Novosco Blog

“We will manage it ourselves”, “We don’t outsource any of our services”, and “We want to keep this in-house”. We’ve heard these phrases many times during customer project meetings and I often wonder why these types of things are said, so let's take a look.

 
A few initial thoughts:

• Organisations are concerned with minimising financial costs.  Factoring in costs for management of projects/solutions will exceed their budgets etc.

• Human nature dictates that we like to keep control of things, so the concept of handing over the reins to something that you “own” can be daunting or threatening.

• Legislation/Regulation govern what organisations are able to do with regards to potential outsourcing/management services. 

Facebook's mantra for developers used to be 'Move Fast and Break Things'. It meant that new tools and features on the platform might not be perfect at the start, but creation speed was key, even if there were some mistakes along the way.

That mantra changed a few years ago when the company's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg indicated he wanted to be a little more careful in getting it right the first time. He said that Facebook was now embracing the motto 'Move Fast with Stable Infra'. The motto changed, but did the culture?

Petrol vs Diesel? Apples & Oranges? Is it a matter of preference? Moving forward seems logical? Is moving backwards better in some cases?  I can think of a few real-world examples that fit both cases but in the sense of Veeam backups, which one is better?

Better is a very general term…

With XenApp 6.5 nearing EoL in June 2018, organisations around the world are planning an upgrade to XenApp and XenDesktop 7.x. While the move from one version of 7.x to another could be considered an easy in-place upgrade, the shift from 6.x to 7.x is a full-blown platform migration.

In the United States there has been much talk of a retail apocalypse, with a large number of retail stores closing as American consumers change their purchasing habits, notably with a move to e-commerce. Sears, for example, now has fewer than a third the number of retail stores it had 10 years ago. Of the 1,200 shopping malls across the US, some experts have predicted that half of them will close by 2023, and that more than 12,000 stores will close in 2018.

Rob is an Account Manager with Novosco, based in England. If he’s not playing football, or watching his son play football, or watching football in general, he’s probably away caravanning around the country.

Question: Rob, what’s your role with Novosco?

RIP ISDN, Long Live SIP

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is the digital standard for communication of data, voice and video, and it’s being phased out. By 2025 SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is the replacement that everything will be moved to. So what’s your business doing about it?

Moving to a hosted Skype for Business platform means your organisation is future proofing its communications as well as ensuring a better quality of service too; freeing you from a reliance on outdated copper wire infrastructure with a fast approaching use by date.

While it may seem counterintuitive, for many businesses, enlisting an external expert to monitor and manage the firm’s cyber defences may be the most effective way to stay in control of security.

Often, when a security breach occurs, the natural assumption is that the organisation’s security technology was not up to scratch. In our experience though, this isn’t usually the case. More often than not we discover that most companies have implemented appropriate security technology but it’s either not optimised at its most effective level or necessary updates, like the most recent patching, haven’t been applied.

Bronagh Hughes joined Novosco as Internal Recruiter in August 2017. She worked in recruitment for agencies previously, as well as the financial sector, and wants for little more in life than for her dog to sit under her desk at work with her all day.

Question: So, you’ve been with Novosco for 6 months at this point, what made you decide to join?

It has become abundantly clear that one of the more interesting stories of 2018 is going to be how ‘big tech' responds to the crisis it is facing.

Some would say that it has monopoly power, an ability to affect election outcomes and a big hold on our brain space… and there is the evidence mounting that big tech has become something of an existential threat, in terms of politics, the economy, and culturally.

We understand that moving everything to the cloud isn’t for every company and that keeping some of your applications on premise is important and vital for many organisations.  

Securing your on premise data and infrastructure is equally as important as security in the cloud. We’ve put together our 6 best practices for cyber defence for your on premise infrastructure. 

How do you manage systems you can’t see or don’t know about?  Where is your customer data stored or used – on your servers or in the cloud? Confident you are abiding by compliance requirements?

Cloud applications have been empowering for business. Does one of your teams need a CRM, an analytics package, or a marketing automation platform? No problem, they can get them all today, with a quick and easy sign-up – without engaging the IT team.

Well of course you do. Disaster Recovery (DR) like anything depends on the budget, time, effort and resources you have available. If your organisation is considering DR, there are several options open to you:

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is perhaps that every company is now a technology company, no matter what product or service it provides. You can’t make, deliver or market a product or service without using technology. Companies that know the coming technology trends and adapt quickly are the ones that get ahead. So here are some of the key IT trends that we are likely to see in 2018.

How can we reduce the risk of exploitation?

In general the advice remains the same for most businesses - make sure your systems and end-points are up to date with their patches and security products.

Emma Harvey is a Technical Services Analyst, helping our customers with support issues and making sure that the right people are working on the right projects. She's a social butterfly who loves to travel, lives for an Espresso Martini and would have Christmas Dinner every day, if she had her way!

Question: Emma, what do you do at Novosco?

Emma: I’m a Technical Services Analyst for Novosco, which means that I handle incoming communication from customers, log tickets, assign tickets to our expert engineers, and help with any issues they may have.

Jonny Murray is an Event Management Technician who has been with Novosco for nearly two years. He's a huge Manchester United fan and likes to spend his free time on the Playstation4.

Question: So, Jonny, what do you do at Novosco?

Jonny: I’m an event management technician. Which probably sounds a bit too vague, so for a specific “what is my role”, I’m part of a team that monitor our customer’s various systems to ensure things work as they’re supposed to.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said that whoever cracks automated intelligence (AI) first will dominate the world. He made the point that any country with a ‘monopolist’ position in AI will be all-powerful economically, politically and militarily.

In response to Putin’s comments, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that "competition for AI superiority at national level is the most likely cause of WW3."

“If we understand what the technology is capable of, we will be in a better place to tell you how our organisation can leverage it” - says one business leader.

“This is what we want the business to achieve and how we’re going to get there.  Go find technology that helps make this happen” - says another.

So which comes first?

Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) will take place in November. It is the world’s biggest celebration of entrepreneurship - with over 35,000 events taking place in more than 160 countries.

So, this is perhaps a useful juncture to reflect on entrepreneurship in this part of the world – not least as the EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Ireland) 2017 was announced on Thursday past.