1st post of the year
Well, our first post of the year. It has been a slow start with the weather. but it has left us with some time to tie up lose ends on some new products, which we will be releasing over the next month or so.
One thing that has been in demand is for people to work remotely. A number of our customers had this in place, the problem for them was in the main it wasn't designed to work for the entire work force.
Now is the time to start to think about this and perhaps even a little bit deeper into
full disaster recovery. If you are a
Small business, do you use Microsoft Small Business server? if so why not use the Remote Web Workplace?
A short 60 second presentation is
Available from MicrosoftAlso available is a short presentation about sharing a conference call and presentation using
Microsoft Office Live MeetingBoth
utilise technology that helps with travel budgets, or ease of access if we get snowed in again.
New this month is our Disaster Recovery Solution, a very cost effective method of providing Disaster Recovery for small
businesses details are
available from our website For a small cost you can purchase seats in bundles of 6 or 12. Contact us for details.
We are starting to have discussions with a lot of our clients about how we can best improve
their use of technology to help improve their business. Still carrying out IT Audits, and
discussions with possible new clients, if you want to know more then drop me an email
martin@limbtec.comLAPTOPSHowever you dress them up, they really
don't like drinks being spilt into them, and they don't like being stood on or having things thrown at them. Basically treat them like they will break, as they will if you do any of the following.
BTWell our
BT issues keep on going on and on and on. It now appears that the shiny copper cable going from here
to the street cabinet, may not be a shiny, or
indeed contain much copper anymore.
You would have thought the
simplest solution would be to
rerun fresh copper from end to end, but apparently patching every couple of weeks or so with bits of cable is far better.
Come on
BT get your act together and get this 11 month (actually 11 months and 1 day) issue resolved.
I am intending to post this
blog every Friday PM, but this is subject to change!
Thanks for reading and more next week.
Labels: BT, disaster recovery, laptop repair in plymouth, microsoft, phone issues, sbs, small business server
A review of the year
Well, just about Evonne does a review of the year, although this year most of the TV programmes are a review of the decade.
This time last year I sat down and wondered what on earth was going to happen through 2009, we had already been hit by a couple of Bad debts, and we needed to alter the way we work. The good thing for us was at the end of 2007, and moving in to 2008 we had sorted out our marketing, refreshed our log and branding. So the answer was all we could do was try our hardest, support our customers, try and reduce costs where possible, and offer to be flexible on payments should the need arise.
And so the year started, we were hit with another couple of customers going bust, but in the main our customers were surviving reasonably well. So we started looking for more customers, we have increased our Business to Business Support customer base by 25%, this has resulted in us keeping our income slightly above the previous year, as we had lost some customers and the others were not spending as much.
We saw rapid growth in our Home User market, particularly in our laptop repairs. Replacement Screens, and replacement power jacks accounting for most of the laptop repairs.
The biggest issue we have seen a rise in, for move businesses and consumers are issues with broadband. In the main and issue arising either with the router, or mainly issues with the actual connection and the ensuring battle with the ISP, but mainly due to BT.
We had a BT Install that had the filter int he wrong place, but the main issues have been with line issues, or other BT issues, I have to add most of these occurred after most of the exchanges in Plymouth were upgraded to BT's 21CN platform. We ourselves have had an ongoing fight for 10 months, other have faired better. But int he main if I had to award a technology villain of the year it would have to go to BT. Please BT in the new year will you take note that customers do have issues and mainly these issues are with your network and not their router or extension cable. And when you run one of your tests and it doesn't run due to a complete lack of bandwidth their is an issue, and the issue is with you.
Enough of that rant, the I-phone has grown in stature and with the host of apps is probably my recommendation for a smart phone for businesses.
Microsoft released Windows 7, and should have a raft of releases in 2010 scheduled. It was a pretty flat year for releases with manufacturers perhaps holding back until people have money to spend, but this has to change next year! (look for announcements by Google and Apple in January)
Looking forward, Plymouth has some major plans ahead this summer will see FIFA visit the city to select the venues for the 2018 World cup bid, I'm sure we will all blow them away. then we just have to wait til December for the announcement of who will get the World Cup. One unusual hero in technology in the city has been the chamber of commerce. Hopefully we will start to see the plans they have produced start to come true. We may well See H2O move into the city to provide fast (and i do mean fast, faster than we currently have) Broadband to the city, by laying fibre to premises using existing conduit (Mainly the sewer system). This will help move Plymouth ahead, and may help force BT to improve the plans for Fibre to the Cabinet in the City!
Well this is my last blog post of the year. Hopefully I will post even more next year, but you can follow the day to day ramblings on twitter -
www.twitter.com/limbtecLabels: 2018, apple, BT, cable, chamber of commerce, h20, microsoft, plymouth, Twitter, world cup
Updates
Firstly, it seems Microsoft has finally got round to sorting some of their security holes. On Tuesday MS released 10 new security patches for Office, Internet Explorer, and Operating systems.
Whist mentioning Operating Systems, Apple will release it next version (Snow
Leopard) in September, the month before
Microsoft's release of Windows 7.
We have been busy as well, our hosted email can now be on Exchange 2007, and we can offer a reduction if you already have an Outlook License. We are now also partners of WASP, and can provide a range of systems to scan items including
EPOS.
We are also working on a new website for a local Cricket Club, which we hope to have up and running soon.
Labels: apple, epos, exchange, microsoft, security updates, wasp
Microsoft Office Live
Are you a small business, or thinking of starting a business.
have a look at Microsoft's office live.
Depending on what you want, this could even be free. You get a free domain name, and you will then have a business looking email address.
I always get worried when I see a new business, with a
hotmail or
gmail address. Even worse when it is an established business.
We are currently working on plans on how we can support businesses using Office Live.
If you want to give it a try (currently free as it is in Beta) but want to have some back up, sign up and contact us we will come and see you and give you free support for the short term whilst we develop our offerings around Office Live.
Labels: business, live, microsoft, office
