Cloud apps move fast, we all know that. It can be tedious to keep up with non-stop changes to cloud app portfolios, and Microsoft’s Office 365 is possibly one of the worst offenders. There are benefits, of course; it’s hard to complain about new app features that are added at no extra charge.

However, it can be challenging when tech companies re-appropriate brands that make sense in their existing format. We all know Office 365, but what exactly is Microsoft 365 and why should you bother?

It’s a no-brainer. Acquire the solution that is the only solution available. Especially if you have the budget for it and its benefits are crucial to your business. However, what if there are two or more equally attractive options? Oftentimes, the options belong to one of two camps - open source and proprietary. Which one is best for your business?

It’s important to identify the advantages of each camp before you start choosing, because a lot of the problems you can encounter later on are simply due to misconceptions about these two families of software.

There are now many grey areas in the market. For example, a proprietary solution also exposes a substantial, but not total, part of its source code to the public. In this article, we’ll only be focusing our discussions on traditional open source solutions and traditional proprietary solutions.

Password security is a major issue that no business or enterprise can ignore. Countless hacking attempts succeed due to inadequate password security. However, remembering all those strong and (hopefully) unique passwords can be tedious, to say the least. Are password managers an alternative? Let’s take a look.

All businesses suffer when their IT systems fail. The catastrophic fallout can result in considerable income loss and comprehensive damage to reputation. Customer confidence is a precious commodity, and it will evaporate in light of an IT system failure.

Curing the symptoms of an IT failure is possible, but also time-consuming and expensive. A systems outage of even a few hours could result in months' worth of lost earnings. How much value do you place on your brand image? Your brand will suffer considerably in light of a system failure.

Organisations now have access to more data than ever, but most are only able to use a fraction of this data, leaving a virtual goldmine of information resource untapped.  What companies don’t realise is that being able to harness this data effectively can yield business information that will prove valuable to the organisation.

The challenge is to extract relevant insights from the various forms and sources of big data which inundate enterprises on a daily, even hourly, basis. The key to meeting this challenge is Big data analytics.

Medium to large operations face a tough decision when choosing how to provision IT support, either  internally or by means of an outsourced provider . Both routes carry costs, benefits and disadvantages.

The stand-out benefits of IT outsourcing

After many years of providing outsourced IT support to countless businesses, HTL has come to see the specific areas of a business which benefit most from outsourced support, and why outsourcing is often the better choice. As a result, we think you should evaluate these five benefits when considering outsourced IT support.

Video conferencing has been affordable for companies large and small for many years, yet many businesses have not wholeheartedly adopted collaboration by video. Though it is estimated that 64% of companies already use video conferencing for meetings, many operations skip video collaboration altogether, despite the rapid growth in the number of people working from home, including in the UK.

If your company relies solely on phone calls, IM and emails to communicate, it is worth taking a step back and considering the benefits of video conferencing. Keep reading as we outline the benefits of video conferencing, and the video collaboration options available for your business.

It’s a decades-old question that businesses continue to ask: should we outsource our IT? What benefits can a managed service provider (MSP) bring to our business, and are managed services cost effective? The ideal option varies from business to business, but the strong growth trend for managed services provision indicates an increased willingness among businesses to utilise managed services. Why? Let’s look at some of the primary benefits of MSPs.

On the 16th and 17th of May, HTL demonstrated our broad range of hosted desktop and cloud solutions at Excel London, the biggest exhibition of its kind. Representatives from companies big and small witnessed first hand just how much difference our services could make to their workflows.

With the onset of new technologies, most organisations have come to rely heavily on their IT practices and systems to ensure that operations are carried out with utmost efficiency. But how do corporate executives and business owners know that their IT system is effectively contributing to the company's business objectives?

The careful consideration given to the acquisition of software assets or the upgrade of IT infrastructure is justified. However, less attention is devoted to evaluating if these investments are actually providing a positive return for the company. Perhaps more important than ascertaining whether IT resources are properly leveraged, is to ensure that the enterprise's IT systems are reliable and secure enough to maintain the integrity of the company's data and information assets.