Is BYOD right for your business?

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is popular among businesses that need their workers to have constant access to data, but don’t want the hassle of both an office and a personal smartphone. BYOD can help your business attract new employees, who will see your company as forward thinking. It can also save your company money, as you don’t have to pay for expensive phone contracts, and it can make your workers more efficient as they have total access to office apps and data. However, how can you be sure that BYOD is the best option for your business?

You can judge if BYOD will be of value for your company by calculating the cost over the savings. Costs may include developing a dedicated company app, data security costs, subscriptions to cloud services, or downtime through lost devices. Savings will include the cost of the phones, contracts, insurances and accessories.

Once you can set up a business case for BYOD, then you will need to create guidelines and policies to make sure that workers secure their data and business apps, if a phone is lost or stolen; this will include simple things like ensuring phones are locked and pass code protected. When the BYOD scheme is up and running, you will also need to take measurements to make sure that the savings, efficiencies or other goals you intend to reach are being met.

An end-to-end IT policy will help manage BYOD schemes. Issues such as what happens when a worker leaves the company need to be ready in advance. While that may take time, implementing a BYOD scheme will save your IT team or staff from having to check if workers are making inappropriate use of your systems.

With most cloud services making data accessible across PCs, mobiles and tablets, starting a BYOD scheme has never been easier. That means your workers will have the data they need to hand, where ever they are. Improved mobile apps also mean they can work with data, be it documents, spreadsheets, designs or databases, not just refer to them.

With BYOD never more attractive for businesses big and small, see how we can help your company set up a scheme.

Is BYOD right for your business?

For ultimate performance, and peace of mind, go multi-cloud

Companies everywhere are increasingly not only migrating their in-house networks to one cloud computing service, but to several of them. The reason? To drastically slash the risk of something going wrong and losing invaluable data, and to improve performance and reliability.

We all know that the major cloud providers, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce, bend over backwards to tell us how secure their services are and that nothing will ever happen to bring them crashing down. But that’s exactly what happens every now and then. Microsoft’s Azure cloud service was the most recent victim of a widespread outage that affected large numbers of its clients – and in business, as in life, there are just no guarantees.

All it takes is a loose cable or a hard disk that stops working and a company’s critical online operations come to a sudden and distressing halt. That’s not even taking other major risk factors into account, including fierce storms that knock out power supplies and cause infrastructure damage, and the ever-present threat of cyber-attacks that have become a devastating reality for some companies around the world.

When systems go down and a firm can’t email or use messaging services, as well as critical programs and apps, it all spells disaster – especially if they’re running an ecommerce operation. Customers will lose trust in the company and quickly go elsewhere.

The answer: the multi-cloud

Using different cloud computing services can greatly benefit companies in other ways too, such as the speed that web pages load on PCs and mobile devices. It’s hugely important for online operations that pages load in a second or two, because that’s what users expect, according to recent research, and slow sites won’t do much for companies in terms of their search engine rankings.

Developing a multi-cloud strategy also allows companies to take advantage of the different features of a number of cloud services – as not all of them are the same – and improve their own operations, including managing how traffic is routed and handling large volumes of server requests.

Preventing disruption and enhancing services is what the multi-cloud, and every firm, is all about.

For ultimate performance, and peace of mind, go multi-cloud

Will an iPad Pro have a place in your business?

Apple has long been rumoured to be hard at work on a larger-format iPad to encourage further adoption among business users. While the smaller Mini model might be fine for the family, and the original 9 inch version is okay for some light executive work, if you’re really going to collaborate, you need a little more screen space.

So, the company has been secretly planning what most people think will be a 12.9 inch model called iPad Pro. Some photos and details of components and prototype parts have now been leaked by the usual Asian supply chain sources, leaving Apple with little to show, should they unveil it at their Worldwide Developer Conference in June. But, will it be worth investing in them for your business? Apple’s recent tie-in with IBM for business apps and cloud services should encourage uptake among larger organisations, and even the basic Apple or Microsoft office suite apps are now very easy to use and not far off their desktop equivalents in terms of features.

A larger screen will certainly make the device easier to work on, or spin around and pass between people at brainstorming sessions, or put on the meeting room table to help the flow of creativity. You can be sure that Apple probably has a new app or two to encourage collaboration on the device. A next-generation collaboration app could record all the audio from a meeting, and note which contributor made what changes to a document or image – there are certainly lots of possibilities.

While Apple probably wants to keep its iOS and OS-X devices distinct and separate, we’re sure that third parties will be providing keyboards to turn it into a two-in-one device to make it more practical for writers and editors, and perhaps even get other virtual operating systems running to make it more computer-like. There are plenty of larger tablets out there on the market for business use, but few seem to have taken off in terms of sales; will Apple’s next entry in the iPad range fare any better? We’ll probably find out in the autumn when it is likely to go on sale. One thing is certain though – it will not be cheap.

Will an iPad Pro have a place in your business?

How to protect yourself against cybercrime in 2015

There has always been the need to protect your computer from vicious malware and spyware attacks. In this age, cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the methods they use to steal data. Never before has computer security been so important.

Here are a few of the major cybercrime attacks to look out for in 2015:

1. Ransomware

Experts expect to see a rise in something called ‘ransomware’. This involves scammers locking your device and asking for a payment to unlock it.

2. Targeted attacks

An increase in more sophisticated, targeted attacks is also expected. In other words, criminals will hand-pick individuals corresponding to how much data they share online, rather than casting out a net and hoping that somebody will bite.

3. Social media malware

With the ever increasing use of social media, more and more criminals will abuse social media to scam people. This might be in the form of malicious videos, as well as malicious links within videos.

4. Open source code

Remember the Heartbleed and Shellshock attacks? Experts expect to see a similar incident happen again in 2015. Cybercriminals will seek vulnerabilities in source code to carry out their malicious activities.

5. Apple malware

Apple market themselves as being one of the safest providers around. But don’t get complacent because iOS users will also be vulnerable to attack this year.

However, there are several security measures that users can put into place to protect themselves against cybercrime:

• Install antivirus software and a firewall on your device

• Back up all of your files regularly using the cloud and remote storage

• Do not click on links that appear suspicious

• Make sure your passwords are strong

• Use encryption software to protect devices

• Enable remote wiping

• Keep devices somewhere thieves can’t get to them

As long as you follow these simple steps, you shouldn’t have a problem. Implement the measures above and be on the look out for the cybercrimes that are predicted for 2015 to make sure that you don’t become a victim.

How to protect yourself against cybercrime in 2015

Microsoft has plans for the Internet of Things on Windows 10 and Azure

The name Internet of Things (IoT) might sound rather nebulous, but that’s kind of the point. It will become a connected gathering of millions, if not billions, of devices, all having a small impact on our daily lives in the near future. From smart home devices for heat and lighting or smart traffic and parking technology, to gizmos monitoring our office and outside air quality, they will be everywhere, all talking to each other and to cloud servers around the world.

Naturally, Microsoft wants a piece of that infrastructure pie, and is aiming to get Windows 10 embedded in as many of those “things” as possible, and its Azure cloud service running in the background. These type of advances mean that companies big and small can starting making their own IoT tools, without the need for huge hardware investment and infrastructure, which is why so many IoT ideas are coming from small start-up or crowd-funded companies. Tiny devices like the Qualcomm Dragonboard (https://developer.qualcomm.com/mobile-development/development-devices/dragonboard/410c) are powering the “things”. Basically a smartphone on a chipset, they can be connected to a range of sensors and send back data over Wi-Fi or mobile networks.

So, if your business sells a product that currently requires time consuming interactions or regular check-ups, look to the Internet of Things to provide a remote sensing solution that can send live data or periodical maintenance information straight to a server, or a smartphone app, making your product cheaper for buyers to manage. Then imagine every company on Earth doing that, from your healthcare provider to the people who ship your components, hardware or goods around the world or country. That neatly sums up the IoT, and how Microsoft’s Azure IoT suite of tools announced in March (http://blogs.microsoft.com/iot/2015/03/16/microsoft-announces-azure-iot-suite/) will come in use for developing the services needed to run them.

Along with a small, compact Windows 10 installation for IoT devices, the combined service will offer a secure and efficient way of sending data between Internet of Things devices and servers, and then providing that data to workers in report or live form. From smartbands monitoring worker attendance, building access and health to office security cameras or GPS-enabled transmitters on your company fleet, businesses will soon be able to monitor every aspect of performance and maintenance, all in an easily expandable, small-business friendly manner.

Microsoft has plans for the Internet of Things on Windows 10 and Azure