The gentleman enjoyed a fantastic day, being wined and dined at the Nursery Pavilion, while witnessing England wrap up one-day series with India at Lord’s!

India seemed set to clinch their first win over England this summer after posting a challenging 280-5…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/14871439.stm

See the game in pictures…                                                          

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/gallery/2011/sep/11/england-india-fourth-odi

Attendees: Mark Colquhoun, Solar, CEO/John Colquhoun, Solar, Non-Executive Director/Paul Turrell, Solar, Account Manager/David Scozzafava, Solar, Account Manager/Mitesh Patel,  Fifosys,  Managing Director/Elliot Zissman, Fifosys, Sales & Marketing Director/Sajal Patel, Fifosys, Service Desk Team Leader/Peter Kroeger,  Fifosys, Non-Executive Director/Simon Young, St Ives Group, Group Information Technology Director /Kevin Hansard, IPL, Information Systems Director/Richard Boyd Hidden Hearing, Financial Director/James Baldwin, Portman Travel, Senior VP Technology/Paul Russell, Kester Cunningham John Solicitors/Stephen Goddard, Kester Cunningham John Solicitors, Business Development Director/Neal Bhatessa, Mandeville Hotel, Director/Sangeet Dhanani , AGC Equity, Partner/Ashok Shah, Harris Lipman, Partner/Hiten Patel, Haslers, Partner /Jamie Waller, JBW, Chief Executive

 Millions of Microsoft users were left unable to access some online services overnight because of a major service failure. Such a major problem is likely to raise questions about the reliability of cloud computing…Hotmail, Office 365 and Skydrive were among the services affected.

– read the full story here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14851455

As a Cloud Service provider Fifosys understands the dilemma SMBs face when making the decision of whether or not to move to the cloud. Companies need to assess their business needs and infrastructure before making a decision. Every company will have their own set of priorities, points of failure and risks they are willing to accept.

There is risk involved in Cloud solutions – but this is heavily outweighed by the benefits

• Reduced Cost and CAPEX investment
Cloud technology is paid incrementally, saving organizations money.
• Increased Storage
Organizations can store more data than on private computer systems.
• Flexibility
Cloud computing offers much more flexibility than past computing methods.
• Anywhere anytime access
Employees can access information wherever they are, rather than having to remain at their desks.
• Allows IT to Shift Focus
No longer having to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues, government organizations will be free to concentrate on innovation.

Often businesses face Cloud computing as an ‘all or nothing’ decision but there is a third option – A hybrid model. This needs to be managed by a service provider that is able to manage the integration – allowing the business to focus and drive what differentiates them.

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.

As proved by our very own female engineers with the highest levels in technical ability, ranging from the Microsoft MCP qualifications to Apples ACTC certification – this is most definitely not the case!

As well as a career, there are plenty of reasons for us ladies to love technology…

A few of my favourite things!

1. The tweet mirror is the latest innovation to progress from the social media revolution. The huge mirror is found inside the store changing rooms and enables you to take pictures of yourself in your soon to be new outfit! You can then use it to upload the image to twitter or Facebook for your friends to see and give their verdict. You can also use the mirror to get a better view of yourself from different angles, that you wouldn’t be able to see in standard changing cubicle mirrors.

2. You may have already come across scented MP3 players, but now you can also buy your very own fragrant laptop! Do you ever sit in the office and wish you could move your desk outside? Why not bring the outside to you? The Asus F6 scented notebook, both stylish and compact, comes in 4 different designs each with a different smell; The pink designed Floral Blossom, Musky Black which features a motif inspired by graffiti art and sports has a musky tone, The Morning Dew comes in pastel green and the Aqua Ocean model displays a blue sky and breaking waves on the cover.

3. A common debate you may have come across in the office, which usually provokes a battle of the sexes, is room temperature. My favourite girly gadget is the USB foot warmer – which does exactly what it says on the tin. Perfect in the winter after those long commutes in stilettos.

Any other gadgets especially for us girls – do share!

A successful new business can increase in size very quickly requiring new members of staff, new software and hardware, and even new systems to manage, store, and work with data. It’s during this expansion when the IT infrastructure will first be placed under the kind of stress it hasn’t yet experienced. A scalable infrastructure that was designed and developed with this very situation in mind will be able to cope well under the increased pressure and the IT team will be able to implement the necessary changes without too much additional work.

An IT infrastructure that does not include the provisions for expansion will either require a major redesign or will need scrapping and completely replacing. Both of these outcomes will cost a business money and, perhaps more damagingly under the circumstances, time. The new team members will have no IT access and existing team members will have to find a way to work around the problems that will quickly surface. When considering IT infrastructure design always consider that your business is going to expand in one way or another and make adequate allowances for that expansion.

There are many solutions available that offer scalability – talk to one of our consultants to see which solution is the best fit for your business

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