Energy
Dame Ellen marshals business to a worthy cause
Sailing legend Dame Ellen MacArthur is spearheading a campaign by energy specialist Eon to urge businesses to enlist "energy marshals" with a view to saving 22 million tonnes of carbon emissions and slashing energy bills by £2.5 billion. The initial target is to get 10,000 of these marshals in place. The idea originated at an Institute of Directors conference earlier this year, since which Eon has been tracking the results achieved by people who have implemented the idea. The company claims that assigning responsibility to changing staff behaviour to a single individual is now proven to make a positive difference to an organisation.
Dame Ellen, meanwhile, said in a statement: "Sailing around the world I got used to closely monitoring the amount of energy I used on my boat and trying to save as much energy as possible became a habit. When I came back to land, the huge amount of energy we waste at work and home in our day-to-day life really hit home.
"Getting your employees to make simple changes to their behaviour when it comes to energy is a really easy, cost-effective way not only to help protect the environment but to save your company money. Having a dedicated energy marshal in your business is an excellent way to motivate your staff to start acting differently today."
For more information on the idea, see eonenergymarshals.com.
Cloud computing
Business online planners have heads in the clouds
Businesses are ill-prepared when it comes to cloud computing, in which IT services are hosted on the internet and downloaded as a business or user needs them.
According to internet service provider Easynet Connect, some 47% of the 270 respondents in its survey said they planned to move to cloud computing within the next five years — but only one in five of them had factored in internet connections in their future plans.
Across the survey, adequate preparation for cloud computing was very low, with only 13% considering a formal strategy for preparing the business for adoption of software-as-service (SaaS) technology. Only 12% said they planned to increase their internet capacity to allow for higher web-based traffic as they moved over to cloud computing. And only 10% said they planned to upgrade security in advance of the new online model.
Environment
Green issues still a priority
The recession continues to bite into IT budgets, but business managers still rate the environment as important. So says a survey from this year's data storage event Storage Expo, in which 513 organisations were questioned. Only 10% of respondents said they would be scrapping any environmental initiative because of budgetary considerations. Seventy per cent said it was still a priority as long as it saved them money, while 4% said it was important whether it had any financial impact or not. Only 4% said it was never a priority, and surprisingly in a recession, only a handful (2%) said they were so worried about their jobs that they couldn't spare time to think about it.
Software
Scan straight to Sharepoint
If you're looking to upgrade your scanner equipment and you use MicroSoft's Sharepoint content management system in the office, you might like to know that Kodak is to start allowing you to scan straight to the MicroSoft environment by including Vizit Scan-to-Sharepoint software free with its hardware. It works in conjunction with Kodak's SmartTouch software, which enables (as the title suggests) one-touch scanning into Sharepoint.
Government contracts
Industry muscle boosts SME government business
Small businesses are being encouraged to bid more for government contracts by a powerful consortium of British industry groups.
The consortium, made up of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, the Federation of Small Business, Confederation of British Industry and FreshMinds Research, have called for government contracts to be awarded to small business rather than to larger concerns.
Conducting their own research, they spoke to 500 small to medium enterprises and found that almost three quarters of them never bid for Government contracts. The barriers to getting into this sort of work were many, but three principal objections held the smaller organisations back. First, three quarters of them found it difficult to find out when opportunities were about to arise, half of them felt that the timescales and the structure of the tendering process shut them out, and three quarters felt that there was too much formality and too little responsiveness in the procurement process overall.
John Wright, the FSB's national chairman, says: "Small businesses should be made aware of the practical steps they need to take to improve their bids. But without government support, small businesses are put at a disadvantage. We need to see actions implemented so we can ensure that SMEs are represented fairly when tendering for government contracts."
The organisations have issued a report to help smaller businesses work their way around the issues. This is available free from their websites at fsb.org.uk, cbi.org.uk, bvca.co.uk and freshminds.co.uk/research.
Telecoms
Free broadband from BT
BT Business is going to offer "free" mobile broadband to its customers — that is, included in existing accounts for no extra charge. It's included in the BT Business Broadband 2 and 3 offerings, which cost respectively £26.99 and £40.50 per month excluding VAT.
Both options have unlimited downloads as part of the option and a USB dongle (broadband receiver). Also in both packages are 2,000 BT Openzone minutes so you can connect in any BT Wi-Fi hotspot. The more expensive package includes more security than the cheaper one (which also has antivirus and anti-spam) and a human IT support manager compared to the less expensive option's Freephone number.
You can also get BT mobile broadband as a standalone offering for £17.50 plus VAT per month.
Demon better than the devil you know
Telecoms provider Thus has started offering new customers free installation of its Demon Premier Broadband products. The company claims that many products in the internet arena advertised as low-cost offerings are in fact structured around high-cost additional charges and fail to deliver the speeds that were promised in the headline price. Thus claims its Demon brand has a choice of low contended or dedicated services. Most internet is contended – more than one household or business is sharing the cabling to their building, so heavy use slows the connection dramatically. Thus says its free installation service is worth around £250.
