News, updates and comment from ACS Limited
December 24th, 2009
Merry Christmas from everyone at ACS Limited.
We will be closing at 1300 today (Christmas Eve) and will not re-open until the 29th January. We are operating restricted opening hours during the Christmas to New Year period. Our support website will continue to operate over the festive period, and any submitted tickets will be attended to when we are open.
Categories: ACS Limited, Announcements
December 22nd, 2009
As with many business in the Buckinghamshire, we are currently being affected by the prevailing weather conditions. As a result, our support team is currently operating a remote-only service.
If you have any questions or queries, please do continue to submit them via our support website at http://support.appliedconsultancy.com. We are open until 1300 on Christmas Eve, and are also operating restricted opening hours during the Christmas to New Year period.
Categories: Uncategorized
December 12th, 2009
Details of our Christmas and New Year opening hours have just been published on our support website, ACS Support. As last year, we will be operating a reduced service between Christmas and New Year. For full details, visit our support website at http://support.appliedconsultancy.com.
During the Christmas to New Year period our support and technical team will be performing maintenance work on all of our NamesAndSpace (N&S) servers. Although we aim to minimise interruption to our services, there may short periods where one or more services will be unavailable. To check the status of our servers and their services, visit our live status feed at http://status.appliedconsultancy.com.
Advanced warning of service downtime will be announced on Reload, our Support & Development blog. Reload may be found at http://blogs.appliedconsultancy.com/reload.
Categories: ACS Limited, ACS Reload
August 12th, 2009
Following several months of extensive design and development work, a new version of SecureSiteSolutions (SSS) is being introduced. With new features and enhancements to existing services, this new version delivers improved levels of versatility and functionality to our secure hosting customers.
We are currently in the process of migrating existing SecureSiteSolutions accounts to the new version. Individual account holders will receive an e-mail notification when their account has been migrated. Until individual accounts have been migrated, please continue to use the old version of SecureSiteSolutions.
SSS V2 incorporates new and revised features that impact all users of SecureSiteSolutions. Key changes include:
For Shop Owners
For Customers
For Developers
Our developer team is continuing to build new features and capabilities into SecureSiteSolutions without compromising on its’ principal role. Planned improvements include: **
SecureSiteSolutions is a service available from Applied Consultancy Solutions Limited. If you would like to learn more about the range of products and services available from ACS including our secure hosting services like SecureSiteSolutions, please contact us.
* Credit & Debit card checking is limited to the validity of card numbers with regards to formatting and providor. At present, no direct checks are made with the card issuer with regards to card validity and/or legitimacy.
** All planned improvements are subject to final approval and may change or be removed from future versions
Categories: ACS Limited, Announcements, Products & Services, SecureSiteSolutions
June 26th, 2009
In the aftermath of Michael Jackson’s untimely death yesterday, many people are noticing a general slow-down on the internet caused by increased traffic to news sites etc.
Google have reported that they actually feared that their network was under attack at one point yesterday due to the massive number of similar “Michael Jackson” search term look-ups around the time when there was still speculation about his fate.
The Twitter network crashed completely (again).
Many news organisations have experienced problems which appear to have continued into today : CNN, BBC, Sky, AOL, CBS, Yahoo and MSNBC all suffered slowdowns.
The additional traffic to these websites is having a knock-on effect on other internet traffic – infact average download times were doubled at around 2.30PM Pacific time yesterday.
This all just goes to show that world-wide news items can affect the fragile internet which we have all grown to depend upon. We all expect it to be there when we need it, but the fact is that the internet does have a finite capacity and it sometimes gets pretty close to being “full”.
It’s encouraging, therefore, that the UK government announced yesterday that a cyber-terrorism plan is in place now that the lack of access to the internet is seen as a potential terrorist target, but if million’s of people’s internet access can be affected by a single news story, are the Government’s plans going to be enough to counter a deliberate attack. What do you think ? Are you going to leave it to trust that the Government’s plans are going to be good enough or are you going to start making some fall-back plans for your business yourself ?
There are things which businesses can do to mitigate their company operations against internet failures – true, if the entire internet is down, many backup solutions will fail, but that’s why it’s so essential to have an up-to-date Disaster Recovery Plan with different options which has been throught-out in advance rather than at the time of most stress. As the saying goes “the best war plans are made in peace time” !
If your company still does not have a DR plan in place, call ACS for help, rather than leaving it to chance – after all, how many people predicted MJ’s sudden demise ? You never know when the unexpected is going to happen
Categories: Uncategorized
May 28th, 2009
Many business owners, especially small business owners, do not realise the potential cost saving abilities of technology. They may see the set up costs and software prices as big purchases without truly realising the benefits.
An interview with Steve Gray, managing director of a building restoration and renovation business from Business Link is a good example of how a business manager has successfully implemented technological changes to his company.
His main points were:
• Ask for advice
• Put technology into action in stages
• Use technology to provide cost savings through efficiency
• Said that in hindsight he would have networked his IT systems earlier, and produced detailed management accounts straight away.
“We’ve finally networked all our technology together. It’s made a huge difference to our efficiency. We can all see the same IT files and can access information as soon as we need to. We can keep our invoicing up-to-date and respond to customer queries immediately.”
“We put the payroll onto the accounts system to pay staff monthly salaries direct into their bank accounts. This has cut down on paperwork and reduced manual errors. Next we introduced job costings and programming of workloads so we could guarantee that the right people are in the right place, doing the right work, at the right time. This has greatly increased customer satisfaction.”
And finally one of his main tips is:
“Embrace technology – don’t be afraid of it just because it’s something different and makes you work in different ways.”
At ACS we have found that people are sometimes reluctant to embrace technology, however if you take a bit of initiative and time to learn, then you and your business can reap the rewards.
To learn more about how our services can save you money, contact us on our main website, www.appliedconsultancy.com
Categories: Uncategorized
May 8th, 2009
“The Palm Pre could finally have its launch date in the UK after a US release was leaked.
An anonymous source sent a document containing details of a whole raft of meetings, finishing with a Friday ‘Launch Lunch’ to Boy Genius Report.” MSN Tech
The official website states that the phone will have the following features:
The Pre is set to give BlackBerry a run for it’s money, however BlackBerry users seem to be pretty adament at staying faithful.
“Would I recommend it? Absolutely. It’s really worth it and I repeat: it’s the best mobile communication device I ever tried so far.” – Luca Filigheddu, on BlackBerry Bold.
Luca also compares the iPhone – stating that it’s not really any good as a heavily used business phone as you cant multi task, but that neverheless it is a great product.
Dont forget you can save money on your business mobile calls with the ACS telecoms service. If you need to stay in touch while you’re out of the office, ACS can provide Blackberry smartphones on any of the major mobile networks.
See our main website for details.
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Categories: ACS Blog
May 1st, 2009
Recently I started this thread on Geek.com re: Windows Vista:
And one reply I got was:
“Not even a pretty face”.
I think it’s a safe assumption that the majority of people who’ve used Vista dont like it. So expectations are high for the emergence of Windows 7.
Rick Hodgen from Geek.com writes:
“Microsoft is engaging in unprecedented public openness with free, pre-release versions of their (new) operating system. Considering that Microsoft’s global OS market share has decreased from well over 96% in 2004 to a mere 88% in 2009 — losing predominantly to Mac OS X, Linux and iPhone, it’s no surprise that Microsoft is reaching out in this way.
Windows 7 represents Microsoft’s largest operating system release to date. The company reports “More than 10,000 companies have signed up to have access to a breadth of helpful tools and resources needed to prepare their products and services to take full advantage of the innovations in Windows 7″, which may also explain their interest in getting the widest possible public response prior to an official release. At this point, Microsoft could hardly afford to release a lemon after what many feel was “the Vista disaster”.
The system requirements for Windows 7 will be as follows:
The official website for Windows 7 is here.
Oh, That’s what all those “I’m a PC’ ads are about…
Categories: ACS Limited
April 30th, 2009
ACS has joined up to two great forums, the UK Business Forum and Geek.com.
In the UK Business Forums you can find great business to business advice, local business forums and get other members opinions on your business ideas. It’s a great way to get your name around and get some new ideas and insights while you’re at it.
Geek.com is at the forefront of computing technology with all the latest tech news and blogs from America.
So if you’re a member of either of these, pop over to our profile and say hello!
ACS
Categories: ACS Blog
April 9th, 2009
Computer virus Conficker has self-activated during the past couple of days. It has seemingly not yet performed any malicious processes, but it may be just a matter of time before it does.
“Computer security firms watching the malicious program noticed that it sprang into life late on 8 April. The activity on its update system delivered encrypted software to compromised machines. It is not yet clear what the payload contains. The Conficker virus variants are thought to be present on millions of PCs around the world.” BBC Technology News
Ficker Facts:
Don’t be Conned – How To Keep Safe
Categories: ACS Blog
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