by Matt Seaton

A Connected Generation

The modern era shows an ever increasing degree of solid and meaningful networking between people (and businesses alike) across the globe. Not only does this amount to the building of external relationships, but of relationships as a whole. The ‘interconnectedness of all things’ is an idea thought of as true by a number of leading business relationship experts – such as French et al. The effective management of business relationships is a critical success factor in maintaining a working competitive edge over an industry. Network connections between parties of people are more important than ever before in ensuring widespread and lasting prosperity.

Interconnection between businesses and the people working within them can vary in nature depending on stakeholder-status. Stakeholders are generally broken down into internal (owners, employees etc), external (governments, trade unions etc) and marketplace (customers, competitors, suppliers etc). You would not build a relationship based on the same practices and ideas when comparing employees and competitors, for example. Yet a relationship of some description is useful in both areas.

Network Diagram
Nodes in a Network

Business networks are comprised of nodes (each node representing a point of contact), and the relationships that connect these nodes together. Such networks can become highly complex and intricate, particularly when certain members of a network overlap connections with others.

Although connecting with stakeholders through a meaningful relationship is now easier than ever before, with thanks primarily to the onset of widespread online communication technologies, managing said relationships in a proactive and beneficial fashion is still of importance.
Simply opening a Twitter account, following relevant members and hoping to reap the rewards of shared information does not amount to an effective relationship. Rapport between parties involves useful input from all members of the group, adding to the shared value of networking with others. It would be foolish to underestimate the power of networking, particularly in the early stages of business.

Ben Way, one of the UK’s leading young entrepreneurs (with a feature on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire), solidifies the importance of networking and interconnectedness in this recent post on In A Fishbowl.

Even if you’re up against it with deadlines or working flat out on your business, continuing to build networks is so important.

If you feel you could benefit from a relationship with Netwise Hosting, and have something meaningful you wish to share, feel free to contact us by clicking here. We would be happy to discuss such avenues of business. In the mean time, our affiliates/reseller programme can provide a base-level relationship with us, founded on the shared interest of product sales.

by Matt Seaton

Expanding Our Range

Here at Netwise Hosting, we are always looking for ways to expand our ever growing portfolio of services and product arrangements. As part of our constant search for compete customer flexibility and overall satisfaction, we have just introduced a number of new features which are likely to be of interest to you and your personal/business needs.

DebianWeb Server 2008Firstly, the expansion of our operating system choices. Linux users are treated to an additional two distributions – those being Debian 5.0 and Fedora 12. You can find out more about these operating systems by visiting the Linux Hosting page.
Users who prefer a Windows solution have also been treated to an additional two system choices. As well as offering Server 2003 Web Edition and Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition, we are now able to offer users Web Server 2008 R2, and Server 2008 R2 Standard. This presents customers with the very latest advancements in Windows server technology. More information can be found on the Windows Hosting page.

Secondly, we would like to bring to light the level of service offered as standard to all customers on our network. You can expect truly unmetered/unlimited bandwidth from day one (as standard), through an uncontended 10MB line fed directly into your server. Extreme traffic/data users can then opt to upgrade their line to 100MB, or even 1GB if required, although 10MB will generally suffice for most users.

All relevant server pages contain more information on what services make up each package. We hope this quick update helps in understanding our constant aim to expand, and how we deliver on this objective. As always we are more than happy to take suggestions on how you feel we can further improve our range of products and services.

by Matt Seaton

Take Control of your Servers

cPanelSo you have undertaken the logical decision to use a dedicated server platform to service your every online requirement. This could range from a single Entry-Level system right up to a full rack of Ultimate machines. Yet even with system type and size considered – no matter what remote solution you have opted for – control is key.

Naturally, the very nature of the ‘dedicated server’ means that tangible contact with the machine is highly limited. Of course, certain service providers (Netwise Hosting included) will allow some flexibility in visiting privately owned machines within the data centre (meaning colocation customers are able to book appointments to personally visit their own hardware). However, standard dedicated server platforms taken out with the provider are generally off limits when it comes to personal access, as the machines are the property of the organisation.

PleskWith a remote system, your not going to be sat in front of your server(s) with a monitor. This begs the question – how do I control my server? Well this opens a rather large can of worms. There are a wealth of possibilities, ranging from command-line access through to full graphical VPS connections. This is all very well, provided you have enough time and expertise to invest in these manual forms of control. Connecting to your system through basic command-line will of course give you all the control you need, but it is far from easy to use; and incredibly unrewarding.

Whats the best way to control your server? A control panel. Now before continuing, it should be noted that control panels can be used alongside other more advanced methods of controlling your system, for the ultimate in usability and overall management flexibility.
Now why use a control panel? Well for starters, there is no need for any specialist software or applications. You can access your control panel online from anywhere in the world, whenever you want.

Control panels also specialise in the exact areas of interest to you and your business. Direct access to every aspect of your online service can be controlled through an intuitive graphical user interface, making on-the-fly changes instant and incredibly easy to deploy.

Netwise Hosting offer a selection of control panels for both Windows and Linux dedicated server solutions, giving users the freedom to chose their desired method of control. We also aim to expand our choice whenever possible, and take care of our customers requests in providing panels not expressly listed in our material. Control panels are installed from the very first point of setup, ensuring maintenance of your server is quick and efficient from the start. Make sure you are ready for whatever eventualities you may encounter during your contract, with Netwise Hosting’s fantastic selection of industry-leading control panels.

Visit our Control Panel page for more information, and choose how you want to take charge of your server today.

by Matt Seaton

Business Under a Hung Parliament

A hung parliament is essentially the result of split voting, leaving no one political party with a majority of seats. This is commonplace in nations with proportional representation (i.e. Germany), however the United Kingdom utilise the first-past-the-post voting system in which such an outcome is very rare.

As of the 7th of May 2010, the UK has entered into a political period in which no single party can claim an absolute majority of seats within parliament. That does indeed mean that the UK is currently governed by a hung parliament, with Labour and the Conservatives holding almost equal seating power. This comes as a particularly large shock to the Liberal Democrats, who were expecting to garner far more votes this election period. Unless final counts tip in the favour of one single party as the majority rule, the UK could enter into a term of coalition governance.

Naturally, this is not the correct forum for direct and purely political discussion (- for all the latest developments regarding the UK parliamentary status, visit the BBC News website.). However it does raise some interesting questions for what this all means for businesses in the UK.

First and foremost, the negative effects of such parliamentary upset can be felt already. The pound (Sterling GBP) fell this morning to a 12 month low, now trading at $1.4639 (2% drop) and €1.1551 (1.6% drop) respectively. On top of this, the FTSE 100 has slumped considerably, loosing 100 points shortly after opening for trade this morning. This is an accumulative effect fuelled by both the uncertainty surrounding the UK’s parliamentary situation, as well as growing fears surrounding the Greek debt crisis.

The Guardian have quoted Howard Archer, Chief Economist at IHS Global Insight, as saying

“The key factor going forward is how quickly a new government can be formed and how well-equipped it is perceived to be to have a very real chance of taking, and getting through, the necessary strong action to rein in the public finances…”

There is no doubt that UK business is in a state of unease regarding the future progression of things to come. Party leaders are looking into workable methods of forming a new government, but these discussions are in their infancy.

Industry leaders across the UK are today calling for stability at the top level of politics. The situations surrounding this entire fiasco could ultimately lead to a panic-fuelled re-entry into a state of recession. A double-dip recession has been on the cards for some time, with a scenario like this a perfect example of how rapidly the prediction could become a reality.

So as of today, business in the UK will resume as normal. No individual party changes that could have effected business (both positively and negatively) will come into play, as no one party holds judgement over another. Until solid ideas are put forward as to how progression will unfold, care must be taken to avoid the hung parliamentary status effecting UK business for the worse.

by Matt Seaton

The Importance of Security Online – Facebook’s Error

It is easy to make the assumption that a large number of internet users today make use of social networking sites; most notably, Facebook. Click here to visit our profile page.

If you happened to be using Facebook yesterday evening (05/05/2010) you may have noticed that Facebook Chat was temporarily disabled for around 2 hours. Now it is routine for Facebook to temporarily disable certain areas of their site whilst performing system maintenance, or whilst rolling out new features and updates. However they tend to do this when system usage is at its lowest, normally when the majority of US and European users are offline. Yet this period of inactivity occurred some time roughly between the hours of 6pm and 9pm GMT.

What Facebook will not jump at the chance to tell you is that this was in fact due to a widespread security breach of its privacy settings across the entire system. For a period of time prior to the temporary removal of Facebook Chat, users were able to spy on the conversations of friends through the chat module. A video better explaining the process behind the breach has been posted to Digg.com, originally found on TechCrunch, which can be seen below.

Naturally, this post is not a simple run down of this Facebook security hole. This is, however, a useful tool in highlighting the importance of security online, particularly when dealing with end-user information. In this case, Facebook responded quickly and efficiently to the issue, which is an important factor to remember when dealing with sensitive user information. The quote below is a response from Facebook regarding the security flaw.

“For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the “preview my profile” feature of Facebook privacy settings. When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete. Chat will be turned back on across the site shortly. We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented.”

So what does this mean when looking at security as a whole? Well it certainly illustrates the fact that even the biggest online service providers can make critical mistakes. Of course, this isn’t actually a security breach as such, with no external intrusion playing a part in this particular security issue. This was a strictly internal affair. Yet it still brings to light the importance of solid security when dealing with online information.

Netwise Hosting hold security as one of the single most important factors when considering any online service solution, whether that be a dedicated server platform, online backup solution or a tailored colocation package. With speed, security and stability being our standing three-point mantra, any solution hosted on our private network is subject to industry-leading security measures to ensure external breaches are drastically minimised (or even removed entirely).

Of course, how data is handled inside the network by site users is a different issue entirely, and relies on the efficiency of site operations and users own security measures. But with this still in consideration, surrounding your system with world class top-level security is hugely important in maintaining peace of mind, both for you as a system owner and as end-users of the system.

Avoid the drama of a security breach in every way you can. As mentioned, the Facebook fiasco was down to internal faults of their own, but maintaining a solid barrier against external intruders is still of severe importance. Visit Netwise Hosting today for an online service you can trust.