Robinsons IT

IT Infrastructure Service – The Key Component of Success in Business Today
By Ashish K Arora

IT infrastructure plays a key role in the success of any business these days. This is because this is a field which covers almost all the physical hardware that is used to connect computers and various users in a company. IT infrastructure in a company may typically include things such as the telephone lines, transmission media, satellite antennas, repeaters, routers and aggregators, to mention only a few devices. This apart, IT infrastructure service also includes the software that is used to either send or receive messages.

These days there are specialized IT infrastructure service providers available, to whom businesses can outsource this crucial function. These IT infrastructure companies actually play an important role since they are the ones who decide on how much information is that can be carried and how quickly. It makes a lot of economic sense for small businesses to outsource this functional area to an IT infrastructure service provider. These service providers will in turn ensure that no viruses or spam harm your network of computers.

Important aspects of your business including, email connectivity, website accessibility and firewall uptime are certain aspects that are taken care off by a IT infrastructure service provider. Since these important aspects are being taken care off by specialized technicians, it ensures trouble free and smooth running of all business processes.

With IT infrastructure service providers taking care of one of the most crucial areas of your business, you also get to save a lot of precious amount of time too. You no longer need to worry about the administration part of your network of computers. Instead, you can concentrate on other key areas of your business including marketing and customer service. With so many advantages on offer, it is no wonder that IT infrastructure is a term that is being increasingly heard across corporate boardrooms these days.

Nuage is bringing affordable, corporate standard IT infrastructure to businesses of all sizes including startups and SME’s on a monthly pay per user model.Get hosted exchange, file server, hosted desktop, hosted VOIP, website design and hosting, and much more on a pay per user per month basis. Visit Nuage Website for more information

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Is Daily Data Backup Worth it?
By James Walsh

Data and time are your most important assets. Once you lose access to data, you lose time. And time is money in business. Fact is that it takes about 30 hours to rebuild 20MB of data, and it costs about £50 000.

The Shocking Truth

You need to ask yourself the following questions: Do you back up data daily? Have you specifically delegated someone to ensure a daily backup of data? Is he or she adequately qualified to do so? Are the backup tapes stored securely off-site, and will these tapes prove reliable if and when you need to restore the data?

Research throws up some shocking statistics: 99% of businesses do not back up daily, 60% of backups are only partial, 50% of restores are unsuccessful.

The aftermath can be fatal to business.

In general, by day 6 after a major data loss, companies suffer a 25% loss in daily revenue. By the 25th day, it is 40%.

43% of businesses that undergo a critical data loss disaster and that don’t have a data recovery plan, never re-open.

To a U.K. SME, a virus attack costs an average of £843, and about 7.2 hours in downtime.

And the Data Protection Act of 1998 states: “You must safeguard your own or anyone else’s data, by appropriate precautions against loss, corruption, or authorised disclosure.”

The Only Solution – Daily Data Backup

You never know what could strike your computer. It could be a virus, electrical surge, mechanical failure, man-made error, or even flood or fire. Therefore, at least in small and medium-sized businesses, backups should run daily. So, if there is data loss, it would only be the information recorded since the last backup that is lost. In such cases, most SMEs would not find it recovery difficult.

However, when it comes to financial service organisations, even the loss of one day’s data could prove disabling. Such organisations with demanding data loads must make a greater effort to prevent data loss.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

This is a service that enables a continuous backup of computer data by automatically saving every change made to the data. The changes in the data are sent to a separate storage location, off-site. This means backups are up to date to the last second of changes made. And it’s incredibly fast. In a matter of minutes, a whole server can be recovered from a recent backup.

• A fresh backup is always maintained because backups are done four times a day.
• You are provided with 56 backup archives of your data since backups are kept for 2 weeks.
• For the ultimate reliability, backups are done at disk sector level, rather than the usual file level.
• In just a matter of minutes, individual files, whole websites, or servers can be restored.
• At any time, users can access their data backups, and browse and restore files.
• While in storage and during network transmission, data is continuously encrypted.

What Makes CDP Different from the Traditional Backup

While in the traditional backup system, you need to specify the point of time to which you would like to recover your data, this step is not required with Continuous Data Protection. In the case of the traditional backup, you can only restore data to the point at which the backup was done. But there are no backup schedules in the case of CDP. Data is written simultaneously to disk and to a second location (usually another computer over the network).

Another advantage of CDP, when compared to traditional backup, is that, in some instances, it will need less space on backup media. Unlike traditional backups that save file-level differences, most CDP solutions save byte or block-level differences. So, if one byte of a 100 GB file is changed, only this byte or block is backed up, not the entire file.

It seems, at least for now, that Continuous Data Protection is the ideal method of daily backup.

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics see http://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk

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Cloud Computing and Why Home Office and SME’s Stand to Gain the Most From It
By Claire Hibbert

‘Cloud computing’ is the latest technology set to change the way home offices and small business owners run their companies. There has been a lot of press recently about ‘the cloud’ from the likes of Microsoft and Google, so what is it and what impact will it have on small business? In short, ‘Cloud computing’ provides companies with the ability to store data and access software services online via the internet. Traditionally, data and software was set up and stored on stand-alone PC Desktops and connected via a network, so team workers could access shared files and information with the assurance that the data was stored and backed up. This back-up system was then managed and maintained by network specialists on a daily basis. Larger businesses were able to justify the high costs against staff capacity however, it was a different story for the small businesses where cash flow was tight and staff resource low.

This is where ‘Cloud computing’ comes into its own. The advantages to small businesses are that they no longer need to set up servers for their staff IT needs, nor employ specialist staff to run a scaled down version of an IT Department to support that need. Fortunately due to today’s technological advances everything is looked after online in ‘the cloud’ by the service provider. The great news is that if your computer gets lost or stolen all your data won’t be lost as it is backed up ‘in the cloud’ and you can access it instantly from another computer, giving you peace of mind. All the online business software provided to you is fully maintained and kept up to date for you at no added cost, unlike traditional versions. You don’t have to spend endless time loading up the software onto each individual computer, every business owners nightmare, simply click on an online link and you and your team have instant access to it instead.

‘Cloud computing’ brings extremely low cost ‘online business services’ to small businesses and because the set up and running costs are minimal finally gives them access to big business tools enabling them to compete with the big boys, without having to compromise on quality. However, be warned it is a minefield out there as new online service providers optimise the rapidly expanding market so be sure to shop around to avoid what looked like a bargain only to discover an array of hidden costs. One such company that offers true value and a unique, comprehensive online business service is http://www.icomplete.com. It connects telecoms, online business software, call management (IVR and VoIP)services together in one place so you don’t have to search out individual providers helping to save you time and effort at the fraction of the cost.

You can use http://www.icomplete.com services for as little as £ 12 per month and this gives instant access to: shared individual or group calendars, customer database (CRM), maps, task management and integrated voice messages, fax, email, voicemail in your email, sms and email reminders and documents that are assigned to your contacts. It makes co-ordination, document sharing and collaboration a whole lot easier and information can be accessed from a PC, Mac or other mobile device anywhere in the world by you and your team.

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Website Design For Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s)
By Anthony James Taylor

Why do some small business owners still insist they don’t need a website? The evidence against this position is overwhelming and easy to research. Somehow, in the business owners mind, the World Wide Web ranks below local newspaper advertising or a leaflet drop. They might not say it but that’s where their advertising budget has gone.

What is the return on this investment? Quite a few small business owners just don’t know! Moving this spend online represents a risk. “The newspaper advert has always brought in enough business to survive.” The unconscious worry is that, if I don’t run the advert I will suffer.

Money conscious SME’s have a recession to deal with, money is tight and experimenting with a brand new website is just a step too far for many. So what is my advice to someone who knows the internet is a good idea but thinks they can’t afford it or is worried about taking their advertising monies away from where they have always spent it? Times change, the internet is still the fastest growing advertising medium and customers are always mentioning it. It’s likely you’ll embrace it at some stage so…

Step 1: Buy your domain name. It’s cheap and easy to do and you’re not committed to doing anything else if you don’t want to. Remember, people will most likely be searching for your product or service rather than your businesses name so reflect this in the domain name choice.

Step 2: Make sure you understand your online market. The local paper will have told you about their circulation figures and the number of people who read your advert so ask a local website design company to do the same for the online market.

Step 3: Test the water with a Facebook or Twitter account. They are free, easy to set up and give you an opportunity to market yourself locally.

Step 4: Go one step further with an eBay or Amazon shop.

Step 5: Talk to a website designer about your online objectives and understand the costs and return on investment. You’re the boss here, you know your business and customers, don’t be lead into buying something you don’t need. Does a market town restaurant need a fancy animation on the home page or would they be better off having a voucher available for download? Better still, make sure you can edit the voucher so as it does what you want it to do when you want it to.

Step 6: Differentiate yourself from the national competition. What can you sell or provide that is too niche for them? Local customer service is a real winner here. Get this aspect across when you are ready to have your own website designed.

Step 7: Get your website designed! Choose a website design company that will listen to your needs and help you to hit your objectives. The website should appeal to your customers, be easy to navigate and drive your bottom line. It’s a business tool, not modern art!

ORCA Website Design Bicester design and build professional websites for small to medium sized businesses.

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