January – Team Member of the Month

by Nicki Dowsett in Uncategorised

Team Member of the Month

Each month the team at MPR IT are asked to put forward their nomination for Team Member of the month and their reasoning behind the decision.

James Thompson has been voted as January 2019 Team Member of the Month. James has been with MPR IT for two months in the role of Senior Installations Engineer. James has been working in IT for six so has a wide range of knowledge to support our well established team.

Winning by just one vote, James came out on top of a close battle between six employees. Some of the comments from his peers include:

“Started the job running, just gets on with it.”
“Brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to MPR.”
“Hard working and efficient.”

Congratulations James

Register your .UK domain name today

by Nicki Dowsett in Domain Registration, Web Hosting, Websites

Register your .uk Domain Name Today

Many businesses today have an online presence, without one your business can go unnoticed. When a potential customer is looking for a new supplier or product the first place they will turn is most likely the internet.

It is becoming increasingly commonplace to register a variety of different domain names for websites such as: .co.uk, .uk, .com, .net and .co. Whilst you only need one website to promote your business, it is possible to have more than one domain name directed to that website. There are many reasons for this, the most common reason being the ability to secure your brand. By owning the different variations it means that no one else can buy these and create fake platforms. This can prove detrimental to your business profile.

With the registration of a variety of domain names you not only help to avoid scams but also increase your online presence. You are more likely to appear higher in searches if you have more options for your website to redirect to, ensuring any potential customers looking for your company can find it more easily.

In addition to registering domain names, MPR IT Solutions offers a variety of services for all your IT needs including domain registration and web site hosting packages, this gives you added peace of mind that all your Technical needs can be supported in one place, with no need to contact several companies to identify where any issue may lie.

Did you know that if your company has a UK domain name such as .co.uk or org.uk you could be entitled to registration of the equivalent .uk domain name at no additional cost for the first year? When the .uk extension was released, new domains were reserved for the equivalent UK domains; this means that for every UK domain you own (.co.uk, .org.uk, etc.), there’s a .uk domain reserved. Time is running out to register your interest in .uk domains before they become publicly available to anyone after 10th June 2019. In addition to your existing domain as your primary web address there are several reasons as to why you should register a .uk alongside your current UK domain.

Securing your brand

By registering a .uk web address, you get the peace of mind that your brand is secure across multiple domains, while increasing your online presence overall. A .uk domain is also shorter, more memorable and easier to share – ideal for a redirect or parking page.

Stop typos

Registering the .uk version and having it redirect to your main website ensures you don’t lose customers if they mistype your domain extension by accident.

Brand protection

Although your .uk domains are reserved for now after 10th June 2019 they will become publicly available. This means someone else could register a domain very similar to yours, and impersonate your website, possibly leading to scams.

Contact us today for more information on our domain registration and web hosting packages. Email us at sales@mpr-it.co.uk or call FREEPHONE 0800 030 20 30.

Exciting Start to the New Year for MPR IT

by Nicki Dowsett in Access Panels, Audio Systems, broadband, cabinets, CCTV, Engineers, fibre optics, Fire Alarms, General, Helpdesk, Hosted phone, IT Support, IT Systems, MPR IT Work, Office Move, Server cabinet, Strcutured cabling, TV Distribution, Uncategorised, Wireless networks

Exciting start to the New Year for MPR IT

Since the start of January, a lot has been happening here at MPR IT. As you will be aware it is now 10 years year since Alex, Andy and Richard started MPR IT. We are continuing to grow and strive with thanks to the continued custom from all our loyal clients. To ensure that we can continue to provide customer focused support, providing outstanding IT support and solutions, the Management team have been making lots of decisions.

Firstly, we are recruiting a number of roles for our Technical support team. Currently we are recruiting for:
1st Line Support Admin
2nd Line Support Engineer
3rd Line Support Engineer

We hope to have all these roles filled in the very near future, with some new team members already on board. As with any new member of the team, we will be ensuring they are inducted to the high standards both our customers and ourselves expect.

Next, it has become apparent that with our continued expansion we have out grown our current offices! Our second piece of exciting news is that we have now secured new premises in the Henwood Estate. With a large amount of work to carry out we hope to be able to move in time for late spring/early summer.
We are currently in the first phase which includes taking down walls and making the space more suitable for our ever-growing team.

Once the construction/demolition phase has completed, we will be entering the next phase. This is where our own expertise will be utilised and our own team will be installing following:
Structured Cabling – Copper and Fibre
CCTV
Access Control
TV distribution systems
Audio Systems
Fire Alarm System
Internet Services and so much more!

As you can imagine its going to be a busy and exciting few months for us all. We will keep you all updated on the progress and of course our move date.

Business Vision Live May 2019

by Nicki Dowsett in Exhibitions, Helpdesk, IT Support, IT Systems

MPR IT are market leaders in offering customer focused support, providing outstanding IT support and solutions throughout the Southeast & London. Highly respected and valued by our clients, we continually strive to exceed expectations ensuring your IT is worry-free with our priority to listen, ensuring we understand and advise accordingly. We are pleased to be a part of this years Business Vision Live on stand 135.

Now in its fifteenth year, Business Vision LIVE is the South East’s premier business showcase and the largest regional business event in the UK: with over 3,000 visitors and 250 exhibitors coming together for the year’s most important business gathering. That’s more than every other business event in Kent put together – and all in a single day!

For 2018, Business Vision Live assembled a superb team of business superheroes to help your organisation increase sales, improve customer service, enhance the skills of your team and dramatically improve the performance of your organisation and they are back again for 2019.

Throughout the day at Business Vision LIVE, you can access a comprehensive programme of free keynotes, workshops & special networking events – providing fresh insights into current business challenges, identifying new opportunities on the horizon and unlocking your personal and organisational superpowers to help you thrive in the years ahead.

Whether your customers are general consumers or other businesses, or a combination of both, you and your team can meet new suppliers, pick up valuable new skills (or superpowers), enhance your market knowledge and make new contacts from across the South East.
Business Vision LIVE is aimed at business owners, senior managers, departmental heads and other executives working in forward-thinking organisations from the commercial, public and not-for-profit sectors.

To unlock your business superpowers, register for your FREE place

26Sep

London Build October 2018

by Nicki Dowsett in Design Inspiration, Engineers, Exhibitions, fibre optics, IT Support, IT Systems, MPR, Office Move, point to point wirless, Server cabinet, Strcutured cabling, Wireless networks

London Build is attended by 20,000+ contractors, architects, developers, engineers and construction professionals. The show covers the future trends, opportunities and construction projects in London and the UK.

London Build features: 240+ speakers across 8 conference theatres (Future London, London Design, BIM & Digital Construction, Sustainability, Interior & Fit-out, Innovation, Skills Hub and Fire Safety), 220+ CPD knowledge sessions, 300+ exhibitors across 9 exhibition zones and a range of exclusive free-to-attend networking events including: Constructing Excellence Breakfast, Constructionline Meet the Buyer, Women in Construction Morning Tea, Doyle Club Meeting, BIM Open Mic, an Oktoberfest beer festival, the Festival of Construction, prize giveaways, celebrity guests and much more.

Introducing MPR Technical Services

A division of MPR IT Solutions our Technical Services team work with Contractors, Project Managers and Architects. With a vast experience in working on builds of all sizes, our team have knowledge in all aspects of the project to ensure that the most suitable and cost effective network infrastructure is incorporated from the start of planning.

Structured Cabling Fibre & Data – Installation, Termination & Certification, Brand leader accredited, certified installers.
Systems Integration – Our tried and tested solutions work to give you peace of mind. Back of house, front of house & client experience all working seamlessly.
MPR IT can offer complete IT Solutions – Hardware, Software, Services & On-going Support.

New Team Members

by Nicki Dowsett in General, Helpdesk, IT Support, IT Systems, MPR

Since 2008, customer service has been a high priority and the main ethos of MPR IT Solutions. Now in our 10^th Year we are keen to ensure that this continues to be the case.

We have recently noticed a significant increase in the number of tickets being generated on our Helpdesk and we are aware that this has had a small impact on our response time. Our Management team have carefully considered and evaluated the increasing demand and feedback that we have received from clients. We are now pleased to announce that we have successfully recruited a further two members of the team to join the helpdesk. Our new helpdesk technicians will be joining MPR in the next couple of weeks.

As with any new member of the team, we will be ensuring they are inducted to the high standards both our customers and ourselves expect. In the meantime, we appreciate that you may notice a small delay in your ticket/query being resolved.

We would like to assure you that the existing team are working extremely high to ensure that any delay is minimal, during this induction period.

If you have any concerns in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact your account manager or Tom Lyng the Helpdesk manager, both of which will be happy to discuss this with you.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

ANTI VIRUS PROTECTION – PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS

by Nicki Dowsett in cybercrime, IT Support, Ransomware

ANTI VIRUS PROTECTION – PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS

Ransomware! CryptoLocker! Blaster Worm!

In recent years the threat from Cyber-criminals using these and many other virus and malware has been increasing and evolving. An attack on your network can be extremely costly, time consuming and frustrating for you, your employees and your customers.

Don’t think it can’t happen to you, until it’s too late.

Anti Virus Protection

MPR IT, is trusted and relied on by hundreds of businesses in the South East for many areas of IT Support and infrastructure, including network protection from such virus and malware threats?

Malicious Virus

MPR IT Solutions, continually strive to ensure that we offer the market leading services to all our clients. Our team of experts regularly review the market leaders in all services that we offer, and work hard to ensure that we are providing the best services to our clients to meet your individual needs. With this in mind we have recently taken the decision to use Webroot for protecting both our own and our customer networks. We feel that this is the best option in the market.

Virus Detected

Why take an IT Support contract over AdHoc Support

by MPRAdmin in General, Helpdesk, IT Support, IT Systems, Uncategorised

Why take an IT Support Contract over Adhoc Support??

Why take an IT Support contract over Adhoc support? This is a question that we get asked frequently. There are a number of reasons as to why an all inclusive IT support contract is a positive step to take for your business. The main reasons being:

Fixed price service – with no hidden costs
A guaranteed support desk available 24/7
Guaranteed service level agreement (SLA) in place – 1 hour call back
Your business is assigned both a designated business account manager and technical account manager
We get more involved in your business, helping plan, budget and advise according to your business plans and requirements.

Whilst not everyone feels the needs for a contact, there are a number of pitfalls to an Ad-hoc arrangement. The biggest being there are no service level agreements in place. Other main issues being:

We operate an “as soon as possible” approach to any support tickets falling into this category
Unexpected costs can become expensive & detrimental to your budget planning

MPR IT’s Fully Inclusive Business IT Support package, is our most complete and rewarding contract. In fact it is used by 90% of our clients. With a fixed price contract there can be no nasty hidden surprises, for your IT Support. Our contract includes both remote and on-site support for your business, meaning you are safe in the knowledge that a Technical Engineer is on hand to solve any issues. The cost for this service is £30.00 + VAT per workstation per month and inlcudes 24/7 monitoring. This cost per user covers all of your IT support needs – there are no other hidden support costs, allowing you to manage your IT budget effectively.

In addition to workstation support, we are aware that many of our customers are now using Cloud-based servers and storage, therefore server support is not always a requirement and is therefore a separate option. For those business that do require this, there is an additional charge of £82.50 + VAT per month per server, please contact to discuss your requirements.

The Service Level Agreement for an All Inclusive contracts is a 1-hour callback with a 4-hour response along with emergency out of hours cover.

Emmanuel Charbonnel from DAD UK says:

Moving to a “Monthly Fixed Rate” support cost from a “Pay as you Use” scheme has improved our IT support structure in many ways. Firstly, there are no hidden surprises at the end of the month with invoices. We know what our bill will be and can budget accordingly, allowing us to invest in our IT infrastructure during the year.

Secondly, any of our employees can now contact the MPR support desk, which in turn, improves the reaction and solution speeds. And lastly it has resulted in a closer working environment between all employees across our two companies making MPR a true partner

To discuss your business requirements please contact our team on 0800 030 20 30 option 2

Email Security & Cybercrime

by Nicki Dowsett in cybercrime, Industry News, IT Support, IT Systems, Password Security, Ransomware

Email security and cybercrime – Almost daily there is a story that covers this subject in the news, whether it’s a large global corporation or an elderly retired person. So many people are still unaware of the risks that can be faced with email security.

Here at MPR IT, we have sadly gained a considerable amount of experience in dealing with these threats. We would therefore like to remind our customers of some simple guidelines that you should ensure your staff follow for email security. These include recommendations from the Government Cyber Essentials Scheme. We also strongly advise if you or any employee is concerned they have an affected PC/Laptop – call us asap

Email Attachments – Never open an email or attachment if you don’t know the sender. If you are not expecting an attachment from a known sender – call them and check they did send you something
Check email addresses – criminals will set up accounts with very similar email addresses making it easy to trick you into thinking you know the sender joe@bloggs.com or joe@bloggs.co
Malware Protection – do you have a robust malware in place? This will stop viruses and ransomware from getting through to your emails and employees
Access Control – encourage your staff to choose passwords that would be hard to guess and not simply change the number on the end each time it needs to be Password or 123456 are not ever going to be good choices. Also ensure that admin passwords are only given out to members of staff that should have access to these.
Firewalls – investing in a high end firewall can prevent hackers from gaining access to your systems and to make certain there are no leaks.
Secure configuration – Is your system configured to ensure security for your organisation. Are all laptops, PC’s and phones password protected? Do files need to be password protected?
Patch Management – the likes of Microsoft and other operating systems regularly release new updates to their software. Ensure you are fully up to date as these updates will often include patches to ensure your systems are more secure. As hackers become more clever the software providers work hard to identify areas to increase security.

We also recommend you view the following websites

Whilst the majority of news stories cover ransomware and data being lost or damaged, we have known criminals to spend months watching systems, gathering information and general daily routines. Then with a simple email, that looks to have come from a sender you know they have managed to gain access to your bank accounts and emptied them before anyone has realised. Either way it is extremely costly to your business. Please ensure your staff are fully briefed on email security and the types of scams and crimes that can & have happened. If any doubt or you would like more information please contact us to discuss.

End of Life – Office 2007

by Nicki Dowsett in General, Industry News, IT Support, IT Systems, Microsoft, Office 2007, Office 365, Outlook 2007

Office 2007 was launched a decade ago, and included the Microsoft products – Excel,Word, Outlook, Powerpoint, and One Note. Since its launch there have been significant advancements in connectivity and productivity for many companies. This means that the majority of companies have left Office 2007 behind, and moved to Office 2016 or more likely to Office 365, however there are a few companies still using Office 2007.

Most Microsoft packages are only supported for 10 years and therefore it is the turn of Office 2007, to receive the end of life treatment. Meaning by the end of October 2017 there will be no further:

Technical support
Bug fixes for issues identified
Security fixes for vulnerabilities released

In addition to the end of life support coming to an end, it is important to note Outlook 2007, will no longer connect to Office 365 mailboxes. Therefore users of Outlook 2007 will not be able to receive or send emails.

Microsoft are now urging users of the 2007 version to consider upgrading to the latest offerings. There are a number of advantages to this, not least the fact that support will be ending in a few months time. During 2017, there has been a number of global cyber attacks. People using packages that are no longer supported by Microsoft are at greater risk.

Earlier this year, in an unusual step Microsoft were pressured into releasing a fix for the Wanna Cry virus on Windows 2000. Despite having stopped supporting the package in 2010, they still had a larger number of users, who were subsequently affected by the virus. It is highly unlikely that they will make this move again in the future and are already publicising the end of life for 2007 package, with recommendations to urgently update software. The most popular choice for businesses these days is Office 365. Please see our page on Office 365 for full details on this product.

MPR IT Solutions has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in supporting companies in making the change to Office 365. We have worked with a number of companies to ensure the transition is smooth, & there is minimum disruption to staff. Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your options to migrate to Office 365 – whether you are currently using 2007 or another version of the Office Suite.

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