Cobweb

PC/Laptop Switch Off Evening - how many so far?

Thought I'd let you know (as I'm pretty chuffed!) after one day we have 59 companies who have signed up to join our green community and start our first initiative on having our team PC / Laptop switch off evening on Thursday 14th August.

It's been quite interesting doing this activity, as it's shocking to hear how many people do not turn their PCs and Laptops off when they go home at night.  Do you? 

Would you like to join our green community and make a difference? 

Post your comments here on what you think, or you can join our green community here and see if the power of many can make a difference to our environment.

PC/Laptop Switch Off Evening

Would you like to make a difference to our environment?

On Thursday 14th August we’re having a PC/Laptop switch off evening to see how much energy we can all save.

Would you like to be part of this?

Complete the attached form to let us know you'd like to join in and see how many PCs and laptops you can switch off.

As a team we'd like to support the local community in seeing how much of a contribution we can make to reducing our carbon footprint.

We’d love to know your thoughts on this and would be really chuffed if you joined in for just one night and let us know how many PCs and Laptops you are able to switch off by completing the attached form.

Bye for now

More iPhone news - iPod touch supports ActiveSync

If you can't wait for an iPhone to come back in to stock there is an alternative. The iPhone 2.0 software update is available for the iPod touch, minus the phone functionality. It includes Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support, so if you need email on the move and are always near a WiFi hot spot then this could be the answer. Add a VOIP application and away you go, ideal for those mobile office bound workers.

See the Apple site for more information, http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/whatsnew.html.

Gartner advises firms under 1000 users to outsource

Interesting piece about Gartner advising business to consider Webmail as a viable cost effective alternative. We at Cobweb say - great news - Gartner are endorsing the IT model that we have been delivering since 2001 - but wait a moment, are they seriously suggesting that businesses should use Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail for their mission critical communications medium? Managing mail for over 5000 business customers I think we have a good idea of the needs of the sub 1000 user organization and there are 3 things these customers need great support, great support and great support.

Of course they also need mobility options, Blackberry, Windows mobile, Iphone, also compliant archiving as well as flexible migration scenarios, simple and complex mail routing and an array of other technical features, but, most importantly they need to know that they can access high quality support in way they want to, when they want to.

It is also important to recognise that different roles in any business require different features, deskless workers may or may not need offline working, office users may need interoperability with other office systems such as CRM or ERP solutions. So yes I agree - businesses under 1000 users should not deploy internal mail systems, but, as they outsource - do the due diligence and find a provider that meets their own individual needs, and my guess is that not many of them will opt for Hotmail!

See the Computer Weekly artical here

   

iPhone 3G with Exchange Server

With the launch of iPhone 3G/2.0 software update there has once again been a lot of hype, but how good is the iPhone for business users? If you are a Cobweb customer, you can use your new iPhone 3G or updated iPhone to access your mailbox using ActiveSync.

Push email support is provided for users of Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and Exchange Server 2007. The usual raft of security policies can also be enforced including, but not limited to; Remote Wipe; Password, Inactivity Time before lock out. One policy missing however is, storage encryption. With a modern Windows Mobile or BlackBerry a business can choose to protect the data stored on the device and any storage cards out of the box by encrypting it.

The iPhone 2.0  software also supports popular industry standard VPN protocols and WPA2 Enterprise, both of which make use of certificates for authentication. Productivity is handled by iWork, which is compatible with Microsoft Office documents so you can read them on the go.

One consideration to keep in mind is does your organisation allow MP3 and other personal media files to be stored on the network and computers? Does this policy extend to mobile devices? If so, users may be a little upset when they get their shiny new iPhone and then be told they are not allowed to store music on it.

Cobweb launches new Partner Programme in Texas

Resellers are invited to partner with Cobweb as it grows to 100,000 hosted mailboxes and expands the services available.   

The Partner Programme which offers four different levels; White Label; Sell With Premier; Sell With and Refer.  Each tier presents a compelling proposition for resellers with appropriate levels of branding, marketing, technical, service and training support as well as lead generation and collateral. See the press release here

ActiveSync or BlackBerry? Now we can Mix 'n' Match.

Recently a site called AstraSync.com has appeared offering ActiveSync (MS's mobile email technology) software for BlackBerry devices and last year RIM announced the release of "virtual BlackBerry" for Windows Mobile.
The first question that came to my mind was, why? I guess it comes down to choice for the end user and IT pro supporting it in the back ground. BlackBerry made mobile email a must for business all over the world, but it's technology does rely on third party servers and networks, in addition to mail servers and the internet. ActiveSync works on Exchange Server out of the box and just uses the internet.

Cobweb are off to the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas

Howdy!    Cobweb are attending Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference again, only this time we're exhibiting on a stand as well as going to the conference.   We will be on the massive Software+Services stand (it's more like a huge pavillion really #875) which is being run by the worldwide MS Hosting teams. 

There will be 9 other Managed hosting companies from around the world, they are mostly US based, and we are the sole UK company on the stand.     The event is truely grand with 10,000+ attendees, key notes from Balmer etc. and plenty of networking, parties and late nights.

We are using this event as the perfect launch of our new Partner Programme for the white-label, resell and referral of Managed/Hosted Services. Mark Adams will be talking about this in a presentation on Tuesday 8th July and Wednesday 9th July at 1.15pm.   We'll get some video of this and post that up for all to see.

We're flying out tomorrow (Sunday) and will there for the week.   You can find out more about Mark, Dan, Shelley and Julian

We will also be posting blog updates on this site, and pictures of the event and other activities to our Travel photo blog

Congratulations Oli (MVP - Microsoft Most Valuable Professional)

Just wanted to say a quick congratulations to one of our employees; Oliver Moazzezi for successfully renewing his MVP status (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) as he’s not the sort to brag, so we thought we’d do it for him!

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Oliver is 1 of 8 Exchange MVP’s in the UK and has been working on the Technology Early Adoption Programme with Microsoft, currently working on the Exchange 2007 platform, which will be available to both new and existing customers very shortly. 

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To find out more about the Exchange 2007 launch at Cobweb, click here, or you can read some of Oliver’s Exchange 2007 posts here.