Like many businesses, we have always given small gifts to clients at Christmas time as a thank you for their custom. This year, when we were compiling the list of recipients and the budget, we asked ourselves whether we could do something better with the money.

Did you know that every two minutes someone faces losing their home? Recent figures show that the levels of homelessness in the UK have risen by 17% in 12 months. No one should have to endure having their lives torn apart by homelessness, especially at Christmas time, and in these uncertain economic times it’s all the more important that we do what we can to help.

Managed Networks decided to make a difference and help those in need this Christmas. We took our gift budget, doubled it, and donated the whole amount – £2,000 – to Shelter, a charity that works to combat homelessness and bad housing. Instead of gifts, our clients will be receiving an insert in their Christmas cards letting them know how they’ve helped alleviate homelessness in the UK.

Tracy Griffin, Shelter’s director of fundraising, said: “We are thrilled that Managed Networks has chosen to support Shelter this Christmas. Every two minutes someone faces the nightmare of losing their home. All the money raised will go towards ensuring that Shelter can reach more people who need our help to stay in their homes this Christmas.”

Ben Rapp (CEO) and Nick Caplan (Chairman) handed over our cheque for £2,000 to Shelter on the 8^th of December 2011. Our donation will prevent twenty families from being unlawfully evicted from their homes. We would like to inspire other small and medium-sized companies to follow our example. We may not have the impressive budget of a big corporate, but we can certainly do something significant this Christmas.

“We wanted to find a way to make a difference and set an example. Homelessness is a real and pressing issue where charity can have an immediate and lasting impact” – Ben Rapp, CEO, Managed Networks.

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.’

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”.

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.

Schools need to revise their curriculum and change their approach to IT, IBM has written in their latest letter to the Government. The IBM initiative emerged after it was unable to fill 200 jobs due to skilled workers shortage.

Over the past year IBM has created over 1,000 new technology, consulting and analyst vacancies across the UK but was only able to fill 80 percent of them because there were too few quality candidates. It sparked a discussion over who is to blame for the candidate’s poor IT skills.

Stephen Leonard, the Chef Executive for IBM in the UK and Ireland believes that lacklustre GCSE curriculum is partly to blame. Leonard decided to take action and wrote to the Department of Education to detail proposals for an alternative.

“We need to do more as a country to develop more IT-capable people and we need more IT-capable people and we need a curriculum that is more adaptable to change over time. If we pioneer new technologies here then we can take them elsewhere, and we have a great reputation as innovators and entrepreneurs, but how do you keep that going when there are not enough people?”- Stephen Leonard commented. “We are going to have a shortfall of 20 percent over the next two or three years and it is potentially going to widen further. Skills, I think, is the biggest chalange we will face in the next five years.”

Leonard also believes that the shortfall can have very negative implications for the Britain as a world leader in many sectors, not just the technology industry. He is concerned that we will fall behind in the race to lead the world.

Karen Price, chef executive at e-skills blames the way IT is taught in schools as the current syllabus has more negative than positive impact. There is too much emphasis put on IT literacy, but students don’t understand how the technology actually works . IBM, Microsoft and 15 other technology companies were working with schools on reforming the curriculum to tailor it to industry’s needs. “We need to get a generation of young people who are avidly interested in technology understanding how it works and can be applied to business situations”- added Price.

Phil Lydford, director at Managed Networks commented: “IT offers great career opportunities providing individuals are prepared to put the effort into obtaining the requisite skills and credentials. Job opportunities exist now and I cannot see that situation changing in the foreseeable future. In today’s difficult conditions youngsters would be well advised to consider a career in IT.”

The latest study by an independent research company Forrester show that less that 20% of the companies in Europe and North America have incorporated data virtualisation and even fewer are realising its great potential.

Virtualisation is the creation of virtual, rather than actual version of something, it can be operating system, server, storage device or networks resources. Forrester defines virtualisation as a technology that abstracts, transforms, federates and delivers data taken from a variety of heterogeneous information sources. It allows users to access data from various sources through a request to a single access point.

The report by Forrester outlines two major factors limiting the adoption of data virtualisation:
1. The early products have failed customers expectations
2. Many of the bigger suppliers are still underplaying the benefits of virtualisation and IT is targeted at individual projects rather than enterprise wide architecture.

Forrester expects the market attitude to change within next 18 to 36 months as technology advancement, third-party integration and new usage patterns increase the awareness of virtualisation’s potential and benefits.

The big businesses have always lead the way, as they are richer and more powerful than small and medium-sized enterprises. However, the politicians are convinced that SMEs, rather than large corporations are going to provide the economy with a much-needed growth. It is believed that thanks to their innovative approach SMEs are able to take up the slack caused by savage cutback in public sector.

Large companies with their impressive resources are still substantially more advantageous and attract more attention than small and medium firms. However, smaller companies also play a significant role as they constantly come up with innovative ideas of  their products, services and ways of running a business. Researchers stress that SMEs can help economy to grow again, but they won’t be able to do so on their own. They will collaborate with other businesses to achieve better results.

Outsourcing wasn’t that popular a few years back. Because of the recession and the need to save money, businesses have switched to collaborate. Now they outsource many of their operations like information technology support or administration work. That solution enables them to hire people they really need and only they need them. The rapid development of internet and crowdsourcing  techniques will make the collaborations become even more widespread.

Many large corporations consider SMEs as a potential threat, rather than as a potential partner. However, some of the big companies like Procter and Gamble, Pfizer or Cisco are already looking for ideas from small medium enterprises. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer which spend incredible amount of money on Research and Development, are cutting down on such facilities and are turning to university labs and various small operations to look for ideas. Consumer product giant P&G realised it cannot come up with all the answers it needs and is welcoming different ideas from independent individuals and companies. Cisco is appreciating smaller businesses with its Business Heroes campaign. The company believes that small and medium-seized enterprises are the backbone of the economy and the most important creators of new jobs and economic wealth.

The public sector is under unprecedented pressure to save money and do more for less. Following the example of big businesses it can also gain by using SMEs services.

Microsoft announced that it s going to buy Skype for 8.5 billion US dollars (£5bn) and it is going to be the biggest takeover deal in giant’s history. As soon as the information appeared, it sparked mixed opinions and speculation. The question is whether the Microsoft has made the right move and if Skype is really worth $8.5 bn?

Skype was founded in 2003 by Nikklas Zennströms from Sweden and Janus Friis from Denmark. The Skype software was developed by three Estonians- Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu an Jaan Tallinn, people who were also behind famous peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa. On October 2005 Skype was purchased by eBay for $2.6 billion. In 2009 eBay announced the sell 70 per cent of Skype to Silver Lake Partners for approximately $2billion, valuing entire business at $2.75 billion.

Last year, Skype had revenue of $860 million, with an operating profit of $264 million. Overall, Skype made a loss of  $7 million and had a long-term debt of $686 million.

There have been reports that Facebook and Google were interested in partnering with or even buying Skype, for the price around $3-4 billion. Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase price is a huge premium over other deals. Skype’s purchase would be Microsoft’s biggest to date.

Many believe that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer highly overpaid for Skype acquisition. The question is why Microsoft decided to buy a business that has changed owners so many times and never made money and on top of it has a substantial debt. The price tag is three times what Skype fetched 18 months ago. Ballmer defended the purchase in an interview, saying that it will make Microsoft “more ambitious, do more things”. Microsoft explains that they want to reach professional users.

Microsoft has already developed a software that is considered to overlap with Skype. Windows Live Messenger has around 330 million active users each month and offers free instant messaging and voice- and video chat. Microsoft also has an equivalent corporate-oriented communicator, Lync 2010, allowing the companies to create private networks.

Skype has around 700 million users and 124 million active users each month, its features are broadly similar to those found ion Windows Live Messenger. Although the Skype user base is significantly smaller than Windows Messenger’s one, it has one big advantage- about 8 million users pay for the service. Skype integrates telephone connectivity and is able to make inbound and outbound calls and those are paid services, its online services are all for free.

The Skype telephony infrastructure would be a valuable addition to Windows Live Messenger/Lync platform. Its functionality could also be deployed in Windows Phones, revolutionising the mobile phones market. However, the purchase price is phenomenal and many believe that Microsoft could build equivalent telephony infrastructure for much less. According to Peter Bright from Ars Technica, even the access to paying customers doesn’t justify the $8.5 billion deal, “The terms of the deal mean that for each Skype customer, Microsoft is paying about $1,000. And on average, those customers are worth a profit of about $30, presuming most of Skype’s income comes from subscriptions and call charges. That’s a huge disparity,” said Bright.

It is also believed that Microsoft bought Skype just to keep it out of reach of Google and Facebook. Skype technology and user base may not be worth $8.5 billion, but time will reveal whether it was a good move from strategic point of view and whether Microsoft will gain a competitive advantage.

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.

Many entrepreneurs struggle starting their own small businesses. There are too many things they have to take care of and too many things to organise. But maybe it doesn’t need to be as tough as it seems when you decide to outsource part of your services. Outsourcing is the practice of using outside firms to handle the work usually performed within the company. Probably the biggest advantage of outsourcing is that SMEs can entirely focus on their core activities. For example, if you are running a small marketing agency, you don’t need to employ an IT expert, you can easily outsource your IT which not only will make your life easier but also can significantly lower your costs.

The latest report by The Times presents a few examples of small entrepreneurs who highly benefitted from outsourcing their services. Paula Elliot, the managing director of the six-person marketing agency said that moving from a regular office to a serviced one revolutionised her working life. “They supply all the office infrastructure, telephone lines, stationery, etc. We don’t need to invest in reception staff or capital equipment (…) It makes things much easier and you don’t need to worry about business rates or furniture or anything”, she added.

Joy Burnford, joint managing director of the research consultancy company, admits that his business benefits from various outsourced services, as she claims that: “If someone else can do it, then they should. If it’s not building an asset for the business, then you should outsource it”. Burnford’s team of five have moved recently to serviced office, she also outsources IT support and book-keeping services.

Martin Hollis, the market research consultant, employs a book-keeper on an hourly rate to work for a half a day once a fortnight to do the administration. He also outsources his IT services because he believes that: ‘IT and book-keeping are two of the most-consuming things if you don’t know how to do them. I’m a huge supporter of doing only the things that I need to do. Some people are completely unable to let someone else to anything, in which case they will gently grind to a halt.”

Brian Clark who is a life couch also admits that outsourcing is very convenient. He had a lot of administration work to do but couldn’t afford employing a full-time worker so he ‘hired’ a virtual assistant. Basically, Mr Clarke dictates his reports and speeches and sends email voice files or scanned documents to his virtual assistant who does the whole typing work. He pays for the service in ten-hours blocks.

Various businesses discovered the power of outsourcing in the early 1990s, but many of them lacking the understanding of this practice. The key is to outsource wisely, as a random and mindless outsourcing can be harmful. Once you get it right, your company can benefit from numerous long-term benefits. Outsourcing can level SMEs with large companies by giving them access to the same economy of scale and expertise.

If you are considering outsourcing your IT, give Managed Networks a call on 0800 783 6170 or leave a callback request!