Wytech | Windows SharePoint Review

To celebrate our 5th birthday we are offering a 10% DISCOUNT! on your next (or first) quotation with us until 14 September 2009. Just contact us before this date and quote the phrase: "Happy Birthday Wytech!" and we will apply the reduction for you.

On top of this, our engineers are writing up 5 reviews, one each week, of the latest business IT products and services. Here's the fifth and last from our very own Wytech engineers.

Review 5: Windows SharePoint

Six reasons to invest in Windows SharePoint
Windows SharePoint can be thought of as a customised online website which allows employees and managers from a business to log in securely and then access company documentation, view the latest notifications, organise diaries, modify and contribute to ongoing projects, and much more. It is effectively a virtual office, and as such provides some real advantages to the traditional office model. Here are six of those advantages:

1. Improve Business Productivity
Users can create team workspaces, coordinate calendars, organise documents, and receive important notifications and updates through communication features including announcements and alerts. While mobile, users can still be updated and kept in the loop. If your business IT goes down because of a data disaster, your SharePoint site carries on, and you can keep working.

2. Easy to Control
Control who accesses your documentation, track any changes which are made to your documents, allow multiple users to collaborate and contribute to a document, and edit your work in Microsoft Office, saving it to your SharePoint site seamlessly.

3. Easy to Use
The interface has been improved, and now users can interact with SharePoint with confidence. The simple layout and smooth integration with Microsoft Office applications like Word and Excel make working with SharePoint straightforward and simple. Clever pop-up and question mark menus allow users to access the help section easily if they need to.

4. Easy to Customise
While standard workspaces in Windows SharePoint Services are easy to implement, organisations seeking a more customised deployment can get started quickly with templates provided for most business environments. This makes life easier for IT managers who want to deploy SharePoint quickly, or for administrators who want to edit and amend their existing SharePoint site without any hassle or delay.

5. Improved Data Security
IT departments can now set permissions as deep down as the document or item level. New features enable IT to set top-down policies for better content recovery and users, groups, and team workspace site administration. SharePoint data can also be regularly backed up and restored, providing an extra level of security against data loss.

6. Cost Effective
Our SharePoint solutions start from just £50 ex VAT per month, which delivers a massive saving when compared to current workspace software alternatives. For this cost you will have a fully functioning SharePoint solution, hosted by Wytech within a secure datacentre. Your users simply startup their computers, connect to the internet and log on to their SharePoint site, a secure virtual office for modern businesses.

To find out more, contact us on 0800 011 2636 or email us with info@wytech.co.uk.

Written by R. G. L. Birkbeck

Wytech | Data Encryption

To celebrate our 5th birthday we are offering a 10% DISCOUNT! on your next (or first) quotation with us until 14 September 2009. Just contact us before this date and quote the phrase: "Happy Birthday Wytech!" and we will apply the reduction for you.

On top of this, our engineers are writing up 5 reviews, one each week, of the latest business IT products and services. Here's the fourth from our very own Wytech Engineers.


Review Four: Data Encryption

Encryption has become an increasingly popular topic in the contemporary world of both IT and business managers. Data is now our most valued commodity and encryption (the activity of converting data into secure code) is becoming an essential defence against security threats.

One of the main problems for business owners is that there are a multitude of options available on the market, and without specialist knowledge it’s almost impossible to know which solution to invest in. Get it wrong however and your data could be lost forever.

Hard drive encryption

The most common solution is ‘hard drive encryption’, which is mainly used on laptops, netbooks and other portable devices. This is because hard drive encryption provides a great deterrent to thieves, and mobile devices are the most vulnerable to loss and theft.

With hard drive encryption, the entire hard disk and all of its contents are encrypted. Only by entering the correct password when your computer boots up can the computer be started and data accessed as usual. Without the password, no one can access the data on that hard drive. This means that in the event of your laptop being stolen the thieves have no way to access your data.

The biggest disadvantage is that hard drive encryption only has two states: ‘all data locked’ or ‘all data readable’.
When data is readable, it is also vulnerable to attack. For this reason users may wish to consider additional security in the form of anti-virus software, firewalls or ‘file and folder’ encryption to work alongside hard drive encryption.

File and folder encryption

As the name implies, this solution encrypts files in specific ‘encrypted’ folders stored on the user’s hard disk, rather than encrypting the entire disk as described above. This means that files are always protected even when the user is logged in and working at the computer.

Users will often need to drag and drop their files into the correct folders in order to encrypt them. The downside of this method is the room for human error and the need for ongoing user training to make sure no mistakes are made.

Buyers must also be sure to check whether the many features promised on product data sheets actually match their requirements, and aren’t just gimmicks designed to hook the buyer or bombard them with technical terminology.

It is always worth contacting a company like Wytech for some friendly, free and impartial advice about these topics. After all, what really matters is the product's suitability for daily use.

Written by R. G. L. Birkbeck