Whether its public, private or hybrid, cloud is redefining how SMEs use IT. Businesses of any size can now acquire high-quality, IT software and technologies when they need it.

According to the latest research, total cloud adoption in the UK now stands at 88 percent and no longer are SMEs trailing behind larger corporates, with adoption rates reaching 82 percent in 2017. (more…)

There is a lot of talk about data science, big data, AI, and IoT these days, but what is the reality behind the hype? What do these terms actually mean, and what impact could these have on your business?

Let’s take a look at 10 of the highest profile tech terms affecting businesses in 2018; (more…)

IT security has never been a bigger issue for startups and SMEs, with 3 in 5 digital firms likely to experience service failures by 2020 due to improper mitigation of risk. It comes at a time when small businesses are increasingly being targeted by hackers keen to exploit network vulnerabilities, and access their data.

Ensuring the security of your data – and more importantly, the data you hold on your customers – is essential. It’s one of the reasons that many businesses are moving to the cloud, where data is stored virtually.

It’s a cost effective solution for most business, but those things that make the cloud an attractive option – accessibility, flexibility and price – are reasons why others consider it to be unsafe. As more and more small businesses move data and processes to the cloud, here’s a handy guide to ensuring your data is safe. (more…)

Small business owners look to technology to help them achieve their goals and grow their business. They expect it to help them speed up the way they work, make operations more efficient, reduce costs and generally enable them to do more things better. Technology should and really does help achieve these things. However, on the flipside it can also be confusing, expensive, restrictive and require ongoing maintenance.

It’s a vexing problem for the small business owner or entrepreneur. They may not be an IT expert and may not want to be. This year’s DNA of an Entrepreneur survey revealed that Britain’s entrepreneurs are planning to spend much more on innovation over the coming year but, from the constantly evolving technology smorgasbord, how do they decide what to pick and what to leave? (more…)

A staple of business life for decades, the spreadsheet was adopted on a mass scale in the late 1980s and 90s alongside desktop computers. The fact that it is still used today is testament to the fact that it really was one of the killer apps of its time.

Increasingly, however, in the age of cloud-based software and connected devices, the spreadsheet and PC-reliant tools like it are being rapidly overtaken by advances in technology, leaving legacy business users at a competitive disadvantage.

Switching from spreadsheets to cloud accounting software allows small business owners to access more up-to-date figures for sales and cashflow, and view analysis and reports on a broad selection of other essential business performance indicators.

With a wider range, and more current information to-hand, cloud accounting can help business owners to make quicker and better-informed decisions.
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Mobile devices: laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones, to name a few, have become not only ubiquitous but essential tools in our personal and professional lives. Companies of all sizes are now faced with the reality that employees would like their business and personal lives to blend, often preferring to use their personal mobile devices to conduct business.
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Knowing when to update your IT systems can be a difficult business decision. For many SME bosses, changing an IT system is as attractive as root canal work.
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Many people are predicting that 2011 will be the year that cloud computing goes mainstream. A key technology trend of the past few years, analyst firm Gartner has now predicted that cloud computing will be one of the top ten strategic technologies in 2011.
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Do you have data stored in the cloud?

For many organisations, the answer is an emphatic “yes”. Adoption of cloud services is growing across a wide range of applications – desktop backup, email and collaboration, document management, customer relationship management, and so on. Such services are especially attractive to small and medium-sized organisations: they let you purchase just the amount of service that you need without making a large, upfront commitment to application licences, servers, etc. And you don’t need a skilled IT team to run and support those systems.
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Whether you’re into technology or not you may have heard the phrase “cloud computing” knocked about… and probably ignored it.

Very sensible. The internet is awash with terms like “web 2.0” and “social networking”… and you don’t really need to know what they mean. But you do need to know how they can affect your business.

See, cloud computing has nothing but benefits for your business. And it’s something which is going to put plenty of opportunities in front of you in the years to come.

We’ve put together the Bytestart guide to cloud computing in business – with a jargon-free guarantee!
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