Archive for October, 2009
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?
(more…)
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 Ivan Zidek, Director at AWIC
In the second of a series of articles, we look at ways to make a remote support teams work for you. See the first in our series here.
Ongoing actions, to ensure your new team continues to perform
Several factors will ensure the remote team you have in place can continue to perform well, even after the honeymoon period is over, and the staff they replace have left the organisation.
(more…)
Tags: best practice, offshoring, remote teams, strategy
Posted in AWIC Services, ProStream, SafeShore | 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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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?
(more…)
Tags: cloud, green IT, thin client
Posted in Film/TV, Media, Financial Services, Hospitality, IT Strategy, InfraSwitch, Pharmaceutical and biotech, Uncategorized | No Comments »
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
Many enterprise infrastructure groups consider follow-the-sun support to be the holy grail of the IT operations service. The aim is to provide customers with a seamless, and truly global, support service. Simply dial a single number or create a single support ticket, and the request will be handled in a timely manner, no matter where in the world the user is located.
But how is this implemented when you currently have silo’d regional support teams?
(more…)
Tags: best practice, global teams, managed service, offshoring, service improvement, strategy, support
Posted in Financial Services, LevelBase, Pharmaceutical and biotech, ProStream, SafeShore, Uncategorized | No Comments »
