Musing 2013 #1 – Farewell Windows XP

As we head into spring we would like to bring to your attention some of the new things we are now doing at HardSoft Systems Ltd and a farewell to a friend.

Cloud Services

It seems like the cloud is inescapable these days. We have all heard that it is the way forward, is cheaper, more flexible, in short, it is better-stronger-faster and we all should be on board. Or should we?
We at HardSoft Systems are offering many Cloud services (Offsite backups, hosted email, hosted servers, etc) and can advise on others. For example, did you know that when your data is in the cloud you have no control over physically where the data resides? Why do you care? Well, if it resides in a country with looser laws over search and seizure, you could find your customer data impounded, on suspicion with no advance warning. It has happened and will again!

How are the services offered by HardSoft Systems any different? Well, our Cloud services are hosted in our data centre on Canadian soil. Therefore your data is protected by the same laws that protect your rights and freedoms reducing the worry of arbitrary or random search and seizure. You can call us @ 800-263-8433 FREE to discuss how Cloud Services can help your business.

Unified Communications

We all love our email, we all love our smartphones, our computers are constantly evolving but what about the common telephone? The telephone has not seemed to evolve much if any, or has it?

One of the most exciting things we are working on is called Unified Communication, (UC) basically it means being able to fold all the forms of communication (email, instant messaging, voice calls, voice mail, etc) into a structure where they all work together. For example UC could be set up in such a way that it knows if you are not logged into your desktop and it is between 9-5 on a weekday, forward call from your landline to your cell, or given the same conditions, take voicemail then email you on your smartphone to tell you that you have voicemail or, email you the voicemail message as an attachment or you get the idea, it is very flexible and programmable.

Now, other than the cool factor, why do we care? It is all about service, we can react to client inquiries faster, we can make downtime more productive time. Like when I am waiting for the oil in my car to be changed, my clients don’t know I am at the car dealer in the waiting room and not in the office nor do they care. If I get their voicemail message I can respond or not, or, I can start the process of satisfying their request. You can call us @ 800-263-8433 FREE to discuss how UC can help your business be more responsive to your customers.

Goodbye to a friend

It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to a stalwart friend. Born August 24/2001, laid to rest August 24/2012, we will miss you Windows XP.

Wow, overly dramatic? Maybe, however, XP is/was probably the most important operating system introduced by Microsoft and was definitely the most widely adopted. Now, having said RIP to XP, is it really dead, well, not really. Microsoft will officially support it for some time yet but practically speaking it is past it’s best-before date. In 2011 we saw Internet Explorer introduced and it will not run on XP (and IE 10 was just released recently, again, will not run on XP), More importantly, this past summer we started to see security vulnerabilities identified in XP that Microsoft acknowledged but that they stated they will not publish fixes for.

So, XP is almost 12 years old and as painful as it is to change to a new operating system, it is now time to change. Remember, now that security fixes are not being addressed with patches there is a higher chance of hacks/ virii etc. it is a vulnerability that your business does not need. Call us @ 800-263-8433 FREE and we can design a migration path to move off XP.