Looking for the perfect home computing or electronic gift?  Here’s a  selection of Insight’s best Christmas technology gadget and gift ideas…and spend online until 10th December for your chance to win a LG 26″ LCD TV

Games Consoles from £117 – All the latest must-have Games Consoles including Sony Playstation 3, Sony PSP’s, Nintendo Wii, Ninendo DSI, and Microsoft XBOX Elite – Have fun this Christmas! View Game Console Deals

Laptops & Netbooks from £199 – Choose from the latest technology Laptops and Netbooks from Sony, HP, Lenovo, Apple and more! From the ultra-portable and lightweight HP Mini 110c to the powerful Apple MacBook Pro there is something to suit all requirements and budgets! View Laptop Deals

Gadgets from £5.99 – Love the latest Gadgets?  Insight has a great selection of webcams, digital books, satellite navigation systems, smartphones, digital photo frames and much more! View Gadgets

LCD TV’s from £167 – Keep the whole family entertained this Christmas with the latest HD Widescreen LCD TV’s from Samsung, LG & more! View Deals

Digital Cameras & Camcorders from £69 – Ultra slim with the latest  scene and face detection technology, Insight has hundreds of digital camera’s and camcorders to choose from! 10 – 14 megapixel cameras, many with free memory cards, batteries and camera cases. View Camera & Camcorder Deals

Christmas Bundles from £16.99 – Get everything you need to accessories your Laptop or Netbook with fantastic notebook accessory bundles which include keyboards, mice and notebook cases! View Bundle Deals

iPods Digital Players from £40 – Whatever your style choose from our great selection of Apple iPod’s including Shuffles, Touch, Nano & the iPod Classic! Flash based storage up to 16GB and available in a variety of colours  View iPod Deals

Printers from £31 -All in one, colour inkjets, colour laser and photo printers from top brands including HP, Canon & Epson, some with great cash back offers and free ink bundles! View printer deals

DVD and Blu-Ray Players from £33 – Great deals on the latest Blu-Ray players, dvd players & recorders and portable DVD players from Sony, Toshiba & Panasonic. View DVD & Blu Ray Deals

View all Christmas Deals

Keith Bates, Chairman of ESG answers your SaaS questions..

With Software as a Service (SaaS) and similar managed IT models continuing to gain momentum and more and more potential services and suppliers looking to capitalise, telling the men from the boys can be difficult. Keith Bates, Chairman of managed services provider, ESG, suggests 10 key questions to ask potential providers – and their suppliers – before you sign up.

Datacentre location?

Datacentre costs vary hugely, so it’s important to understand rack space and connectivity costs. In Docklands, for example, rack space cost is high but connectivity is widely available at competitive rates. Alternative locations may offer less expensive rack space but more limited connectivity options, which may prove more expensive and may limit key resilience requirements, such as SAN replication.

How easy is it to move between datacentres?

If opting for an ISP-provided datacentre, beware being tied to a specific IP address range – it can be expensive and complex to provision a new range of addresses. ‘Carrier-free’ datacentres that support connectivity from a variety of telcos offer much greater flexibility.

How secure is the data?

Third party datacentres tend to offer far greater levels of data security than on-premise systems – with well ventilated, well fireproofed facilities secured with multi-factor, leading-edge security technologies. Look for ISO270001 data security standard accreditation and providers willing to submit to penetration tests.

How long will data be saved?

Do your homework on your legal and regulatory responsibilities as regards data retention – remember, you remain ultimately responsible for your data – and look for secure, flexible solutions to suit.

Is hosting really an option for smaller organisations?

Cloud-based ‘white label’ solutions can give you access to the kind of technology infrastructure a FTSE 100 company would aspire to achieve and put an organisation on a far broader competitive plain.

Are all your datacentres virtualised?

Most datacentres are still based on physical solutions – upgrades need planning and are expensive. Virtual technology enables providers to offer upgrades overnight, as required, critical if your need demands a solution that can scale up flexibly. Look also for providers able to migrate your service between datacentres, without interruption, as required.

Virtual datacentres also enable just the data to be mirrored to a secondary site rather than replicating the entire environment.

How resilient is the Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy?

Look for providers offering regular DR rehearsal options. Be wary of inter-ISP agreements that can mean connectivity purchased from different providers actually comes from one source, undermining resilience. Look for providers with

‘RIPE’ accreditation to demonstrate IP-Address and connectivity independence.

Are all datacentre contracts on auto-renewal?

Look out for the auto-renew contract that allows cancellation only in the last quarter of what is typically a three-year deal. Failure to cancel during that period can result in the organisation finding itself committed to a contract extension.

Why is the application not performing?

Connectivity is key here. Look for a free performance test before signing up and consider a ‘one stop shop’ option to avoid the datacentre and comms providers passing the buck between one another.

What about design? DO SaaS applications need to be designed differently?

Specialist cloud computing networking and software expertise can transform application performance. To double-check a provider’s capabilities, ask about the availability of contractual ‘get-out’ for non-performance.

Increasingly IT users are bringing their own technology into the workplace, the most ubiquitous of which is the USB storage device. On a key-ring for easy data sharing with colleagues or sat proudly next to a notebook for DIY backup, they are everywhere.

Let’s put it in perspective, 1GB is the equivalent of about 1 million A4 pages of text – meaning that taking chunks of valuable data from you business is actually pretty straight forward.

The point is that as more people bring their own technology into the workplace, IT Directors face the task of managing people’s personal preferences over corporate standards, a horrifying thought for most CIO’s.

Many refer to this as the ‘consumerisation’ of IT – it’s being driven by the fact that innovation is now moving quicker in consumer technology than business technology.

On that basis I’ll pose the question, is your IT experience better at home or at work?

My guess is most of you said ‘home’.

In years gone by most manufacturers would be build technology for business, once mature, prices would drop, the technology is commoditised and then became a consumer product.

Now many leading-edge technologies hit consumers first – think netbooks, smartphones and apps as obvious examples……..in fact anyone using Flickr, Bebo et al are already cloud computing at home.

Look out for the emergence of Generation next, these are the users who will accelerate the consumerisation trend, it’s not going away.

In short, CIO’s face a real challenge here…..unless the technology makers fall in love with businesses again and close the innovation gap.

Confessedly never the most sparkling of the stars in the data management firmament, Backup has tired of its dowdy reputation just lately and decided to go all webby and onlinified. We asked Brett Raynes MD at Backup Direct to talk us through the makeover

Online who?
Online backup – also commonly referred to as Internet backup, remote backup, or web-based backup – is pretty much what it says on the tin.

It is a data backup process that involves tranferring your files and folders over the Internet for storage in a secure offsite datacentre or datacentres rather than on traditional onsite storage media.

Ok, so what’s in it for me?
Looking after corporate information has always been a key part of business operations – from the days of handwritten books to the era of filing cabinet, to early mainframe and tape systems – and these days that means backing it up and securing it on a regular basis. Online backup is a natural evolutionary step forward – especially from tape-based storage – and has multiple advantages.

Compared to the monotony of tape-based backup processes, online backup tends to be cheaper, faster, more streamlined, more efficient and, probably most crucially of all from a business-case perspective, it’s automated. Let’s face it, there’s nearly always something else most of us would rather be doing – like watching vinyl matt drying – than manually backing up our data.

How does it work exactly? Do I have to back all my data up or can I pick and choose?
Like the man said, it’s basically as simple as choosing the data you want to backup and then securely transferring the files in question to the specified secure datacentre across the Internet via a software interface. Just select the documents or apps you want to backup – you can backup your whole hard drive or just the odd file or folder and fire away.

But I’ve already got a backup solution, why do I need a new one? And why online?
Backup – especially tape-based backup – is to varying degrees a manual process carried ouit by a particular individual at regular intervals. This isn’t perceived as an issue for many businesses; that’s what you pay your IT department for right?

Well, not necessarily. What if the process isn’t, for some reason, being carried out sufficiently regularly or reliably? What if the backup administrator goes off sick or on holiday? What if they really ought to be doing something more productive or mission critical? What if, like lots of smaller businesses, you don’t have a dedicated backup specialist and instead rely on someone somewhere finding the time once in a blue moon?

Online backup, in comparison, can be set as an automated process, taking the hassle out of the procedure and making sure the responsibility doesn’t lie at any one person’s door.

What about security? Isn’t my data at major risk out there in the er, “Cloud”?
This is fast becoming one of technology’s great myths. There is a certain amount of stigma attached to the word “cloud” but it really isn’t as though your data is “floating around” in the ether somewhere. In fact, if you’ve ever sent an email or used Internet banking you’ve used the “cloud”.

You must, of course, shop around, but with most online backup solutions the data is encrypted before it’s sent, while it’s in transit, and after it arrives. Typically it is also stored in two (or sometimes more) monitored, controlled locations. Nobody but the owner – who holds the required encryption key – will ever be able to see that data in its original form.

Another myth is that data is somehow more intrinsically secure if it’s onsite and you can “see” and “touch” it. Keeping it onsite doesn’t make it secure. Tape, for instance, is rarely kept encrypted, is often left unattended, and is always vulnerable to things like fire or water damage too.

Ok, but can it dovetail with my existing disaster recovery and business continuity processes?
It can better than dovetail, it can become an integral part of it. Some online backup solutions backup not only your data, but all your systems, applications, and key processes – everything. So in the event of a disaster, there’s no need to reinstall each and every individual application and driver, Just boot up the new server, stream the data back, and you’re ready to go.

In some cases you can even remote onto the host backup server and carry on working regardless of wwhat may have happened to your infrastructure.

In other words, should the office say, get flattened by Godzilla or a stray ICBM, you can keep working (and keep the business running) from home or anywhere else you like.

And, come to that, what about my wider storage management processes?
In essence, online backup is a guarantee that data will be retrievable for many years to come. Buy a new tape drive or server and there’s no guarantee it’ll be compatible with legacy equipment. Few businesses see this as an issue, but such compatibility problems happen regularly. Online backup has no such constraints – how and where the data is stored is incidental. It’s always there and it’s always available.

Sounds a bit too good to be true… What’s the downside? What are the caveats?
Online backup – also commonly referred to as Internet backup, remote backup, or web-based backup – is pretty much what it says on the tin.

It is a data backup process that involves transferring your files and folders over the Internet for storage in a secure offsite datacentre or datacentres rather than on traditional onsite storage media.

The offsite datacentres central to the idea of online backup are, typically managed by a third-party, often offering users a range of complementary services.

Everyone is talking about Desktop Virtualisation as the new way of improving agility and cutting cost and complexity at the same time – but is it really as straight-forward and effective as that?

What are the compelling reasons to virtualise the traditional desktop PC and when and how should you do it?

Desktop virtualisation is a technology that everyone talking about right now. The trouble is no-one seems to have a really good solution just yet – one that you can just order, take out of the box and deploy. Is desktop virtualisation then, a stunningly good and cost-effective way to make individual workers and the organisation as a whole more productive and cost-efficient, and resolve the everpresent cost and complexity conundrum? Or is it just another smart idea that the IT industry has come with for selling thin client computing; a new label for an old stager?

Even if it looks like it might be a solution that seems to have actually found a real problem for a change, there is the small matter of telling your users – and that of course means everyone from bought ledger clerks to senior execs’ – that they will no longer be given a fully-functioning PC on their desks but instead they will get a slimmed-down system that is very secure, power- and cost-efficient but also has no local storage, removable disk drives or USB ports to play with. You are very likely to come up against some pockets of resistance.

But there is also some good news for users because, with virtual desktops, they will be able to work at any desk, or in fact at almost any location – on a customer site, at home, while they are on the move – in exactly the same way they would as if there were sat at their own screen in their own office. And it may not in the end be smart to take the whole of the desktop estate virtual. As ever, the most important thing to do is take a long hard look at what you really need to do and at all the probable benefits and implications before you start to roll out any systems.

On the face of it, desktop virtualisation would seem to be a no-brainer. In concept, it is simple enough, as Dave Austin, EMEA director of product marketing at Citrix explains. “Like its server and storage predecessors, desktop virtualisation separates the physical desktop from the user. It is a way of decoupling applications, operating systems and hardware, and making them independent elements.”

By putting all the ‘virtual’ desktops on servers (usually virtual machines themselves) in the datacentre, users can access their own personal desktop set-up and all the applications and data they normally use, from any screen, through a normal browser. “This makes it far easier to secure user data and control desktop access for thousands of users across a distributed enterprise. For the IT team, it simplifies desktop management and reduces the cost of traditional desktop computing by up to 40 per cent.”

“Virtualised desktops also improve the overall computing experience for end users”, he continues. “They can log on to the system from any location to a desktop that is fast, secure, personalised and free from the corruption and conflicts that plague traditional desktops. They’ll see the same personal settings as they would from their office computer. The only difference is that they’re stored in the datacentre, not on the individual device.”

To anyone who has looked at thin client computing in the past this might all be sounding rather familiar. But it’s important not to get the desktop virtualisation concept mixed up with the older thin client model says Chris Whiteley, head of product strategy at Avnet Technology Solutions.

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