The UK's average home download speed is on the rise, but it could be even faster if more users upgraded at minimal cost, according to Ofcom.

November's average broadband speed was 7.6 megabits per second, up from 6.8Mbps in May, says the regulator.

Upgrades offered by Virgin Media and BT helped boost the figure.

Ofcom says many of the 42% of homes which subscribe to speeds of 10Mbps or less would benefit from switching deal or provider at little or no cost.

The 22% headline speed bump is a notable improvement, according to the price comparison website broadbandchoices.co.uk.

"In reality, the average speed increase of 1.4Mbits will save you around 6 minutes when downloading a 2 hour film," said Michael Philips, the firm's product director.

"This doesn't sound a lot but faster connections improve your general web-surfing experience and are definitely worth the investment, for example if more than one person shares the connection in a household."

Ofcom noted that the price difference between many of the so-called super-fast services and current generation connections was "relatively small".

It said Plusnet customers could roughly double their promised speed to "up to" 40Mbps by swapping to a service with the firm that cost £5 more a month.

It said TalkTalk clients could enjoy a similar gain by paying their provider an extra £10 a month, while one of BT's deals offered an equivalent speed bump at no extra charge.

Marketing restrictions

The figures are contained in Ofcom's sixth study into residential fixed-line broadband performance.

It is the first report since internet service providers were told they would only be able to claim a maximum speed if it was available to 10% of their customers.

The new rules come into effect in April. Using them as a guide Ofcom provided a breakdown of its figures saying that:

• 6Mbps was the average speed for services advertised as "up to" 8Mbps
• 14Mbps was the average speed for connections advertised as "up to" 20/24Mbps

The regulator said speed upgrades offered by Virgin Media and BT accounted for most of the period's gains.

Virgin Media's "up to" 50Mbps cable deal was the fastest surveyed offering average download speeds of nearly 49Mbps. The firm's 100Mbps service was not included in the research.

BT's roll-out of FFTC (fibre to the cabinet) technology helped boost its statistics. The move involves running fibre from its exchanges to street cabinets which are then linked to homes by normal telephone lines.

Since the cabinets are closer to most homes than the exchanges, users enjoy faster speeds.

It has led to the creation of the firm's Infinity offer which promises "up to" 40Mbps. The service was found to provide an average speed of 36Mbps.

'Disappointing'

The study said that other ISPs "did not change significantly" over the six months.

Orange's "up to" 20Mbps ADSL service fared worst out of the maximum-speed offers surveyed. It was found to provide average download speeds of 7.2Mbps.

The firm said it believed the next report would show an improvement.

"It's disappointing to see the outcome of this survey, although it was not unexpected as it was conducted last year as we were moving a large number of our customers to our new broadband network," a statement said.

"Since this time, we have completed the migration and the vast majority of our customers have seen a significant improvement in the download speeds they receive."

The news site thinkbroadband.com said the research also highlighted the need for investment in out-of-town connections.

"Rural areas have an average of 3.3Mbps versus urban at 8.8Mbps," said the firm's editor Andrew Ferguson.

Ofcom says it plans to publish the next report in July, using data collected from tests run in May.

Summary of data speeds sampled by Ofcom in November 2011:

Source: Internet News

Contact us if you wish to improve your business broadband speeds.

Quick, did you hear that? It was your network calling you, pleading for an upgrade. Oh wait, was that the sound of weeping desktops begging for a refresh? You know they’re there — the warning signs that it’s time for change. We tend to ignore them for a variety of reasons. For starters, change causes work stoppage, overtime, and budget explosions. But eventually, there’ll be no choice. Before that time comes, it’s best to heed the signs. Let’s examine 10 clear indications that your IT landscape is in need of change.

1: You can’t remember the passwords to your security equipment…

… and you’re not sure resetting them to factory defaults will actually work. When equipment gets old enough, you never know if a factory reset will even come back to life. The loss of passwords could easily lead to such a situation. Oh sure, the lesson here is to never forget your security information. But more than that, when passwords are lost, it could be a sign that it’s time to start replacing those ancient pieces of hardware.

2: Your support contracts have all run out

Some companies live and breathe by their support contracts. Without the contracts, those companies would surely die a slow, painful death. Many companies rely on support contacts only for particular pieces of software or hardware (especially when they’re costly). Other companies use support contracts only when absolutely necessary. Regardless, when all those support contracts have ended, it’s a good sign your software is out of date and in sore need of upgrading.

3: You’re still using ancient software

When was the last time you walked through your company to find out what versions of various software products were deployed? During that pass, did you happen to see anything seriously out of date? You’d be surprised at what’s out there. On occasion, I still see Windows 98 or NT machines or Windows XP machines running Office 2000. Ancient software can cause far more issues than you think. This is especially true when users collaborate with people in other companies (who are most likely NOT running Microsoft Office 98 or StarOffice).

4: Your company has become a hackers’ playground

If you keep getting hacked, something is amiss. Depending upon what is being targeted, this could be either hardware or software related. Either way, you may be facing poorly configured security hardware, buggy (or ancient) software, or lax security policies. One break-in is understandable. Multiple hacks? Not so much. If you’re attacked more than once, it’s time to make some major changes.

5: You’re falling way behind your competitors

There are companies out there not keeping up with the Joneses. Some might think this silly, but when other companies are passing you by, they can offer clients and customers a lot of features and products you can’t touch. Your competition can do this because they’ve taken advantage of the latest technology or they’re leveraging their systems and resources with imagination and groundbreaking innovation. You, on the other hand, have stuck with “what works” for so long it no longer works. If your competition is smoking you, it’s time to step back and examine your landscape to find out why you’re being left in the dust.

6: Network slowdowns are crippling business and productivity

How often do your end users complain of network slowdowns? Are your clients able to get quick access to your services or sites? If complaints are coming in faster than you can troubleshoot, it might be time to revisit that backbone. The amount of data being transferred through your pipes isn’t the same as it was five or 10 years ago. With so many more Web-based tools in play, data usage is through the roof. That ancient DSL or cable line needs to be upgraded in the worst way. Slow data means slow workers means a slowdown on profit. Share that with the board or the CEO and see how quickly they move on upgrading those data pipes.

7: You haven’t embraced mobile devices

How long have you shunned the mobile device? Are you still not allowing users to get their email on their smartphones? Do you not allow wireless on your network? If that’s the case, it’s time to wake up and join the new world order. Not only do you need to allow those devices on your network, you need to open up the Exchange floodgates for iOS and Android devices.

8: Your employees are jumping ship

There are many reasons why employees leave. But when you start hearing rumors that one of those reasons is horrible IT policies or support, you know it’s time to rethink things. No, you do not want end users to attempt to dictate IT policies. But at the same time, you don’t want your policies to be a contributing factor to high employee attrition.

9: You can’t support telecommuters

People need the ability to work from anywhere and everywhere. This isn’t nearly as difficult to manage as it once was, yet some businesses still refuse. Why? In some cases, their network infrastructure simply won’t handle the load or the task. If your infrastructure can’t handle a few telecommuters, it’s seriously time to upgrade.

10: You keep seeing HIPAA red flags

If your company falls under the HIPAA jurisdiction and you’re tossing red flags left and right, run (don’t walk) to the front of the infrastructure upgrade line and get your network/software/topology to follow the rules and guidelines set in place by HIPAA. This isn’t one of those situations where you have the luxury of dragging your feet. You have to move. Otherwise, you face some serious fines.

Time for a change

In all honesty, is your IT landscape up to par? Does it meet today’s needs and follow best practices in today’s demanding IT-centric world? If not, it’s time to take a hard look at what needs to change. If any of the problems listed here sound familiar, it may be time to shake off the shackles of “If it’s not broke…” and migrate to the here and now.

Source: TechRepublic

If any of the above sounds familiar then contact us for a free onsite network review.

British datacentre owners are entering the cloud services market en masse, a move eased by developments in virtualisation management but hindered by the challenge of setting themselves apart.

At Cloud Expo Europe in London this week, several companies launched high-end public and hybrid cloud services, and all sought to put their own spin on a technology that is fast becoming a standard.

"Cloud technology has entered a utility-based model," said Lukasz Olszewski, a systems architect at UK datacentre operator Telehouse. "We want to differentiate ourselves on the quality of our services."

The growing sophistication of virtualisation frameworks from VMware, Red Hat, Citrix and Microsoft has let datacentre operators easily create clouds on any range of hypervisors, then deliver services on top of that. Clouds based on Red Hat, Microsoft, Citrix and VMware all made an appearance at the London trade show.

"The hypervisor itself is kind of commoditised," said Sam Johnston, Equinix's director of cloud and IT services. "You've got VMware, ESX, Hyper-V, Xen, KVM... that kind of low-level function is essentially commoditised."

Among those with a launch at Cloud Expo Europe was colocation specialist Telehouse, which has started selling virtual datacentre, storage, disaster recovery and infrastructure cloud services, based on its four facilities in London. On Wednesday, Infiniserv announced an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud backed by dedicated connectivity, while London-based telecommunications service provider Interoute now offers similar packages.

In addition, Gloucester-based hosting and cloud company Rise demonstrated its Microsoft-friendly IaaS cloud, which has a management portal designed for less technically-savvy customers, and Claranet showed off its IaaS hypervisor-agnostic virtual datacentre.

Standing out

The challenge for companies is to differentiate themselves to potential customers, when the service they are selling is becoming a standard, the datacentre owners confirmed. The range of services could also confuse some businesses, they said.

"In terms of competitors, there's still a lot of head-scratching going on in the industry," said James Henigan, product and IT services director at Rise. "The market growth is going to come, but we need to help the end-customer understand what they need."

The datacentre owners said their new cloud services are squarely targeted at existing customers, rather than being pitched at drawing in new clients.

"The obvious community for us is our existing connected customers — around 3,000," Interoute's chief technology officer Matthew Finnie said. "The value proposition to those guys should be a no brainer... We see it really as computing infrastructure for our big internet customers or big corporate customers."

Source: ZDNet

Converge IT offer Cloud Solutions for SME's and Enterprise businesses throughout the UK, contact us now at our IT Support Centre for advice.

Disasters are inevitable. Even though people know they have to plan for the worst, life gets in the way. Then when disaster strikes, it takes them down. Rather than just sitting and waiting for a crisis, it's wiser to prepare for it. Here are some things you should do to be ready.

1. Get a good battery backup

You may be dubious about the value of a good battery backup, but it could mean the difference between getting some data and none whatsoever. Let me give you a recent example. I recently had a client that lost power to its building. Problems started to escalate and it looked as if we were heading for a disaster. But thanks to a battery backup, I was able to remote quickly into the machine, get a backup running immediately and avert a total loss.

2. Start creating nightly data backups

This measure goes with the first point. Without backups, you are completely lost. So making regular, reliable backups is the single most important thing you can do to prepare for a disaster. What's more, you need more than just a backup to an external drive. You must also have an offsite backup. As long as you have data, recovery is always a possibility. Make sure backups are nightly and successful. Backups are not a matter of set it and forget it.

3. Start creating weekly full images

Full images are just as crucial as data backups. Some backup products, such as Acronis ABR with Universal Restore, allow you to take a backup image and load it on dissimilar hardware, providing you with one of the fastest routes to recovery. Just ensure you have a recent image — at least a weekly one — or else restoring it will saddle you with an out-of-date system.

4. Document server and client applications

One of the problems with recovery is knowing what software is installed and where. So, document all the software on the system. Make sure you also record the versions of each piece of software. Know as much about your system as possible and don't rely on memory.

5. Check the status of RAID storage

I can't tell you how many times I've had clients with failing RAID storage. Their array is on its last drive when that also fails. Had they monitored the status of the array and replaced it, they wouldn't be in a situation where it couldn't be saved. RAID should not be looked at as a backup system — though some seem to think that's its purpose. It is crucial to monitor RAID-drive status at all times to prevent disastrous levels of loss.

6. Rotate backups offsite

What good are backups if they're in a building fire? Of course, you can place them in a fire-proof safe, but why take a chance? Set up a system for rotating your backups at least weekly offsite. In fact, if you really want to be safe, have three external drives. You'll have one working, one in a fire-proof safe, and one offsite at all times. Although this approach requires you to rotate them more frequently to ensure each is relatively up to date, it will mean you always have a backup available.

7. Document the network

Documentation shouldn't stop at software on servers and clients. You also need to document the network. Know what you used, how you used it, the address schemes, and security measures. This documentation will make it much easier to recover the network. Also, make sure you use diagrams as well as descriptions. The documentation must be clear and thorough enough to enable any network admin to re-create your network quickly.

8. Have an offsite failover for your website

It's great to have all these backup plans, but if you're faced with disaster and depend on your website for revenue, you need an offsite failover. It will allow you to switch easily if your onsite server is out of commission. When you create this offsite failover, make sure you have the sites set up to update regularly, so you're not switching to an out-of-date server.

9. Relocate your software offsite

The organisation will have made a significant investment in all that software — unless it's like me and uses only open source. That investment needs protecting by locating all the installation media offsite. Better yet, burn copies of that data and store the originals offsite. That way, should disaster strike, you won't have to spend days tracking down the installation media to get back up and running. Also make sure that all install keys are stored with the media.

10. Develop a solid recovery plan

Finally, you must have a plan for dealing with disaster. When the inevitable happens, you need to know how to react. Every second you flounder adds to the disaster. Ensure you know exactly what to do. Your plan needs to be set out, step by step, so that panic doesn't get a chance to take over.

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT for advice on your business continuity plan.

It is estimated that unstructured data - everything from email to spreadsheets, documents and digital media - accounts for at least 90% of an organisation's data. You systems are bloated with everything from personal iTunes playlists to the early versions of that PowerPoint presentation you delivered in March. To make matters worse, analysts at Gartner and IDC predict that data growth in IT organisations will grow by as much as 800% in the next five years.

Corporations can fight information bloat by using tools that provide a file-by-file inventory to identify files that are duplicate, unused, infrequently accessed or violate policy. In short, there are ways to shed those unwanted terabytes. Here are some tips how:

1. Inventory your technology

Most companies don't know how big their problem is. They can't tell you what file content they have, how much exists, who created it, what resources it is consuming or how much data is duplicated. When we first begin working with an enterprise, we typically find an average of 50%-60% of any given organisation's NAS data has not been viewed in several years.

Since many view the task of sifting the bad data from the good as too daunting, the problem just gets worse. Traditional, manual profiling is difficult and expensive. As such, profiling is done infrequently - sometimes annually - making it impossible to understand the data's impact to the corporation and its storage resources.

Before you can identify wasted files, re-tier storage or trend on storage usage patterns, you need to understand your current capabilities and decide what tools you need to be successful. There are several that offer varying degrees of visibility into some or all of your unstructured environments.

Native array monitoring tools often stop at array capacity and can't provide file-level information, such as when the file was last accessed. Furthermore, this view tends to overestimate your true capacity, leaving you searching for budget to buy more arrays sooner than is truly necessary. Solutions that walk the file tree tend to be cumbersome and place a significant burden on your system, slowing down not only your visibility reporting, but potentially your network as a whole. These "boil the ocean" tools tend to take months or years to deploy and may force users to install agents to feed a relational monitoring database, which can weigh your system down and present scalability challenges.

More lightweight solutions can be deployed in a matter of weeks, not months, and work without the use of agents. Some use a purpose-built database to collect file metadata (versus the complete file). This enables them to characterise and report on billions of files at 10x to 100x faster than a standard relational database. Many of these solutions can be paired with a data mover or user script to implement removal, archiving or re-tiering of data.

2. Identify inappropriate files

End user files make up a hefty portion of an organisation's unstructured data and often include several duplicate versions stored in multiple locations. From employees' personal files of photos, videos, playlists and potential viruses, to outdated versions of old documents, virtually every company is storing these files in some form or another. These files are resource hogs. You need to put a priority on identifying the files so they can be removed or re-tiered - and their storage reclaimed.

Data owned by employees who are terminated or reassigned also represents a security concern. These files should be quickly identified and quarantined or archived to ensure corporate guidelines on data ownership and retention are maintained. If your data centre needs a diet, make sure your administrators are able to aggregate and analyse file information by file type to make their roles as watchdogs for enforcing corporate retention and unauthorised usage policies more efficient.

3. Re-tier your data

Make sure you understand the value of the data you're holding on to. IT organisations are often shocked to learn they can save millions through automated tiering of less-than-critical data. The sheer growth of data makes it critical to store unstructured data on the most cost-effective storage tier throughout its life cycle. Tiering criteria include the availability, security and reliability needed for those files. With the annual cost of owning Tier 1 storage running around $8,000 per terabyte, it's vital that only the data that is most critical to business be stored here.

Once you've identified useful information such as the last access dates, you can determine the "value" of individual files to an enterprise and move data to specific storage tiers based on the value of the data. Furthermore, once each file's value is determined, administrators can establish and monitor data storage policies. These enable administrators to set up automated tiering policies that streamline the process and help ensure that only the most critical information is stored on pricey Tier 1 storage.

4. Implement trending protocols

It's important to monitor the information you collect to see how your data grows and changes over time. Capturing the changing impact of data on your corporation - or trending - gives you a greater understanding of the resources the data is using. That knowledge enables you to set actionable policies to better manage that data.

Depending on the tools you use, you'll be monitoring your storage environments more often. You want to be sure you avoid tools that only aggregate the file level information and do not make file level information accessible to the user, as you can't trend on what you can't see. Imagine being able to aggregate file level information and see trends in this data over time, rather than being limited to "point-in-time" views.

In short, know your data. Unbridled data growth leaves sensitive and non-corporate files hanging in the lurch, representing potential security risks. Identify duplicate end user files, their locations and owners so you can consolidate inactive files or old versions and remove duplicate files to free up storage resources for business critical information.

If you follow these tips, bulky NAS volumes can finally shed some weight.

Source: ComputerworldUK

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on your business data management and storage.

Virgin Media customers on 50Mbps plans are in line to get 120Mbps at no extra charge, the company revealed after mistakenly sending upgrade emails to some of its cable broadband subscribers.

Last week, the ISP announced it will increase headline speeds across all its packages, with the top-tier plan going from 100Mbps to 120Mbps, and other plans doubling in speed. On Monday, Virgin Media confirmed it had incorrectly sent an email to some customers across all its tariffs, saying they would be upgraded to 120Mbps once an infrastructure upgrade had been completed.

"Our first email, intended for our 100Mb customers, was accidentally sent to some customers on other tiers which may have led to some confusion. We're sorry for any misunderstanding and will be writing to customers again soon to clarify how the upgrade will affect them," a Virgin Media spokesman said.

"In the meantime, as part of our double-speed programme, we are delighted to confirm that 50Mb customers will actually be upgraded to 120Mb," he added. Previously, the company had said people on the 50Mbps plan would move to 100Mbps.

The price of the 120Mbps package will stay the same for current 50Mbps subscribers, while those on 100Mbps packages will see their cost drop to the 50Mbps level — £35 per month if taken without a Virgin phone line, or £25 with a phone line.

Some 50Mbps customers may initially see a speed increase to 100Mbps before the 120Mbps tier has been provisioned in their area, Virgin Media said. The upgrades are scheduled to begin rolling out in February and should to be completed by mid-2013, it added.

In September, BT introduced plans to "roughly double" the speed of its 40Mbps fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) service to around 80Mbps. In addition, it said it will use fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology to deliver speeds of up to 300Mbps to some customers during 2012, but did not say exactly when these services will be launched.

Source: ZDNet

Contact us at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on your business communication requirements.

1: Your employees

Your own employees are your biggest source of security risks. Sometimes, it is deliberate; sometimes, it is not. Employees have the most access and the most time. We expend a lot of effort worrying about external threats, but in all honesty, all it takes is an employee bringing in a virus from a home PC on a USB drive to nullify all your forward-facing firewalls and measures. Disgruntled employees sometimes express their anger by hurting your computer systems. And of course, it is possible for a well-meaning employee to make a major mistake. Good governance, education, setting (and enforcing) policies, and knowing your employees are your best steps to closing the holes here.

2: Common coding mistakes

Certain mistakes in programming still get made despite years of warnings and education. Most common are SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. I still see these issues from time to time even in major software packages that you would think are trustworthy (WordPress is a good example). It’s hard to change software once you’ve installed it, so you need to keep these packages up to date even though it is quite a hassle.

3: Unauthorized machines

I’ve seen this one too many times. Someone decides to bring in an old PC and put it on the network to do something your existing infrastructure doesn’t allow them to do. They think that they are being helpful, working around the limitations of the IT department. After all, if IT won’t build a Web site for their group, it’s just “doing them a favor” to set up an old PC in the corner with a Web server on it, right? Wrong. The best way I’ve found to keep these rogue machines in line is with rigorous IP address audits and policies and scanning the network to create a list of machines. If machines can’t get IP addresses, they can’t do much harm.

4: Ancient “rock solid” servers

We all have them — that server buried deep in the data room that “just won’t quit.” Usually, it’s running some software package that is impossible to migrate to another machine. Sadly, these machines are often major security risks because they typically are no longer getting patches or we fail to patch them out of fear of breaking them. In addition, those older versions of operating systems often come with inherent security holes that no patching can fix. You need to replace these servers one way or the other. The best first step is to virtualize them. From there, it is a lot easier to try to update them.

5: Legacy applications

It’s not just the old servers that are big security risks; it is also the applications running on them, as well as other legacy applications you may have running. These applications would be a lot less problematic if they were current with their patches, but usually they aren’t. All too often, we miss a major version update because the upgrade is so difficult, and then we’re so far behind the ball that it’s impossible to catch up. Or perhaps the applications are completely discontinued. It’s painful to say it, but the best thing you can do is find a migration path to a recent version or another package entirely.

6: Local admins

We all know the dangers of allowing users to run with escalated privileges. Still, we occasionally end up with users being granted local admin rights inappropriately. In my experience, this often happens while troubleshooting a problem: We make the user a local admin to see if it fixes a problem and we forget to undo it. Regardless of how it occurs, it is a ticking time bomb for security. Use your central administration tools to make sure that the local admin list gets reset on a regular basis to the proper users and groups.

7: Incorrect share/file permissions

File permissions are tricky things, and most users are not even aware of how to set them. So what happens? Users create sensitive files in their usual networked location and those files get the default permissions, which are “collaboration friendly” to say the least. The next thing you know, everyone can read the documents, which are supposed to be confidential. Your best weapon is to pre- establish a share and file structure with the correct permissions. For example, give everyone a home directory for personal documents and create shares or directories around roles, projects, and teams with the appropriate permissions. The hard part is then educating them to use the correct locations — but that is much easier than trying to teach them permissions.

8: Hidden servers within applications

I have seen more and more applications lately that use a local Web server as an administration console. Sometimes, these applications are installed by users without permission. But occasionally, the IT department just does not realize what comes with an application. While these servers can be locked down so that they are not a risk (and with luck, they get installed like that), you need to verify that the applications are secured properly before allowing them to be installed on users’ machines.

9: VPN clients

Some users figure out how to set up VPN access on their personal machines. For a power user, it isn’t too hard to do. But you have no control over that machine, and once it is on the VPN, problems with the unauthorized machine can easily spill over onto the VPN. One thing you can do is audit the VPN systems to see who is connecting from what PCs and compare it to your list of authorized systems. Also, you can put additional firewalls around VPN clients to quarantine them. Finally, there are various systems to ensure that the clients connecting are on a preapproved list.

10: Disabled security software

Security software often puts up roadblocks to getting work done, so the “logical response” from many users is to find a way to work around it. For example, I’ve seen people set up anonymizers at home to sidestep IT policies. Power users (especially developers and system administrators) often know how to circumvent security tools. They may also be local administrators because of a technical need, which makes disabling software and changing settings even easier.

Combatting this is tough because these users often assume that they are “too smart” to be a security risk. What they fail to realize is that the modern crop of security threats do not require the user to make a mistake, like going to an obviously suspect Web site or downloading pirated software. Every Acrobat file, for example, is a potential plague rat at this point. Start looking for unusual trends, like large amounts of consistent traffic to an IP address and use centralized tools to ensure that settings are at the right levels and are reset periodically. Also, take any unnecessary local administration rights and firewall entire groups onto their own network segment to limit damage if those groups have a legitimate need for lower security.

Source: Tech Republic

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on securing your business network.

Spanish banking giant BBVA is switching its 110,000 staff to use Google's range of enterprise software.

The deal is the biggest that the search giant has signed with one company for its cloud-computing services, where software is offered as a service via the internet.

The bank told the BBC it will use Google's tools only for internal communication.

But the deal could be seen as a breakthrough in corporate adoption.

Banking - with its high security needs and strict regulations - was always considered to be one of the last industries to accept cloud-computing.

BBVA's director of innovation, Carmen Herranz, stressed that all customer data and other key banking systems would "stay in our own data centres" and be completely separate from the cloud solution.

The bank would use Google applications like email, calendar, docs, chat, video conferencing and other collaboration tools to "achieve a cultural change" and get "the whole company working together" across the 26 countries where BBVA is based.

Ms Herranz said the project - with roll-out across all employees to be complete by the end of the year - was not about saving cost.

"The main goal is to promote innovation and making decisions and increase productivity. We are in a challenging market and need to make faster and more accurate decisions... and eliminate duplication," Ms Herranz told the BBC.

Also driving the change was the increasing mobility of the bank's workforce. A lot of the bank's computing needs had moved to smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers at home, she said.

Jose Olalla, chief information officer at BBVA, said because workers now had "access [to] the information they need at any time from any internet-connected device, anywhere in the world, [they] will be able to be more flexible and mobile".

BBVA is one of Spain's largest banks.

It is also the largest provider of financial services in Mexico, and has a large presence in the south of the United States.

'Largest ever deal'

Traditionally, companies have done all their computing on their own premises, to keep their data secure and to stay in control.

However, most enterprises leave some 80% of their computing power idle, and find themselves spending more than two thirds of their information technology budget on maintenance and software upgrades.

Cloud computing tends to be much more efficient, with firms like Amazon Web Services running their servers at more than 90% of capacity. That cuts cost and also helps the environment.

The man in charge of Google Enterprise apps in Europe, Sebastien Marotte, said that his corporate customers on average achieved cost savings of between 50% and 70%.

But the deal with BBVA, argues Mr Marotte, is important not only "because it is the largest ever agreement we have signed with an organisation, it is important because it is a very large financial company, it shows that now even banks are moving to the cloud".

BBVA's data would not reside on dedicated servers - a solution known as private cloud - but would sit distributed across the public cloud of Google's data centres. Both Mr Marotte and Ms Herranz stressed this would meet the demands of banking regulators and data protection officials, and be as secure as any solution on the bank's premises.

A bigger worry will be whether BBVA's computer network will be able to cope with the sharp rise in network traffic that cloud-computing solutions demand.

A pilot with 7,000 staff had not seen any issues, but the bank would closely monitor for any increases in network load. "Our biggest worry is around video conferencing," said Ms Herranz.

Network issues were blamed on serious performance problems when several years ago Google apps were introduced by the city of Los Angeles.

'Starting from scratch'

The biggest challenge for BBVA and other firms switching to cloud computing could indeed be cultural issues.

The bank says it has a training programme in place - including personalised guides - to prepare their staff for the move from their tried and trusted email solution and other tools to the new browser-based online world.

However, the bank encourages its employees to leave all their old email and data in those legacy systems. They will be accessible if necessary, but, says Ms Herranz, but we "want to start from scratch... don't want to carry across old behaviours".

"To move to the future, you have to leave the past in a box," said Ms Herranz.

Source: BBC

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Applications will soon open for new top-level domains in the biggest change to the system in over two decades.

From Thursday it will be possible to register almost any word as a web address suffix.

Familiar endings like .com and .org could potentially be joined by the likes of .pepsi, .virgin or .itv.

The proposals are controversial but Icann, the organisation which regulates domain names, says the change increases choice and competition.

In December, the US Federal Trade Commission wrote to Icann warning that the expansion of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) "has the potential to magnify both the abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter in tracking down Internet fraudsters."

And in the US, the Association of National Advertisers, whose members include some of America's biggest companies, have also opposed the changes.

Not cheap

But Peter Dengate Thrush, a former chairman of Icann's board of directors, said the change was necessary.

"It's badly in need of overhaul," he told the BBC.

"No-one would design a domain name system now for several billion users just using a couple of names that we started the system with in 1985."

Mr Dengate Thrush is currently chairman of Top Level Domains Holdings, a company developing registry services for top level domains.

At a cost of $185,000 (£120,000) just to apply, obtaining one of the new names is a serious financial commitment.

"Probably you are closer to half a million dollars to get it off the ground," said Jonathan Robinson, a non-executive director of Afilias, a registry operator which manages extensions like .mobi and .info.

The cost has lead to concern among some non-profit organisations that they will have to spend considerable sums defending themselves from cyber squatters.

Last month, the Reuters agency reported that the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and 26 other international organisations wrote to Icann asking it to protect suffixes like .imf from cyber squatters.

Deadline approaching

In spite of the cost there has been significant interest in applying for the new general top-level domains before the deadline for applications closes in April, according to companies advising on registrations.

"We're already working on over 100 applications - we're expecting that to increase," said Stuart Durham of Melbourne IT DBS.

He said around 25% of those had been "from Fortune 500 companies", with the majority of interest from the retail and financial services sectors.

As well as brand names, Mr Durham said there is likely to be a lively interest in place names.

"A lot of the geographic extensions that are being discussed like .london or .nyc will have a very good solid business case," he said.

"We've recently had extensions like .cat for the Catalan community that's done very well as well."

However, Mr Dengate Thrush worried this could lead to some conflict issues with places like Wellington, capital of his native country New Zealand, which shares its name with other places around the world.

"I think there are about 20 or 30 other cities called Wellington." However, he believed the systems set in place by Icann will ensure these issues can be successfully negotiated.

Cyber squatting

Even those who support the change foresee some issues.

"I would say it's almost certainly a good thing," Afilia's Mr Robinson told the BBC.

However, he says "you open up a whole new second tier of real estate that could be cyber squatted".

But Mr Durham thinks that there's very little that could be done to eradicate malicious squatters and others seeking to exploit the system.

"Cockroaches would survive a nuclear attack," he said.

"Some cyber squatters and infringers would too."

Source: BBC

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Mobile operator O2 is to provide free internet to "millions" of residents and visitors in central London by launching Europe's largest free wi-fi zone.

The service will be rolled out across the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in 2012.

It will be powered by a system installed on street furniture.

O2 said the deal, which will have no cost to the taxpayer, will enable visitors to "make the most of what London has to offer".

Councillor Philippa Roe, cabinet member for strategic finance at Westminster City Council, said: "Westminster welcomes over a million tourists a day, is home to 250,000 residents, employs over half a million people and sees 4,000 business starts-ups each year.

"Visitors to London will easily be able to share their pictures and updates of the Olympic events across social networking sites."

O2 will begin installing the Metro wireless network across Westminster this month, initially being available in limited areas before being rolled out across both boroughs.

'High quality connectivity'

London is catching up with other major cities. In Paris, several hundred individual wi-fi zones offer free connections in public parks and municipal spaces.

New York also offers free wi-fi in parks and last year began to install wireless internet access at several of its subway stations.

London's service will be powered by equipment attached to lamp-posts and other existing structures on London's streets, and should be completed by March.

"This ground-breaking deal... will see us deliver high-quality connectivity across London in time for London 2012," said Derek McManus, chief operating officer for O2.

"Our longer-term aim is to expand our footprint of O2 wi-fi, which is open to everyone, and also intelligently enhance our services at street level, where people need the network the most."

John Hunt, from independent broadband review site thinkbroadband.com, said the service would be very popular, particularly for overseas tourists worried about expensive mobile costs.

"Obviously, free wireless is a good thing. It allows people to get online cheaper," he told the BBC.

"Whether it will be able to handle the Olympics is going to be their main issue."

Underground trial

Mr Hunt added that London is becoming a well-connected city for residents and tourists desperate to be online while on the move.

"There are other networks as well, such as The Cloud and BT Openzone, and a lot more places like coffee shops are getting people online," he said.

However, he said residents living in the free wi-fi areas should not be considering ditching their home connection.

"The problem you will have is that the wireless may not be fast enough to support everything you want to do.

"I don't think it will necessarily replace home broadband - it's more a complementing service."

In November 2010, Charing Cross became the first Underground station to offer wireless connectivity as part of a six-month trial.

A spokeswoman for Transport for London told the BBC that it hopes to install the service in up to 120 stations on the network in time for the Olympics.

Another trial, sponsored by Finnish firm Nokia, involved 26 free wi-fi hotspots in locations across the city.

The firm said it planned to make it a fully-fledged service in 2012.

Source: BBC

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If there is one safe prediction for 2012, it's that mobile devices and apps will become increasingly mainstream, table-stakes technology for small businesses.  

A recent survey by consulting firm SMB Group showed that small- and medium-sized businesses plan to significantly increase spending on mobile in 2012, with firms in the five-to-49-employee range leading the way.

Nielsen, meanwhile, reported that almost half of American cell phone users now have smartphones -- 44 percent as of October 2011. And IDC reported that 18.1 million tablets shipped in 3Q alone, a 23.9 percent jump from the previous quarter, 264.5 percent from the same period in 2010.

The mobile revolution is real, but how specifically will it affect small businesses in 2012?

We put this question to two keen observers of the small business market: SMB Group partner Laurie McCabe, and Mark Tauschek, lead research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Inc.

Mobile Payment

McCabe and Tauschek agree on at least one key trend for 2012: small businesses will begin to adopt mobile payment -- using smartphones or tablets with add-on card readers and low-cost online credit card processing services such as Square and Intuit GoPayment.

"A lot of very small businesses especially haven't really had a mechanism for accepting credit card payment," Tauschek said. "Now they do, with a simple hardware add-on and an app for their iPhone or iPod touch."

Mobile POS (point of sale) terminals could be used on retail sales floors to relieve congestion at fixed cash points, or in more purely mobile environments such as craft and farmers markets, or where a mobile provider delivers a service to a homeowner or business and needs to take payment on the spot.

"This is a huge thing," McCabe said. "Especially as retailers don't have to spend any money [on the service] and the readers are fairly cheap or free. It makes it very easy when you're on the go, and some small businesses are always on the go."

Some retailers may adopt mobile payment simply to make themselves appear more leading edge. For example, Apple's own uber-cool stores were mobile payment pioneers.

Most small business owners can't afford to switch just because it's the cool thing to do, McCabe said, and most won't. But new businesses or those with outdated equipment should consider mobile payment for the business advantages it offers.

Small Business Mobile Becomes the Norm

Small businesses that learned early to use mobile technology to make them more accessible and more responsive to customers have enjoyed a decided competitive advantage, Tauschek said, but that advantage may not last much longer.

He believes that with the huge growth in the installed base of smart mobile devices and the ubiquity of broadband wireless connectivity, 2012 will be the year in which being super-accessible and instantly responsive from anywhere will become an expectation, the norm.

This applies to businesses of all sizes, Tauschek said, but it's especially important for small businesses to be proactive and exploit their nimbleness to gain the advantage over bigger competitors.

"It will no longer be adequate to respond, ‘Yeah, I got your email and I'll get back to you in a couple of days.' Now, you have to be able to say, ‘I'm going to interact with you immediately, over whichever channel you prefer -- instant messaging, social media, voice.'"

Moving Beyond Email

A key prediction from SMB Group for 2012 is that, in the mobile realm, small businesses will start to move beyond basic communications and Web browsing applications.

Many are now looking at adopting time management, field service, customer relationship management (CRM) and even enterprise resource management (ERP) apps, McCabe said, as well as vertical, industry-specific apps in fields such as health care.

"Now they can check on the inventory status of a product or enter time spent on a project -- anywhere, anytime," she said. "It streamlines the way they do a lot of things, and helps them be more responsive to customers. And that is good for business."

Many small business owners may even prefer using mobile versions of popular business applications originally developed for the PC. "This is just anecdotal, but I've had small business people telling me they prefer to use these applications on their smartphones," McCabe said. "In a lot of cases, it's because the mobile interface is so nice and clean."

Is 2012 the Year of the App?

The increasing ease-of-use of maturing mobile apps is, in fact, one of "the key building blocks" that will make 2012 a "breakout year for apps" in the business world, Tauschek said.

Part of that comes from mainstream software developers paying increased attention to mobile. Some now design or upgrade applications from the ground up with mobile in mind. "Mobile is now the first design point for a lot of vendors," McCabe said.

Part of it, too, is that many developers have realized they don't have to put everything-but-the-kitchen-sink into their mobile apps. Some are producing multiple apps with bite-size chunks of functionality.

SAP, a small-medium enterprise ERP vendor, is the most obvious case in point. SAP offers many mobile apps, including some as specific as one for capturing travel receipts and sending the data back to SAP servers.

"They've made very elegant interfaces," McCabe said of the mature mobile business apps now appearing. "And they've given users only what they need, without cluttering [the app] up with [all the functionality] of a full-fledged Web client."

Not every small business will adopt applications as sophisticated as SAP in 2012, but Tauschek says the year will see more mainstream business apps such as Dropbox and Boxnet -- two companies that provide mobile access to online file storage and synchronization services -- "increasingly permeate small businesses."

Accessing the Mobile Cloud

Increased adoption of cloud services and applications (like Dropbox and Boxnet) is another mobile trend to watch in 2012, Tauschek believes. But it goes beyond online storage, already a well established mobile cloud app.

Lots of other cloud-based mobile apps are already available, including two from cloud pioneer SalesForce.com. These include the company's flagship CRM application and its Chatter collaboration tool. More will come, Tauschek said.

One game-changer is Apple's Siri, an artificial intelligence- and speech recognition-based "personal Web assistant" that will help iPhone users perform all kinds of functions, including finding stuff on the Web -- thus challenging Google's search engine.

The key to Siri's power, Tauschek said, is that it leverages ubiquitous broadband wireless capacity to access sophisticated capabilities residing on Apple Web servers rather than relying only on program code on the device.

Siri is so far available on the latest iPhone 4S model, but is expected eventually to be available on other iPhones and possibly the iPad.

Mobile Intelligence

Siri is an exemplar of another trend to watch: artificial intelligence (AI) built into mobile devices. Tauschek admitted it's hard to predict the impact of increased use of AI, a loosely defined set of capabilities that allow computer systems to learn and automatically adapt to circumstances and users.

"Think about this from the small business perspective," Tauschek suggested. "If you can turn your smart phone or tablet into a truly intelligent personal assistant, how will that improve all your touch points with clients?"

Android Ascendant

Apple may still have disproportionate mind share, but Google's Android mobile platform is on the rise, Tauschek said. 

"In the tablet market especially, the iPad has really been the only game in town," he said. "But that's changing. And while it might seem to be changing slowly, it's actually happening quite rapidly now. You have to remember that everything [in the Android world] is lagging about year-and-a-half behind Apple." 

With the rapid expansion of the number of available Android apps, and the fact that the latest version of the Android operating system works equally well on smartphones and tablets – as does Apple's iOS -- Google's mobile platform is finally catching up. 

That may make it more attractive to small businesses, but it cuts two ways, Tauschek said. The fact that apps available in the Android Market are not vetted by Google or anyone else -- unlike apps in the Apple App Store which must all pass stringent vetting by Apple -- means security of Android apps could be a concern, he cautioned.

The Year Ahead

What else will 2012 bring? McCabe believes small businesses -- and businesses of all sizes -- will start to make more use of text messaging. Many customers may not want to receive unsolicited marketing messages via text, she said, but they might welcome alerts and other kinds of messages. 

And she expects to see cross-platform services emerge to simplify data backup, recovery and security on both mobile devices and laptops and desktop computers. 

And 2012 could mark the beginning of a consolidation phase in the mobile industry, which may or may not affect small businesses. AT&T is making a play for T-Mobile, for example. There have been rumors of various suitors for ailing Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry.

RIM's declining fortunes may be a cause for concern among enterprises that invested heavily in inhouse BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES), Tauschek said. But small businesses that use the Web-based BlackBerry solution need not worry. If they're nervous and want to jump ship, they can do so with minimal disruption, he said.

Will 2012 be a breakout year for mobile in small business? We think so. The sheer mass of devices -- those purchased by companies and the personal tablets and smartphones that employees bring to work -- create opportunities just too important to ignore.

Source: Small Business Computing

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The use of mobile devices to surf the web reached an all-time high in December, accounting for 7.7 percent of browser usage according to Net Applications's measurements of daily visits to its network of 40,000 websites.

1: Use a fast browser

Not all browsers are created equal. Some are simply faster than others. The top speed you will find, in the current crop of browsers, belongs to Google Chrome. If you’ve grown accustomed to Internet Explorer or Firefox, you’ll notice a dramatic increase in rendering time using Google Chrome. Of all the ways you can speed up your browsing experience, this is by far the best. Google Chrome also helps speed things up by allowing you to enter search strings in the URL address bar. With this feature, you don’t have to add yet another toolbar, thereby slowing down the browser even further.

2: Disable Flash

Flash pretty much saturates Web sites now. It’s almost impossible to get away from this technology. Problem is, Flash can be slow, so it directly affects the speed of your browsing experience. You can have Flash turned off by default and then re-enable it to view what you need to view. The biggest problem with this is that some browsers require an add-on to block Flash. For Chrome, you need the extension Flashblock. There’s also a Flashblock extension for Firefox. Internet Explorer has a built-in tool you can access by clicking Tools | Manage Add-ons. In the Manage Add-ons dialog box, double-click Shockwave Flash Object. Then, click the Remove All Sites button. This will disable Flash for all sites.

3: Save your temporary Web files on a RAM disk

I wrote an article awhile back on using a RAM disk to help speed up disk-intensive applications. Since the RAM disk will be much faster than your standard hard drive, using it to save all your browsers temporary files will create a faster environment for your browser. However, this solution is not for the newbie, and you will need to use a third-party to better achieve this task.

4: Get rid of all those toolbars

You’ve seen them in the wild: browsers so filled with toolbars they take up the majority of real estate in the browser window. Most users don’t realize those toolbars tend to slow down the browser in many ways. Some toolbars simply take up precious computer memory, while others eat away at bandwidth by sending and receiving data in the background. The math here is quite simple: The more toolbars you have, the slower your browser will run. Some of those toolbars might seem essential. But if speed is really your top priority, you will want to jettison that extra baggage for the speed you will gain.

5: Use tabs, not windows

Too many tabs can cause problems, but they’re still your best bet for browsing efficiency. How do tabs speed up your experience? A couple of ways. The first is all about organization. With multiple tabs in a single window, it becomes quite a bit faster to locate the page you need to work on. You don’t have to maximize a window, discover that it’s not the right one, minimize it, maximize a new window… until you find the correct one. A single window open with multiple tabs is far easier to search. This is not the only way tabs can help you. Browsers like Chrome treat each tab as an individual process (instead of a child process of a parent). So when a Web site causes a tab to crash, you can close that one tab and not lose all the other tabs. This behavior is not a standard at the moment, so you’ll need to switch over to the Chrome browser to take advantage of it.

Source:TechRepublic

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Net Applications' December data shows that Apple devices accounted for more than half of all mobile Web browsing for the month. The iPhone and iPad together accounted for 52.1 percent of all mobile Web traffic. Second place went to Java ME with 21.3 percent market share.

Google's Android platform finished in third with a paltry 16.2 percent. Symbian (5.8 percent) and BlackBerry (3.5 percent) rounded out the top five.

Source: Internet News

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1. Flipboard

Flipboard is a 21st-century newsreader based on your social graph. It displays news stories based on what's being shared by your friends on Twitter or Facebook and auto-formats them in a newspaper-like column format. You can scan the headlines and first couple paragraphs and then click through to the site to the open the full story right in the built-in web browser in the app.

2. Amazon Kindle

The best way to read books on the iPad is the Amazon Kindle app, mostly because it has a large selection of titles available and it does the best job of syncing between multiple devices — iPad, iPhone, Android phone, PC, Mac and more. Of course, there are also strong alternatives such as Barnes & Noble's Nook app and Apple's iBooks app.

3. Documents to Go

The best way to collect, manage and read business documents on the iPad is with Dataviz Documents to Go, which not only allows you to sync local files from your computer but also to connect to cloud services such as Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, SugarSync and iDisk.

4. Things

Tablets are great for people who spend most of their days in meetings. For that crowd and everyone else who needs a task list and project planner, the best app I've found is Things.

It's a little expensive, but I've tried cheaper solutions and none of them are as easy to figure out and as powerful to use as Things. It has a few limitations (syncing between multiple devices), but it does a great job of getting the process out of the way and helping you effectively track and organise your to-do items.

5. Analytics HD

One of the great ways to take advantage of the iPad as a viewer is to use it for quick glances at business dashboard metrics. This even translates to the simple task of checking traffic metrics and user info for your website. If you use Google Analytics, the Analytics HD app is a great way to view site data from the iPad. (Also see QlikView, SAP Business Objects Explorer and Roambi.)

6. Evernote

The iPad is a surprisingly good note-taker. The keyboard is about 80 percent as good as a laptop keyboard but the convenience of a more portable device is valuable as well. Evernote is a great note-taking companion for the iPad, since it can auto-sync your meeting notes back to your PCs or smartphones. Just keep in mind that it's an online service and so be careful that you don't use it for any business-sensitive data. For that stuff, you can use locally controlled files with Apple's built-in Notes app, for example.

7. Penultimate

Now that we've talked about the value of using the iPad for note taking, there are ways to do it that go beyond just typing things out. You can use an app like Penultimate to jot down handwritten notes and sketch out pictures and diagrams.

There are several apps that can do this (such as Adobe Ideas, Ideate and Idea Boards) but I think Penultimate is the most effective. If you get tired of using your finger as the writing device, you can get an iPad stylus like the Bamboo Stylus or the Griffin Stylus. In addition to using it for notes, I've even used Penultimate to sketch out an idea for a colleague in a meeting. It works great as a mini whiteboard in a coffee shop or a taxi cab. 

8. Twitter

Twitter's official iPad app is the best way to access Twitter and is an example of the kind of imaginative new UIs that good developers will attempt once they get grounded in touch-based tablets like the iPad.

Check out the way the Twitter app exposes more or less info by sliding left and right. (Other useful Twitter apps include Osfoora and Twitterific.) The bottom line is that Twitter is an amazing real-time news aggregator, as long as you follow the right people.

9. TED Talks

By far, the most inspiring app on the iPad is the TED Talks app. TED is a series of events featuring some of society's most fascinating and innovative ideas and most influential thinkers. You'll definitely disagree with some of them, because there's a large diversity of opinions. But there are a lot of talks worth listening to and they're all free. Many of the talks are short and succinct, somewhere between five and 20 minutes.

10. Pulse

Pulse is another iPad news aggregator like Flipboard, only instead of building its sections based on social feeds it uses RSS feeds. Like Flipboard, it presents the info in a visually compelling format using images from the articles that it is linking to.

11. SkyGrid

Yet another great news aggregator for the iPad is SkyGrid, but its speciality is pulling together news on hot trends in real time. It's not nearly as visual as Flipboard or Pulse, but SkyGrid helps fill in the gaps by surfacing hot news and articles that might have been missed by your favourite RSS sources and your social network.

12. ProPublica

ProPublica, a non-profit publication of investigative reporters, is doing some of the most important work in journalism today — the work that has increasingly been cut out of the profit-driven newsrooms. Plus, they have an excellent iPad app.

The three column layout gives you the latest stories from ProPublica (most of which don't make the mainstream news), the middle column links to good investigative news pieces from the mainstream media (many of the stories are buried), and the third column has ProPublica's 'Projects' or groups of stories where you can stay up to date on on-going issues. Keep in mind that ProPublica is non-profit and funded completely by donations.

13. NPR

Another great app from a media organization is the NPR app. It lets you quickly skim top stories, read related text articles, and quickly add radio/audio stories to a playlist that you can then listen to all at once.

14. The Guardian Eyewitness

A real diamond in the rough among iPad apps is The Guardian Eyewitness, which features amazing photojournalism from around the world from the popular UK news publication. The photos look fantastic on the iPad screen and provide a great way to scan through some of the most important current events on the planet.

15. The Big Picture

Another great world news photo app is the Big Picture from Boston.com, a site that has had some of the web's best news photographs and slideshows for a long time. While The Guardian Eyewitness app lets you scan world events, the Big Picture app lets you dive into them as there are full sets of photos from each event. The two apps compliment each other well and are great for visual storytelling of important news stories.

16. Rosetta Stone

The popular language software Rosetta Stone has an excellent iPad app called TOTALe HD. Unlike the Rosetta Stone iPhone app, which simply serves as a review for your full lessons on a PC or a Mac, the iPad app has basically all of the same content from the PC/Mac and delivers it in a multitouch experience.

The app also syncs back to the Rosetta Stone servers (for Version 4 of the software) so you can pick up right where you left off when you get back to your computer. You have to have a full licence of a Rosetta Stone language pack and an online account set up in order to use the iPad app. You can't just buy language modules directly for the iPad app.

17. iA Writer

If you want to use the iPad for note taking or writing, then iA Writer offers a very simple solution for writing and managing your files. It is a completely bare bones word processor that can save your stuff directly to your Dropbox. Another similar program is WriteRoom and there's always Apple's own Pages, but at 69p you can't beat the price and basic capabilities of iA Writer.

18. The Weather Channel

Unlike the iPhone, the iPad does not come with a built-in weather app. However, The Weather Channel has filled the void with an excellent app that takes advantage of the tablet interface. I've never been a big fan of The Weather Channel's desktop PC widgets, but they've done a great job with the iPad app.

19. Nasa

Let's face it, most of us geeks love space. The iPad itself was, in part, inspired by science fiction such as Star Trek. Nasa has a strong tradition of sharing its space exploration advances and research and it has continued that tradition in multitouch style with an excellent iPad app that lets you explore photography from satellites, see Nasa's launch schedules, research historical information about missions, and watch Nasa TV live.

20. Scrabble

I've been a Scrabble fan for a long time but hadn't pulled out a board in a while when the game suddenly saw a revival in recent years in digital form, including several knock-offs such as Words with Friends.

My favourite way to play digital Scrabble is the Pass'n Play mode on iPad. But the iPad also has an individual learning mode, a local network mode, Party Play (where you can use an iPhone or iPod Touch as a tile rack), and a mode where you can play against a Facebook friend. So, you can have a little fun and expand your vocabulary at the same time.

Source: ZDNet

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The government has named 10 cities eligible to compete for a share of £100m urban broadband funding.

The eligible cities are: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester and Sheffield, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport announced on Tuesday.

The funding is designed to contribute to broadband infrastructure that will allow people to access the internet at speeds of 80-100 Mbps.

"Transforming communities into super-connected cities will enable them to compete with the world's top digital cities," culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement. "It will help them attract new jobs and new investment and make the UK a place where digital businesses look to come."

Proposals should include high-speed mobile connectivity, according to the statement.

The government will select six cities to join UK capitals Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and London in receiving funding.

The four capitals will automatically get money, and the amount will be dependent on funding bids. Bidding cities will be expected to pick up the tab for non-capital expenditure such as providing for a local project team. Bids close on 13 February 2012.

Broadband access in the UK is patchy, with large parts of the four countries below even 2Mbps.

Source: ZDNet

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Both data and tools to manage it are growing, but taking advantage of it requires planning.

The proliferation of large-scale data sets is just beginning to change business and science around the world, but enterprises need to prepare in order to gain the most advantage from their information, panelists said at a Silicon Valley event this week.

So-called "big data" is both a challenge to manage and a tool for competitive advantage, according to speakers at a Churchill Club event on Wednesday night in Mountain View, California. The discussion at the Computer History Museum followed the launch of EMC Greenplum's Unified Analytics Platform, which lets business and IT staffs analyse both structured and unstructured data.

New networked devices and applications are collecting more data than ever and more organisations are holding on to it, creating huge demands for storage. In the second quarter of this year, storage companies shipped 5,429 petabytes of disk capacity, up 30.7 percent from last year's second quarter, IDC reported last week.

"Data growth is already faster than both Moore's Law and ... network growth," said Anand Rajaraman, senior vice president of Walmart Global E-Commerce and head of @WalmartLabs. His lab has developed tools for Walmart to take advantage of the new types of data being generated, including applications that collect and analyse information from sources such as Twitter and Facebook to gauge trends and individual consumer preferences.

Great benefits to science

The benefits of big data stretch beyond business to earth sciences, biology, psychology and other fields, Rajaraman said.

"Science has become more and more about collecting large amounts of data and doing analysis," he said.

Big data can be any volume of data that requires new tools to analyse, said Luke Lonergan, chief technology officer and co-founder of Greenplum, which EMC acquired last year. For example, it would take 27 hours to run a logistic regression algorithm, which can be used to predict the probability of an event, on 30G bytes of data, Lonergan said. If run on 32 computers, the process takes 60 seconds, he said.

"'Bigger than previous-generation, non-parallel infrastructure could handle' might be a useful definition. Anything that blows you out of the old way of doing things," Lonergan said.

Analysing data also has gotten harder not only because there is more of it but because it comes from new sources, panelists said. Blogs, Web comments and other information comes in the form of unstructured data, which can't be crunched the way relational databases are. The need to mine different types of content has led to new data analysis platforms, most notably the open-source Hadoop framework that was pioneered by Google and Facebook.

The market for new tools to manage and exploit big data is still growing, said Ping Li, who heads the Big Data Fund at venture capital company Accel Partners.

Understand the implications

"A lot of the applications that ride on top of these new data platforms have yet to be invented," Li said. Traditional business intelligence and ERP (enterprise resource planning) platforms are being adapted to deal with big data, but what's needed are native applications developed specifically for the new world, he said.

Developing countries are active participants in this process, sometimes because companies there have skipped over legacy systems that are ingrained in first-world enterprises, Li said.

Trying to get value out of big data today is like creating an online store in the early days of e-commerce, said Walmart's Rajaraman, who helped develop Amazon.com's marketplace business. Amazon had to invent its own systems for payment, fraud detection and other tasks, each of which later spawned independent vendors that specialise in each area, he said.

It's important for an enterprise to understand the implications of big data and how the new tools work before embarking on a big-data initiative, panelists warned.

"Those who are just standing up Hadoop as is, with no management framework, writing directly to it ... there's going to be some real disillusionment there," said Keith Collins, senior vice president and chief technology officer of SAS.

Big-data tools such as Hadoop can't create value out of information by themselves, Collins warned in an interview at the event. Enterprises have to know what they want to find out from their data and then deal with how to get that out of their data. "The data issues come after the question," he said.

Source: ComputerWorld UK

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Do you know what your employees are doing on the web? At a minimum, they're probably goofing off watching YouTube videos. At worst, they could be steering your company toward financial ruin. In this quick guide, I'll show you how to keep an eye on employee Internet use and monitor just about everything else they do with their PCs.

I can already hear the groans of disgruntled readers as I type these words (and if you're worried about privacy at work, you have ways to stop your boss from spying on you). But gone are the days when PC monitoring was an optional, draconian security measure practiced only by especially vigilant organisations. Today, more than three quarters of US companies monitor employee Internet use. If your business doesn't do so, you're probably overdue for a policy change.

Why you should monitor

Everything your team does on company time, and on company resources, matters. Time spent on frivolous websites can seriously hamper productivity, and visiting objectionable sites on company PCs can subject your business to serious legal risks, including costly harassment suits from staffers who may be exposed to offensive content.

Other consequences may be far worse than mere productivity loss or a little legal hot water. Either unintentionally or maliciously, employees can reveal proprietary information, jeopardising business strategy, customer confidentiality, data integrity and more.

And, of course, unchecked web activity can expose your network and systems to dangers from malware and other intrusions. Even something as simple as a worker's failure to keep up with Windows patches can be a threat to your business, so don't think of monitoring as merely snooping.

Monitoring software

Employee monitoring is just one facet of a larger discipline known as endpoint security, which includes everything from malware protection to policy enforcement and asset tracking. Large enterprise computing environments demand comprehensive endpoint security systems, consisting of server software coupled with client software on each user's machine, that can handle many of these functions at once. These systems tend to be complex enough to require the expertise of a trained IT pro. But in this guide, I'll be looking primarily at simpler tools designed for smaller organisations.

For a small business, you have several good ways to achieve endpoint security. You can install a web-hosted system that combines software on the PC with remote monitoring services to protect your computers and enforce compliance with company policies. You can combine a few complementary tools, such as a desktop security suite and professional tracking software. Or, if your company is very small and your budget is tight, you can adopt free tools à la carte.

The most secure way to monitor PC use is to deploy a system that consists of a host, server or appliance together with client-installed software. Unless you have a dedicated IT staff or the budget to bring someone in on a regular basis to check on things, a cloud-based service such as Symantec.cloud or Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security is probably the best choice.

These services are relatively inexpensive and easy to set up compared with server offerings, and they give you the flexibility to set and monitor compliance with acceptable use policies from a single management interface. They also deploy system security updates automatically, block malware and protect sensitive files to prevent data from leaking out of your company. Better still, these hosted systems effectively protect laptops that frequently leave the office.

The cost for a hosted endpoint security service is generally very low: A five client licence for Trend Micro Worry-Free will set you back less than $300 for two years.

If you're not up for a total security overhaul and you just want to track user activity on a few systems, you have several affordable ways to go about it. Packages such as Interguard Sonar can monitor all email and IM sessions, track and filter web usage, log users' keystrokes and program use, and capture screenshots on command for as little as $87 per user.

If you're really on a shoestring budget, plenty of free and open source tools can log PC and web use. A freebie called ActivTrak, for instance, can keep tabs on which applications your staffers are using and which sites they're visiting, complete with simple reports that give you a pretty clear idea as to how employees are spending their time on their PCs.

A word of caution on standalone tools, though: Some antimalware utilities can quickly identify and disable standalone monitoring tools, so you may need to create an exception in your malware protection settings to ensure that ActivTrak can work properly on your systems.

Best practices

It should go without saying that employee monitoring ought to be just one small component in a comprehensive strategy to protect your business and maintain productivity. Once you've made the choice to monitor, you should follow these general guidelines to ensure your success.

Be forthright: Nobody likes being spied on unwittingly. Unless you think someone on your team poses a serious threat that requires covert monitoring, it's best to be up front with staffers about what you track and why. Many companies accomplish this with a simple statement in the employee handbook telling workers plainly that everything they do on company computers, including individual keystrokes, can and will be tracked. Letting employees know that their behaviour is being monitored can serve as a powerful deterrent against unwanted online activity.

Filter proactively: Most good endpoint security tools include web and email content filters that can block inappropriate sites and prevent users from sending or receiving files that can jeopardise your business. Use them. By limiting the ways your staffers can get into trouble, you can prevent problems up front.

Check reports regularly: There's little point in generating usage reports if you're not going to look at them. Take the time to at least spot-check the reports that your monitoring software generates so that you can identify potential problems early and take remedial action.

Whatever you discover, whether it's a time wasting website that everyone is watching this week or a single person who is addicted to solitaire, you can often fix problems with a simple email that tells your team you know what's up: "Just a reminder, people: Chatroulette is not an appropriate use of company time."

Source: ComputerWorld UK

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the best monitoring solution for your business.

IDC says 18.1 million media tablets were shipped in this year's third quarter, an increase of 264.5 percent compared with last year, and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 23.9 percent. Shipments fell short of IDC's original forecast of 19.2 million units, but the research company sees "strong demand" for this year's fourth quarter, thanks partly to shipments of Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color. IDC has therefore increased its forecast for 2011 slightly, from 62.5 million to 63.3 million units.

The forecasts cover media tablet shipments to channels, not sales to consumers.

Apple was the market leader, shipping 11.1 million units in this year's third quarter compared with 9.3 million units last time. Its market share slipped slightly from 63.3 percent to 61.5 percent. Samsung took a distant second place with a 5.6 percent market share. Hewlett-Packard was third with a 5.6 percent market share, followed by Barnes & Noble (4.4 percent) and Asus (4.0 percent).

HP entered and left the market during the quarter, shifting 903,354 units of its TouchPad, mostly at fire-sale prices. Barnes & Noble shipped 805,458 units, according to IDC. RIM did not make the Top 5 table, having seen its shipments reportedly tumble from 500,000 units in this year's first quarter to 200,000 in Q2 and 150,000 in Q3 (when, thanks to price reductions, it sold more PlayBooks than it shipped).

The media tablet market is still small enough to be changed dramatically by individual product launches. IDC says in a statement:

"After ceding share in 3Q11 (down to 32.4 percent from 33.2 percent the previous quarter), IDC expects Android to make dramatic share gains in 4Q11 growing to 40.3 percent. That increase is due mostly to the entrance of Amazon's Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, into the market. The share increase comes at the expense of Blackberry (slipping from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent), iOS (slipping from 61.5 percent to 59.0 percent), and webOS (slipping from 5 percent to 0 percent). Despite HP's announcement last week that it would contribute webOS to the Open Source community, IDC does not believe the operating system will reappear in the media tablet market in any meaningful way going forward."

The media tablet category is somewhat arbitrary. IDC used to count all of Barnes & Noble's products in the eReader category, which is dominated by the Amazon Kindle range. Also, IDC may find it difficult to track sales of the Kindle Fire separately, since Amazon does not publish sales figures.

Separately, Amazon announced yesterday that "that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago."

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the how tablets can be an integral part of yourbusiness IT strategy.

The Countryside Alliance has launched a broadside against the government for not properly supporting rural broadband pilot schemes, but the councils and development agencies running those pilots say everything is on track.

The alliance, which campaigns on rural issues, said on Friday that the North Yorkshire, Cumbria, Herefordshire, and Highlands and Islands pilots are "still nowhere over a year since being named by the chancellor".

The group submitted a Freedom of Information request to each local authority in October, and said the results were "underwhelming", showing no one had gone past the procurement stage.

"Local authorities are struggling to turn Whitehall's promises into reality," Countryside Alliance chief Alice Barnard said in a statement. "It has been over a year since these pilots were set up and the people who live in areas with no or unreliable broadband coverage haven't seen any improvement."

In a separate statement, alliance policy chief Sarah Lee said the government was "leaving the councils high and dry with no idea of how to get the projects moving".

Pilots 'on schedule'

However, ZDNet UK spoke to the councils and development agencies involved on Friday and found all four reporting that their pilots were on schedule and going well.

All are in the procurement stage at the moment, and North Yorkshire County Council said it expects the service rollout to begin in June 2012. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which said the process was "running on schedule", said its deployment should begin within a year from now.

"It is currently anticipated that a contract will be awarded around the end of August 2012. The project will be delivered in phases and confirmation of the rollout plan will be known soon after the contract is awarded," a Highlands and Islands Enterprise spokesperson said.

Herefordshire County Council said it expected to award its super-fast broadband contract in spring 2012, with the deployment to follow soon after. "Despite claims made today that plans to bring fast broadband to rural areas have 'stalled', plans for the two counties [Herefordshire and Gloucestershire] are progressing well and are on target," the council said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Cumbria County Council said that project should have a contract in place in spring 2012, and was also on track.

"The reality is that addressing the historical lack of super-fast broadband provision for an area like Cumbria will take time and effort, so despite some expectations it does not happen overnight," the spokesperson said. "Multimillion-pound EU procurement exercises, which we have significant experience of dealing with, take time, and need to be done well as we are dealing with taxpayers' money."

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) also said things were on track, and denied leaving the councils and development agencies high and dry.

"Lessons have been learnt from the pilots as they have developed their plans and this has informed how we help roll out broadband in other areas," a DCMS spokesperson said. "We have now allocated funding for each county in England and the devolved nations and are working with them to develop broadband plans.

"We expect there to be a steady flow of plans being approved and beginning procurement in the coming months," the DCMS spokesperson added.

Funds not released

Responding to these reports of the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) process going as planned rather than being delayed, a Countryside Alliance spokesperson said the councils and development agencies "may say it's going swimmingly but a lot of this money hasn't been released yet".

"A lot of our members are saying, 'Where is it? Let's have a schedule [of] when people on the ground can expect this in their house'," the spokesperson said.

According to John Moore, the head of finance and central services at North Yorkshire County Council, the procurement process would be moving more swiftly if it were not for regulations.

"I agree in principle that progress is frustrating [but] county councils did not invent the procurement, telecoms and European state aid regulations," Moore told ZDNet UK. "We couldn't for example just ring BT up and say 'by the way, the government has given us £17m, can you start next week?' The regulations simply do not allow that to happen."

"I recognise the frustration with the regulations but to be fair the BDUK guys have been excellent with us," Moore said. "I might be critical of the government's regulations and their approach to state aid [though]. I can't get European money into North Yorkshire without the London civil servants agreeing a particular interpretation of 'state aid' that we've already agreed with Brussels."

Malcolm Corbett, the chief executive of the Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA), said it was more important to get rural broadband right than to get it rolled out as quickly as possible.

"At the moment, a lot of the [smaller ISPs] are concerned that the landscape favours BT too much," Corbett said. "Fixing some of those concerns does take time. For example, with passive infrastructure... Ofcom is taking a few months to decide policy on this.

"This is a critical national infrastructure which is going to last us well into the future and we really need to get it right. We don't want to find ourselves in five years' time having done half the job and having to spend more."

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the best broadband option for your business.

Disaster will strike. It’s not a matter of IF, it’s a matter of WHEN. People often say, “Yeah, I need to plan for that.” But life gets in the way. And when life continues to get in the way, and you’ve failed to prepare for disaster, disaster will take you down. Instead of just sitting around and waiting for it, why not prepare for it? Here are some things you must do to be ready for a disaster.

1: Get a good battery backup

I know, I know… what is a battery backup going to do to help when disaster strikes? Here’s the thing. A good battery backup could mean the difference between getting some data and getting zero data. Let me give you an example. We recently had a client that lost power to their building. Things started to escalate and it looked as if everything was going to get tragic fast. But I was able to remote into the machine and get a backup running immediately. Because of that battery backup, I was able to get in quickly and avert a total loss.

2: Start creating nightly data backups

This goes along with the previous step. Without backups, you are completely lost. No backups, no data. Making regular, reliable backups is the single most important thing you can do to prepare for a disaster,. And you need more than just a backup to an external drive. You need an offsite backup as well. As long as you have data, recovery is always a possibility. Make sure those backups are nightly and make sure they succeed. This is NOT a set it and forget it affair.

3: Start creating weekly full images

Full images are just as crucial as data backups. Why? Some backup products will allow you to take that backup image and load it on dissimilar hardware. (Acronis ABR with Universal Restore is one such product.) That is one of the fastest routes to recovery. Just make sure that you have a recent image (at least weekly) or else restoring that image is only going to land you with an out-of-date system.

4: Document server and client applications

One of the problems with recovery is knowing what software is on what system. Do yourself a huge favor and document all the software that is installed and used on your system. In fact, take this one step further and document the versions of each piece of software. Know as much about your system as possible, and don’t rely on your memory for this.

5: Check the status of RAID arrays

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had clients come in with failing RAID arrays. Their array is on its last drive and that has failed. Simple solution. Had they monitored the status of their array and replaced it, they wouldn’t be in a situation where the array couldn’t be saved. RAID should not be looked at as a backup solution (though some seem to think that’s its purpose). It is crucial that RAID drive status be monitored at all times to prevent disastrous levels of loss.

6: Rotate backups offsite

What good are those backups if they burn up in a building fire? Sure, you can place them in a fireproof safe, but why take any chances? Set up a system for rotating your backups weekly (at least) offsite. In fact, if you really want to be safe, have a set of three external drives. At all times, you’ll have one working, one in a fireproof safe, and one offsite. Although this will require you to rotate them more frequently (to keep each backup from going stale), it will ensure that you always have a backup available.

7: Document the network

Your documentation shouldn’t stop at software on servers and clients. You also need to document your network. Know what you used, how you used what you used, the address schemes, and security measures. With this documentation handy, your network will be much easier to recover. And make sure you do the documentation right. Use diagrams as well as descriptions. Make sure the documentation is clear and thorough enough to enable any network admin to re-create your network as quickly as possible.

8: Have an offsite failover for your Web site

It’s great to have all these backup plans. But if you’re faced with disaster and you depend upon your Web site for revenue, you need an offsite failover so that if your onsite server is out of commission, you can easily switch over to the offsite version. When you set this up, make sure that you have the sites set up to regularly update so you’re not switching over to an out-of-date server.

9: Relocate your software offsite

You have purchased all that software. And unless you’re like me and use only open source software, the cost of that investment is significant. Do yourself a favor and relocate all the installation media offsite. Better yet, burn copies of that data and store the originals offsite. That way, should disaster strike, you won’t have to spend days tracking down all the installation media to get yourself back up and running. While you’re at it, make sure that all install keys are stored with the media.

10: Develop a solid recovery plan

And finally, you must have a plan to go along with disaster. When the inevitable does finally strike, you need to know how to react. Every second you flounder piles onto the disaster. Make sure that you know exactly what to do immediately. And make sure that your plan is laid out, step by step, so that panic doesn’t get a chance to take over.

Source: TechRepublic

Is your business continuity plan in place and does it meet your business needs? Not sure? Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice.

1: Bad backups

When you are desperate to get your operation back online, nothing is worse than the sinking feeling you get when you discover that your backups are no good. In this day and age of 24/7 computing, it is often hard to get good backups. Lots of applications just do not seem to cooperate well with backup software. Sometimes, the backups themselves are stored improperly, which causes all sorts of issues. And of course, there are problems with overly complex backup applications, settings that do not work as expected, and hardware issues. All these factors conspire to produce backups that are not what we need when we need it. By monitoring your backup systems closely and testing them on a regular basis, you ensure that they will work when you need them most. And when they aren’t working, you need to make fixing them a top priority.

2: No way to restore

All the backups in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans if they require you to have a live CD or some other way of bootstrapping the restore process, and you do not have that available. You should, of course, discover this in your dry-runs. But you also need to make sure that the restore system is always handy. Putting a copy of it with the backups is a good idea.

3: Lack of a post-recovery testing plan

Ever restore a system, only to discover days or weeks later that there are continuing problems? I have, and it stinks. In the case of system or application issues, the root cause (like a virus) may be lurking in those backups. After you perform your restoration, you need to perform two major types of tests: those that verify that the general systems and applications are back up to snuff and those that check that the specific issue that triggered a restoration is resolved. The former needs to be put into place, written up, and published and practiced long before it is needed. The latter is typically determined on the fly as the situation warrants.

4: No hardware to recover to

Some people assume (or hope) that the disasters we recover from are software only (viruses, OS meltdowns, etc.). And their hardware purchases reflect it. The fact is, if you do not have a full system to restore to, one that matches the system you need to restore closely enough that a bare metal restore will work, you do not have a full recovery process. You have merely made a large gamble that your hardware never fails!

I understand completely how this happens; hardware is expensive and it is difficult to justify buying two servers when you need one. That’s one reason why I like to buy servers in batches, so I can have one fully redundant spare that can substitute for many others. If I ever suspect that the original hardware is bad, I can transfer it to the spare server quickly to verify that the issue is related to the server hardware. Expensive? Not in comparison to the cost of downtime waiting for new servers or parts to be delivered if I don’t have a spare.

5: Lack of essential components

There are certain essential components you should have on hand, “just in case.” But I’ve seen a number of shops, especially some of the ones with tighter budgets, overlook these in their kit. Basic items you should always have on hand include:

• Spare network cables, at least a few of every length you currently use
• Power cords
• Hard drives of the size and types your servers need
• Spare RAM chips of the size and types your servers need
• Extra drive cables
• Spare drive controller cards, if they are separate from the motherboards in your servers
• Extra keyboard, mouse, and monitor

6: Never did a dry-run

One of the most repeated but least followed pieces of advice is to practice your recovery plan in advance. There are lots of reasons why people skip this, but it usually boils down to a lack of time. The good news is it is not too hard or time-consuming to give your recovery plan a trial, especially if you have spare servers handy. Whatever the holdup is, work through it and test your recovery process.

7: Unable to selectively restore from backups

It is really frustrating to need only one small file from a huge backup but to be forced to restore the entire backup just to pull out that file. As we shift to backing up virtual machines and not raw file systems, this is getting more common, too. Before you feel comfortable with your recovery plan, you should make sure that restoring individual files, even if they are within a virtual machine, will work. Otherwise, you can experience much more downtime than needed.

8: Lack of depth in backups

Few of us have the unlimited budgets needed for every backup to be a unique snapshot that gets archived permanently. We need to rotate media on some sort of schedule. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the schedule provides us with the depth and redundancy we need.

I keep three days of backups as “nearline” backups on a rotating basis. Once a week, I transfer a nearline backup to disk, and once a month one of those disks goes offsite permanently. In addition, I have the Exchange server do its own backup twice a day, which gets saved in nearline on the same schedule. I also have SQL Server performing its own backups once a day, which get saved nearline and retained for 14 days. This enables my organization to quickly and immediately get back online; we restore the entire VM from a known-good spot and then use the Exchange or SQL Server backups to bring it up to date.

9: Offsite backups are too far offsite

There’s this underlying assumption that if the offsite backups are ever needed, it will take time to be ready to use them anyway, so it does not matter if they can’t be easily accessed. Well, that’s usually true, but not always. Sometimes, you absolutely need those offsite backups, and when you do, you will need them right away. Online backups are a convenient alternative to sending physical media offsite, but just remember that your connection will feel mighty slow if you need to download a massive backup set just to pull a few files out of it. Make sure that whatever you use for offsite backups, you can access them easily.

10: No documentation in print

It’s important to have your restoration process documented. But you know what folks often forget? If your systems are down, you may not be able to access your files! For example, we keep a SharePoint site for all our network documentation. But if the SQL Server is toast, how are we going to get to SharePoint? That’s why you need to keep printed copies of the documentation you might need, preferably near the physical media (along with any live CDs or other restore materials). And you need to keep the printed copies up to date. One reason I like putting this material in SharePoint is that I can subscribe to an RSS feed of the documents list and get notified when any items change.

Source: TechRepublic

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre to discuss how you can design and implement a business continuity plan for your business.

Many companies have made it clear that their end users want applications and data to follow them across any device and any cloud. But failure has been a painful pill to swallow for many talented architects and engineers who have tried to adopt desktop and application virtualization solutions. Many didn’t know what they didn’t know about the “client clash” in the cloud, with rising mobility, solutions that enable consumerization of IT, and the new generation of digital native users.

Over the years, I have spent quite a bit of time with customers trying to deploy thousands of applications across millions of endpoints on both physical and virtual environments from the client to the cloud. Regardless of company size, pilot pool, or environment, it is clear that fundamental changes in people, processes, and technology are needed for successful transformations to occur.

Based on original research from customers large and small who have embarked on this journey, here is some prescriptive guidance for transforming desktops and applications into universal clients in the cloud.

1: Step away from the machine; start with the user and business

Virtualization enables us to not only decouple the layers in the stack (Machine, OS, APPS) but also to separate the user and business from the technology. Before starting any transformation you need to understand:

• The user’s role and impact on the business
• What users are trying to do (content)
• The context in which they are trying to do it (connectivity, environment, risks)

2: Assess the current asset landscape

The easiest way to get from current state to the cloud is to understand the landscape before plotting your course. What technologies are available from the client to the cloud that already work for your environment? What tools are available that will help ease the migration of your current applications and users to the new paradigm? What applications or tools will support a split environment during the transition and migration process from current to cloud? What partnerships or agreements are already in place to avoid duplicate costs, projects, and expense?

3: Identify and diffuse potential political landmines

The fastest way to kill your project is to not include or get buy in from other teams. The more successful projects include all the key stakeholders from the beginning to diffuse any turf wars over who owns the resources and budget. Every aspect of IT is affected, such as desktop, server, network, storage, asset management, and service desk. Many implementations have failed due to lack of cooperation and/or thought to include the other teams. Nothing kills a pilot faster than when the service desk doesn’t know about it and can’t meet service level agreements for key applications or employees that have significant impact on the bottom line.

4: Get your house in order

Automating bad processes is a bad idea. Before planning your new project, make sure you have automated the processes required to successfully launch a universal client project. If you know your software asset management system does not show what was purchased versus deployed, and this is done through a manual process, perhaps you should look for enterprise license optimization tools that complement your current asset system to replace the manual true up. Or if you know your company is implementing a private cloud, make sure you understand what it is replacing and how you can leverage it for this project BEFORE planning your project to see if timelines align.

5: Assess user and environment requirements

Before walking the proverbial plank down one implementation route or another, assess the user and environment requirements. Understanding overall usage of applications and in what context users need to access them is essential. Be sure the solution you pick will not adversely affect the company’s bottom line. For example, if road warriors need to use a specific application on a frequent basis but are often disconnected, a virtual application solution in a disconnected mode may work better than a software as a service solution. Or if the connectivity from the service provider to the user is not very reliable and/or powerful, an offline solution may be in order. An essential first step in the transformation is to rely on user and environment assessment tools to determine actual software usage.

6: Calculate risks — legal, security, and business

Assessing the overall risk to the company is always a good idea. What are acceptable risks and what are not? Are there key regulations that the company must adhere to, such as personal information acts that would affect where and how they access applications and data? What risks would alternative models such as “bring your own desktop” or streaming virtual applications to personal devices have on the company? Do your license contracts allow those types of implementations? What are the restrictions? Before you talk to your vendors, be sure you know how their licenses are being consumed within your organization today. The number of risk requirements and amount of costs can significantly influence your decision. For example, a less secure online word processor in a public cloud might work for a group of students in an English class but would not be advisable for a group of physicians who need to write notes on patients.

7: Create user profiles (categories)

Once you have details about your users’ overall requirements, the environment, and their roles, you should categorize them into their overall role or function. Examples of roles could be Knowledge Worker, Road Warrior, or Task Worker.

8: Assess application usage requirements

After identifying the right category for your users, it is time to identify the application requirements and good candidates to migrate to the new user paradigm. What applications are being used by multiple groups (such as Microsoft Word or Excel)? Which ones are used only by the Road Warriors (Sales)? How often do they use them? Which ones are used by accounting only once or twice a year for audit? Mapping applications and usage back to user category dependencies will help you create the best candidates for a pilot project. It will also help you understand which applications to virtualize or migrate first and in some cases, which ones should not be migrated/virtualized at all.

9: Assess application compatibility requirements

A good application compatibility assessment tool is critical for planning. The determination of whether to implement a specific application virtualization solution over another will vary depending on the user, content, and context. With three application virtualization architectures on the market today, it is difficult to ascertain the right solution for your desktop transformation requirements. The key is to leverage a streamlined Application Readiness tool that can assess all three application virtualization formats and remediate, convert, and work with your existing and new delivery mechanisms to support both current and emerging cloud infrastructures.

10: Map your route to implementation

Now that you understand the user, content, and context, create a route to implementation based on the business and user requirements. Your route can include a variety of technologies, people, and processes. Be sure to create a unified team across the business to help the success of the plan. Top performers always have a roadmap for success, so that if the pilot project takes off in a big way, they are prepared to scale and pull the trigger in a timely manner to move at the “speed of cloud” to reap the highest benefits. Knowing key performance indicators and defining what success is up front are critical to understanding whether the pilot truly achieved desired state. If it didn’t, take the time to assess and adjust routes to implementation based on changing business needs (user, content, and context).

Source: TechRebublic

Contact Converge IT at our Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on moving your business to the Cloud.

Rush orders for solid-state drives (SSDs) increased last month in the wake of massive flooding in Thailand that caused a serious drop in hard disk drive supplies.

According to DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce, rush orders for SSDs rose even as shipments of end-market products, including PCs, smartphones and tablet PCs, continued to drop because of sluggish economic conditions.

Another NAND flash product, memory cards, saw a huge decline in sales due to the Thai floods, which closed down digital camera factories.

NAND flash prices for the second half of November 2011.

More than a dozen hard disk drive (HDD) factories have been shut due to flooding in Thailand. PC manufacturers have been bracing for significant supply shortages.

In the first half of 2011, Thailand accounted for 40% to 45% of worldwide hard disk drive production. As of early November, nearly half of Thailand's production was directly affected by the flooding. While production at some factories was halted, the industry also faces stoppages due to poor access and power outages.

According to market research firm IDC, the full extent of the damage to hard drive factories won't be known until floodwaters recede, although it's already clear that there will supply shortages into the first quarter of 2012.

Hard drive prices should stabilise by June, IDC said, and the industry should be back to normal by the second half of 2012.

Fang Zhang, a storage analyst with market research firm IHS iSuppli, said the price of hard drives has been rising for both system manufacturers and consumers. In some cases, they're up more than 30%.

But those price hikes aren't likely to drive most buyers to purchase pricier SSDs.

Zhang said anyone purchasing a $700 PC or laptop isn't likely to spend hundreds of dollars more on an SSD. SSDs will continue to be reserved to a niche market of high-end applications and users.

"SSDs are still way too expensive," she said. "They're at least 10X what hard drives cost."

Zhang sees more of a market for SSDs and flash memory in ultrabooks and tablets, which depend on lightweight, durable storage.

Forrester analyst Andrew Reichman agreed, saying there has been a lot of talk throughout the industry about the hard drive shortage possibly spurring SSD sales, but he's wary of that buzz.

On the storage array and server manufacturing front, Reichman said vendors typically stockpile hard drives so that they have at least a five-month supply.

"There's definitely market buzz about it, but it's not that well founded. Most users are struggling with capacity growth and keeping costs down, so going out and finding ways to boost performance is not the highest priority," Reichman said.

According to Forrester, SSDs can be up to 10 times more expensive than hard drives; other research firms peg the costs far higher. Market research from other firms such as iSuppli and Objective-Analysis shows SSD pricing averages around $17 per gigabyte; it's expected to drop to $12 a gigabyte next year and to $5 per gigabyte by 2015.

By comparison, a Fibre Channel or SAS drive costs 50 cents to 60 cents per gigabyte. A consumer-class SATA hard drive sells for under 10 cents per gigabyte.

A chart showing that NAND flash prices are not expected to drop below the price of hard drives (Source: Objective-Analysis)

The uptick in rush orders for SSDs will not be enough to revive a NAND flash market that is slumping, according to iSuppli. The contract price paid for NAND flash by system manufacturers in the second half of November dropped by 4% to 6% compared to the first half to the month, DRAMeXchange stated.

Even so, major PC brands, such as HP, Acer, Asus, Toshiba and Lenovo also launched their ultrabooks in October and November, which use only SSDs with capacities from 64GB to 128GB. The only exception to those vendors is Asus, which offers both hard drives and SSDs in its ultrabooks.

However, the high costs of Ultrabooks' components and the wide price gap between ultrabooks and mainstream notebooks in the market seemed to hurt sales, which in turn caused SSD shipments to fall short of expectations.

Source: Computerworld UK

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Recent developments suggest all is far from well with the UK's process of achieving super-fast broadband access. To put it right, government needs to do more joining-up of agendas at the national level while allowing more freedom to innovate locally, says Malcolm Corbett.

While not unexpected, the recent decision by fibre broadband company Geo UK marks a sad day. Geo says it's withdrawing from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework, which is helping to allocate £530m in government funding to upgrade the UK's rural broadband infrastructure. The company won't be taking part in future next-generation broadband access procurements.

Geo's decision is even more significant given Cable & Wireless Worldwide's apparent withdrawal from the Cumbria super-fast broadband procurement process. There is speculation that BDUK's shortlist may be getting shorter by the day.

One big question we should be asking is: are we getting this right?

Government's broadband ambitions

The government's ambition is for Britain to have the best super-fast broadband network in Europe by 2015. Most in the industry strongly support this ambition. But at the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) conference on 9 November delegates were asked if they thought it would actually be achieved. Only one hand went up, and that was the rep from BT. ISPA members are supposed to deliver services over these new networks, so clearly there is a large credibility gap.

At the same time members of Eurim, the Information Society Alliance, have been arguing for a linkage to be made between the broadband and smart-energy agendas. It seems crazy to be investing around £1.5bn to connect smart meters in homes and businesses without linking this plan to the next-generation broadband plan.

As a rep from one of the main industry equipment suppliers said recently, "We're happy to take the money off the government twice, but we can't really see the point."

Government needs to do more joining-up of agendas at the national level while allowing more freedom to innovate locally. Ministers have successfully argued for £530m for broadband and brought in another £150m to support rural mobile coverage. Bringing together the broadband and energy agendas could pay dividends.

Tough challenge for BDUK

BDUK itself has been presented with a tough challenge. The 2015 target is hard to meet if your longer-term objective is to support the development of a competitive market with sustained investment and innovation.

It would be much easier, quicker and cheaper simply to allocate the money to BT. However, if the government wants a competitive landscape, the input problems need fixing and that takes time.

Meanwhile the pressure from MPs and communities wanting better broadband continues. They know money has been allocated and they want results. None of these issues is easy. We need to take a hard look at what the 2015 target means and get the key players round a table to thrash out the issues.

With local authorities, a positive step that BDUK could take is to encourage those with the capacity to innovate to develop creative approaches — and then let them get on with it, rather than insisting everyone follows the same model.

The Community Broadband Fund is an opportunity to support innovation, but is woefully small at £18m. Taking a look at what could be achieved by pushing more funding in that direction could really help.

Government needs to move faster on the release of spectrum for wireless services and more pressure needs to be applied to Ofcom to fix the PIA problem so we can ensure a level playing field for all operators. It needs a bit of ministerial table thumping.

Meanwhile the private sector needs to look at models that both encourage more investment and organise demand. This requirement means working top down with capital markets and government, and bottom up with communities, bringing in more patient capital and better matching supply to identified demand.

Opening up new channels for collaboration

There are models available at both ends. It's not rocket science. It just requires more linking between sectors that don't normally talk to each other.

For example, we need to connect those who help villages raise community investment to save their shops and pubs, with those who build broadband networks.

We need City institutions raising capital through the markets to work with companies seeking long-term capital for next generation-broadband projects.

It will work, if we get the fundamentals right.

Source: ZDNet

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While Cisco has been predicting for years the growth of the network by way of their Visual Networking Index, the Cloud Index takes a look at traffic both inside and outside of the data center. Among the key forecasts from the new Cloud report is that overall data center IP traffic will grow between 2010 and 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 33 percent. Overall traffic will grow from 1.1 Zettabytes in 2010 to 4.8 Zettabytes in 2015.

"The interesting part about the 4.8 Zettabyte figure is that it is higher than what we forecast in the Visual Networking Index for the network itself and this caught us by surprise," Doug Webster, Sr. Director of SP Marketing at Cisco told InternetNews.com. "The vast majority of traffic is staying within the data center itself."

Webster noted that approximately 76 percent of traffic stays within the data center as virtual machines migrate from one server to another. Data center to data center traffic is also on the rise, accounting for as much as 17 percent of total traffic.

Cisco analyst Shruti Jain added that many people don’t realize how much supplementary data is generated for different types of transactions. For example, Jain told InternetNews.com that if you send a 1 MB email to four people, you'd expect to have used 5 MB of data. As it turns out according to Cisco's findings, that transaction can generate as much as 30 MB of data due to all the storage, replication and backup that goes on.

Source: Internet News

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Now that the Windows 8 Developer Preview has been available for a while, it is easier to take a step back and evaluate it without the powerful emotions that strike most people the first time they deal with it. Looking at it from a long-distance perspective, there’s a lot to like about Windows 8, especially if you are ready to cut the cord from an installed desktop application base and transition to Web applications and Windows 8 native applications. Here are 10 things I think are great about Windows 8.

1: It’s designed for tablets and touch

Microsoft is working hard to make Windows 8 work well with tablets and the touch UI paradigm, to the point of alienating traditional desktop users. It remains to be seen how Microsoft will respond to criticism over the Metro UI. But I can tell you that after using a phone with the Metro UI for well over half a year now, I think it is extremely effective for touch, and I would love to have a tablet running Windows 8.

2: Apps “share” data

One of the big changes in the application development model is that native Windows 8 apps (those using the new Metro UI and WinRT API) really do not directly communicate with each other, even through the file system, except via carefully defined interfaces. While this handcuffs developers a bit, it means that when applications do share data, Windows is aware of how they do it and makes it easy. For example, you could have an application that handles images and use it to share the pictures with, say, an application to upload them to Facebook. That unleashes a lot more power for developers because it means that applications from different vendors will work together seamlessly, and the developers do not even have to write anything specific for the application theirs works with.

3: The apps can be integrated into the OS

Just as the applications can “share” with each other, they can do the same thing with Windows itself. Again, this allows some really neat integrations to be done without much work by application makers. You can see things like a new social networking application come out and within weeks, Windows will be able to use your friends who are on it in its contact list, or the pictures can go into your picture gallery. The possibilities are endless.

4: It offers ARM support

While the ARM CPUs may not be for everyone or every purpose, lots of mobile vendors have a deep commitment to that platform and understand it well. The ARM devices will not be able to run legacy Windows applications, but they will run the Windows 8 native apps without a hitch. That’s great news for hardware makers, software developers, and users.

5: It beefs up security

The new programming model for Windows 8 native applications is extraordinarily secure. While I am sure that exploits will be found, it will be difficult for the native applications to break free of their chains. Microsoft has really flipped it around. Instead of allowing everything and slowly adding restrictions over the years (and breaking applications in the process, like XP SP2 and Vista did), it’s starting from an “allow nothing” stance.

6: App markets will benefit developers and users

Application markets are nothing new. Even Vista had one (although no one seems to remember it). With Windows 8 native applications, Microsoft is making the application market the primary way of getting apps onto the computer, much like Windows Phone 7. That’s great news for developers who need to get some more visibility for their applications and who do not want to deal with payments processing and such, especially for low-priced apps. And the application market is great for users, too. As we’ve seen, app markets encourage lower prices, and Microsoft will surely apply the same strict quality control that it has to the Windows Phone 7 app market.

7: System restore is easier

Microsoft has built new utilities into Windows 8 that makes it much easier than ever to send the system back to “out of the box,” while preserving your data. Providing a more appliance-like experience is critical for the typical user, and the help desk will appreciate it too.

8: Cloud sync is everywhere

While not everyone is in love with the cloud as an idea, Windows 8 has great facilities for allowing applications and users to automatically sync data between devices using the cloud. That’s great for users who can seamlessly transition between their tablet and desktop PC (and perhaps their phone), as well as for tech support, who can just replace a broken device instead of worrying about data loss.

9: It offers simplified administration and configuration

The Control Panel has been stripped down to the bare essentials, and you can’t even think about tasks like registry editing, defragging, etc., from the Metro UI. (You can do these tasks through the legacy desktop, if needed, but that won’t work for ARM devices.) Throughout Windows 8, a primary theme has been giving the user a more appliance-like “It just works” experience. Power users might howl about it, but the truth is, the Windows experience is still far more complex than the average user wants to deal with. Windows 8 is a great move in the right direction for those users.

10: System stability is improved

Windows 7 has really set the standard for system reliability. Short of hardware or driver problems, the old blue screen of death is almost never seen anymore. Windows 8 takes this to the next level. The same changes to the application development model also improve system stability. Applications can’t run over each other’s data easily, and the new WinRT API just does not allow the kinds of shenanigans that have caused unstable systems over the years. If you stick with native Windows 8 applications, reboots (other than for patching) and crashes should be extraordinarily rare.

Source: TechRepublic

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Sensitive personal details entrusted to Southwark Council were found on a computer that had been dumped in a skip, after having been misplaced for two years, according to UK data protection authority the Information Commissioner's Office.

Details of around 7,200 people who used Southwark Council services before December 2009, including medical history, criminal convictions, names, addresses, and ethnic background, were left on the computer and documents, according to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

"The computer was an old Apple iMac," an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) spokesman told ZDNet UK on Monday. "It had some security features, like password protection, but no encryption. The vast majority of details were on the computer."

The iMac and documents were left at the council's buildings at the Spa Road Complex in Southwark after the council vacated the building in December 2009. The building remained tenanted until Southwark Council sold the building on 11 May 2011. The computer and documents were found in the skip by a member of the public on 3 June, after a clean-out by the new landlord.

The member of the public who found the computer and documents reported the data loss to Southwark Council. The skip was not located in a public place, but "within the security of the complex," the ICO said in an undertaking.

The ICO has the power to fine organisations up to £500,000 for breaches of the Data Protection Act, but did not fine Southwark Council. The breach occurred before the ICO fining powers came into effect, ICO acting head of enforcement Sally Anne Poole said in a statement on Monday.

"The fact that thousands of residents' personal details went missing for over two years clearly shows that Southwark Council's policies for handling personal information are below standard," said Poole. "As this information was lost before the ICO received the power to issue financial penalties we are unable to consider taking more formal action in this case."

The iMac was unaccounted for since 2003, after having been mistakenly removed from the council's asset register.

The council agreed on a number of measures to try to tighten up data security, including to review its decommissioning processes, and to update data protection guidance.

Source: ZDNet

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Most Excel files are small enough not to affect performance, but size isn’t the only thing that can slow things down. Fortunately, you don’t have to know all about multithreads and dual processors to eliminate bad performance. The following tips are easy to implement, so even the most casual users can improve performance when a workbook slows down. Better yet, apply this advice when designing sheets to help avoid sluggish performance altogether.

1: Work from left to right

This tip is easy to implement because data tends to flow from left to right naturally, but it doesn’t hurt to know that there’s a little more going on under the hood. By default, Excel will calculate expressions at the top-left corner of the sheet first and then continue to the right and down. For this reason, you’ll want to store independent values in the top-left portion of your sheet and enter expressions (dependent cells) to the right or below those values. In a small sheet, you won’t notice much difference, but a sheet with thousands of rows and calculations will definitely perform better when you position dependent cells to the right and below the independent values.

In technical terms, this behavior is called forward referencing. Formulas should be to the right or below the referenced values. Avoid backward referencing, where formulas are to the left and above the referenced values.

2: Keep it all in one sheet

When possible, store everything on the same sheet. It takes longer for Excel to calculate expressions that evaluate values on another sheet. If you’ve already spread your work across several sheets, rearranging everything probably isn’t worth the effort. But keep this one in mind when planning sheets. Keep expressions and references in the same sheet, if possible.

3: Keep it all in the same workbook

Linking to or referencing other workbooks will usually slow things down, even in an uncomplicated workbook. If you can, store everything in the same workbook. Using fewer larger workbooks will be more efficient than using several smaller linked workbooks. When you must use linked workbooks, open them all — and open the linked workbooks before opening the linking workbooks — to improve performance.

4: Clean things up

What you’re not using, delete. Create a backup so you can reclaim functionality at a later date and then delete everything you no longer use. In doing so, you’ll minimize the used range. To determine the used range, press [Ctrl]+[End]. Then, delete all rows and columns below and to the right of your real last used cell. Then, save the workbook.

5: Convert unused formulas

If you’re still referring to derived values (the results of formulas), #4 isn’t feasible. You can, however, convert the formulas to static values. But only do this if you’re sure you will never need to recalculate the formulas that generated the values in the first place. To convert formulas to their static values, use Paste Special and select Values to paste. Doing so will overwrite the formulas with the results of those formulas. Be careful, though. The formulas really will be gone. Create a backup first, just in case.

6: Avoid multiple volatile functions

A volatile function recalculates every time there’s a change in the worksheet, and that slows things down. An efficient alternative is to enter the volatile function by itself and then reference that cell in your formulas. The function will still calculate as expected, but only once instead of hundreds of times. Examples of volatile functions are RAND(), RANDBETWEEN(), NOW(), TODAY(), OFFSET(), CELL(), and INDIRECT().

7: Avoid array formulas

Gurus and power users alike love arrays, and they are a powerful tool. Unfortunately, they’re memory hogs. It might be hard to believe, but a couple of regular formulas will calculate faster than their equivalent array. If helper formulas aren’t adequate, consider a user-defined function. In addition, you might be able to replace arrays with new functions, such as SUMIF(), COUNTIF(), and AVERAGEIF. (Array formulas perform somewhat better in the Ribbon versions of Excel.)

8: Avoid monster formulas

The performance killer in most workbooks is the number of cell reference and operations, not the number of formulas. Throw in some inefficient functions and you can slow things down enough that users will complain. Two or three helper formulas are almost always more efficient than one super colossal formula.

9: Use ISERROR() to update old error-masking formulas

If you’ve upgraded to a Ribbon version of Excel, you can replace most of your convoluted IF() masks with the IFERROR() function:

=IFERROR(expression,actioniferror)

This function is more efficient than the pre-Ribbon solution of using IF() in the following form:

=IF(ISERROR(expression),trueaction,falseaction)

If you’re still working with a pre-Ribbon version, consider a helper formula (#8). Two columns of simple formulas will be more efficient than a single column of IF() functions.

10: Limit conditional formats

Many techniques rely heavily on conditional formatting, but sometimes at a cost. Every conditional format is evaluated every time the workbook performs calculations. Use conditional formatting wisely, and sparingly. Too many conditional formats will slow things down.

Source: TechRepublic

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The software behemoth is revising how Windows Update works in Windows 8 to minimize the number of automatic restarts required and prevent disruption and data loss. But one thing it won't do is push updates for third-party applications.

Microsoft has opened up presales of its second-generation tabletop computer, some 10 months after its first appearance.

Microsoft and Samsung said on Thursday the new unit, which starts at $8,400 (£5,300), is now available for pre-order in 23 countries, including the UK, with a release to follow in early 2012.

The computer, called SUR40, made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and is Microsoft's second attempt at large-scale multitouch computing. It sports a more powerful processor, new system software, and new sensor hardware that promises to make touch recognition more accurate.

Source ZDNet

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Billionaire investor Warren Buffet has invested $10bn in IBM, it has emerged.

The billionaire's company Berkshire Hathaway started buying shares in the company back in March, and in total has spent around $10bn (£6.7bn), according to the BBC.

Buffet said he was impressed with how IBM intended to attract IT firms internationally. "If you're in some company around the world and you're developing your IT department, you're probably going to feel more comfortable with IBM than with many companies," he told CNBC.

"It is a big deal for a big company to change auditors, change law firms, or change IT support," he said. "There's a fair amount of presumption in many places that if you're with IBM, you stay with them."

Source: ZDNet

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Microsoft is tweaking its Windows Update service with Windows 8, and is trying to limit the number of restarts for consumers and small business users to one per month. Also, instead of the current 15-minute warning that a reboot is required, users will have three days to choose the most convenient time to update their PCs. In businesses, where IT administrators set group policies to prevent automatic restarts, users will get a notification on their log-on screen to tell them that a restart is required. This notification will remain until a restart is performed.

Farzana Rahman, the group program manager of the Windows Update group, has outlined Microsoft's plans in a post on the Building Windows 8 blog: Minimizing restarts after automatic updating in Windows Update. Microsoft's planned changes are based on many billions of items of data, but the company may adapt them in response to feedback.

"Windows Update is one of the largest services on the Internet by several measures," says Windows boss Steven Sinofsky. It's also one of the most successful. It "currently updates over 350 million PCs running Windows 7 and over 800 million PCs across all the supported Windows platforms," says Rahman. "There are actually many more PCs updated by WU indirectly if you account for our Windows Software Update Server, and for those machines (or customers) that do all updates manually for any number of reasons."

With roughly a billion PCs using Windows Update, and more than a dozen batches of updates every year, the service has proven astonishingly reliable. This has encouraged its adoption to the point where 89.30 percent of Windows 7 users now have auto-updates enabled, and only 4.88 percent never check for updates.

Limiting Windows restarts

Restarts (reboots) have become a greater annoyance for a number of reasons. These include the much greater stability of Windows Vista and Windows 7 compared with Windows XP (reboots may be rare and crashes almost non-existent), and the increased use of mobile computers that are turned off much of the time. Instead of updates being installed automatically at 3am, while they're asleep, users are faced with the need to update when they resume work in the morning.

Where users have chosen to have updates installed automatically, they should, of course, be installed without their intervention -- and that includes a reboot. If they do not want to change their behaviour, they should change the setting.

Rahman says that with Windows 7 users:

"The majority of automatic update users (39 percent) are updating when they shut down their systems. For these users, there is no automatic restart because the system can complete all steps of the installation during shutdown. This is the least disruptive experience for users, and so we do want to 'hitch a ride' whenever we can on user-initiated shutdowns instead of inconveniencing users with a separate restart."

However, Windows Update exists for two reasons. First, it is intended to help protect users from malware by patching security holes in their systems. Second, it helps to stem the incidence of malware by providing a sort of "herd immunity" that helps prevent malware from growing virally. Rahman says:

"There is one exception to the rule to wait for the monthly security release [before forcing a restart], and that is in the case of critical security update to fix a worm-like vulnerability (for example, a Blaster worm). In that case, WU will not wait, but will go ahead and download, install, and restart automatically. But this will happen only when the security threat is dire enough."

No third party software updates

One bugbear is not being addressed, which is the use of multiple update programs by suppliers of third party software. Today, the majority of critical threats to Windows PCs are not due to security flaws in Windows but holes in software from Adobe, Apple, Oracle (Java) and other suppliers. Their updates are irregular and frequently intrusive. As Rahman says:

"People clearly find the experience with multiple updaters on the system less than optimal (and we agree!). Each application updater gives you a different experience, you have to remember to go visit each updater to install updates, you never know when or how updaters will run and what they might do, and so on. People would like one updater for the entire system."

However, Microsoft is currently unwilling to take this on. The high take-up of Windows Update is based on the fact that "they trust the quality of updates distributed by WU". Bundling in updates for third party programs might diminish that trust.

For those users who have problems knowing when or how to update third party software, there is a very convenient solution (for the programs it covers). I recommend, and use, Secunia's Personal Software Inspector (PSI). This scans your Windows hard drive, lists the applications that need updating, and provides a link to each update. Using PSI also means you don't have to run numerous separate updaters.

Source: ZDNet

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Impact of Thai floods will hit smaller PC vendors most, IDC says.

Disruption at more than a dozen hard disk drive (HDD) factories due to flooding in Thailand means PC manufacturers should prepare for significant supply shortages, according to analyst and market research firm IDC.

Worldwide hard drive shipments could suffer a 20% decline beginning in the middle of this month and extending well into the first quarter of 2012, according to a new IDC report.

In the first half of 2011, Thailand accounted for 40% to 45% of worldwide HDD production. As of early November, nearly half of Thailand's production was directly affected by the flooding. While production at some factories was halted due to flooding, the industry also faces work stoppages due to poor access and power outages.

The full extent of the damage to hard drive industry factories will not be known until the floodwaters recede, "although it's already clear that there will be HDD supply shortages into the first quarter of 2012," IDC stated.

John Rydning, a research vice president at IDC, reiterated what he told Computerworld earlier this month : That hard drive manufacturers will favour their high-margin products used in enterprise servers and storage systems. "But the HDD vendors can't neglect their smaller customers, whose business will continue to be important once capacity is fully restored," he said.

Prices for disk drives have already begun to skyrocket in some instances. Fang Zhang, a storage analyst with IHS iSuppli, said hard drive prices have increased significantly for system manufacturers and consumers, some by more than 30%.

IDC said the industry should be able to restore drive production quickly once the waters recede, but today's shortages will continue to constrain supply for an extended period. Hard drive prices should stabilise by next June, IDC stated, and the industry should be back to normal by the second half of 2012.

Because a large portion of PC shipments have already taken place for this quarter, the decline in total shipments for the fourth quarter is expected to be "less than 10%," IDC stated.

But in a worst-case scenario, total PC shipments could be depressed by more than 20% in the first quarter of next year.

IDC said there are opportunities for larger PC vendors to capture enterprise accounts from smaller competitors and accelerate industry consolidation, particularly in faster growth markets.

"The HDD shortage will affect smaller PC vendors and lower priced products most, including mini-notebooks (aka netbooks ), emerging markets and entry-level consumer PCs. However, even the largest vendors are expected to face HDD shortages, particularly for portable PCs where the market is more consolidated," said Loren Loverde, program vice president for IDC's Worldwide Consumer Device Trackers. "Nevertheless, the shortage will relieve some pressure on pricing and margins, and present some opportunities for strategic share gains among the larger players."

Source: Computerworld UK

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UK web domain holders will be able to retain their registrations for up to ten years instead of the current maximum of two years, beginning 1 May 2012.

The announcement has been made by Nominet, the not-for-profit organisation responsible for the safe and secure running of the .uk internet infrastructure, after a consultation among stakeholders.

"The change will give businesses and consumers the opportunity to lock in their domains for up to ten years, giving them security of tenure and a longer period between renewals, said Nominet.

One year registrations will also be available though, Nominet said. The changes, it said, will give the registration agents for .uk domain names "the opportunity to offer a more flexible service".

Lesley Cowley, CEO of Nominet, said: “For millions of businesses, their domain name is mission critical, from their website to the email addresses it supports. By offering longer registration periods, these businesses will have peace of mind that their domain name is secured for a number of years, and they won’t have to worry about renewing so frequently.”

In September reports claimed Nominet was set to agree to a new fast track process that would make it easier for the police to quickly shutter domains allegedly being used by criminals for fraud.

Police are usually required to have a court order before Nominet agrees to act against ".co.uk" domains allegedly being used for criminal purposes, something that can slow down the process of closing problem domains.

Nominet’s draft guidelines set out a streamlined "expedited" procedure as long as the police provide “a declaration that the suspension is proportionate, necessary, and urgent.”

Source: Computerworld UK

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The UK could squeeze extra speed out of its copper broadband network rather than depending on full fibre-to-the-premises connectivity, a Westminster e-Forum heard on Thursday.

The deployment of super-fast broadband services in the UK under the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) scheme is on track to deliver faster than 24Mbps connections to two-thirds of premises in the country by its 2015 deadline, Sean Williams, director of strategy, policy and portfolio at BT, said at a Westminster e-Forum on Thursday.

However, the form the super-fast service will take is undecided, with Lucy Dimes, chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent UK and Ireland said that vectoring broadband technology (VDSL) could take copper-based broadband speeds up to more than 100Mbps.

Vectoring works like noise cancellation in headphones, reducing noise by characterising the interference profile of an entire bundle and compensating for it to let ISPs deliver faster speeds. However, vectoring does not prevent that speed degradation that worsens the further the premises are from the exchange. It also prevents sub-loop unbundling (SLU).

Williams made the comments during a Westminster e-Forum focusing on the UK's future broadband infrastructure, attended by a number of representatives from infrastructure companies such as BT, Arqiva and Fujitsu.

He also confirmed that BT will not be ditching its copper network any time soon.

"Copper is a permanent feature of our network," Williams said. "There will be people who want copper telephony and not broadband."

While the company is currently rolling out partially fibre-based products under its Infinity brand, Williams said technologies such as vectoring and broadband extension technology (BET), could help take up the slack.

BT, which has been offering customers up to 40Mbps fibre-to-the-cabinet connections (FTTC), recently announced a 110Mbps service in October, only some of which use fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP). The company said its £2.5bn rollout of superfast broadband is being deployed at a rate which makes it available to around 1m premises every three months.

"[It]is a hugely rapid deployment" Williams said. "We've had 300,000 subscribers already."

BT is planning to upgrade its maximum speed for its Infinity products to 80Mbps in 2012, which Williams said would leave "even more overhead" to meet demand.

However, despite BT assurances that innovations outstrip consumer demand for bandwidth, Bill Mackenzie, business unit director of carrier solutions at Fujitsu, said that point-to-point fibre gives the best longevity in terms of investment. Fibre is cheaper to deploy and will allow service providers to keep their costs low and in turn offer better packages to their customers, he said.

Mackenzie also said that even with BDUK, European funding and industry investment, "there will still be parts of the UK where from Fujitsu's perspective the case will just not work. For me it's about making sure we make the right investment at the right time for the long term, rather than doing it in the short-term which may end in cul-de-sacs".

He also said that the time limits imposed by BDUK's target date also add to the challenge of deploying a full fibre network.

"The BDUK money comes with a significant timeline challenge to meet these deadlines and industrialise the process at the same time," Mackenzie added.

BT's Williams added that simplification and acceleration of the BDUK process and availability of further public spending would help keep the government on track with its 2015 goals. The scheme aims to deliver superfast broadband connections to 95 percent of UK premises by 2015, and an absolute minimum of 2Mbps to all premises within the same timeframe.

Other technologies, such as the LTE mobile trials that are taking place in Cornwall, femtocell trials, or satellite broadband could also be used to deliver high speed internet connectivity to remote or rural areas. However, these technologies come with their own challenges.

Chris O'Dell, vice president of sales for Hughes Network Systems, said that satellite broadband could help fill in the gaps with the UK's broadband 'not-spots' but conceded that for heavy internet users, it is unlikely to be sufficient.

"Satellite is a complementary technology. It has limitations with bandwidth etc, but what you do get is flexibility in its deployment," O'Dell said. "A lot of the historic arguments have gone away but the reality is if you have people wanting to draw down 50GB-100GB every month, then satellite is probably not the answer."

Source:ZDNet

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A national computer security campaign is urging smartphone users to do more to protect themselves from unwittingly downloading malware applications.

Get Safe Online says that there has been an increase in smartphone malware as the market has grown.

Criminals are typically creating Trojan copies of reputable apps and tricking users into installing them.

Once on the phone, the app can secretly generate cash for criminals through premium rate text messages.

Get Safe Online, a joint initiative between the government, police and industry, said it was concerned that users of smartphones, such as Android devices, were not taking steps to protect their devices.

Get Safe Online said fraudsters are designing apps which generate cash secretly in the background without the owner realising until their monthly bill.

A typical scam involves an app designed to send texts to premium rate services without the user knowing.

Apps can appear to be bona fide software or sometimes masquerade as stripped down free versions of well-known games.

Rik Ferguson, a hacking researcher with internet security firm Trend Micro, said: "This type of malware is capable of sending a steady stream of text messages to premium rate numbers - in some instances we've seen one being sent every minute.

"With costs of up to £6 per message, this can be extremely lucrative. The user won't know this is taking place, even if they happen to be using the device at the same time, as the activity takes place within the device's back-end infrastructure."

Online banking

Another major security firm, Symantec, recently warned in its annual threat assessment that Android phones were at risk and that it had found at least six varieties of malicious software.

Minister for Cyber Security Francis Maude said: "More and more people are using their smartphone to transmit personal and financial information over the internet, whether it's for online banking, shopping or social networking.

"Research from Get Safe Online shows that 17% of smartphone users now use their phone for money matters and this doesn't escape the notice of criminals."

Tony Neate, head of Get Safe Online, urged people to check their phone's security.

"Mobile phones are very personal. I have talked to people who are never more than a yard away from their mobile phone. Because of that attachment, they start to think that they are in a way invincible.

"It's the end user that picks up the tab - it's your phone that incurs the costs. Whether you have pay-as-you-go or a monthly account, that money is going to come from the account and go to the criminal."

Source: BBC

Contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on your smartphone security.

HP wants to reinvent the data center with a new generation of low-energy, highly efficient servers. The effort is collectively being dubbed, 'Project Moonshot' and involves low power processors from ARM as well as new approaches for architecting and sharing data center server resources.

"We're unveiling what we believe is the future of extreme low level energy, server technology," Glenn Keels, director of marketing in HP's hyperscale business unit told InternetNews.com. "This is much more than just a server -- it's the result of a multi-year effort involving technology, customer enablement and uniting partners."

Project Moonshot is getting started with the new HP Redstone Server Development Platform, initially powered by ARM Cortex processors from Calxeda. Keels noted that future iterations of Redstone will include Intel Atom as well.

With Redstone, HP can provide up to 2,800 servers in one rack, which dramatically reduces the amount of power and cabling required versus a traditional data center server deployment.

"It's a very flexible platform specifically designed for testing, development and benchmarking," Keels said. "So customers can begin to understand the suitability of placing large scale application on this new class of servers."

While CPU architecture is an important component of lowering power, the CPU alone is only one component of the overall approach.

"We're moving from tens of servers per rack, basically sharing nothing, to thousands of servers per rack sharing everything," Keel said.

Source:Internet News

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Mobile operator Three has revealed that nearly all of the traffic that passes across its network is now mobile data from things like browsing the internet and app usage.

The operator said on Monday that 97 percent of its traffic is now mobile data, adding that it had seen an explosion in customers' usage since June 2010.

"It's even more amazing when you know that since June last year and September this year - just 14 months - we've seen a 427 percent increase in data usage on Three for smartphone customers," Phil Sheppard, director of network strategy at Three, said in a blog post. "Downloading apps, streaming movies, getting around town with Google Maps, even checking in on Facebook - it all adds up."

In the UK smartphones accounted for nearly 70 percent of all handset sales in the 12 weeks leading up to the 31 October, according to market research company Kantar Worldpanel. The company said this means that 43.8 percent of all UK handsets sold were smartphones.

The research also revealed that the majority of smartphones in the UK use the Google Android operating system, which has 49.9 percent market share, followed in second place by BlackBerry with 22.5 percent and Apple with 18.5 percent.

Over the same period, HTC sold more Android smartphones than any other manufacturer using the OS, making up 44.8 percent of Android sales in the past three months, Kantar Worldpanel said.

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centres for advice on the best mobile data solution for your business.

BT has moved up its deadline for delivering fibre-based super-fast broadband, saying it will connect two-thirds of UK homes and businesses by the end of 2014, a year earlier than originally planned.

On Monday, BT said it is recruiting 520 extra engineers, many of them ex-soldiers, to help speed up the rollout. It is also bringing forward around £300m of its £2.5bn total investment to meet the revised deadline.

"Our rollout of fibre broadband is one of the fastest in the world, and so it is great to be ahead of what was an already challenging schedule," BT chief Ian Livingston said in a statement. "The acceleration reflects the success of the programme to date and is testament to the hard work and innovation of our people. We are investing when others are merely talking about it."

According to Livingston, the extra engineers will make sure that BT is ready to extend the rollout, should it be granted a chunk of the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funding aimed at connecting rural areas.

BT's plans mean 16 million homes will have access to super-fast broadband by the end of 2014. Six million are already covered, and BT said next year will see that total taken to 10 million.

By way of contrast, Virgin Media said in July that 6.5 million homes could access its up-to-100Mbps cable product, although its latest financial results indicated that only 187,000 customers were actually taking Virgin's services of 50Mbps or above.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt welcomed BT's news, saying it is "vital" British homes and businesses have access to super-fast broadband as soon as possible.

"With access to super-fast broadband, UK businesses will have the infrastructure they need to grow and develop new products and services," Hunt said, according to the BT statement. "This investment means new jobs today, but also allows us to build the digital infrastructure we need for the jobs of tomorrow."

BT expected to see a lower amount of deployment work in 2015, the year originally planned for the final phase of the rollout, a spokesman for the telecoms giant told ZDNet UK. This, plus the fact that the rollout so far has gone "better than expected", meant it was viable to bring the work forward, he said.

FTTP product

Also on Monday, BT confirmed it has set its wholesale fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) product live. This means ISPs that resell BT's connectivity can start offering their customers speeds of up to 110Mbps, as long as those customers have fibre going all the way to their homes or businesses, rather than just to the street cabinet. However, none of those resellers have as yet announced FTTP products based on BT's infrastructure.

BT's FTTP services were scheduled to arrive this summer. However, the company ran into difficulties with technical issues such as blocked ducts and had to delay the deployment.

At the start of October, BT said its FTTP services will hit speeds of up to 300Mbps next year. At the moment, the only towns seeing those speeds are the places where BT has been conducting FTTP trials: Ashford, Bradwell Abbey, Highams Park, Chester South, St Austell and York.

The vast majority of BT's fibre rollout is based on fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology, which uses existing copper connections between the cabinet and customer premises and is therefore slower than FTTP. Its FTTC services currently reach up to around 40Mbps, and the company has said it will roughly double those speeds in 2012.

Source: ZDNet

Contact us at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the best broadband solution for your business.  

The laptop has been around for quite some time, but it will more than likely be replaced as the go-to tool for computing on the move. What will be the successor? The tablet - obviously. Many doubters think the tablet is nothing more than a gimmick to help boost sales. I was one of those doubters for quite some time. But after using tablets enough, I have come around to seeing just how incredibly helpful that technology is. Here are some reasons why I believe tablets will replace the laptop as the mobile device of choice.

1: Power consumption

There is no question here: The tablet blows away the laptop with regard to power consumption. On average, I can get a full day out of a tablet on a single charge. A laptop? Not even close. And for anyone on the go, losing power is just another obstacle that interferes with work. With a tablet, you don't have that issue. It would be a rare occasion that you would burn through your power before getting access to a means of recharging.

2: Viruses

Android? iPad? Viruses anyone? I think not. Not that it will never happen, but it's a pretty safe bet that tablets will never suffer from the same deluge of viruses that plagues a Windows laptop. Because of this, a tablet can safely work on without concern for viruses and malware. Oh sure, you'll find antivirus software in the Android Market, but they are pretty much pointless. Who in the world wouldn't want to work with a portable device that isn't vulnerable to the masses of viruses and malware out in the wild?

3: Portability

You can lug around a 4- to 12-pound laptop or a sub .5-pound tablet. Which do you want when you're going through airports, taxis, hotels, conferences, meetings, etc.? You're going to choose the tablet every time. But not just because of weight. The ability to work with a tablet in confined spaces totally overshadows the laptop. Need to work in a cab? Tablet. Need to work in the bathroom? Tablet. You simply can't beat the tablet for portability.

4: Cost effectiveness

Out of the starting gate, a really good tablet will cost about the same as a low- to mid-range laptop. So you're getting more for your money at the outset. But now figure in the price of an extra battery and software for the laptop and you can see how quickly the cost will add up. Tablets are fast becoming one of the most cost-effective office tools you will find.

5: Online connection

Pay the extra fee and get your tablet with a 4G connection, and you won't have to worry about finding a Wi-Fi connection to access whatever cloud or service you need. Most models can be purchased with a constant network connection (to the tune of 3G or 4G), which makes the tablet a step ahead of most laptops. Yes, you can purchase aircards for laptops, but that's just another piece of hardware to worry about.

6: Available applications

There are thousands upon thousands of applications now available for tablets. So many in number and variety are these applications, it almost makes going back to a laptop a real pain. And yes, a good portion of those apps are worthless, but not all of them. And a good portion of the solid, useful apps are free! Best of all, those apps can be installed from anywhere without installation media. You have a network connection, you can install software.

7: User friendliness

Tablet interfaces are probably some of the single most user-friendly desktops you will come across. They are simple, elegant, and don't get in the way of work. I fully believe (as do Ubuntu and GNOME) that this is the future of the PC desktop. The applications (for the most part) were also designed with amazing user friendliness in mind. Simple to use, very little clutter to the interface (no Ribbons to get in the way), and singular in purpose (in many cases). So you might have more apps installed than you would on a laptop, but because of the ease of installation/removal, that's not a problem.

8: Bluetooth connectivity

I have become a fond user of the Bluetooth. Headphones, headsets, keyboards, you name it. And tablets make the connection between these devices a breeze. Connecting those same devices to a laptop? Not so easy. Even with a built-in card, the connection process is not nearly as easy as it is when done from a tablet.

9: Efficiency

Getting a laptop and a tablet out of hibernation is like comparing apples and oranges. Tablets are as close to an instant-on tool as we have in the industry. And when on the go, nothing beats instant on. Need to write a note or send off a fast email? You'll be completing that task much more quickly when doing it from a tablet.

10: Social integration

Some might argue that social networking isn't ideal for business use. I would argue that it is. Even when you're on the go, you need to remain in contact with co-workers, family, and friends. Why not do that with the ease of nearly seamless integration? Forget having to use a browser for everything. Instead, grab an Android tablet that can quickly have you Facebooking, Tweeting, and Tumbling. And if you think that's nothing more than a waste of time, remember that small businesses depend upon social networking tools for free marketing.

The tablet era

Tablets are not only here to stay, it will only be a matter of time before they have fully and finally usurped the laptop as the go-to hardware for the mobile business user. After you get past the acclimation period for the keyboard, the tablet is an amazing tool for portable business (or even casual) usage.

Source: TechRepublic

Looking for advice on the best tablet for your business - contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre.

Citrix has reported strong third-quarter results and increased its outlook for the year, projecting growth via a bevy of product announcements.

On Thursday, the company reported earnings of $92m (£57m) or 49 cents a share, on revenue of $565m, up 20 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 64 cents a share. Wall Street analysts were expecting non-GAAP earnings of 58 cents a share on revenue of $544.8m.

On a conference call with analysts, Citrix chief financial officer David Henshall said that customers are increasingly buying XenDesktop for desktop virtualisation as well as back-end technology such as NetScaler. "We have some of the largest deals coming out of NetScaler as well as XenDesktop, and a surprising number of combined transactions - those customers that are buying both a hardware and a software solution as well as customers are looking at both XenDesktop and XenApp standalone products as a component," Henshall said.

Source: ZDNet

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Global spending on enterprise IT is predicted to reach $2.7 trillion in calendar year 2012, a 3.9 percent increase from $2.6 trillion in the current calendar year, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Although spending growth has slowed from earlier projections of 5.9 percent growth in 2011, at this point enterprises have little choice but to continue to invest in IT, despite a bumpy world economy.

"The days when IT was the passive observer of the world are over. Global politics and the global economy are being shaped by IT," Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner, told an audience of 8,500 CIOs and IT leaders gathered for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo this week in Orlando, Fla.

"IT is a primary driver of business growth ... this year 350 companies will each invest more than $1 billion in IT. They are doing this because IT impacts their business performance," Sondergaard said, according to a Gartner statement.

Those investments are being driven by several significant trends that center on customer relationships, and are fueled by dynamic growth in information, cloud computing, social networking, mobility, and collaboration, he added.

For instance, although only three percent -- some $74 billion -- of IT budgets worldwide was spent on public cloud services last year, Gartner forecasts this figure will grow five times faster than overall enterprise IT spending each year through 2015.

Meanwhile, 20 percent of the world's population -- 1.2 billion users -- currently is using social networking.

The next stage of social computing is about mass-customer, mass-citizen, and mass-employee involvement with enterprise systems, Sondergaard's statement said.

"IT leaders must immediately incorporate social software capabilities throughout their enterprise systems," he added.

Then, there's the explosion of information -- Big Data and otherwise.

Multiple systems, including content management, data warehouses, data marts and specialized file systems tied together with data services and metadata, will become the "logical" enterprise data warehouse, Sondergaard said.

Meanwhile, the mobile revolution is already all but a fait accompli. Last year, there were already more mobile devices -- smartphones and mobile PCs -- than desktop PCs in use globally.

Additionally, although 20 million media tablets like the iPad were sold in 2010, Gartner projects there will be 900 million tablets sold by 2016. What that means is that by 2014, so-called "lightweight mobile operating systems" such as Android, iOS, and Windows 8, will outnumber PC-based systems, and 60 percent of IT organizations will have deployed private app stores.

"Where data centers will give way to data clouds, mobile devices become windows into personal clouds ... personal computing will become massive collaborative computing, and information technologies will be overshadowed by information ecologies."

"The impact of these forces will make architectures of the last 20 years obsolete," Sondergaard said.

Source: Internet News

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Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is an increasingly popular technology that enables companies to run their user desktops as a virtual machine. So instead of requiring a fully unique operating system to be installed on each and every machine in a small business, VDI enables a more agile, rapid and centralized approach to desktop management and deployment.

To date, the challenges of VDI deployment for SMBs have been cost and complexity, which are two issues that Citrix is aiming to solve with their new VDI-in-a-box 5 solution.

"There is pent-up demand among small and medium organizations who want to realize the benefits of desktop virtualization but have been underserved by existing solutions," Krishna Subramanian, vice president, marketing and business development, SMB solutions at Citrix said in a statement.

The VDI-in-a-Box solution is built using technology that Citrix acquired in May of this year with the acquisition of software vendor Kaviza. VDI-in-a-Box provides small business with the capability to deploy virtual desktops, powered on the backend by servers that are connected to shared storage resources.

A key part of the release is the inclusion of new wizards to help ease virtual desktop deployment in an effort to make it more intuitive for small business IT managers to use.

"Since the acquisition of Kaviza in late May, our team has been working feverishly with the extended Citrix teams to build and deliver this release," Kumar Goswami, vice president of products, Citrix wrote in a blog post. "The UI effort alone is significant -- we have completely revised and updated the management interface, with usability testing to ensure we are delivering the simplest experience for Windows administrators to setup and manage virtual desktops."

In order to deliver streaming audio and video capabilities for the virtual desktop, VDI-in-a-Box leverages the Citrix HDX 5.5 stack. HDX provides enhanced multimedia protocol capabilities for remote and virtual desktops.

The overall goal for Citrix with its virtual desktop deployment efforts is to get both the ease of deployment and the cost for VDI down to the point where it's cheaper than deploying a PC. Wes Wasson commented on a call with press that it is Citrix's view that the crossover point for virtual desktops is now here.

"With continued innovation, the cost of setting up a virtual desktop will be lower than a physical desktop across the board," Wasson said. "It's a huge milestone and it really takes cost off the table and lets customers focus on the true benefits of going virtual for the desktop."

Citrix currently has a trial version of VDI-in-a-Box available, with general availability set for later this year.

Source: Small Business Computing.com

Contact Converge IT at either our Manchester or Daresbury IT Support Centre for advice on how a Virtual Desktop solution can save your business time and money.

Nokia has introduced the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, the first smartphones from the Finnish manufacturer to run Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.

Chief executive Stephen Elop presented the new flagship handsets at the Nokia World 2011 conference on Wednesday, saying "Lumia is a new dawn for Nokia". He also took the opportunity to take a friendly jab at other Windows Phone manufacturers.

"The Lumia is the first real Windows Phone," Elop told the audience in London. "We are signalling our intent, right now, right here to be the leaders in smartphone design."

The smartphone debut comes after a tricky 12 months for Nokia, in which it carried out a transition from self-developed mobile OSes to Windows Phone. Elop, who left his post as head of Microsoft's business division to lead the mobile device maker a year ago, has described Nokia as "years behind" its rivals, such as Apple's iPhone and Android. A lot is riding on Nokia's Windows Phone-based range, and Elop has said the company's goal is to make sure its handsets are clearly differentiated from other Windows Phone-based handsets.

The Lumia 800, previously codenamed Sea Ray, runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and closely resembles the existing MeeGo-powered Nokia N9 in appearance. Of the two new handsets, it has the better specifications and the higher price. It has a 3.7-inch Amoled touchscreen display, an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, 1.4GHz single-core processor with hardware acceleration and Internet Explorer 9.

It supports Windows Phone Mango native features such as live tiles and Microsoft Office integration, which can give access to documents stored on corporate servers as well as locally. The Office integration means that as well as the 16GB of internal memory, owners will get the standard 25GB of free storage on the Windows Sky Drive cloud.

'Surprise at every turn'

"With the Lumia 800 our intention is to surprise you at every turn. This is a smartphone that defies convention," Kevin Shields, senior vice president of product management, said at the conference.

The Lumia 800 will ship with a few unexpected options as standard, such as Nokia Drive free turn-by-turn voice guided navigation. It will also have Mix Radio, which lets owners store up to four playlists and download up to 20 tracks from each playlist for offline playback. The playlists last for four weeks, after which users are asked to connect via Wi-Fi to renew the Mix Radio licence.

Applications such as Drive will be available on Windows Phone-based devices from other manufacturers. Nokia will be able to differentiate its package via features such as offline navigation, which other hardware makers might not be able to provide.

These features should help Nokia's smartphones stand out from competitors, according to IDC mobile analyst Al Hilwa.

"Music and Navigation offline is an idea whose time has come - kudos to Nokia for working on this," Hilwa told ZDNet UK. "The devices really show off the Windows Phone live tile user interface: it is a welcome departure from the sea of icons you see in the current crop of smartphones and provides some great new opportunities for developers to integrate their apps into the UI."

The Lumia 800 will cost around €420 (£367) before taxes or subsidies, and it will launch in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain as well as the UK next month. Operators Orange and Three have already confirmed they will carry the smartphone when it is available in the UK, though neither has revealed pricing.

The second handset, the Lumia 710, is a "more affordable" device, according to Nokia, though it includes many of the same features as the 800. It comes with a 1.4GHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera and the same social People Hub integration as Windows Phone 7 devices. The mid-market handset is also scheduled to arrive in November and will cost roughly €270.

Neither of the Lumia phones provides near-field communications (NFC) capability for uses such as contactless payments, as Windows Phone Mango does not support NFC.

Building a base

Elop did not give a US launch date for the handsets, saying only that Nokia will outline a portfolio of products for the US in early 2012. This disappointed Hilwa, who nevertheless conceded "it is right for Nokia to play where it is strong first and build a strong base for Windows Phone internationally".

However, his colleague Francisco Geronimo believes Nokia will have a fight on its hands to successfully challenge Apple's iPhone and leading Android handsets with Lumia.

"Despite the speed of development, the quality of the devices and the competitive pricing, Nokia will not be able to drive significant volumes in the coming months," the IDC mobile analyst said. "The reason for that is not linked to the devices themselves, but to the low Windows Phone OS penetration and awareness among consumers. Microsoft's OS represented two percent of total smartphone shipments by the end of the second quarter 2012 - the lowest share ever.

"In the coming weeks, these devices will share the store shelves among several popular Android devices, the new iPhone 4S and even some new Blackberry 7 devices," Geronimo noted. "Consumers don't know the Windows Phone user interface or its advantages."

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the best mobile solution for your business.

Your small business data is priceless.  Your customer records, sales data, employee information and tax history are easily some of the most valuable assets that you own.  And -- especially for small businesses -- losing that data can be more damaging than losing a building, inventory or raw materials

Permanent data loss, whether caused by mechanical failure, natural disaster or even human error can be detrimental to the point that it is no longer possible to maintain the business.  Data backup is a small business's first and best defense against harm.

Design Your Backup Strategy

You can approach data backup in a number of ways, so be sure to consider which combination will do the best job of protecting your business's most valuable asset. 

The first option to consider is cloud-based data backup.  It is a cost-effective solution, and there a number of online services that offer secure, cloud-based backup solutions.  Most of these providers use redundant backup locations to secure your data, but before you select a provider, be sure to ask the following questions, as services vary from one provider to another:

• What local restore capability will I have?
• How do you protect my data from corruption or loss at your facility?
• How do you handle a full restore?  Do you send media to my location, or do I need to pull it over the Internet?
• How will you provide me with a copy of my backup data if I choose to discontinue service?

You might also consider backing up your data locally.  This can be as easy as backing up important data to a CD or DVD and storing it at an offsite location.  Finally, you might consider a disk-based system or an external storage device, such as a flash drive or hard drive. 

If you use servers for daily tasks, consider server backup as protection against a possible system failure.  Again, cloud storage companies offer backup services.  Another way to make data backup easier is to consider a Windows-based storage server instead of a standard Windows server acting as a file server. 

A storage server may help you drive down costs because it reduces ongoing storage growth and uses high-density SATA drives, which help drive costs even lower on this long-term solution.  Additionally, a storage server is simple to implement, manage and backup, making it a great option for small businesses.

Finally, don't forget to protect your virtual servers.  A recent Symantec survey found that more than half of small companies polled don't fully protect their virtual servers, and CDW's Small Business Server Virtualization Roadmap found that while more small businesses are moving to virtual servers, many are neglecting to back up or secure the data in their virtual environments.

Back Up to Tape...No, Really

While data backup is moving away from tape -- or already has, depending on your available resources -- small businesses should not overlook the opportunities that data tape still provides.  Depending on your retention periods for backup, tape is still a great option for long-term retention.  

While tape may be slower than some of the newer technologies available, when you use it for backup, "fast" isn't really a requirement if you have a disk as the initial target for the backup job. This simply makes the tape backup a copy for that long-term retention.  Even dated technology can still work for archival data backup, so be sure to consider this option before deciding that you need a complete upgrade. 

If tape is an option that works for your small business, you will need to look at your business data and determine what you need to archive for an extended period. 

Replicate for Instant Backup

Replication is another critical data backup element.  At the core of all business continuity plans is some form of data replication, which duplicates and stores vital data in a secure location where the organization can retrieve it should something damage or devastate the business's primary data center.  There are two basic data replication strategies to consider:  host-based and controller-based. 

Host-based data replication happens at an operational level by pairing two individual servers that will each save data, which ensures redundancy.  This solution is effective because the back-up server can be deployed remotely, which eliminates the need to restart the server should something go wrong.  It also has a limited footprint, taking up less physical space and reducing your energy consumption. 

Typically, host-based strategies are the preferred choice of small businesses because they are cost effective and are easy to install, but keep in mind that most use a software system that requires a license.  Be sure to weigh the preventative expenses against the cost and value of significant data loss. 

Controller-based data replication is used more within larger organizations.  Controller-based replication occurs at the byte-level on a storage area network (SAN), an architecture that connects remote storage devices to servers, while appearing attached locally to the operating system.

Data is one of your organization's most important assets.  Take advantage of the diverse backup options available to your small business, and craft a personalized backup strategy that works best for you.  Doing so ensures that your data is always protected and available. 

Source: Internet News

Converge IT provide a range of backup and disaster recovery solutions to meet your business needs. Contact us at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centres for advice on your data security.

Average broadband speeds in the UK have reached 5 megabits per second, making it the 25th fastest country in the world, though a laggard compared to many of its European brethren.

The figure, published in Akamai's State of the Internet report for the second quarter of 2011 on Monday, shows that the UK still lags behind mainland Europe for both peak and average connectivity.

"Many countries in Europe are already recognised as leaders in high-speed internet connectivity, with some having implemented the equivalent of a national broadband plan, and others continuing to deploy fibre at a local level," Akamai wrote in the report. "The positive short-term and long-term trends for average peak connection speeds across European countries point to a continued improvement in high-speed internet connectivity within these countries."

The Netherlands was the fastest country from Europe with average broadband speeds of 8.5Mbps, followed by the Czech Republic with 7.4Mbps and Switzerland with 7.3Mbps. It came fourth worldwide, behind Japan at 8.9Mbps, Hong Kong at 10.3Mbps and South Korea with 13.8Mbps.

"I think, by and large, we have seen the trend heading in what I call the mid-direction," David Belson, Akamai's director of market intelligence, told ZDNet UK. "We're seeing a lot more usage and we've seen the average peak connection speed continue to grow over time... due to the increasing availability and speed of higher-speed broadband connections."

Belson said fibre-to-the-home and fibre-to-the-cabinet initiatives could be having an impact, causing average speeds to climb in countries where the technology has been rolled out.

The UK fared better in terms of general broadband connectivity, coming eleventh worldwide with over 91 percent of connected users having a speed of 2Mbps or greater, compared to first worldwide for Bulgaria with 97 percent and second worldwide for the Czech Republic with 95 percent. The UK government has vowed to get all of its citizens online at a minimum speed of 2Mbps by 2015.

Akamai's measurement of UK connectivity differs to the most recent average speed of 6.2Mbps given by Ofcom in May 2011. Akamai measures broadband speeds via "at least" hundreds of servers in the UK and possibly thousands, Belson said. Akamai measures the time it takes from a file to be accessed to when it is downloaded, whereas Ofcom measures its speeds via broadband monitoring units connected to the routers of 1,710 people across the UK.

Source: ZDNet

Contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on the best broadband solution for your business.

Google caters well to consumers, but it falls short of meeting the business needs of larger organizations. Here are the biggest areas of concern.

Without a doubt, Google is playing a larger and larger role in business IT. But as many have found out, doing business with Google requires certain expectations to be set up front. This is not to say that doing business with it is awful, or that other companies do not have many of these issues as well, of course. Still, there are some good reasons to be wary about doing business with Google.

1: Customer support is not its forte

The biggest reason to think twice about doing business with Google is that its organization is simply not designed to provide support for customers. Google has recently opened some phone numbers for customers to reach them, but by and large they prefer support to be email only (if they provide it at all). This is a perfectly fine approach for a free or ad-supported product. But if you are hoping to run a business built on Google's offerings, you'll want to check out the support options first.

2: Leadership has questionable views on privacy

Eric Schmidt (executive chair of Google's board) recently joked about whether your Android contact list and most recent calls should be used to customize advertising. Whether Google is heading in that direction or not, no one wants to think that Google takes these matters lightly. Time and time again, Google's executives (particularly Mr. Schmidt) have made it clear that they will get as much data generated by your online activities as legally and technically possible. Is that necessarily bad? No. But their attitude seems to be that if you want any kind of online privacy, you need to go through extreme measures.

3: It makes its living by leveraging information about you

Most users never stop for a moment to ask themselves how Google can do so much for no cost to them. Of course, the answer is advertising, and that is nothing new. But what makes Google's advertisements so valuable is not just their wide reach but the selective targeting. You see, Google has taken the same engineering that produced its excellent search engine and applied the effort toward linking ads to people, based in no small part upon the data harvested as a result of your daily interactions with them.

Of course, seeing ads on Google Search based on previous searches is not a shock. But it's a bit creepy (and occasionally embarrassing) when you go to a site and look at products there, and then ads from that site follow you around to every site you visit for months. If you want to know what other users do with their computers, just look at what ads Google displays for them.

In addition to the inherent privacy concerns ("What if a hacker gets a hold of this?" and "What if other sites figure out how to use this?"), there are legal concerns. As the government continues to subpoena Google's data, it is quite possible that data concerning you will end up in a government database, and who knows where it will go from there.

4: It's too willing to yank products and APIs

Google is famous for rolling out new products on a regular basis. Unfortunately, it is also famous for pulling the plug on them. Sure, other companies do the same thing. But Google's threshold for failure feels a lot lower. Even more frustrating is when it does this with APIs. It has become clear that Google opens APIs to study usage in the wild, but once it has learned what it wanted to, Google shuts down the APIs. This may work great for Google, but it is a nightmare scenario for companies that depend upon its products and services.

5: Quality is sometimes lacking

Overall, the quality of Google products is high. But there are some exceptions, and those exceptions (especially Android's issues) are quite visible and damaging. Google's "perpetual beta" was cute when it was Gmail or Orkut. When the same mentality is applied to your phone's OS or your business email, it is an entirely different story. Google seems to currently view its target audience as consumers or small businesses for whom its applications are not mission critical.

6: It has minimal contact with real-world users

Google takes an extremely data-driven approach to deciding how to do things. For example, its usability changes are driven by massive amounts of data. It will roll out a change to a "small" group of users (which could be millions of people), observe how usage patterns change, and then make decisions from there. Google is lucky to have one of the largest user bases in the world for its applications, so it can take this approach and have tons of data.

Google doesn't like user feedback, in large part because it is hard to quantify. The problem is that it believes the data, not users. While this isn't terribly surprising (IT professionals have plenty of horror stories about how they did what users wanted, and it was a mess), it can be very frustrating to work with Google or to hope for a particular feature or change to be made. There just isn't a way for the voice of the customer to be heard.

7: There are no SLAs

Google doesn't do SLAs because, for the most part, Google doesn't have any contracts to use its services. Now, that said, Google's track record with uptime has been pretty good; better than most, honestly. If you look at its history over the last few years, an SLA is more a security blanket for you than anything else, and it would not change how it runs its business one bit anyway.

8: It has a consumer focus for features

One of the big reasons why Google has done so well is that its solutions cater well to consumers, and by extension, small businesses. At the same time, large companies have needs as well, and Google just does not meet them. For example, where is the federated Active Directory authentication for Google Apps for Business or the central management of Android phones? Those are the kinds of things that businesses need but consumers and small businesses do not. And until Google expands its focus a bit, these needs will not be met.

9: You are not important to Google

If you are part of a business, the traditional customer-vendor relationship is familiar, comfortable, and normal to you. But this is not in Google's DNA. Google's main currency is actually your clickstream data. Why does it give away Google Analytics? So it can collect clickstream data? Gmail? Search? Same thing. Its APIs? More data to feed the machine. Google's true business is to run a commodities market where it is both the market itself and the sole producer of the commodity. In Google's eyes, it is seller's market. You have no other choices, and there are plenty of other people happy to buy that same commodity. Where other vendors would work hard to keep you happy, Google does not even bother to tell you to take a hike.

10: Google does not cater to business expectations

Google is really good at getting individuals and small businesses the products they need for free or nearly free. But it struggles when doing business with enterprises because the expectations are different. Google succeeds with the smaller companies because they understand that you get what you pay for. They don't feel that a service that is free, or nearly so, is worth complaining about.

An enterprise, though, is often willing to pay more money to get certain things, like no ads, preferential treatment, a dedicated account executive, and SLAs. These are not bad things. But again, Google just is not set up to do business like this (with the exception of Google Apps for Business). Because it has such minimal interaction with you as client, it isn't going to understand your needs, let alone try to cater to them. If what it delivers is fine with you, that's great. But if you want the handholding, customization, support, etc., that a traditional vendor will sell you for an upcharge, Google isn't going to be providing it.

Source: TechRepublic

Contact Converge IT at either our Daresbury or Manchester IT Support Centre for advice on your business IT requirements.

BT broadband services across the country were disrupted on Friday morning by problems at an exchange in London.

The issue, which began at 8:30am and was resolved within 15 minutes, caused broadband supplier Plusnet to warn customers up and down the country of intermittent broadband connection loss.  

"BT can confirm that a very small proportion of customers had technical issues with their broadband around 8:30am this morning," BT said in a statement on Friday. "This issue was quickly resolved in around 15 minutes. Affected customers are advised to restart their hub or router."

However, Plusnet was still finding it difficult to restore connectivity to customers after BT had dealt with the outage.

"Our suppliers have advised of a major service outage affecting users all over the country this morning," Plusnet wrote at 9:11am. "If you have been disconnected from the internet and are having problems getting back online then please switch your modem/router off for 20 minutes or so before powering it back up and attempting to reconnect."

Zen Internet warned customers at 8:40am that it needed to carry out emergency maintenance due to an issue affecting the BT Stepney Green exchange. "Our engineers are currently working with our supplier to resolve the problem," it said.

As of 11:10am Plusnet's automated broadband status line was reporting no known issues with the network.

"This does seem to be an extremely brief outage and all affected customers' [broadband] service was back up and running a couple of hours ago," a BT spokeswoman told ZDNet UK.

BT did not disclose the cause of the outage.

Source:ZDNet

Reviewing your business broadband solution? Contact Converge IT at either our Manchester or Daresbury IT Support Centre for advice.