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John M. Hoyt’s IT Predictions for 2011

Everyone else has been making their predictions for the coming year, so I thought I might do the same… These predictions are based upon industry news, social media and blog rambling as well as some personal wishes. Will any of it come to fruition? I guess at the end of 2011 you can remind me how wrong I was. A …

The best resolution for 2011: Backup your computer and server regularly!

Yes, I keep beating this horse, but not a week goes by that we are not reminded how important backups are for businesses and individuals! This week, a gentleman sent us his Lexar 16 GB memory stick, which had been purchased in order to backup his data to it. Normally I would be cheering for this, but, apparently this memory …

Slow internet access? Charter Business ups the ante in Greenville / Upstate SC

Tired of waiting for that ISO to download? I know the feeling, even with the 30megabit download speeds we currently have… As if they were reading our minds regarding speed limitations, our Charter Business rep let us know the other day that they have turned it up a notch here in Greenville and are offering two new speed packages. The …

Microsoft’s Online Services Health Dashboard for BPOS

Word travels fast on Twitter!  And word was that there were outages affecting some Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite customers over the past few weeks…  In light of that, Microsoft has stepped up to the plate with their Online Services Health Dashboard and made it available to all customers and partners in all regions. This is direct from their newsletter: …

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Are you overlooking a notebook computer backup plan?

I hate to keep beating this dead horse, but a dear friend called this morning as I was on my way in to the office, telling how his notebook computer had experienced a totally depleted battery over the weekend and that when he tried to bring it back up, he got the dreaded blue screen of death… This was followed …

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Continuous Data Protection – Servosity Online Backup Offers It!

I’ve heard every excuse in the book for not backing up data. Too much trouble, too expensive, too time consuming, slows the computer down while the backup is running, etc.  Until today. I actually had a discussion in which the individual told me that backups were useless because they were not real-time, and that using a backup program like Symantec’s …

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City of Los Angeles California chooses Google Apps (over Microsoft’s BPOS) for in the cloud solution

A major buzz word for 2009/2010 has been “cloud computing”, where your applications and servers are not actually hosted locally, but instead “in the cloud”, on a remote server or servers. Thus eliminating the need for you to purchase an expensive Microsoft Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, all the licensing, then the Microsoft Office applications for each of your users, …

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Offers Cloud Alternative to Hosting Your Own Exchange Server

EVERY business needs email and of course, Microsoft Exchange is the perfect solution for most businesses, however, the cost of purchasing, deploying and maintaining a server, or even multiple servers to host email can easily exceed the budget of a smaller business and in some cases, even larger businesses. Fortunately for them, there are alternatives. Sure you could use Google …