The last couple of years has seen a radical shift in IT infrastructure and strategies following the effects of the pandemic.   Many have moved to an online e-commerce platform and others have opened up access to their systems to suppliers and customers.  Working from home has also played a major part in shifting the focus […]

IT infrastructure isn’t static.  As a business grows, it”s IT Infrastructure needs to grow with it.  Changes in the business environment, application changes, equipment replacements all mean infrastructure changes.  From time to time, the changes in workflow and storage are sufficient to mean a rethink about the overall infrastructure itself. IT Infrastructure scaling comes in […]

Because of the pandemic, what were business development strategies have now become survival strategies. Many businesses have moved to cloud-based e-commerce solutions to offset the loss of bricks-and-mortar trade. They envisage cost savings, improvements in service levels, and an increased ability to incorporate new technologies into their existing infrastructure. Cloud Solutions can be used in-house […]

In both the in-house and managed service provider (“MSP”) environments, managing and monitoring performance is a key task.  Every IT department should have a performance monitoring strategy. In a typical IT environment, the service that a customer receives is dependent on: Server performance, measured by a server monitor; The overall server performance is defined by […]

A well-configured, performant network is essential to all organisations. In the new world of companies relying on e-commerce as their prime source of income, having IT networking systems available and responsive to customers is an absolute necessity. Linux is the most used IT networking environment with between 80% and 90% of all internet servers running […]

The pandemic and the consequent move to remote working, working from home, and the move to e-commerce have highlighted IT Security’s role in the IT workplace.  Networks must be efficient, responsive, and above all, secure.  They must be resistant to DDoS and other external attacks,  prevent malware attacks as far as possible and provide a […]

Digital transformation has been in the news a lot recently, often coupled with its fraternal twin, digital convergence. As with many trending topics, people often talk of the one meaning the other, and in general, are not entirely sure of what each term exactly means. To consider a couple of working definitions: Digital transformation is […]

Networks, especially multi-site networks, have become more and more complicated in recent times.  Back in the day, they carried data, and that was about it.  Today they carry data, multimedia, voice, access control and security data, fire control data, and perhaps some specialized data for alarm controls.  Network Performance is a hot potato.   Managing […]

Back in the day, network management was a resource-hungry tedious process.  Network topology and equipment configuration was manual, usually through a command-line interface.  Today, with ever-more complex networks supporting more types of traffic, there isn’t the luxury of time for box-by-box network configuration and management. The current move to Software-Defined Networks (“SDN”), with the ultimate […]

The stampede to the cloud is well underway, both as the implementation of cloud principles in-house or moving to an outsourced managed service provider. In all cases, one concern is that of taking reusable backups as part of normal operations and as part of a business continuity plan. The first question to answer is to […]