Software maintenance cover. Is it just money for old rope?
When everything’s going swimmingly, it’s easy to question whether the money you’re paying for ‘maintenance’ on your software is actually a good investment.
That is until something changes.
Recommended Podcast: Why MSP’s Need To Embrace Marketing
IT support companies are generally pretty rubbish at marketing.
“That’s a little harsh” I hear you say?
Of course, there are exceptions. But I speak to lots of MSP business owners in my role here at Zen and I find it’s often something I end up joking about with partners, and that they’re quite open to admit.
In a fascinating interview for TubbTalk, The Podcast for IT Consultants, MSP marketing expert Paul Green shares some unique insight on why he thinks this is the case, and what can be done about it.
How to Back Up to Amazon S3 Using BackupAssist
On-site or off-site backup.
Which is right for your business?
When you’re thinking about the backup approach that best fits your small business, committing solely to one option is unlikely to be the silver bullet you might like.
However, your choices may not be quite as binary as you could be led to believe either.
What if there was a way to keep a local backup for really quick recovery of files, applications, and servers, that also combined the security and reliability of a cloud giant like Amazon?
Enter BackupAssist and the Cloud Backup Add-on!
MailStore 11.2 – Now With Exchange 2019 Support
Are you an existing MailStore customer? Great news – it’s upgrade O’clock!
Not yet using an archiving solution?
Maybe it’s time to grab a copy of the trial and see what you’re missing?
From keeping those mailbox sizes in check to keeping your email protected against accidental deletion and cybercriminals intent on cryptoransoming you, MailStore offers businesses of all sizes attractive benefits.
Now, MailStore, the popular email archiving software, available as both the classic on-premise version and the Service Provider Edition for MSP’s has released version 11.2 which features Exchange 2019 support (due to be released shortly).
MDaemon 18.5 – Now with Dynamic Email Signatures
More is better. The mantra of the signature stuffer.
From job titles and contact details to special offers and even instructions to save the trees. Nothing is off limits when it comes to providing ‘useful’ information to our lucky recipients by the medium of email footer.
It’s a perfect picture unless of course, you’re the poor soul tasked with making sure the emails your company sends are consistent, professional and accurate.
If you’re that person, you’re going to love this latest MDaemon release.
Off-site Backup to a NAS Device Using BackupAssist (Synology Example)
In case you missed the announcement, BackupAssist recently added WebDAV to the suite of backup job types the software is able to support. Intended for those who wish to back up their data to an off-site destination, the protocol enables admins to create encrypted, incremental backups to either a third party hosting company, another Windows server or a NAS device.
The latter is a popular choice, particularly for the smaller business. They’re a good option because once the hardware’s paid for, there’s no monthly recurring charge as you’d tend to expect from a cloud storage provider. Also, the portability of the small units means they can be ‘seeded’ to locally and then moved. In most cases, you have physical access too, which means you’re not relying on an Internet connection for your data in disaster recovery scenarios
In this post, I focus on the steps for configuring one of the more common NAS devices I come into contact with, the Synology. The requirements will be the same for other brands, however, the exact steps and screenshots will of course differ. Continue reading
MDaemon v18.0 – Enhanced Security and Usability for Small Businesses
With the deadline for GDPR fast approaching, all eyes are turning to compliance, security, and how we look after our data. MDaemon 18 is the latest offering of the mail server that enables business owners to remain in total complete control of both security and every other aspect of their email communications.
In this latest major release, Texas-based developer Alt-N Technologies add yet more features to boost security and improve usability.
Here are my highlights – don’t forget, you can find the full exhaustive list of goodies in the MDaemon Release Notes.
MailStore v11.0 is here! GDPR-ready Retention Policies and Enhanced Security
MailStore version 11 is now live and available for download from our Web site. Just a few weeks ahead of the EU General Data Protection Regulation implementation, this timely release focuses on two key areas, security and compliance.
If you’re wondering where email archiving fits into the GDPR piece, you might find our recent video ‘10 ways MailStore can help satisfy GDPR‘ and the official MailStore advisory PDF a good starting point.
In this post though, we’ll take a closer look at the goodies v11 brings to users of both the Server and Service Provider Editions of the popular archiving software.
New Whitepaper: MailStore, Email Archiving and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
E-mail archiving is an indispensable tool in the armoury of any company looking for a secure but accessible way of storing email. It’s also an excellent way to tick a number of the boxes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
I touched on this topic in a recent YouTube video and today the German vendor MailStore have released a new whitepaper detailing exactly how to fully support your GDPR compliance customers, available here.
BackupAssist 10.3 Introduces WebDav Support – An Rsync Replacement?
Back in May of last year, there was a veritable buzz in the office as BackupAssist released v10, and with it their shiny new ‘Cloud Backup’ engine, designed at the time to work only with public cloud giants AWS and Azure.
The buzz was partly around the potential for the new technology. Here was a backup engine that could happily back up large files over a WAN, that would encrypt, deduplicate and compress, and that could also be set up with very little effort.
We mentioned then that this was the first iteration and in the newly released 10.3 you’re seeing the next step. In this latest release, the Cloud Backup engine has been expanded to include support for WebDAV destinations, unlocking a wide variety of destinations including Windows machines, NAS devices, and third-party hosting companies.
