Unlicensed software poses a significant risk.

Harbour IT, along with Microsoft, recognises the significant risk that unlicensed software poses to customers. Each year, millions of consumers worldwide find themselves the victims of software piracy or licensing issues.

Counterfeit software is increasingly becoming a vehicle for the distribution of viruses and malware that can target unsuspecting users, potentially exposing them to identity theft and data corruption, or loss of personal or business data.

Unlicensed or counterfeit software also leaves organisations open to fines after vendor or industry body audits.

Staying in compliance helps to reduce the risk of system failures, security breaches and financial penalties. Microsoft offers a variety of Windows Legalisation Solutions. To find out more, please contact your Harbour IT Account Manager.

Harbour IT's Managing Director, Craig Bishop, reflects on the good and the bad – but mostly the good – from 2009.

Well, what a busy year! It started with a lot of questions about the flagging international and local economies, all of which seem to be a distant memory now. Certainly some organisations are walking around with the odd black eye and abrasion but on the whole, from our perspective, the wheels are back on.

In many ways it has been the year of "cloud computing". Whilst it means something slightly different to each person, there is no doubt that the way applications can be delivered, how data is stored and what users expect is all changing fairly rapidly. Keep up to speed in this critical area with the first of our Techie Brekkys for 2010.

Our biggest task this year has been to share the technology changes that enable this cloud computing to happen in a controlled and secure way. This requires an understanding of what can and cannot be done and what changes need to occur in order to take advantage of the technology... exciting stuff!

Windows 7 is certainly a pleasure to work with... I'm not sad about seeing Vista gone from my notebook at all.

The other big thing for us this year was the expansion of our Service Desk, which now provides 24 x 7 support for our Service Desk customers. It has been much more popular than we expected and reflects the changing expectations of our users and their working habits.

On behalf of the Harbour IT team I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your custom and say that we really appreciate the opportunity to be of service to you. We wish you, your families and loved ones a very happy Christmas and New Year.

Craig Bishop, Managing Director, Harbour IT

We’re offering you the opportunity to experience state-of-the-art remote infrastructure and applications monitoring, obligation free.* Our Harbour Watch monitoring service will be customised to your environment and business requirements. For one month, we’ll monitor:

• up to 5 servers AND
• up to 5 network devices PLUS
• an application or service of your choice.

In addition to our standard hardware and resource monitoring, we'll customise the monitoring solution for at least 1 of your mission-critical applications to demonstrate the benefits that monitoring can have in terms of visibility, control, response and increased availability.

During this month, we’ll send you email and/or SMS alerts of actual or potential issues – 24x7, or your choice of hours.