Appreciation Messages to Make Your IT Support Team Feel Valued

Here is the compilation of some inspirational appreciation messages for your IT support team that let them know you really appreciate their work.) Check Out

Chinese investors look to Singapore after USA, a study by EIU finds

Singapore, according to a recent study, has become the second-most attractive destination for investors from China. In first place, the United States still holds its own, but Singapore is fast catching up.

As per the study Singapore notched up a score of 54.6 out of 100 as compared to the States’ 57.5. The study was conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which placed Hong Kong in third with a score of 50.2. A total of 67 economies were evaluated based on their worth for investors from China.

The top three are unchanged from the survey last year, as they are developed economies favored by investors. The ratings take into account the market capitalization, the operational hassle, and the probability to expand etc to arrive at a consensus for investing locales. Singapore and Hong Kong feature so high in the list mainly because of their openness to foreign investment.

According to the EIU Singapore has managed to trump Hong Kong to second place as it provides a diversified platform, while Hong Kong is restricted to a few sectors alone. It is therefore understandable that Singapore has the capacity to attract more investors as compared Hong Kong. For Singapore, the Chinese investment total has gone up to a whopping US$2 billion from the paltry US$20 million in 2005.

Japan has meanwhile, slipped to a lowly rank of 6^th despite being the closest neighbour. According to the EIU, the reason for this is years of deflating economy and no impressive economic growth to show. Chinese investors have therefore chosen to look further than many would expect them to. The States lead the list as normal with US$3.9 billion worth of investment from their Chinese counterparts. One of the main reasons behind this, as the EIU puts it, is the vast natural resource inventory that the US provides and the level intellectual property they can serve up.

The study also predicted, that by 2017, China’s outbound investment activities will easily overtake the incoming investment drive and make China a net investor in the global market.

Ways of Adding Value with Cloud Computing

As the wave of Cloud computing gathers speed, companies, big and small, are acknowledging the fact that various economic benefits can be entailed by using services of Cloud providers. The economics of IT is changing, and perhaps what is heartening for people choosing to go the Cloud way, is that the trend shows little signs of slowly any time soon. It is believed that, or rather theoretically proven that the trend of Cloud is slated to grow and manifold with the benefits increasing exponentially. As a result of the economic value that Cloud provides, soon money could be thrust into other areas of concern for large economies thereby ushering an era of change through IT alone.

Some of the value adds that Cloud can provide to your business are:

1. Elastic consumption

If you have implemented cloud in your company, you are probably no longer doing manual tasks that you used to before. Cloud introduces the automation of most practices in a company which make it flexible for the financial investors in the firm to save some money. As a result, significant capital expenditure is eliminated and a company enjoys the privilege of pay-as-you-go services. Migrating to cloud eliminates risks that are usually associated with static IT projects, thereby allowing the business to maintain its agility. This elasticity, offered by Cloud services enables a company to take on infrastructural challenges that their own in-house IT department would not be able to support. Consequently, the bedrocks of your business become elastic enough to be scale a company both ways, with immense ease, and without compromising on maintaining continuity and growth.

2. The economy of its scale

Most companies according to a recent study by Microsoft are only just waking to the realization that Cloud implementation can significantly cut costs. According to the analysis the scale of economics as was significantly low, as compared to the latest findings. The current trend suggests that cloud could one day deliver computing strength at costs 80 percent lower than the current prices. This trend has been predicated on three factors: the supply side, where Cloud can purchase and operate with cheaper infrastructure; demand-side, where these purchases can be utilized efficiently by pooling users; and multi-tenancy, which allows the sharing of resources, thereby sharing cost. For companies to foster and take complete advantage of the Cloud computing trend, it is essential to understand the underlying economics as well.

3. It promotes innovation
One of the more romantic advantages for implementing Cloud is that it frees your resources for other tasks. Most companies, especially the smaller ones bank on keeping their heads above water, by at least keeping the office and their infrastructure in place. Maintenance alone, of this infrastructure can eat away into a company’s revenue stream, thereby leaving little scope for investment into noble initiatives, or even new user and in-house change requests. This is where Cloud would provide stakeholders a breather. By freeing resources, that were previously pillaring the company’s foundation, can also contribute towards experimentation and genesis of fresh ideas. Resources that are freed, as a result of Cloud implementation can prove to be more productive as compared to earlier times.

Cloud Storage: Comparison of Providers and Solutions

The term “Cloud Storage” is sufficient in itself to stir up a debate in even the sanest of conversations. However, even the most anti-cloud naysayer would agree that cloud is the best solution for disaster recovery. Enterprise cloud storage providers understand that their clients are looking for security, reliability and redundancy. They are also aware of the fact that there is a lot of fear about the safety with most companies taking a staggered approach when moving to cloud storage, from archive backups to live storage. 

So, to make it convenient for you to select the best service for your company, below is a list of top 3 cloud storage providers who are well equipped with the resources to handle your company’s bytes in bulk:

1.      Amazon S3          

Amazon S3 comes under AWS umbrella and covers major internet hubs including Pinterest and Reddit. It costs $0.055/GB per month if you occupy over 5,000TB on Amazon's cloud. In case the data you’re storing does not fall under the mission-critical variety, then the company’s Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) reduces the price to $0.037/GB per month.

You can opt to store your data in any one of the many geographic locations. You can however lower the latency by selecting a location close to your home. However, considering a disaster recovery standpoint, choosing a distant location makes sense too.

2.      Google Cloud Storage

Part of the Google cloud Platform, Google Cloud Storage is specifically designed for big businesses in need of big-time storage requirements. Google storage services are charged at highly competitive prices, with 4,500TB costing $0.054/GB per month. Also the Durable Reduced Availability, as compared to Amazon S3 is slightly cheaper at $0.042/GB per month.

To safeguard the data of your enterprise, Google stores it redundantly at several different geographical locations. In addition, the company offers a little more piece of mind by constructing its own proprietary security technologies into Google Cloud Storage.

3.      Rackspace Cloud Files

It can rightly be said that Rackspace knows cloud computing pretty well. Below the 1PB/1024TB threshold, the prices charged by the company starts at $0.075/GB per month on a purchase of over 500TB of storage. However, the prices increase slightly in case you require less storage.

Rackspace's unique selling point is its Akamai CDN file transfer method. Here the company can use 213 Akamai edge locations to trasfer files over the Internet that too in record time. So, instead of transferring files from one of Rackspace's origin servers, Akamai CDN is utilized to deliver the files regionally. It’s beneficial for big businesses with numerous offices and mobile employees or websites received lots of traffic globally. 

How to Secure Your File Sharing and Sync Process

For last couple of technologically advanced years, IT Support has undergone several changes and so have file synchronization and sharing techniques. The result is a huge variety of platforms that can serve the purpose equally efficiently.

While options are numerous, from Box and Google Drive to Dropbox and Microsoft SkyDrive, you should choose what is right and can meet your unique requirements! The best way would be to compare them on the basis of different objectives that you may have.

Here is how different tools can help you secure your file sync and sharing process:

Efficiency in Terms of Storage Space

Regardless of which file sync and share platform you are using, your ultimate purpose is storage. So, it is important that you know how much storage space you are getting with different platforms.

SkyDrive leads the charge in that case. Dropbox and YouSendIt can provide you with just 2GB at the best. Unfortunately, this is less than the half of total storage space average file-sync services offer! Also, there are several other reasons other than the storage space to give SkyDrive a try.

Cost-Effectiveness

All of the popular file sync and sharing tools offered by IT Services charge on monthly basis. Again, SkyDrive from Microsoft is your most cost-effective platform. Interestingly, its yearly rates are less compared to virtually all major competitors.

SkyDrive and SugarSync are the only tools that provide users with most options for plans to choose from. YouSendIt comes with probably the worst plan – you are forced to either keep sticking to the $14.99 plan or pay $9.99 for 5GB. Google upgrades Gmail accounts of paid users only.

Safety

When choosing a file sync and sharing platform, another big requirement from users is security. This is always a big concern for those who need to share or upload files with personal information. So, whatever your requirements, make sure you know what different companies are doing to secure uploads and downloads.

Even if you don’t have much idea about what to look for, you should ask questions about SSL support at least. This is a technique used to encrypt your data so that only the sender and the receiver can read it.

Most of these platforms provide you with a SLL connection. And when it comes to encoded storage of files, SkyDrive, Google Drive and Box are going to disappoint you. Give one out of Dropbox, YouSendIt or SugarSync a try, depending upon your needs and keeping other features in mind.

Mobile Device Support

You’ll always want to be able to sync your systems with mobile devices and access data and information. Amazingly, SugarSync supports more (almost all!) mobile devices compared to other platforms!

While most of them really like iPhone, Blackberry is hardly supported by half of them. Box which’s supporting most mobile devices is another great option here.

Top Important Network Maintenance Tasks You Can Do

It is a good habit to reserve complicated tasks for the experts. But, there’s a list of things you can do on your own too. These tasks don’t require you to be a pro, knowing a few simple instructions can help you complete them without expert help. In what follows we help you recognize these tasks, take a look:  

1. Installing, Replacing Or Upgrading Both Hardware And Software

These are the most common network maintenance tasks. The procedure involved may include replacing failed or old hardware such as switching line cards and supervisor modules in Catalyst 4500 and 6500 series and upgrading the Cisco IOS images to current versions for switches and routers alike.

2. Monitoring, Tuning And Optimizing Network

Proactive monitoring is essential for effective network maintenance. It helps in detecting potential problems such that suitable remedies could be implied before they cause a severe outrage or affect an ongoing operation. Proactive monitoring also helps in:

•  Verifying the performance of the network
•  Baseline the performance
•  Understand the right amount of direction and traffic flows
•  Identify and troubleshoot potential network problems

3. Documenting The Network And Maintaining Documents

While most engineers find this a mundane task, it is important to understand that documentation is critical for overall network maintenance, for troubleshooting and to support it. Documentation should include the following information:

• Information about interconnections between devices for LAN and Wan connections
• VLAN information and IP addressing
• Topology diagram of network
•  Inventory information of all devices, modules and components
• Configuration information
•  Date traffic information

4. Securing Network From Internal And External Threats

Securing the network acts integral to network operations and maintenance tasks. It is crucial to pay equal considerations to both internal and external threats. While most organizations have dedicated network security teams, structured maintenance approach and monitoring can also be used for detecting potential security threats based on which you can take appropriate action before any undesired incident takes place.

5. Planning For Network Upgrades, Expansions Or Enhancements 

Effective network monitoring can help you identify potential issues before they arise such that you can plan for possible expansions or network upgrades to strengthen network security.

6. Scheduling Backups And Restoring Networks From Backups

Backups should be regarded as core maintenance tasks and given high priority. Backups of critical network devices and components should be scheduled, monitored and ultimately verified at all times. This will help in faster recovery of network or its components following hardware or software failures.        

7. Ensuring Compliance With Legal Regulations

It is vital for you to ensure that the network is compliant with both corporate policies as well as legal obligations. Regardless of your industry and its requirements, you need to ensure your business is following industry standards regulated by the law. You also need to ensure that your network completely adheres to all corporate policies.

Top 5 Best Practices for Small Business IT Support

Businesses, big and small, need tech support. No exceptions.

Without an in-house expert or a dedicated IT support service focusing on a small business’s technology needs, it will soon struggle to keep afloat or just fail to stay competitive in the target market due to increased operational costs, delays etc.

Whether you intend to hire a small team of your own or hire outsource IT support tasks, keep in mind the following pointers:

• Short term solutions like an in-house employee with some tech know-how looking after the health of IT systems don’t always work. A small business must establish IT support as a well perceived need within the organization and list out the tasks that need to be taken up on a routine or emergency basis.
  
• Installing new software or fixing an obnoxious computer bug isn’t everything that a tech support professional can do. Those are just basic tasks. Any small business entity trying to grow and scale should get on board a managed IT support service provider or team of professionals with relevant certifications and hands-on experience.
  
• Customer support of any kind is best delivered by people who can empathize with those who are at the receiving end. Make sure to always choose IT support companies or professionals who can offer the much needed human touch.
  
•  IT support should always be proactive. If tech support guys are visiting your office every week or keeping some employees busy on a daily basis, while trying to fix an ongoing problem, what’s the point of getting managed IT services?
  
• Prepare a monthly, quarterly and half-yearly review plan for IT support whether you've an in-house IT department or have hired another company for the job. The tech support team must be accountable and it is up to you to ensure that the investment actually pays off. 

Choose Right IT Support for your Business in Singapore

It’s vital for business companies to deploy state-of-the-art technology for smoother operations. After all, they’re growing every second and hiring new talent with every passing day. Advanced IT solutions help employees to get comfortable with their company by having access to services such as real-time messaging and online work groups. But all this is possible only if you have the right IT partner with you.

Make sure that you trust your IT partner and your employees feel comfortable with the offered or deployed IT solutions. When choosing an IT support for your business in Singapore, you should consider following points:

1. Test Your Trust

Before finalizing your IT service contract, it’s necessary to gauge the trust level between you and your IT partner. Both parties must reach a certain level of understanding in order to avoid discrepancies that may arise in future. Remember talking to each other can largely prove beneficial in building a stronger trust in your relationship. To solidify this bond, the best way is to sign a written contract with every detail precisely mentioned.

2.  Explore Options

It’s important to look out for support skills that you want from an IT support service provider. You should conduct a background check on the company’s experience and the skill-sets, or domain expertise of the vendor. The skills of an IT service company must match with your requirements otherwise it can cause great trouble in future. A good service provider has facilities for professional training as well as technical forums for remote IT support. So, look for a partner who has valuable knowledge about IT system set-up and troubleshooting.

3. Cost-Efficiency Is Good

Some good IT service companies have a good track record, but they’re too expensive. Small businesses have limited budgets for deploying IT resources. So, choosing a cost-efficient IT service provider will help you to keep your expenses in check.

4. Work Culture

If you are new to Singapore, you may well need to communicate in English. There are many IT service companies who provide support services in English language. There are four official languages of Singapore such as English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. If you are familiar with any one of these languages, there is no fear of communication lack. But, business entities from outside Asia may find trouble during communication unless they’re fluent in English.

5. Working Strategy

Did company management turn up on your calls? Does an engineer pro-actively check your IT records? What is the work-policy there? These are some of the questions, which need to be asked by a client and answered by an IT service professional. It would immensely help for the growth of both business entities.

IT Services - Helping Small and Medium Businesses To Grow

It’s by incorporating technology into everyday business operations that is driving the businesses economy of Singapore.  Modern IT services help SMEs in easy product transition and business expansion. They also have much better understanding of device capabilities meant for community and industrial skill training programmes.

IT-enabled SMEs have witnessed 15% more revenue growth and double job creations as compared to non-IT SMEs, providing tremendous job opportunities. A faster pace of employee productivity and scalability is achieved by adopting productive software tools available in the IT space.

Feeling curious? Thinking of adding some agility and a business turnover feature! Here are some benefits introduced by IT solution services for SMEs

Simple & Fast, yet Cost-Effective

The introduction of cloud technology offers friction-free business operations to SMEs. Previously it was considered as unsafe and a much costly alternative. Small business owners now can have on the go (24*7) service access by having an account with a cloud service provider.

With cloud computing services, one can start with near to zero investment in IT that otherwise requires bulk purchase of hardware equipments, bundled softwares and modern networks with skilled professionals. Now you need not to acquire special skills for operating within organisation and skip terrible installation experiences. So in fact, it is a good platform for SMEs to gain competitive advantage over their rivals.

Trimmed Solutions

Customised solutions available on the cloud provide perfect fit services for nearly entire verticals under SME segment. These solutions find exact match to SMEs unique needs and completely address the glitches without any business break.

New Vistas of Data Storage and Retrieval

Advance tech incorporation into SME business will definitely lead to easy conversion of data stored in legacy systems or cross-platform storage arrays. Business boundaries defined earlier can see new expansions and open up vibrant opportunities, without any serious doubt.

Optimum Network Security

Cloud ensures trustworthy and reliable data delivery to SMEs transmitted through secure hops. A Service provider ensures high speed and well-functioning (low downtime) Internet connectivity that contributes in digital-economy growth of company.

Little Maintenance

Software upgrades is considered to be the most expensive affair in system maintenance. In this model, entire work is done on server and client needs not to pay any money for change in version or hardware installation.

Cuts down Overall Cost

On ‘Pay per use’ subscription basis, cash-strapped/strained businesses can afford gaining valuable insights, otherwise nearly impossible. It drastically reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) and alleviates associated risk factors/components, making business less severe to volatile environment present outside. 

Revamped Work Environment

Cloud computing services helps to establish collaborative teams that work on different platforms. Now different team members can consult each-other through online platforms. Such work structure helps in better brand building and quick service access for customers. The concept of prompt delivery in new markets is not a day-dream anymore with such IT solutions onboard.

Customer Feedback Is a Gift; Don’t Waste It

Feedback's are valuable reactions, comments or opinions your customers have about your services or products. Appraising them in the right manner can help you and your business reach positives you have desired for.         

A happy satisfied customer service means a successful productive business. Being in the business industry, I guess you understand the importance of the last phrase. However, the question still remains the same, to know how one you achieve customer satisfaction? Well, don’t be surprised if I tell you that feedback is one of the magic ingredients that can help you grow business and also add more customers to your kitty.

It opens a direct gateway in the psychology of the customer and their wants and expectations from a particular product or services. So, here’s telling you what makes feedback a gift for every business and one that shouldn't be wasted: 

Open Interaction with Customers

The biggest advantage a feedback is that you can openly interact with your customers. With a committed response to valuable response to the feedbacks from your customers, you get to learn about the things that the customers like and dislike about your products and services. 

Successful entrepreneurs encourage feedback, and consistently work upon their offerings to make them meet the exact needs of the target customers. Customers also remain happier and more loyal, if their opinions and feedback is taken seriously and worked upon.

Privileging Your Customers

As a part of business cycle, you must get involved in several trade procedures and must have felt the privilege of being classed as the special one in some cases. Similar is the importance of feedbacks for your customers and business. Feedbacks make the customers feel important and involved as a vital component in your business. The way you appraise feedbacks makes the customer feel that you really value their opinions and look out for the services they desire. This is one special treatment you can give your customers and make them feel more involved with your products or services. 

Appraising Customer Value

It’s not just that the feedbacks that are always the way you want them to be, sometimes they are good or say positive feedbacks and sometimes they come as negative feedbacks. Negative feedbacks are more importance than the positive ones. Because, positive feedbacks are like an overview of your business, negative feedbacks are the one that will guide through the loopholes and let you know where improvement is required. Therefore, work on the negatives effectively to convert them into positives for a successful business.                          

 Get Ideas on How to Improve

In the chase to become a successful entrepreneur, hunger for better products and services never get quenched. The demand to what your customers require can brilliantly be managed or monitored through their valuable feedback. Reach out to the customers and ask them about the scope of improvement they would like to see with your services.

Getting regular feedback from your customer means you have a regular familiarity with their demands and you can effectively work on them. Once you understand what the customers requires, you can work on those services and accordingly enhance your sales and achieve higher customer satisfaction and loyalty as well.                

Latest Trends in IT Service

Like any other sector, tech trends too are determined by demand and supply both. While small, medium and large scale companies are now increasing their IT spending, IT service companies in Singapore and elsewhere are now keen to offer more cost-effective and useful services.

Listed below are some key trends in managed IT services in Singapore that businesses are likely to embrace this year:

Increased Cloud Adoption

By the end of 2014, as many as 50% of all small businesses would be using some sort of cloud service. The adoption is likely to skyrocket as small and medium scale businesses have been keen to have a solid cloud strategy.

Several medium scale companies are also mulling private cloud strategies.

Disaster Recovery is more important

Regardless of where a business is located in Singapore, it cannot afford to ignore potentially devastating natural tragedies. From 2013, an increased number of business owners have shown interest in investing on the deployment of recovery systems.

IT services in Singapore already are offering numerous IT support packages with disaster recovery options and we can just hope that more businesses would opt for such failsafe mechanisms.

Organization Wide Content Management

It’s likely that more midsized businesses in Singapore would seek IT support for the management of enterprise content management systems. Several businesses are already using systems such as Microsoft SharePoint for content management.

Ten Reasons to Outsource your IT Services in 2014

Outsourcing IT services is ideal for all small and medium scale businesses that need Information Technology solutions but are not in a position to afford an in-house team or private hardware. Even large scale companies such as banks, hotels etc. in Singapore and elsewhere outsource some IT functions to dedicated firms. 

Listed below are top 10 reasons why you too should outsource your IT services in 2014:

1. With a dedicated IT support company in Singapore, you gain access to a vast pool of IT resources without having to shell out a great deal of money. You’d have the smartest of IT support engineers, cloud computing experts and other such professionals merely a call away when you need them!

2. Achieve higher productivity by having all your staff concentrate on core business activities and not downtime, network connectivity, data integrity or other such issues.

3. You can eliminate the possibilities of downtime and other such inefficiencies which result from technical failures, operating system errors, network connectivity issues, manual backup systems etc.

4. When you opt for dedicated IT support in Singapore by partnering with a credible company, you also gain access to a host of services and solutions through their supplier network. Such services and solutions are made available (through group purchasing power) at a relatively cheaper cost.

5. Network security threats, as you know, are very real. Also, there’re complicated security regulations & compliances regulations that need to be adhered to. With a partner IT support company by your side, you can be assured of the fact that all such legal requirements are being taken care of.

6. You gain immediate access to a wide range of consultancy services. For example, if you’d like to know about high availability systems or whether they are suitable for your business, you need not spend a week carrying out online research. An expert would be a call away.

7. You will have resources that are not otherwise available in-house. Budget restraints will no longer keep you from trying out a better service or deploying an advanced IT solution.

8.  Managing potential risks with a dedicated IT support company in Singapore is easy. From data backups to network security, an IT services partner would take care of all issues of importance for your business.

9. IT costs are often variable but a service provider can be paid monthly. That means, it’d be possible for you to plan your budget more easily.

10.  When you outsource your IT services to a good company, you can be assured of being ahead of the competition. For example, if you start using some technologies today and manage to cut costs, your competitors (who’re not in partnership with a good IT company) may take another year or more to do the same.