Windows 7, Server 2008, Exchange 2010 End of Life

Details

Created: Tuesday, 04 December 2018

Written by Ella Coles

In January 2020, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Exchange 2010 will all reach Microsoft’s end of life. This means they will no longer get security patches making them unsafe to use.

Most small businesses will be using at least one of these but are not aware of the looming deadline. This will cause a domino effect of upgrading or replacing hardware, applications etc that won’t work with newer versions.

If you would like to talk to us about this and how we can help your business prepare for this deadline please get in touch.

2018's Emerging Technologies - VR

Details

Created: Monday, 16 April 2018

If you blink, you might just miss them.

In the day and age of digital technology, it's hard to keep track of whats new and whats old. Here's a handy list of new and fast growing trends in the technology industry that you, as a consumer or a business, might benefit from.

Immersive technologies

By far one of the most exciting technologies that is steadily becoming available to consumers over time. Mostly designed and dreamt upon for the uses of gaming, modern Virtual & Augmented Reality has rapidly found more and more uses where the technology can be effectively utilised outside of the video game industry.

KFC were recently in the headlines for incorporating VR as part of their employee induction. Trainees would enter a virtual KFC kitchen, allowing them to learn health and safety, risks and methods without the associated risks of a real kitchen.

Skip Razzio, a clinical psychologist, has begun using VR to treat patients with psychological conditions such as PTSD, re-creating the emotions and feelings of war and helping them overcome them, or Autism, by helping people with the disability learn social skills and how to interact with people better.

The VR industry so far has seen nothing but an exponential curve in growth, from a $129m valued market in 2015, to a predicted $2.9b valued market in 2018. However, the main stunt to further growth is consumer availability. VR products, on a whole, are expensive. Whilst overtime these technologies will become cheaper due to increased competition, there are still only 2 main players in the market: Oculus and Vive.

Until this changes, VR will remain out of the hands of the average consumer and thus a danger to its future growth. Despite this, a future as pictured in the movie 'Ready Player One' is all too real.

Can you guess the next emerging technology of 2018? Find out next week!

Tales from our helpdesk: New client with system grinding issue

Details

Created: Tuesday, 09 October 2018

Written by Ella Coles

We recently won a new client with a very serious issue. Every day, every hour on the hour for 15 minutes their whole system would come to a grinding halt. Employees couldn’t send emails, take calls or do their job! Basically, the employees were only able to work for 75% of the day. Their previous IT provider had given up trying to fix this issue.

We ran extensive diagnostics and discovered their antivirus was causing their server to become non-responsive! Uninstalling the antivirus and re-installing the latest version rectified the issue allowing their employees to work 100% of the day.

If you would like to talk to us about how we can help your business please get in touch.

The IT Productivity Paradox and how to fight it.

Details

Created: Friday, 23 March 2018

"You see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics" - Robert Solow

It doesn't make sense, does it? The fact that even though we live in the most advanced technological breakthrough in the history of mankind, we should see an exponential curve in productivity; but we don't. It has even been argued to be in decline. With the birth of global communication and easily accessed off-the-shelf technology and software that is designed to maximise efficiency, it's hard to believe that this is the case.

But it is. Matt Richel, for the New York Times, writes, “statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused."

He goes on to explain that the big Silicon Valley firms have a monster of their own creation wrecking havoc in the productivity statistics, with employees checking emails up to 77 times a day, with mundane tasks taking up large amounts of time e.g. group emails and attachments. According to Basex, the United States alone loses up to $650bn a year due to unnecessary tasks and delays that could potentially be remedied by more efficient IT systems being implemented.

So what on earth is going on?

The answer is actually remarkably simple and is known as The Productivity Paradox, which has taken countless victims over the years. It is the unusual observation that despite further investment in IT technology to improve productivity, worker efficiency has hardly budged. This is not an anomaly however; the same technology 'paradox' has been seen before in the early 20th century.

Put yourself back to 1881. You work in a dark, humid and hot factory powered by a steam engine. The sound of mechanical machinery is deafening. Labour turnover is at an all time high due to dangerous working conditions and disease. Then, out of nowhere, Thomas Edison arrives to save the day with his brand new electrical motor! You would of thought businesses would of jumped straight onto it, no?

Wrong.

By 1900, less than 5% of factories used electrical power and instead opted for the traditional method. It took until the 1920s, over 40 years, for 50% of factories to use electrical technology. From this, we can see that despite new and exciting technology that could revolutionise the way we think and work, we still hesitate to use it - and for quite some time.

Why? Because change is difficult and stagnation is easy.

We as humans are hardwired to resist and fight change. And so, with such a radical change needed to push through required electrical motor legislation (or in this case, computer technology) and despite us knowing the immediate and long term benefits of adopting a 'new way' to do things, it's still uncomfortable for us because it will completely upend the way we think - which is understandable to an extent.

But in truth, we all need to get over ourselves and take the initiative. We live in a world of easily accessed software that is a click away. Think of it this way - you have a document you need to distribute and get multiple colleagues to append. Would your business send it on Google Documents, with live editing powered by the cloud and automatic saving? Or would your business use the same method that has been around since the 1990's, requiring all users to send you a separate document and for you to compile it all together manually? 

Now ask yourself - which of these solutions is the steam engine and which is the electrical motor?

If your business is using the steam engine, telanova is at hand to help you join the IT Revolution.