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Blog entries posted during November 2009

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Design Principles

by: Hugo Harber

Christmas is a time for family, too much food and many other good things. One of these is these is, of course increasingly expensive electronic equipment to amuse the children. For me this year it was a pair of Nintendo 3DS for which I reluctantly...

03 January 2012

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When IT goes Bad!

by: Hugo Harber

I was reading this morning that the FiReControl Plan (a universal panacea for the fire service) - estimated cost £120m, actual cost £470m value delivered £0 – had been abandoned! I was immediately worried that whoever named the project didn't know...

21 September 2011

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Once it's gone it's gone

by: Hugo Harber

Once it's gone you never get it back As we all know time is precious and once it's gone you never get it back. So I find myself at the end of January wondering why I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. The reason is snow or rather the lack of...

26 January 2011

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Let’s face it: Cloud has Gone Mainstream

by: Hugo Harber

Cloud is now a mainstream solution. I don’t say this because every cloud pun has been uttered and written or because every IT business has a cloud strategy now; it is because in almost every tender document I look at there is reference to cloud...

08 December 2010

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Any Neutrals in the Net Neutrality argument?

by: Hugo Harber

I never sit on the fence. However, I am split by the net neutrality arguments. The reason for this is that there are really two arguments here: 1. Should providers block users from accessing content via their connection to the internet? 2...

06 December 2010

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A first class seat?

by: Hugo Harber

At the height of the MP's expenses scandal, Tory MP Nicholas Winterton was at the centre of a row surrounding first class rail travel. Whilst his comments were widely interpreted as a statement of class and privilege, there was a serious message...

22 September 2010

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Outsource, Managed Service or Cloud

by: Hugo Harber

One has to make a clear distinction between outsourcing, managed service and cloud. Outsourcing is all about wholesale transference of internal competencies, responsibilities and assets of a department or function to another party, these are almos...

22 September 2010

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The FSA makes the business case for encrypted storage & backup

by: Hugo Harber

I am sure it will not be news to you that you have a responsibility to your customers to keep their data secure. However, what diligence do you go through to ensure this is the case?< Yesterday, the FSA handed out a £3.25m penalty (reduced to...

03 September 2010

Evolution not Revolution.

by: Hugo Harber

Are on-demand IT services really all that new? Are we really experiencing a revolution in the way businesses consume the IT services that support them? The way I see it, SMEs harnessed the benefits of Iaas & SaaS long before they were known by tho...

27 August 2010

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Just who is “waking up”?

by: Hugo Harber

I am sometimes asked whether SME's are "waking up" to the benefits of cloud computing . I see it the other way around; that they have been searching for answers to everyday business problems for many years, and the ways of accessing new...

16 August 2010

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A look to the (not so distant) future

by: Hugo Harber

The needs of UK businesses are evolving at an unbelievable pace – a technology aware workforce, challenging economic climate and access to new technology advances almost every day are creating the perfect climate for progression. Out of all of the...

17 May 2010

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Why should I look at adopting Unified Communications?

by: Hugo Harber

The key to adopting any new technology is to be really clear about what you want to achieve as a business before you make any decisions around implementation. Most businesses I deal with share similar drivers, which largely tend to be common sense...

17 May 2010

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What is Unified Communications?

by: Hugo Harber

Over the next few weeks I will be looking at how best to approach Unified Communications to gain the maximum advantage for your business. I will consider specifically the what, why and how? - starting today with the what? Unified communications ca...

30 April 2010

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Addressing the green agenda with technology

by: Hugo Harber

As I start to think about budgeting for next year with the obvious restraints the current economic climate imposes I am also looking to technology to help provide environmental savings for the business. Whilst the carbon footprint of businesses in...

24 March 2010

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When should you question pay per month services?

by: Hugo Harber

Recently I’ve been exploring my options around backup solutions for my personal data and I came across a number of services that were aimed at personal, SME and large enterprise sized clients. It dawned on me that the personal SME focused services...

24 March 2010

Buying services from the cloud

by: Hugo Harber

Last time I talked about the attractiveness of buying services more flexibly, on a user centric basis, and have been asked by a couple of people what types of services are best suited to this. My response to this is simple; it's not what you buy i...

25 February 2010

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Are the services you buy designed for the end user?

by: Hugo Harber

When you go to your telecoms provider what do you get? Lines, servers and appliances or do you get end to end services? As we deliver more and more functionality to our ever more demanding end users the work of the IT department involves increasin...

22 February 2010

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Remove the jargon to discover the benefits – continued

by: Hugo Harber

Unified communications (UC) have been around for 4 or 5 years. It is a concept that has been pushed hard by the hardware vendors into the enterprise sector but has meant little to medium sized business. I think this is for two reasons. Firstly the...

10 February 2010

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Cloud so what?

by: Hugo Harber

Many of our customers are looking at how to make the most of the newly created cloud services . Of course how to achieve this varies from business to business but to generalise there are some activities you can embark on which will help you make t...

15 January 2010

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Your cloud doesn’t have to be public

by: Hugo Harber

As companies move to SOA and cloud, concerns around security are being raised. You can understand why, the label ‘cloud’ conjures up a picture of publicly accessible services and applications, spread across multiple locations. The fact is that...

15 January 2010

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Snow Clouds

by: Hugo Harber

So we have a little snow (quite a lot actually). As expected the trains are disrupted, we have run out of grit, schools are closed and businesses are shutting down. So wouldn't it be great if you don't have to close your business down? By adopting...

07 January 2010

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Remove the jargon to discover the benefits

by: Hugo Harber

Convergence, Cloud and Unified Communications are terms which have bandied around by technology companies for a few years now, but tend to mean little to the businesses I talk to. Over the next few weeks we will look at some of these terms and...

05 January 2010

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A decade for transformation?

by: Hugo Harber

I was recently reading some articles on the predictions for the growth of Augmented Reality – an industry that barely exists today that in just 4 years time will be worth just shy of $1bn dollars. It will create opportunities for software develope...

05 January 2010

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Where is my data?

by: Hugo Harber

I think it’s fair to say that we’re all comfortable with public content being served from public services that anyone can access. I think it’s also fair to say that given the choice, we would all choose low cost public services to store...

09 December 2009

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My Top Ten Corporate Security Threats

by: Hugo Harber

Security threats are more than just a distraction. An attack directed at financial or personal records or business-critical applications is potentially devastating. But even indiscriminate attacks can result in the loss of valuable data, high repa...

24 November 2009

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A multi-layered approach to security works best

by: Hugo Harber

Security is a management problem with a technology solution. It isn’t a check-list of do’s and don’ts - it’s a discipline covering the business’ IT infrastructure. When it comes to security, a multi-layered approach works best. For instance, worms...

20 November 2009

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Agile software development meets the shopping list

by: Hugo Harber

Every software development project has a shopping list of tools and infrastructure and your list is typically sent to the internal IS team where they start to go through a purchase and provision process. You hope to be given an ETA so you can star...

19 November 2009

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Waiting until it is too late, costs more.

by: Hugo Harber

Security spending is a cost that’s notoriously difficult to justify in traditional cost/benefit terms: you spend a lot on security and in the best-case scenario nothing happens! But it’s important to remember that reactive security spending is...

16 November 2009

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Are you bailing out a leaking boat!

by: Hugo Harber

Over the years the threat to your data and network has changed and evolved though it still might feel a bit like bailing out a leaking boat. The threat no longer comes through a single point like the rogue USB, but from multiple points of entry to...

06 November 2009

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Avoiding Single Vendor Lock in with cloud computing

by: Hugo Harber

You have infrastructure in place right now; it’s built on a common Windows or UNIX platform and you’re either in-sourcing or outsourcing the hosting. As cloud computing matures your business has more and more options to move services to the cloud....

30 October 2009

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Profile

Hugo Harber – Director of Products & Market Solutions
Hugo is a seasoned ICT professional and leads Star’s products and solutions strategy. He is responsible for the delivering Star’s Product Roadmap, working with customers to develop new products and deliver solutions that solve today’s business challenges.