On 25-28 October 2016, Auckland will be hosting Microsoft Ignite New Zealand 2016. With 2,500 attendees, you would be wrong to write this off as an insignificant, local event. Even being so far away from Redmond, it’s well supported by the Microsoft team in the USA. The keynote speakers are Dona Sarkar (Windows Insider Program […]
Managing on-premises and Cloud backup and compliance with Druva
The need to back up files you’re storing in the Cloud is a contentious topic. Some would argue that the resilience and redundancy built into services like Office 365 mean that paying for any additional backup solution is overkill and unnecessary. Others would argue (strongly) that the resilience is purely for the SaaS provider’s benefit […]
Mind the Gap - The Reality of Technology Use
IT projects are established because of a need, and can be led by IT, the business or both. Generally, the IT drivers are pretty easy to quantify. Aging hardware is more likely to fail, and it is more challenging to quickly find cost-effective replacement parts. This means that replacement minimizes potential downtime. Business drivers can […]
Monitoring Desktops? The Case for Monitoring Desktops in the SMB market.
The Small and Medium Business (SMB) market has been such a big part of my life for the past 12 years that sometimes I forget the stark contrast between it and the enterprise world. I asked a question of some of my peers online last week in relation to desktop monitoring. Their responses were the […]
What you NEED to Know about choosing a Remote Monitoring and Management Tool
If you’re an Enterprise systems administrator, you’ll have some structured tools in place to support your servers and desktops. In a Microsoft-centric world, you’re likely to have a Standard Operating Environment, locked-down control via Group Policy, and SCCM and SCOM servers for configuration and management control. Or perhaps you’ve invested in third party monitoring tools, […]
Debating the Future of the Data Center
More and more organizations are weighing up the numbers – is it still cost-effective to run your own data center or even rent rack space in someone else’s data center? Is Infrastructure as a Service the way to go, to smooth out periods of large capex and reduce the hidden costs of hardware maintenance? Your […]
Should the SMB Secure Employee Mobile Devices through MDM?
Having some way to manage the security of mobile devices is crucial for Enterprise environments. If mobile phone and tablets are provided by the organization, having a tool to manage this ‘fleet’ is just as important as the tools you use to manage your desktops. After starting out with application provisioning and enforcing PIN numbers, […]
Cryptolocker, The Cloud, and How to Protect Your Organization
It’s frustrating that in 2016 we still have to be careful when opening emails. For all of our advances in technology, the scammers have advanced too, and they’re making a nice sum of money from ‘ransomware’ infections. Threats like Cryptolocker are prevalent among home users who wonder what package delivery they missed, and whose anti-virus […]
Windows 10 is great, but is the Small Business ready?
Last year Microsoft released the Get Windows 10 notification, and was Microsoft’s first “in your face” deployment mechanism for a major operating system upgrade. It was met with mixed results, from enthusiastic early adopters to people who still haven’t upgraded and were still waiting for the Service Pack 1 to be released first. The most […]