Islington Chamber of Commerce Summer Party

Islington Chamber of Commerce hosted a brilliant Summer Party last night. The annual event took place in King's Way, an impressive glass building housing galleries, a restaurant and meeting spaces by the Regent's Canal. It attracted a large crowd of local businesses and entrepreneurs, gathering to network, catch up and meet new people.

Two guests which made the evening were the recently elected Mayor of Islington, Councillor Mouna Hamitouche, and Marco the Magician.


David Pattinson from Pattinson Investments, Iwona Knapinskla of Jurys Inn, and Richard Pitman from Kafe Vend

Looking onto the Canal from King's Place

Getting the photo right

Members of the Islington Chamber of Commerce.

Taking a snap of the photographer

Marco the Magician..

The crowd gathers to watch the card trick..

Marco the magician's card launched from his pack and stuck to the ceiling!

10 key things to ask your future IT provider

Sourcing one of the 800 IT service and support providers in London can be an overwhelming task. Whether you're in Procurement, Human resources, IT, or running the company, most people don't have the time or know-how to get started.



With all this in mind, we’ve gone to business owners and our engineers to give you the list of 10 key things you should ask your current or future IT provider before signing or renewing.

1. Is the service provider proactive? A proactive service means they’ll stop problems before they occur, reducing downtime. The average London company loses £1.00 per minute per member of staff when their networks are down. A good IT company will monitor and resolve problems on the horizon (like an out of date, overworked server).

2. Which factors should I take into account when choosing the right IT supplier? Ask yourself the following questions. Are you looking for a company that fixes problems just before or shortly after they happen? How many dedicated helpdesk staff do they have? Do they offer out of hours support? Where are they based in relation to your location? What level of in-house IT expertise does your company have? How long could your business run if your computers went down? How soon can your provider fix a problem?



3. What accredications should they have?Find out if they are registered with the MSP Alliance (Managed Service Provider Alliance), and if they are accredited with Microsoft, Cisco and similar companies. Ask to see testimonials from their clients about their services – an IT firm with a ton of accreditations doesn’t necessarily mean good support or customer service!

To read the full (free) article, go to: http://www.onlinecomputing.co.uk/special/articles/

UK cloud deployments to soar 78%

Usage of cloud computing in the UK is set to almost double over the next two years, a survey shows, but penetration will remain low overall UK deployments of cloud computing will increase by almost four-fifths (78%) between now and 2012, research by the National Outsourcing Association claims.

The group’s research shows that businesses in the country will turn to the cloud – used in the NOA study to denote public, private and ‘hybrid’ cloud systems – primarily as a cost-saving strategy.

But as penetration – which the group defines as “percentage of IT infrastructure moved to the cloud” – in the UK currently sits at just 3%, the predicted 78% increase in deployments will still represent a small fraction of overall IT systems.

“Cloud computing looks set to continue its march into UK businesses over the next few years,” said Martyn Hart, chairman of the NOA. “However, it appears that there is still a long way to go before cloud becomes truly ubiquitous, as penetration is still fairly low. Being so new, users will need to ensure that they fully understand their options.”

Respondents to the NOA survey expressed concerns commonly associated with public cloud computing – 92% are worried about being ‘locked in’ to a single provider’s system while 75% have data security concerns.

To read more..
http://www.information-age.com/channels/it-services/perspectives-and-trends/1262228/uk-cloud-deployments-to-soar-78.thtml