Business - Switch Systems Blog

Monday, April 06. 2009

Switch @ Sandy Park Business Day

I'll be at the HMRC Business Advice Open Day at Sandy Park tomorrow, come find me for some free advice!

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 16:51 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Friday, September 26. 2008

Grow your business, using IT!

We've just launched our new campaign 'Grow With IT' - designed to showcase the benefits of IT to small-medium sized businesses in the South West who often do not realise what may be technologically possible!

Have a look around the site and tell us what you think.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 13:31 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Monday, August 18. 2008

The news..

BT's Digital Vault service ends "Free" option

BT has said that it is no longer going to offer 2GB of free online storage, and will encourage users to take out their 4.99/month subscription for 50gb.

Google Apps outages bad for business

As posted on slashdot, Last week's google apps outages have reminded many sysadmins that even the mighty Google isn't infallible - we all think cloud computing and storage is great, but what happens when that cloud disappears..?

IPv4 available space dips below 1 billion

People have predicted that we've got about 3 years left before we are totally out of IPv4 addresses, which will push people onto IPv6 just in time for the london olympics. This years olympics are already available over IPv6.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 09:18 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Thursday, July 31. 2008

SBS 2008 launches Nov 12th

Microsoft have announced the worldwide release date of November 12th for Small Business Server 2008. Having a look around SBS2008 RC0 it seems to be a fairly polished product, though it still needs a few bugfixes. We'll have more news when an RTM release is ready!

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 09:20 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Monday, December 17. 2007

I am now an Associate Member of the Free Software Foundation

Without even realising, you and the companies you work for are benefitting directly from free software. Free software is often misunderstood, as it is more than just receiving software without monetary cost.

Free software, by definition is software that grants you rights to modify and redistribute the software as long as you publish your modifications in kind. This method of distribution is behind the majority of infrastructure that powers the entire internet, and can be found in anything from Set Top boxes used to record television programs, to your wireless router at home sharing your internet bandwidth.

The Free Software Foundation works on protecting these freedoms granted to software developers. Often there are legal issues that entangle free software developers, ranging from Intellectual Property claims (often predatory and false!) and also targetting legal proceedings at people who try to modify free software without releasing their changes. They also sponsor some key projects, and provide online information on free software practices and also advise on predatory software practises like consumer-hostile digital rights management and anti-competitive measures taken by some proprietary software vendors.

Learn more about free software here, read the Free Software Definition:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Join the Free Software Foundation: https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=6008

Posted by Ruairi Fullam in Business at 13:58 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Thursday, November 15. 2007

Microsoft Partner Campaigns...

Microsoft's new campaigns are rolling out over the next few days, we got a taster of this in a foil padded envelope arriving on our desk:

The jellybeans have all been eaten now

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 11:42 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Monday, October 22. 2007

Celebrating Small Business 2007

An enjoyable evening last Friday at the FSB/Exeter College award ceremony, our congratulations go out to Underhill Estate Agents (winners of the best employer) and Lefroy Beauty Therapy (winners of best small business).

Switch was nominated as one of the 8 contenders for the 'best small business' in Exeter - thank you to all of our clients who took the time to vote for us, see ifyou can spot myself and ruairi in the picture!

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 11:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wednesday, October 17. 2007

This article on the register says "BT reseller DMSL has created a IT repair service that will compete with the likes of the Geek Squad and PC World's Tech Guys by offering support services for home users and small businesses across the UK." - the difference being that the "FixITlocal" service will be operated by local resellers who have signed up to be part of the group.

I'm not sure how they plan to regulate and check the skills/credentials of each individual reseller (a simple "i agree to the PCA Code of Practice" checkbox just doesn't cut it!) , and looking at the sign-up form and text on the website leads me to believe that you have to attempt to sell their supplied products. It will be interesting to see if this has any impact on The Tech Guys.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 13:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wednesday, September 05. 2007

Devon Rural Survey

A Recent Survey of Businesses performed by the Devon Rural Renaissance has some interesting facts on IT usage in the region, which echoes much of what we are telling our clients, and that's rural firms are failing to use new technology.

31% of businesses surveyed do not use broadband... That's almost a third!
of these, almost half reported that they simply weren't able to do so due to lack of skill or technical resources.
The relationship between age of an owner and plans to introduce internet trading have a clear declining linear correlation (i.e. the young are more likely to use the internet for trading)
80% of businesses reported that they would need more skills in computer/ICT usage within the next 3 years.

Interesting reading - check out the full article above or call us for more information.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 17:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wednesday, August 22. 2007

SMBs put off outsourcing

SMBs are being put off outsourcing their IT due to the cost and loss of control over their systems. This article by Computer Weekly says that just 25% of 500 UK SMBs surveyed are willing to use outsourced services.

The key areas for outsourcing are security and e-mail. Only a small minority of SMBs can see a time when their IT function is fully managed

said Aphrodite Brinsmead, author of the study. On the plus side, 44% of SMBs would most likely look to a vendor to provide them with security services. Other issues such as connectivity, web presence and email management also come out as high priorities for outsourcing.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 11:55 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Thursday, August 09. 2007

Introducing... me!

I'm Ruairi Fullam (call me "Rory", my name is Irish), and I've been an Exeter-based IT Consultant for over five years specialising in roughly the same areas as Kris does. I'm currently now based at the Switch Systems offices working alongside Kris as I anticipate in the near future to merge with Switch Systems to mutually increase the quality of service we both offer, which of course is of great benefit to both of our existing customer bases.

Well, Kris has taught me a number of interesting things that weren't immediately obvious to me, like realtime graphical network monitoring using TheDude, and learning the basics of physical network cabling.

Seeing the potential of this, I advised Kris that it would be great if we wall-mounted his new Thin Client terminal display on the wall between our two desks, so at a glance we can see the status of all our client networks and websites, and also see the identity of incoming callers (thanks to Kris' fantastic CRM integrated caller ID software).

So - for now I'm working through my current workload, but we have some great ideas for the future on how we push Switch Systems further and increase the brand value and market presence. Exciting times to come for sure!

Posted by Ruairi Fullam in Business at 13:09 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Monday, August 06. 2007

Dell and Vista/XP...

It looks like you can no longer request windows XP instead of windows Vista from Dell - a recent purchase of a Vospro 1500 laptop found this out the hard way. If you persist, Dell will offer you £35 off the price for a 'naked' (no operating system) unit, or you can "downgrade to XP" by formatting, installing XP and then phoning up microsoft via telephone activation using the Vista CD key that you have.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 13:10 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Saturday, August 04. 2007

MS Action Pack requires yearly tests

ArsTechnica reports that Microsoft are now going to force it's Action Pack subscribers to take online tests in order to continue their subscription. I have no doubt in my mind that this is to help stop regular non-IT companies from using the action pack subscription to cut their software licensing costs, which is a practice i've seen a few times. Having checked the last set of correspondence, I just noticed this :

...partners either renewing or subscribing to the Action Pack ... will be required to take an online course ... and pass the associated assessment (with a score of 70% or higher). We will require that Acion Pack subscriberse pass an assessment every two years.... most courses are an hour in length.

Hopefully this will put people off from using the Action Pack outside of the terms and conditions of the agreement.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 17:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Wednesday, July 25. 2007

Quantas A380 flights get Broadband

An article on apcmag says that in-flight broadband wifi will be available on it's new A380 planes, even in economy (which will also have laptop power sockets)! This is great for business travellers and regular passengers alike, plus premium economy seats also have USB charging sockets and RJ45.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 09:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Monday, July 23. 2007

Windows Vista Search Indexer and Outlook 2007

I've been trying to find out why Outlook 2007 wasn't indexing my emails (if you run Windows Vista, Outlook will use the windows indexing service to index mailbox contents). In the end, it was the power settings on the computer here that stopped the indexing service from running in the background - change your power settings so that you're on max performance and the indexing service will rebuild at full speed.

Posted by Kris Sum in Business at 12:07 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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