On our new and improved site you will find much more information on who we are and what we do. As well as articles, FAQs and our White Paper. There are also several case studies of our previous projects with more to come!

In the next couple of months there will be further improvements such as the addition of our technology page, further thought pieces and some tools to help manage your IT.

We would love to get some feedback, so please have a look, let us know what you think and also how we can make it even better.

This issue mainly effected companies in the USA and Australia as they were starting their business day just as the update was made available. By the time the UK started work McAfee had already issued a new update without the glitch. Fortunately this did not affect any Fifosys clients.

Instruction on what to do if your business has been affected can be found at https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB68780

Barry McPherson, executive vice president of support and customer service, said on the company’s blog

“As you know, McAfee on Wednesday released a faulty signature update file (DAT file) that caused problems for a number of our customers.

First off, I want to apologize on behalf of McAfee and say that we’re extremely sorry for any impact the faulty signature update file may have caused you and your organizations.

I want to give you a brief update on what has happened since we first became aware of the false detection. McAfee team members have been working around the clock to fix the problem and work with impacted customers. We estimate that the majority of the affected systems are back up and running at this time and more systems are coming back online quickly.”

Do let us know if you were affected and need any help.

What happened

Early on Wednesday 31st March 2010, BT issued an announcement:  “Following flooding at a BT exchange in the Paddington area, customers in parts of North and West London may be experiencing a loss of broadband and/or telephone service. Customers in other parts of the country may also be affected.”

Pretty innocuous sounding, but what happened next?

When phone lines within London, and by some accounts all across the country, stopped working, it wasn’t just phone calls that were affected. Indeed, switching to mobiles made that a low impact issue.

But phone lines are used for so much more than conversations. When cash points tried to get approval for someone withdrawing money, they couldn’t, and the ATMs were shut down.  The same happened with PDQ machines for people trying to use a credit card in shops.

By noon, SagePay, one of the UK’s largest online payment processing systems, were saying: “Please be advised Lloyds Cardnet and Halifax Bank of Scotland customers are currently unable to process transactions via the Sage Pay gateway.”  So, websites across the UK stopped being able to take money.

And given the 31st March may well have been pay day for many, how many companies couldn’t contact the bank electronically to make that payment?

Although we all enjoy the benefits of an interconnected world, sometimes there are risks.

A bit too much water and a business’s trading for the last day of their financial year is interrupted.

What is the loss of business this one fault caused?

Did it cause your business issues? 

As we rely so heavily of BT’s network, surely it’s sensible to use technology to give ourselves that “work from home” option?

How often do we consider the impact of what we take for granted failing?

One area of significant development is hosting core areas of the back end IT infrastructure and services.  Hosting solutions have been available for over 15 years but required the brand name of ‘Cloud Computing’ to suddenly be considered as a serious subject of discussion.

All of a sudden this brand name has turned into the so called new IT buzz word for 2010.

Whilst traditionally hosting was more considered an easy low investment option for SME’s, this is now applicable to all organisations due to the benefits that include: 

1. Consolidation of physical server hardware, leading to a reduction in warranty renewal costs, space and power
2. Software applications payable on a per user per month basis, thereby reducing the upfront CAPEX costs
3. Removes the risks associated with a single site failure
4. Reduces the investment required for Disaster Recovery
5. Allows systems to be easily restored in the event of a significant hardware and software failure 
6. Allows multiple sites to grow with ease
7. Central point of administration
8. Reduces the number of personnel in the IT team
9. Removes the need to up skill in house IT teams to manage an outsourced hosted environment
10. Puts the responsibility in the hands of the managed hosting provider

To ensure organisations make the right decision, IT must be thought about at a strategic level with clear business objectives defined at the outset. By failing to take IT seriously at a senior level,  organisations could miss out on the continual technology improvements that can deliver clear business benefit from a management, administration and collaboration perspective.

East London-based PR agency Idea Generation has outsourced its IT management to IT support specialists Fifosys in a contract worth £35,000 a year, achieving the perfect balance of value for money and quality of service. The fully managed outsourced solution provided by Fifosys enables Idea Generation employees to focus on core business activities, reducing hours lost to resolving IT issues by 70%.

Idea Generation is the UK’s largest arts, cultural and entertainment PR agency, and finding the right IT managed service provider to optimise return on investment and deliver a high quality of service was essential. Fifosys will provide Idea Generation with a fully-outsourced IT solution to help the business run as efficiently as possible.

Hector Proud, Managing Director of Idea Generation comments, “Prior to engaging with Fifosys we had tried seven different companies over a five year period, but we just couldn’t find anyone who could deliver a consistent level of service. If anything went wrong, we couldn’t even speak to someone who was polite. Everything has changed now we are working with Fifosys. They are the dream supplier – conscientious, professional, and the first agency that has achieved what they said they would.”

Proud continues, “The service provided by Fifosys ensures that our core resources – namely our staff – are able to work as efficiently as possible. Inevitable day to day problems, glitches and bugs are quickly sorted by the support desk. Our workforce are much happier and reassured now that they can make a call and get the problem resolved. Hours lost to resolving IT issues have fallen by at least 70% so far.”

Managing director of Fifosys, Mitesh Patel, comments, “For any business with less than 250 employees such as Idea Generation, employing IT people with the breadth of specialist skills required in-house can be near impossible. Through outsourcing, a company can have access to a team of 20+ IT engineers who can deliver to their overall IT requirements and add value by taking accountability of IT and the IT Budget.”

Describing what sets the Fifosys offering apart, Proud comments, “The Fifosys solution offers the winning combination of competitive pricing and a customer service strategy that really works. If they were charging me very little but things were dropping left, right and centre, it wouldn’t be worth it – it’s the two things together that makes this investment work.”

Proud adds, “The vital thing was that Fifosys provided a fresh approach to pricing structure. They offered a straightforward service fee, and were clear about how much they would deliver within this set budget. Importantly, this reassured me that they have confidence in what they can deliver, and secondly, it enables us to plan and budget going forward without any nasty surprises – which is something that IT companies have a bad reputation for doing.”

Idea Generation excels in the creation and management of ‘high-octane’ media relations programmes, offering a new generation of public relations based upon intelligence, honesty, creativity and efficiency. Clients include Veuve Cliquot, The Poetry Society, Playboy, The Clothes Show London and Vauxhall.

Proud concludes, “Finding the best IT provider is one of the hardest aspects of running a business, and it is a very debilitating process of trial and error trying to find the right levels of service. It’s like getting the flu, when an IT system is all up and running you don’t even notice it, but when it fails it is the end of the world – especially in today’s 24/7 IT-dependent world. If you’re working in communications as we do, or anywhere in culture, you need to have an IT system you can rely on – Fifosys has provided us with just that.”

 Boutique debt brokerage business invests in an end-to-end IT solution and a fully managed service from IT outsourcing provider Fifosys -

European debt brokerage company, Yorvik, has outsourced its entire IT infrastructure installation for its Cheapside-based offices to IT support specialists Fifosys in a contract worth in excess of £100,000 over a three year period for the provision of a complete infrastructure and fully managed service. The outsourced solution provided by Fifosys ensures that Yorvik’s IT requirements will be effectively met as the company experiences significant growth.

Yorvik is a fast-growing bespoke debt brokerage business specialising in debt, claims and bank debt; therefore finding the right IT infrastructure provider to understand the increasing demands of a complex financial organisation was essential. The fully outsourced solution from Fifosys provides a scalable infrastructure to the start-up, delivering the levels of service required to support the company’s development.

Lars Lemonius, founding partner of Yorvik, comments, “As a start-up, we needed an IT provider that could facilitate a complete infrastructure solution from scratch whilst appreciating the high-level IT requirements of a complex brokerage business. We needed that organisation to also be flexible and price competitive. We sourced multiple quotes before employing Fifosys, and the decision to engage them was based on the perceived quality of service for the price offered.”

Lemonius continues, “Fifosys’ approach is encouraging and we were satisfied that they could deal with the complex requirements of the business, with the right balance between outlay and return on investment. More often than not, you consider the smaller IT providers but question if they are able to deliver the service levels required. Then you go to the bigger providers and they demand a massive price premium for the guarantee that they can deliver, so it was a case of finding the balance, which Fifosys has achieved well.”

Fifosys is providing Yorvik with a comprehensive one year infrastructure installation strategy including a server and desktop environment, IP telephone system, email and information store, network security, and a data backup and disaster recovery programme. This is complemented by a fully managed outsourced service, delivering maintenance and 24×7 support, as well as consultancy services as and when Yorvik requires it.

Commenting on the key benefits of the Fifosys solution Lemonius adds, “The development plan Fifosys provides is integral to our growth as a company. At the moment we have 10 staff, but we expect to be 20 by the end of 2010, so we need to have a managed service which can keep up. And if we do encounter any technical issues they are resolved quickly, as Fifosys provides a 24-hour hotline – something smaller companies cannot necessarily provide. If you have a mission-critical IT set-up as we do then you need to have this in place, even if it is rarely used.”

Lemonius concludes, “What is key about Fifosys for Yorvik is the integrated approach to telecoms and IT. Some companies will only offer the IT side, but the two are so integrated today that you need an IT outsourcer to provide both.”

Managing director of Fifosys, Mitesh Patel, comments, “For an expanding company such as Yorvik it is imperative to invest in a reliable and scalable IT infrastructure from the start, which will deliver return by offering secure and robust IT delivery and allowing the organisation to focus on core operations.”

Patel concludes, “This IT infrastructure should then be complemented by a fully managed service. Fifosys delivers added value through the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) concept framework, acting as the single point of contact with all third party suppliers, and ensuring that IT is aligned with the business objectives of the client.”

The power was eventually retired at 11.45am! … If we had not had the 2 separate fuse boards we would not have been able to operate for over an hour. It just shows how valuable forward planning and a good Business Continuity plan are in this and any industry.