Newsletter 24th January 2011

Posted on by June 17, 2012

I hope our newsletter cheers you up on this, reportedly the most depressing day of the year, or it might have been last Monday depending on which reports you read or indeed listen to. The reports are full of economic doom and gloom and no-one could dispute that times are tough, but there are still savings to be made and good news to be had.

When I first started out in business and was looking for an accountant, a friend of long self-employed standing told me that an accountant should always save a company more than it charges. Now I don’t know the truth of this, but I liked the sound of it and it’s the tack we take when speaking to prospective customers. We’re able to save you more money on your company’s IT set-up than we charge you to look after it/consult on it/set it up (whatever it is you want) because we use open source software which doesn’t cost anything. That means we don’t have to build into our charges the thousands of pounds other companies have to spend on licenses for every step of providing email, websites and other services. Open source software is marvellous for lots of other reasons we won’t bore you with (unless you ask us), but for many companies the cost-saving alone is reason enough to talk to us.

IT for Business Workshops
Our first workshop runs on Thursday morning. Further details can be found here, but in a nutshell these workshops are designed to give you help, advice and ongoing email support to tackle the problems your company faces and support any changes you might be considering.

Domain name email
Very basic stuff, but I felt it was worth a mention this week. Marketing has been the name of the game here lately (I know, it’s like cleaning your teeth to within an inch of their life the day before visiting the dentist) which has involved much researching of companies. The number of companies that make do with a googlemail or – shock horror – a hotmail address is quite shocking, especially when these email addresses are included on a website at the company’s own domain name! windowcleaner34@hotmail.com on www.whenimcleaningwinderrs.co.uk isn’t a good look. It says a lot about what a company thinks of its customers when that approach is deemed acceptable. Once a doman name’s been bought, it’s a piece of cake to set up an email address or two on it, and instantly improves a company’s image.

Other bits and pieces that have caught our eye this week include:

And finally

JFK Twitter account (@Kennedy1961) chronicles the president’s life, marking 50 years on Thursday since JFK’s inauguration.

A Nigerian village connects to the internet for the first time, via a mobile phone charged by a generator.

Newsletter 13th January 2011

Posted on by June 17, 2012

Welcome to our first innovation of 2011: a newsletter.  We hope you enjoy the eclectic nature of it and sign up to receive the rest, which we anticipate coming out somewhere between once a fortnight and once a month.

IT for Business Workshops
First of all we’d like to draw your attention to our IT for Business workshops, starting Thursday 27th January 2011 at Broadfield Court, Bodenham, nr Leominster. More details here, but in a nutshell they are intended to help you get the very best from your IT set-up without being taken for a ride, bamboozled by jargon or spoken down to from a great height. We’d like to demystify the whole business for you and help you take control of your company’s IT.

Cloud Computing
We’re all hearing more and more about cloud computing. Definitions vary, but essentially its starting point is using an external company’s servers for data storage (ours, for instance); after that the sky’s the limit (pun absolutely intended). We piggy-backed on IT Donut’s article about it here.

Other bits and pieces that have caught our eye this week include:

  • The Engineer’s article about Ordnance Survey maps becoming open government data
  • a rather bizarre article (that we won’t waste your time linking to) about how to speed up an ageing laptop that managed not to suggest running Linux instead of Windows – always try this!
  • a very interesting BBC article, an interview with Andy Mulholland, chief technology officer at Capgemini, which examines how technology and people have affected each other and influenced, driven or kept up with change.
  • The Herefordshire Media Network event on 25th January

And finally
A tweet from Rory Cellan-Jones and an SEO joke:

ruskin147 Rory Cellan-Jones
I’ve been subjected to ageist banter in my office. When I complained, my colleague said “don’t worry you’ll have forgotten in ten minutes”

jorendorff Jason Orendorff
“So this SEO expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor”

Disaster recovery

Posted on by November 5, 2014

Disaster recovery: are you prepared?

Business Matters today posed the question “Are you prepared for a disaster?”, and provided the predictable response that many SMEs think it won’t happen to them. But it can, it does and it may well, and the fall-out is shocking. A high percentage of businesses that suffer catastrophe whether due to natural disaster, theft/vandalism or some other apocalyptic force never recover, and go out of business. However, according the the article, 41% of businesses questioned said disaster planning had never occurred to them (what, really??) and 40% said it wasn’t a priority.

Nuisance, not the end of your business

The worst aspect of this head-in-the-sand approach is that disaster planning isn’t difficult. Establishing and maintaining regular back-ups is child’s play, and in most instances it happens without anyone lifting a finger. Remote data storage is becoming a norm (this is one major benefit ‘the cloud’ has to offer), not only cost-effective but in many cases offering better-managed systems and therefore greater data security than a company can provide for itself in-house. Beyond this, it’s a case of collating information so that disaster recovery becomes a case of implementing a plan, a nuisance rather than an impossibility, a hassle rather than the end of your business.

We can help

It won’t surprise you to hear that we can help you put together a disaster recovery plan, and if lightning should strike, help you put it into practice. Whether you use us, someone else or do it all yourself, put together a plan. It could be you.