We’ve taken a look at some of the hottest IT solutions available at the moment and how they can benefit your business.
Cloud computing is a hot topic in the IT industry at the moment and not without reason. Basically cloud computing offers users IT resources such as software as a service over the internet. One of the great things about cloud is that users need no knowledge or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud. All data and software is stored on servers this reduces in house costs by removing the need for expensive hardware. Cloud computing is also a green technology helping cut down your carbon emissions by reducing electricity output.
Software Asset Management (SAM)
SAM is a set of established processes and procedures for managing and optimising your businesses IT assets. Implementing SAM can help your business significantly reduce costs by helping you recognise what software you have, where it’s running and if your software is being utilised effectively. SAM is crucial to your business especially as software owners such as Microsoft begin to conduct audits of their customers to ensure licences are not being abused.
Virtualisation
Like Cloud Computing, Virtualisation is another hot topic in the IT industry at the moment. Virtualisation is the creation of a virtual version of a piece of hardware, software, operating system or server which can be operated on existing hardware. Virtualisation makes existing hardware more efficient and can increase resource utilisation rates by 80%. Increasing efficiency can help significantly reduce your IT costs, Virtualisation typically reduces hardware costs by 40% to 50% and power related costs by 30% – 70%.
Consumerisation of IT
This is not an IT solution itself but a trend in the industry to keep an eye on as it will lead to a review of your IT security. The Consumerisation of IT is where end users bring their own devices and connect to your corporate network. This throws up all kinds of security issues as IT departments will have less control on what content is accessed via machines connected to their network. A security assessment will be needed if this a strategy you want to adopt but this will be worth it in the long run due to the significant reduction in hardware costs.
Alex Smith is a regular blogger on technology and IT solutions and a big gadget fan.
]]>In a bygone era, a company’s accountants and payroll department would have to familiarise themselves with tax rates, deduction amounts and percentages, and a flurry of mathematical adjustments and calculations as they applied to each employee’s pay check. This made payroll an especially time consuming and complex task, characterised by a large department of number-crunching accountants checking and double-checking their work.
Payroll software has reduced the need for this tedious task. Instead, these software applications are familiar with the tax rates in multiple countries and jurisdictions. Simply set up the payroll software to work with your particular country and it will do the rest: it can figure out tax rates, National Insurance deductions, and any other matters that apply to an individual’s pay check. Companies can even set up their own deductions for things like pensions and other benefits. And there’s no need for calculators or a room full of accountants: the software takes care of the task automatically and in a matter of seconds.
Without the need for a large accounting staff dedicated solely to employee pay, companies can feel free to minimise the size and scope of both their payroll and accounting departments. This can result in a significant year-end savings that can be the difference between ending the year with a profit and ending it without one.
Payroll software stores a vast number of archives in its database, and these records are searchable by company employees. That means past pay stubs can be pulled up at any time — either by employees or by the payroll department — and checked for errors, discrepancies, or other items. These archives can also keep a record, and a running tally, of all relevant deductions per pay check and per month or year. This allows employees and the payroll department to see exactly where their money is going when it is deducted, and how much they can expect to be deducted, on average, per pay check.
Many releases of payroll software can integrate with a company’s existing electronic time recording system. This is important, as it will help to pay employees only for the precise amount of time that they were actually on the job. Payroll software can manage employees’ pay by integrating with these systems and paying an hourly rate based on quarter-hour increments or even less. That means a late employee will not earn the same amount as someone who came in early, got the job done, and left fifteen minutes late to ensure that it was done right.
Payroll software results in higher efficiency for business as well as a sizable cost savings year-over-year. Additionally, it ensures that employees can view their archived pay stubs and records, and that each employee is paid only for the time they were on the job — rather than giving them the benefit, and payment, of the doubt.
]]>It goes without saying that every video conferencing system that is purchased must meet the needs of the business as well as enabling the business to communicate effectively in internal and external business meetings. Here are 4 things that should be considered when choosing a video conferencing system:
Adaptive Motion Control (AMC) with Forward Error Correction acts as the brain of your video architecture by making appropriate changes when the network conditions change and by auto negotiating in real time to make sure that the motion settings are exactly as you want them to be. Bandwidth availability can often be unpredictable and AMC will take appropriate action to minimise the effects of poor bandwidth. Adaptive Motion Control automatically implements a number of industry recognised techniques such as bitrate downspeeding, packet marking and Forward Error Correction (FEC) which when combined, can help to deliver a constant High Definition picture. A number of video conferencing manufacturers offer this feature but Lifesize is considered to be one of the best when it comes to adaptive performance.
The higher the resolution, the less grainy the picture will be therefore you should choose a video conferencing system that is capable of generating High Definition video. Some High Definition video conferencing systems will be able to support 720P and may give the option to opt for 1080P resolution but will reduce the frame rate so you should find out about this when asking about the resolution of your video conferencing system.
The mark of a well thought out and well-designed video conferencing system is that it is reliable. The reliability of the system will be greatly improved if it supports Adaptive Motion Control since this reduces the chances of any problems occurring during a video conferencing session.
Choose a video conferencing service that supports a Firewall or NAT Traversal service as this will help prevent any unauthorised people from listening in to your conversation. A H.460 Firewall is the recommended option that is used for video conferencing so make sure you ask about this before committing to purchasing your video conferencing system.
]]>When choosing an ERP vendor, companies will spend a large portion of their time looking at the actual system and this will definitely prove to be beneficial but they will often overlook the support that the vendor is able to provide when things go wrong. It is vital that the vendor has a support team that is appropriately equipped to be able to deal with problems in an efficient manner as they occur. A problem with your ERP system will often result in your ERP commitments stopping altogether. A good support team should also be able to provide advice, guidance and even additional ERP tools. Here is a checklist of 5 things that you should ask a software vendor about their support team before purchasing ERP software from them.
One of the big advantages of using Software Asset Management software is that it can actually help to lower costs as well as giving businesses better financial control. Typically, a good Software Asset Management system will provide the following functionality:
Software Asset Management Systems can track all software that is installed on an organisations computer network. This can help prevent workers from downloading and installing unauthorised software onto their machines. This in turn improves software security by preventing the chances of the user (whether it be accidently or intentionally) downloading software bundled in with viruses onto the organisations machines.
One of the major benefits of using a Software Asset Management system is that it protects the organisation from unintentionally acquiring illegal software licences which would be useful in the event of a surprise software audit.
A number of Asset Management Tools exist and although they can help the business in many ways, most have been designed to help organisations to manage their technical responsibilities. Here are some of the more common Asset Inventory Tools and how they can benefit a business:
As Software Asset Management systems help to prevent unauthorised software from making its way into the organisation, there should be fewer software issues which means that the organisation can downsize their IT support team due to fewer IT support related issues.
]]>All small home networks require the same basic set of components: more than one computer, a router, which analyzes the data it receives and tells it where to go, software installed in the computers that works in concert with the router, and a path for the information to follow between the computers and the router, which can either be through a physical cable (a wired network) or over the air (a wireless network). Wired and wireless networks each have advantages and disadvantages. Wired networks can achieve greater data transfer rates than wireless networks but require cable to be run throughout the household. Wireless networks offer fast data transfer rates, but cannot achieve the same speeds as wired networks. Wireless networks must also be properly secured so that moving across them cannot be intercepted. However, wireless networks are more flexible than wired networks, and are especially useful if laptops or other portable computing devices are planned to be part of the network.
Once the most suitable type of network has been settled upon and the equipment purchased, it must be installed and configured. Any router should come with complete setup instructions that will clearly explain how to establish a connection between it and the devices to be added to the network. After a connection has been established between the computers and the router, the computers must be configured to allow them to communicate with one another. The exact method by which this is achieved varies by the computer’s operating system/ hardware/ software combination, but easy-to-follow instructions can usually be found in the computer’s network and internet settings documentation or equivalent.
There is also another very simple, fast way to set up a network between two computers by connecting them directly to one another with an ethernet cable (as long as both computers have network interface cards installed). This type of connection can be useful for the simple transfer of files between computers, but is otherwise significantly less flexible than connecting through a router.
Indeed, with such user-friendly setup options, there is no longer reason for the average computer owner to be intimidated by establishing a computer network.
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