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| An exciting year for the enviz Group |
| The introduction of Powered by enviz as well as new website in Feb.
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This 2012 is set to be an extremely exciting year for the enviz Group.
We are starting with our brand new website which is set to be launched on the 1st Feb. We are extremely excited about this as you are going to see from our customer’s perspectives as to why they have chosen and continue to choose to work with enviz IT.
As well as this we have seen unprecedented growth to enviz Converge specialists in supplying all forms of communication products, from standard telephone lines to VoIP and not forgetting Mobile as well as broadband services. All this is provided with the same exceptional customer service as enviz IT provides. If you have not heard from these guys you are sure to hear from them soon as they are keen to improve the level of service you receive from your current telecoms provider as well as cut your current costs.
Another area of interest is Powered by enviz, the company that enables you to create your own IT company at zero cost. This is a recession buster as this allows specific companies who match a certain criteria to go out there and create their own ICT business, expanding their product portfolio and ultimately making them extremely competitive in the market place. This has already experienced a massive amount of interest and is expecting to have its website launched mid February, however we will keep you up to date on that.
There have been some other new elements to the group including enviz Cloudsense a company focused on providing cloud solutions to all forms of businesses nationwide. This is expected to receive a lot of interest this year.
We also have 2 new members to welcome to the team, Richard Price who is joining the enviz IT tech team as well as Lisa Hayward who is heading up the Powered by enviz programme. Two exceptional characters who are keen to excel enviz in every way they can.
All in all, all of us at enviz are extremely excited to see what 2012 brings us, as things happen we will keep you up to date.
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| Frankly Recruitment and enviz Limited charity event in swindon |
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enviz IT would like to wish Frankly Recruitment the best of luck with their fund raising day in Swindon today. Come on down and help raise money for Red Nose Day.
http://rnd.franklyrecruitment.co.uk
enviz will be there to support you all the way
Best wishes
The Team @ enviz
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| No More Marketing Department. |
| Details and the latest news below
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Modern sales and marketing techniques will say you need a sharp suit, an upbeat pitch and to be ready for anything.Many companies that use this method will agree it works.
enviz IT adopted this approach and after 7 years of trading acquired less than 1% of its 350 customers though this type of sales, the rest are through recommendations and referrals - a far cry from a successful ad campaign.
Over the last 2 months enviz has changed its approach and has started to present prospective customers with IT professionals instead, this has had a direct impact on the amount of customers acquired via sales.They have found that people would much prefer to speak to people that support the product, instead of those who are trying to sell it.
As the enviz customer base grows, the technical team grows, bringing with it a wealth of knowledge and experience into the mix, making enviz a stronger candidate to pull out of the current financial low.
As a leading IT support company, enviz feels it is important to support local businesses and to help them reduce the cost of their IT infrastructure, as a result of their recent growth they will be freezing prices for 12 months so that they can pass on their success to their customers.
They have also remodelled their services so that they are not only cost effective, but more suited to the needs of local businesses ensuring that they only get what they need instead of the products and services companies want to sell them.
Over the next twelve months enviz will be hosting a presentation stand with a “Meet and Greet” in business parks around the town where they will be serving free tea and coffee and holding an IT clinic for the day.
enviz are looking to get in touch with local business who would like to invite one of their IT professionals into their offices to see if they can solve some of those long standing problems that won’t go away - totally free of charge!
If you have any interest in the business park stand or if you would like to meet the team, then feel free to contact them on: 0800 0822420 or Email team@envizit.co.uk. Web: www.envizit.co.uk
If you're thinking of a change in career or just think you can add something different to the team then please don’t hesitate to contact them on careers@envizit.co.uk.
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| Do you think your connection is fast enough? |
| So... Broadband speeds are definately on the up
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So... Broadband speeds are definately on the up. Even using your mobile phone you can start to get a respectable speed now but those nutters in the US have taken it one step further. In fact, they have taken several leaps further.
Whilst home users in the UK can enjoy speeds of 'up to' 50mbps, if we're lucky, businesses can opt for a Leased Line offering speeds of two to three times faster. Although depending on where you are this can cost you approximately £117,500 just to install it (As we recently found out) and a monthly bill comparable to having another employee on board.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, EPB Fiber Optics and Alcatel-Lucent have decided to work together and they are offering a staggering 1gbps (1000mbps) connection. But wait, it gets better - this isn't one of those times where a company promises something that takes months if ever to materialise. The service is live now!
Now this may all sound good but the cruncher is the price. At $350 (£227) per month it is considerably more than your standard broadband bill but for the speed it isn't that bad. For example an 'up to' 50mbps connection from Virgin will cost you around £38 per month. At that pricing structure that would equate to £760 per month for a 1gbps connection. Obviously this is based on the Chattanooga speed being 20x faster than Virgins fastest residential service and not taking into account that if Virgin were to ever introduce a 1gbps connection it would hopefully be much cheaper.
I know that I'd love a connection with that kind of speed. I wouldn't however want to spend that much on it!
Oh, and whilst we're on the subject of fast internet connections. Did you hear the one about the 75 year old Swedish woman with a 40gbps connection in her house? Admittedly she isn't any old age pensioner - she's the mother of Swedish internet mogul Peter Löthberg so you can't really blame her for having a cracking connection. And just to make you even more green with envy, she can download a full, Hi Def DVD movie in only 2 seconds.
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| Retro learning for A Level students |
| Taking away the computers of today and replacing with the 30 year old equivalent
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I was just perusing the BBC news website, in the technology section and came across an image that caught my eye, along with the headline “Blast from the past”. The image was of an extremely old computer, a 30 year old computer to be exact. I would always be drawn to this sort of article as it’s always interesting to go back in time and look at how computers have progressed. I remember the computers at primary school – to think how much they’ve changed in appearance and advanced and the things you can do etc is astounding.
So they caught my eye with the image and headline, I wanted to find out more and why this old friend was appearing on the pages of today’s BBC news page. It turns out that one A-Level teacher is using the old machines built by Acorn in 1981 (discontinued in 1994) to better teach his students how computers work and programming. It’s a much tougher way for them to learn as it offers a much more “unforgiving programming environment”, apparently the Visual Basic software they use for learning is way too easy on the students. As well as this, the old PCs are much slower and the students can see how things happen in real time.
In a brutal industry where the old is swiftly forgotten and replaced by the new, I think it is great that resources such as this that have long been put to bed can now be reused and not wasted. It’s also a great way for today’s youth to realise what computers came from. Early technology is a great way to help people realise quite what extraordinary capabilities we have today. By taking teaching back a few years in history is an interesting approach, striping back all the fancy advances and giving today’s students a good run for their money. I wanted to blog on this just because I thought it was a great initiative and how much more fun for the students to learn in this way, albeit harder, but giving them something they would ordinarily not be able to have a go on.
I’d love to try and work on the old computers I used at primary school, or at least play on them!
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| Biggest data loss fine to hit UK insurer! |
| Big blunder = big fine for multinational insurers
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The Financial Services Authority (FSA) have imposed a £2.3 million fine on UK insurer Zurich. This is the biggest data loss fine that any organisation has ever faced.
Zurich Insurance lost 46,000 customer records including some bank details when a tape back-up went missing. The tapes were lost in transit between two sites in South Africa, even more embarrassing to the multinational, Zurich UK did not hear about it until a year after the incident took place!
Amazingly the FSA actually knocked a third off the fine amount due to Zurich agreeing to pay at an early stage, the original amount was £3.25 million! The FSA have beaten their own record for the largest fine slapped on an organisation for data loss when it fined HSBC £2 million. Nationwide were also hit back in 2007 with a £998,000 fine.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told Zurich they must be more vigilant and to use encryption when shifting tapes around in the future.
Whilst not wanting to tell financial heavy weights how to do it, here at enviz we are astounded that this sort of data loss is even a possibility for such well established multinationals where the very essence of their trade is dealing with super sensitive data.
A tape system? Really? We are very aware that many businesses use this system as do many of our clients and it works for them. But to us it’s practically archaic and a bit unreliable especially for the likes of Zurich Insurance. To think that it relies on human interaction, and therefore human error, is just not acceptable for many businesses today. Your data is at the very heart of your productivity and success, without it your business would suffer and potentially expose your client’s sensitive information to third parties.
enviz are proud to announce the launch of our new back up bolt-ons – Backup Lite and Backup Pro (for full details please see our Bolt-ons page). Both services are extremely robust and a fully secure solution to protecting your data against fire, theft and equipment failure. You won’t find this service anywhere else, it’s completely unique and built entirely in-house by our team of clever technicians.
Maybe someone should pass our number Zurich’s way!! We can promise them they wouldn’t face this kind of blunder again!
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| The App Goldrush! |
| App saturated. Are you addicted to Apps?
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The App market exploded on to the scene with the emergence of the smartphone, most notably Apple’s iPhone. Many entrepreneurs spotted an opportunity to make a few mill. and jumped on it, creating their own Apps to sell to the likes of iTunes.
Today there are over 250,000 apps and that is just for the iPhone alone, one would think the market is becoming saturated. It is true that the days of developers hitting the jackpot with one winning app are over, now the competition is much stiffer and developers are less likely to hit those high earning figures.
There is also more competition from other platforms such as Nokia’s Ovi, Google’s Android, BlackBerry etc to add to the downloads in excess of 4 billion from Apple’s iTunes alone.
Apps have changed the way we use mobile phones, your phone can now do pretty much anything you want it to on your little handset. I’m not a big App user, I use my iPhone for texting, calling and emailing and little else. But when it comes to Apps, I do have a Translator, Met Office, eBay and a Dictation service (for when I’m feeling super lazy), so you can see I’m not massively in to apps or the gaming side of them at least. Other people I know have pages and pages of Apps that keep them entertained for hours on end and I have to say some are really impressive.
I know apps can be so handy both in business and your day to day personal life but isn’t it all getting slightly excessive? Do we really need any more apps? I don’t know, you tell me?
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| HAPPY BIRTHDAY to enviz IT! |
| enviz is 6 today!
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An exciting day on the farm at enviz HQ – enviz IT has turned the ripe old age of 6! Our MD is very proud and can’t quite believe how the years have flown by from the early days with a couple of clients to the team we have today servicing lots of clients from all sorts of industries.
enviz has blossomed in to a fruitful IT support company earning compliments from people everywhere it goes.
There are many great things on the horizon here at enviz are lots of exciting things getting ready to be launched, so we can only hope that we are here still in another 6 years.
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| Console games to move online |
| Your favourite consol games on the net and a fraction of their retail price!
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In a market dominated by expensive console games, new online services are allowing gamers to play the big titles without paying big bucks. When players no longer need to own the latest console game to enjoy playing it, is it game over for the games console?
Starting at the end of this year, people will be able to play high end games over their internet connections and will no longer need to pay in excess of £200 for the ideal gaming experience. The average cost of a game today is nearly £40 and consoles are upwards of £150. This new turn of events comes after a long line of offline products going online, saving time and money.
To take advantage of these new services you will need a connection speed of 4MB and an Internet browser.
Early concerns I would be having if I was the online service provider is that the UK average internet speed is as low as 1.8mb which is a far cry from the minimum requirement (4MB). Is this the opportunity of time that the game console manufactures need to franticly develop new ways to keep the hardware console as the primary device for playing games?
The Concept
Online gaming already exists for more simple games like Playfish and World of Warcraft. But this new concept promises high-end action to low-end laptops.
Gaikai CEO David Perry explains the appeal of online gaming to developers, "If you look at a game like Farmville on Facebook, it has over 80 million players. It shows what can be done when you open the doors wide. "You make it incredibly accessible, you allow friends to share and we can do that with any game now. We could put any game online like Facebook, just as easily as Farmville."
But for now, Gaikai's offering is somewhat more basic. Go to a site like Amazon or IGN and if your connection is fast enough, you simply get an invitation to instantly play the game, regardless of what device you are using.
In the coming weeks, those who sign up in the US, UK, and France will test a trial version, with the service going public later this year. Initially, just the first few levels of a game will be offered - a kind of try before you buy.
Digital future
Gaikai's main competitor, OnLive, seems to be one step ahead. This is a multiplayer, cross-platform, streaming service offering complete titles.
OnLive's vice-president, John Spinale says online gaming means never having a physical disc that can get lost or scratched.
"I see this as absolutely the way of the future - not just with OnLive but digital distribution overall. People do not really want to buy hardware. They want to have access to software and they want to play the games."
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| Techno Bling! |
| Got a bank balance the size of P. Diddy's? Then we have the mobile phone for you!
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Nearly everyone you speak to has a mobile phone these days, and it's from all ends of the spectrum; from increasingly young kids to the elderly.
Let’s face it, they are here to stay and why not? They can provide a lifeline for when you break down in the middle of nowhere. They can be used to keep a safe eye on your kids and let them know tea's ready. You can even check your emails, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Flickr, you name it from pretty much anywhere in the world. And with the advent of 'Apps' you can waste, ahem, spend, precious time playing with your phone.
Whilst many people are happy to make do with any old phone, simply being happy with the odd phone call or text message, some see the mobile phone as a fashion accessory - even a status symbol. Some people adore their BlackBerrys, others swear by their iPhones - you can even get them gold plated now - but if you want to be 'the daddy' of phone owners you need to fork out big bucks. Bucks on a major scale. How does 1 million dollars sound?
True, you'd have to be P. Diddy to be able to pull it off but the 'Las Vegas Jackpot' phone from exotic phone builder 'Gresso' costs just that.
The features of the phone itself are pretty standard but what warrants the hefty price tag is what it's made from; Pure Gold. Oh, and not to mention it's finished with Rare Black Diamonds, Diamond-cut Sapphire Crystals and is inlayed with 200year old African Blackwood.
What's that I hear you say? You've got the odd million spare so you'll take one? Great! Well you best be quick as those nutters at Gresso are only making three. That's right, so for all you 'bling-magnets' and 'pimp-daddies', unless you want to miss out on perhaps the most extravagant phone ever made then I'd act fast.
For all those like the rest of us 'regular' folk perhaps you could opt for its little brother, the same Gold and Blackwood design only without all those Diamonds and Sapphires. It's a steal for only $20,000.
Perhaps I'll stick to my two cups and string.
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