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An intranet is the backbone of many businesses and in the modern, connected world, intranets are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Whilst once they were just a means of connecting workstations to the main and mail server, an intranet can now contain many components.

This is especially true due to the rise in the use of mobile devices, the increased demand for collaboration across organisational departments and the inclusion of social as a means to further engage employees.

But what makes a great intranet? How do you ensure that your organisation serves the needs of the employers and allows them to work efficiently and productively?

Let’s take a look.

Networks are integral to the survival of many businesses. Fine, when everything works as it should. But when problems occur, your support staff need proper training, the right tools, and a solid troubleshooting methodology. This leads to speedier problem solving – minimising downtime, and getting network users back to productivity faster.

Know Your Network

The most common local area networks (LANs) use Ethernet, a data link layer protocol, and Internet Protocol (IP), a network layer protocol. Devices on the network are linked physically by twisted pair copper, fibre or wireless access points.

There used to be a time when dial up was the latest revolution in modern technology, and then along came ADSL showing its predecessor to be snail paced and prehistoric. It’s that time again and fibre optics are the freshest pair of cables out of the box. Installing fibre optic cabling to your premises will make an impressive difference to your business and the efficiency you and your colleagues are able to offer your clients.

Keeping up with the modern client now includes having the ability to access all relevant information whilst on site; immediate invoicing and remote video calling in the highest HD quality. Not the easiest thing to do if you’re still chugging along the ADSL2+ line, that generally delivers 12Mbps, despite the advertised 24Mbps. Businesses of all sizes are looking to not only get the fastest speeds now, making full use of the cloud and its capabilities, but to future-proof their network for all possibilities.

Structured cabling is the simple name for a building or site’s cabling and connectivity telecommunications cabling that comprises a series of subsystems made of standardised smaller elements.

The structured cabling system generally controls voice, data, and video and can be further integrated with the management of systems such as alarms, security and energy. So it’s worth adopting at the start of a new build, or implementing as part of any major update.

Without a structured cabled system, voice and data cabling is often left until the fit out stage of a build, which means there are already inherent compromises in the system. If it’s addressed at the start, then the voice and data systems can be integrated with the fire alarm, security and energy management cabling to create a more efficient overall solution.

Fibre optic cable is the cream of the crop when it comes down to network cabling quality. It’s faster, and more secure than twisted paired copper, but it’s also more expensive. But for some applications, particularly those with very heavy data loads, where bandwidth is an issue and speed a premium consideration Fibre optic is also useful where outside interference is a problem, it’s hands and shoulders above anything else on the market. It can also carry the data far greater distances before the signal requires any sort of boost.

3 Main Types of Fibre Optic Cable

There are three main types of Fibre Optic cabling available today. They are:

As the New Year is upon us, we thought a little less cables and a little more fun facts were suitable to see 2014 in properly. This interesting infographic from Insight below looks at how technology has changed over the course of the last quarter century.

For many of us that have been involved in technology for quite some time, it’s odd to think that the World Wide Web was first being developed by the UK’s very own Tim Berners-Lee and team just 23 years ago. Did anyone back then in 1990 see it coming to this?

A structured cabling system (SCS) refers to a complete system of cabling, together with its associated items of connectivity hardware, that is uniquely designed and installed to carry the services of business’s IT infrastructure around any given premises.

This is as opposed to point to point cabling, which only connects specific devices to each other. A SCS is totally independent of any other devices such as servers, or PCs, or printers etc, yet it serves to provide such devices with the signals and data they need to operate.

IT audits often feel like something of a personal imposition, especially to the people who are responsible for operating the IT system. However they are a necessary evil that substantiate whether the IT system being audited conforms to any industry compliances that may apply, or industry best practice.

Industry Standards

Here in Europe ISO 9001 helps to ensure businesses adopt best practice in terms of quality of information, and procedural discipline, across both their entire administration infrastructure, and any production facilities; whilst within the IT sector, (across all industries), it is ISO 27002 which rules the roost in terms of recommending the measures that should be deployed in order to best safe-guard information security.