An IT Support Blog from London

It’s a back-and-forth sentiment that’s not uncommon in many organisations: business executives believe that IT is not doing enough to support business goals while IT leaders are of the opinion that management is holding out on IT investments, preventing them from doing more. In today’s ever-evolving business landscape where the right use of IT can give organisations a competitive edge, the need for aligning technology with business objectives has never been more important.

Both sides–management and the IT organisation – may assert that they are working towards the achievement of the company’s goals. But unless their efforts are aligned, i.e. IT contribution is clearly manifested in efficiency, productivity, and profitability, top management will be hard-pressed to see technology as an enabler of core business strategies and IT people will continue to feel underappreciated.

Because your main objective is to grow your business, it can be burdensome when you also need to allocate time to manage your IT assets - even if that can also translate into business benefits. The good news is that there’s a way to grow your business and manage your IT assets without spending much time on the latter. It’s called managed services.

This isn’t an article for explaining what managed services is. We’re assuming you already know what managed services is but are still looking for a good reason to hire one. This post should take care of that. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the major benefits of working with a managed services provider.

Disasters are by definition rare and unpredictable and therefore not front and centre when executives think about day to day operational activities. Yet an information technology disaster can strike any business, and the costs to recover from such an event can be tremendous. As with many risks, the probability of a disaster affecting your company’s information technology infrastructure can be mitigated, and so can the fallout should the worst happen. One of the best ways to reduce the damage is to have a well-designed and tested disaster recovery plan (DRP) in place.

Technology expenditure is usually taken on in a reluctant manner: few businesses rush forward with adopting the latest technologies, instead deferring IT expenditure for as long as they can. Whether it is updating on-premise servers, migrating to the cloud or overhauling a creaking website – management teams tend to delay spending the funds for as long as possible. But is this wise? Are there hidden costs to squeezing the last bit of usage out of outdated technology?

It is without question a risky affair: allowing employees to use their personal devices to access your network and valuable, often confidential company data. Yet despite the risks BYOD (bring your own device) marches on and companies and organisations around the world are adopting tactics and technologies to make it work.

There used to be a time when it was relatively easier to prevent malware from infecting our systems. We’d install an antivirus, keep its database updated, and equip end users with a laundry list of things to avoid - like suspicious email attachments and unfamiliar websites. Today, drive by downloads are making malware avoidance a more challenging task.

A drive-by download is a malware infection procedure that doesn’t require the user to download anything or even click a link. For his/her system to get infected, the user only has to visit a site that’s been compromised. The infection process then takes place behind the scenes, without the user ever noticing anything unusual.

In the wake of Brexit, it seems like there has never been a more important time to attract businesses to the UK. There are still plenty of reasons for multinationals to set up shop here. While it has experienced setbacks in recent times, London has retained its status as one of the world's financial hubs. We also have the fifth largest economy in the world according to GDP (Nominal), and despite the current uncertainty, there are still solid strategic reasons for companies basing themselves in the UK.

Information technology risks range from the very apparent to the silent and hidden. The majority of businesses mitigate the most obvious risks: only an irresponsible IT operation will do without network firewalls in place or skip on regularly updating operating systems and software. Yet it is the less obvious risks which can trip up even carefully run IT functions – and which can cause progressive or indeed sudden harm to your business.

Data centre optimisation and consequential benefits for businesses

With so much focus on hacking and internet security, many firms of 10 - 100 people will feel that they have put a lot of effort into making their data as secure as possible. Unfortunately, internet security is a moving target, where the threat may be characterised as agile and continually evolving. Consequently, it is impossible for networks to remain impenetrable.

Standard IT best practice, such as upgrading and patching operating systems and applications, and maintaining a reliable backup and Disaster Recovery capability, are all layers that help to ensure that a firm is in a position to resume normal operations within an acceptable timeframe, should it be the victim of an attack.

Continually reviewing your vital signs

Remote monitoring is one of the most powerful IT support tools available. Most importantly, rather than just detecting hardware and software faults in real-time, it is also able to provide the capability to predict failure.

By analysing log files created by hardware devices and active services, remote monitoring applications are able to identify events and conditions which precede failure. This is exceptionally beneficial because it frequently allows remediation of minor problems that are precursors of bigger failures.