In hard financial terms, cloud computing means taking the upfront investment out of adding new applications or additional users as it converts IT from a capital intensive balance sheet asset item to a pay as you go subscription based system. In IT terms, the value of cloud computing is in the flexibility it delivers to the organisation; the capability of adding or subtracting capacity without requiring additional software licences, infrastructure or personnel.

Buying In the Right Expertise.

It’s paramount to select the right service provider if you are in the process of tendering and outsourcing your IT services.  ManagedServiceExpert is an IT provider portal that can assist with your selection process, in determining  a supplier that fits your business goals and solutions.

Cost cutting through outsourcing servers.

Running servers in your own data centre means you providing power and cooling plus operation by people with relevant expertise. Outsourcing server provision in this way enables the economies of scale realised by a provider who does this on a vast scale, far larger than most businesses can afford. In addition, like all outsourcing questions, you must ask the question, “What business are we in?”. If you manufacture furniture or retail cars why do you need to own the infrastructure to run your payroll or accounts? Posing these questions means the need for your own servers disappears and the need for server licences. By outsourcing in this way, IT staff are either redeployed or laid off and the maxim that it’s an IT man’s job to make himself (or herself) redundant holds true.

Reduced hardware costs at the user level.

Users need very little computing power on the desktop to run cloud computing applications for their day to day work. The explanation here is simple, the actual computing (processing etc.) is done by the servers held remotely at the data centre. In turn this means cloud applications are delivered using either a dumb terminal or a mobile device. To date the pattern has been that users are issued with mobile devices, typically laptops. In turn these confer major problems on the organisation both as a direct purchase cost and indirectly through breakages, theft, or imprudent loss (leaving in taxis, on aircraft etc.). In the same way as has happened with mobile phones that overhead can be removed by paying the user a monthly allowance making them responsible for buying their own choice of device and their being responsible for availability, safekeeping, insurance etc. This arrangement is known as Bring Your Own Device or BYOD for short.

Cost reduction through elimination of software licences.

If you do not own servers you have no need of server licences which is clearly a major cost saving. Similarly, desktop licences, outsourcing means obviating the requirement for a licence on each machine you operate.

Organisational agility.

To date the pattern has been that adding new applications or people with IT requirements has required new hardware and software to serve them and associated capital investment costs. Conversely, reducing headcount or discontinuing an IT product has meant bearing additional cost of disposal of excess IT capacity. In addition, short term project work such as sales campaigns, product launches etc. have been a significant cost in IT terms. Where cloud applications really score is that usage can be turned on and off so users are added almost instantaneously as needed and removed just as quickly. Also, short term projects are inexpensive, straightforward and quick to accommodate.

Green computing.

By outsourcing your servers you are outsourcing the energy costs of powering and cooling them; whether this is a total energy saving is questionable and contingent on local conditions plus energy costs. Having said this, in house data centres typically utilise servers at around 5 to15% of capacity and occasionally much less. Cloud data centres achieve 30-40% and these economies of scale deliver a significant reduction in the environmental impact of IT. Lower powered machines on the desktop means a further reduction in the total environmental impact IT has on the organisation in terms of both power usage and asset disposal. So, taken as a whole, including build and disposal costs, there is a significant reduction in the environmental impact delivering IT has on the organisation.

Reduction in staff costs.

Moving IT into the cloud means less staff to support your servers and drastically reduces the need to support users. Consequently IT staff can be redeployed on to more productive tasks or laid off.

Shift to pay-as-you-go cost model.

IT has evolved into a capital-intensive, long-term project based investment with assets firmly secured to the balance sheet. A shift to cloud computing means costs migrate to a pay-as-you-go model which in accounting terms moves costs to the statement of income from the balance sheet. Under the traditional IT model, desktop licencing has meant that all users are licenced to use products they may do not use nor have any idea of how to use. Moving to a desktop delivered over the web means if you are using only Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that is all you pay for.

Further information, white papers on cloud computing technology and case studies are available at ITHound.

So how can this be achieved?   How do you acquire the best domains?

Name Sniper from Namesplace.co.uk is a purpose built drop catching application/script for doing just that – catching expiring UK domain names using a Nominet compatible EPP script.

NameSniper’s dedicated  DAC hosted drop catching service has just completed full beta testing and is now available to anyone wanting to catch domains on a regular basis. A trial is available for one month, so you can test drive how effective NameSniper is at catching premium UK domain names.

So how can a drop catching solution help build up your website portfolio and make you some money.

Here are some typical scenarios and potential business opportunities;

1.  Build a Number of Industry sites for Link Building: the SEO scenario

This is an effective method of providing extra resources for link building if you’re an SEO company, and working in a popular niche with a high proportion of dropping domains. Provided the sites are hosted on seperate IP’s, are well maintained and looked after regarding publishing fresh , regular content.  Careful to interlink sites too much, and use different tags, registration names and hosting locations.

2. Keyword Rich Domain: affiliate marketing scenario

These are normally well fought for amongst fellow domain catchers. Keyword rich domains, over 3 years old with a healthy history in Google, and a bunch of good back links can be worth their weight in gold. Here’s an example. NameSniper caught the following domain name, 3mobilephonedeals.co.uk, and within 6 weeks, a site was built and making money from three mobile phone referrals via their affiliate marketing campaign. Pick an industry vertical with a high average sale value, or a monthly subscription based service.

3. The Pass it Forward : domain wheeling and dealing Scenario

Take for example, the domain name conveyancingsolicitors.co.uk, this was a well sought after domain name for obvious reasons.  It is keyword rich with a decent local search volume, and would be a useful site for any UK solicitors and conveyancing company looking to increase the number of leads/queries for their business.   Imaging the scenario after optimising and and participating in a  short SEO campaign – could very quickly gain 1st page position on Google and higher.

If you catch a domain name in demand, and get multiple buyers interested, you can start a bidding war.  NameSniper caught this domain recently as it expired and became available to the public.  It was acquired, and sold with in the space of 24 hours, with a profit in the 4 figure region.  Now that’s a good domain deal, and for that reason is a surefire and worthwhile investment into a domain catching solution.

4. The Forgetful Webmaster Scenario

Quite often, domain name owners forget to re-register their domain name when it comes up for expiration.  Even though there is a 90 day grace period – a large enough window for most people to act upon, surprisingly this scenario happens on quite regular occasions.

If you are catching domains regularly, you’re guaranteed to come across this scenario and accidentally catch someone else’s domain name.  If the company approaches you to purchase the domain name, then you can gain from your position and sell the domain back to them for a reasonable amount.

Science has not remained behind in the race to controlling and taming fire to the ultimate good use. Progress has been made on this front and has found application in many homes, industry and corporate firms. There is sophisticated equipment for the control of fire in corporate organizations that in their wisdom recognize the immense hazardous nature of fire and take precaution to tame it whenever in goes out of control.

However, all these efforts do not seem to have succeeded entirely in their noble goal of taming fire and protecting life and property against its devastating effects. To this day, fire continues to rummage and consume lives and livelihoods of many around the world often in their desperate and helpless glare. Because of the recognition that it is near impossible, if not impossible indeed, to bring fire under control once and for all, we should at least continue to take safety measures to put us in a redeemable position whenever a fire arises.

Fire alarm systems

It is imperative that fire alarm systems are in place at least to warn of an impending fire. These are a `must ‘installation, whether it is in the limited space that could be a home or in a metropolitan building in such cities. Fire alarms are basically life savers and therefore careful thought is required before choosing the effective fire alarm for a given location. House or commercial fire alarm installations must be fitted by certified professionals who understand the liabilities that could result in case of failure.

Because they save life, a gamble in installing a fire alarm is a gamble on human life. Certified electricians will not only ensure that your alarm goes of in the event of fire, but that the insurance firm will also ascertain that precautionary measures were in place before the fire accident and therefore compensate you for any fire damages incurred as a result of fire. Modern fire alarms can be quite complex and therefore require a professional hand to install them effectively. Avoid quacks at all cost. Your fire alarm should never be the source of fire in your home or work place.

Electricians Wimbledon – SW19 & South West London

If you are based in the south west london area and require an experienced and proficient electrician to attend, fix and repair or carry out a fire alarm, smoke alarms or security installation, we can recommend Voltstarelectrical for a first class job, approved and guaranteed work.

Price is an important factor and this online pricing tool for various sized print jobs from doxdirect gives you an instant online quote.

Sizing: One question you will want to ask when outsourcing your large format printing needs is how much larger a print company can reproduce your images. Most print companies will work with large format jobs as well standard A5 and A4 printing sizes; however, graphics and surfaces over 72 in. (183 cm) are considered “grand” format, which is mostly for industrial use. A limited number of print companies have the capability to accommodate grand format.

Print Surfaces: You will also want to know what surfaces your print can be transferred to; vinyl, for example, is a highly versatile medium as it can be used for advertisements on windows or on vehicles.

Software: Perhaps the most important thing you will need to ask is whether the company’s software system is set up so that you as the client can do the proofing yourself.

This part of the process is really a matter of personal preference; if you find the system easy to navigate, and you are very specific about your printing needs, you can definitely opt to work with a company that puts you in control of that process. On the other hand, if you do not have the time to do the proofing on your own, you can choose a company that will manage this themselves and consult with you back and forth until the image is print-ready.

Web-to-print solutions have revolutionized the way that companies present themselves, and large format printing is essential for getting your company’s name on the map.

Knowing what to ask before establishing a relationship with a print company can help produce the results you are looking for.

Tower Servers are normal boxes (in appearance) you would have seen in 1999. Of course they are very powerful & have bundled software tools to manage them. The problem with Tower Severs is the space they occupy, management personnel they require, and cost of operating them (power, network, etc.).

Rack Servers are mounted inside a Rack (something we normally use to manage our letters, office files, etc). Major Racks available out there adhere to an IEEE standard and are measured in rack units or “U’s” (each U is 19” wide and 1.75” tall). So a rack server size is typically in multiplication of these “U’s”. Motivation here is to scale vertically than horizontally with more compact physical servers. In addition to this, there are many other electronic devices which adhere to this IEEE standard for instance – Rack Consoles, SAN devices, Power Backup devices, etc.

Advantage being that you can fix them into rack as well along with your servers. Not to mention that the hardware vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc.) provide additional software tools that help you effectively manage these servers and in some cases the supported devices also.

Blade Servers are an additional level of innovation on top of Rack Servers. Blade Servers are typically placed inside a blade enclosure, and together they form a blade system. A Blade system normally meets the IEEE standard of Rack Units, which means that the entire Blade system can be placed inside the rack along with other electronic equipments. The benefits of blade enclosure includes hot plugging (normally blade servers have a handle attached to them, for transferring them in and out of the blade enclosure – it’s an easy way of identifying them) and stripped modular design