Thomson Reuters Elite President Cary Burch recently commented on the new partnership in the company news

Whilst we already deal with Thomson Reuters on an array of projects and share a number of clients, we see this more formal relationship as a way to provide our clients increased security that they are dealing with a company that has strong links with the software developers.

At Fusion we are very excited about this new chapter in our growth as a firm. This new relationship comes as Fusion itself is 10 years old, it does make us wonder where this will take us for the next 10 years.

In the emerging world of BYOD (bring your own device) a lot of people are wanting to use Apple products for business. Whilst I love Apple products for home users, for an IT administrator these devices are a nightmare to manage.. Just imagine anybody can install apps onto their device, Apple like to create their own standards instead of adhering to industry standards and they tend to let design be the deciding factor, not to mention the expensive of such a device.

So Dell (Latitude 10) have created a device that is nice to look at, has great functionality and will have IT admins rejoicing! Also with optional extra of a docking station provides a great alternative to a desktop machine for someone who doesn’t need the power of a desktop. So far we have been very impressed with this device and look forward seeing how the device works in the real world!

We are also looking forward to testing the Microsoft Surface Pro device in the next few weeks…

If Windows 8 is something that you have been holding out for why not give us a call, we can give you a demo and even arrange to put in a pilot to ensure that all your software is going to be compatible.

In reality it will probably take around 6 to 12 months before we start recommending the software to clients. Its not because it will be full of bugs and unusable, because this will not be the case, Microsoft goto great pains to make sure its bug free by making their product available for general consumption whilst its in beta or as they like to call it release candidate. The problem is that many manufactures will be slow getting out drivers and patches to software to make sure its compatible and also the time it takes to skill up on the new features. One thing we have noticed over the years is that more and more software does seem to still work on newer operating systems, this is mainly because Microsoft have realised that they need to maintain support for these legacy apps and more recently they have had stricter guidlines for programmers.

So watch this space and also take a look at our new blog from time to time, I am sure you will be seeing lots more information about Windows 8 and the pros and cons.

Here are my top 5 tips if you are thinking about making any custom changes to your software:

Making a Difference

It’s not always the easiest thing to quantify, but will your proposed development actually make a difference? How much time and/or money will the development save and, on balance, how long will the development take and cost. Here at Fusion we can assist by offering an objective viewpoint and working with you to put together a development proposal at no charge, just give us a call.

Get User Support

Once you know what you want to do, get the users behind the development as soon as possible. Discuss with them what you plan to do and most importantly what you hope to achieve and how it will benefit them. As a user, I find it can be very frustrating to have an application that I use daily upgraded and be in the dark as to why anything was changed (or where that button has gone!).

If it’s a major piece of development you may want to enlist one or more advocates from your super users (people who have used the system/process you are developing for a long time or have a lot of experience in it). Most people will enjoy this extra role and will welcome being involved in the development process.

Bite Sized Development

Don’t try to do too much development in one go, you wont benefit from the time and cost savings if it’s still in development! Prioritise the changes you would like to make; those which confer the most benefit should be higher up the list with things like aesthetic changes down the bottom.

Breaking development down into manageable chunks in this way assists everyone; particularly if you’re commissioning an outside developer to do the work. Working through a staged priority list you have a rolling assessment of how the work is coming along, rather than any issues only coming to light once everything has been completed and the development piece delivered to you.

Test, Test, Test and then Test Again

In an ideal world you would have a dedicated environment set up for testing; a true replica of your live environment dedicated to testing your new development. Whilst this is the best way to discover any problems, the cost of setting up this environment can be prohibitive. We can offer advice as to how best to test the new software without it impacting your users or the live environment; this could involve us hosting virtual servers and/or machines for this purpose.

Whichever way you go about testing, don’t rush this step. Spend some time actively trying to break the new development and then pass it on to some other users so they can try to do the same!

Staggered Deployment

Once you have a working development piece in your hand it’s very tempting to unleash it across the firm so that everyone can get the benefit of it as soon as possible. But if something has been missed, even a small issue within the product can negatively affect users trust in it and could mean they don’t want or like to use it! So give it to a small subset of users first for as long a period as you feel necessary for them to actively put it to use and then extend that user group gradually to the whole firm. The slight delay caused by this will be well worth it!

Each piece of development is unique and the guidance above may not assist in every situation, but we’re here to offer the support you need in planning the development and, should you wish, do the work for you!

Gary Colclough, Business Analyst/Developer at Fusion IT Management Limited

Virus Protection

If you look at the bottom right of your screen near your clock, you should see an icon that relates to your virus protection. There are many companies that provide virus protection so this could be in the form of a McAfee, Symantec or AVG icon, to name a few. If you then right click and go to the about screen, you should be able to get the date of the virus definitions. Virus protection works as long as the virus definitions are up-to-date, if the definitions are more than a day or so out of date then your system is at risk. Now multiply this by the number of machines you have (and also not forgetting servers), are you sure all your machines are fully up-to-date? Your IT suppler should be managing this for you. If you have any doubt, contact Fusion for a free PC health check.

SPAM

SPAM messages are classed as messages that you didn’t give permission for the sender to send. To get your name on a legitimate email list is not very difficult, have you ever subscribed or bought something and forgotten to click on the “do not give my details to trusted sources” checkbox? Many of us (myself included) will have done this, one firm sells a list to another firm and another firm sells it on, before you know it you are receiving emails from all sorts of companies. The one thing that differentiates between SPAM and a marketing email is the ability to unsubscribe, if you cannot unsubscribe and they are trying to sell you Viagra then the chances are its SPAM! How many of these do you receive a day? There are ways to stop these messages coming through, a good IT supplier or your ISP can help you with this.

Backups

How many people put in a tape each day and never actually test the backups? Many people do not even do backups, relying on the fact that hardware is more robust and reliable than it used to be. But what happens if you have a fire, flood or genuinely delete a file by accident? Every company should have an offsite backup, if you don’t you are running the risk of complete data loss, if you lost all your computer data would your business ever recover? A couple of other things that would keep me awake on a night; OK we are getting successful backups, but is my IT supplier backing up all the correct data that we have? Also when was the last time you did a test restore?

Internet Speed

One of the main gripes that many clients have is the speed of the internet. You can obviously throw lots of money at dedicated leased lines into your buildings, but this isn’t always the most effective solution. There are many ways to increase your connection speed and it does not have to cost the earth. We can do an audit of your existing internet connection and make recommendations to bring you up to speed. It maybe that you have a fault on your line that needs chasing up with BT or it maybe that you need to bond two lines together to create one bigger connection. New technologies are coming out all the time; Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC), Virgin high speed connections and we can even utilise the mobile networks for emergency internet connectivity. Unless you have someone trying to bring these new technologies to your organisation you will be left behind.

Remote Access

Many firms struggle when it comes to getting connectivity into the office, in this day and age you should be able to access your email, office files and accounting system from wherever you are in the world. I personally have a home office, I am just as efficient working at home as I am in the office, in fact without the disruption of the office environment I would argue that I am far more productive. If you called into the office to speak to me whilst I was working from home the office would simply transfer you to my VOIP (Voice Over IP, basically a telephone that works over the internet) extension, it would be seamless to the caller. There are many solutions to help you achieve this such as VPN, remote desktop, direct access & Citrix, your IT supplier will be able to help you choose the right technology.

I have just scratched the surface of the top 5 issues that we come across, these are just some of the issues that Fusion strives to make sure are not issues which keep our clients awake at night.

Jamie Watson, Managing Director at Fusion IT Management Limited

Do you have a server room full of kit that you have no idea what it does? For many years a MD looking to put something new into their business when speaking to their IT professional was usually met with an answer something along the lines of, oh that is possible but we will need a new server!

Long gone are the days of having a server purely for one purpose. Virtualisation is the the answer to all your problems. At Fusion we have been consolidating clients existing servers onto virtual servers for the past few years. 18 months ago we consolidated our own physical servers from 6 to 2 within a couple of days! As part of the process we can look at your current servers, their roles and consolidate them further. Take for example a recent client (see before and after pictures above) that we have taken onboard, they had 8 physical servers in excess of 8 years old, the server room at times was like a furnace, needed constant cooling and not to mention the issue of maintaining all of this old equipment. Fusion managed to consolidate this to one physical server and two Hyper-V (Microsoft’s implementation of virtualisation) servers, the server room now no longer even requires external cooling. This alongside the fact that we have put in place a disaster recovery solution that will get  them back up and running within a matter of hours, makes their new solution far more resilient. The managing director of the company told our MD, Jamie Watson, that he cannot believe the difference and it will save him thousands of pounds a year in electricity costs alone.

Is your IT specialist talking to you about virtualisation? If not maybe you should be talking to Fusion as you could be missing out!

Your solution? Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint is a Microsoft solution that allows your entire office to collaborate and complete projects from a single platform. It’s like having a global network share one computer, just with more elbow room. Here are some of the cool ways SharePoint can help your business.

• Document Management

Sadly, the shared drives of many business’ servers resemble those closets you see in movies, the ones with random clutter that spill out and bury anyone unlucky enough to open the door. It’s all too easy to misplace or rename files when there are no controls over how important documents are shared. Before long, you end up with a confusing and ultimately useless drive full of shared work. However, Microsoft SharePoint gives you the tools to create special web sites for projects or departments allowing team members to easily add, edit, and manage group files. Use of these intranet portals can be limited so only relevant groups or departments have access to pertinent files.

• Team Collaboration

It’s hard enough for team members to interact when they’re separated by one floor. But what if the members of your team live in separate countries? SharePoint gives you the ability to establish Document Workspaces, where team members can edit each other’s contributions or chat in an offline discussion board. With SharePoint, conference calls and confusing mass e-mails are a thing of the past.

• Business Automation

SharePoint has the power to create intelligent workflows to perform many menial tasks without your help, allowing you to focus on the more fun parts of your job. For example, you can use a workflow to overhaul your document approval process. After you designate a few simple workflow commands, SharePoint will automatically send the file and an e-mail to approvers notifying them of their task. Once the approvers sign off on the file, SharePoint will send a notification e-mail back to you. It is a neat process, especially since you were getting some quality putting practice in your office the entire time.

Are you interested in making Microsoft SharePoint a part of your business? Onsearch Interactive Solutions can help! Like SharePoint, we are in the business of giving you the technological tools you need to grow your business and strengthen your communication, both with your customers and your employees. To learn more about SharePoint and the other exciting features of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS), be sure to check out our earlier post here and contact us to see how OIS can increase your productivity with SharePoint.

Do you have a team project nightmare SharePoint could have helped you avoid? EMail me at jamie@fitm.co.uk as Fusion have all the skills needed to make sure your Microsoft Sharepoint project is a success!

The concept of cloud computing

What is this new buzz word that everyone is talking about? Cloud computing has been around for years, but the difference is that companies like Amazon and Apple are bringing it to the masses.

What is the concept of cloud computing? In my opinion its the sharing of computing services over a remote connection to some collocated servers.

Wikipedia’s definition;  Cloud computing refers to the use and access of multiple server-based computational resources via a digital network (WAN, Internet connection using the World Wide Web, etc.). Cloud users may access the server resources using a computer, netbook, pad computer, smart phone, or other device. In cloud computing, applications are provided and managed by the cloud server and data is also stored remotely in the cloud configuration. Users do not download and install applications on their own device or computer; all processing and storage is maintained by the cloud server.

We have always used cloud services, think of your website, where is it hosted? I can guarantee that the website will be hosted on a shared server in a data centre somewhere, surely this is classed as cloud computing?

My thought are that because internet connections both fixed and mobile are getting better all the time that this is why people have jumped on the cloud computing bandwagon. It will only be a matter of time before before the next buzz word comes along!

Jamie Watson