OK so you’re thinking about taking Riven’s award-winning IT support, here’s what we need to do. As a new customer we need to carry out a network health check, the purpose of which is to examine the IT systems you have and gain an understanding of how your business uses its IT systems.

The health check is a thorough document, so much so that it forms the basis of all your system documentation. From here we gain an appreciation of how your current level of IT support works alongside your business and whether it is sufficient.

The next stage is simple: we help guide you through the level of support required and what your business is used to. It’s at this point that we work our IT magic and tailor the IT support to your individual needs.

“No two businesses are the same – at Riven we know this.”

We know most companies are changing for a reason and so more often than not there is work to be done to improve your current systems. Don’t worry, we take care of all of this too and work with you to deal with those problems or upgrades that have been looming over you.

That’s it. Our experience and skills make sure all your IT support needs are taken care of – Physical, Virtual or in the Cloud.

Riven Associates will help you select the platform you use as this will depend on what you need to accomplish with the technology. Other factors to consider include the IT infrastructure that you currently have and your level of technical expertise. We can do all the hard work for you and make this process as easy as possible.

If you are considering virtualisation technology, here are Riven’s Top Ten reasons that you may wish to consider.

Virtualisation Top 10… in no particular order

1. Server Performance – The utilisation level of physical servers is on average only 15 – 20% due to extra capacity being required to allow for peaks in server performance. Rather than leaving this spare facility to remain idle, virtual servers allow this free capacity to be used for running more than one server operating system on a single hardware platform.
2. Being Green – Energy costs continue to consume an ever greater share of company budgets, and demand on energy is constantly increasing. Virtualisation solutions help companies to reduce energy costs and achieve carbon emission targets.
3. Reduce Overheads – The hardware for physical servers will need to be replaced approximately every three to five years. Unlike hardware, virtual servers never wear out so physical server replacements do not require a complete rebuild of a virtualised image.
4. Increased Flexibility – Server virtualisation allows the user to rapidly build a new server in order that new applications can be swiftly deployed. In addition, rather than the necessity for having one physical server for testing and another for production, the same physical server can house multiple workload types and functions, such as development and test, production and other capabilities. This increased flexibility and consolidation is facilitated by the use of consistent hardware builds.
5. Better Availability – Owning backup servers was previously a very expensive but necessary solution, whereas images are all able to share several physical servers via virtual servers. If hardware fails, virtual images can automatically be relayed to another physical server.
6. Reduce Costs – It helps to reduce costs as you don’t need to buy additional hardware. Virtualization also helps cut down on maintenance costs that you would incur if you had more physical servers.
7. Business Continuity – Virtualisation offers great business continuity opportunities. Along with reduced downtimes and increased security, virtualisation helps deliver immediate and effective disaster recovery.
8. Less Space – Virtualisation helps save space as you don’t need to buy additional physical servers.
9. Test Environment – It’s an ideal testing environment. A virtual server works well as a test environment or “sandbox” as it is isolated from other servers. Test new applications or new configurations without having to purchase new hardware – “Will the new version work well on this hardware?”~
10. Maintain Legacy Applications – If you do have an old application that has compatibility issues with newer software or that must run on a certain version of an operating system, you can dedicate a virtual machine just for those applications. By doing this, your IT system and planning won’t be held back because of a few old applications.

The objective is that BCP should ensure the continued operation of business functions in the event that the company suffers loss of one or more critical IT systems.

Typical disasters include local incidents (such as building fires, flooding or security alerts), regional incidents (for instance earthquakes), or national events (such as pandemic illnesses). However unlikely these events may seem, proper planning, preparation and most importantly, testing of your plan is critical.

Aside from the obvious benefit of enabling a company to recover swiftly from unforeseen IT disruption, there are other reasons for the establishment of a robust BCP:

Compliance: In many industries there is a legal requirement to have a recovery strategy in place.

Customer reassurance: Evidence that a company has an effective continuity plan provides them with a competitive edge on winning and retaining customers. BCP can be an integral demonstration of quality assurance in many industries.

Insurance: Reduced insurance premiums can be secured if there is evidence that a company has effective BCP in place as it is a clear illustration that their business risks are being managed efficiently and effectively.

Increased value: A company which makes use of BCP, and is therefore able to cope with unexpected IT catastrophes, is a more valuable and reliable investment than its competitors who do not make use of this technology.

Why do we need Network Security?

Network Security is crucial for businesses as it offers confidence and protection in the face of potential cyber criminal attacks.

Believe it or not these attacks are now so commonplace that you probably don’t know they are happening and that your security is doing its job.

Your IT systems are susceptible to threats from a number of sources but there are some key areas that need to be addressed:

Viruses – Programs created by unscrupulous programmers the purpose of which is for the programs to duplicate themselves and infect computers when activated by a specific event.

Vandals – Destructive software applications.

Data Interception – Spying on communications or modifying data being transmitted.

Social Engineering – Gaining access to confidential network security information via non-technical means e.g. posing as IT support staff and requesting passwords for certain individuals.

Attacks – Reconnaissance attacks (collection of data which is used to destabilise a network), access attacks (exploitation of network weaknesses to gain entry to e-mail, databases and so forth) and denial-of-service attacks which foil access to some or the whole of a computer system.