Blog – Page 16 – 4TC Services

Latest News for 4TC

We have loads to say!

Top edge computing platforms in 2022

December 5, 2022/in News/by Wingman

Edge computing helps reduce latency of data processing. See which edge computing platform is right for your business.

As modern technology continues to advance in ways that satisfy the human desire for instant gratification, consumers are placing more emphasis on speed as a key feature when choosing their product vendors.

Whether you choose to blame this on the world’s introduction to old-school instant messaging or Amazon’s two-day shipping, at the end of the day, the demand for speed affects businesses and organizations like it never has before. But, this demand also means that businesses and organizations must step up their operations to keep up with the competition.

Software solutions that can enable companies to pick up the pace and complete their processes at a faster rate are highly favored, with this feature valued second only to reliability. Fortunately, organizations looking for a way to advance in their data processing can adopt edge computing technology in order to carry out their operations quickly but still trust that their data is secure.

Top edge computing products

Azure Stack Edge

Azure Stack Edge is a hardware as a service that enables organizations to access, utilize and analyze their applications and data locally.

Users can run their containerized applications at the edge location where data is generated and gathered. From there, the data can be analyzed, transformed and filtered, and users can control the data that they choose to send to the cloud. Their edge device also serves as a cloud storage gateway for easy data transfers between the cloud and the edge location.

Working with Azure’s edge solution makes it easy to utilize Azure’s other integratable products, so organizations can generate and train their machine learning (ML) models in Azure and benefit from quick data analysis and insight access.

Azure has several versions of their edge devices within their Azure Stack Edge Pro Series, granting users and organizations more options with a greater selection of features and capabilities to choose from, so they can get the tool that suits their needs.

HPE Edgeline

HPE Edgeline supports edge computing and processing through its various converged edge systems. Its systems provide IT functionality optimized for edge operating environments, enabling users to benefit from edge storage, computing and management.

Their solutions are purpose-built for the edge, with autonomous operations, local decision-making in real-time, and easy scaling across sites and locations. As for security, HPE Edgeline Integrated System Manager provides IT-grade security to support the deployment and operation of their Edgeline systems.

The HPE Edgeline Converged Edge systems serve as a distributed converged edge compute model, so users can manage their operations and data in real time, even without an internet connection. In addition, its systems connect open standards-based operations technology (OT) data acquisition and control technologies directly to the user’s organizational IT system, reducing latency and saving space.

HPE has various enterprise-class converged edge system tools for customers to choose from, with features optimized for different use cases. Additionally, HPE’s Edgeline OT Link Platform software is also offered and supports users’ edge activities like data flow and integration management.

ClearBlade

ClearBlade’s technology works to streamline edge data by connecting device sensors or event data and transporting it into cloud data lakes, enterprise systems or artificial intelligence (AI) tools through built-in integrations. Its software can connect via REST, MQTT and sockets in addition to its prebuilt connections for third-party systems.

The solution lets users choose to keep their functions local within their edge locations or transfer them within cloud storage and vice versa. Users can also complete various data processes at the edge, including data analysis, modification, routing, storage and management.

ClearBlade keeps users’ data secure with encryption, authentication and authorization of application programming interface (API) access. It enables connections across all user clouds, gateways and devices with various protocols.

Another aspect of its edge computing technology is offline continuity, which ClearBlade advertises as a perk to its software. Even when an internet connection is lost, all edge devices are able to continue their real-time behaviors.

Eclipse ioFog

The Eclipse Foundation’s Eclipse ioFog is an edge computing platform for processing enterprise-scale data and applications at the edge. By processing users’ data at the point of creation with an edge-centric compute architecture, users can gain more functionality and greater security for all of their data and application processes.

ioFog’s universal edge computing platform enables users to create and remotely deploy their microservices to their edge computing devices by providing a common computing platform that lets software run on any device.

Users can deploy and manage their multiple edge devices at once as an edge compute network, which ioFog manages automatically. ioFog can manage and transfer any data type and supports native Geofencing of users’ data, notes and routing.

To secure users’ edge activities, each node within the edge compute network is part of a distributed trust network and is constantly validating security protocols with all of the other nodes, monitoring for deviations. The data transfer and communications between notes occur via session-based MicroVPNs, which ioFog creates as a method of enforcing security for its users.

Google Distributed Cloud Edge

Google Distributed Cloud Edge users can now maintain their data use and storage according to their workload needs and requirements by utilizing any of Google’s 140+ network edge locations worldwide or their own localized, customer-owned edge locations. Google also supports Google Distributed Cloud services across the customer’s operator’s edge network and customer-owned data centers.

Users can use the open-source platform Anthos on their Google-managed hardware at their edge location to run their applications securely on a remote services platform. This way, they can locally process their data and transfer or modernize their applications with Google Cloud services.

By leveraging the capabilities of Google Distributed Cloud Edge, users can run local data processing, modernize their on-premises environments, run low-latency edge compute workloads and deploy private 5G/LTE solutions.

The software also connects with third-party services, granting greater accessibility within customers’ own environments.

Alef Private Edge Platform

Alef’s Edge API Platform enables organizations to manage their applications at the edge through mobile connections. In addition, users can develop their own private mobile LTE networks with API connections and firewall protection.

The APIs allow users to manage their mobile connectivity for Industry 4.0 applications. Additionally, deploying mobile networks as a service at the edge can allow users to create an easy-to-use private LTE network without on-site mobile network installation.

Alef’s system increases speed for users, as connecting to their edge enables them to access services within 50 milliseconds of any U.S. enterprise. Furthermore, by simplifying network complexities, Alef has reduced the time to launch to 60 minutes. And by orchestrating their operations and workloads at the edge with their core IP, organizations benefit from lowered latency for their applications.

Finally, leveraging Alef’s edge solutions means being able to connect to any spectrum, any EPC (Evolved Packet Core) and any cloud. Users can connect to 5G/4G/3G spectrums or their own Wi-Fi and manage data traffic across any cloud provider. And Alef is agnostic, so organizations can partner with their EPC or choose to bring their own.

Cisco Edge Computing Solutions

Cisco offers several edge computing solutions for users to deploy their services on their own developed edge computing infrastructure.

Users can design an edge computing infrastructure for their workloads that enable them to separate their network functions and optimize their resources with software-centric solutions that they can procure separately. Additionally, their fixed edge and mobile networks can share 5G core-based infrastructure coverage for greater efficiency in their operational processes.

Application developers can benefit from using Cisco’s open-edge computing model. IT can enable them to mitigate congestion in the core and meet local demands, as applications can access information about local conditions in real time. Additionally, close proximity to subscribers and real-time network data access can enable a better application user experience.

Cisco’s edge computing model can deliver high-quality data and application performance and security. By distributing the users’ computing capacity to the edge, users can benefit from lower latency to end devices, greater network efficiency with edge offloading and reduced costs for data transportation.

Infiot ZETO (Netskope Borderless WAN)

Infiot, recently acquired by Netskope, is a secure access service edge (SASE) platform that provides edge intelligence with AI-driven components. Netskope Borderless WAN will now integrate Infiot’s ZETO technology to further its edge functionalities for Netskope customers.

The combined technology of Infiot and Netskope will now be able to provide further built-in routing, policy-based traffic control, wired and wireless networking, and integrated network security functions for edge deployment.

Furthermore, Netskope customers will be able to utilize cloud-first networking through the use of Netskope SASE Gateways for secure connections between any enterprise location.

The solution’s developments will help improve Netskope customers’ performance speed, cloud visibility and application activity with the addition of this technology.

What is edge computing?

Edge computing is the process of utilizing a software system to process data closer to the data’s source and use location. Processing data with this solution can reduce the time it would take to analyze the data compared to having first to transfer it to a data center or cloud. This is because it shortens the latency time that would be required to move the data back and forth.

How do edge computing products benefit users?

Organizations that choose to store and leverage their business data are constantly increasing their data volumes. The ever-increasing volume and complexity of this data have caused the need for more space and have led to latency issues. However, edge computing software is capable of more significant amounts of data with reduced latency, which means more easily accessible data insights for organizations.

However, an edge computing solution can do more than just reduce the data processing time compared to cloud computing. Organizations can gain a vast range of additional benefits by processing data at a location at the edge of a network and utilizing systems at those physical locations.

Organizations that utilize cloud-based data analysis tools across all of their business enterprises can increase their risk of security breaches and potential data loss, as an attack on a connected solution could affect all of their organizational operations. With edge computing, a security breach would have less impact on the entire organization, and only the transferred data could be affected.

Conducting on-site data analysis with edge computing devices also means that the analyzed data is safeguarded by the localized firewalls that protect the enterprise.

Edge computing can also allow organizations to control their data flow and storage that takes place within their edge locations, enabling them to manage their data in a way that lowers data redundancy, reduces bandwidth and lowers operation costs.

Edge computing is also arguably more reliable than cloud computing. Using edge devices to save and process data locally can mean having greater access to data than entrusting remorse data storage location, as edge device users won’t need to worry about their internet connectivity issues when trying to process and access their data. Regardless of connectivity issues, organizations can have access to their network data stored in their edge solutions.

Primary features to look for in edge computing software

There are several features and capabilities that are common in edge computing products. Edge computing software solutions generally provide features that enable real-time access to local information to support immediate action. In addition, many edge computing software solutions will provide automated features that can occur regardless of unreliable or inaccessible internet connectivity.

To keep users’ data and applications secure edge computing software should come with security features. Common security features of these solutions may include on-premises security, isolated operating environments, edge device monitoring and authorizations, authentication, and encryption layers. Alternatively, edge software solutions may support connections with third-party security services.

Other beneficial features of edge computing systems should support the management of the organization’s data storage, analysis and transfer processes. This can include features that provide users with visibility into their data center and operations and even cloud operations.

In addition, granting users greater control over their data flows can help them facilitate easy scaling across locations, supported by an easily manageable and configurable architecture.

Source: Top edge computing platforms in 2022 | TechRepublic

Quality Management with ISO 9001 – The 7 Key Principles

November 30, 2022/in Blogs, News/by Wingman

In the last article we found out that ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). And that most businesses use this standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently supply products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements.

In this article we are going to look at seven focus areas to help to businesses to keep these standards ISO 9001 has seven key principles that it pushes as important:

Engagement of people

Making sure the management system involves your team

Senior management aren’t the only people who ISO 9001 is for. Your whole organisation contribute towards it’s processes. If you wanted to fully benefit from your quality management ISO then you are going to need to openly discuss issues and share knowledge and experience with your team. It is paramount that everyone in your company understands their contribution to its success and feels valued for it. This will demonstrate your businesses commitment to improving quality and will help to achieve certification.

You could possibly want to consider some awareness training to help to raise awareness of ISO 9001 and the benefits it brings. There are plenty of online courses that could be very informative and useful for your business personnel.

Customer Focus

Focus on your customers and their needs

A really great way of showing your commitment to quality us developing a strong customer focus. So that you can strengthen your business and its performance even further it is very important to gather customer feedback good or bad. This can help you to spot non conformities and improve your processes.

Your company should take into account not only the interests of the consumers, but also those of other stakeholders, including owners, employees, suppliers, investors, and the general public.

Leadership

Develop s strong management team

Strong leadership entails having a distinct vision for the future of your business. Effectively communicating this vision will guarantee that every team member is working toward the same goals, providing your organisation a sense of unity. As a result, employee motivation and productivity may increase.

Process Approach

Create a process culture

The ISO 9001 Standard’s Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) principle will assist you in fostering a process-driven culture throughout your organisation. This is a tried-and-true method to guarantee that you efficiently plan, resource, and manage your processes and interactions.

You may align operations for improved efficiency and make it easier to reach your goals by managing the many sections of your organisation as a whole. You can find areas for improvement by measuring and analysing these interconnected processes.

Improvement

Drive continual improvement

The ISO 9001 quality management system depends on continuous improvement, which is why it should be your company’s main goal. You can uncover ways to enhance and strengthen your business by putting processes in place for identifying risks and opportunities, spotting and resolving non-conformities, and measuring and monitoring your efforts.

Evidence-Based Decision Making

Base your decisions on facts

Making informed judgments requires access to accurate and trustworthy data. For instance, you need the appropriate evidence to identify the underlying reason of a non-conformity. Ensure that individuals who require information can access it and maintain open lines of communication.

Relationship Management

Develop mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers

It’s possible for your suppliers to give you a competitive edge, but this demands a partnership based on trust. Long-term, mutually beneficial methods must be balanced with short-term financial rewards in order to forge such enduring partnerships with suppliers and other interested parties.

Benefits of the Quality Principles

During the ISO 9001 certification process, putting these seven quality concepts into practise can assist you in fulfilling important Standard requirements. As a result, you will be able to raise employee engagement and productivity, customer happiness and loyalty, and resource usage.

By putting these seven quality concepts into practise, you may help yourself meet crucial Standard requirements during the ISO 9001 certification process. You will be able to increase resource consumption, customer satisfaction and loyalty, employee engagement, and productivity as a result.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step. Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

So we can act as either your IT department or to supplement an existing IT department. We pride ourselves in developing long term relationships that add value to your business with high quality managed support, expert strategic advice, and professional project management.

Quality Management with ISO 9001 – What is it?

November 30, 2022/in Blogs, News/by Wingman

The Quality Management Systems (QMS) creation worldwide standard, ISO 9001, was released by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). The current standard is referred to as ISO 9001:2015 as it was most recently updated in 2015. For ISO 9001 to be produced and updated, it needed to be approved by the majority of member nations in order to be recognised as an international standard, which means it is accepted by most nations on the planet.

What are quality management systems? An ISO 9001 description would be that this standard provides the QMS requirements to be implemented for a business that wants to develop all of the policies, processes, and procedures required to offer products and services that fulfil customer and regulatory needs and enhance customer satisfaction. The cornerstone of quality assurance activities is quality management systems.

Why is ISO 9001 important?

As was already said, ISO 9001:2015 is a widely accepted standard for developing, implementing, and upholding a company’s quality management system. It can be utilised by any business and is intended for usage by organisations of any size and in any sector. Because it is an accepted international standard, many organisations demand this certification from their suppliers as the foundation for any business creating a system to guarantee customer happiness and progress.

Your consumers will feel more secure knowing that you have a Quality Management System in place that is based on the seven ISO 9001 quality management principles if you hold a SO 9001 certification. In fact, ISO 9001 is so important and prominent that it serves as the foundation for other industry standards to be developed by groupings of companies, such as AS9100 for the aerospace industry, ISO 13485 for the medical devices sector, and IATF 16949 for the automobile industry.

What is the current ISO 9001 standard?

The ISO 9001:2015 version of the standard is the most recent one. The previous revision, ISO 9001:2008, was replaced by the ISO 9001:2015 standard, which is also referred to as ISO 9001 revision 2015. Many of the procedures from the earlier iteration of the standard are included in this updated revision, which places more emphasis on risk-based thinking and an awareness of the organization’s context. A significant structural modification from the ISO 9001:2008 standard was made to enable this transition; the key clauses of the standard are different between the 2015 and 2008 iterations.

What is the purpose of ISO?

It is a very common question to ask what the purpose of ISO is. ISO is an international organisation that creates a commonly recognised set of requirements and guidelines to assist organisations around the globe to act more consistently. More than 22,450 standards are created, published, and maintained by the ISO organisation through technical committees made up of people from all around the world. These standards offer guidance on how to develop management systems, conduct certain testing, and design and construct products.

ISO does not go around assessing companies on these aforementioned standards. The ISO only participates in the maintenance of the standards; it leaves the evaluation of businesses in relation to the standards to outside certification organisations.

In the next article we will look in depth into the most important requirements of ISO and how to best implement them into your business.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step. Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

Your Android smartphone could be your biggest Word or PowerPoint helper

November 4, 2022/in News/by Wingman

Small quality-of-life feature could change the way you use Microsoft 365

Microsoft has announced a new, more convenient way to pull images from Android devices, such as smartphones, into documents and spreadsheets made with the web versions of Word and Powerpoint found in Microsoft 365.

In a post on the Office Insiders blog, the company revealed that it will soon be possible for users of Microsoft’s online online collaboration tool to link their Android photo libraries to a Microsoft account using a one-time set up process.

For now, the feature is only available to personal users, in addition to enterprise and education organizations, who have opted into the Office Insiders program, which gives users early access to exciting but experimental new features within the company’s office software suite.

Microsoft 365 and Android integration

While at a glance this might seem like an exclusive club, with some business and education users may be out of luck due to their organization’s Microsoft Office configuration, it’s not too hard to enrol so long as a user has full control over their system.

For personal users, the Office Insider program is a simple opt-in, to be found on the product information page within Microsoft 365.

Once that’s done, linking your Android photo library to your Microsoft account is a simple process, so long as your Android device has the means to scan a QR code with its camera and install the Link to Windows app on the Google Play Store.

Luckily, these are features that will come as standard on most, if not all, recent business smartphones.

The new feature promises to be robust and intuitive, supporting the same image sizes, dimensions, and file types currently supported by Word and Powerpoint on the web. It will also allow users to replace existing images in documents with those on mobile devices.

The feature will eventually be available to all users of Office on the web who have a Microsoft 365 subscription, use an android phone, and, if they are using the Mozilla Firefox web browser, are using version 104.0 or later.

Source – Your Android smartphone could be your biggest Word or PowerPoint helper | TechRadar

WordPress updates its website builder for the third time this year

November 4, 2022/in News/by Wingman

WordPress 6.1 adds improvements to website accessibility and more

Open source CMS WordPress.org has released WordPress 6.1 “Misha” in a bid to expand the block editing experience introduced earlier this year in WordPress 5.9 and WordPress 6.0.

Named after the Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin, WordPress 6.1 includes additional updates to its website builder, offering a new default block theme that features ten style variations designed by WordPress community members.

The release also includes new writing features that allow users to select partial paragraphs in a block, and has a keyboard shortcut to add internal links expanded to all blocks.

WordPress site builder upgrade

With contributions from over 800 people around the world, WordPress 6.1 has been designed to ensure that users can apply a different look and feel to a website within a single theme.

Available now, WordPress 6.1 also offers a suite of new templates that users can create directly from the Site Editor, including custom templates for posts and pages.

“Additional improvements to the editor give creators and developers more control and customization for site-building while offering a more cohesive experience to users,” said Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress Executive Director.

The update also includes fluid typography that lets web creators set one font size to scale on any screen size, which can be enabled through theme.json, a configuration file for block themes.

“As of WordPress 6.1, block based template parts can be used in traditional WordPress themes, allowing both site owners and plugin and theme authors to adopt what they need as they are ready in a way that is still future forward. A theme needs to specify the block-template-parts theme support to enable this feature,” a WordPress.org press release added.

WordPress.org has also improved the layout and visualization of document settings to help content creators easily view and manage important post and page settings.

Source – WordPress updates its website builder for the third time this year | TechRadar

Harness More Value From Technology for Profit – Some Tech Solutions to Look Into

October 31, 2022/in IT Services/by Wingman

In the previous article we looked at how there were ways to save money in a business that prominently uses technology. As we found out, there was a lot of products available to make things more streamlined and that ended up costing less.

In this article we are going to have a look at some of the best profit friendly solutions which require little upfront commitment, yet offer great cost-saving, revenue-increasing potential.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft Office has been a go to collection of tools for businesses for just over a decade now and it is easy to see why. You can get so many useful tools like the tried and tested office apps, the saviour of communication over the pandemics, Microsoft Teams and even business automation tools all from one place.

SharePoint: Is an easy way to share documents to a whole team of people at once and keep them all organised, and it links so well to

Microsoft Teams: The app that has been the frontrunner for business communication, giving you the ability to do video and voice calls, schedule meetings, direct message and have chats with the whole team.

Outlook: The Microsoft email service.

Microsoft 365 is a prime example of a SaaS (software as a service) product. It has subscription packages available to suit any business and you per monthly in accordance with how many users you have.

Cloud Hosting

Traditionally you would have had to host and email server, website or application yourself in office which would have cost you on maintenance and electricity. However, in this day and age there are cloud providers that can provide all of this for a much cheaper cost. Because these cloud service providers have their services in bulk, they can provide them to you for an affordable price.

Managed Security

Managing data security can be very time consuming and your time is worth a lot of money, therefore offloading this job to an experienced managed security provider is an excellent solution. A managed security provider can back up all of your data, make a continuity strategy, and ensure your endpoints are protected. All things you would have to do yourself so, outsourcing this is definitely the most cost efficient option.

In the previous article we talked about the financial risks of data breaches and cyber attacks so, having all of this taken care of by a professional and reduce the likelihood of a financially crippling cyber attack.

Cloud Hosted VoIP

With the recent development that the UK are going to be decommissioning the ISDN telephone structure, businesses need to look to the future for a different way to run their phone systems. Cloud hosted VoIP is one of the most affordable solutions and requires almost no hardware making it one of, if not the, best solutions.

Another great reason to have VoIP is that you can make calls from anywhere with an internet connection. The systems also come packed with features such as auto attendants, call queues, call recording, voicemail-to-email and much more. Call bundles make it much more affordable especially when calling overseas.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step. Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

Latest News for 4TC

Edge computing helps reduce latency of data processing. See which edge computing platform is right for your business.

Top edge computing products

Azure Stack Edge

HPE Edgeline

ClearBlade

Eclipse ioFog

Google Distributed Cloud Edge

Alef Private Edge Platform

Cisco Edge Computing Solutions

Infiot ZETO (Netskope Borderless WAN)

What is edge computing?

How do edge computing products benefit users?

Primary features to look for in edge computing software

Engagement of people

Making sure the management system involves your team

Customer Focus

Focus on your customers and their needs

Leadership

Develop s strong management team

Process Approach

Create a process culture

Improvement

Drive continual improvement

Evidence-Based Decision Making

Base your decisions on facts

Relationship Management

Develop mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers

Benefits of the Quality Principles

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

Why is ISO 9001 important?

What is the current ISO 9001 standard?

What is the purpose of ISO?

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

Microsoft 365 and Android integration

WordPress site builder upgrade

Microsoft 365

Cloud Hosting

Managed Security

Cloud Hosted VoIP

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

London Office

Essex Office

Signup for IT News!