Medium Sized Business Blog

Educating employees helps reduce IT security risks

Daniel Langton — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:18:01 GMT

In the modern world of business, the internet is proving to be a major enabler of business growth, helping businesses to work more efficiently while driving revenue and managing costs. For the vast majority of UK companies, it is a major asset which can be used to facilitate new ways of working and support organisational growth.

But where opportunities lie, there is often an element of risk. While firms can use the web to increase sales and quickly extend their footprint, they also need to be aware of the dangers it can expose them too. When businesses operate online, they simply cannot afford to take any chances with IT security.

The same logic applies whether it is a company with vast volumes of data stored in the cloud, or one which simply uses the web to make employees more productive. All internet users need to ensure their networks and systems are fully protected. Failure to do so can lead to security breaches, reputational damage, financial loss and, in the worst cases, business closure.

IT security throughout the enterprise

Business leaders and IT bosses are likely to be well aware of security themes, and conscious of the need to take the necessary precautions. In almost every case, computers will be equipped with anti-virus software and firewalls, helping to guard against many online attacks. Should employees stray onto an infected site on a company-owned PC, contingencies are in place to limit any damage or loss.

But with fraudsters aware of the vast opportunities to profit online, there are business owners and their employees need to be aware of more sophisticated scams such as phishing and ID theft. Understanding of such dangers is likely to be lower than that for virus attacks, which have occurred since the early days of the internet. And from an employers' perspective, this means staff need to be educated on the threat and able to identify potential risks.

Martyn Ruks, technical director at MWR InfoSecurity, recently warned of lack of skills and security knowledge among UK employees where IT security is concerned. He said this has the potential to jeopardise the secure storage of data and the safety of online connections both now and in the future. Mr Ruks advised that greater emphasis needs to be placed on IT security in schools, so that people enter the workplace with a sound understanding of the risks they may face. This should enable employees to adhere to companies' in-house IT policies more closely, reducing the chances of a breach occurring.

Spam email remains an IT security concern

According to GFI Software, nearly half of all companies have experienced a data breach as a result of employees clicking on malicious links or files within spam emails. Some 40 per cent of respondents said their systems had been breached as a result of spam, and 4.5 per cent did not know whether they had been compromised. And worryingly, 70 per cent of firms said their anti-spam solution is either marginally effective (62 per cent) or not effective at all (eight per cent). This highlights the importance of training employees to recognise fake emails, circulated by criminals aiming to infect users' systems and steal confidential data.

Some 61 per cent of GFI Software respondents said they had seen spam email volumes increase during the last year, reinforcing the extent of the problem. Of those surveyed, 74.5 per cent said they receive too many suspicious messages in their inboxes. Phil Bousfield, general manager of GFI Software's Infrastructure Business Unit, noted that the spam problem is not going away. "In fact, the delivery of malicious links and files makes it more dangerous than ever before," he added. "Businesses need to respond by taking advantage of all the latest spam-fighting technologies available to them."

Mr Bousfield said the most effective way to stop spam - and phishing attacks - is to employ a multi-layered defense that encompasses on-premise and cloud-based anti-spam solutions. But if employees continue to unwittingly click on dodgy links, their employers' best IT security efforts may be in vain. This is why it is essential for businesses to not only have solution-level defenses, but also continue to reinforce security best practice among the workforce. This way, if breaches do occur, the company has at least gone to all reasonable lengths to prevent the occurrence in the first instance.

Businesses must take sufficient care with data

Businesses may understand the basic message about IT security, and have gone to some lengths to prevent attacks against their systems. But according to Greg Day, Europe, Middle East and Africa security chief technology officer and director of security strategy at Symantec, many firms are still not going as far as they need to. In many cases, this is because they are unaware of the potential costs associated with data loss, he said.

And all too often, businesses are the last to know they have lost data, Mr Day stated. "Normally it's a copy taken or left behind - but with duplicates in the business the loss is often missed," he said. "Businesses do back-up their core data and valuable intellectual property but often don't back-up 'other' valuable data which is used by people every day, such as data on desktops, personal folders and emails." This information is often overlooked because it is on a computer, the expert stated." As most businesses are unable to put a value on this 'other' data, they often don't understand its commercial value."

Conclusion

With cybercrime costing the UK economy £27 billion every year - as reported by the Cabinet Office - it is clear that there are still a great number of victims. But businesses have access to both the knowledge and IT solutions they need to guard against attack. User error may always be an issue to some extent, but they should be able to minimise losses through education schemes and by deploying suitable solutions. So long as they are prepared to devise an appropriate security plan, and carry it out sensibly and diligently, companies should be able to ensure the internet remains a force for good in their organisation.

Find trusted Microsoft partners more easily

Daniel Langton — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:42:00 GMT

When you're looking for an IT expert to help your business, it pays to work with a Microsoft Competency Partner.

Why? A Microsoft competency reflects a partner's expertise and business focus, but is also enhances their ability to better serve businesses like yours. Whether it's by standardising or advancing your IT infrastructure, or helping you realise more business value from your IT investments, Microsoft competency partners really can help your business reach its fullest potential.

Plus, you can guarantee that these companies are in the top 5% of our partners worldwide. Added to this is their access to Microsoft technical support and product teams to help them deliver the solutions your technology challenges demand.

We've put together a site to help you find the right partner for you. Find it here

Events company scales up for Olympic challenge with Office 365

Daniel Langton — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:44:00 GMT

iLUKA, an events and hospitality company providing services for sponsors for the fast approaching Olympic Games, has addressed the IT challenges of a tenfold increase in staff while saving tens of thousands of pounds by adopting Microsoft Office 365. The company has markedly decreased its software licensing expenses, reduced its IT workload by decommissioning redundant email servers, and is benefiting from the enterprise levels of security and availability that Microsoft offers.

“Our objectives were to lessen risk within the business, cut costs during the Olympic Games and meet our clients’ IT standards,” said Tim Chapman, iLUKA’s IT director. “Office 365 provides everything we expected. It’s been a significant win for our company.”

iLUKA develops and delivers coordinated strategic activations for sponsors, including the world’s largest banking, oil and pharmaceutical companies at global sporting events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups. Providing hospitality services for sponsors of the Olympics requires iLUKA to increase its staff from about 116 to over 1,000, with all employees needing access to email and productivity software such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. With Office 365, iLUKA has the ability to add hundreds of users and pay for the software on a per-user, per-month basis. The company has the flexibility to add and delete employee accounts for the duration of the Olympic Games, paying for employees’ email and software only while they are employed.

Supporting the big events also creates significantly greater levels of email traffic, which would have required iLUKA to scale its email servers quickly. Office 365 took care of this issue, allowing iLUKA to decommission rather than upgrade its email servers.

In addition, the firm’s large clients expect it to have enterprise-level IT systems, with high standards of security, privacy, reliability and resilience. “Maximising data security and minimising risk are among our top priorities,” Chapman said.

More information on Office 365 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office

Software Asset Management : Stay legal and save money

Daniel Langton — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:37:23 GMT

More than four in 10 programs installed on PCs around the world were counterfeit, according to a 2010 study by analysts IDC and industry lobby group Business Software Alliance (BSA). That’s software with a commercial value of over £32 billion! Since software typically represents 25% of an organisation's total IT budget, it makes good sense to keep a close eye on how, where and what you buy. Paul Curran finds out more from the licencing experts.

27% of PC software used across the UK in 2010 was pirated - equivalent to £1.2 billion in lost licencing revenue to vendors, according to the BSA study. But the impact of software piracy goes way beyond income lost to the software industry, says Sarah Coombes, BSA’s managing director, EMEA, for anti-piracy.

“The UK IT industry is a dynamic sector that supports thousands of high-skill, high salary jobs and contributes billions of pounds in taxes each year, so we need tougher intellectual property laws to protect it,” she says.

Ignorance is no excuse

Nor is the problem purely down to overt criminals that sell fake software at cut-rate prices. Plenty of businesses seek to stay legal, but are buying too few software licences, according to the BSA report. Whilst 81% of PC users recognise licenced software to be more secure and reliable than counterfeit equivalents, it claims many simply lack a clear understanding of whether common ways of acquiring software are legal or not.

“In today’s downturn, midsize companies understandably look to secure the best possible price for their software, but they must guard against unwittingly purchasing counterfeit products from non-accredited suppliers,” says Martin Prendergast, managing director of Microsoft Partner and software asset management specialist, Concorde Solutions.

“As well as missing out on the productivity benefits of genuine software and risking the potential infections that come with bogus products, they’ll inevitably end up paying twice and perhaps incur financial penalties. As the saying goes, if a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is.”

Yet ignorance is no excuse, says Prendergast. “Your software is a valuable asset, so it’s important to know what you have and how it’s used. Besides which, unlicenced software is a bad idea for midsize companies without deep pockets - if they get caught, they may be heavily penalised, not to mention the damage to their reputation.”

Exposure through over-licencing

Equally, he says, many businesses over-spend on licences because they don’t keep accurate records of what they’ve deployed. “Under most licence agreements, companies are obliged to maintain records of every purchase and upgrade, but many lose track of this process. So whilst they understand the risks of using unlicenced software, they struggle to work out which licences need renewing and often waste precious funds on licences they don’t actually need.

“Being over-licenced is poor business practice because although you're not legally at risk, you’re financially exposed. Moreover, of those businesses that do recognise their legal obligation or are prompted by vendor audits, many end up conducting licence compliance reviews with little or no return and, in most cases, unwelcome expense.”

This is where Software Asset Management (SAM) comes into play, says Prendergast. “It enables you to plan and control your company's software more effectively, so you can handle technological and organisational changes, and any associated risks. What’s more, by adopting SAM, you can continually monitor your compliance, which helps you make more informed purchasing decisions and ultimately save money.”

Reconciling usage with entitlement

Whilst there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to software management, Matt Fisher, sales and marketing director at Microsoft Partner, License Dashboard, says the SAM process involves:

establishing what software is installed on your network and accurately identifying it
understanding how that software is being used; for example, is it sat dormant on a PC or is someone actually using it?
collecting all your licence information and verifying what your entitlements allow you to do
reconciling those different data sources against one another - i.e. an Effective Licencing Position (ELP)

“By developing and implementing a set of procedures and policies, SAM helps match your licence entitlement against what’s installed, so you can continually track that equation,” says Fisher, adding that Microsoft offers a combination of tools to get you started:

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), which is generally included in any Enterprise Agreement, is ideal as a ‘discovery’ solution for collecting audit data about your desktop infrastructure. It enables you to:

capture rich software and hardware inventory for all Windows desktops and servers
automatically distribute software to clients whether LAN, WAN or Internet-connected
deploy updates to Microsoft and non-Microsoft products
manage clients over any internet connection.

Fisher says the best solution for doing a similar job on more complex server environments is the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit, a free, agentless tool that:

simplifies and streamlines infrastructure planning via network-wide automated software assessment
uses a tracking tool to produce server usage reports - tracking licences and simplifying the ‘true-up’ process
provides detailed information for analysing usage trends and planning future growth and licence acquisition
produces reports to determine server licence and client access licence (CAL) needs for server products

Fisher reminds volume licence customers also have the right to request a Microsoft Licence Statement (MLS) via their large account reseller at any time, detailing your entire transactional history for cross-checking.

“By bringing together auditing data from SCCM and MAP on the one hand and licencing data from the MLS on the other, we’re able to reconcile these data sources against one another and help customers quickly create an effective licensing position (ELP). This helps you get the most out of your volume licence relationships, guards against non-compliance, prevents unnecessary purchases, and reduces administration costs.”

Dealing with new delivery models

Having brought the management of on-premise software under control, Fisher says companies will still face addition challenges posed by new software deployment options; cloud computing, virtual platforms and associated new licencing models have all added complexity. All the more reason, he says, to take SAM seriously.

Midsize businesses probably don’t think about the licencing of their virtual estate until faced with an audit,” he says. “But they must remember that whenever they virtualise something, there’ll be a licencing implication; so managing virtual instances is just as important as managing physical ones. Besides, using SAM to track virtual licences helps you detect and eliminate the massive under-utilisation typically caused by virtualised server sprawl.”

Prendergast agrees: “The benefits of on-demand software and virtualisation can only be truly realised if they are properly supported by SAM; otherwise, businesses risk wasting capacity and using software improperly. “Worse still, the very benefits promised by these technologies might well come back and bite businesses if they’re not sufficiently cautious on licencing,” he says. “SAM discovery tools are getting better at recognising when instances are virtualised, so there’s no longer any excuse for being under-licenced, even in the virtual world.”

Food for thought

Fisher likens the way some companies treat volume licencing to an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet. “Having paid a fixed price, they gorge themselves on software without realising the implications. What SAM helps them do is manage their licences more effectively, so when it comes to annual ‘true-ups’, there are no nasty surprises.

“When all is said and done, companies should think of software management as a business benefit, rather than an obligation. After all, they’ll typically experience a 20% cut in overall software spend during the first year using SAM processes, not to mention the security and productivity benefits they’ll gain by using genuine, licenced products.”

Concorde Solutions: http://www.concordeuk.com/

License Dashboard : http://www.licensedashboard.com

Microsoft Software Asset Management: http://www.microsoft.com/En/gb/sam/default.aspx

Microsoft SCCM: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/configuration-manager-2012.aspx

Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit: Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit

BSA/IDC Global Software Piracy Study, May 2010: http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2010/

Register now for the Windows Server 2012 Roadshow

Daniel Langton — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:45:53 GMT

Prepare for the release of Windows Server 2012. Register for our exciting roadshow and learn how to:

build your private cloud, offer private cloud services, securely connect to public cloud services
increase your efficiency, availability and manageability
leverage an open application and web platform for the datacenter
and the cloud
provide secure access to your personalized work environment from anywhere

The roadshow is travelling to London on June 14 (5.30pm start) and moves on to Edinburgh on
June 15 (1.00pm start).

Seats are limited, so sign up today to reserve. You can register
here

How CRM can help your business thrive

Daniel Langton — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:01:00 GMT

In a difficult economic climate, a strong focus on sales,
marketing and customer service delivery can make all the difference to a
business. Consumers, with limited disposable income, are intent on getting
value for money. When we face strong competition in a tough trading
environment, we all need to deliver or risk witnessing customer attrition and
declining profits.

There is a clear need, wherever possible, to provide a personalised service to
consumers – one that anticipates and meets their precise needs. Goods need to
be both valuable to the user, but also available at an attractive price point.
You then need to find ways of reaching out to different consumer groups, and
explaining why they should be interested in their services.

Now, with more business being conducted online, it is becoming even more
critical to meet the specific needs of individuals. CRM tools help to tackle
the challenge by profiling customers, and tailoring sales and marketing
techniques to meet their requirements. You can also monitor consumer trends and
analyse the spending habits of groups and individuals to gain intelligence on
their user base. If this intelligence can then be used to encourage people to
spend more of their hard-earned income, revenue growth is likely to follow.

Get more on this topic in this new CRM article featured in our resource centre. It includes a round-up of the
latest insights from analysts and industry experts.

YO! Sushi adopts Office 365 and cuts costs by 40%

Daniel Langton — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:11:45 GMT

Anyone who has ever eaten at a YO! Sushi restaurant will know the company takes real pride in its modern and fresh image, and of course some very tasty food. It’s no surprise that YO! Sushi also applies a clean, seamless and efficient approach to all elements of the business – including IT

In line with this, our partner Information Management Group (IMGROUP) has recently helped the UK operation adopt Microsoft Office 365, which delivers Office applications through the cloud. YO! Sushi’s employees now collaborate securely from anywhere using an always-on service. The annual costs of replacing and running the company’s on-premises systems have also been cut by 40 per cent.

Read the full story here

Exploring Microsoft Licensing, 8 May 3:30pm live meeting 1.5 hours

Daniel Langton — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:47:00 GMT

Come and learn with Microsoft’s Licensing experts. This is your opportunity to have your licensing questions answered and increase your knowledge and listen to your peers. Have you bought Microsoft Volume licences, but are still not entirely sure how it works or what you have purchased? Or are you just interested in exploring your options? Join us for this interactive webcast to get an introduction to Microsoft’s licensing options for Small and Medium sized organisations

Venue: Live Meeting

Date: 8th May 2012, 3:30pm

Duration: 1.5 hours

How to Register

You will need to sign in with a Windows Live ID address, once this is done, please enter the Event Invite Code and this will take you to the registration page

Event Invite Code: B30346

Alternatively you can register by calling us on 0845 166 6670 and our registration agent will be happy to help you.

MSB 101 for policymakers

Daniel Langton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:18:00 GMT

Jyoti Banerjee, M Institute co-founder and director and founder of KiteBlue, was asked to present to an audience of policy-makers at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in November 2011. Here's a note on his presentation, first published on the M Institute’s blog. [Ed’s note: great insights and well worth reading.]

My presentation focused on some basic truths about medium enterprises (or mid-sized businesses, or MSBs, as they are increasingly being referred to):

Although medium enterprises are a tiny fraction of the number of businesses in the UK, their contribution to metrics such as share of employment and contribution to profits, etc, are well over 20% of the national economy.
Despite their strength and contribution, they are an invisible segment of the British economy, with very little attention paid to them, either in the media or by policy-makers. They are often confused as being part of the SME cohort, a completely unhelpful segmentation that should be done away with.
Being mid-sized is, almost paradoxically, only a little bit about size. Although BIS is using a definition based on revenues around £25m-500m, and the CBI stretches that down to £10m, what makes medium medium is that they are too small to be big and too big to be small. M Institute has for some time pointed to the behavioural characteristics that link medium enterprises together. Focusing on these behavioural characteristics is helpful because they help differentiate small from medium, and medium from large. They also identify the characteristics of good MSBs, something that we need to be able to do in aiding the rump of medium enterprises to "grow up."
Talking about the rump, although British MSBs feature some very good companies, there is a long tail of under-performing medium enterprises, including a number of family-focused businesses. Anything that improves the performance of this substantial cohort is to be welcomed.
Medium enterprises, both good and not-so-good, share some common challenges in improving their business performance. They find it tough to attract good talent to their businesses. They struggle to raise growth finance, particularly if they want to hang on to the shares of the business - the British funding landscape is more suited to equity finance than debt instruments for MSBs. And they lack specialist expertise to help them scale the business up, particularly relating to the behavioural issues listed above.

[View Jyoti’s presentation on the M Institute blog page]

The MSB story on Prezi

So what should policy-makers pay particular attention to when it comes to mid-sized businesses?

I suggest there are three key issues that make up MSB 101 for policy-makers.

National entities

Internationally, governments are learning that mid-sized businesses are national in scale. What do I mean by that? Basically, large enterprises have become so big, they often dwarf whole countries when it comes to economic impact. The ten largest economic entities in the world feature five enterprises and five countries.

The largest of large enterprises are pan-global and cannot be managed by national governments. As a result, they exploit what works for them, at the expense of the nations they take advantage of. When a Goldman Sachs pays a tiny proportion of its revenues as tax, compared to the proportion paid by ordinary enterprises (let alone individuals), we know that these pan-global entities are not contributing to national economies as they should.

Policy-makers should be delighted to know that medium enterprises usually operate within national boundaries. Sure, some of them are world champs at what they do, but they are more likely to be regional champions within the economy. The benefits of what they do stay home. That is a good thing for national performance, and policy-makers should focus on such businesses.

But please don't focus on them to milk them dry - you would be losing the point of earning from growth.

Walled Garden

A great danger of the new-found fashion in mid-sized business is that a brand new "walled garden" is constructed, focusing on initiatives that fit in with the current MSB zeitgeist. That would be a huge error. We don't need a walled garden of policy initatives focused on medium enterprise. What we need is for the thinking and understanding around medium enterprise to infiltrate and penetrate every corner of business policy.

So, policy-maker, whatever your focus, ask yourself how your work contributes to removing the problems that mid-sized businesses face when it comes to raising finance, or finding qualified graduates to employ (a big concern for MSBs, by the way) or finding room for them on your ministerial delegations to growth hot-spots in other parts of the world.

Policy-makers have often been encouraged to "think small first." I too drank the Kool-Aid on regulatory impacts on small businesses, when I was part of the Better Regulation Task Force. However, today, I know differently. Most small companies miss the threshold on regulations, or they get their accountants to sort things out, or they just go AWOl when it comes to compliance. Medium enterprise pays the price on regulation, by having to deal with regulation, without having the luxury of special teams to do it, as large enterprises do.

Abolish SME

By clumping small enterprises together with medium enterprises, the SME definition is completely unhelpful at best. Worse, policy-makers end up focusing on the needs of the millions of small companies, rather than the substantially different needs of medium enterprises, which are much more impactful as a cohort.

Now I am guessing that SME is enshrined at a special altar somewhere in Brussels, and it would be highly inconvenient to change a lot of government text about SMEs. That, I am afraid, is your problem. But don't let the breadth of the problem put you off the fundamental truth that SME is wrong, wrong, wrong.

One silver lining: you don't have to throw away the SME acronym altogether, as you can re-use it for Small and Micro Enterprises, a job it does rather better than its current use.

Summary

The biggest single difference that government can make to MSBs is to put them on the map, make them visible, celebrate the best of them. If you do nothing else, please, please do just this. And you can tell the Chancellor it is not even an expensive recommendation...

What's new in SQL Server 2012 - free virtual seminar

Daniel Langton — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 11:44:00 GMT

Microsoft Training Partner QA is a running free 90-minute virtual seminar on 21 and 23 March (am and pm), highlighting what's new in SQL Server 2012.

An outline is provided below, or you can find more information and booking details on the QA website.

Overview

A complete and integrated database server and information platform, the much anticipated release of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enables organisations to get more value out of existing IT skills and assets, increase the productivity and agility of IT departments, and quickly build flexible, innovative applications.

As a cloud-ready information platform, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 will help organisations build solutions to extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by mission critical confidence. Overall SQL Server 2012 brings higher levels of database server performance, availability, and security; more productive management and development tools; and increased business intelligence (BI) capabilities.

This 90 minute virtual seminar will provide attending delegates an overview of the new and improved features of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 an insight into the new features that could impact current and future SQL implementations. The seminar will close by providing an update on the latest Microsoft Official SQL Server 2012 Courses and Certifications – and how QA can help with your SQL Server 2012 skills needs.

SQL Server 2012 New Features – Administration

Always-On for availability and disaster recovery – Always On
Improved security and role assignments
Self-contained and manageable databases – Contained databases

SQL Server 2012 New Features – Business Intelligence

Power View to enhance user insight into the data using rapid data exploration
BI Semantic Model : a different way of creating and maintaining data structures to allow data exploration
Enhanced change data capture (CDC) using SSIS for incremental data warehouse loads
Improving the quality of data during the loading process using Data Quality Services (DQS)
Maintaining the integrity of important data which is central to your company and shared by many systems using the enhanced – Master Data Services (MDS)

SQL Server 2012 New Features – Development

ColumnStore indexes
Window frames and improved analytic functionality
Improved spatial data
Filetable
Sequences
Semantic searches
Distributed replay

SQL Server 2012 Training Courses and Certifications

5 reasons why IT Pros should consider Windows Intune

Daniel Langton — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 09:06:00 GMT

Guest post from MVP/MCT and STEP member, Erdal Ozkaya, first published on TechNet UK in April 2011.

The Windows Intune cloud service helps you centrally manage and secure your PCs through a simple web-based console. No matter if your IT staff or end users are in the main office, at a branch office, or on the road, domain or non-domained joined, Windows Intune will provide the functionality you need. Here are 5 reasons why IT pros should consider using Windows Intune

Windows Intune is a subscription based service with a easy-to-use web-based console; you get immediate insight into your PC environment and can view updates, Forefront status, alerts, security policies, and more. You just need to sign up to the Windows Intune service, have an Internet connection and the Windows Intune client installed on each PC you wish to manage. It’s easy as 1-2-3.
It has the benefits of “The Cloud”. With Windows Intune you don’t need to build and maintain a server infrastructure. This means you are not going to need to worry about needing to purchase server hardware, have the right OS licenses, install and configure each server, and on top of all that, design a secure infrastructure. All you need, is a browser.
Windows Intune has EndPoint protection. Endpoint Protection helps enhance the security of managed computers in your organization by providing real-time protection against potential threats. This ensures keeping malicious software, or malware, definitions up-to-date; and automatically running scans. For ease and centralization of computer management, Windows Intune includes a policy template with Endpoint Protection Agent settings so that you can create a policy and deploy it to multiple computers. This can be done across multiple PC’s in any location, worldwide, in seconds.
Take advantage of having the upgrade rights to go to Windows 7 Enterprise with Volume Licensing and Software Assurance. If you are still using Windows XP in your environments (Professional) or Vista (Professional, Business and Ultimate) this is a perfect, cost effective, opportunity to move to Windows 7 Enterprise.
Support your users easily with Microsoft Easy Assist. Windows Intune comes up with free Remote Assistance software, which will enable you to resolve PC issues, regardless of where you or your users are located. You don’t have to spend money to any 3th party remote assistance software or worry about a secure VPN connection anymore.

You get all of this plus much more tools features like software and hardware inventory tracking, the ability to set up security policies, get enhanced reports based on updates, malware status, licensing and much much more.

I wanted to highlight the top 5 features of Windows Intune which helped make my IT pro life much easier..

To learn more or to get a free 30 day 25 machine trial, visit the Windows Intune Zone on Springboard or the Windows Intune product page.

Pay-per Click (PPC) for SMBs #12: How to maintain and improve your adCenter account

Daniel Langton — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:39:00 GMT

Here is the last in our series of guest posts from Microsoft Advertising adCenter on how to get up and running with pay-per-click advertising.

Having created an adCenter account and set up campaigns with ad groups, keywords and text ads, Shah’s Cars is now well on it’s way to become a roaring success in the online marketplace. The purpose of this blog post is to discuss what to do now once your account is live.

In Charlie’s previous post, Pay Per Click (PPC) for SMB Part 11 - Understanding All Of The Key Performance Indicators & Reports, we learnt how the performance of your account is tracked and measured. To ensure the performance does not stagnate you will want to put a little time into maintaining your account. In addition, if you want to stay ahead of your competition putting some time aside to further optimise your account will go a long way too.

Five simple steps to maintaining your adCenter account

1. Resolve Editorial Dissapprovals – With a new account you’ll want to check the 'campaign alerts' section on the 'home' tab (see screenshot below) for disapproved ads or keywords. Make any changes necessary to avoid leaving money on the table. Repeat this whenever you upload new ads or keywords to your account. Refer to this article on editorial disapprovals for more clarity.

2. Give 2 Minutes a Day – It’s not a bad idea when starting out to do a quick top-level check of the account trends during the past 24 hours on a daily basis. This way you can spot any potential issues immediately.

3. Review Your Account Weekly – Once a week, review the performance over the past 7 days and consider revising bids, or make possible changes to your text ads if they could be performing better (we suggest using 3-4 ads per ad group, replacing under-performing ads where necessary).

4. Run a Monthly “Check Up” – On a monthly basis block out some time to analyse the performance of your account. Review how the account has been trending over the past month and the results of any optimisation/testing you may have done. It’s also worth searching on Bing if any new competitors have entered the marketplace who you need to be aware of and react to.

5. Be On Top Of Your Budget - Once your campaigns budget have been depleted, your ads will no longer be delivered for that day or month (depending on your settings) and the campaign paused. If you see an alert in the home tab, as illustrated in the screenshot below, then increase your budgets or you will continue to miss out on potential clicks.

Top tips to improve your account performance

Account not delivering enough impressions?

If your ads are not showing as much as you would like then you’re not getting enough impressions. Here are a few ideas for you to consider…

Increase volume of keywords – Easily find more keywords to upload to your account with our previous post on the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool. Also branch into other keywords such as generics if you’re currently just bidding on brand and product terms. Remember to use synonyms, for the term ‘cars’, you can also have ‘automobiles’, ‘motors’ and ‘vehicles’ for example.
Avoid going on budget pause – As mentioned, if your campaigns budgets are too low and become depleted your ads will not show while your campaigns are paused. So again, stay on top of this, especially as Bing continues to grow.
Bid on all match types – While you may start off just bidding on exact match, for example, while assessing and measuring the performance of your adCenter account, also bidding on phrase and broad match ensures your ad is displayed as much as possible. However, it’s best practice to bid higher on exact match as this will deliver the most targeted traffic.

Getting impressions but want more clicks?

If your ads are appearing and you’re getting impressions but not enough clicks then we’ve also got a couple of tips to help you with that too…

Focus on relevant keywords - To encourage more clicks you need to make sure you have bid on keywords which are relevant to your ad. Review your keyword list for relevancy. Moreover, irrelevant keywords are likely to be disapproved.
Optimise your text ads – Improve your ads by incorporating branding and a strong offer, focusing on USPs, and using calls–to-action and dynamic text where appropriate. This will improve your CTR resulting in you getting more clicks, and will also increase your ad positions as a result. Our earlier post on writing great ads should help.
Increase your ad positions – Most clicks come from the top 3 positions. If you increase your ad position, you’ll increase your clicks. Again, simply bidding higher on your keywords can make a huge difference. However, consider demographic targeting for more efficient use of your budget.
Add negative keywords – When bidding on the term ‘car’ in broad match, your ad could also appear for ‘cheap car insurance’ or ‘car practical test’, thus bringing down your CTR. Stop this by adding negative keywords which will primarily consist of products and services you do not offer, or anything which is not relevant to your ad. Refer to our post on Negative Matches for more information.

This concludes our series on PPC for SMB. We hope you’ve found this beneficial in helping you get up and running on Microsoft adCenter.

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #3: An introduction to adCenter

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #4: Introducing adCenter Desktop

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #6: How to set up a new Microsoft Advertising adCenter account

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #7: How to find keywords

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #8: How to write great ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #9: Bid and match types

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #10: Negative match types

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #11: Understanding all the KPIs and reporting

Exploring Microsoft Licensing, 5 March 3pm virtual meeting

Daniel Langton — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:03:00 GMT

Come and learn with Microsoft’s Licensing experts. This is your opportunity to have your licensing questions answered.

Date: 5 March

Time: 3pm

Duration: 1.5 hours

Invite Key: 05D7A0 (NB 0 = zero)

Event ID: 1032505140

Telephone: 0845166 6670

Have you bought Microsoft Volume licences but aren't entirely sure how they work or what you have purchased? Or are you just interested in exploring your options? Join us for this interactive webcast to get an introduction to Microsoft’s licensing options for small and medium sized organisations. We will discuss how to get the most out of Software Assurance benefits, the basics of how to license Microsoft’s desktop and server products, as well as an introduction to online services and cloud licensing. The event is targeting anyone involved in purchasing or making decisions about software licensing.

Customers that attended our events over the last 6 months:

83% “strongly agreed” the event helped them understand licensing better

86% rated the events as EXCELLENT

Spaces are limited and our licensing education sessions fill up quickly, so please register as soon as you can to book your place!
For more up to date Microsoft Customer Licensing Education events, check here regularly.

Feedback from customers who have attended Microsoft’s Licensing Training

‘Excellent presenter, knew her stuff and delivered in a very impressive and interesting style which was remarkable given the subject’

‘Enjoyed Louise’s approach to presenting – upbeat and keeps you engaged!’

‘An interesting and informative training’

Registration information: You will need to sign in with a Windows Live ID address, once this is done, please enter the Event Invite Code and this will take you to the registration page. Alternatively simply call the telephone number and speak to a registration agent who will be happy to help you.

Anywhere Working:save time & the environment

Daniel Langton — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:30:00 GMT

Today, 27 February 2012, marks the start of Anywhere Working Week.

While workers can lose personal time and money in their commute, a lack of flexible working can harm businesses as well. In last winter’s snowstorms, UK businesses lost over £7 billion due to lack of remote working opportunities.

Anywhere Working is an initiative that can help you make your business Anywhere Working ready, offering you case studies to sell Anywhere Working internally, helping you put in place the latest flexible working best practices, and offering incentives and giveaways to your workers who join the programme. Want to add your support to the campaign? Visit AnywhereWorking.org for more information.

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #11: Understanding all the KPIs and reporting

Daniel Langton — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:30:00 GMT

Continuing our series of guest posts from Microsoft Advertising adCenter

So Shah’s Cars has campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Its ad copy reads like more digestible Shakespeare and it is live on the web. Job done, right? Wrong, Shah’s Cars’ PPC journey has only just begun.

Using Microsoft’s Advertising tools you can now follow your campaigns, find out how your ads are performing and improve them with amazing results. First, however you need to understand what your key performance indicators (KPIs) are:

There are eight main KPIs in adCenter (however there can be many more depending on your targets):

Impressions – The number of times your ad is shown.
Clicks – The number of times your ad is clicked on.
CTR (Click Through Rate) – How many clicks you get as a percentage of impressions. This is calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
CPC (Cost Per Click) – How much it costs you every time someone clicks on your ad.
Position – What position you appear on in the search results. There are 3 to 4 ad at the top of the page, and 6 down the right hand side.
Spend – How much you’re spending in your chosen currency.
Conversions – How many of these clicks lead to conversions.
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) – How much you pay for each conversion.

The first six will be measured for you by adCenter. However, to track conversions and CPAs you will need to place our tracking script into your conversion page. You can find this in any campaign settings page in the adCenter UI.

Just click “show code” and copy and paste the code into your conversion page.

If you do not code your own website, then ask your website designer to do this for you.

Your KPIs will tell you how well your account is doing; however which KPIs you focus on will depend on the purpose of your campaign. For instance, if you are simply looking to make as many sales as possible you will focus on raising the number of clicks. If you want cheap sales you will concentrate on keeping your CPCs low. Sales might not be your primary focus and you might just want to get your brand shown as much as possible in which case you will simply want to increase impressions. Generally customers will be interested in one or more KPIs and must find a balance between them.

You can check your KPIs using the UI either quickly and fluidly on the home screen or you can deep dive into your account using the UI’s 'extensive reporting' tab.

On the home screen the top two widgets on the right side will provide you with up-to-date information on your accounts; you can add or take away KPIs, comparing them if you wish and even change the time scale from hours to month.

The top graph shows KPI changes over a customisable period of time. You can select the timescale at the top, choose whether to look at all or individual campaigns, and select each KPI.

The graphs are really helpful for tracking any changes you make to the account as well as identifying trends.

The bottom table will show you KPI breakdown from each campaign over a set period of time. Choose the time from the top left and select which KPIs you would like to display with the “select column” function, this is fantastic for identifying your top performing campaigns for different KPIs.

Account optimisation makes the difference between accounts that work and ones that don’t 99.999999% of the time and understanding your KPIs and how to interpret them is the key to building a good optimisation.

Charlie

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #3: An introduction to adCenter

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #4: Introducing adCenter Desktop

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #6: How to set up a new Microsoft Advertising adCenter account

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #7: How to find keywords

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #8: How to write great ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #9: Bid and match types

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #10: Negative match types

LMA makes recommendations on non-bank lending for medium-sized businesses

Daniel Langton — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:44:00 GMT

The
Loan Market Association (LMA), in consultation with its non-bank members, has responded to a Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) consultation, which aims to examine barriers preventing medium-sized businesses, SMEs and micro businesses accessing non-bank debt in the UK.

The LMA has provided BIS with its specific recommendations as to what could be done to improve the non-bank lending landscape in respect of the provision of syndicated loans to medium sized businesses, as well as general feedback relating to issues associated with lending to smaller corporates generally.

Key points arising as part of the LMA's response include:

1. Appropriateness of syndicated loan product to medium-sized businesses
The LMA has stressed that the syndicated loan product is an attractive, simple and flexible source of funding for medium sized businesses (ie those with turnover between £25m-500m) (Mid-Caps) and should not be overlooked when considering the development of alternative debt markets for such businesses in the UK.

2. The need for non-bank investors
The LMA agrees that, as many banks are deleveraging, it is important that other, non-bank, investors are found to plug the gap and ensure that the funding requirements of UK businesses continue to be met. This is particularly pertinent given the regulatory capital treatment of European credit institutions following the implementation of CRD IV (Basel III), which will make lending to the sub-investment grade sector generally less attractive for banks.

3. Non-bank investors better suited to Mid-cap, as opposed to SME lending
Although it may theoretically be possible for non-banks to lend to SME and micro businesses, in practice, non-bank lenders are not set up to finance these kinds of borrower. Nonetheless, the LMA believes that, by providing more funding at the larger end of the corporate spectrum, non-bank investors can help banks free up capital to lend to smaller companies, where banks are arguably more efficient, due to existing networks and credit histories with borrowers. Alternatively, given the modest amounts required by smaller businesses, if non-bank debt were to be provided to SMEs, it would need to be part of a much larger asset management model where SME exposures could be pooled.

4. Structural and behavioural barriers to increased non-bank lending in the syndicated loan market
Regulation remains one of the key barriers stifling access to non-bank capital. The LMA has urged the Government to assist with lobbying initiatives in this area. Caution should also be taken to ensure that proposed regulation of the "shadow banking" industry does not result in unintended consequences for regulated institutional investors.

5. Importance of working capital finance for Mid-caps should not be overlooked
A fundamental requirement of smaller businesses is working capital finance, as well as ancillary facilities such as letters of credit and overdrafts. These types of offering are typically not attractive to institutional investors, who are better suited to providing fully drawn term funding. The LMA has stressed that it would be difficult to disintermediate the banks entirely from the lending landscape and that banks should continue to play a key role in the provision of working capital finance. In addition, since the vast majority of transactions are currently sourced from banks, these institutions remain uniquely placed to provide the necessary origination network, especially given the regional nature of their business model and their existing relationships/credit histories with borrowers.

Clare Dawson, Managing Director LMA, commented: "Whilst non-bank investors are already present in the syndicated loan market, much could still be done to broaden this valuable investor base and give it a meaningful diversity."

"The LMA would support Government incentives to encourage institutional investment for mid-cap borrowers. However, we would stress that to be successful, such incentives would need to take into account the impact of current regulatory proposals, many of which need to be resolved at a European level".

Mingle with business pros at Business 2012 and Digital London

Daniel Langton — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:00:00 GMT

Event: Business 2012

Date: 18-20 March 2012

Venue: O2 London

Find out more: http://www.business2012.com/

Business 2012 is the key event for all type of businesses. Whether you have just started up, have been operating for a year or two or are an already established larger organisation, the three-day Business 2012 event will help you drive your business to the next level. Help will be on hand to advise you if you are interested in expanding, developing ecommerce solutions or looking for growth tips – you name it and it’ll be on show either through an exhibitor or through an interactive feature or workshops.

With dedicated keynotes from individuals including Lord Sugar and Richard Branson, Business 2012 has some of the best keynote speakers on stage who will give you insights into their business experiences and pitfalls whilst guiding you into the next stage of your business. Almost every business sector will be covered with workshops being operated by some of the greatest businesses in the country – all passing on their services and knowledge to you for free.

All of the workshops and seminars are free to attend – but spaces are limited over the 3 days.

Seminar topics include:

Business planning
Raising finance
Marketing
Brand building
Social media
Business coaching

Event: Digital Digital London Summit & Showcase

Date: 13th-14th March 2012

Find out more: http://www.digitallon.com/

Microsoft offer: Register using Discount code: MS025 for 20% discount OR MC022 for Public Sector ticket at only £260+VAT

The summit features 60+ sessions across two days discussing the adoption of technology as an enabler to remain competitive, innovative and exist in the digital age.

There is also CEO level support from some of the largest technology companies in the industry, including a session from Gordon Frazer, Managing Director UK, International VP, Microsoft, on ‘Future Skills for the Revolution in Digital Technology’, taking place on 14th March at 11.50am.

Some of the key topics being discussed include:

Social collaboration & innovation platforms
Big data and analytics to drive new insight
Mobile delivery & the App Internet
The future of work and Next Gen customer experiences
The emergence of smart cities and environments

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #10: Negative match types

Daniel Langton — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:06:00 GMT

Last week Akhila filled you in on how to apply match types and bids to your SMB accounts. The Shah’s Cars account is now ready to go live, but there’s just one more adCenter feature to explore: Negative Keywords.

Trust me, it’s all positive when it comes to negatives. Negative keywords are an optional aid to help prevent your adverts from being displayed when a search query contains your keywords but the search query as a whole is irrelevant to your landing page content. Adding negatives to your account will help to maximize your click through rate (CTR), decrease the cost per click (CPC) and improve your average position.

For example, if Shah’s Cars included ‘car’ as a keyword on broad match, there’s a chance that the ads might be showing to searchers who are looking for ‘car games’, ‘car film trailers’ or ‘car insurance’. These people will probably not click on Shah’s Cars ads. But, by adding ‘games’, ‘film trailers’ and ‘insurance’ as negative keywords associated to the bidded keyword ‘car’, you can prevent the ads displaying when combinations of search queries containing these terms are searched for. Perfect!

Negative Match Types and Hierarchy

Microsoft adCenter supports negatives only with keywords that have been assigned either at broad or phrase match type.

You can apply negative keywords at different levels:

Campaigns - these apply to all keywords in a campaign, except when associating negative keywords with an ad group or a specific keyword.
Ad Groups - when applying negatives at ad group level, campaign negatives will not take effect to that ad group.
Specific keywords - when correlating negative keywords with a specific keyword, campaign level and ad group level negatives will not be functional to that keyword.

Finding Negative Keywords via the adCenter UI

You could spend forever trying to come up with terms you don’t want your ads to be triggered by, but adCenter can quickly do this for you. Here’s the process:

Log in to adCenter
Click on the Tools tab
Click ‘Research Keywords’ (under the ‘research and optimization tools’ heading)

I have used the car example below:

Applying Negatives via the adCenter UI:

Applying negative keywords via the adCenter Desktop tool:

Navigate to the campaign or ad group that you would like to apply the negative keywords to.
From the editor pane, click the 'exclusions' button.
From the properties dialog box, enter the negative keywords where promoted click ‘add’, then click ‘OK’.
The negative keywords will now be applied to the account.

Key points to remember…

I hope you’ve found this useful and thank you for reading.

Raman Jhooti

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #3: An introduction to adCenter

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #4: Introducing adCenter Desktop

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #6: How to set up a new Microsoft Advertising adCenter account

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #7: How to find keywords

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #8: How to write great ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #9: Bid and match types

Virtualize your way to the cloud with Hyper-V

Daniel Langton — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:14:00 GMT

This post, writtend by Mitch Irsfeld, Editor, TechNet Flash, was first published on Wednesday 1 February. Please note that to access some of the resources linked here you will need to sign in with your Windows LiveId. If you don't yet have one, it'll take you just a couple of minutes to create one.

Virtualize your way to the cloud with Hyper-V

Virtual machines are computing environments implemented in software which abstracts the physical resources so that multiple operating systems can run simultaneously. But not all virtual machines are created equal.

If you are new to the concept of server virtualization, may we suggest some overview resources, including a great offer to download the free e-book from Microsoft Press, Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, penned by Mitch Tulloch. Chapter Two focuses specifically on Hyper-V 2008 R2, describing how it works, how to deploy and manage Hyper-V and how to create virtual machines.

The current edition of TechNet Magazine features an excerpt from Distributed and Cloud Computing: From Parallel Processing to the Internet of Things by Kai Hwang, Jack Dongarra, and Geoffrey Fox. The excerpt explains three classifications of virtual machine architectures: the hypervisor, host-based virtualization, and para-virtualization, which are differentiated by the position of the virtualization layer. Check out Cloud Computing: Virtualization Classes to see which architecture makes sense for you scenarios.

Still Better Together
Hyper-V is available as a free stand-alone hypervisor product (Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1) and as an installable role in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. As an integral part of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Hyper-V provides great value, enabling IT pros to leverage their familiarity with Windows while providing a compelling solution for core virtualization scenarios, including production server consolidation, dynamic datacenter, business continuity, VDI, test, and development uses. See the white paper Top 5 Reasons to Choose Microsoft Hyper-V R2 SP1 over VMware vSphere 5 to learn why Hyper-V is not only the best solution for virtualizing Microsoft workloads, but also a better value than its competitors based on per-processor licensing cost.

Speaking of workloads, three additional white papers go in-depth on specific Microsoft workloads:

Going forward, Microsoft is working to support a new generation of Hyper-V machine virtualization on the Windows client OS. VMs are a handy way to try out new software and configurations in multiple test environments without risking changes to the PC you are actively using. The Building Windows 8 blog recently discussed how the team is Bringing Hyper-V to "Windows 8" to let you run more than one 32-bit or 64-bit x86 operating system at the same time on the same computer. Virtualization is going to play a radical new role in the enterprise, allowing a mix of applications and platforms to combine to solve IT challenges.

Try It Out
One the great features of Hyper-V is dynamic memory, which can reallocate memory among virtual machines to help you use physical memory more efficiently. Use the Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Configuration Guide to configure this feature once you have added the Hyper-V role and created a virtual machine.

After you familiarize yourself with virtualization and Hyper-V, download the Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 evaluation bits and get hands-on with the technology. There are a number of resources to assist your evaluation. Begin with the instructions for installing the Hyper-V role and configuring a virtual machine in the Hyper-V Getting Started Guide. For step-by-step instructions in testing Hyper-V in a production environment, see Getting to Know Hyper-V: A Walkthrough from Initial Setup to Common Scenarios.

As you begin your evaluation, it's a great idea to bookmark the TechNet Wiki article Hyper-V Gotchas, authored by Tony Soper and a community of IT experts, to follow best practices and avoid common mistakes.

And finally, if you're a PowerShell user, there are 80 functions in the PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V from connecting to a virtual machine to backing up, exporting, and taking snapshots of VMs.

Thanks for reading,

Mitch Irsfeld
Editor, TechNet Flash

Subscribe to TechNet's Today's News feed for news updates as they happen, often several times a day.

IE6 Migration Roadshows: various dates in Feb, Mar, April

Daniel Langton — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:36:00 GMT

With support for Windows XP coming to an end on 8 April 2014, and IE6 standing in so many people’s way of migration, what better time to start taking the leap to a more modern browser? Problem applications are all too often the blocker, so Microsoft has teamed up with Camwood, Citrix Systems and Quest Software, all application compatibility experts, to help jump-start your move.

Join us at a date below for a packed agenda discussing the technical challenges faced by IT departments when migrating their users off of IE6. We will establish:

Why you should go through the trouble of migrating;
How you go about identifying those problem applications;
What you can do about them.

There are a range of dates to choose from, each offering a slightly different spin and all promising to be thoroughly informative! Take your pick and use the links below to register with our partners.

Who, Where & When?
Tues 21^st February
Microsoft & Quest Software
Manchester United Football Ground (Old Trafford)
09:30 – 14:00 (+Stadium Tour!)
More Information & Registration

Thurs 22^nd March
Microsoft & Citrix Systems (Including newly acquired AppDNA)
Chalfont St. Peter (Easy access via the M40 & M25 as well as rail)
09:00 – 16:00
More Information & Registration

Tues 3^rd April
Microsoft & Camwood
London, Cardinal Place
More Information & Registration TBC - check back here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2012/01/17/save-the-date-ie6-migration-roadshows.aspx

Thurs 19^th April
Microsoft & Quest Software
Reading Football Ground (Madejski Stadium)
09:30 – 14:00 (+Stadium Tour!)
More Information & Registration

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #9: Bids and Match Types

Daniel Langton — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:46:00 GMT

Welcome to the ninth post of The World of Paid Search: A Step by Step Series.

So far, we’ve furnished our imaginary business, Shah’s Cars, with an account, relevant keywords and engaging ads. Next, we need to decide on the bids and match types to use. Identifying the relevant bids and right match types for your keywords can be a challenging task, but getting it right will have major implications on your overall account performance.

The Auction

Getting your ads to appear on our lovely search engine www.bing.com involves taking part in an auction. Basically, when one of our searchers types a query such as ‘used cars’ into the search bar, a competition between all the advertisers bidding on that keyword on adCenter kicks off. The major winners are those who appear in the top 3 spots (highlighted in red below) because a lot more people click on those ads than any others. The remaining positions (highlighted in blue below) are also pretty popular and great spots to occupy.

Choosing Bids

How you fare in the auction and what position your ads occupy depends on the maximum bid you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad (also known as the Max CPC). Using adCenter or the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool (MAIT) you can identify the estimated Max CPCs for every one of your keywords for different match types and for different ad positions. Have a play around with these brilliant tools, and you’ll soon find out how much a click is going to cost, what position you can afford and estimates around how your account is going to perform.

Match Types

At this stage in the process of setting up your account, you also need to think about which match types to use. Match types describe how closely the keywords (KW) that you’re bidding on are matched by the user search queries (SQ). There are 3 different match types available on Microsoft adCenter: Exact, Phrase and Broad. You can choose to use just one or two of these types, or all three.

Once you’ve decided which match types and bids are going to generate the best results for your keywords, your account can go live! Yippee! Lots and lots of luck, and please pop back for the final three blogs in our series in the next few weeks to ensure you can enhance and optimise your live account.

Many thanks,

Akhila

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #3: An introduction to adCenter

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #4: Introducing adCenter Desktop

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #6: How to set up a new Microsoft Advertising adCenter account

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #7: How to find keywords

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #8: How to write great ads

Hospitality firm iLuka prepares for Olymics with cloud solution

Daniel Langton — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:29:00 GMT

Events and hospitality company iLUKA will increase its staff from around 116 to more than 1,000 for the London 2012 Olympic Games, with each employee requiring access to email and applications. The firm also needs to comply with its clients’ demanding IT requirements. Through cloud-based Microsoft Office 365, iLUKA can pay for software on a per-person, per-month basis. The company will cut its software licencing costs by tens of thousands of pounds, ensure enterprise levels of security and availability, and reduce the IT team’s workload by decommissioning redundant email servers.

Organisation size: 116 employees
Organisation profile: iLUKA develops and delivers cutting-edge event hospitality—“big events for big companies”—helping its clients maximise benefits for sponsors.
Software and Services
- Microsoft Office 365
- Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010
- Windows Intune technologies

Business Needs

iLUKA is a specialised agency, developing and delivering coordinated strategic activations for sponsors including the world’s biggest banking, oil, and pharmaceutical companies at global sporting events such as Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups.

While the core company is made up of around 116 people, for a big event such as the London 2012 Olympic Games, staff numbers will rise to more than 1,000. Each employee needs access to the company email system, and the ability to work on documents using Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel.

This presents a financial challenge for iLUKA. Buying conventional software licences outright is expensive if they’re needed for just one or two months. It also means that the company has to scale its email servers quickly to cope with significantly increased levels of traffic. In addition, the firm’s large clients expect it to have enterprise-level IT systems, demanding the highest standards of security, reliability, and resilience. This is especially the case for the London 2012 Olympic Games, where companies are spending tens of millions of pounds on sponsorship.

They can’t afford the reputational damage that a technical issue might cause, even if it happens down in the supply chain. Tim Chapman, IT Director at iLUKA, says: “We needed our data to be secure, and we had to keep risk to a minimum.”

Solution

Microsoft Office 365 was the answer to both challenges. The company decided to switch from on-premises servers to Microsoft Office 365 to provide email for its staff. It also gives each user a licence for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010.

Being Microsoft software, it delivers enterprise-class security and availability with multiple data centres, best practice security, and a 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee.

With Office 365, iLUKA can add hundreds of users and pay for the software on a per-user, per-month basis. This means it can add employees for the duration of the Olympic Games, paying for their email and Office software while they’re working, and then delete their accounts once they leave.

The company also uses Microsoft Lync 2010 and the Active Directory service, running on the company’s own servers. This required a technically-demanding hybrid deployment. Fortunately, Microsoft Partner AIMS Online Services was there to help. Although it specialises in supporting other partners, IT companies sometimes refer complex problems like this to the firm. “I couldn’t have done it without AIMS,” says Chapman. “The deployment has been very successful. AIMS let us know what was going on, but we didn’t have to get involved in the details.”

Benefits

For iLUKA, there were four main benefits.

Enterprise-class infrastructure. With the reputation, technology, and commitment of Microsoft, iLUKA and its clients can be confident that they’re getting a reliable, secure, well-managed service.
Significant savings. Office 365, including a licence for Office Professional Plus 2010 costs about £15 (U.S.$23) a month, but a licence for Office 2010 alone is around £300 to £400. With hundreds of temporary employees for the Olympic Games, iLUKA is saving thousands of pounds with Office 365.
Fewer on-premises servers. Office 365 has allowed the company to decommission seven servers. At a cost of between £8,000 and £9,000 each, including software, this is a significant saving.
Reduced workload for IT department. Office 365 is easier to administer because there are no servers to manage and keep up to date. It’s also simple to organise user licences from the Office 365 control panel, and there’s less paperwork involved.

“Our objectives were to lessen risk within the business, cut costs during the Olympic Games, and meet our clients’ IT standards,” says Chapman. “Office 365 has delivered everything we expected. It’s been a significant win for our company.”

More Microsoft case studies

Safer Internet Day 7 February

Daniel Langton — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:53:22 GMT

Microsoft research, released today (6 February 2012), highlights that 78% of respondents have basic online security protection, but are less knowledgeable about how to defend against cybercrime threats that rely on deception such as phishing, identity theft and fraudulent links.

The findings are based on the Microsoft Computing Safety Index (MCSI) which gathered responses from more than 11,000 people in 27 countries to examine their adoption of proven online tools and behaviours. Respondents were awarded points for proactive security practices to arrive at an overall MCSI score out of 100.

The average MCSI score across all 27 countries was 44, and hints at a shift in potential exposure from software-based threats towards more socially engineered threats. The survey shows that while many consumers are using firewalls, anti-virus software and strong passwords, further education is needed on the actions and tools that can help protect against socially engineered threats that deceive victims to steal from them. Over half (56 per cent) of respondents do not educate themselves about preventing identity theft and 73 per cent do not educate themselves about the latest steps to protect their online reputation.

The MCSI survey demonstrates that consumers are taking measures to ensure a safer computing experience and to combat the technical threats they most often experience, such as unknown emails, popups, spyware and viruses, with 85 per cent installing anti-virus protection to deal with malware and spyware.

However, as cybercriminals adopt increasingly sophisticated and devious tactics, the research indicates that many consumers are potentially vulnerable to social engineering attacks and are not taking the precautions to guard against cybercriminals that use deception to steal money and personal information. For example, only half of people change their social networking privacy settings to limit what information they share and just 29 per cent say they use phishing and web browser filters.

Microsoft’s commitment to keeping families safe online

A total of 600 Microsoft employees across 20 European countries are volunteering to support Safer Internet Day to assist in addressing this changing landscape and in recognition that families, and children in particular, need access to the latest information and training on to protect themselves online. They aim to train around 98,345 children, teachers and parents about how to effectively help protect children online, underlining Microsoft’s commitment to fostering digital citizenship and improving lives through technology. “We are absolutely delighted to take part in Safer Internet Day and our employee volunteering activities underlines Microsoft’s commitment to creating awareness on how children and families can safely enjoy their internet experience. The research highlights the immediate need to guide people of all ages across Europe on responsible internet use, and Safer Internet Day is a great way of bringing this issue to the forefront of people's minds,” says Sylvie Laffarge, Citizenship & Public Affairs Director Europe, Microsoft.

There are a range of tools designed to mitigate online risks, including Windows 7 Parental Controls, Windows Live Family Safety 2011, and Zune and Windows Media Center family safety settings, allowing parents to restrict online content based on a child’s age. Windows Internet Explorer 9 Parental Controls allow parents to view specific and detailed information about their child’s online activity. Xbox Parental Controls help parents restrict their child’s ability to play inappropriate content, such as from games or DVDs.

Key Findings

Over half (57 per cent) said they run software updates and/or turn on automatic updates.
Over a third (39 per cent) of respondents do not educate themselves on protecting their online reputation or preventing and correcting identify theft.
61 per cent have created passwords using upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Over half (51 per cent) said they have conducted transactions on reputable sites only.
When asked how to protect their security online, half said they have turned and left on their firewall.
Only 18 per cent have installed anti-virus or spyware software on their mobile phones.

Age group findings

Index score across age groups
14-24	25-29	30-44	45-59	60+
47.08	47.27	45.04	40.97	39.70

The Index finds that younger age groups are familiar to social threats. Over two thirds (69 per cent) of 14-24 year olds changed their social networking privacy settings to limit what information they share, which is double the amount (34 per cent) of the 45-59 age group.
Younger people are also more likely to use search engines to monitor and manage their personal information online, with 40 per cent of 25-29 year olds actioning this, compared to 22 per cent of the 45-59 age category
62 per cent of 14-24 year olds create screen names and/or gamer tags that are not their real name. They are also scored highest (68 per cent) in creating passwords using upper and lower case letters, numbers and/or symbols.
25-29 year olds are more likely (32 per cent) than other age groups to educate themselves about the latest steps to take to protect their online reputation with 71 per cent changing their social networking privacy settings to limit what information they share.
30-44 year olds scored highest in installing anti-virus/spyware/malware software on their PC and/or laptop with 87 per cent claiming to have done so. 61 per cent of 30-44 year olds also said they run software updates and/or turn on automatic updates.

Gender findings

Index score based on gender
Male	Female
45.02	42.52

Males ranked higher in the overall Index with an average score of 45.02 compared to females at 42.52. The results showed that males are more likely to run software updates, leave firewalls on and use phishing and web browser filters than females.

Parent and non-parent findings

Index score based on parental status
Parents	Non-parents
41.65	46.17

Non-parents ranked higher across the majority of online safety areas compared to parents.
The higher score for non-parents is in part a result of the types of activities younger people engage in online. For example, 41 per cent of non-parents edited information about themselves which may affect their online reputation, compared to only 23 per cent of parents, while over half (52 per cent) of non-parents created pseudo names and/or gamer tags compared to 31 per cent of parents.

Interpreting the MCSI

0-19. Get Back to Basics – A score in this range indicates users may not be taking advantage of the most basic—and oftentimes free—protections available.

20-79. Take It Up a Notch – Scores in this broad range suggest users have the basics covered, but opportunities exist to learn about new and emerging threats, particularly in the social realm.

80-100. Stay the Course – A score in this range shows users are well-aware of the various threats—both existing and emerging—as well as the steps necessary to help guard against them.

PPC for SMBs #8: How to write great ads

Daniel Langton — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:39:00 GMT

Continuing our series of guest posts from Microsoft Advertising adCenter.

Our imaginary account for ‘Shah’s Cars’ is now complete with campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Next, we need to write some awesome ads. Writing effective ads that target the right customers can help increase your click-through-rate (CTR) and increase the campaign’s return on investment (ROI).

Top 8 Tips for Writing Effective Ad Copy

1. Know your limits

The limit for ad titles is 25 characters. For descriptions it’s 70 characters. Ads that exceed this unfortunately won’t go live. And although you can have up to 20 ads per ad group, we recommend having between 3 and 5. This amount means your message won’t get diluted but it’s enough to test what works for you by focusing on a different best practice in each one.

2. Be professional

If your ad looks a bit messy, searchers will assume that your website and business are too. Make sure your ad represents your brand perfectly by using the right grammar, punctuation, capitalisation and spelling. ‘2^nd-hand carz V. V. V. cheap at Shahz Carz’ is how not to do it!

3. Include the keyword

Probably the most effective way to increase CTR is to repeat the keyword back to the searcher in your ad. Using adCenter insertion functions such as {keyword} insertion and dynamic text insertion (sometimes known as {param2} or {param3}) are an effective way to easily produce targeted, specific ads which is certain to get you more clicks.

4. Include unique selling points

Differentiate your ads from your competitors by including your unique selling points and special offers. Examples include low prices and discounts, free delivery or in the case of Shah’s Cars, a free MOT when you purchase a car. Woo hoo!

5. Be relevant

Make sure your landing page features the product that you reference in your ad. If the searcher gets to what they’re looking for quickly on your site, they are much more likely to convert.

6. Call searchers to action

Compel searchers to click by using calls to action. Good ones include ‘order now’, ‘book today’ or ‘save’.

7. Be seasonal

Use seasonality in your ads to inspire your customers to click. For our Shah’s Cars account we’re going to write an ad specifically for the time of year that new English (UK) licence plates come out in February and September. Having topical, time-relevant ads will make your business really stand out from the crowd.

8. Get creative

Don’t let your ads be plain Jane's. Make them into exciting Emma’s with a bit of creative flair! For example, instead of talking about ‘miles per gallon’, write about ‘a nippy number that doesn’t guzzle the gas’.

You can write your new ads straight into adCenter or the adCenter desktop tool, or into an Excel spreadsheet and then upload this.

I hope you’ve found this helpful and good luck with the writing. Thank you for reading.

Read previous posts on this series:

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #1: Paid and organic search

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #2: An introduction to Bing

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #3: An introduction to adCenter

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for SMBs #4: Introducing adCenter Desktop

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #5: The Microsoft Advertising Intelligence Tool

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #6: How to set up a new Microsoft Advertising adCenter account

Pay-per-click (PPC) for SMBs #7: How to find keywords

Your employees are talking about your technology. Do you know what they’re saying?

Daniel Langton — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:10:00 GMT

In every office on the planet, employees spend part of each day chit-chatting about the good and the not so good that goes on at work. The “water cooler conversation,” whether physical or virtual, is just part of our DNA.

When it comes to the topic of your workplace’s technology, do you know what your employees are saying? And, perhaps more important, do you want to know? Even if you suspect you might get less than satisfactory feedback on your current technology investments, I encourage you to brave the uncharted territory and find out what your workers really think. You might be surprised at what you learn, and your findings also might help you map out your technology investment strategy more effectively.

One way to get this kind of intelligence is by hosting an office technology roundtable. In this session, you invite all employees to gather in person with the sole purpose of discussing the role of technology in your workplace: what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to their use of technology at work.

Possible questions could include:

How does our technology help you do your job more efficiently?
Do you ever feel that technology is slowing you down, rather than saving you time? If so, in what instances?
Does our technology foster collaboration among colleagues and clients, and if so, how? If not, how would you envision technology improving collaboration?
Which software and/or programs do you use most frequently? Least frequently?
Do you ever find it quicker and easier to do a job-related task on your personal technology than on workplace technology?

Additionally, if your workforce encompasses a wide range of ages, it might also be interesting to find out how different demographics are using and benefiting from workplace technology. Perhaps the Boomers and Gen Xers could use some guidance from Millennials on how best to maximise social networking technology. Or maybe more seasoned employees could address issues of using technology as a tool, not a tether, and being mindful of the dangers in being so “socially connected” that you actually hamper your productivity.

If you take us up on this idea, we'd love to hear about any interesting findings that surface.