Oaksys Tech Update

The attack on Google Mail for some Chinese dissidents was based on a security weakness in Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6.  It demonstrates the need for keeping your software up to date. One (free) tool that is highly useful in achieving this can be found at Secunia. It examines your software version level, of most common software, and advises you if the current version is out of date. Usually it offers a location where updates can be found. As a consequence you are likely to maintain the essential security patches.

Anti Virus and anti-malware  software can only go so far in protecting your machine. If your PC accesses the Internet or receives email you need to make sure that all of your software is kept up to date with the secuirty patches.

Ofgem, the Energy Regulator, reports that the UK needs a £200 Billion investment in its energy infrastructure if we are to avoid power shortages. What steps has your business taken to protect the security of its energy? Does it have a UPS and load shedding policy that is routinely exercised? Has it considered local generation of power, possibly under a CHEAP scheme? If you do not preplan it is inevitable that at some time in the future your organisation will lose productivity due to regional power outages or brownouts.

Guru

BT just love sneaking out price increase details. This happened at the foot of an email from BT discussing other services.

The cost of an “out of plan” call rises from 5.4 pence per minute to 5.9 pence per minute (that’s 9% folks) with effect from the appropriate date of  1st April 2010. The call set-up charge for each call increases from 9.3 pence to 9.9 pence. The call set-up charge is particularly iniquitous; if you reach an answerphone you will be charged a minimum of 15.8 pence even if you hang up immediately.

Compare this with Skype which is 1.2 pence per minute and 2.9 pence call set-up, i.e. 4.1 pence minimum for a call (outside of plan).

Those are the domestic tariffs, I’ve yet to track down the business tariff’s, but I have little doubt that the increase will be 3x the rate of inflation there.  If your business is paying the full BT tariff for calls you should be firing the person responsible for negotiating telephone costs. With a little bit of work it is usually a simple job to cut those costs by 30% from the BATEOTM, I can usually get 50% reduction with no loss of service quality.

Guru

BATEOTM - bill at the end of the month

I attended a seminar where Microsoft’s latest tools for managing Hyper-V were demonstrated. Virtualisation is creating an increase in the complexity of the Server environment. Businesses will need increasingly skilled personnel to manage the environment. They will need good software tools to be able to perform effective management of the environment.

The other thought which struck me is the need for operations management to have good tools to measure/track the operational cost (and cost recovery) of running applications in a multi-server data centre. It takes considerable capital expenditure to set up a full loaded Microsoft/VMWare environment. The servers have to be powerful as does the storage environment. Recovery of the capital cost during the financial depreciation period will be an additional loading on the operational costs. Fortunately such software tools do exist to help track the costs and to bill the user business. More on this later.

Guru