Managed Networks has set a new challenge to their staff: How quickly can you run up London’s Tower 42?

On Thursday 1st March they will be putting three teams to the test, along with a number of other participants, in the Vertical Rush event organised by homeless charity Shelter.

Participants will be running (or perhaps walking…) up the 42 floors of the tower to reach the magnificent champagne bar, Vertigo 42, with its fantastic views over the city. Each entrant will be given a chip that will accurately record their race time, with prizes for the fastest times.

With 920 steps (183 meters) to climb to the bar this is not for the faint of heart, but Managed Networks believes in going the extra mile (or extra floor…) in support of a worthy cause. Shelter provides short-term help to those in need while at the same time conducting research and pushing useful policies into real legislative change.

We are proud of our ongoing commitment to helping the homeless having already made a Christmas donation of £2000 to Shelter. We are looking forward to the challenge presented by the tower race and hope to raise a lot more money for this deserving charity.

If you would like to support us with sponsorship then please get in touch with Abdus Sahid (abdus.sahid@managednetworks.co.uk), one of our technical account managers, who is organising our entry in Vertical Rush. We want everyone to work together to make this Shelter’s most successful fundraising event yet.

Microsoft and Google are among technology companies backing the ‘Next Generations Skills’ campaign which launches today in a bid to get computer science onto the curriculum in UK schools. The technology giants are calling on the Government to make changes to the education system to provide better IT skills.

Peter Barron, director of external relations at Google EMEA, said: “Google is a company built on, and still driven by, engineering. As we see increasing potential for growth in the creative, digital and hi-tech industries, we need to ensure that we are equipping the next generation with the skills they need to keep Britain at the cutting edge of technological and scientific innovation.” In August, Google chairman Eric Schmidt criticised primary and secondary education system in the UK, saying that it would “hold back” the country’s agenda to boost the economy through growth in digital media.

Steve Beswick, director of education for Microsoft UK, said: “Microsoft strongly supports the introduction of computer science as a rigorous school subject at every level from primary onwards. We need a step change that re-establishes computer science as a high-status school subject, valuable both educationally and economically.”

 Ed Vaizey, minister for culture, communications and creative industries, has said earlier this month that the internet economy will contribute to 10% of UK GDP by 2015.

Multitouch has already been disruptive in the smartphone market and this disruption will spread to other parts of the consumer electronics segment- the recent research by Gartner reveals. Multitouch technology has rapidly moved to become the consumer experience on high-end smartphones. The behaviour associated with multitouch is extending to additional devices, such as tablets, digital media players or portable navigation devices.

The success of Apple’s iPhone has significantly disrupted the smartphone industry and has resulted in most high-end smartphones adopting touchscreens. Some of the smartphones have implemented multitouch, while others have chosen single-touch solutions. Consumers have moved towards smartphones with touch implementations, with one exception- smartphones that have heavy messaging as their central value proposition. Some users opted for physical keyboard for long emails and text messages.

When Apple launched the iPhone, there were very few touchscreen handsets in the market. Within a matter of months, the number of touchscreen phones had increased dramatically. Multitouch has already caused a disruption in product introductions for multiple industries and has the potential to change well-established consumer’s behaviours. It will also continue to disrupt the market in the PC and tablet segment as it has the potential to disrupt the entrenched mouse controls that the PC industry has relied on for years. Multitouch could redefine the PC form factor over time.

The latest study by sourcing advisory group TPI  reveals that the investment in outsourced IT services is growing. The retail, manufacturing, media and telecoms sectors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have spent more money on outsourcing during the first nine months of this year than in the whole of 2010.

The manufacturing  sector spent €5.8bn in the first three quarters of this year, compared with €5.6bn in all of 2010. The retail industry’s investment in outsourced IT so far this year reached €1.4bn compared with €0.8bn in 2010. The telecoms sector has spent €4bn so far in 2011 compared with €2.8bn in he full 12 months last year.

Meanwhile, the financial services sector has slowed its spending on outsourced IT services. After the first three quarters of 2011 the sector’s spending accounts for 48% of its total for 2010. Financial sector was not alone in reducing spending. The energy, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors also experienced falls.

Martyn Hart, chairman of the National Outsourcing Association commented: “Outsourcing in the Emea retail sector has risen 600% on last quarter, and 75% year-on-year. This is due to major retail players seeking competitive advantage by adopting high-tech IT solutions and infrastructure upgrades. They are turning to outsourcing providers as a low-risk route to superior technology.”

Reasons for outsourcing IT services

• Outsourcing reduces capital and operating costs.
• It saves time and provides relief from the administrative tasks involved in employee-related responsibilities. The company can then focus on growth strategies.
• In 95% of cases proactive IT support service is better than having internal IT team
• Even companies which have internal IT provision often need some extra assistance
• Internal IT team may need additional skills or simply more engineering time to implement a new project
• IT requires a vast range of skills and internal IT people may not possess all the necessary skills.
• Outsourcing IT support services means that the company can concentrate on its core business.

Google announced yesterday that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for £7.65bn ($12.5bn). The deal is expected to be completed in late 2011 or early 2012. Buying hardware is rather unusual move for Google, but as the company explains: “The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing.”

The takeover is said to boost the rise of Google’s Android software in the smartphone market. The £7.65bn deal is Google’s biggest acquisition to date. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google’s Android operating system. Other manufacturers, including HTC and Samsung, will be free to release phones using Google’s Android software. Motorola Mobility will be run as a separate business. Larry Page, Google chief executive officer, commented: “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

The deal represents growing competition on the smartphone market and is said to be the biggest challenge yet to Apple, which has led the way in the smartphone market with the iPhone. It also comes just 6 months after Nokia signed a strategic deal with Microsoft in effort to increase their share in the market.

Motorola was the first mobile maker to partner with Google and release phones based on its Android operating system. Analysts predict that by the end of 2012 half of the world’s smartphones will be using Android software as manufacturers prefer adopting Android operating system rather that developing their own.

Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has sealed the deal with Skype to provide social networking site with video chat option. It will allow Facebook users to talk face to face. Zuckerberg unveiled new Facebook functionality just days after Google presented its social network to the world. Is this the beginning of the technology battle between the giants?

The video chat will not require Facebook’s users to download any specific feature from Skype. All they have to do is download a plug-in for the video chat tool but it shouldn’t take more than 20 seconds. Zuckerberg described the new function as the “best technology” within the “best social infrastructure”. Skype, which is being acquired by Microsoft  in a £5.2bn deal predicts 50% increase in video calling traffic. The internet telephony provider also believes that it can increase its number of users by up to five times from its current 150 million. The joint project also proves the strengthening alliance between Facebook and Microsoft against rival Google.

Just last week Google unveiled its social network Google+ which offers a collection of new Google products. One of the products, Hangouts, allows up to 10 people simultaneously engage in a chat. The video feed switches based on who is speaking at a given moment. That creates a huge advantage for Google as Facebook offers only one-on-one video chat, but Zuckerberg hinted that group video chat will be rolled out soon.

Facebook has more than 750 million users and it will be extremely hard for Google to compete and steal Zuckerberg’s brainchild’s crown. However, the competition between Google and Facebook will only bring benefits for the users- they will get better service and more innovative technology.

You may have the most appealing website and sell the most desirable products, it will serve for nothing unless your business venture stands out on search engines. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital to a business because it generates 90% of all the online traffic. There are more that 250m websites worldwide, even the smallest business needs to take on SEO to be noticed. The research shows that websites that appear in top three places  of the search engine’s results attract 98% of all the web traffic. People not very often look at the second results page or beyond.

Search Engine Optimisation is the method of analysing and constructing individual web pages and entire sites to get them discovered, analysed and indexed by various search engines. The main purpose of SEO is to make the content of the website more relevant, more easily read by search engines and their indexing software. How exactly search engines arrive at their list of most relevant sites is a secret, as the algorithms are constantly being tweaked in. However, the relevancy is mainly based on the content and on the number of sites that lead to your website.

“SEO is about reverse engineering to try to trick Google into thinking you are the most relevant site. Anybody can launch a website and the barriers to entry are low, so if your business relies on the web for customers you need to be proactive,” said Aneesh Varma, the co-founder of FabriQate, a creative digital agency in west London.

SEO can be very beneficial, especially for small and medium enterprises as the usually don’t have a big budget to advertise their products and services and on-line presence can lift their business at little cost. Here are a few tricks that can improve your search engine visibility:

1. Keywords in the URL- give your website (and your business) a name that describes what it does. That will encourage search engines to rate your web higher and will also make it easier for potential customers to find you. For example you are selling handmade earrings it would be better to name your website handmadearrings.co.uk than for example prettyjewellery.co.uk. Whenever you are creating a new sub-page, make sure it has a meaningful URL. Avoid the default URLs and use a structure containing links with keywords. For example www.managednetworks.co.uk/it-services/business-continuity URL indicates that the business is providing unique content.

2. Not only the name of your website is essential, its description matters too. Title containing keywords in itself always achieves a better rank, it should brief the service provided by your firm. Generally, use as many keywords as possible, include the words and phrases you wish to be known for into the content of your website. Take advantage of meta tags, which are information that you can write into the unseen instruction part of your website and are recognised by search engines as they trawl the internet looking for relevant sites.

3. Engage in social media- create a Facebook page and Twitter account and a blog for your business and link them to your website. Remember to try to generate original content and update social media platforms on the regular basis. You may also try to find some affiliates who will add a link to your website from their website in exchange for the same favour. Try to have links from site that matches the profile with your own services. It will boost your presence in the web and assist in establishing the authority of your domain.

Search Engine Optimisation can help your small medium business grow. All it takes is to be systematic and consequent in your on-line activity.

Apple, Google and Microsoft came under fire after allegations of tracking and storing the information about the users’ movement. Apple’s iPhone and iPad constantly track users’ locations and store the data in unencrypted files that can be read by anyone with physical access to the device, the latest research revealed. It was also reported that Apple, Google and Microsoft routinely capture their customers’ phones cell tower and GPS data without anyone knowing.

The security researchers, Pete Warden and Alasdair Alan discovered that iPhones and iPads keep the track of users’ physical location and store the data in unencrypted files. It appears that Apple has been recording information since deploying iOS 4.0 last June. The file is stored both, on the iOS device and any computers storing backup of its data.

The researchers wrote “The most immediate problem is that this data is stored in an easily-readable form on your machine (…). Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements”. However, Warden and Alan underline that there is no evidence that Apple or anyone else accessed the information.

According to hobbyist hacker Samy Kamkar, Android phones by Google collect nearby Wi-Fi access points and their geographic location every few seconds and transmit the information, along with the device’s unique id to the company several times per hour. By combining that information, it wouldn’t be hard for Google to figure out where you live and work. “They [Androids] are sending all your GPS coordinates. They know how fast you’re travelling. There is a unique identifier that’s always sent”, Kamkar added.

Just today, it emerged that Windows Phone 7 also silently transmits the precise physical location back to a central database. However, Windows Phones don’t store any of the locations on the device itself. By contrast, iPhone 4 can store the locations for months, if not years. Android indexes location of cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks, but only up to 200 and 50 entries, respectively.

Both Apple and Google have admitted that their phones report their locations, but only when devices’ location services are on. Their defence claims that the information transmitted from their phones is anonymous and users have the ability to turn it off. Neither Apple nor Google has revealed that the locations are also stored on the handset. Apple, Google and Microsoft are still to public their official statement regarding the controversy. MacRumors reports that one of its users sent an email to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for explanations:

“Steve,
Could you please explain the necessity of the passive location-tracking tool embedded in my iPhone? It’s kind of unnerving knowing that my exact location is being recorded at all times. Maybe you could shed some light on this for me before I switch to a Droid. They don’t track me.”

Steve Jobs’ purported response was:

“Oh yes they do. We don’t track anyone. The info circulating around is false.”

A lawsuit has been filled against Apple following its alleged tracking of the whereabouts of the iPhone and iPad users. Vikram Ajjampur and William Devito, the plaintiffs who filled the lawsuit on Monday explained: “The accessibility of the unencrypted information collected by Apple places users at serious risk of privacy invasions, including stalking.”

Is our privacy the price we have to pay for using hi-tech devices?

Salaries for UK IT professionals have risen 5% over the past year, a latest research by IT recruitment firm CV Screen revealed.

A detailed study of 50 IT roles and over 7,000 advertised positions in the UK during the first quarter of 2011 showed that the average salary for a permanent IT position is now £38,946, up 5% on the same period last year.

Matthew Iveson, director at CV Screen, commented “The rise in IT salaries can partly be attributed to the recovery of the economy and jobs market over the past 12 months. Employers are gaining confidence and their recruitment budgets have increased over the last year. Rather than cutting back on staff, we are now seeing employers looking to grow the size of their workforce and are having to offer more competitive salaries to secure the best talent.”

CV Screen points out that the number of registered vacancies increased dramatically, by over 25% in the first quarter of 2011 compared with 2010, whilst the number of application per role has actually dropped by 20%. This means that the employers may struggle to fill vacancies. The employer-driven market is now shifting towards a candidate-driven market, which is driving salaries up.

There still exists a lack of good quality candidates within certain areas of IT jobs market, particularly for .NET, PHP and Java roles. Employers have been forced to offer higher salaries to attract the best calibre candidates.

The rise in IT industry salaries may continue, as Iveson stressed “Whilst it is difficult to make predictions for the next 12 months, we strongly believe that rising inflation and the increased cost of living will push IT wages up further and therefore the salary increase trend will continue well into 2012.”

Remote access computing, whether from multiple offices or geographically dispersed field worker locations, will often be accompanied by some form of basic protection and retention of generated electronic information. The issue of remotely stored data protection and recovery is number one on any SME or mid sized enterprise agenda as the percentage of processed total data in remote offices rapidly increases.

In many instances, the present systems of protection may be in serious need of review and upgrade to more adequately deal with a company’s ongoing, yet expanding data accessing, processing and network security storage. In today’s rapidly changing IT environment a proactive IT policy is now a critical service level constant which maintains deployment efficiency and security standards.

A “remote office” may be defined as a staffed location with one or more Microsoft Windows servers – a file and print server and, depending on the level of operations, may also include:

• A Microsoft Exchange Server for e-mail management.
• An application server running a database program like Microsoft SQL Server.
• Another application server to support business-specific, mission-critical applications.
• A backup server attached to a tape drive or autoloader.

There are many factors to consider when designing an overall solution to the remote data protection problem, including the types of applications to be protected, the potential risks, and specific data recovery objectives.

Applying the same level of protection to all the applications and services running in each office may seem simpler to implement, but it could be cost prohibitive. Each application and the data that it generates or manages needs to be evaluated and relative priorities set for individual protection.

For example, many remote offices probably have a shared file and print server. Losing data from this system probably won’t put the organisation in jeopardy, although it may be inconvenient trying to recover or recreate that data.

Most companies still rely on tape backups for data protection and recovery. However, in remote offices, the manual processes used in operating the tape backup system may not be as reliable as they are often performed by non-technical staff who may have little or no training in backup and recovery procedures. Data recovery in remote offices from tape backups can also be problematic and often require outsourcing IT expertise.

Identifying and implementing necessary data protection is an important cost investment, but beyond hardware and software costs, an overall remote offices solution needs to consider the impact of data protection decisions and the application of an integrated IT support.