Office 365 – Is it useful for an SME?

  • July 5, 2011 5:03 pm

Office 365 – an overview

Over the last few days Microsoft has formally released Office 365. As a small business you may be wondering whether it offers you anything significant. Sure, it can talk about being Cloud based, and therefore hits one of the IT industry’s current buzz phrases. But does it actually offer you as a business owner anything new or useful?

Office 365 is being offered in 2 main packages, “Office 365 for professionals and small businesses”, and “Office 365 for midsize businesses and enterprises”. I am going to concentrate on the professional and small business version. This is pitched at up to 25 users, costing £4 per month per user as at July 2011.

The key aspect of Office 365 is neatly summed up in the strapline “Collaboration for everyone”. The key strength of the package is providing an environment in which small businesses can share their information internally. Whether documents, emails or calendars, without the need for servers. This makes it an ideal offering for businesses who don’t have an IT department, who don’t want the hassle of looking after servers, operating systems and applications.

Included in Office 365 are Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint online and Office Web Apps.

Mobile Working

It’s important to note that the Office Web Apps are not the full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. These are cut down versions that specifically provided to enable viewing and editing of documents on the go.

It works on the (fairly reasonable assumption) that you will already have a version of office on your main PCs. The Office Web Apps are designed to provide the more limited functionality that you are likely to need when working via a range of mobile devices such as:

  • PCs
  • Macs
  • the iPhone
  • Android phones
  • BlackBerry smartphones
  • Windows Mobile
  • Windows Phones

Why IT Departments and SMEs alike should care about the UK CRC Scheme but don’t

  • October 10, 2010 4:43 pm

In the UK companies covered by the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme had until 30th September to register or face fines. But while general business awareness is low (only 50% of the approx 5,000 firms required to register had done so by the 4th October), awareness within IT functions is almost non-existent. This will hamper organisations’ ability to deal with the CRC and deliver the reductions that will lead to lower energy bills and lower CO2 emissions.

About the CRC Scheme

In the UK companies covered by the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (previously known as the Carbon Reduction Commitment) had until 30th September to register with the Environment Agency who is operating the scheme on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

With around 50% of companies registered by the deadline, either as a full participant or as an information provider, many thousands of firms are facing fines and other penalties.

Currently the prevailing sense is one of apathy or ignorance regarding the existence of the CRC, let alone its impact.

In essence the CRC attempts to encourage greater energy efficiency by means of placing an additional cost on carbon emissions, requiring organisations to measure and report on these, and by use of league tables to show which organisations have performed better than others.

The impact on IT

How then, does all this affect IT? Very directly is the straightforward answer. In many service businesses and organisations the top 3 sources of power consumption are

  • Heating/Cooling
  • Lighting
  • Plug Load (all power consumption via devices that are plugged in)

In most organisations Plug Load is predominantly IT related, PCs, monitors, printers, faxes, copiers, network equipment and servers. In addition IT makes a significant contribution to the requirements for cooling with many server rooms requiring up to 150% more power for cooling the heat generated by servers, than for actually running the servers.

It should be clear that any business looking to reduce both their power bills and their liabilities under the CRC scheme should be looking at their IT environments as a key part of their strategy.

Greenocity Ltd, a specialist in providing advice to businesses about improving their IT related emissions, have discovered that while general business awareness of the CRC scheme is low, knowledge of the scheme within IT departments and CIOs is almost zero. Tony Fisher, MD of Greenocity comments “It is shocking that awareness of the CRC scheme among IT professionals is virtually nonexistent. Without IT involvement, organisations will miss vital opportunities to reduce their energy bills, reduce their CO2 emissions and increase their profits”

Unless and until IT becomes an active participant in organisations’ energy efficiency strategies, these strategies will be operating with one hand tied behind their backs. It is therefore imperative that organisations need to ensure that:

  • Their IT organisations understand the implications of the CRC scheme
  • IT is provided with responsibility for the Carbon Emissions it produces
  • Energy Efficiency becomes part of the overall IT strategy, along with availability, customer service etc.

With the nature of IT replacement cycles extending over a number of years, and the requirement for IT constantly increasing, organisations that bring their IT functions into their carbon reduction early will find that IT can start to contribute towards delivering the reduction in carbon emissions; those companies that do not involve IT will find that their IT functions may well be increasing the level of their emissions, simply through a lack of awareness and focus.

So what can IT actually do?

There are a number of approaches that IT can adopt, including PC power management (an extremely cost effective and straightforward method of reducing power bills and carbon emissions (http://www.greenocity.co.uk/powerdown).

Other solutions are more involved and need to be considered within the overall IT strategy. Initiatives such as virtualisation, cloud computing, thin clients, data centre design and consolidation can all contribute to a more energy efficient IT environment as well as simplifying the IT administrative burden.

One of the unique aspects of this legislation is that for organisations that truly embrace it and its aims, it will lead directly to lower power bills, an improved bottom line and a greener environment.

The impact on SMEs

Although not directly affected by the CRC scheme, SMEs would do well to pay close attention to it for a number of reasons

1) It may well be the case that their customers are involved, and when big customers are required to improve their efficiency, this is normally passed down the line to their suppliers as well

2) The CRC is likely to be expanded to cover increasing numbers of businesses and organisations, and it may only be a matter of time before it affects even SMEs

3) The key method of reducing CO2 emissions, is to reduce power usage. Getting smarter on using less power, leads to lower bills as well as lower CO2. Find me one SME that couldn’t benefit from lower power bills….

Greenocity Ltd (http://www.greenocity.co.uk) is a specialist provider of knowledge and advice to enable IT functions to deliver a more energy efficient and greener future, while reducing their organisations’ power bills. With extensive experience of IT across a range of organisations, and a deep knowledge of environmental issues and associated legislation Greenocity can provide the insights needed to deliver IT’s contribution to environmental improvements and lower energy bills.

Greenocity’s managing director Tony Fisher can be contacted on +44 (0)7000 247 365 or via tony.fisher@greenocity.co.uk

Waypoint Consulting Ltd (http://www.waypoint-consulting.co.uk) specialises in providing knowledge and advice to SMEs to help maximise the benefits of their investments in IT, to facilitate improved efficiency and support business change. With extensive experience of Project Management, IT and Business Change programmes across a range of organisations Waypoint can provide practical suggestions and advice to help businesses become more effective and embrace the changes that will deliver business success.

Waypoint’s managing director Stuart Riches can be contacted via stuart@waypoint-consulting.co.uk or via www.waypoint-consulting.co.uk


WordPress blogs subject of another round of hacking attacks

  • October 6, 2010 1:56 pm

I was contacted yesterday by a friend who wanted some changes made to his website. First thing I happened to notice when I went to take a look at the site in question is that my security software started throwing up some alerts about blocking access to a potentially malicious site.

Confident that my friend’s site doesn’t usually qualify for that description I did some digging and discovered that every time I accessed a page on his site, it was attempting to contact an internet address that is registered to an address in Latvia. Looking at the source for the site, there was some JavaScript that appeared on the end of each page that referred to a site called meqashoppinginfo and called a script called js.php.

As far as I can tell the attackers targeted sites with WordPress Blogs on shared hosting providers (most SME websites are hosted in this way) and using WordPress as the point of entry will have gone on to infect any php pages hosted by that site.

Having cleaned my friends site manually (and deleted his WP blog as he isn’t currently using it anyway) and reported the issue to his hosting company, I have received an update from my hosting company as shown below:

Security warning for websites using WordPress

We’ve been made aware of a security issue facing websites using WordPress. We take security very seriously at 123-reg, so we want to check if this matter has affected your site.

If you use the blogging platform WordPress on your web hosting, you may have been the victim of a security hack (please ignore this email if you haven’t installed WordPress on your hosting).

The problem is due to a security breach caused by hackers, who have targeted sites that use WordPress. WordPress is an open source application, making it vulnerable to such attacks.

As your hosting provider, we want to help you counter this WordPress hack as quickly and as effectively as possible. To do so, please follow these simple steps as soon as you can:

1. Run a simple cleanup script
If your WordPress site has been hacked, you will need to run this
simple cleanup solution script (written to defeat this WordPress hack).
2. Scan your local machine
Run a full anti-virus scan on the local PC from which you administer
your WordPress account.
3. Change all your user passwords
Change any user passwords for WordPress account, your FTP
account and MySQL account.
4. Change your secret keys
If hackers have stolen your password they may remain logged into
your WordPress account until you have changed your secret keys.

Visit the WordPress key generator to obtain a new random set of keys.

Then overwrite your secret keys wp-config.php file with the new ones.
This will disable the hacker’s connection.

5. Take a backup of your WordPress files
Backup all of your WordPress files to your local PC (label them as
‘hacked site backup). You can then investigate these files later.

That should do the trick!

If you have been affected by the WordPress hack, we’re sure that the above steps will completey eradicate the problem – allowing your website to function as before.

We’d like to stress that this WordPress hack bears no relation to the security of your 123-reg web hosting itself. This remains robust and very well protected from any attacks by hackers.

Having used the script on another infected site, I can confirm that it is simple and use and works effectively.

This episode re-iterates the importance of:

  • Make sure your passwords (blog admin, FTP etc) are strong passwords and are changed regularly
  • Keep your software up to date, hackers often make use of known bugs in older versions that are now fixed
  • Install anti-malware software on your PC and check your site regularly – this is what alerted me to the problem

CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme – What is it and how might it affect me

  • June 18, 2010 10:15 am

What is the CRC?

April 1 2010 saw the start of the UK CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (aka Carbon Reduction Commitment), however it is clear that many businesses are still in the dark about what it is, how it works and whether it might affect them.

In brief the CRC is the UK Government’s mandatory scheme to encourage businesses and public organisations to take steps to measure and reduce their carbon emissions, and it attempts to achieve this via some simple (in theory) steps

1) All organisations covered by the CRC are required to calculate their estimated emissions based on their activities

2) They are then required to purchase allowances from the UK Government that will cover these emissions

3) Annually they are required to calculate their actual emissions, and dependent on whether they are better or worse than the purchased allowances, they will reclaim the cost of the allowances purchased plus or minus a bonus/penalty amount (initially of up to 10%)

This is an annual process so each year businesses will need to commit part of their cash flow to purchasing allowances, at the end of the year the business will receive this cash back (subject to the bonus/penalty) and will also be required to purchased allowances for the coming year.

Anyone covered by the CRC will therefore have a permanent cash flow impact, and may also be liable for a profit impact should their estimate be incorrect (very likely).

Who is covered by the CRC scheme?

To quote the Dept of Energy and Climate Change

Organisations are eligible if they (and their subsidiaries) have at least one half-hourly electricity meter (HHM) settled on the half-hourly market. Organisations that consumed more than 6,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) per year of half hourly metered electricity during 2008 qualify for full participation and need to register with the Environment Agency, who is the administrator for the scheme .Organisations that do not meet the 6000MWh threshold will have to make an information disclosure of their half hourly electricity consumption during 2008, which they submit once per phase. It is estimated that initially around 5,000 organisations will qualify for full participation, including supermarkets, water companies, banks, local authorities and all central Government Departments. Qualifying organisations will have to comply legally with the scheme or face financial and other penalties. A further 15,000 will have to make an information disclosure.

So in this initial phase the scheme will not directly affect SMEs although 2 caveats apply

1) The UK Government is committed to extending the CRC scheme to cover more and more businesses and organisations eventually covering most UK businesses

2) As many of us who have ever been part of a larger supply chain knows, what affects large businesses tend to be transmitted down to their suppliers.

This is the first in a series of articles trying to demystify the CRC along with blogs at www.waypoint-consulting.co.uk

Future posts will cover other aspects of the CRC scheme, how organisations can prepare for the scheme and how crucially they can use the scheme as a catalyst to save money by thinking more about how to reduce their energy consumption.

Increasing your IT Efficiency while reducing your Carbon Footprint

  • March 23, 2010 8:39 pm

One of the biggest changes facing businesses over the next few years is about to get underway. The UK Government’s introduction of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme which commences in April 2010 will have a profound effect on how businesses will need to monitor, control and reduce their energy use. It forms the cornerstone of the UK Governments legally binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. For businesses needing to understand the carbon impact of decisions will become second only to understanding the financial impact.

In order to improve anything, it is first necessary to be able to quantify it, this is as true for CO2 Emissions as for anything else. It is essential therefore to be able to measure your starting point, this is known as your Carbon Footprint. A ‘carbon footprint’ measures the total greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by a person, organisation, event or product. Once you have your footprint, this should form the basis for both ongoing Monitoring and Action Planning.

Action Planning can be used to identify potential opportunities to reduce the footprint, and caninclude a range of measures, some simple and quick, others more involved. Monitoring will enable you to understand the impact of changes on your overall footpint and will assist in demonstrating your commitment to, and compliance with, legislation such as the CRC.

In the vast majority of cases the changes that will deliver a reduction in the carbon footprint are the same changes that will deliver a more cost efficient, more manageable and ultimtely more effective IT environment.

In future posts I will consider in more details the various areas that need to be considered when developing an IT Carbon Footprint, and the sort of changes that can deliver the improvements that should benefit the profitability and effectiveness of the business as well as ensuring a reduction in CO2 emissions.

Rural Broadband

  • March 23, 2010 1:46 pm

At least the politicians in the UK are now talking about rural broadband, but the cynic in me wonders whether this has more to do with an upcoming election rather than a serious desire to sort out this issue.

Gordon Brown talks about the need to provide “superfast” broadband to all homes in the country while David Cameron talks about putting the UK top of the European broadband league. Admirable sentiments, but unrealistic. Let’s look at Gordon Brown’s statement first – superfast broadband for all – what exactly does he mean by “superfast”, is he talking about the definition of superfast being 50Mbps. Given the inability to delivery these sort of speeds even in densely populated urban areas, how exactly does he suggest that we can achieve these speeds in rural areas where the distance to the nearest exchange can prevent any reliable broadband service from being delivered? This doesn’t even begin to address the fact that broadband speeds are one of the most “flexible”  definitions known to man.

David Cameron has also been talking recently about broadband, and talks ambitiously about putting the UK at the top of the European league for broadband provision, while suggesting that part of the BBC licence fee could be diverted to fill in gas where the market doesn’t work to increase provisions. It seems to be unrealistic to aim for top of the league without having any real understanding as to how you can improve the low speeds that dog most rural communities and will continue to drag down the average that is part of the reason we are so low in the current standings.

Both leaders talk knowingly about the benefits of broadband, about its ability to transform business models, to enable home working, to enable the provision of audio or visual services such as on-demand TV, but neither of them seem to be able to say how much this will cost or how it will be delivered, instead relying on bland statements about markets, encouraging provision etc.

Living in a rural community I am fortunate enough to get a reasonably reliable broadband service, touching 2Mb, not enough to deliver most TV on demand services, but enough for most of my current needs. There are many people who are not this fortunate and have an unreliable service or can’t get broadband at all. Do I expect to get the sort of speeds available in cities? No, of course not and what’s more I don’t even want politicians to start suggesting that I will because quite frankly I don’t believe them when they say that. I personally am willing to accept a 2 tier service, and believe that most rural communities are, but feel that the current provision falls a long way short of what is currently possible.

The problem with delivering rural broadband is well understood; copper wiring over extended distances. That being said, the solution must therefore be to either overcome the problems with copper wires or avoid using them.

If any government is serious about addressing this issue it would do well to “encourage” the deployment of fibre between all BT’s exchanges and their cabinets. The vast majority of rural households and businesses are in all probability closer to a street cabinet than they are to their local exchange. Extending the fibre network to the cabinet will have the effect of reducing the amount of copper wiring involved, and hence should deliver an immediate improvement in broadband speeds for the vast majority or rural homes and businesses.

Where it is not possible to do this, the mobile providers should be looked at to see whether their existing network infrastructure can be used to plug the gaps.

While this well understood process is ongoing, it should then be possible to continue to undertake the research necessary to understand the new technologies that can be brought to bear on delivering high speed broadband services.  

Government should consider encouraging the deployment of fibre/mobile based improvements in the short term via the use of through tax credits and a streamlined planning process and could then support the R&D via an “open-source” model. That is to say that Government could fund the research work into new methods of delivering broadband, and make this research publically available through something like the GNU licence. That way the market can do what it does best; work out how to exploit the technology to deliver chargeable services to as many customers as possible and we can all benefit from improved broadband provision.

And one final word for those who thing that rural broadband isn’t an issue for them, remember the rural communities and businesses are likely to be your customers, suppliers or even both.