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We have many small business customers who have just a single server (usually Microsoft Small Business Server) that runs their business. Naturally, these customers are very concerned about their only server. The loss of that machine could be very damaging for them so they take data backup very seriously. Traditional data backup is fine but, if they were to completely lose their server, it could take a couple of days to get them back on-line again. With the importance of Email to businesses and their absolute reliance of IT systems in general, this sort of delay is unacceptable; a better solution was required.

 

One solution would be to use some kind of server mirroring technology or off-site replication technology but these techniques are too expensive for SMEs as they require lots of hardware and expensive software. What’s needed is a great backup solution that will replicate machine images off-site to our data centre and yet not cost the earth. Thankfully, such software exists and our tests show that it works beautifully!

 

We’re now able to take complete server images (once every 15 minutes if required), copy them off-site over an existing ADSL connection and maintain a live virtual machine image that’s ready-to-go in the event of a serious failure. We reckon that if a customer was to lose a server overnight, we could be on-site with a working replacement server by 11am! That server could be a copy of their machine up to 15 minutes before the old server was lost.

 

It’s really impressive technology that we’re about to implement across a three site, six server business in the Midlands. We’ll be using the technology to protect their file, Exchange, database and terminal servers.

 

Once this solution is running and settled, we’ll be offering the solution to other SME customers. Drop us a line if you’re interested  in hearing more about it.

 

Rest assured we’ll be blogging widely and at length about this technology as we believe it’s really important to our customers and SMEs in general.

 

Jason Timmins – Technical Director – Micro-Business Maintenance Ltd – Business IT Support

We can offer free installation on three year Ethernet First Mile contracts signed before 30^th June 2011. This could save you thousands as EFM services often have costly setup fees.

 

Please call us today if you want to talk about EFM super-fast Internet connections. All we need is a post code in-order to give you an accurate quote.

 

https://www.mbmltd.co.uk/Ethernet-in-the-First-Mile.aspx

 

Jason Timmins – Technical Director – Micro-Business Maintenance Ltd – Business IT Support

I read an article this morning that spoke about how beneficial it is to your search engine optimisation to have domain names that contain the keywords you’re focusing on. They call them Exact Match Domains. These are often difficult to get as popular keywords have already been registered, that said, we managed it with our domain UnlimitedDataBackup.com which immediately ranked very highly for that term. Apparently, if you can’t get the EMD you want, try adding a suffix to the end (like we did for our voip-uk.us domain below) as Google can work-out what you mean.

Domain names are quite cost effective to register so we registered the following…

 

BusinessITSupport.us

EthernetFirstMile.us

OfficePhone.us

VoIP-UK.us

 

Each of these domains redirects to an appropriate page on our main MBMLtd.co.uk web site.

 

EMD names are certainly interesting option for SEO. We’ll have to see what happens.

 

Jason Timmins – Technical Director – Micro-Business Maintenance Ltd – Business IT Support

Woohoo! We finally got our new Facebook fan page address. Check it out…

 

http://facebook.com/mbmltd

 

Pretty smart, eh? Now all we need are some more fans… this means you. 😉

Do you know how many old Emails you have in your Inbox? Do you need to keep all your emails for a long time? We often find that our customers’ Email servers are slowly grinding to a halt because of the amount of Email people keep in their mailboxes. Clearly, we recognise the importance of retaining copies of your Emails, but there is a better way to approach this problem… Email archiving!

With Email archiving all your old Emails are removed from your mailbox and stored on a secure archive server. This device looks at your mailbox each day and, based on the rules you apply, moves your old Emails into the archive. If you want to recover an Email, you use the Outlook plug-in or the archive’s web page to find the item you want. It’s that simple!

In addition, the archive server stores all new Emails passing through your system. This means that you have a cast-iron copy of all your Email communications both internally and externally. We understand some organisations have to comply with ‘Email compliance’ procedures, but for most small businesses the issue is about knowing who said what to whom and when. The Email archive stores everything forever, even if the Email is deleted from the user’s mailbox.

Email archiving used to be expensive, but new software used by MBM makes this functionality much more cost effective. The software runs on a standard, modern Windows PC and the total cost, including installation, is more affordable for small and medium sized organisations.

5 Mailboxes £899
25 Mailboxes £1,349
100 Mailboxes £2,799

Email archiving enables you to retain *all* your company’s Email forever for just one single cost. Is it time to start Email archiving?

If you would like to find out more about Email Archiving, call 01902 324494 or Email

Jason Timmins – Technical Director – Micro-Business Maintenance Ltd – Business IT Support

This is a nice corporate video from Microsoft about new user interfaces. It shows some new ways that people could interact with their computers. It looks like Microsoft are drawing on their experience with Kinect to offer some really interesting way of gaining access to computers in the home and the office.

http://bit.ly/hq57Lv

I’ve run a business IT support company for more than twenty years and time-and-again my team visit company’s PCs that are crashing and randomly locking-up. More often than not, when we open the machine, we find that it’s full of dust. Dust will kill your computer.

 

Certain components inside your computer run hot; modern CPUs working hard are too hot to touch. A processor that is running too hot will crash (Blue Screen of Death in Windows) or randomly reboot your machine. The dust and lint coats the cooling mechanisms and causes components to overheat. If you want to avoid these problems we recommend taking a look inside your computer every six months to make sure that there not too much dust inside. Here are some things to lookout for…

 

1.       Check the air vents – Computers breath-in cool air from the front and expel hot air from the back. You need to make sure that these openings are not blocked either by dust or by external obstructions. I once visited a customer to examine their server and found the air intake to be covered in a mat of short brown hairs. I asked the business owner about the hair and whether they bought their dog to work, he said, “Oh, that’ll be the rats.” I took care of the blocked air vents , they took care of the rats and their server ran much more happily.

2.       Dust the insides – Completely disconnect the machine before you open it. Take the side off and have a look for dust, dead insects, etc and remove them from the machine. Try not to touch the delicate components inside; we find the best tool for cleaning the dust from inside a computer is a can of compressed air (these are often referred to as ‘air duster’ and can be found from any number of online retailers.) If the machine is particularly dusty (and the weather is fair) you may want to take the computer outside before you use the air duster; a surprising amount of dust will come out so it’s better to do the work outside. When using the air duster, pay particular attention to the heatsink (metal fins on top of the motherboard) and the fans that move air around the machine. When using a compressed air duster on the fans, hold the fan still so that it doesn’t turn in the jet of air. Some hard drives run hot so make sure they are also free of dust.

3.       Check your fans – Dust will work its way into the bearings of the fans that cool your computer. Make sure that the fans will turn freely, just move their blades with your finger, a fan should turn with very little effort. If the fan won’t turn or turns stiffly, it must be replaced. New fans are readily available online but you may wish to find a local expert to do the work for you.

 

It’s our experience that if you do this every six months, you will have a nice, quiet, reliable computer. Many modern computers have protection from overheats so physical damage is often avoided but a regular maintenance routine will ensure that these problems don’t occur. Oh, and try not to have rats running around by your computer!

 

Jason Timmins – Technical Director – Micro-Business Maintenance Ltd – https://www.mbmltd.co.uk – Business IT Support

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks allow existing VoIP-enabled business telephone systems to connect to the public telephone system over the Internet. A SIP trunk can handle many calls simultaneously using a single broadband Internet connection.

MBM‘s SIP trunks are commonly used to allow outbound calls to be made over the Internet which leaves existing telephone lines free for inbound calls. However, increasingly, customers are transferring (porting) their telephone numbers over to our SIP trunks so that they can also receive calls via the Internet as well as make calls. This means that expensive multi-channel ISDN lines can then be omitted altogether saving the organisation a considerable amount of money.

Our SIP trunks can support many different types of telephone numbers, region numbers, non-geographic numbers (0800, etc) and we can even offer international numbers from dozens of different countries.

Although SIP is the open standard for Internet phone calls, our service also supports the IAX proprietary standard used by Asterisk-based phone systems such as TrixBox.

Our call rates are very competitive, so why not call one of our technicians to see how connecting your PBX using an MBM SIP trunk can save you money?  Speak to one of our engineers on 01902 324494 or email sales@mbmltd.co.uk

Hosted telephony solutions allow businesses to replace their old telephone system with Internet handsets connected to a feature-rich phone system on the Internet. Calls are then made and received over the Internet using your ADSL broadband line. Many calls can be sent simultaneously over a broadband connection so considerable savings on line rentals can be made.

MBM‘s hosted telephony solutions come with a large number of features, many of which would be too expensive for small businesses to purchase directly themselves. Our solutions offer features such as voicemail-to-Email, direct dialling from your Outlook contacts, call recording, auto-attendant (voice menus) and intelligent call queuing.

One of the key features of a hosted telephony solution is that extensions can be located anywhere that is connected to the Internet. This is particularly useful for home workers, branch offices and international departments. All of these sites are effectively connected to one phone system so that calls between them are free and the management of the system is centralised.

In our view businesses should consider a hosted telephony solution for…
• New Offices
• Replacing Existing Phone Systems
• Centralised Call Centres
• Distributed Call Centres (with Agents Working at Home)

The potential savings are huge and the features available are extensive, so please call MBM to discuss your own business requirements and the potential cost savings. Speak to one of our engineers on 01902 324494 or email sales@mbmltd.co.uk

MBM‘s range of InterLinx Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) private branch exchange (PBX) servers deliver all the benefits of Internet telephony, but also the features of a traditional on-site telephone system. These machines are very popular with our business customers because they allow them to benefit from all the ‘high-tech’ features and cost savings of VoIP yet retain their existing, traditional telephone lines.

InterLinx Voice is based on the popular, open-source Asterisk PBX software. The features of this solution match any of those available from the traditional PBX manufacturers. Here are some of the important features of InterLinx Voice:-

• Local and Remote Extensions – Have handsets on-site or at your home or branch office
• Call Recording – Automatic or on-demand call recording
• Call Management – Transfers, diverts, conferencing, queues, menus, caller ID, paging, etc
• Voicemail – Rich voicemail system and voicemails delivered to Email
• Standards-based – Support for all kinds of handsets and devices
• Hold Music – Play music or marketing messages while the caller is on hold
• Existing Lines – ISDN2/30 or standard analogue lines
• Web-based Admin – A full, easy to use, web-based management system
• Outlook Integration – Dial contacts from Outlook
• Many other features too numerous to mention!

MBM’s InterLinx Voice solutions are supplied as a complete package including appropriate handsets, installation, training and support..

Call now to find out how an InterLinx Voice VoIP PBX can benefit your business. Speak to one of our engineers on 01902 324494 or email sales@mbmltd.co.uk