Archive for the ‘Film/TV, Media’ Category
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
Quite often, business continuity planning is thought to be the domain of very large enterprises, like large financial institutions, who need to continue trading even in the event of major global disaster. But as we mentioned in our article on the impact of snow-related transport issues on businesses, “Small companies, especially ones without dedicated IT staff are the most vulnerable to loss of productivity due to weather-related staff shortages. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, this could translate to an estimated 1.2 billion pounds lost in a day because of the disruption, with one-fifth of the UK workforce unable to make it into work.”
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Tags: best practice, business continuity, colocation, disaster recovery, service improvement, strategy
Posted in AWIC Desktop, Charity and education, Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, IT Strategy, Oil and gas, Pharmaceutical and biotech, ProStream, Resourcing and recruiting, SMB | No Comments »
Small businesses and startups know that capital is hard to come buy, which is why many companies just get by with IT that doesn’t really meet their needs. Traditionally, to get all the big company functionality you’d like (such as Microsoft Exchange with Blackberry, high availability or regular backups), companies have had to invest a significant amount of working capital into server hardware. The AWIC Desktop service changes all that. With no hardware costs and no expensive software licenses to purchase, small businesses can use the service from Day 1, and have a fully-functioning Enterprise IT infrastructure. And because it’s so easy to add new users, the service can grow with your company, for when you move into that 1,000-employee Central London HQ that we all know you’ll be in soon.
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About AWIC Desktop
AWIC Desktop is a reliable, accessible subscription-based computing service that saves you money. It is one of a suite of products offered by Tunbridge Wells-based AWIC Technical Advisory — dedicated to clear, practical advice on IT for small and medium businesses.
Tags: adverts, AWIC Desktop, budgeting, business growth, green IT, hardware refresh, hosted desktop, startups
Posted in AWIC Desktop, Charity and education, Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Resourcing and recruiting, SMB | No Comments »
AWIC is pleased to announce the launch of our new product, AWIC Desktop.
It’s a subscription-based IT service that brings the following benefits to companies:
- Reduce costly on-site computer hardware
- Lower your electricity bill
- Plan your annual IT budget
- Protect your data from fire, flood or theft
- Simplify your IT
- Work from anywhere
Tags: AWIC Desktop, business alignment, cloud, disaster recovery, green IT, hardware refresh, managed service, savings, thin client, virtualisation
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, News, Resourcing and recruiting | No Comments »
AWIC Technical Advisory is pleased to announce our latest service offering.
from AWIC Technical Advisory
Tags: hardware refresh, innovation, portfolio, service improvement, services, strategy, technology
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, IT Strategy, News, Resourcing and recruiting, SMB | No Comments »
It happens more than you’d think.
Picture this: you’re about to login to your company’s online banking software to make sure those cheques got paid in, and the page won’t load. A few clicks, and then a reboot of your computer….and before long, you’re on the phone to your ISP. Ten days – and several heated phone calls – later, the ISP finally admits that one of their engineers clipped a cable up near the Tesco Express and they’re ever so sorry that you’ve been without internet service all this time.
It may sound far-fetched, but that’s a true story. What would you do if your business was without the internet for 10 days? How could you cope?
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Tags: business continuity, disaster recovery, innovation
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, IT Strategy, KeyControl, LevelBase, Oil and gas, Pharmaceutical and biotech, SMB | No Comments »
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
What on earth is PC-over-IP (better known as PCOIP) and why should anyone in the creative industries care about it?
A new technology is now available that allows you to instantly share dailies in full HD, work with remote studios or work from home – while keeping your movies secure.
The technology has been available for a while which allows companies to centralise their desktop IT, removing the computers from under people’s desks and replacing them with an energy efficient, small, quiet box called a “thin client”. A thin client is basically a screen directly connected to the internet.
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Tags: PCOIP, teradici, thin client
Posted in Film/TV, Media, IT Strategy, InfraSwitch, Uncategorized | No Comments »
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
The film and television industry has one of the most mobile workforces in the country.
There are around 400 ‘permanent’ (i.e. registered) companies in the UK film industry. This figure varies depending on the number of productions being worked on at any one time. Of the companies existing today, we can say approximately 43% are production, 13% are distribution and the remaining 44% are exhibition companies. (Source: Skillset)
In a survey of workers in the film/tv industry by Skillset, almost all (91%) of the sample were freelance; just under half (48%) of the survey sample had been employed on a fixed-term contract i.e. for a fixed number of hours, days or weeks, over one in five (22%) had an open-ended weekly contract and a further 9% had been employed as dailies. The remaining 9% were permanent employees. (Source: http://publications.skillset.org/index.php?id=9&page=10)
The transient and mobile nature of the work force in film and television means that production companies have challenges when it comes to providing IT for staff that’s only around for a few weeks or months at a time.
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Tags: hosted desktop, mobile
Posted in Film/TV, Media, IT Strategy, InfraSwitch, SMB, Uncategorized | No Comments »
The information technology industry is experiencing a shift in focus of how IT services are provisioned to small and medium businesses (SMBs). Technology that used to be available only in large companies over private, corporate networks can now be made available over the internet to SMBs.
Small businesses still use traditional IT infrastructure: a local network of desktop PCs, attached to local storage, and generally maintained by on-site support. This means issues with reliability, support, ties into maintenance contracts and insurance.
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Tags: green IT, hardware refresh, mobile
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Hospitality, News, SMB | No Comments »
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
Over the past 18 months, IT budgets have shrunk dramatically, meaning that most companies have shelved the idea of replacing old kit. But as the economy starts to pick up, many companies are opening up to the idea that now is a good time for a hardware refresh.
The average lifetime of a pc is 3 years. How old are your company’s computers? Are they ready for the scrap heap?
If so, do you really need to replace your traditional desktops with more of the same? What about the alternatives?
Have you considered the switch to thin client technology?
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Tags: cloud, green IT, thin client
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, IT Strategy, InfraSwitch, Pharmaceutical and biotech, Uncategorized | No Comments »
As more and more companies journey down the path to virtualisation, AWI takes a look at some of the best practices that could make the difference between a successful implementation and a more chaotic rollout.
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Tags: best practice, strategy, virtualisation
Posted in AWIC Services, Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, IT Strategy, InfraSwitch, Oil and gas, Pharmaceutical and biotech | No Comments »
