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Well here we are at the end of January already and I cannot believe that the monthhas flown by so quickly. January for Cambridge Networks has been breat;
- A new team member has joined the technical department
- We have signed up a couple of new clients to our CAP support packages
- We have secured a couple of new server installations
- Our new Kaseya implementation is also going well
So we are also investing more time on creating a dedicated knowledgebase for the technical department. Long term this may be offered to support clients, however we are at the stage of building the foundations for the new Knowledgebase. We are going to be using our purpose built CMS solution created by our sister company Cambridge Networks, called 'TheOnionCMS' We are developing a dedicated module especially for knowledgebases and FAQ systems. This will assist our technicians on a day to day basis, which in turn will reduce the amount of time resolving issues. More importantly it will be a central location for all of the technical department to create usable documents on 'how to's' and easy to follow guides for installations, repairs and so on.
More to come very soon
Thanks for reading
Greg Sewell
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So today was different.... I took my son of 7 with me to a couple of
sites as Kirsty was busy having her hair cut.
Was it an issue.....? I don't think so; however will wait for the
emails/calls from clients on Monday as they find that their flip charts have
been all used up, polo's all eaten and desks rearranged. 7 year olds have
the attention span slightly higher than a bored chicken (BIG GRIN).
Was he good.......more or less yes, polite didn’t break anything
(always a bonus) and generally sat and watched DVD's or drew.
So this allowed me to sort out both clients with their issues. One
was a return of a repaired Dell machine which was riddled with viruses, bots
and Trojans. In this case the client wanted the machine to be configured
for another role, so we installed a new hard disk and installed Windows from
scratch. The old hard disk was installed into a portable USB drive
caddy. Two bird’s one stone....
Next client was that a hard drive in a mirrored pair had dropped out
and needed replacing. This fault had happened a couple of times so we decided
to replace the drive this time. Main reason for the failure is that it
was a Fujitsu Server with an old ATA100 Raid 1 card installed. (Not the
best use of technology, however the installation was already in place so we
could not do much about it).
Also whilst onsite, we discussed with the client any other issues, it
transpired that one machine was slower than all of the rest, which seemed
strange as the machines were near as identical. A quick check in the bios
led me to the issue being the workstation only had 256mb of ram and with a
shared graphics adaptor the machine had less than 200mb to start with and was
struggling with about 40mb fully booted. Not a happy bunny one bit.
Luckily we all carry spare memory with us and I installed a brand new 512Mb
module and the machine was ever so thankful. We updated another machine
onsite which was also low on memory and made note of the other machines that
needed additional ram for a further site visit.
All in all a rewarding day, managed to spend a little time with Connor and
fixed a few more issues for clients.
Thanks for reading
Greg Sewell
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We support most things.... |
No your not dreaming, I have managed to do another post on the Blog!!!!!!
So whats new..... Well we are now getting into the thick of the Kaseya project and things are starting to happen on the new technician front. Carl Chatten will start on Monday 21st of January 2008, which is great news for all. We are also starting to find some time for focusing on our Microsoft certification as well which will also increase our knowledge and experience, well at least to understand Microsoft's way of thinking.
So back to Kaseya; so far this suite of products looks really great, lots to get our teeth into and lots of information we can start to give back to clients, which will be a real bonus. We are planning on getting the system bedded in by end of Jan with a rollout into mid Feb. So with the additonal resource in the workshop I can see we will get the app out there tweaked and useable.
Sorry this one is very short and sweet, however I will ponder over some more content in the next couple of days. Maybe I will tell you about my adventure this weekend where I will be repairing a failed Raid 1 system, or maybe tell you about the fun and games we are having with a broadband provider and a dodgy line issue. can you believe that we have a client with a 700k upload and a 160k download!!!!! not what the doctor ordered.
Thanks for reading
Greg Sewell
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So for 2008 we have a new service program to add to our support portfolio of products. This new program is called Kaseya and I have added a news article relating to it only today so that it is recorded here.
Kaseya is the next step for us at Cambridge Networks with the added push towards the 'Work Smarter not Harder' attitude we are promoting for 2008. We have now been in business for nearly 10 years, in fact 18th of July 2008 will mark the 10th anniversary of Cambridge Networks, so we will be celebrating in some way shape or form, so please watch this space.
We recognise that to keep our clients computing environment running and functioning we need to be ahead of the game in so many areas, thats why we are investing in more smart technology to assist with the growth of the business. Majority of support companies will just employ antother engineer and then another sales person and so on. However that strategy will not work forever, so we have deceided to make an investment into more technology first and then look to employ another technician when we need to. Ideally we want to get the technology performing more work than the technicians. I will be adding another dedicated page detailing what Kaseya can do and how it will help both our clients and our technicians.
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More info about Cambridge Networks future direction here:- We are looking to secure several more strategic partnerships with both local and global partners. This year has seen us halt our involement in the Elmeg brand of telephone system and to pass any new business onto our telecoms partner Convergence Communications . We must stress that our existing Elmeg installations will still be supported by Cambridge Networks, however any new opertunities we will be passing over to Convergence. Over the last 4 months we have built a strong relationship with the team at convergence and have seen the benefit of partnering with companies who focus one one area of speciality. This is true for Cambridge Networks, so we can now see the benefit of business being passed in both directions.
Other Partnerships soon to be formed include:-
A global disaster recovery solution which allows for DR to both physical and virtual envrionments
A global monitoring and security system that can monitor users usage of all aspects of the computer systems
We will be looking through our portfolio of products and services over the comming months to see where we can add value to our clients and there may be new partnerships build and old partnerships disolved depending upon the relevance of the product and service.
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