Category: Business & Technology Blog

In the technology-driven economy of today, your IT choices can directly impact the productivity of your workforce and consequently your company’s bottom line. The secret to getting your IT strategy right is to plan carefully and invest for choosing the right breed of PC for your business.

In partnership with Lenovo, we’ve outlined some of the top tips and things to look out for.

The appeal of consumer PCs

Many startups and emerging companies tend to pick consumer PC when buying for employees. This may happen for several reasons, including:

• Lack of awareness of the rigours of business computing
• Unclear of the differences between consumer PCs and business PCs
• Overemphasis on aesthetics or price

Most importantly, the seemingly more economical cost of consumer-grade devices make them appear to be the right choice, but the total cost of ownership (TCO) of PCs is far more critical, much like the cost of spares and service for a car over its lifetime.

According to Gartner, a significant bulk of costs associated with PCs appear months and years after purchase, often exceeding the original price. TCO for a PC includes purchase costs plus the cost of spares, service, and support needed to keep them operational over a defined lifetime. Reliability and durability are fundamental to ensuring lower TCO of PCs. Business PCs score much higher than consumer PCs on all factors especially.

Designed to enhance business benefits

Business PCs are purpose-built to perform reliably, efficiently and with ease, even in the most challenging work environments. They are better engineered and equipped with features that are not usually found or needed in consumer-grade devices.

Better productivity: Business PCs come with CPUs optimised for work-related software and tasks, and faster memory and hard drives to prevent performance bottlenecks. They can be customised to suit specific business functions and offer battery life that allows working for hours at a stretch. And better cooling technology ensures business PCs can run faster and for more extended periods of time, without incurring internal damage or performance losses from heat.

Better Reliability & Mobility: On the road, a business PC is visibly better at WiFi and mobile broadband connectivity because of superior antenna design. And because they are built of sturdy and light materials, like carbon fiber and metal alloys, they can withstand years of wear and tear. They also undergo a series of rigorous testing to ensure durability in any work environment and are equipped with rapid charging technology for 80% charge in just sixty-minutes, so you are not dependent on a power outlet.

Better Security and Manageability: Business PCs are quick and easy to deploy, and are designed with security in mind. They offer security features such as self-encrypting hard drives, anti-theft technology, biometric user authentication and more. More importantly, most business PCs come with a comprehensive portfolio of services that include 24/7 technical assistance, extended warranties and on-site visits, if necessary. Unlike most consumer PCs, business PCs can be serviced anywhere in the world.

Planning for the future

The stage at which your organisation is at also needs to be taken into account when selecting PCs, as the benefits that the PC should bring to your business and how it can help the company move forward are essential.

Startups:

PCs purchased at this stage of growth need to be sufficiently equipped to sustain the long hours of work necessary to take a business off the ground. Also, the PCs chosen should be very reliable and easy to use as most startups do not have full-time IT teams.
Look for MIL-spec reliability testing, extended warranties, and accidental damage protection.

High-growth businesses:

Businesses that sustain around 10 percent growth every year tend to be more sophisticated in their IT requirements. The workforce is more diversified and demanding. The PC solution should be matched to different working styles and tasks, and be upgradeable without hassle. Plus, a smartly selected set of accessories for the PC can help employees and the company derive the maximum value from its PC investment.
Look for hot-swap drives, batteries, graphics cards and tool-less access to memory.

Mature businesses:

Mature business need devices that don’t just cater to their current needs but can also meet future requirements. They should opt for the top of the line products that offer top performance and a future-ready feature set, reducing the need for frequent upgrades.
Look for the latest generation of CPU, operating system, display technology, and storage.

Once you have a clear understanding of your requirements, you are better equipped to look for business PCs that best fit your business needs.

From durability and security to customised features and applications for business, and a comprehensive service offering, a business PC will provide you with the confidence necessary to expand your business and focus on what matters – your future.

Check out this handy infographic to help you with your planning depending on the stage of maturity your business is at.

 

As Lenovo Platinum Solution Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the Lenovo range and how it could be effectively deployed in your business. To find out more give us a call on 01274 396 213 or email  and we’ll get back to you promptly.

 

It feels like everyone is talking about collaboration these days. How can businesses improve customer experiences, enhance cross-team engagement and increase productivity through collaboration and what tools need to be deployed to make that collaboration effective? 

In a recent survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, findings highlighted the two most important areas that collaboration needed to address within the workplace as delivering ‘effective team communication’ and ‘fostering collaboration both inside and outside an organisation.’ With teams becoming increasingly dispersed, the challenge for managers can be centred on making remote workers feel included and not isolated.

As part of the research, Robert Cross, a management professor at the University of Virginia, shared findings recently that showed a 50 percent increase in ‘collaborative intensity’ over the last 10 years, citing that today’s managers spend between 90 and 95 percent of their working hours in meetings or responding to emails compared to 60 to 65 percent little more than a decade ago.

So how does technology fit into this environment? We have an increasing global workforce whose office ‘fits in the palm of their hand’. As consumers, our mobile devices enable us to connect with people via a wide variety of apps, whether its Skype, Facebook, Snapchat or WhatsApp. We can manage our lives from our mobiles, even control the heating in our homes remotely and the business environment is starting to catch up. There is an increasing amount of business applications designed to improve our productivity such as OneNote, Office 365 or Evernote whilst there is a plethora of web based conferencing tools from Skype for Business to Google Hangout – we can now have virtual video meetings, bringing the right people into the meeting at a click of an icon rather than long laborious phone calls. Video conferencing can also mean that we can connect with more people than ever before, reducing the need for lengthy travel time to hour long meetings…

But with more time being spent in meetings than ever before, how can technology help improve the meeting experience? Interactive devices have exploded onto the market with the emergence of the ‘collaboration board’, a term used to describe large format, interactive displays that form the core of the collaboration hub, huddle or zone.

Improved productivity and greater work efficiency is a result of contribution and meeting room technology should facilitate this. We can collaborate every day on tablets, laptops and ‘individual’ screens but true and effective collaboration happens on a ‘shared’ screen, meaning a screen multiple users in the same room can view, absorb information from and contribute on then the workgroup can achieve better results.

The entrants into this new market include industry giants such as Microsoft with the Surface Hub, the Google Jam Board or the Cisco SparkBoard, all launching to the market in the past 18 months. These solutions provide users with an environment that enhances the work place by delivering a solution designed to improve communication within teams and customers or capture meeting findings and actions, increasing productivity. The downside to some of these platforms is that they are ‘locked down’ to the propriety software / applications pioneered by the manufacturers. That’s why the solution from Avocor is so unique, designed with ease of use in mind, they enhance cross-team collaboration and improve productivity by offering a simple user interface. Powered by an on-board internal Windows 10 PC, getting meetings started is straight forward by just hitting the recognisable Windows icon, gaining instant access to familiar applications available for mobile or desktop use.

Because Avocor promotes an open platform, the possibilities when considering a solution that is bespoke to customer requirements is endless. With a wealth of connectivity available including RS232 controls, the solution is the core of your integrated visual platform, enabling elements to be added to the solution as and when required. Adding a web camera and connecting via cloud based applications such as Skype for Business or Google Hangout can enhance the meeting experience for remote workers, making them feel more included whilst tools like Adobe Connect provides complete web conferencing solutions for webinars, online meetings and even virtual classrooms.

In short, we live in a digital age, that’s non-disputed. But we should remember that we work in one too and organisations need to provide their workforce with the best tools that have been designed to increase productivity and break down communication barriers. The collaboration tools that are chosen need to be easy to use and available on a variety of devices, facilitating people to be effective in their functional capability, regardless of location.

So, is your organisation ready for effective collaboration?

Want to learn more?

Complete IT Systems have a team of Avocor specialists on hand to demo the solution, discuss business benefits and help you understand how the technology works for your organisation. There’s also a great range of resources available on the Avocor blog.

Give us a call on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form to discuss your requirements with us.

 

 

 

While modern technology offers amazing gains in productivity, you also need to make sure your organisation is protected from increasing security threats. Your organisational data is valuable, and needs to be protected.

Information loss is now the most expensive consequence of cyber-crime, closely followed by business disruption and loss of employee productivity.

Wouldn’t you feel more confident knowing your business assets are protected and secure?

A security solution that travels with your users

Enhanced mobility and more flexible user access can expose your business data to a wide variety of threats. Add the increased use of cloud applications and an explosion of data – it’s a real challenge!

Enterprise customers are choosing Microsoft 365 for unique security protection and intelligence. It keeps your organisation’s customer data, company data, and IP secure, so you can focus on what’s important.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise protects your information with: 

• Protection against malware and phishing attacks
• Flexible mobile device and app management controls
• Increased security of on-premise systems for cloud applications – both approved and unapproved
• Protection against data leakage
• Greater ability to respond to security incidents

Click here to learn more about the IT security company hidden in plain sight.

Want to discuss your Microsoft requirements?

As Microsoft Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

Strawberries and cream, horses and carriages, the UK and good weather. Okay, not so much the last one maybe! But some things are just made for each other.

Canon toner and Canon printers are a perfect example. The two are engineered to work seamlessly together to provide you with the fast fusing performance and high quality print you expect with uncompromised results.

We’ve put together 5 good reasons to use Canon genuine consumables.

Quality

With original Canon cartridges you get the reassurance that each cartridge will provide exceptional performance. Refilled cartridges may not print to the same standard as new Canon cartridges because its internal components may be partially or fully worn out.

Manufacturing and assembling toner cartridges is a complex procedure involving several hundred processes. However Canon has developed a single automated production system which uses state-of-the-art production technology to create the high quality cartridges that our customers expect.

 

Avoid unsightly lines

The photosensitive drum unit is one of the most sensitive imaging components in the printer. New Canon cartridges ensure that toner does not accumulate on the drum and the fixing roller. This avoids unsightly lines, blurring or grey backgrounds and damage your printer. Original Canon toner guarantees the proper function of the drum unit, resulting in crisp, clean documents to represent your business in the best way each and every time.

Cleaner, greener offices

Canon’s exclusive roller-charging technology ensures ozone-free emissions. This clean technology is not harmful to human health or the environment and even makes the cartridge more compact as fewer parts are required. In addition all Canon toner and cartridges are non-hazardous. This means that their cartridges do not require special treatment or processing and can be recycled as part of your normal office waste.

Canon consumables contain more ink

Simple one this. The print capacity of counterfeit cartridges that Canon has obtained and tested, ranges from 28% to 69% of capacity compared to original Canon cartridges. Watch this short video to see more.

Don’t just take our or Canon’s word for it…

Allion Co., Ltd., an external verification agency, conducted tests to determine the difference in print quality between genuine Canon toner cartridges and third party cartridges. The report verifies the benefit of genuine Canon cartridges.

Talk to our team about the benefits of Canon genuine consumables for your business.

As Canon Authorised Partners, Complete IT Systems are able to offer you leading guidance on your organisation’s print environment to achieve best value for money, results and reliability.

Give us a call today on 01274 396 213 or email  to talk to one of our print specialist team.

There’s many great reasons, but we’ve selected 5 to get started!

1. Integrated security for Windows, Mac and mobile

   Sophos Cloud is the only integrated security solution that secures Windows, Mac computers and web traffic, and manages mobile devices. Cross-platform detection even identifies Windows threats residing on Mac systems, malicious Android apps on PCs, and more.

2. Quick and easy deployment

   Get up and running in 60 seconds, with no training required. Best practices are implemented by default for strong protection out of the box. The Sophos Cloud trial account provides all the features and functions without limitation. If you like what you see you can simply activate and keep your account.

3. User-centric pricing and policy enforcement

   A single license covers all of a user’s workstations and mobile devices. Policies are applied to users or user groups and will follow the user as they log in to new workstations or register new mobile devices.

4. Out of the box server protection

   Securing mission-critical servers is essential in today’s business environment and requires a different approach than securing end user devices. Sophos Cloud offers functions designed specifically to protect servers with automatic exclusion to ensure high performance and security.

5. Effective protection

   Sophos Cloud is based on the same proven technology that protects over 100 million devices worldwide. Advanced capabilities like HIPS, mobile device management and web control are brought together in one intuitive console, giving you powerful Sophos security with cloud simplicity. Protection stays current with automatic updates and real-time lookups of suspicious files over any Internet connection.

 

As Sophos Gold Solution Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the Intercept X solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

Request your no-obligation free trial via this link or call us on 01274 396 213.

 

This week Sophos announced Sophos Mobile 8, the latest version of its Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and mobile security solution. This new version lets system administrators manage and secure corporate-owned and personal Mac, Windows, and mobile endpoints in the cloud-based Sophos Central management platform to deliver a simpler management strategy for businesses of any size.

Secure mobility

This unified approach to endpoint management ensures consistent security policies and secure access to resources regardless of an employee’s choice of device. Sophos Mobile 8 adds a range of management features like MacOS management and configuration, Windows 10 application management, and extended Android and iOS management functionality.

Risk of malware

“Mobile devices continue to be the fastest growing malware target,” commented Dan Schiappa, senior vice president and general manager of Products at Sophos. “Personal and IoT devices on the network represent a significant threat to corporate security due to management and discovery issues. With Sophos Mobile 8, IT admins in any size of business can manage and secure all their MacOS, Windows, and mobile endpoints from a single management platform. This streamlined approach to security management helps both administrators and users save time and effort, improving productivity across the business.”

Protect your business while enabling productivity

Responding to the rise in mobile malware and ransomware, Sophos Mobile 8 includes the latest in mobile security and anti-ransomware technology to protect devices against the evolving threat landscape. In 2017, SophosLabs processed more than 10 million Android samples (up from 8.5 million in 2016) submitted by customers for analysis. Within that sample, nearly 3.5 million were deemed potentially suspicious or malicious apps, 77 percent of which were malware. More recently, SophosLabs discovered attackers are increasingly using Google Play to stash malicious apps like cryptocurrency mining or unwanted advertising that can cause a variety of problems for Android users.

“Our Unified Endpoint Management solution can protect user productivity within a secure operating environment. Sophos innovation has led to endpoint protection based on deep learning technology to deliver market-leading levels of detection and prevention. Our vision is to extend that predictive security layer to all endpoints, including mobile devices, giving customers the most comprehensive security tools to maintain secure, productive working environments,” concluded Schiappa.

Sophos Mobile 8 is available now both in the cloud-based Sophos Central platform and for installation on the customer’s own premises.

 

 

As Sophos Gold Solution Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the Intercept X solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

Request your no-obligation free trial via this link or call us on 01274 396 213.

Bringing first-to-market features into the interactive display market, the brand new Avocor E series showcases 2mm optically bonded glass on an IR 4K display.

With no parallax gap between the glass and the actual display, your users will have a pixel-perfect touch experience with superior accuracy and pen performance, and a perfect interactive visual aid to add flair to any learning environment.

All in all, Avocor’s solutions are accurate, superior and affordable.

Check out this short video of the screens in action at the recent BETT Show 2018 in London.

Limited time special offer

If that’s not enough, we’re also offering a FREE NewStar Flatscreen wall mount bracket  with each subsequent sale of an Avocor screen from an onsite demo before the end of April 2018.

Want to find out more?

Complete IT Systems have a team of Avocor specialists on hand to show you the solutions, discuss the business benefits and help you understand how the technology can work for your organisation.

To book your demo give us a call on 01274 396 213 or email .

 

With less than 100 days to go in the countdown until the May 25th d-day for the General Data Protection Regulation, there’s more noise than ever out there right now. In a recent this article, BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, states that “getting a compliance programme implemented, in a way that aligns to business needs, is a suggested approach to reduce the risk of falling foul to the legislation”.

The article takes the view that irrespective of your role in IT, you will have seen and read to some extent about the GDPR – but it’s how you take in the information and translate that into an appropriate action plan for your business that’s the important part.

It also discusses the varying stages in preparation that organisations seem to be at at the present time, and finds that “a substantial number of small-to-medium organisations have now turned to GDPR preparations with around six months to go”.

Complete IT Systems are here to assist with solutions and support for your organisation’s journey to GDPR compliance objectives, as well as more general IT security and data governance requirements. Give us a call on 01274 396 213 or email us to discuss your requirements or pain points today.

You can read the full independent article here.

Here’s 3 reasons and a product tour video to give you some ideas – give us a call to discuss your requirements.

Everything your users need to stay productive

With the responsiveness and efficiency of 7th generation Intel® Core™ p

rocessors, your team will always be ready to work on the go and get more done as they move quickly and easily between all their favourite apps – take your business productivity, creativity, and mobility to the next level.

Work smarter with Windows 10

The Miix brings out the best of what Windows 10 has to offer: from fast start-ups to the expanded Start menu and all-new browser, it serves as a great business all-rounder.

Ultra simple style

At just 8.9 mm thin and weighing 780 g (without its detachable keyboard), the Miix 720 has a simple, streamlined design. Its one-piece metal alloy body paired with coordinated accessories make the Miix 720 a chic complement to busy working life. Available in Champagne or Iron Gray colours.

Providing both strength and flexibility, the Miix 720’s dual watchband hinges are made from 256 individual pieces of stainless steel and are adjustable up to 150°. So whether you’re watching a video, working hard, or simply using the touchscreen, you can find the perfect angle that’s comfortable for you.

Check out this short product tour video to learn more:

As Lenovo Platinum Solution Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the Lenovo range and how it could be effectively deployed in your business. To find out more give us a call on 01274 396 213 or email  and we’ll get back to you promptly.