Managed Networks is supporting Jeans for Genes charity to raise money for children with genetic disorder. Jeans for Genes Day is an annual fundraising and this year it takes place on Friday 7th October. It’s very simple- all you have to do is ask people to come to work in their jeans and donate £2.

The idea of Jeans for Genes Day originated in Dorset in the early 1990s. Now Jeans for Genes is a national UK campaign which raises money to change the world for children with all types of genetic disorders. The charity’s main fundraising event is Jeans for Genes Day which takes place annually on the first Friday of October. Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK make a donation to wear their jeans to work or school.  The money they raise helps to fund the care that children need now and the research that could change their lives in the future.

Genetic disorders are caused by an alteration in DNA. This may mean that either a gene or several genes are missing, repeated or in the wrong order. Altered genes can affect a child’s senses, movement, ability to learn or appearance.

For more information visit www.jeansforgenesday.com
You can make a difference simply by wearing jeans.

Microsoft has come under fire after it turned out that Bill Gates’ firm paid £1m to silence Natalie Ayres, a female executive who was unfairly overlooked for the UK managing director role.

Natalie Ayes served Microsoft for 15 years, rising to become general manager of software giant’s Small-Medium Enterprises and Partners Group. Ayes was tipped to success Alistair Baker as Microsoft UK managing director in the summer of 2006. Instead the job was handed to Gordon Frazer, a general manager at Microsoft South Africa, allegedly before Natalie Ayres had completed the interview process. She then left the company with a ‘compromise agreement’ that ran into seven figures, sources at Microsoft revealed.

Mr Frazer, who succeeded Alistair Baker as MD of Microsoft UK, said at the time that Microsoft would miss her ‘dedication and intelligence’ but respected her ‘personal decision to move on’. Mrs Ayres’ departure was said to have angered the firm’s employees who felt that management stopped women from reaching more senior jobs. ‘It’s a boys’ club, the only way to progress beyond a certain point is to become a male in female clothing. They management do not follow procedure enough and if your face doesn’t fit, you suffer,’ said a source.

Mrs Ayres has said in the past that Microsoft was a good company was a good place for women to work: ‘Women can be more susceptible to self-doubt, but I’ve always found a natural place at the table for me at Microsoft at every level.’ A spokesman for Microsoft said: ‘As is standard practice for any responsible company, Microsoft does not comment about individual employees – current or former.  However, Microsoft places great importance on our core values of diversity and inclusion which is just one of many reasons why we are consistently ranked as one of the top 50 best workplaces in the UK.’

Summer may be the holiday period but Managed Networks has been busy. There has been a lot going on in our company- we have refreshed our brand, launched new website and increased our presence on social media platforms. We have also worked towards building a strong partnership with Microsoft and Intellect.

Our Values

At Managed Networks we believe that every business should be values-driven, as it provides a focus for everyone. That is why we developed our statement of values and put it in four sentences that define our identity:

• Managed Networks has been providing better IT to SMEs for almost 20 years.
• Our highly-qualified professionals give clear, unbiased advice in plain English.
• We listen to our customers, understand their business needs, and deliver appropriate IT solutions.
• Our world-class customer service is backed by our unique proactive service warranty.

New Appearance

Following on from our thinking about our values, we decided to refresh our brand image to reflect our values. Managed Networks has taken an unusual approach to refresh our brand’s image. We aimed to combine clean design with great functionality. Since we offer solutions that simply work – guaranteed – we wanted this approach to be reflected in our visual identity. Working with talented graphic designers and professional website developers we have created a new website of which we are very proud. Follow the link to explore our revamped image and brand new website>

Intellect Membership

Managed Networks is proud to be a member of Intellect, the UK IT trade body for the technology sector, and to benefit from its wide membership and high standards of professionalism. Our Chief Executive Officer, Ben Rapp, was recently appointed as a non-executive director of Intellect, sitting alongside with senior industry figures from major global IT companies.  Recently we have taken another step in our partnership with Intellect by sponsoring one of Intellect’s conference rooms. We will be hosting a series of practical seminars on key IT and business topics in our sponsored room. Look out for your invitation!

The first seminar is scheduled for 13^th October 2011 and will cover Business Continuity Planning. The seminar will be run by Ben Rapp, CEO at Managed Networks and Fellow of the British Computer Society.

New team member

We are delighted to announce that Sara Newman has joined Managed Networks’ team as Operations Manager. Sara has a background in prog-ramme and project management and is a Prince 2 certified practitioner. She is ITIL-qualified in service management. Sara will drive our continuous improvement program and help us deliver even better service to our customers.

Microsoft Competencies

We are committed to IT professionalism we work closely with top-level IT companies. We have been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 2000, we became a Gold Certified Partner in 2005 and a Microsoft Small Business Specialist soon after. We have just attained a Microsoft Silver level Desktop competency to add to our growing Microsoft Accreditations Portfolio including the Gold Server Platform competency.

Social Media

At Managed Networks we believe that communication is a key to successful relations. That is why we are very active on different communication plat-forms. We want to send out a clear message and keep you abreast of what we have been up to recently.

You can follow us on:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter

The study by the Chartered Management Institute revealed that women in IT are paid more than men at junior level for the first time. Does it mark yet another step in eliminating gender inequality in the workplace?

A female junior IT executive in the UK earns an average salary of £20,730 compared with £20,686 for men at the same level. The same research last year showed that men working at junior levels in IT received an average £1,119 more than women. The salaries for women in IT increased by 2,5% compared with a 0,5% raise for male staff. Phil Lydford, Managing Director at Managed Networks commented: “The survey confirms what has been obvious to us in the IT industry for a while and that is that capability in the job is much more important than gender. Here at Managed Networks we have as many females in leadership roles as males.”

The research also reveals that equal pay for all women is still 70 years away as men are paid an average of £16,469 more than women doing the same job. Petra Wilton, director of policy and research at Chartered Management Institute said the persistent gender pay gap is damaging UK businesses. Wilton also added that the UK government has an important role to play in eliminating gender inequalities: “We need the government to scrutinise organisational pay, demand more transparency from companies on pay bandings and publicly expose organisations found guilty of fuelling the gender pay gap”.