There’s no doubt about it.  If your business uses a server, sooner or later, something will go wrong. At this point, you’ll discover one of the real costs of IT – the cost of downtime. With staff sitting around unable to work, unable to send or receive email, unable to access the Internet, unable use business applications – you’ll be giving top priority to getting your systems back up and running as soon as possible.

Consider the following two examples:

Company A

A heavyweight PR company based in Birmingham.  Not a current JamesCash client.

On 16th March 2010 they report via Twitter they have their email and server back after five days of downtime, asking people to call if they still have problems getting email through.

On 22nd March 2010 Company A again reports via Twitter that they are still having problems receiving email.

By our calculations, this is 10 days of business disruption and counting…

How do you think this affected one of premier PR companies in Birmingham? How much did this cost them?

Company B

An award winning Birmingham based video production and media company.  A client of JamesCash.co.uk.

At 11:00 on Thursday 18th March 2010, their four-year-old server fails due to a catastrophic hardware fault.

By 15:00 on the same day, a JamesCash engineer had taken a replacement server to site and restored their most recent backup to the new hardware, to get their team back up and running within four hours.

The Choice is Yours

You can wait for disaster to strike and lose thousands, or you can take steps now to protect your business by calling the JamesCash team (IT Support Birmingham) on 01384 880660.

My Name is Matthew Benson and I’m 19 years old. From a young age I was always fascinated by two things, Aircraft and IT.

For more than 6 years I have been a member of the Air Cadets, learning how to fly and shoot with the lifestyle of the RAF. With this knowledge I joined the Royal Air Force with the aspiration of becoming a Helicopter Pilot in either the Chinook or Sea King. In March 2009 I became seriously ill, losing nearly 10kg of weight in just a week, putting me in hospital for a further week. This medical condition meant that I was no longer medically fit to join the RAF or any other Service and I was left to find another way to make a living.

So it was more by luck than judgement that I enrolled at the Telford Zenos IT Academy, after seeing a small advertisement for open days at the bottom of the jobs page in my local paper. I was drawn to the challenge of getting a fistful of IT qualifications in just 5 months, and the lure of the Zenos Trainers saying that it would not be easy was what made me decide I would apply for an interview. I think more than anything Zenos taught me that if you put the effort in to what you’re doing then you will get the desired results and that it is always good to have something to aim towards, having seen what happened to others who didn’t take their opportunity seriously. One of the best aspects of the course was the way in which we practiced doing real support requests and using a basic call logger in our work so that we understood the underlying concepts and got working environment experience before starting a job.

In January 2010 I finished my 5 month course at Zenos learning how to be a desktop support technician and began working for JamesCash.co.uk, providing IT Support in Birmingham.

I applied to work with JamesCash.co.uk whilst I was still at Zenos finishing MCDST. Both James Cash and Richard Tubb of JamesCash.co.uk came to the academy to interview me and others for the job. Before I went in I had visions of RAF style interviews , and I was extremely nervous. By the end of the interview I had calmed down a lot and came away feeling that I had left a good impression. Shortly afterwards I was asked to come down to Dudley to the JamesCash.co.uk office for a trial day to work alongside a technician and watch how things were done. I’m glad to say I was offered the role, and I have been working for over a month now and I am really enjoying myself. Every day is a learning experience and I constantly find myself pulling up on knowledge gained doing the MCDST and CompTIA A+ courses at Zenos. I am hoping to keep the learning constant throughout my career to continually push myself forward and achieve the best I can. I am particularly enjoying the pro-active approach to our support as it means I always have something to do and we don’t have to wait for things to go wrong.

Outside of work I have a keen interest in Cricket and Rugby, and when I can find the time I am a bit of an artist as well. I still miss the military environment of the RAF but I feel much better knowing that I took my second chance and made the best possible fresh start.

Matthew Benson is the subject of CompTIA’s first Career Success Spotlight – check it out!

On 6th June 2010, the entire JamesCash.co.uk team will be taking part in BRMB’s Walkathon.  The event involves a 26 mile sponsored walk around Birmingham with the aim of raising money for “building a home for the brave in Birmingham”.

If you can, please help us towards our aim of raising £1,000 by donating here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/jamescash.co.uk

If you would like to join us, or find out more about the BRMB Walkathon click here.

We have 19 copies of Laptop Cop software to give away to our fans.  In the event that your laptop is stolen, you can:

• Geolocate your stolen laptop
• Remotely retrieve and delete files
• Monitor and control the thief
• Recover your stolen laptop

You can find out more about the software here: http://www.laptopcopsoftware.com

The first 19 fans to email their name and address will each receive a copy sent out to them.  Please email your request to james@jamescash.co.uk

There’s no catch, we were given these by a supplier and they’ve been hanging around the office for a few months, so we’ve decided to give them away. 

Only one copy per respondent.