or full upgrade dependent on your situation.

For more information on our computers and other stuff visit http://www.cobrasupport.net/computers

OMG, parents are catching on...but you’re just not quick enough

2010-03-21T12:03:00.002Z

Mums and Dads, have you ever wondered what the secret codes your children are using on their mobile phones and computers mean? Well you are not alone.

Although parents of the modern age are much more knowledgeable digitally and understand what things like “LOL” (laugh out loud ) or “OMG” (oh my god) mean, your kids are ahead of the game and create a dozen more for every one that you learn.

So what can be done about this? Well don’t forget that the internet is a very large dictionary and you can be guaranteed that if someone has used it, Google can find it. Just type it in, hit search and you will discover what these abbreviations represent.

However, would it not be more organised and pre-emptive to check and monitor your children’s instant message or social networking history, as well as their sent and received emails on their computer to see what terminology they have been using? How can you do this, you ask?

Cobra has partnered up with ContentWatch, a globally renowned and award winning content protection provider purely to help parents stay ahead of the game and protect their children from the dangers on the internet. We can help you keep your kids safe whilst they are online, protect them from strangers and potential predators in chat rooms, harmful material they should not be exposed to so that they can use the internet in a fun and secure way. What’s more you will be notified every time your children are prevented from doing something that could harm them and this will help you sleep safely at night knowing your family is protected.

A little head’s up for you.... “P911”, “PIR”, “PAL”, “PAW”, “CD9”, “Code9”, “POS”, “POH” – all of these mean you (parents) are watching!

Take a look at www.cobrasupport.net/family to see how our Family Protect Service can help you keep your children safe online.

Or, alternatively, you could always use the trusty phone and call 0800 612 8939.

Small Business IT on a Small Business budget? No it’s not nonsense!

2010-03-12T16:40:00.000Z

There are many small businesses that are desperate for good quality and reliable IT solutions to support their businesses. The problem is they do not believe they can afford to invest in infrastructure to provide a solid foundation for their company. As a result, many small businesses are using out-dated technology that hinders their productivity and growth, which for any small business is a dangerous avenue to walk down.

Small Business IT on a Small Business budget is not fiction, it is a reality and implementing bespoke services and solutions is extremely straight forward. The financial implications are low because small companies can take a stepping stone approach to their IT and each solution actively improves your efficiency, security and net-worth.

From simple wireless or easy-to-use wired networking to provide added value assets to your office, using a corporate email account with a fresh website to promote your online credibility, centralised storage with backups for productivity and support from an external IT Department (because small businesses are just as important as corporate entities) are all available to small businesses, and most importantly, they will not break the bank.

Of course, not everything needs to be implemented in one go, but it is also a good idea to be able to have “Small Business IT in a box” that gives you what you need at a reasonable cost. The majority of individuals and companies will spend money on services if they are really needed and if the cost to obtain is not only affordable but worth it.

We have exceptionally good services for small businesses that can be supplied organically to your growing company or an “all-in-one” solution through our Small Business Package. As part of our small business services, we provide you with a consultation on a scalable approach to your small business IT structure and even how we can re-implement your existing architecture to improve your business.

Check out our website at http://bit.ly/bPKFYW and get in touch with us before you start to walk down that avenue.

I am a PC and Windows 7 was my idea

2010-02-24T16:23:00.004Z

We’ve all seen the adverts, the one with the woman in the cab, the other with the mother setting the internet usage time for her kids and another with the man explaining “his” idea on the treadmill in the gym. Love or hate them I am sure we will be seeing more of these campaign ads from Microsoft in order to win-over home users to upgrade their existing Vista computers, or to persuade Windows XP users to invest in their latest operating system.

However, this post is not to discuss the likes or dislikes of Windows 7, nor is it to criticise Microsoft’s marketing ideas. This post is to discuss one of those adverts in particular and it is the advert of the father explaining how “his powers know no limits” as he discovered (what seems to be exclusively with Windows 7) how to print, share information and media wirelessly throughout his home.

Although Windows 7 is a new operating system, the ability to network information and media wirelessly across multiple devices was available in Windows XP and is not limited to Windows 7. The problem that many home owners are facing is that they do not really know how to set up a home network and some believe that it is expensive to implement. It is therefore unfortunate that some are still forced to use USB modems to connect to the internet and to use their computer in one single place. Shocking as this is, it is the truth.

Don’t believe it? Well we have just recently converted one such home from a restricted wired modem internet connection to a wireless network and although we also supplied a new laptop with Windows 7 to update their environment, their existing computer had Windows XP installed. Now all of their information on both computers is shared throughout their home network and they have the freedom to surf the web anywhere in their home.

Wireless home networking is very simple to implement with a good quality wireless router and a couple of basic changes to your computers in order to share your information. You do not have to spend hundreds of pounds and in fact we charged our customer just £95 to convert their home into a wireless network.

Let us break you out of your chains and give you the freedom to move and share without cables or restrictions, no matter what computer or operating system you are using.

Check out our Home Networking Services on our website http://bit.ly/8Ya8R2 and we can provide you with a consultation on a scalable approach for your home network.

70% of Kids Online Reached by Paedophiles

2010-02-10T11:57:00.006Z

This is the headline in The Sun Newspaper today and on the day after Safer Internet Day 2010, this is exactly what Britain’s parents need to see.

We recently wrote an article about children not being safe online (http://bit.ly/9Jpd0V) but the exposure on internet safety for children is still not sufficient even with press articles and dedicated calendar events promoting this delicate but serious topic. As an IT Company we are fully aware of the dangers on the internet which is why we provide a solution that actively protects children from the dangers on the internet, as well as keeping parents’ assured that their children are safe.

However, even with services like ours and media coverage, online safety is still the greatest risk in the digital world today and Jilliane Hoffman, a best selling author and former Assistant District Attorney in Florida agrees. She states “‘Phantoms’ who trawl the internet are the greatest threat to our children and these ‘invisible’ predators use the anonymity of the internet to snare vulnerable kids.”

Jilliane also claims that “Seven out of every ten kids online are approached by a paedophile in the US” and these facts are not falsified, increased to scare or hype this matter. These are truthful figures on how dangerous the internet really is for children. 2009's figures provided by ContentWatch stated that in 2008 1 in 3 children aged 10-17 had unwanted exposure to sexual material and 1 in 5 children of the same age received a sexual solicitation over the Internet.

So what can a parent do? This was the question we raised in our previous article and the answer remains the same; education. Educate your children about online safety, educate your schools on what they can do to protect your children outside of the home, educate your friends, family, raise awareness in your local areas and ultimately invest in computer internet protection to prevent contact and content reaching your children. Internet Safety is not going to disappear, it will in fact only increase and we see horrific evidence of this in daily newspapers across the globe. Do something about this now before your children become part of the worldwide statistic.

For more information on our Family Protect Service visit http://bit.ly/6cvtm9 to register for free information.

Read the full Sun Newspaper Article dated 10/02/10 http://bit.ly/cVS1i7

Help Support Safer Internet Day 2010 http://bit.ly/6YsbmE

Online Backup, Finally No More Copy and Pasting!

2010-01-28T13:29:00.006Z

You are at the end of your day or your week and you think, “I must backup my files, but I don’t really have time, so I will do it tomorrow”. We’ve all been there, you’ve got pictures, music, work files, personal documents, videos of the kids that all need backing up to your external hard drive. Of course, you first need to find the new items which are obviously spread all over your computer, then you need to connect your external hard drive to your computer and then wait for the ‘copy and pasting’ to finish. What an absolute bore.

There are two things that are wrong with the first paragraph. The first is, “I don’t really have time, so I will do it tomorrow” and the second is “backing up to your external hard drive”. If you are one of those individuals still using an external hard drive to copy and paste your files as a backup solution, or you are a person who is always “doing it tomorrow” then this article is just for you.

Looking back historically, pictures were stored within physical photo albums, videos were all nicely organised on VHS tapes and documents were filed away in the filing cabinet. More recently these files are stored on CD/DVDs, external hard and flash drives, digital photo albums or allocated folders on your computers. It is likely that they are also stored on multiple computers and devices and with numerous versions available both new and old that you keep “just in case”. Well “just in case” is not a linear term and you cannot predict the day when your device will not only fail but the data will be unrecoverable. I am not just talking about your computer either, external hard drives are just as fragile and are notorious to just one day turn on and all you hear is the hard disk making strange grinding and skipping noises. So after all your hard work of “copy and pasting” to your external hard drive or a separate partition on your computer hard drive, it was pretty much all for nothing as everything is now gone. Not to mention that if your backup files are available, it is highly unlikely they will even be up-to-date. So what are you going to do now?

The answer is, don’t wait. Do not wait for that day to arrive, invest in an online backup solution now as not only will all of your files be backed up every day securely, available to be restored whenever you need, but the backup process will happen without any intervention from you, thus making the reliance on manual backing up completely redundant.

How does it work then?

Online Backup works using your internet connection. All of your files are copied to secure off-site file servers over the internet and then every day the online backup software is scheduled to make incremental back-ups of any new or changed files. You are also usually able to access up to 30 versions of your backups so that if you need to restore a document that was changed 12 days ago, then you can do just that. You can schedule the backup process to occur any time of day, week and some will even shutdown your computer for you once complete. It is quick, easy to use and you will feel totally assured that your files are backed up and available for restoration should disaster strike.

I understand how it works, but is it safe?

Yes it is safe as the internet connection uses a secure socket layer (SSL) to transfer the data, as well as the data being encrypted during the file transfer process and stored encrypted on the file servers. All of the file servers are located in large underground data-centres, monitored with sophisticated climate and security equipment with backup internet lines to ensure network uptime.

What about Data Protection?

All of your data is encrypted on the file servers and you are the only person to have the ability to decrypt and restore your files using your own decryption password. This ensures that you have total control over your files. In terms of legality, if you use an IT company in the United Kingdom ask them which country their backup servers are located. If they are stored within the EU, then they will all be compliant to the UK Data Protection Act. If the servers are located in the United States, make sure the company that owns the servers have signed up to the Safe Harbour Policy which is an extension to the UK Data Protection Act and is deemed acceptable and safe to transfer your data to.

What if the backup server goes down?

The majority of online backup companies use secondary backup servers for replication that hold your data as well. This ensures the availability of your information if their primary server fails.

But I need to be reliant on my internet connection

This is true and if your internet connection happens to go down at your home or office, the backup transfer will automatically continue from the last point when the connection is restored. Should your internet connection be offline when you need to restore your data, if you use a good backup company, you will also have the ability to access your files over the web from any computer, as well as download them.

Using an online backup company to safely and automatically store your personal and business files is not only vital to secure and protect your personal data continuity but it allows you to have a solution where once setup, you will not need to manually control any part of the backup process. Don’t jeopardise your data, talk to an IT Company and ask them about their online backup solutions as using the manual “copy and pasting” to external hard drives as a backup solution will soon be treated the same as VHS tapes, a redundant historical memory.

Remote Support - It's Like Having an Always Available IT Team, But Without the Added Salary

2010-01-23T12:38:00.005Z

What is Remote Support?

DEFINITION: A secure service that allows a representative to assist an end-user in solving computer problems, either by showing what steps to take through screen sharing, or with permission, taking control of the computer and performing a task remotely.

Remote Support is a relatively recent and innovative technology which allows any user, whether home or business, to call upon an experts’ help within minutes of finding a problem or those needing immediate assistance with a computer-related issue.

Who can benefit from Remote Support?
Within the boundaries of your home it is simply a direct connection to an external IT Support Company who can provide on-hand help to your nuisance and frustrating problems. Within any industry it is a crucial addition to a company or office looking for cutting edge, affordable and efficient solutions to problems that are encountered on a daily basis. It can assist standalone home and business users, entire networks or mainframe servers alike.

It can be of assistance to anyone who has a working internet connection and who operates a PC, Apple Mac, or even an iPhone and other handheld devices. It doesn’t matter which country you are in, whether you are a village apart or 5000 miles away from one another, it is a secure, safe and easy way to reach out for computer help. Everyone can benefit from this external support service.

Is it really better than having an experienced technician always on site?
The simple answer to this is, if you want to save money by not paying for an IT Manager’s salary or an IT Support Team, then yes. If a problem is dealt with remotely it is likely the company in charge of your Remote Support will have an experienced team of technicians ready to address any issues and as a result, support is often instantaneous and more qualified. Remote Support will allow you to get up and running much faster without a waiting time for an on-site technician to visit you at your computer.

How does this technology work?
Remote Support technology is essentially a secure and encrypted tunnel between your computer and the Remote Support Technician. It is safe, it is secure, it is fast and you remain in full control at all times and see everything the Remote Support Technician is doing (and stop it if you’re not happy). You can load the Remote Support application from your desktop or use a dedicated website to connect securely. The connection is always made by you, with your permission and the technician will resolve your issue once connected. It is very important and comforting for users to know that no one can just access their system without them first creating and accepting the session (providing you are using a credible Remote Support Company) and then allowing the technician to take control. Once the secure session is completed, it is then terminated. This entire process ensures your files, documents and work stay safe and private.

What’s the verdict?
Why employ someone internally to carry out support for you (who has to prioritise their work flow), when you can rely on a team of technicians to take care of your problems remotely. They won’t be in your way, they won’t charge you expensive costs for hours of site visits, they will respond quickly when you need it and most importantly, will provide you with a very high level of service.

Ultimately, if you need immediate and qualified assistance, then Remote Support should definitely be your first choice. However, if you would prefer to wait for an unknown amount of time before your problem can be resolved on-site then I suggest you stick with your internal support department!

To Host or Not To Host, That is the Question

2010-01-20T18:02:00.004Z

This is the scratchy head topic that all forward-thinking businesses deliberate on. It is a subject of great financial debate for companies, small to large and the decision to host or not to host can either save you money or pour much needed cash-flow from your IT budget straight down the drain. However, there is sound reasoning for the decision to use hosted solutions and we will discuss the pro’s and con’s so that you can make the right choice for your company, when the inevitable discussion arises over the boardroom table.

You may have seen lots of interesting offers about “cloud services” and “business virtualisation” but at the end of it all, there is no better word for hosted services than ‘hosting’. Hosting is for ease of understanding, internet-accessible hardware. What I mean by this is that all of the hardware that would usually be sitting in your internal communication or server room is sitting in someone else’s and you have a secure direct tunnel to these systems over your home or office internet connection.

There are many types of hosted solutions on the market such as, dedicated server hosting (individual servers that you have full control over), virtual private server hosting (multiple software-based servers spread over a single hardware server), managed hosting (services that are managed by your hosting company rather than you), unmanaged hosting (services that are managed by you with only light support from your hosting company), collocation hosting (your own hardware hosted in another company’s data centre), but I am going to concentrate on a particular type of hosting that I would recommend for standard day-to-day business activity. This is managed web and email hosting.

So you’re a small company with 5 to 20 staff members thinking about investing in some serious internal hardware and kitting out your office with business servers. Or, let’s say you’re a medium sized company of 25 to 50 people with 4 to 5+ year old infrastructure acutely thinking it’s time for an upgrade. Well, before you start running to your Financial Director or business partner asking to spend anything from £10,000 to £50,000 payable in one go, why not investigate the hosting route as you will not only reduce your immediate financial exposure dramatically, but you will also be investing in business protection, both monetarily speaking and systems-related.

Investing in managed web and email hosting is a very cost effective way of progressing the technology in your company. Your websites and emails are all stored on secure servers outside of your working environment, managed and supported by qualified technical support staff and you have a direct secure tunnel to these servers using your internet connection on your computers or even on your mobile phones. Immediately you have reduced the risk on your business and have set in place reliable continuity elements. In a hosted environment the IT backbone of your company (and for the majority of companies these are your website and emails) resides on an external source and should an emergency occur internally such as an office fire, theft or terrorism, all of your core systems are protected and will remain operational. In addition to this, software/hardware upgrades, service packs, extra modules for your hosted hardware are all handled by your hosting company which enables you to use the latest technology without investing in any further personal time or money. Not to mention the most important part of hosting, a Network Uptime and Service Level Agreement and if you use one of the top hosting companies that provide this at a 100% level, you are guaranteed a 24/7/365 provision on the accessibility and security of your technology or more importantly, your business.

However, should you decide to host your core business solutions internally, you are not only putting all of your eggs in one basket, forced to lay out a tremendous amount of money that for small companies just is not practical in terms of cash-flow, but you also cannot guarantee to customers, investors, shareholders, partners, staff a 100% uptime and are utterly reliant on internal staff for support and additional third parties for countermeasures, all levying costs. Ultimately, should any emergency occur, your business will come to a standstill.

Therefore on security and continuous business activity alone, the financial burden and company exposure of using internal hardware completely outweighs the actual risk of not hosting your core business IT structure. So why isn’t everyone using hosted solutions then?

People fear what they cannot see or touch and therefore using hosted services for some is a risk. Since they cannot control the source then it is deemed as being out of their control. However, this is a good thing as that control hinges on the hosting company and they are not only qualified to handle this for you but you pay them for this skilled level of cover. Another reason why companies do not want to use hosted solutions is because they would also be at the mercy of their internet connection. Hang on a minute, if the internet connection goes down at the office with internal business servers they will stop communicating with the outside world. So isn’t that the same thing? The answer is ‘yes’ it is and in the event that your internet connection does go down, savvy companies would have already installed a backup ADSL line for example, which isn’t that expensive in order to keep you afloat, or without this, there is simply no difference to the internet connection going down whether you have internally or externally hosted hardware.

There are two other reasons why companies prefer not to host and that is due to migration time and cost. Migration is always a cause for concern for companies because when migrating to hosted services, changes to the DNS Server (Domain Name System) of your domain are necessary. Your DNS is essentially the index for your domain which tells every other nameserver on the internet where your website is stored, how your emails are processed and to which IP address and so on. However, making a change to your DNS requires a process called propagation to occur which is the period when every nameserver refreshes their own directories to pull in any new settings. Nameservers refresh daily but at different times, so there will be occurrences during propagation when your website and emails will be inaccessible or people will report they receive bounce back messages when attempting to email. However, usually 24 to 48 hours after any DNS change, your website and emails are live to everyone on the internet and therefore it is always good practice to make changes on a Friday afternoon to allow propagation to occur during the weekend. You can put in provisions such as using a backup mx record (an entry in your DNS that points emails to a backup mail store in the event of a failure) that will store any emails during this time, as well as always keeping your website on the existing web server so that companies and customers are able to view your website either on the old or new server, dependent at which stage of propagation their nameservers are at. However you do have to allow for the propagation period and the possibility of your website and especially your emails to be down for a brief amount of time.

In terms of migrating and importing web directories and mailboxes to the hosted servers, this is straightforward and is usually handled efficiently by either the company you are purchasing the hosting solution through or a member of your internal IT Department. However, if your business simply cannot afford to be offline even for a single weekend and this will be more prominent in large to corporate companies, then hosting is not for you and you will have to invest in costly internal infrastructure.

Lastly we have the cost implications of hosting. I have already mentioned the acquisition of internal hardware could be in excess of £50,000, but with hosted services, you do not incur high-end financial burdens. There are no one-off purchase costs where you have to consider raising capital or depreciation of hardware, you spread the cost over a period of time. For small companies, the annual total hosting cost would not even equal the full cost of an outright server purchase and for larger companies the cost of hosting is effectively a monthly payment plan, where both scenarios benefit from using servers at the forefront of technology, a dedicated technical support team, business continuity program and a service level agreement. Although you will not be able to position the hosting as a company asset, hosting is in itself an asset for your company in terms of the immediate low financial costs and high protection factor for the daily running of your business.

For these high mission critical systems, the hosting route provides for small and medium companies, an inexpensive, scalable, reliable and supported corporate infrastructure. For larger companies the cost of hosting your website and emails is similar to a standard monthly server support contract, which hosting provides as standard with their service level agreements. I would highly recommend any company, especially small and medium companies who cannot afford to invest in expensive internal hardware, a technical support team and business continuity planning, or need to have their core communication always on and always available, to seriously consider hosted services. We provide web and email hosting as part of our small and medium business solutions, so get in touch with us if you would like a clearer understanding on the benefits of hosting for your company.

To host or not to host, that is the question. I think the question is rather can your business afford not to host?

Home Computer Users Need Help Too You Know!

2010-01-15T11:23:00.001Z

Picture these computer problems. You turn on your computer and the fearful blue screen appears. You try and print, you hear absolute silence except you still see the green light on the printer blinking patronisingly at you. You try to finish an email and your home network goes down. The work you took home from the office cannot be opened by your word processor at home or all of your music, documents, sentimental pictures and movies are deleted. The list of potential computer-related catastrophes is endless but only one question remains; what is a home user to do in these situations?

Well there are three possible answers to this question. The first is to panic, the second is to phone somebody whether it is a friend, family or colleague for computer help or three, contact your own IT Support Company. My own IT Support Company I hear you say, are you crazy? I am a home user!

In 2007 65% of American homes (source: Wiki Answers) and 70% of UK households (source: UK Gov Statistics) owned a computer. These were already staggeringly high figures and we are now in 2010. Home users also utilise computers to perform similar and identical tasks to office workers and by that premise it is therefore unfathomable to risk not having assistance when reliance on your computer is so great. Furthermore, if office workers can have dedicated IT Support to prevent businesses from coming to a standstill, then aren’t home users duty bound to enjoy the same peace of mind?

Let’s dissect some very stereotypical notions of Home IT Support.

IT Support for home users does not mean taking your computer into a shop, nor does it mean telephoning the manufacturer of the machine or your Internet Service Provider. Home IT Support does not mean calling a friend, family member or the IT Department at work when you have a computer problem and it also does not mean trawling through page after page of the internet or a bleak forum to attempt to get out of those hair-raising moments.

What Home IT Support does mean is contacting a company who understands what it’s like to be a home customer. Home IT Support means speaking to a company that can troubleshoot your problem, posting relevant information to a dedicated online support helpdesk so that you can attempt to fix the issue yourself or even remotely connecting to your machine to resolve your issue for you. Home IT Support actually means speaking to an IT Support Technician without being confused by technical terms and it is also imperative that these support services are all available as soon as a computer or network problem arises. Home IT Support means on-demand IT support that is affordable, reliable, professional and from a company that is qualified both in technical ability and customer service, in order to handle each case with the due diligence it requires.

So, ‘my own IT Company I hear you say and I am a home user’. No you’re not crazy and there are companies out there actively doing exactly this. We as an IT Company specifically provide dedicated home IT support services to home users covering remote support, on-site support and helpdesk support, as well as bespoke solutions to keep your computer, network, data and family protected. We even provide free IT support to all of our existing customers through an online helpdesk because we know how important it is for our customers to remain supported at all times.

We are now at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century and home users should not have to do anything but contact their IT Support Company to gain immediate and qualified IT support assistance. And for all those home users who do not believe that these IT support services are available today, on demand and when you need it, well I say to you, ‘who’s the one being crazy now?’.

Are Your Children Really Safe Online?

2010-01-15T11:05:00.000Z

In the digital world today, children are at major risk from internet threats. They are targeted through seemingly reputable websites, chat programs and social networking sites. Search engines alone can easily expose your children to online predators and illicit content without warning. So what can a parent do?

Before this can be looked at, first answer some questions so that you gain a better understanding of how your children use the internet at home and how little you may know about their activity.

1. Do you know what your children are doing every time they go online?

2. Do you know who your children chat to when they go on the online?

3. Do you know what type of material your children are looking at when they are surfing online?

4. Do you know how often children become victims of predators whilst surfing online at home?

If you have answered NO to any of these questions, then you need to ask yourself, how can I not know these answers? The answer is because you have not had any active help or guidance in protecting your children when they are surfing online. Sure, you can read articles and receive impartial advice but without a push in the right direction, why would you have setup a solution.

2009's figures provided by ContentWatch, a multi-awarded winner and globally renowned content protection provider for children stated that in 2008 1 in 3 children ages 10-17 had unwanted exposure to sexual material and 1 in 5 children of the same age received a sexual solicitation over the Internet. These are shocking figures and my intention is not just to scaremonger, but to alert parents and schools to the dangers your children are facing without your knowledge. You could be sitting in your front room watching television whilst your child is being harassed, bullied or even e-groomed in the computer room. However, the real danger is that children do not really understand which unfortunately leads to the terrifying stories we read in the newspapers around the globe.

So back to the first question, what can a parent do?

I know that parents do not have the time to research, manage and setup software to protect their children. I know this because we provide as part of our Safe Surfing solutions, a Family Protection Service that keeps children protected from inappropriate content and contact when they use the internet. But what you can do supersedes any service solution or software offering and that is education. Educate your children, explain the dangers and the risks and then talk about it with them so that they understand how dangerous the internet is. When you teach your children to drive, you explain that although driving is fun and exciting, it is like carrying a "loaded gun" and you always need to have the safety catch on. Essentially, you need to explain that the internet can easily be used as a weapon if you are not careful and it is very important to use it wisely and appropriately.

Education is the key and of course setting up content protection software is essential; children are still children and they do need to be protected and monitored. But, if you can get the first step right and teach your children how dangerous the internet is then hopefully we will start to see the global abuse figures reduce significantly.