NZCS Reigns High as Cloud Consultants to Businesses

No matter what type of business you run, you should consider reducing your infrastructure usage and backup costs. This is easily done by converting to a simpler solution: cloud software. As New Zealand’s leading cloud consultants, New Zealand Computing Solutions can guide you with this conversion.

Cloud software operates on the internet instead of your computer. This type of operation eliminates your usage of expensive infrastructure resources such as servers. Cloud software also abolishes your dependency for backups.

This may sound a bit confusing to you, especially if you are not a technical person. This is perfectly fine. Our team of cloud consultants has the experience to advise you on what cloud solution is best for you to run your business on.

For instance, our cloud consultants may advise you to use SaaS (Software as a Service) to run your business operations. The cloud solutions can be beneficial to your business’ daily operations because of the following functionalities that it performs:

• Provides CRM (customer relationship management)
• Accounts rendered
• Accounts payable
• Email marketing

New Zealand Computing Solutions can develop a SaaS solution to benefit your business’ operational needs for a very low upfront cost. Afterwards you will pay a monthly fee based on the number of users. NZCS can have your business up and running in no time. While you can purchase various SaaS products online, it is helpful if you are not a technical person to get a consultant to provide you with a solution that is a closer fit to how you run your business.

NZCS cloud consultants are available to help you avoid technical dilemmas. We work with you exclusively to design the right cloud solutions. So contact us today and begin a new era with your business in cloud software.

Eleven Ways NOT to Waste Your IT Investments

It’s insane to waste business money, especially when it concerns your Company’s IT investments. Stop this madness by following these 11 tips:

1. Do not put your company’s server room in the restroom. This sounds outrageous; however, there are companies that actually do this. My own eyes have witnessed one in the toilet. Please use your restrooms for bodily function purposes only – not IT department purposes. 
2. Do not settle for cheap Information Technology options. Keep in mind the firm saying “you get what you pay for” because this is true. So, cheap isn’t better when it comes to IT investments. 
3. Don’t off and run to retailers like Disk Smith Electronics or Harvey Norman to buy a new printer without consulting your IT department first. Just as you’re always advised to consult your doctor before starting a new diet, the same advice goes for your Information Technology. Yes, it’s just that important! 
4. Do not wait until you hire a new person to call the IT department and request a new computer, network jack and cell phone. As a business, you should always be step ahead of the plan, so have all this in place beforehand. 
5. Don’t plan for your servers to last 5 or more years. As anybody knows, life has a lot of unexpected moments. This goes for business as well. So never assume you can have a server for five years or else you may be disappointed that it last only three years. 
6. Do not take your IT department for granted by considering them a distraction from your profits. In actuality, they empower you to increase your productivity as well as generate more revenue. 
7. Do not wait until your IT equipment breaks down in order to fix it. Keep in mind when your business slows down, so does your money. Avoid this scenario by monitoring, maintaining and replacing your IT on a regular basis. 
8. Don’t build something and think that people will come. This mentality is similar to thinking a puppy will come because you order to do so – people aren’t animals taught to obey their masters! Therefore, don’t bother wasting your money on installing a system for a nonexistent problem. 
9. Do not consider a little business downtime as a golden opportunity to take a break. Wrong! This can hurt your business big time; particularly in monetary means. Be well prepared for business continuity as well as disaster recovery. 
10. Do not neglect providing your IT department with ongoing technical training. Granted, they should already be skilled in Information Technology; however, this is an evolving business. So for the sake of your business’ success, keep them up to date on what’s going on in the IT world. 
11. Do not fail to budget for equipment replacement and IT support. Everything wears out. If you’re going to run a smooth business, you best to be prepared for it. So include it in your budget and it will save you from hitting the wall with a mad fist because you didn’t. 

Do any of these situations sound familiar? If so, then you have issues that luckily can be solved. Your solution is New Zealand Computing Solutions. Turn your IT business situations around by moving to a managed solution. Your IT work is an important asset to your company. That’s why at NZCS, your IT needs are our number one priorities. Call us now.

Company name as text on your web site

Just a quick web design tip for your business today. I find a lot of web sites that have logos and images to represent their company name but trying to find the name as text on the web site can be a real challenge. Images and logos are great but have the business name somewhere on your contact page as text. Why is this important?

• If you deal with the company - be it as a lead, client or supplier there are times you want the company name. It could be to fill out a form or setting up a new client in our database or adding a contact to outlook. When I want this information I find your web site and go to your contact page and copy and paste it. That way I know there are no spelling mistakes (well hopefully anyway :) If you only have images it make it difficult. You want to make your site useful of people that deal with you.
• It is much better than images for your search engine optimisation because text is much easier to index

Upgrading your iPhone to iOS5

iOS5 is latest operating system for your iphone, ipad or ipod from Apple which has more that 200 new features.

Upgrading your operating system from XP to Windows 7 is something you might normally get your IT provider to do but iOS5 has been designed to be simple enough for anyone to do. There are a few issue that can occur but I have not seen anything to dramatic. Before you start make sure you have a spare couple of hours because it is not a 5 minute process.

1. Upgrade to the latest version of iTunes
2. When it asks to upgrade to iOS5 say no. 
3. Delete any apps in iTunes you do not use any more and have a bit of a tidy up.
4. Do a sync of your iDevice. 
5. At this point it is a good idea to turn off your Anti-Virus. I had a problem with this when backing up the phone and good a 5000 error. Turning off the Anti-Virus and doing it again it worked correctly.
6. Go to your iDevice and to the version panel and commence the upgrade. This will start by downloading the new OS which will take about 30minutes.
7. Next it will backing everything up and load the new operating system.
8. It will then restore the apps. It might appear to hang at this point but it is because it is waiting for you to run through a wizard on the phone. 
9. Run through the wizard and it will continue to restore the apps. 

Kickstart your software development career

Every day we get CVs from people looking for software development jobs but the majority are just not prepared and are wasting their time. If you want to be a software developer in 2011 you should know at least two programming languages and make sure one is widely used.  I don’t want to know about the semester you did c or C++ at Uni or some other course. This does not give you enough experience. I want to know about language you used to create a project that you wrote for yourself at home that took at least 30 hours to complete. I want to see your passion and I want you to be more than a copy and paste programmer. I need to know that I can give you a problem and you can come back with a simple solution to that problem.

Know current programming languages

If you want to become a professional programmer I recommend learning one or more of the following

• C# (Either look at being the best you can at either Web Based or Windows. Don’t try and master both to start with. I personally believe web technologies are going to give you the best future.
• Rails
• Mobil languages like Java and Objective C – Android, Iphone and IPad development. Mobile is going to be hot for a long time.
• HTML 5 / CSS 3 / Javascript

Have experience

Defined: Have created a project from scratch outside of an academic environment to solve an actual problem

• Created a web service.
Creating a multi-threaded application
• Connected to a SQL Server database with a development language.
• Created and dropped tables in a database using SQL not tools. Selected data including joining multiple tables, filtering data and ordering data with SQL. Have written a SQL function or stored procedure and used it within an application. Too many people tell me they know SQL and all they know is how to select * from table. You ask them to join to tables and they have no idea. Even a junior programmer should be able to join two tables.
• Know the basics of security. You should know how to stop SQL injection and cross site scripting attacks. A basic knowledge of hacking will help you create more security code.
• You might not be a designer but should have studied UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface) concepts and know how to make a screen look good and be functional.

Show me what you can do.

This may be the first job you are applying and you cannot point to examples online but it is so easier to sell yourself by demonstrating what you have created at home. Doesn’t matter what it is. Be creative and show off your skill. It could be making an electronic CV for instance. Your goal is to get attention. Another way of doing this is to work on some open source projects.

Know what you want

If you like to do a lot of different jobs then a company like New Zealand Computing Solutions is perfect because you are doing a lot of work for clients. If you prefer to work on one product then a start company like EzPSA is probably more what you are after. On the other hand if you prefer not to have to make so many decisions then a large corporate company might be more to your liking.

Quickly open items on your Windows 7 taskbar

Windows 7 has a large taskbar at the bottom of the screen where you can pin your most popular programs. There is a little known feature for keyboard junkies to open these programs quickly.

In the windows 7 taskbar illustrated there are two icons that are displayed. Counting from the left  holding down the [Windows Key] and pressing a number starting with 1 will open that application.

So   [Windows Key] +1 will open Windows Explorer and  [Windows Key] +2 will open Windows Media Player.

Coneybeer Email Management

The Daily Email Grind

Managing emails gets harder every day. It is not spam but I get more mail everyday by 8am than I get in my letter box over a 12 months period. A few years ago I could cope with the number of emails which was probably around 20 a day but now I am halfway through a Sunday and have received 42 emails. More and more are automated but there are others from people asking questions or wanting quotes. Regardless of the source they all require some attention.


Organised Email Folder Systems
I have seen a lot of people put everything into different folders and keep it nice and neat but I for one don’t have the time to do this. There is a balancing act between being over organised and completing nothing and being somewhat organised and meeting deadlines. I do need to keep emails as they are important records of who has done what in conducting my business and I can always search through the emails. Other people use rules to file them automatically – this is like having a personal assistant opening your mail and filing it in a folder and wondering why you don’t know what is going on. There are cases where rules like this are useful but be careful with important email.

Coneybeer Email Management

The best system I have found to manage large amounts of email is called the Coneybeer Email Management System. I was introduced to it about a year ago and it still requires some discipline but the beauty of its design is in the simplify and if you go off track you can get back on again very easily. A lot of systems fail because as humans we tend to fall back into bad habits but with this system you can get it going again with minimal effort.

1. Create a folder called completed 
2. Move everything from your inbox into your completed folder
3. Wait for new mail to arrive
4. As soon as you have completed an email in the inbox move it from the inbox to the completed folder if it is important or delete it if it is not.

Your inbox then becomes your to do list. If you leave it to long you might end up with a big inbox again but just move everything from the inbox into completed folder and start again. Down the track you might want to create folders for Years and move mail out of the completed folder into year based folders so they do not get too big for searching.

If you have Outlook 2010 completing emails becomes even easier because you have Quick Steps and can press the completed button and have it move it for you. You can even assign a shortcut to this like CTRL+SHIFT+1 if you prefer to use the keyboard to move the selected mail to the completed folder.