An IT Support Blog from London

Information technology is important to a business. In fact, it’s easy to argue that the importance of IT is growing. Leaders are recognising this, Spiceworks’ 2020 State of IT report found that 44% of businesses are planning to grow IT expenditure in 2020, compared to 38% in 2019.

Merely throwing cash at IT is not enough, however. When evaluating options for IT support, London companies much seek out the right IT partner – a partner that can support your business in times of difficulty, and a partner that helps your business make the most of its technology investments.

In this article, we present five core areas you should look at when evaluating your existing IT support partner, or as you choose your next technology support partner.

Start-ups and small businesses are often highly cost-conscious, with a can-do attitude that usually sees the founders becoming involved in a range of non-core activities – including in supporting the IT that helps businesses tick over.

However, as a business grows, owner-managers must realise that it’s impossible to personally service every business requirement, and that experts in their respective fields, such as IT, can deliver so much more.

In this article, we outline how taking steps to outsource IT support can help you grow your business more quickly and more sustainably. Read on to find out why outsourced IT support is an essential step for growing businesses.

Technology is central to your business, but your business may not necessarily be in the business of technology. That’s why you rely on an IT support company to conduct the day to day maintenance of the tech that supports your business.

Over time, however, there may come a need for a change in support providers. Your business may grow, presenting increasingly complex technology needs that your existing supplier cannot cope with. Or, your support company may simply drop the ball too frequently.

What are the signs that your company should consider switching, and how should you go about making this switch? Read on to find out!

It seems like only yesterday that cloud computing was deemed the next big thing in the business and IT landscape. Service providers scrambled to offer the best cloud services available, while organisations carefully planned how they could best make a smooth transition into the cloud environment.

Now fast forward about a decade. Cloud computing remains a game-changing technology which initiated a paradigm shift in many companies, not only in how they set up their network infrastructure but also in how they run their operations. Over time though, provisioning resources in the cloud may become a tedious and complex task for IT administrators, especially if the primary aim of a business is a faster time to market their product.

This is where serverless computing comes in.

A rapidly growing pool of productivity data is aggregated by Microsoft thanks to the broad adoption of cloud productivity suites. Indeed, Office 365 is leading the field with triple the market share of its closest competitor, G Suite.

Office 365 and the Azure cloud platform is therefore a rich source of information detailing how employees conduct their daily work routine, and this has led Microsoft to launch Workplace Analytics. But who gets access to Workplace Analytics, and can it provide real insights for your business?

The World Wide Web has always been a valuable source of information and a reliable means of communication to masses of users across the globe. With more than 5 billion Google searches made every day and a projected $3.5 trillion online retail sales for 2019, you’d think that the internet as we know it is already as vast as it can be.

Unknown to most people, however, is that the surface or visible web—the part of the internet which the average user can access through search engines—comprises only about 4% of the entire web. The rest is composed of the deep web, a small part of which is the oh-so-mysterious (for the curious) but essentially shady, dark web.

IT security is one of those business risks that can go under the radar until the worst happens. Businesses that do not operate in the technology arena are especially vulnerable to the consequences of the lack of IT risk assessment. Fortunately, these existential risks can be completely avoided.

What does an IT security assessment do?

In essence, IT security assessments are the actions and procedures that determine, evaluate, and then eliminate a range of vulnerabilities in technology systems and the business processes linked to those systems.

Disaster recovery is one of those topics that isn't particularly complicated, yet is easily misunderstood. It is, nonetheless, a crucial aspect of technology management. The cost of a disaster can be tremendous, and with no fast route to recovery, an adverse event can have game-changing consequences for a business.

Getting backup and disaster recovery right is not that hard, yet 50% of UK businesses are leaving their data at risk, according to a 2018 survey. Though businesses generally make some effort to guard against disaster, plenty of disaster recovery myths persist. In this article, we tackle those myths and propose steps to ensure a reliable disaster recovery scenario.

We all love comparisons. One of the oldest comparisons or debates in the history of IT is that which pits Windows against Linux. It’s a subplot of another debate with a much wider scope: proprietary vs open source, but just as relevant for businesses.

For as long as we can recall, Windows has been the OS of choice for most businesses, especially for their PCs and laptops. Linux usage, on the other hand, has been limited to servers and a few departments in certain organisations like research agencies, startups and universities. Does this still hold true in? Let’s talk about it.

When it comes to IT services, many businesses still go for the fix-it-when-it-breaks approach. And why not? They think that getting the services of an IT support company only when a problem actually arises will save them money. But does it really?

If you also think that saving your financial resources for a time when something breaks down is the right way to manage your organisation's IT ecosystem, then it's time for you to know all about reactive and proactive IT support. This should help you to determine which would work best for your business. But first, on to the definitions.