TechFlare Solutions

When its time to take a Tablet

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:47:00 GMT

Nervous wreck. Feeling naked. Sweaty palms. You know you have become too dependent on technology when you fly away to a Trade Show without your trusted laptop which has become a companion for you for the better part of a decade.

Yes, I was making the break and heading for the Pharmacy Trade Show in the Gold Coast with nothing but a shiny new HP Elite Pad 900. The device looked damn impressive and I was enjoying demo'ing it to client. Especially dropping the device many times over and giving people a mini heart attack. But was it really ready to be productive and useful as my own device??

As an MD of a growing business my requirements from technology are fairly basic compared to the hard-core gamer/3d designer/techy loony. I have been, however, addicted to firing up solid state technology and not waiting (I'm a Gen-X but close to the Gen-Y where 3 milliseconds feel like 3 hours).

So I'm depending on this little touch screen device which carries an Intel Atom chip, 64GB of solid state drive and Windows 8. I had been prepared for this transitional event having previously failed miserably to try and integrate other technologies such as the admirable iPad and many smartphones. You see, the ultimate utopia in my head is to do away with the many devices and notepads and just have one "elite" device that can dock, roam and do everything. And theoretically the device looked like the goods!

The preparation was to have a brand new device loaded, updated, Telstra SIM installed and Office installed including my personal fave - Visio. On top of that all the other bits and bobs like updating the management software so I could dial in my trusty tech team in case of failure. I had all the add-on devices including the docking station, productivity jacket (wow what a name - imagine one of them for humans? Extra USB ports and memory storage - yes please!) plus a Bluetooth keyboard. Sadly though, no stylus as it was on backorder.

Firing up the device on the aeroplane with a keyboard and Word was a great experience. It felt the same, it looked the same, it was… natural. Yes I am a Windows user, clearly, so the transition is as much the hardware as it is the software.

Fast forward through to the trade show and here I was docking the device, undocking it, doing the drop test, firing off emails, using office, browsing the web, moving stuff to the desktop and using the cloud. Holy cow! This device was comfortable – so comfortable I forgot completely I didn't have a laptop.

Conclusion? Well, I am making the transition so goodbye laptop because I am taking a tablet. Not because I am feverish about a new gadget (No poke at Apple zealots here) but because the device truly bridges the gap. I agree with some reviews that this is not for everyone however if you are a mobile user that uses your device for the standard core application (office, web) then you will be over the moon. There were a few minor glitches and delays, particularly without a stylus; however the efficiency gains in my opinion outweigh this. I certainly will be raving about the product.

Pro's - Mobility to the Max, Love the Sim, Windows is a Natural, Great Accessories, Battery Life Good, Good price point.

Con's - Slight Delays, Few slight glitches using Chrome (stylus may change this).

The Bottom Line – Gloriously, the business world has a true tablet solution. If you are a business user jump on in.

Score Card - 8.5/10

HP Site Link

Test Arctile

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:30:22 GMT

this is a test article

Secure Your Network!

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:07:00 GMT

In the wake of the latest hacker news in the US the topic of the day, if not the week, if not the month, if not the year is DATA and NETWORK SECURITY! (You can add data redundancy and backup to that as well). Business owners are so often caught out with a number of cases growing it seems on the world stage. I think we are well and truly in the midst of that old prediction of Cyber Crime being the largest crime on the planet.

The fact that China has its own cyber army is frightening enough let alone the shadowy rogues floating around the internet ready to destroy long running businesses and wipe away years and years of hard work. (I know this due to working with a number of clients who have come to me through disasters!)

If the New York times is hacked how do you think your business will fare? How well are you covered? As an entrepreneur I hate spending so much time on risk management but lets be realistic you spend a long time building something; why not spend some time protecting. Someone once said; "the price of freedom, is eternal vigilance."

Now if you are a small to mid sized business I don't recommend running out and hiring a world class team investing in enterprise levels of security. I do however recommend you invest in sound technology, ensure it is constantly up to date, your backups are running and tested and MOST importantly have independent tests of your security by a 3rd party specializing in security.

Let me give you a little story I hate to tell. A company I know of spends a lot of time setting up a business. Years and years. The then become relatively successful and complacency sets in. Next things you know they end up not being able to operate for weeks at the cost of hundreds and thousands of dollars. This is due to they end up hacked and their data is stolen and deleted with a ransom note attached. For a lot of small to medium sized businesses this would spell the end of the company.

What was the cost of ensuring this didn't happen? $5-10k per annum I suspect not knowing the business all too well. Its why we pay insurance.

I'm sure if business managers and owners dig into Google on this topic there is enough content there to turn them grey! Recently Burger King was hacked to great embarrassment which is another element of the new frontier of data security.

Anyway I'll end this brief note on a more positive front; It's never too late to do a full review of your network and get independent advice on your data and network security. Just make sure that you do it now and keep doing it!

Predictions for 2013

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:34:00 GMT

At the start of every year we get the usual predictions. Anyone care to have a crack at a few? News has put out an article that looks at 2013 predictions... Drones, 3D Printing and more... Have a look here...

How do we see 2013? More of the same if I had to make a prediction. The digital big bang is in full swing so more and more commercial operations will be focusing on moving online, upgrading online and focusing on Apps which is to say making sure every aspect of their digital presence is available and capable to be run through any interface particularly smart phones and tablets.

We'll see more automation carried out particularly with service industries automating service delivery in order to reduce cost, offer more competitive pricing and offer more flexibility to their clients, employees and suppliers. One of these flexibilities will be an ongoing trend for a lot of organizations; working remotely. This will include more staff working from home and more remote workers being productive on the road.

We'll see a lot more Samsung and a lot more Android as Apple starts losing market share and the air comes out of the companies Hype. Not surprisingly we will see a lot of Windows 8 which presents a unique opportunity for organisations to have the same OS running across desktops, tablets and smartphones. My guess is that the strategy will be successful particularly when the Surface Pro version is available.

I've got to mention cloud. So I will say this will be a year where cloud makes more gains and provides more pains as it trundles through the Trough of Disillusionment. (See Gartner's wonderful Hype Cycle). Still there will be a maturity in this space with less outages and more practical uses.

We'll see the NBN make more progress here in Australia but with the coming federal election we could see it stall as the Liberal government is likely to get in and is likely freeze at least some of the implementation.

So all in all another year where we keep progressing toward the future of cloud, mobile computing and faster internet connections with more applications available. Not such a bad future methinks!

Here's to a great 2013 for all of us!

2012 and Best Wishes

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:23:00 GMT

I'm sure it is a shock to everyone but 2012 is almost done! Time flies when you are having fun. And what a year it has been. We've taken on new partnerships, acquired business and brought on new staff and best of all met and done business with some great people. Thank you to all of our new clients, staff and partners!

And it goes without saying a BIG thank you for all of those who have continued to do business with TechFlare over the last while. In fact some of our clients are coming up to the magical decade with TechFlare which is an amazing milestone to make.

Small housekeeping note. We'll be closing the office between the 21st of December through to the 6th of January. We'll have all of our usual provisions and our skeleton crew in place to take care of any business that emerges in this period.

We hope you have had an excellent 2012. Season greetings and wishing you all the best for a wonderful 2013!

Dick's price a vote of confidence on electronic re

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:38:00 GMT

Well Dick Smith’s has changed hands after a long ownership under Woolworths. This was to no one’s surprise as the business was up for grabs for some time. What surprised many was the price it was sold for. $20 million! Astonishing given that Woolworths had valued the business at $440 million at the start of the year. More astonishing when the business is reportedly making approximately $25 million a year in profit before taxes. Two years of solid trading and you’ve made your money back well and truly. Also astonishing is the write down of $420 on Woolies’s books. That is some haircut. I have to say if I knew the final price I would have started making calls. I’m sure ole Dick would have choked on his (Australian Made) cornflakes (ozeflakes perhaps?) when he read the final price. (What an interesting story if Dick Smith bought Dick Smith? Perhaps they would report it in the Mirror?)[BREAK]

So are the previous head of Dick’s; well… dickheads to sell off this profitable business? Some reports say there was too much hassle in management of this store and the return was too modest for 350 odd stores turning over 1.5 billion approximately. Or perhaps they look down the road a little and say that retailing of computers and electronics is way too hard. JB Hifi aren’t exactly lighting up the stars with their current trading. (Although do any of you see those yellow bags everywhere like I do? Or perhaps it’s my subconscious reminding me to buy more Xbox titles/discount games/gadgets)

In any case the real question here is all about computers and electronics as a business both retail and online as an industry. Now a quick note here. I did once venture into the world of electronics, computers and software to the world of consumer mainly online but a little on the shelf as well. And it wasn’t too long before I was off chasing other avenues. You see it is a mugs game especially in the digital age where every man and his dog are flogging gear via websites in this unholy race to the bottom. But then again you have guys like Ruslan Kogan smashing it and making cash left, right and centre. (He is definitely one of the few winners in this race). For more on this race see Seth Godin’s great article - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/08/the-race-to-the-bottom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

So you see everyone wants everything cheaper so if you are in the game your margins are squeezed. If you are a retailer your leases are typically going one direction especially if you are in these giant shopping malls. Furthermore labour costs are quite high if you can get the staff that is (well ones that actually work). So margins down, competition up, overheads up. Not such an attractive prospect. Perhaps Woolies got the best they could and wiped their hands?

Or perhaps the opportunity for Dickies is to focus on their service game, consolidate more stores and improve their digital strategy past their competitors? Personally I see a strong future in this space based on higher volume through bigger range, more population and the move to the digital era brings overheads down. I think Anchorage (who bought Dick Smith) have nailed this deal. The potential is very strong and the price is just incredible. This is a certain Kerry Packer deal (aka “doing a Packer” ie selling and buying back channel 9 for huge profit).

Or perhaps I don’t know Dick…

The talented Mr. Antimalware

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:57:00 GMT

If you ever were waiting for the day when you could turn off your antivirus or antimalware program because malware and viruses were a thing of the past, then you will mostly likely patiently die. But why do viruses and malware exist, and who writes these damn things ? Well there is no simple answer to those questions. The answer lies with many different sets of people: anticommercial advocates, extremist religious groups, jealous co-workers, criminals seeking to perpetrate fraud, etc. - the list is endless. The stereotype of some geeky kid in a basement seeking to cause some mischief so as to become famous (or infamous), runs deeper than one thinks. The kid is more than likely to be sponsored by a criminal syndicate, their social network and in some cases even their own government. The problem is more socio-political than technological.

Malware comes in different varieties: viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, spyware, adware, etc. Regardless they all have one objective in mind: to disrupt the normal operation of your computer largely for some nefarious intention. Your usual line of defense is your antivirus/antimalware/antispyware program and in some cases your good old firewall.

For all intended purposes let's just refer to your antivirus/antimalware/antispyware program as Mr Antimalware. As programs goes Mr Antimalware comes in different flavours. Over a dozen companies each has its own version, and more often than not you will get asked which one of these is the best. Well there is no clear cut answer there either, as Mr Antimalware needs to be able to achieve (preferably) all of the following:

1. Have as complete a database all known forms of viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, spyware, adware, etc. in order to recognize, stop and or counter their effects.
2. Make a decent effort to recognize, stop and counter the 2000+ new (and unknown) malware variants that appear in the wild on a daily basis
3. In performing criteria 1 and 2, not get it wrong i.e. falsely claim that a legitimate piece of code in is fact a form of malware.
4. Perform all the above without significantly slowing down your computer and net connection.

At this point you are probably scratching your chin thinking now that is nigh impossible and you will be right. Also one could say that criteria 2 and 3 are almost contra to each other. Regardless, any variant of Mr Antimalware will achieve the above criteria to different degrees, but no single version will be perfect. Also Mr Antimalware is often split into two separate parties as either (i) a good proactive defender where prevention is better than cure or (ii) an effective remediator where countering and curing the effects of a malware infection is more important. Over the years the leaderboards for the two parties are almost never the same products. Two good resources on the subject is (i) the U.S journal Virus Bulletin and its VB100 accreditation and (ii) the European journal av-comparitives. Regular readers of such will realize that in the annual leaderboard roundup, there is usually a different winner every year. So what was the winner in 2010, may not have even made the top 5 in 2011!

One good methodology for effective malware protection that has emerged within recent years are dual scanning engines. A good combo is where a proactive defender which is strong at criteria 1 and 2 sits at your internet gateway usually as part of a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution, and an effective remediator which has its strength in criteria 1 and 4 on your desktop or laptop. But that is a subject to my next blog post, Mr and Mrs Antimalware.

In closing, I suspect anyone reading this is probably realizing that malware protection is a never ending cat and mouse game. If the problem is indeed socio-political, then our answer may well be legal rather than any form of technology.

Improving your hard disk performance

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:16:00 GMT

Ever wondered why your computer slows down the more you use it? Why is it when you run a defrag it works a little faster?

Most of us use conventional platter/spindle hard drives in our computers (and most likely still will for a few years yet), but I'll bet you didn't know that the speed of accessing data on your drive will be different depending on where you put it.

Platter hard drives are circular in geometry. Picture your hard disk platter as would a CD. Data, on your hard drive, is typically written in circular tracks from the outer radius inwards (oddly enough data on a CD is written in reverse from the inner tracks outward). Because there are tracks on both sides of the platter, a given track and it's counter track on the opposite surface is collectively known as a cylinder. Because of the circular geometry, data on the outer tracks is typically accessed faster than the inner tracks. The inner tracks are smaller in circumference hence data is more likely to spill over multiple tracks/cylinders, whereas the data on an outer cylinder is more likely to be stored on one cylinder only (hence avoiding a head move and the latency that comes with it). Effectively the data rate (the amount of time a given amount of data can be moved from the drive into RAM) is higher at the outer tracks than the inner tracks. Software like HDTune will actually graph this for your you. Transfer rate is typically highest at the outer cylinders and deteriorates down to about 30 to 40% of that rate when it gets to the innermost cylinder.

Partitioning your hard drive actually serves two purposes: (i) to separate the data on the disk surface and (ii) provide track/cylinder delimiters for your volumes. The second point is significant, because the transfer rates for each volume will actually be different. For example, if you partitioned your hard disk half as a drive C and and half as drive D, drive C will use cylinder 0 (the outer edge of your hard disk) to cylinder x (the middle of your hard drive), drive D will use cylinder x + 1 to cylinder y (the inner edge of your hard disk). If you care to experiment, try installing Windows onto drive D and time how long it takes to boot. Try installing it onto drive C and time it again. Drive C should take about half the time, because the transfer rate on that volume is almost double that of Drive D.

So how does that have anything to do with the questions asked back in the first paragraph. Well most people format their hard drives as a single "C drive" partition. Over time, data gets written, deleted, then rewritten. A few months in, data will migrate towards the inner cylinders where the data transfer is slower. Defragmentation will do two things (i) move frequently used data from the inner cylinders to the outer cylinders and (ii) collate data fragments that represent a single file together into consecutive blocks (to eliminate the head head having switch through different cylinders).

So what strategies can I employ to get better performance from my computer. These will help:
1. Partition a hard drive so that that drive C is no more than 30 to 40% of the total drive volume. Data transfer rate is optimal in this space and is best for data that is frequently used (like your Operating System files). Drive storage purists/performance junkies will only ever partition and format their drives to 30 to 40% of its capacity to in order to prevent their system from ever transferring data at a less than optimal rate.
2. Place your swap file into it's own volume. This will prevent it from fragmenting with any of your system files.
3. Redirect your documents, videos, pictures, etc to the D: drive (or any other drive than the C drive). Statistically, these get read and written to at a lower frequency than your system files and receives little benefit if put on your C: drive.
4. Set your internet cache to the C: drive where write performance is at its highest.

TechFlare Action Plan 2012-2013

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:05:00 GMT

Well not sure where the month has gone but we are already in August. What’s the saying – time flies when you are having fun. Well I’m back blogging after a notable absence of some months. I thought I would kick things off with an update on TechFlare’s action plan for the next 12 months.

Acquisitions

We recently did our 3rd business acquisition. You can read about it through the media release and the channel news. Currently TechFlare is looking to purchase IT and Telecommunications business with a 3 year goal of wrapping up good opportunities to take TechFlare to the next level. We are looking for a combinations of customers, skills and revenue. We are specifically looking for opportunities out of Brisbane and Melbourne to extend our eastern seaboard footprint. If you know of any opportunities ping me an email. We hope to do another 6 over the next 3 years. The GTC and GWD acquisition was a great one for TechFlare as it improved a number of elements of the business and we are excited to have Viv Trivedi join the management team. Viv brings an excellent mixture of skills, contacts and opportunities to the table.

The Telco Play

Well after what seemed like a long time TechFlare finally sealed the deal with Telstra and is now officially a direct dealer with the telco giant. Equally exciting we welcome David Coote to the management team. David is a veteran of the telco industry and has had enormous success in the past in developing business in this space. We look forward to David ramping up our Telco division combining the strengths of the Telstra network with our excellent service operations.

Branding

What’s in a brand? Well here is a quote for you. “A brand is a personification of a product, service, or even entire company.” Robert Blanchard. In other words pretty damn important right? Well after sometime TechFlare has gone through a re-branding process starting off with the logo, the tagline, marketing collateral and of course this website. What do you think? I love the “Your IT Team” tagline. It really sums up the approach we have to our clients both existing and potential. Speaking of taglines I was sent this recently. It’s a list of famous taglines. http://www.chomchomadvertising.com/360-most-famous-business-taglines/

Product Development

We are excited with our progress in the product building space. We have three products being developed currently. They are in the monitoring, cloud and ERP space and are due out this next 12 months. We hope the products simplify IT for business and provide greater value for the end user and our channel partners. Stay tuned for more news in this space. As the products get closer for launch we will continue to release information!

So in other words a lot of work going on! It will be a busy 12 months ahead and I hope it is for you too!

Software publishers hate Australians

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:53:44 GMT

Somewhere I like to imagine the following conversation happen at 2k Publishers:

2k Publisher 1: "I'm going to carve Australian's cheque book out with a spoon!"
2k Publisher 2: "Why a spoon cousin?, Why not an axe?"
2k Publisher 1: "Because it's dull you twit!, it will hurt more!"

You may ask where this deep sarcasm and irony comes from, you may ask indeed. To whit, it comes from my recent revelation that 2k intend to charge Australian Steam users 49 dollars for the privilege of buying Firaxis - Civ V - Gods and Kings.
If you are a United States Stream users - you get to buy it for 26 dollars, indeed if you live in the land of the long white cloud (New Zealand) you get to buy it for the same price but in Australia they want us to pay double.
My guess is because they don't want to offend EB, Harvey Norman or any of the other suits propping up a broken business model.
It beggers belief that they would annoy their customer base, who with this sort of game are likely to be online, price savvy and will angrier than an angry bird faced with a load of green pigs when they realize what's going on.
Ultimately, we can purchase the CD keys elsewhere and buy the game.. without going through Steam.

When are the publishers going to wake up and realize that they're alienating the people who actually pay for the software?