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What is IT Support? (In jargon free words)
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Jason Francis
What is IT Support? IT companies are notorious for making everything technical and difficult to understand. This might seem like a bit of a long-winded way to describe what it is that ESP provides as it’s ‘bread and butter’ – in a blogpost, but I thought it would be an interesting way to describe it and it will hopefully dispel the myth that all IT Companies are the same. Of course, we have different pages across the site that describe this in less detail, in different formats and even video. This blogpost however is aimed at being a long-hand version, but hopefully it will describe it in ways that you can understand.
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Email DNS Records…
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Jason Francis
What is DMARC, What is DKIM and What is SPF?
What is DMARC, What is DKIM & What is SPF? DMARC, DKIM and SPF are public records that help the world to know that emails being sent from your organisation are real. When properly implemented and widely adopted, they will vastly reduce the amount of unsolicited or spam email that gets delivered to email-boxes.
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Cloud Server Vs Onsite Server Advantages & Disadvantages.
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Jason Francis
What is an onsite server?
An onsite server is a traditional way to handle a business’ computer network. It is a physical piece of hardware (kit) that sits on your business premises and provides services to the other computers on the network. Some examples of the things it ‘serves’ are File-sharing, Network Addressing, Virus Scanning & Print Services amongst other things. In many cases, you will end up with hardware that’s more powerful than what you require.
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What is an IT Roadmap?
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Jason Francis
What is an IT Roadmap? And why does my business need one? Well, the simple answer is that it’s a plan. A plan of how you intend to manage your IT Systems over the coming years. A plan of how much you intend to spend on IT Systems and security over the coming years. In ESP’s case, we use a 4-year roadmap that’s reviewed every 6 months. The roadmap becomes an agreement, between you, the customer, and your IT Provider, as to how the IT Systems are going to develop within your business over the coming 4-year period. It sets out some standard items, such as contract renewal dates, as well as replacement cycles for equipment such as PCs and Laptops. It’s essentially a documented plan, based on best-practices for businesses, when it comes to their IT Systems.
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What does your business do?
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Jason Francis
What does your business do, and what language do you use to describe it? OK, so this is a bit of an unusual blogpost for an IT Support company. It would definitely fit in more with a marketing agency or a consultant that helps businesses to grow. However, I thought it was interesting, so I wrote a blogpost about it! This post is all about talking to people, using the right language, and context, to make sure that they understand what you are talking about. It seems like an odd conversation but let me explain.
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ESP – Sheffield’s best IT Provider renews all ISO accreditations.
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Jason Francis
Back in 2018, the Senior Leadership Team ESP decided that we needed to be ahead of the other IT Companies in Sheffield in terms of IT Security. We set out a plan, to get ourselves accredited with ISO 27001, which really demonstrates a high-degree of commitment to IT Security and Data.
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What is MFA?
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Jason Francis
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an important security measure for all businesses whether large or small. It adds an extra layer of protection to your login process by requiring users to provide two or more forms of identification before accessing sensitive information or systems.
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ESP Achieves Microsoft 365 Solutions Partner for Modern Work
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Jason Francis
ESP Projects achieved this new designation in January 2023, meaning we are one of the first Microsoft Partners in Sheffield to gain the accreditation, showing our commitment to making sure that we are best placed to advise all our customers on all things Microsoft Cloud related.
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Copper networks switch off in 2025
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Jason Francis
BT Openreach is intending to close off many copper connections by 2025. The idea is to bring consumers and businesses forward, into the SuperFast, UltraFast and HyperFast broadband spaces by forcing them onto Fibre based products.
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IT Security. Why does my Sheffield business need to worry about IT Security? And how do I stop getting hacked?
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Jason Francis
IT Security in Sheffield from ESP Projects. You need to ensure that your business is better protected than most. Find out how here.
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What is the #ESPDuck all about?
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Jason Francis
Firstly, what is the duck and where did it come from? Well, we decided that we should have a pet, here at ESP Headquarters. Unfortunately, we’re always very busy delivering best in class IT Services to businesses in and around the Sheffield area to be able to look after a real-life one properly. So, we decided that we should pick one that is a little more simple in the effort stakes (no need to feed or walk!).
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What is a UPS and What Do They Protect Against? – Everything You Need to Know
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Jason Francis
What is a UPS?
Firstly, what is a UPS? Well, the acronym stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply.
The easiest way to describe a UPS would be to say that it’s “A battery that keeps your equipment on when there is a power cut” but that does oversimplify what the UPS is for and doesn’t acknowledge some of its most important features.
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What is an Intranet and why should my business have one?
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Jason Francis
An intranet is a private network that utilises technologies that are normally seen as internet technologies but is operated in an isolated fashion from the rest of the public internet. OK, that seems like a bit of technical jargon, so what is an intranet really? Effectively, it’s an internal website that provides staff with a central place to share and read information.
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Seven Steps to Requesting Web Development Proposals
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Jason Francis
Over the years, we’ve ‘bid’ for Website Design work in a whole variety of different ways. One of the most common, is that organisations approach us with their ‘Development Brief’ or ‘Request for Proposal’.
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Home PC repair
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Jason Francis
ESP Projects has always provided IT support for small businesses, but has never been involved in repairing home PCs and laptops. This all changed recently. We are now in a position where we can repair home PCs & laptops in our workshop via our sister company – ESP At Home Limited. If you are interested in this service, contact our sales team on 08454657229 option 1 or sales@espathome.co.uk
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Help – My Computer is Running Slow
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Jason Francis
We all know that feeling of opening your favourite most used program only to be presented with the dreaded spinning circle advising us to ‘please wait’. Even trying to open just a couple of your most needed applications only for your computer to be brought to its knees doing so. It’s infuriating, especially when there’s no indication of anything actually happening other than said circle mocking you as it whizzes around happily.
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