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If like me you were wondering whether Microsoft Office 2010 was just another upgraded application that adds more functionality which you won’t use, here’s a précis of what I found to be the most useful functions for everyday users.

Paste Live Preview:

 
See what the change would be, when you paste the clipboard, before making changes to your document.  Goodbye Undo Undo Undo.

Protected View:

 
This allows you to safely view documents from the internet or e-mailed to you in a protected ‘sandbox’ environment so stops viruses and malicious code spreading as parts of emailed documents.

Inserting a screenshot:

From the Insert menu item, grab the image you want to insert.

Cropping images is so much simpler:

The ability to Crop an image to shape makes this task so much simpler to use.

Photo-Editing:

Having more power to edit inserted images, makes results more professional and cuts down on the number of applications you would require.

Video-Editing:

PowerPoint 2010 now gives you the functionality to edit embedded videos from a single point of entry.  Once again the number of applications and knowledge to use these applications is cut down.

Sections in PowerPoint 2010:

Anyone who ever wanted to use some slides in Portrait and some in Landscape will cheer at this one.  You can divide the presentation into sections and format each section differently.

Conversation view in Outlook 2010:

Anyone who’s ever had extensive mails around a single topic will love this.  This view allows you to group all mails in a single entry in Outlook so that the entire mail trail is visible from a single point.  This takes away the need to navigate through a mail folder looking for similar mails.

I believe Microsoft has taken the recognition of breadth of work done by the information worker forward with the release of Office 2010.  It’s made previously complex tasks much simpler and allowed for the ‘less-technical’ user to be more productive.  They should be commended for this.

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I have just read a very interesting article on how a bad flash drive caused the worst U.S military breach ever and just had to share a piece of it with you.

The malware-laden flash drive was apparently inserted into a U.S military base computer and it uploaded itself to the U.S Central Command network. From there is spread undetected on classified and unclassified computers creating a way in which all of this data could be transferred to servers under foreign control. This silent operating program was set to deliver operational plans into the hands of someone unknown. So it makes you think, if a U.S military can have their data breached, so can you.
According to the Ponemon Institute, the cost of a data breach rose last year to R1 568 per customer record, with the average total cost of a data breach estimated at R51.9 million in 2009.
 45 companies acknowledged that a breach of their sensitive customer data was the result of negligence (40%), system glitches (36%), and malicious and criminal attacks (24%). External threats to data should be one of your top concerns to small to medium business owners.
If you looking for more information on securing your business then please contact us.

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Isn’t Heritage Day a wonderful day to celebrate the fact that we are South African (and proud of it!)? Many people end up having a Braai being a South African tradition and some even refer to it as Braai Day. But what is it actually all about? And how did it start?

Heritage Day is defined as a day when South Africans celebrate the diverse cultural heritage that makes up our “rainbow nation” – the word Rainbow Nation was elaborated by our former President Nelson Mandela who said “Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.”

The significance of Heritage day rests in the acknowledgement of the aspects of our culture; our creative expression, the history behind our country, the many different languages and of course the land that we live in.

In an address marking Heritage Day in 1996, former President Mandela stated:

“When our first democratically-elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation.

We did so knowing that the struggles against the injustice and inequities of the past are part of our national identity; they are part of our culture. We knew that, if indeed our nation has to rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of division and conflict, we had to acknowledge those whose selfless efforts and talents were dedicated to this goal of non-racial democracy.”

So with Heritage Day two days away, have you decided what you are going to do to celebrate? Take a look at what Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu thinks you should do. Click here

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Being the head of an IT department, it is your duty to ensure that you provide high availability to mission-critical applications, services and data. As we all know, this is not the easiest task and often we are faced with the dilemma of downtime which can cause significant losses for your company. That is where Failover clustering comes in – Failover clustering enables you to build redundancy into your network and eliminate single points of failure.
How does that work?

Failover Clusters operate by having redundant computers or nodes which provide service when the system components fail. Think about what normally happens when an application within a server crashes; this application will be unavailable to everyone in the company until someone fixes the crashed server. Having a Failover Cluster, also known as a High-Availability Cluster, allows the system to fix the situation by detecting hardware/software faults and automatically restarting the application on another system without the need for human interaction.
The clusters are easy to deploy, no matter what size your organization is.

If you are looking for more information on this topic please contact us.

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The industry debate on whether or not to host rages on.  Should an enterprise remain in-house, thereby ensuring:

• Security & Privacy
  • Have your applications and data inside your firewall, managed by your own IT department.
• Customizability
  • Have the ability to customize applications to suit your company specific processes.
• Visibility & Control
  • Have in-house administration and management of the application and databases.
• Data Accessibility
  • Have local access to the data, as well as the ability to perform complex integrations.

Or should they host and get the advantages of:

• Global Reach
  • Have the application available globally which makes it accessible from anywhere as well as makes collaboration easier on a global level.
• Server and Power Redundancy
  • Because data centres are redundant by nature, there is no need to spend huge sums on money to ensure power continuity as on an in-house solution.
  • Backups are generally managed externally, ensuring that the risk of data loss is at a minimum.
• Ease of Provisioning
  • Because the service providers have servers available, getting more processing power/hard disk space is a lot easier and quicker than provisioning hardware internally.
• Business Agility
  • Because of Ease of Provisioning, it makes the business a lot more agile, and open to change.
• Deployability & Manageability
  • Because hosting normally brings with it the ability to access the software via an internet browser, it takes away the pains of doing deployment via client installations.

Service providers currently host your applications in such a way that it allows your business the benefits as described in the in-house solution above with the flexibility described in the hosting solution. This offering is known as Software + Services and allows you to have the best of both worlds.

Contact us for some more information on this topic.

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The 9th of August marks National Women’s Day which celebrates a time when women participated in a national march, in Pretoria, petitioning against legislation that required African persons to carry the “pass”. These were documents they had to carry to prove they were allowed into ‘white’ areas.

On the 9th of August 1956, 20 000 women sang their protest song in honor of the occasion. The song translated into English means “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock”!

Years later the phrase, “you strike a woman, you strike a rock”, has come to represent all women’s courage and strength in South Africa.

So join South Africa in celebrating National Women’s Day. Honouring the women who risked arrest, detention and banning by declaring the 9th of August National Women’s Day.

Happy Women’s Day ladies, from everyone at myMSP.

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Well it’s not long now until Spain and Netherlands face it off on the Final of the 2010 World Cup. Hasn’t it been an amazing, exciting experience!? I don’t know about you, but I am wondering what is going to happen after Sunday when we have to get back to our normal lives?

In spirit of the final I thought I would give you a few facts on both teams:

The Spanish national football team is controlled by the Royal Spanish Football Federation. Here are a few facts:

• They are Currently Number 2 in FIFA World Ranking
• Spain have never won the World Cup
• In the Euro 2008 final, played in Vienna’s Ernst-Happel-Stadion, Spain defeated Germany 1–0, with a goal scored by Fernando Torres in the 33rd minute
• The Spanish team’s nickname is: La Furia Roja which means “The Red Fury”
• David Villa has his own song: A local music group from Northern Spain; The chorus goes “illa, illa, Villa , Mara – Villa”

The Spanish Team

The Netherlands national football team is the national football team of the Netherlands and is controlled by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB). Here are a few facts:

• The Netherlands have never won the World Cup
• They won Euro ‘88 and reached three World Cup finals in 1974, 1978, and obviously now in 2010
• The team is frequently referred to as Holland, even though Holland is a region of the Netherlands
• They secured a 100% record in their World Cup 2010 qualification campaign, winning all 8 games and becoming the first European team to qualify for the World Cup
• In the Netherlands the team is colloquially referred to as Oranje (orange), a tribute to the Dutch Royal Family

The Netherlands Team

So isn’t it amazing that 2 teams that have never won the World Cup now stand the chance to make their name in History!

Good luck to them! May the best team win.

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Along with the energy-saving demands of the green agenda, today’s unfavourable economic climate has pushed cost management back to the top of the boardroom agenda. The effect on IT and procurement departments is that they must now ensure technology investments not only demonstrate an organisation’s social responsibility credentials, but also reduce the price of doing business. The good news is… these demands are entirely compatible.

Take a look at the following Article for more information: Click Here

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WOW! What a game yesterday! South Africa(2) vs France(1)! Well done Bafana you did us proud. I was literally on the edge of my seat the entire time. I can just imagine how it felt to be at the Bloem stadium!

Even though they never made it through to the next level, I think we should all be proud of the way they went out.

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I’ve had 14 years experience doing Technical consulting for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and financial products, and the implementation thereof, and what I have experienced when dealing with in-house IT departments has been consistent, regardless of the size of organisations.

Instead of being an enabler, i.e. enabling business to gain efficiencies, and support the business strategies, in-house IT departments have been spending so much time on reducing downtime and fixing equipment failures. This means that they do not have time to spend on finding solutions to infrastructure issues and requirements for business systems progress, which forms a roadblock, and therefore it makes it very difficult for business requirements and systems to be implemented quickly.

IT departments have always been seen as a true Cost Centre, and a necessity within the business.

Due to the fact that outsourced IT companies in general, rely on efficiencies to make money, they reduce the cost of not only rolling out new projects, but also day-to-day operations of the business.  In addition, they are very dynamic and constantly learning new ways to do everyday tasks in order to improve efficiencies.  Outsourced IT companies also have access to a variety of specialists, which makes problem solving so much easier and quicker.

If you would like to read more information on outsourced IT then please visit our website.
Click Here

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