Data backup should be considered an essential part of running and maintaining a business. Every company and every organisation has data that cannot be easily or quickly replaced and in the event of data loss this can lead to lost revenue, disgruntled clients, and the loss of staff time during the data retrieval process. As well as information that most businesses would consider mission critical, employee information, client information, and project data can also become irretrievable.

Data loss is one of the most damaging events that can happen to any business and is one of the most common reasons for the failure of new small businesses costing companies millions of pounds every single month. Online data backup can usually be established so that data is stored automatically on a regular basis and should the need arise, this information can be quickly and easily retrieved. With daily backups the most your business stands to lose is a single day’s data – still damaging but less so than losing weeks or months of critical information.

Some aspects of a data warehouse may be securely protected so that only key members of your organisation can access the information it holds while other levels of the data warehouse can be accessed by all. This allows the appropriate team members to have the relevant level of access and, in turn, allows them to access the combined data collected from various points of your business IT network. Advances in general database technology as well as in data warehousing mean that the data warehouse can be used as more than a single, central data storage location.

The biggest benefit of including a data warehouse in your business IT strategy is the culmination of all your company’s data. Historical data can also be stored centrally enabling advanced analytical comparison and reporting. Comparing historical trends allows businesses to make mission critical decisions and form business strategies based on extensive sets of empirical data rather than assumptions or using smaller amounts of data. Another beneficial by-product of data warehousing is that it also allows for an extra method of storing data and can be added to a data backup and recovery plan.

Automation offers a method to greatly reduce the time that a person spends
performing a particular part of their work. Once a task is automated, the employee
is then able to concentrate their time and effort on different tasks improving
their operating efficiency as well as that of the business.

The more streamlined a business is, the more efficient it becomes. Without
having to take on new staff or take any other drastic action a business can
improve its output, service more clients or produce more goods, and generally
improve its output. For this reason, identifying and automating routine business
practices is one of the first areas that an IT consultant will consider.

IT consultancy can be used in a variety of settings throughout any business.
One particularly advantageous task is to help identify the routine business
practices and tasks performed by different people within the company. This
leads to the finding or developing of software that helps to automate these
processes, save money, and improve operating efficiency.

RingCube made their mark in the technology industry when they gave a dramatic performance at the Demo show. (Demo is where start-ups get just 6 minutes to showcase their products and technology.) CTO Michael Larkin appeared to knock his laptop on the floor sending the stage screens dark. He then casually plugged in his iPod into the port of a colleague’s laptop and his desktop loaded into the machine’s memory.

RingCube’s innovative technology takes virtual desktop adoption to the next level by eliminating the trade off between user personalisation and centralised IT management. When combined with a desktop virtualisation product like Citrix XenDesktop, RingCube makes it easier for IT to give each user a personalised virtual desktop. This includes a full operating system and user profile settings, plus all of the applications users require — whether local or streamed.

What does this mean for consumers?

• Dramatically reduced cost of storage
• Simplified transition from physical to virtual desktops.
• Gives end users all the personalisation benefits of a ‘dedicated’ VDI desktop
• Offers IT administrators all the cost benefits of a ‘pooled’ VDI desktop
• Increases deployment of virtual desktops to every user companywide

To learn more about RingCube, you can visit www.ringcube.com.

“The acquisition of RingCube underscores our chief goal of enabling users to access their desktops and applications on any device, and making virtual desktops simple and affordable for IT. As customers take on enterprise-wide desktop transformation initiatives, Citrix is in the best position to provide a broad range of technology delivering multiple types of virtual desktops that satisfy every user in the enterprise. RingCube technology adds a significant capability to provide users and IT flexible, personal VDI desktops at a much lower cost.”
Bob Schults, Group Vice President, Enterprise Desktops and Applications at Citrix

Having a lot of people active on a network increases this risk. Incorporating an antivirus solution will protect computers from dangerous viruses that can delete, modify or steal all information on a system and cause an unnecessary waste of money and time. This is a business’ worse nightmare considering most or all work done is stored on a computer.

Securing PC’s By Using An Antivirus Solution

Internet and e-mail have created such an easy target for the spread of computer viruses and without antivirus software, one will not exactly know that the virus exists until it is too late. The importance of this solution for businesses is that having so much information coming in and out of its network, allows viruses to seep through without anyone even being aware of it.

Viruses are not always visible and an antivirus solutions job is to detect these viruses by scanning a pc’s files and when found, it alerts the user and then takes the steps to remove it.

An antivirus needs to be regularly updated. A good antivirus software will do this automatically or have an option to do so which will allow the software to connect to the internet to the vendors website and download and install the latest updates.

With VMware’s new cloud infrastructure solutions, you will find unparalleled capabilities that accelerate IT and accelerate your business.
• Run business-critical applications with confidence — Achieve better application performance and eliminate downtime.
• Respond to business faster — Gain built-in automation and resource elasticity to free IT from manual processes and deliver IT services on demand.
• Trust your cloud — Secure your cloud with virtualization-aware security.

 The foundation of VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite is VMware vSphere, the most trusted, widely deployed virtualization platform in the world. Architected to support the broadest range of virtual and cloud infrastructure needs, VMware vSphere is broadly utilized by enterprises, small and mid size businesses (SMBs), public cloud service providers and as a foundation for the growing virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market. An increasing number of customers are standardizing on VMware vSphere as their strategic IT platform. As such, VMware vSphere has attracted a broad ecosystem of industry leaders that support and extend this foundation.

What’s New in VMware vSphere 5?

• Next-generation ESXi hypervisor delivering industry-leading performance and scalability while setting a new bar for reliability, security and management efficiency.
• ‘Super VMs’ with four times more powerful virtual machines to scale and handle the most resource-intensive applications; virtual machines can now scale up to 32 vCPUs and 1 TB of RAM.
• Simplified and more comprehensive high availability and disaster recovery.
• Intelligent policy management of data centre resources to automate previously manual process (e.g. deployment and patching of vSphere hosts, dynamic placement, balancing and service-level agreement-driven profiles for storage).
• Flexible hybrid cloud management from a single pane of glass.
• Broader industry support from software and hardware providers, including more than 1,400 independent software provider (ISV) partners which support running more than 2,500 applications on vSphere.

for full details visit the site http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/overview.html

On Thursday 17th March, a suspected fire caused an immediate shutdown of power to all hardware at the Blue Square data centre in Maidenhead.

The fire brigade immediately attended site and deemed it safe within 27 minutes of their arrival. Backup generators soon kicked in for all power to resume within 2 hours

This failure affected 3 of the 5 UPS systems which caused the UPS systems to shut down and also caused the mains supply to operate its safety trip. The impact of this incident to Fifosys and its clients is that all hosted services were unavailable from between 2 to 6 hours. Due to the method in which power was reinstated to the 3 buildings, 90 percent of Fifosys’ client services resumed within 2 hours and 10 percent within 6 hours.

Due to the Online Data Backup solution by Fifosys and the fact this is mirrored to another site, all client data was 100 percent protected and no information was lost as a result of the disaster

Mixed reviews…

Having identified the clients who were affected before Blue Square had time to call, Fifosys immediately contacted those clients to inform them of the situation. Some clients commented:

-         ‘Great, this will be a good test of our disaster recovery process’

-         ‘This is a good PR opportunity for you and us (CFO to the board) ’

-         ‘Considering the nature of the disaster, 5 hours downtime is an acceptable risk for our business, especially considering it’s the first time in 4 years’

A few clients responded:

-         ‘I’m sorry this is just not acceptable’

Others looked upon the disaster in a different way – in light of the previous week’s events around the globe:

-         ‘Call this a disaster, look what’s happening in Japan’

-         ‘We are not doctors saving lives, so let’s put it into perspective’

The reality

Fifosys, like its clients and many other businesses, spends thousands of pounds on ensuring the risks involved in running hosted services are mitigated. With the clear objective of reducing the negative impact of IT on our businesses we all continue to justify the financial impact Vs the investment required.

When a number of businesses were asked, “What was the financial impact of this disaster?” some gave an amount ranging from £5,000 to £100,000. Many clients also enquired about compensation for these amounts, however when asked to prove the financial impact, most businesses will find this very difficult.

Is Cloud computing still a viable solution?

At Fifosys we believe Cloud Computing is still the only justifiable model for businesses due to the fact that if they had the infrastructure in their premises and they had a disaster of a similar nature, some would still not be up and running within 2 weeks of the occurrence.

The fact that the data centre aims to guarantee 100% power to its facility, has come under question. However you, us, them have invested a considerable amount in reducing the risk. The only way to test whether we are going to get a return on our investment is when the disaster actually occurs.

Several steps will now be taken by Fifosys and its technology partners to ensure we can reduce the negative impact of IT by reducing the recovery time.

A number of clients’ expectations have been managed at the outset; however there are those that expected a different outcome. We will visit these clients to reconfirm what their expectations are and what we can do in future to better manage these.

Fifosys is now investing in additional infrastructure at the second data centre where it will be able to offer clients a failover environment.

This is the first time in 10 years that Fifosys has experienced a disaster of this nature. We can now confidently say that we have been through the recovery process and managed to come out with minimal negative impact

In recent years the browser market has become more competitive and products such as Firefox and Chrome have really been giving Microsoft a run for their money! This has prompted the release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 web browser.

Along with increased speed of 35% the application has 3 key features that Microsoft has brought to our attention:

• Tracking protection – A new tool that prevents users from being tracked as they move from site to site. This will prevent commercial firms from tailoring adds and reduce spam emails
• It keeps a close eye on any downloads to prevent any Trojans or other viruses from sneaking through
• IE9 also has hardware acceleration built in so it can call on the power of a PC’s graphics card to display sites in more detail.

An estimate has come in from the web analysis firm Net Applications that suggests IE has about a 56% share of the global market, with Firefox on their tail with about 22%, Chrome 11% and Safari 6%.

Japanese Earthquake Disaster Disrupts Technology Giants

Japan is home to some of the world’s leading technology firms. Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and Cannon are just a few companies affected by last week’s tragedy.

Sony have confirmed that it had voluntarily suspended operations at seven major manufacturing plants, while the country assesses the state of its power grid. Panasonic Corp said ongoing aftershocks had prevented it from inspecting two factories in northern Japan. Elsewhere, Canon said three of its plants had sustained serious damage in the earthquake. The factories make LCD screens, lenses and inkjet printers.

Production failure has shown an almost immediate knock on effect as costs of some of Toshiba’s devices have risen by 12.5% already

While the technology industry is facing a long struggle to return to ‘business as usual’ it appears that countries fixed communications infrastructure has survived remarkably intact. This is down to Japan being a major hub for undersea telecoms cables that form a critical part of the global internet.

There is a new scheme in place to expand the addresses to IPv6, but this will not take full effect for years. So what does this mean for you?

It shouldn’t inspire you to panic or worry too much. Businesses still have IPv4 addresses and at present these do not need to go anywhere. It’s clear that IPv6 is the long-term solution, so businesses will need to make the transition eventually. In the meantime, however, there’s no need for the extensive panic and hype which has overtaken the news over the past couple of months. It’s a great thing that businesses worldwide are aware that the transition is necessary and upcoming, but it should provide no real distraction to your everyday activities at any point in the near future.

What should you do to prepare for IPv6? You should decide when you’d like to allow the wild IPv6 addresses into your space or whether you plan on sticking with IPv4 for that much longer. What’s most important is to hire or train staff in knowledge of IPv6 and the switchover. This will be essential for the long term and it’s always better to be prepared. While your IPv4 address won’t suddenly be turned off, the switchover will happen eventually. When it does, you should be as ready as any other business to ensure minimum disruption to your work.

To make this a little easier, it may be worth investing in a ‘translation technology’ which will assist you in making the switch over. Ensure your IT staff are prepared to use the technology to continue working on a day to day basis. You may wish to participate in World IPv6 Day on 8^th June, where companies around the world will test out IPv6, including Cisco, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook.

Overall, while the transition phase is likely to last years, get your company’s equipment upgraded and tested out before it’s all over. You may choose to fit existing hardware with a system that can handle both or just upgrade on your next purchasing cycle. There is certainly no rush, but awareness and training are at the forefront of what’s required today.