Small and medium sized enterprises represent more than 99% of all businesses trading in Wales and across the UK today. However research shows that few of them have effective plans to protect themselves against online attack.

Despite the very real risks of data and financial theft or system sabotage, many smaller firms feel the e-security solutions offered only apply to larger organisations and are therefore not relevant to them.

The forthcoming e-Crime Wales Summit on 15^th July will place a special focus on the needs of smaller enterprises and how they can tackle a growing hi-tech threat that could easily put them out of business.

It’s a free event that is very informative. Why not come and see us there? 

Unfortunately, as most South Wales and West of England businesses will know, there’s little opportunity on our doorstep to see the latest IT products and solutions. Normally it’s a trip down to London or up to the NEC for any exhibitions; or a sales person camped on your doorstep trying to tout their wares.

We think that we lead the way in IT and technology solutions so we’re putting on an exhibition of the ‘Best of Breed’ solutions that we use on June 15th & 16th in Cardiff. It’s an opportunity for both our clients and businesses looking for the latest solutions to speak directly to the product manufacturers to discover for themselves the benefits. The vendors including, Polycom, Fortinet and Microsoft, will have demonstration booths so that you can ‘try out’ the products as well as ask the technical experts about how these solutions can work in your business.

The Tewdric team will also be on hand to advise on implementation – there’s no hard sell, because we don’t think we need to…the products speak for themselves.

Full details are available on our website http://www.tewdric.com/events.aspx plus online registration form

If you need one good reason to attend here it is: The right technology can save your business money and improve employee productivity. So what are you waiting for?

By managing director, Giles Phelps

As Britain wakes up to a Hung Parliament this morning, a falling Pound and stock market, business owners will be rethinking their strategy. The situation is Greece has also rocked the global economy and the reality of a double dip recession is increasing.

As a director, you not only consider ways of increasing turnover and profit but also how to reduce costs  in a recession in order to remain lean and agile  – and  keep cash in the bank.

IT is one area that businesses look to when making savings – often suspending any investment in new equipment or technologies. In the short term, cashflow objectives can be achieved but, in the past, the longer term picture was even harder as companies attempted to play ‘catch-up’ and find that the investments required 3-4 years later are significantly greater than if they had continued to incrementally upgrade.

However, cloud computing offers an alternative – particularly for SME’s looking to gain competitive advantage. Outsourcing hardware and applications turns CapEx to OpEx……..and that keeps the bank manager happy too. The per user model used means that a business can stay responsive to market conditions – scaling up or down as required. It also allows the business to focus on its core activities and leave the IT problems to its hosting suppliers.

And it’s not just your server that you can put in the cloud. Hosted VoIP telephony, data replication and disaster recovery solutions are seeing massive growth too.

But don’t wait until it’s the last straw for you business, it’s a strategic move that frees up time and money – which is just good business sense.

Friday thought by technical director, Kevin Herbert

Reflecting on Wednesday’s ‘problem security patch’,  we’ve been talking to a number of our clients about what, if anything, could have been done differently to prevent the issues that transpired; pc’s automatically shutting down and unable to reload.

There are two possible courses of action when receiving a new security update. Firstly, the IT administrator could roll it out straight away and deal with any issues that may occur.

Alternatively, the IT administrator could test it on a sample of PC’s – probably non-critical machines (and definitely not those of directors!). Once these prove to be ok (say allowing 24 hours), the update can be deployed across the rest of the company.

The downside to the latter option is that if that patch provided protection against a significant threat that actually manifests itself (often known as a Zero Day Attack), then most of the PC’s would not have been covered. The consequences should a virus infiltrate company data could be devastating and so always far outweigh any patch ‘blip’ that could occur.

So, even with the benefit of hindsight, deploying the security update was the right thing to do. I  want to add that this only applies to critical security patches and that sample testing for other types of releases e.g. operating systems, etc,  should still take place.

It’s rare that companies like McAfee make errors and the benefits of having critical updates most definitely compensate for any inconvenience.

Friday Thought by managing director Giles Phelps

OK, so the volcanic ash has provided me with a plethora of puns – but one thing is certain; business doesn’t have to come to a halt just because travel has been restricted.

If you aren’t yet up to speed on cloud computing then it’s scenarios like these that make the whole thing worthwhile. The ability to work from anywhere with all your applications becomes real competitive advantage as your staff can stay productive wherever they are.

 And if face to face meetings is the issue, then today’s video conferencing solutions allow you to you keep your appointments, and even, give live presentations with crystal clear sound and vision.

Good IT systems are now becoming more than just ‘nice to have’ items as communications keep a business going.

 Finance Directors should be looking at the total cost of ownership, the cost of contingency plans without these systems and the effect of low employee productivity during ‘Acts of God’ when looking at implementing new technology for a complete financial picture.

Friday Thought by managing director, Giles Phelps.

1. Digital Economy Bill

Whilst the legistlation was rushed through Parliament this week, the wrangling in the House of Commons are still continuing (and probably will for some time).

Part of the Bill is designed to give power to copyright holders where their rights have been infringed online. However, under the rules, the onus has been placed on the Internet Service Providers to block access to infringing websites. Whilst Internet piracy is a major issue, perhaps the responsibility should be put upon the website hosters who have the ability to take down contravening websites.

2. Broadband Tax

This tax being brought under the Finance Bill was going to be charged at a rate of 50p per month on all fixed landlines. The annual collection of £6 was to help pay towards UK-wide fast broadband. However, the levy was scrapped in order to hurry the bill through Parliament this week.

3. Fines for loss of data

The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) have been given greater powers of enforcement with fines of up to £500,000 for major data breaches. Their aim is to encourage businesses to impose better IT security measures when handling consumer data.

4. National Insurance increase

Announced in the March Budget, the tax is due to increase by 1% in 2011. Whilst this isn’t a massive increase, it will impact on employers and they may consider outsourcing resources instead of recruiting.

5. Carbon Reduction

This will only affect large corporate enterprises and factories at the moment who have energy bills greater than £0.5million per year. They are expected to show a reduction in their energy consumption. One way they could easily reduce it overnight is to outsource its IT services and, in particular, their servers.

Cloud Computing have been big buzz words within the IT for the past few years and are now filtering down into mainstream business media. There still seems to be a variety of definitions – particularly by the big manufacturers making it seem to fit their services better than a competitors.

Of course, the recession has also helped the rise in cloud computing as businesses look to outsource services to shed internal resources and take advantage of a more flexible payment system whilst benefitting from the service immediately.

But is it really all that new?

For ‘traditional’ IT resellers and consultants it is a very different business model. Instead of trying to shift as many appliances out the door, it’s about getting more customers through the door to make a service they are selling profitable.

However, from our experience that still won’t make them successful. Net Support UK (NSUK) was set up in 1998 offering outsourced IT services such as server management and remote desktop support as a way to offer better value for the customer coupled with high quality customer services and technical expertise. This is what has stood us in good stead.

So on the last day of our financial year it’s great to review the figures and see that our strategy is working. From clients I’ve spoken to recently, new and old, they are reaping the rewards too.

My head is firmly stuck in the clouds.

By Giles Phelps

The Friday Thought by Technical Director, Kevin Herbert

The communications regulatory body, Ofcom, has submitted proposals to promote competition and investment in the broadband market. It will mean allowing BT’s competitors to have access to its dedicated virtual link over new fibre lines laid and for BT to provide physical access to its ducts and overhead infrastructure to allow the competitors to lay their own fibre if wanted.

The increase in competition and ability for ISP’s to lay fibre easily to more remote locations is great news for customers. Not only will it give them greater choice, but hopefully a fuller selection of services.

It also allows the smaller ISP’s to act more competitively as wholesalers, who are likely to take up some of the duct availability, can pass the significant saving on to them.

However, my concerns are that there has been no mention of any limitation to whom or how much a provider may put down in a duct. We could find ducts being ‘stuffed’ unnecessarily in order to block out other competitors. It will then fall to BT to create new ducts with the costs being absorbed by the customer.

There should also be consideration to maintenance of the ducts. Should the duct collapse or be damaged from construction works, who get priority in fixing their cabling? This also means that with an increased number of suppliers accessing the duct, there is the potential risk of damage to another provider’s cable and who will take responsibility for that repair and when? Of course, it will be the end user customer who will suffer the largest headache if there is no solution put in place.

 At  present, it is BT Openreach who can determine which cables should be repaired first and as it is only them accessing the duct, they are able to check that all cables are working before closing it back up again.

 I’m not 100% convinced that duct sharing will provide a successful answer to faster broadband UK wide unless some control in put in place to protect the customer from the bad side of competitive behaviour.

The Friday Thought by Managing Director, Giles Phelps

There is daily comment on unified communications and how the Microsoft UC server is better than sliced bread but currently out of reach cost-wise for most businesses.  The system enables an integrated approach to your emails, telephony (desk and mobile phone), video and call conferencing, instant messaging (IM) and real-time availability information, etc. Everything linked in to the system can be set to provide the user with information in the form that they want.

For example, if a sales person is out on the road, and their calendar shows this, the system can be set to route all calls coming into their desk phone to their mobile. If they can’t answer, the caller can leave a voicemail which will stored within the UC system and emailed to the user’s account and is also accessible by calling into their phone voicemail -  via their PC.

The benefits for a remote worker are clear – they can be contacted where ever they are on any device connected into the system.

However, to get this system working efficiently, it means the workers need to ensure that they use it correctly. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear, that even with all the geniuses at Microsoft, the system can’t guess whether a worker is in or out of the office - it still needs to be told where to find someone! However, it has now made the job easier as there’s only one system to login to. 

So when I talk to financial directors and IT managers about moving towards unified communications, I always ask what type of workers they have (e.g. remote workers, home workers, etc), what devices they currently have and how they use them - do they use call conferencing? VoIP? And how they are going to encourage workers to use devices differently if they look to implement a more integrated system so that they real gain maximum efficiency and cost savings from the solution. If some of their employees are still stuggling with what email is all about, their problems are not going to be solved by unified comms.

A good VoIP system makes for a reliable step-up for many organisations as it provides additional telephone features such as call routing, bomerang for voice messages, conference calling and presence/availability information that they won’t have used before. Workers have greater flexibility and should provide the business with higher levels of productivity…if the culture allows for it!

From recent news articles, both the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) and the Digital Economy Bill look to be placing the emphasis on the ISP’s taking responsibility for blocking access to webpage that infringes copyright material. In effect, they are aiming at the conduit rather than the source as all that the ISP’s will be able to do is block it’s own clients from accessing those websites deemed to have copyright breaches.

As an ISP, Connect Cardiff, would have to be informed that a website had fallen foul then block its clients from access to that site. In theory, that sounds fine but what if those sites were YouTube or Google? How will our customers react to be denied access to such sites?

I think this is an issue to key a close eye on – watch this space (and blog) for more details…!