39th in the 2010 Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies!

Posted on 8/03/2010 by Matthew O`Neill
Awards, Best Companies, Lab News, Sunday Times

I'm pleased to report that the awards and recognition have continued. We've just been placed 39th in the 2010 Sunday Times 100 Best Small companies!!

You all know the Sunday Times, however you might not know the Best Companies organisation, the people behind these top 100 lists and their own star accreditations in recognition of the very best places to work. 

To quote:

Being a best company goes beyond the bottom line. It's about excelling in every area throughout the workplace and an organisation's commitment to its most important assets - its workforce. Focusing on employees brings real benefits such as, improved workplace engagement, better staff retention, reduced recruitment costs and greater financial performance.

It's a fantastic result and a real tribute to all the great people here.

Check out our listing in the Sunday Times here.

Ranked number 23 in the world!

Posted on 12/02/2010 by Matthew O`Neill
Awards, Lab News, Lab Tech

We have succeeded in making it into the 2010 MSP Mentor top 100 list, which highlights IT service providers that are excelling in the realm of managed services.

The Background

Managed Services and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are increasingly important to modern day IT support providers like ourselves. They enable the majority of our services to be improved and automated through the use of advanced management technology. For example, we use the revolutionary Kaseya technology as the centrepiece of our IT Automation philosophy. It means we can:

• Monitor and report on clients networks in real time
• Resolve issues before they occur
• Automated routine checks
• Fix 80% of issues remotely
• Deploy software autmatically and remotely
• Much more!

Who are MSP Mentor?

They are a media outift designed to be the ultimate guide to managed services, and are the leading global destination for MSP's. They've made it their mission to ignore all gossip, speculation, and vendor hype to deliver in-depth and entirely factual analysis of the evolving managed services provider industry.

One of their well known efforts is the annual Top 100 list. This ranks MSP's from all over the world not just on their managed services based revenue, but also the way in which they use managed services and technology to improve both their offering and customer experience.

Where did we come?

Not only have we made it into the list this year, but we've come in at number 23! It's a fantastic result and great recognition of the progress we're making.

Check out the full list here.

Microsoft’s black screen of… not very much at all!

Posted on 4/12/2009 by Rich Adams
Lab News, Microsoft, PrevX

Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the Harry Potter and the… sorry… Microsoft and the Black Screen of Death saga, it would seem that it isn’t actually black or death like at all. It doesn’t even appear to be very dark, or even a particularly nasty shade of beige.

For those in need of a refresher, it all started last week when a small UK based internet security company called PrevX announced the danger through their blog. It could, they informed us, conceivably shut down not just windows 7 but any system more advanced than Windows 98. To stop the worlds IT luddites rubbing their hands with smug glee, however, PrevX also announced it was offering a free fix. This only had one drawback… they couldn’t guarantee it was going to work – GREAT!

As you can imagine, this set the blogosphere alight with rumour and counter rumour. It also meant Microsoft launched an immediate investigation and, sure enough, announced that they could not see any problems.

Faced with standing down the might of the world’s largest software developer, PrevX immediately began to back track. They have now announced that “"Regrettably, it is clear that our original blog post has been taken out of context, and may have caused an inconvenience for Microsoft. This was never our intention.”

The whole saga has undoubtably put PrevX on the map. But the degree to which the IT world views all this as a cynical PR ploy remains to be seen, as does the extent of any possible backlash.

Google Chrome previewed

Posted on 20/11/2009 by Rich Adams
Google, Lab News, Microsoft

Another week, another round in the ongoing struggle for supremacy between Google and Microsoft. No sooner did Microsoft release its (pretty impressive) Windows 7 operating system, than Google has previewed its answer: Google Chrome.

Open souced (that means free!) and specifically designed for netbooks, all applications are designed to run in a web browser and all the user's data is stored on Google's own servers. That means it can be downloaded straight from the net.

Google has been able to boost the speed of the system by designing it for specific hardware. The firm said that it would only run on computers using "solid state drives" instead of traditional hard drives.

During a recent demonstration, Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, stated "We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast."  He then showed it booting up in just seven seconds. He also gave a demonstration of its pretty speedy game playing, music and typing capabilities.

Microsoft still has 90% of the operating system market, which puts it light years ahead. Chrome OS, however, is a clear sign that Google isn’t simply prepared to chip away at this lead. It’s after a much larger slice of the pie.

Google Vs Switzerland

Posted on 16/11/2009 by Rich Adams
Google, Lab News, Microsoft

It could be argued that… You know you’re doing well in business when a competitor takes you to court. A straight fight hasn’t worked. You’re now too big, and they‘ve decided to run and tell the teacher.

You must, therefore, be doing something fairly spectacular when it’s not just rivals who’re getting all writ-happy, but European governments are muscling in on the act too.

Hot on the heals of Microsoft’s run in with the European commission over competition laws, Google is apparently about to find itself in hot water with Switzerland’s privacy watchdog over its Street View service.

According to recent press reports, Swiss data protection commissioner, Hanspeter Thuer, has demanded that Google ensures all faces and car plates are blurred to protect people’s privacy. He also wants enclosed areas such as walled gardens and private roads removed.

As a further mark of their success, Google don’t seem particularly fussed by the prospect of having a prominent European country take them to court. A spokesman said: “We believe that Google Street View is absolutely legal in Switzerland.” He also added that new obscuring software would deal with Mr Thuer's concerns, anyway.

True, Google hasn’t quite managed to annoy representatives for the whole of Europe (a la Microsoft) but they’re clearly doing something right as they continue their bid for world domination.