Archive May 2020

Cloud computing has revolutionised the way businesses work.  Companies that utilise the cloud will have coped the best with COVID-19 imposed restrictions.  Whether forced to by circumstance or not, businesses are moving from the traditional server in the office to cloud systems.  By far the most common cloud services being considered first are Microsoft Office 365 and Google G-Suite.  There is a common misconception that when you are in the cloud you don’t need to backup.  But storing data in OneDrive or G-Drive is not backup on its own. While it is unlikely that your data will be lost through hardware failure, there are other things that can go wrong. Read More

Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS) has been around for years, I was using it over 20 years ago and was a fan.  It was an excellent solution for flexible working over slow connections, which is all we had back then!  However, back then, you needed something else to make RDS complete, and in my case, this was Citrix Metaframe.  Citrix added lots of missing functionality (printer and drive redirection, load balancing features, etc) and made RDS sing.  However, it also made it quite expensive.  Thankfully, these days this functionality is built into RDS and you get all you need out-of-the-box.

Office 365 (rebranded as Microsoft 365 for SMB offerings) also provides an excellent solution for flexible working.  As Office 365 is a managed service in the cloud, it is accessible from anywhere and allows each user the ability to install on up to 5 devices.   This could be a company-provided laptop, mobile phone, home computer and more.

Which One Should I Use?

It can be seriously confusing trying to understand which of the various solutions are right for your business to offer maximum value.  Read on to get our take on the pros and cons of the options. Read More