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Despite advances in the resilience of IT systems, there remains a grim reality of failures which have the rather unpleasant habit of striking at the least convenient of times. Even short periods of outages can wreak havoc; after all, our dependence on IT has never been higher. But outside of annoyance, what does downtime actually cost?

Factors to consider are:

With the whole world apparently going cloud crazy, you might get the idea that you’re missing out (and the chances are, if your technology systems are long in the tooth, you are). Check out these five signs which show your business is ready to take the leap…and reap the rewards.

Ever lost your emails or experienced a corrupted .pst file? For most long-term users of on-premise emails, this is a reality which occasionally bites – and it always leaves nasty scars. With a move to Office 365, you’re likely to never face the problem again. But let’s start at the start.

As useful as the internet is, it is also the means by which criminals can attack your business, either to disrupt operations, or for their financial gain. Information security is everyone’s business: employees, managers and business owners. It is necessary to take reasonable precautions to secure individual devices, the network and all other IT infrastructure against threats which continually evolve and which, if they take hold, can have nasty effects on productivity, reputation and the bottom line.

But just what is malware? 

The world is changing as technology grows ever more mobile. Cellphones have gone from bulky, large pieces of hardware to smaller, more compact specimens; always useful, they’ve also evolved from ‘just’ making calls, to revolutionary tools for doing business over the internet. For owners of any business, the opportunity presented by these connected devices cannot be ignored, as they deliver efficiencies, convenience and productivity benefits which can substantially boost personal and company performance .

Doing that depends on more than the smartphone, though – it comes down to the apps you’re using. Here’s our pick of three particularly useful apps which can give your company that little bit of extra oomph:

So do you use the cloud? Most people’s first reaction is no.

But let's ask you another question... Do you make use of Internet Banking or do you Dropbox? Yes? Then you are in the cloud!

Owing to its widespread use, online banking serves as a great example to explain the evolution of cloud computing and the progression most of us make towards using the cloud as a de facto standard for service consumption. Let’s take a closer look.

While humans love predictability, the world we live in is decidedly erratic. The unexpected can always happen – and when it does, can your business resume operations rapidly?

The reality is that most small to medium businesses have rudimentary disaster recovery (DR) plans in place, if any at all. More than that, those plans are probably never tested. Admit it – the reality is that despite living in the Shaky Isles, where a flood or a slip is known to happen regularly, you probably haven’t given DR any thought at all.

Now is a good time to change that.

Archiving company emails is one of those ‘bugbear’ tasks which can seem like a lot more hassle than it’s worth. After all, emails gather pretty quickly and can rapidly accumulate, requiring significant amounts of storage capacity.

But failing to archive email can have some consequences - and those drawbacks go beyond the risks associated with regulatory compliance (although that is in its own right a very good reason to look after old email!).

Oh well… forget all of this! This week we thought we should twist things and instead focus on why you SHOULDN’T need to archive your emails.

A lot has been said about the cloud and there is still a lot more to come. That’s because cloud computing really does deliver the advantages that it promises: reduced cost, more accurate provisioning, easier management and access to better services (and a wider range, too). But for many, moving to the cloud remains a worrying proposition. Is it secure, will it work for MY business, what are the catches?

There is a growing body of evidence (including case studies and reference clients) which are helping to dispel the concerns – but for those thinking about cloud, here are our top five things to consider.

Probably the best feature of the cloud is the quite staggering amount of awesome apps you can get for free. In this article, we outline 3 absolutely great (and FREE) cloud apps and services that everyone should be using to organise and share their data.