IB: InfoBulletin

1. "It'll end in tears" - Take care with big IT projects
2. Free backup tapes!
3. Unmetered Internet access : how to make it pay?
4. Web access, Web hosting, Web design explained
5. How reliable are your PCs ?
6. How to avoid email overload
7. Charges for viral disinfections
8. What are your issues

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E&OE

1 "It'll end in tears" - Take care with big IT projects

Comment
Sadly all to often in the charity sector we see broad-reaching all-singing, all-dancing IT overhauls that collapse in a heap or have very limited functionality on delivery. In the commercial sector, the larger the project, the greater the chance of failure - 50% failure rates are often cited for large projects.
Most organisations can do far worse than get a good fast cabling infrastructure (100Mb/s), a quick connection to the Web, ISDN or better still leased line, and a number of high quality servers for appropriate purposes.
Individual projects such as accounts, database development, or CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) can then be tackled on a manageable, cost-controlled basis one by one.
Complete systems integration is of course ideal, but currently the implementation costs, on going costs and associated risks are often under estimated. Conversely, the benefits are often over estimated; is it worth £50,000 to get information directly from a 'data-warehouse' when one hour's spreadsheet manipulation of an exported report file would give the same results ? Tread carefully !

2 Free backup tapes!

What it is
It's free DDS II and DDS III tapes for your tape backup drive - a special offer! Having just upgraded our server to DAT instead of multiple DDS devices we have now have spare, used but working DDS ii/iii tapes. These are free, first come first served !

Cost
Just your phone call.

Contact
Ring Asif on (020) 77 93 78 77

3 Unmetered Internet access : how to make it pay?

What it does
Unmetered or toll-free Internet access is intended to bring the advantages of a flat fee payment system (like those applied to leased lines) to the home- and small-business users and those traditionally using pay-per-use dial-up accounts.

Benefits
A lower and more predictable charge for Internet access for users is the main intention. Some providers are offering a flat rate per annum charge and some offer a completely free service (you get an 0800 number) - but beware the free lunch syndrome!

Drawbacks
Congestion problems abound in several bottlenecks: CallNet800 had to close applications for new accounts after complaints about unreliable connections. Many NTLworld customers had to wait a long time for access software or to even be connected to the service. Both Telewest and LibertySurf have suffered congestion problems.

Costs
AltaVista had originally mooted a per annum flat charge of around £30 but this has now come out as £59. This may be the best model if they can make it pay and make it work. You need to have registered with them first. (Since the first edition of this bulletin, AltaVista has announced on 22nd August that its service never actually started, despite 1/4 million customer registrations. They cite the problem being BT not providing ISPs with a viable rental package). More details

BT's SurfTime offering has been controversial from the start, provoking many complaints to Oftel from other providers that it was putting a stranglehold on toll-free access. They have plenty to lose - nearly 20% of their local call income is from Internet use. SurfTime is available for other ISPs to take on and provide their own product from it.
The SurfTime II service is £6.99 per month for evenings/weekends, but customers who are not strictly BT ones (eg Energis, NTL) also need to spend at least £10 pm on non-Internet calls (ie voice calls). Company officials have even suggested SurfTime may "die a death" as it will eventually represent poor value when BT offers its own broadband services.

Three-quarters of ISPs' incomes is down to dial-up users and the ISPs don't anticipate a major shift to 'Aways On' broadband services, like leased line and ADSL, until around 2007.

ISPs using the 'Freeserve model' get half their revenue collecting part of the per-minute cost of calls you make. The rest goes to BT and other licensed operators, so this makes it difficult for any ISP to deliver a flat rate service without losing money.

Around 40% of a 'conventional' ISP's income is from charging a monthly or yearly subscription for you to connect (on top of per-minute phone costs). Since they may lose over half of this by 2004, they have to provide some sort of unmetered access simply to keep our custom, but the question is how to make it pay.

On top of this, the larger cable companies are facing the unexpected costs of making good the roads they dug up during the 1990s in the rush to lay vast quantities of cable. A recent ruling in Nottinghamshire means that suppliers like NTL and Telewest can be called back to refurbish the shoddy work, whereas before, this responsibility reverted to the local council after 2 years. The bills, running into millions of pounds, would have to come from the telecomms' cash reserves.

Summary
Companies (telecomms and ISPs) are finding it difficult to develop a model that can make it pay, but unmetered access, in whatever form, will become inevitable.
The tariffs are at least as messy as mobile phone ones as regards price comparisons.
If you see the word "free" bandied around when Internet access is advertised, don't assume you won't have to pay anything to anyone; the minimum you'll get away with for reliable services is a once-off charge.
The modern cable companies seem to have done a 'rush job' and BT is reluctant to let its high quality phone cabling (the 'local loop') go to its competitors for a song.

Contacts
AltaVista

NTL

Guide to 0800 freecall Internet services

Choose your unmetered access

Oftel information on Internet access

4 Web access, Web hosting, Web design explained

What it does

• a) Web access
  This just gets you access to the World Wide Web layer of the Internet. You typically pay a monthly or yearly fee to an Internet Service Provider for an account for a dial-up modem service. We have recommended UUNET Pipex or Demon Internet as reliable providers, for example.

• b) Web hosting
  With the above type of account, you often get an allocation of free Web space which could be anything from 10MB to 50MB. Some ISPs make their name by offering larger free allocations, but their basic access may be more expensive. This disc space on the ISP's Web servers is where you can start to build your Web site, assuming that :
  • you know how to build it;
  • your intended Web site fits into the space.
    You can usually rent extra quotas of Web server space (eg 100MB) for a yearly sum from the ISP you are using, which is intended to offset the additional disc drives they have to buy.
  Large organisations sometimes host their own Web site by installing a physical Web server in-house. This step marks a sea change for any organisation since you - instead of the ISP - become responsible for :
  • access to your site by Internet visitors, so you need a 24-hour connection like a leased line;
  • site integrity, which means if your Web server fails, your site presence disappears;
  • keeping out hackers, so you need a firewall.
    
  The cost of a leased line (at least £4000 pa) may be offset by the savings of hosting a large site outside, but there will be some capital costs (Web server and software and firewall) and possibly extra IT staff costs for maintenance.

• c) Web design
  There are many editors (some free- or shareware) for writing HTML pages these days, such that you can almost write them like a document, but if you want a site that is interesting, easy to navigate and will make visitors come back, you need to specify it well and have some design experience. This usually entails maintaining the site and using tools (like FTP) to 'upload' your pages to your chosen space.
  If you don't know how to build a Web site, there are many designers around to guide you through the specification, design, implementation and maintenance process. Get a recommendation (preferably from a similar organisation to yours) and check their references first. Indeed, it may be worth contacting them before you decide on a hoster since some sites need to interact closely with a Web server, eg FrontPage extensions.
  Connecting a database to your Web site will usually involve some outside help. A good compromise between cost and flexibility is to get your designer to build in areas of the site where you can change just the text (usually via a password system). This way you can update news and services information without knowing anything about the site design.
  The larger ISPs also provide design services, but will often tend to be expensive, being aimed at the corporate market.

A typical combination
.... is to choose one company that will both host and design your organisation's Web site (b & c) and have another separate provider (ISP) to give you Internet access (a), that will provide you with WWW browsing, email, FTP, etc.

Cost

• a) Web access :
  Dial-up accounts are about £10 pm upwards and permanent leased lines from £3000 pa.

• b) Web hosting :
  Will depend on how big your site is and the amount of free space you get, but you're looking at a few hundred pounds per year.

• c) Web design :
  If your site is only a few easy pages of HTML, then it's DIY or a few tenners to someone with experience. After that, it's anything up to several million dollars for a big corporate portal or dot-com.

Contact
Own sister company the information works" is on 020 7793 0677.

Listing and reviews of free Web space providers

Listings of free space providers

Example hosters

Search a database for Web designers

5 How reliable are your PCs ?

Who are the best and worst ?
Dell and Dan Technology overall topped the list in performance for the broadest range of categories surveyed, with Tiny and Time (who have both had massive campaigns to gain home user market share) bringing up the rear.

How good are the best ?
Some sobering thoughts :
- The best performer for having fewest PCs 'dead on arrival' was IBM, with a mere 3.4% dead !
- The best performer with a big market share for fewest PC systems failing during their lifetime was Dell, with only a near 20% failure rate. At the rear again was Time, with almost a 50% failure rate during their lifetime. Portable figures were even worse.

Contact
Source : PC Magazine, survey based on 3500 recipients http://www.pcmag.co.uk, "Service and Reliability"

6 How to avoid email overload

What it does
This item tells you how to keep down the size of your email messages and those of your users for Microsoft Exchange/Outlook and Pegasus Mail. Applying items b) and c) below will reduce mailbox sizes to at least half the size of using 'belt and braces' setups.
As a systems administrator you can enforce limits on how much space users are allocated (both in NetWare and in NT/Exchange), but this often results in cryptic messages at the user's end and generates support work running around to decipher the source of the problem. Better to use preventative measures and 'good IT culture'.

Benefits
Depending on your application, you will :

• be able to open your email client faster;
• improve server performance;
• put off that day when you have to buy an extra disc for the server to cope with email overload!

How to make it happen

• a) Reminders
  Remind people occasionally to trawl through and empty or archive (by printing if appropriate) their old emails. Dumping those with attached documents they have already saved is the most effective. The human approach is definitely the simplest, especially if they realise it will save buying more hard discs!

• b) Empty deleted messages
  Make sure users have their Deleted Messages folders emptied automatically upon exit.
  • In Outlook, this is set to be off by default unfortunately.
    • Pull down Tools | Options | Other and Tick "Empty the Deleted Items folder ..."
    • If you click the Advanced button, you can choose to be warned about this (on by default) or not.
  • In Pegasus, this is set to be on by default.
    To have a warning before you delete any message:
    • Pull down Tools | Options | General tab and Tick "Ask for confirmation before deleting ..."
    Any message(s) in the Deleted Messages folder can be recovered by dragging to another folder before you exit your session.

• c) Don't keep a copy of messages sent
  If you don't want to keep a duplicate of absolutely everything you send ...
  • In Outlook, this is set to be 'save everything' by default.
    • Pull down Tools | Options | Email Options and Untick "Automatically save unsent messages"
  • In Pegasus, the default is set to prompt you for each message. To change this:
    
    • Pull down Tools | Options | Message settings tab. The tick box is "Ask whether or not to make copy to self".
    In combination with the next tick box down ".. ask which folder to put it in", this makes a good balance between tracking your own responses and keeping the mailbox small. In the same pane, you could also choose On, Off or Use last setting for Copy to self.
• d) Use automatic filtering rules
  Move or delete your incoming automatically - use with care!
  • In Outlook, pull down Tools | Rules Wizard.
  • In Pegasus, pull down Tools | Mail filtering rules.

What to monitor
On a NetWare server, all the mail (eg for Pegasus) is kept on the SYS volume (often mapped as the F: drive). Keep at least 10% of this volume as free space at all times.
With MS NT/Exchange systems, check you have at least as much spare space on your mail server as the size of the mail database (*.edb files). Exchange needs this much space to do maintenance and/or repairs. Note your mail server may be separate to your file & print server.

7 Charges for viral disinfections

What it does
In the past we've generally made no charge for fixing viral infections and just handled the fix via our normal support arrangements. However we are finding that viral infections are becoming increasingly common and resolution of these problems typically takes up to 3 times longer than other typical support problems. With this in mind, we are going to have to start charging for these viral fixes as stated in our terms and conditions.

Cost
However, the charge will be at the discounted FM rate of £250 per day or pro-rata for parts of a day, but we will respond quickly as per normal support call-outs.

How to help yourself
We strongly recommend that you minimise the risk of viral infections by keeping your organisation's anti-viral files up to date, with updates on an automatic basis if possible. If you have any questions or need help please call.

Contact
Call support 020 7793 7877.

8 What are your issues

We're looking for trouble.

Perhaps there's something that you've thought about implementing but are not sure of cost. Maybe there's a niggly problem you've never bothered to ask about.

How to make it happen
Whatever the issue, call us on 020 77 93 03 95 or email us here