Thursday, February 24, 2011

Pisted Off


More used to meetings of the board room variety, Atlas Director Craig Cameron had a different type of 'meeting' on a recent skiing holiday: with a Swiss family who were trying to teach their young children to ski.

Craig was skiing down what was a challenging Red Run in the Swiss resort of Les Crosets when he saw ahead of him a family with small children stopped right in the middle of the Piste immediately after a particularly steep and icy section. Slowing down, as you should, Craig approached just as the family member on the right looked as if they were beginning to move off.

Keen to avoid a collision and (wrongly) believing he had the time (and the ability) to make one final left turn above them, Craig “lost an edge”, landed sideways on the slope and because of the gradient started to slip down the hill and towards the family.

The end result was Craig’s skis became entangled with the skis of the familiy's youngest child. No one was hurt but as the little girl tried to move away she fell over backwards and in the process knocked over her father and two others .... leaving Craig lying against the slope and the Mother screaming as she watched her family roll down the hill.

Fortunately they didn’t go far and were soon getting back up on their feet again. Feeling a sense of responsibility Craig skied down towards them and asked if he could help. The Father’s shouted reply was “OK please go” which Craig likes to think really meant “thank you for enquiring after the wellbeing of my family but we are fine and it’s OK for you to go on’.
P.S. We are pleased to at least confirm that no animals were harmed during the Cameron skiing holiday. Any keen skiers will also be pleased to know that Craig currently has no holidays booked for next ski season and will be conducting all his 'meetings' in the Atlas boardroom for the forseeable future.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Microsoft Mainstream Support End Dates

With windows 2011 small business server now available we felt customers should be aware of the Microsoft products which have been or soon will be taken from mainstream support, some of which are still being used.

 
 
Key mainstream support end dates;
  • SQL Server 2000 -              08/04/2008
  • Windows Server 2003 -       13/07/2010
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 - 13/07/2010
  • SQL Server 2005 -              12/04/2011

 
As you can see only SQL server 2005 is still on mainstream support and that runs out shortly,.

 

 
If you are running any of these older or obsolete versions, there are many reasons to talk to us about an upgrade:


 
  •  Enhanced Security,
  •  Much Better Performance,
  •  Increased Stability,
  •  Easier Administration,
  •  Access to Microsoft updates and service packs

 

 
So, if you are still running any of the above and would like some advice on what this means to you please feel free to contact us on tsm@atlasbiz.com or by calling 0333 666 3330.

 

Thursday, February 03, 2011

We Are Virtually Certain This Will Interest You

Director John Bilyj has long been an advocate of virtualisation and all of the benefits it can bring to a business. Here he blogs about what it is, what it can do and why you need it!

 
Virtualisation is the use of a single machine to run more than one operating system session. All sessions may be the same operating system or each one may be different. This has obvious attractions to us in the IT business - testing programs on different versions of Windows may be done on one computer rather than one for each operating system, for instance.

What attraction does it have for the IT end-user, though? Well if you have more than one server at your office (say one for storing documents, one for email, one for hosting your database) it may be that consolidating all of these onto one physical machine may have advantages for you. These advantages include:


• Save time - administering virtualised servers over physical servers can save a huge amount of time.

• Save money - any way you measure it, virtualisation comes out as a cost-saving proposition. Money is saved in less administrative time, fewer infrastructure requirements and less energy utilisation.

• Simplify management - virtualisation enables the use of advanced features like resource optimisation, high availability and point-in-time snapshots of servers.

• Recover from disaster – having a reliable disaster recovery plan is essential for ensuring business continuity.


Virtualisation offers hardware independence and decreased recovery time in case of a disaster or failover.

If any one of these is of interest to you, please contact us at Atlas Business Group of Companies to discuss what we can help you do to get more efficient, in reality as well as virtually!

Atlas can be contacted on 0333 666 3330 or by e-mail; sales@atlasbiz.com.