Cobweb

Hello, Introduction & Pub Club

Hello & Welcome to my first Blog, My name is Rob Savage and I work in the business development team at Cobweb and have done so for the last 5 ½ years, office based, I’m responsible for generating business for Cobweb’s full range of Hosted Solutions, services I really believe in, that add value to our customers day to day business challenges.

Being office based, tied to my computer is not always ideal, a change of scenery is always welcome so for me attending my first ‘Pub Club’ meeting last night in Bristol (Revolution Vodka Bar) was great.

It gave us the chance to meet new/potential customers in a laid back social environment and have a chat over a drink or two, speaking to people on the phone on a day to day basis is great, but actually putting faces to names makes a real difference.

So… for anybody wanting to meet the Cobweb Team, keep an eye out for the next event.

To be held in a Pub near you, oh….and the drinks are on us tooJ.

All comments welcome

All the Best

Rob

Are we behind the curve in the UK?

Just having returned from a conference in the USA, I was once again surprised by the differences in the US and Europe hosting markets. There is no question that the sectors are facing the same challenges on both sides of the pond, issues such as Data Centre availability, mainly because of power restraints, the advance of the jumbo players in the market such as Google and Microsoft and the varying rates of adoption of Managed Services, by businesses, large and small. What puzzled me more is that is that there seems to be so much more innovation coming out of the US in terms of onlining the applications that currently sit on-premise, on the desktop. Is this is because the US investment money is chasing the “hosted” business model once again or the College system is churning out young guns with great ideas and execution skills? This is the first college year that the graduates have the internet all the way through school and college. The message from the analysts was loud and clear that the revolution is here and the time frame within 12 to 18 months to see a step change in the way businesses consume technology. For a Manages Service Provider in the UK, who has over 4000 business customers taking varying degrees of technology from us, it does not feel that way. Consult, buy and build still seems the norm for most businesses, although whenever I talk to customers this business model rarely delivers the results expected and it seems that they feel it is the IT consultants that benefit the most. Out of that comes the most important point for all Managed Service Companies, for at least the 12 months, the real competitor is not Google or Microsoft, or any of the new innovative solutions that we are all developing but the traditional on-premise solution of consult, buy and build. As a business dedicated to IT as a Managed Services are we alone in the UK or is anyone else looking forward to the "revolution"

Mark

What's happening then?

Well it's back off to University for me next week (did I mention I'm doing an MBA?! :) ) and obviously all the preparations for that are in full flow. Lots of reading, lots of sorting out folders and making sure that pencils are sharpened and I have some clean, fresh paper. This year is all about strategy which I'm really looking forward to. Strategy is an area that I've had less exposure to than other areas of the business and in my role I have been fortunate enough to touch all areas and have a good understanding of how they work and why. This really helped me in my first year and helped bump up those exam results a bit.

Strategy is such a complex area that I'm interested in how you teach it to someone. How can you give someone the skills to help visualise and verbalise the future direction of a company and then get the rest of the company to understand that vision and why it's the right thing to do. Some decisions are much easier than others but some of them can have the 'hard sell'. Implementing systems such as ISO9001/27001 ones would be classed as one such change. How do you take a company that has a few rough round the edges processes and procedures and turn them in to a company that is process driven through and through? Not easily would be the answer.

Commitmant to the continued use of these types of systems is paramount to their success. They cannot be driven by a small team, an individual or a department. They have to become engrained in everyone in the company. Like any quality system (EFQM, Six Sigma etc) you are looking for consistancy and conformity to make sure that you set a high standard of what you are trying to acheive and then repeat that in all areas.

I received some really good feedback to the last post and would love to hear from people that have similar challanges within their companies. A Quality Manager role is a thankless task, but I've been told by a wise old sage of the industry:- 'We aren't here to be thanked, we're here to make everyone elses lives easier.'

Mark

It's only going to get worse

After reading the following article it seems like it's steadily getting to be more and more of a risk being online and carrying out any kind of transactions. When I read about the phising sites and how people are caught out by them it just goes to show how many naive people there are using the internet.

Here's some basic tips on making sure that you aren't the next credit card on that list they are selling!

• Use anti-spyware and anti-virus programs
• On at least a weekly basis update anti-virus and spyware products
• Install a firewall and make sure it is switched on
• Make sure updates to your operating system are installed
• Take time to educate yourself and family about the risks
• Monitor your computer and stay alert to threats
• Don't click on links in emails until you know exactly where they are going to
• Never open attachments in emails that will run things on your computer (.exes etc)

You can stay safe on the internet but you have to make the time and effort to be aware of whats going on around you.

Mark

My Perfect Device?

In my continuing quest to find the perfect single device I'm now testing the Palm Treo 750 courtesy of O2. Based on my experience after using it for a day I think I may finally have found "the device" for me. In combining the PDA version of Windows Mobile in a form factor that combines both phone and QWERTY keypads along with a touch screen I have everything that I initially look for. Having worked for Microsoft during the early device OS "battles" it does seems strange to be using a Palm device running Windows Mobile.

The Palm enhancements to Windows Mobile make it really simple to dial a contact, and the device has enough grunt to cope with the 1,600+ contacts I have in Outlook, which are all now synchronised with the device (something which previous devices I've used have struggled with). Email and Calendar all work as expected and I have Word, Excel and PowerPoint to hand too.

I'm going to continue my testing over the next week or so and in particular I'm going to be looking at battery life. This is because the biggest annoyance I have found with the device is it's proprietary power connector – a standard USB2.0 power connector would have been so much nicer and would save me having to buy a whole bunch of new power adapters (maybe that's the reason given they always seem to cost so much!)

If you'd like to try the Treo 750 check out the O2 shop where you can get the device for free on contract!

Please let me know your favourite device and if you have a Treo 750 what you think of it.

More reason to beware

As more and more businesses move themselves on to the web then it gets easier for us all to be making transactions and putting potentially important data on to someones webserver. Most people would say this is of concern to them if they do order online whereas some people (My dad is a prime example) won't order online at all because they don't understand the risks and just think it's not safe. I'm a definite advocate of ordering online and ALL of last years Christmas shopping was carried out online, it was great! Not a mass of sweaty shoppers pushing in front of each other and then long queues at the till.

The thing is that when you read reports such as this one - here - it does make you a little bit more cautious when you think that these types of 'hacker toolkits' can be found so easily and so cheaply really. I've been fortunate in never having had any problems with online ordering (crosses fingers) but I think it's inevitable that it will happen, its just a question of when. You can see the quandry. Being a man the shopping thing goes against every fibre of my being. Is the risk of ordering online at the moment too great to stop me from doing it and sending me back to the scrums of the shops? Not on your nelly.

What are your thoughts on ordering online? Is it worth the risk or do you think there are safer ways of ordering your goods other than going to the shop.

Your thoughts please.

Mark