Tag Archives: device

Does BYOD Have Real Value For Business?

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By Ian Callens from IT service, support and solutions provider Icomm Technologies

 

It’s great that so many businesses are embracing new technology and looking for new ways to engage their workforce.  Indeed industry research shows 81% of companies now accommodate personal devices in the office, whilst 54% have formalised ‘bring you own device’ (BYOD) policies.

BYOD is clearly here to stay and this is being driven by perceived business rewards of a more flexible, mobile and agile workforce driven by the workforce.  However, BYOD is a subject trying to force a wedge between finance and IT, where finance sees cost benefits and IT views the enormous security, support and implementation issues.  Continue reading →

Creating IT Heroes

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By Nathan Pearce, F5’s Senior Technical Marketing Manager

As an IT professional, technology evolution can be a blessing and a curse.

The constant conveyor belt of new products mean you have potentially a huge arsenal of tools at your disposal. But the demands of the business and the difficulties of where to place your technology bets means you’re constantly facing difficult decisions.

At the moment, we’re experiencing the most accelerated pace of IT change we’ve ever known. Cloud computing, big data / analytics, mobile and social are transforming the way we work and the way our businesses operate.

Yet, there remains a sentiment in some quarters that the IT department has lost influence in the business in recent years, is unreliable or is a barrier to progress, lacking the necessary knowledge to tackle and implement new solutions and infrastructures efficiently. Continue reading →

Flash: Enabling the “Mission-Critical Business”

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By Brian Feller, VP & GM EMEA, Whiptail

Imagine how your business might benefit if you processed 1,000 more transactions per second. If you concluded an analysis 20 minutes sooner. If a batch processing job was reduced from eight hours to two – or even less.

Those are some of the benefits offered by flash storage for business applications and data, as opposed to traditional mechanical, hard disk-drive storage devices.  It’s a fundamental business transition from selecting some applications to push towards peak performance into an enterprise where every application accelerates to its maximum potential. Flash enables a high performance “mission critical business,” which efficiently manages data center resources while leveraging personnel more effectively. Continue reading →

How do you make staff more productive?

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By Phil Jones, UK Country head, Brother UK

 

How about asking them not to come in to the office on a Friday? What about offering flexible working hours?

It may seem counter intuitive to ask employees to spend fewer hours in the office; however a flexible working culture can actually increase productivity as well as reduce costs.

Business is increasingly taking place wherever and whenever, and so the norm of 9-5 office hours is fast becoming an outdated concept. The global mobile workforce, which is set to hit 1.3bn in 2015,* is growing rapidly as both employees and employers recognise the benefits. Continue reading →

When two worlds collide

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By James Passingham, Technical Services Director at Foehn

In a perfect world, Graham Alexander Bell, Almon Brown Strowger and Dr Martin Cooper would have lived at the same time and talked about their plans to develop modern day communications, including the phone, switch and cellular phone.

Unfortunately this wasn’t to be and telecommunications has developed in silos, with fixed telephony and mobile telephony two separate infrastructures.

Only now are we seeing a true melding of the two through Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). Continue reading →

Mobile data recovery: a growing cause for concern

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By Robert Winter, chief engineer, Kroll Ontrack

According to the International Telecommunication Union, the number of mobile phones worldwide is expected to exceed the world’s population by 2014, with overall penetration rates reaching 96 percent globally by the end of 2013.

Consistent with the widespread adoption of mobile devices, Kroll Ontrack saw a 55 percent increase in mobile device recoveries for phones and tablets from 2010 to 2011, and a 161 percent increase from 2011 to 2012. With more and more people storing valuable personal and business data on their mobile devices, there is no doubt the demand for recovery when something goes wrong will continue to climb. Continue reading →

Are PCs going the way of the dodo?

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By Nathan Pearce, F5’s Senior Technical Marketing Manager

 

Over the last few months, there has been a huge amount of discussion in the media about the death of the PC. Despite Yahoo’s recent ban, mobile working has become the norm and many of us are choosing to invest in tablets and laptops rather than sedentary PCs so that we can work whenever and from wherever we want.

A recent Gartner report revealed that worldwide PC shipments declined by 4.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012, while PC shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa fell by 9.6 per cent. This is more than the effect of a weak global economy – this is the sign of a genuine shift in working practice and buying behaviour. Continue reading →

BYOD: Implementing and defining an effective Mobile Device Management programme

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By Rob Newburn, Head of Information Security & Managed Services, Trustmarque

As an increasing number of employees are bringing mobile devices into the workplace, many organisations are keen to take advantage of this trend and encourage their use for business purposes.

The benefits of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) are well-known and have been widely written about, but less well discussed are the thought processes and diligence that need to be undertaken to make this secure as well as successful. By formally adopting BYOD, organisations can lose some control over IT hardware and how it is used. However, with an effective plan of action it is possible to balance user productivity with security.

The key to the success of a BYOD programme is the preservation of user experience. If the user experience is compromised, employees will very quickly switch off. Here are some of the main things you need to consider in order to preserve user experience and maintain corporate security. Continue reading →

Embrace Smartphone Users and Stop Sales Stagnating in 2013

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By Michael Smith, a marketing executive at 9xb

 

Web use is changing. Think about how you access the internet now, compared to five years ago. Back then, it would be almost exclusively through a desktop or, at a push, laptop. Now, it’s more likely to be through a phone, a tablet or video game. A lot has changed in a short amount of time.

The stats back this up. According to the 2011 Horizon Report, by 2015, 80% of people accessing the internet will be doing so through a mobile device. Analysts from Morgan Stanley concurred with this, predicting that, based on the current rate of adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop internet by 2015.

This presents a challenge and an opportunity for companies with an online presence (which is the vast majority in the 21st century). So how can businesses embrace mobile? Let’s look at one of the biggest opportunities here: smartphone users. Continue reading →