That’s right! We will be sleeping outside. In Scotland. In October!

You may be wondering why on earth we would want to do something like this. Well, I can assure you it’s not because we’ve lost our minds but it is in fact to raise money for Action for Children, a charity which tackles the root causes of youth homelessness. Essentially, we’re sleeping out to try and ensure that others don’t have to.

And not just content with the challenge of a night spent out in the cold, our team is going to up the ante just that little bit more. We are prepared to work hard for every single donation we receive and so we’ve given ourselves an extra challenge.

In a bid to reach our £5,000 target, we have set ourselves the challenge of cycling 2,191miles on an exercise bike. That’s the distance from our office here in Edinburgh all the way to the GFI offices in Malta – and to make it harder, we’ve only given ourselves six weeks to do it in. And if you think sleeping outside and cycling across the ocean is enough, you’d be wrong! We’re also baking up a storm, selling cakes to all our lovely colleagues and planning a fundraising extravaganza of entertainment at Le Monde, including live music from progressive blues/funk band Rhythm Beats Workin and standup comedy from Keara Murphy.

If you would like to find out more about any of our fundraising challenges, or you’d simply like to make a donation to a great cause, just head over to our JustGiving Page to see how we’re getting on.

1.            Best Auditing & Compliance Product – GFI MailArchiver®

2.            Best Backup & Recovery Product – GFI IASO and GFI Max Backup™

3.            Best Cloud Computing Product or Service – GFI Cloud™

4.            Best Messaging Product – GFI MailEssentials® and GFI Max MailProtection™

5.            Best Network Management Product – GFI Max RemoteManagement™

6.            Best Patch Management Product – GFI LanGuard®

7.            Best Security Product – GFI LanGuard and GFI WebMonitor®

8.            Best Systems Monitoring Product – Monitis™

If you like our products, vote for them today!

How to vote: Visit the nominations page; here you will find the online voting form; vote for each of the products you’ve used and would recommend to others – it’s that simple!

Why your vote means so much to us: The Windows IT Community Pro Awards allow the tech community to determine what products deserve acclaim and recognition. As a company with the vision of being the recognized software leader for small to mid-sized businesses, being chosen for these awards means a lot to us!

Your vote matters!

And we’re not stopping there. Knowing most of our followers are sys admins we thought of ordering another 50 150 GFI Superhero T-shirts… That’s right, you can celebrate with us and get your own free T-shirt!

Here’s how:

It’s really simple. We’re giving away a GFI Superhero T-shirt (like the ones in the picture) to the first 50 150 sys admins who participate in our competition – all you need to do is complete this form!

Dates:

Registration opens now and we will update this blog post when we’ve received 50 complete forms. We have reached 150 requests so we closed the competition. A blog post will follow up in a few weeks!

The all-important small print:

Before you do that though, be sure to read our Terms and conditions – it’s very important that you follow these, as you could be disqualified if any of these rules are infringed. Having said that, good luck to all and…

HAPPY SYSADMIN DAY! 

Terms and conditions:

• The first 50 150 complete forms will each win a GFI Superhero T-shirt (as shown in image above)
• GFI Software employees and their families cannot participate in this competition
• All entrants must be sys admins; non sys admins will not be considered for the prize
• Winners will be notified by email
• GFI is not responsible for the timeliness of the prize dispatch T-shirts are available in Small, Medium, Large, X-Large and XX-Large
• Upon contacting the winner/s, if no reply is received within a week (7 days), GFI retains the right to choose another entry
• Whilst GFI does its utmost to ensure that all prizes are delivered in a timely fashion the company does not retain responsibility for any prizes that are lost/stolen in the mail
• Any incomplete or irrelevant entries or entries that do not comply with these Terms and conditions will not be eligible to win
• Prizes are as described and cannot be substituted for cash.

Jackie Wake, Product Marketing Manager for GFI Cloud

Jackie Wake, product marketing manager for GFI Cloud, is back with exciting news about more features in the latest version released today.

Q: Tell us about the latest release of GFI Cloud?

Today’s release launches a new area in GFI Cloud for reports.  From the same centralized console accessible at www.gficloud.com, IT administrators can now generate reports for GFI Cloud’s services for antivirus, patch management and asset tracking.

Q: What reports are included?

These are the reports that have been most requested by our customer base; they enable IT admins to:

• See at a glance the current status of antivirus protection in their business and show the value of the service being delivered by IT.

• Easily spot and analyze trends in antivirus threats to their network, such as the top threats detected or computers which are at most risk; so they can take preventative actions and improve security.

• Spot and analyze trends in missing patches, so they can take action and address areas where they are particularly vulnerable.

• Generate a detailed inventory list to know what is on their network, with easy reference to key asset information, such as IP and MAC addresses.  Identifying devices with outdated operating systems is as simple as running a report with GFI Cloud.

Q: Why do I need reports in GFI Cloud?

If done well, much of the work of a smooth-running IT department can be invisible to the business; as far as they can see their environment ‘has no problems that need fixing’.  Instead of feeling fantastic about the health and performance of their environment questions, the value IT is providing to the business could be questioned.

Reporting in GFI Cloud is useful to the IT department, in terms of better decision-making, and to the company because it can provide insight, in a structured and digestible format, on the work IT does.  In no time, management can start to recognize that ‘everything working’ and ‘staff being consistently productive’ is a result of the IT department’s true value and work – and use of technology.

You can now report on the activities and state of the servers, workstations and laptops you manage, if you work from the office, from home or even in a remote location.

With quick and easy access to key reports for antivirus, patch management and asset tracking, you have the management information you need to help improve network security, run IT more efficiently and effectively and, why not, get some well-deserved kudos for you and your team.

Q: Any other reports planned?

Yes – this is just the beginning… There has been a strong demand by our subscriber base that GFI Cloud gives them the ability to generate reports. We will be adding more reports to each new release of GFI Cloud, and as we continue to understand what reports are of most value to our customers and their organization.

We are delivering the top reports requested by customers in this release and will add even more on a regular basis, in small batches.

Customers can tell us what reports they’d like to see in GFI Cloud by giving us feedback directly using the Feedback button on the upper right section in the GFI cloud web console.

Q: Anything else of note in this release?

Yes. Monitoring in GFI Cloud is enhanced with the addition of a new event log check detecting and alerting on conditions set by you.  Highly configurable, this enables you to monitor and manage the health of key business applications, to keep them running efficiently.

We’ve also made the installation of GFI Cloud’s Antivirus even simpler and cleaner, with a smoother transition when a pre-installed AV is removed. We’ve made it quicker and easier to deploy the GFI Cloud agent with proxy details as part of the MSI installer.

Q: Where can I check it out?

You can start a free 30-day trial of GFI Cloud today and see for yourself how easy it is to manage your company’s IT, with one place to monitor and protect your IT network, wherever you are.  Watch our short video for a round-up of some of the great features added to GFI Cloud this year.

Do you want to learn more about this product? Visit our website to find how GFI Cloud simplifies IT management with one centralized view of antivirus, workstation and server monitoring, patch management and asset tracking across all your servers, PCs and laptops on the move!

The seven teams were made up of a mix of customers and sponsors giving everyone involved the perfect opportunity to get to know each other while delving into the topics to be discussed each day. But of course this wasn’t just an excuse to have a good ol’ chinwag, as points would be awarded each day for the best contribution to the group discussion that evening.

As well as this each team was also awarded points based on how well they performed with the tricky challenges set for them along the way. These included submitting a picture of MAX ‘on tour’, finding an MSP on route (and of course getting a picture with the CTO as proof) and getting the best picture of someone (not in the team) reading IT Business or CRN.

So after a great deal of discussion, some fast driving and a lot of fun the winners were finally announced… and here they are:

As well as the great accolade of winning the first ever acmeo Systemhaus Rally each of the overall winners were also awarded a bottle of Champagne and a winner’s Trophy to take away with them.

All in all everyone agreed the rally was a huge success with everyone involved making the most of the opportunity to connect with others in the industry, see some amazing sights and of course drive some fast cars! Gerald Gruh, managing director of PDV-Systeme Sachsen summed things up perfectly:

“The rally exceeded my expectations. This was partly due to the fact that the participants were a really good match. Being able to receive points for daily tasks and discussions in addition to the driving was a great idea…The organisers got the combination of fun tasks and networking absolutely right. I was able to make great new contacts”

Rally organizer Henning Meyer said of the event:

“As organizer of the event I can only say that it has been far better than I could have ever imagined. I am overwhelmed by the creativity and team spirit everyone showed during the daily tasks and as the participants were so open we managed to have great discussions and conversations…that’s what we wanted to achieve.”

It’s safe to say that this event was a resounding success for all involved and we at GFI MAX can only hope it’s the start of many more to come!

Now in their fourth year, these awards are highly respected by end users and vendors, and honor vendors, like GFI®, for their efforts to provide products and solutions that help companies combat IT security threats. Last year, GFI won two awards in recognition of our efforts to help small and mid-sized businesses improve their security – VIPRE® Business Premium™ was awarded the Anti Malware Solution of the Year and GFI Cloud™ the New Product of the Year award.

If you like our products visit http://www.computingsecurityawards.co.uk/, choose a relevant category and add your nomination.

We encourage you to nominate GFI and share the link to the nomination page with your colleagues.

Hurry up though, nominations close on 29 July!

Finding a job that’s the perfect fit can be a daunting task too. It takes time. It requires resources. It isn’t easy – until now.

To help those seeking a career with GFI, we recently launched our new “Talent Network” for candidates interested in joining our global team. By joining our network, you remain connected with us in the event you don’t immediately find a job that catches your eye. You’ll know the moment your perfect fit posts, whether it’s in software development, sales, marketing, finance, human resources or accounting, to name a few.

Our Talent Network is free to join and it’s powered by popular job search site CareerBuilder. You can share notices of our available jobs using the top social media channels as well as email, communicate with our company, or simply learn more about us. All you have to do is enter your email address, country, zip code and desired job title.

So do yourself a favor: Make your GFI job search as easy and productive as possible. Join our Talent Network today.

In today’s IT landscape, businesses use a large number of applications which interact with each other in different ways. Ensuring interoperability, a prerequisite of systems’ uptime, is a difficult and time-consuming task for IT administrators managing multiple solutions within their environments. Using interoperability-certified products delivers a single point of reporting from the interoperability point-of-view, thus greatly reducing the time required to address this issue and consequently adding value to businesses by reducing costs with IT management.

Security products like GFI EndPointSecurity typically interact with a large variety of applications and devices – therefore interoperability is critical and any issue associated with it can affect the IT environment to a large extent, as it affects all the coexisting products. The outcomes of interoperability issues can result in damage to business revenue caused by downtime of critical systems and costs in time and manpower to manage these problems. Hence it is very important to use a product that is interoperability-certified and integrates seamlessly with the existing environment.

By achieving the OPSWAT Bronze interoperability certification, GFI EndPointSecurity proves once more that our customers’ confidence in using our product is built on rock solid ground.

Learn more about GFI EndPointSecurity, or start your free 30-day trial today!

The challenge began yesterday when GFI MAX™ and acmeo, along with a number of eager teams, jumped behind the wheel for a networking event with a difference!

GFI MAX are delighted to not only be sponsoring this amazing rally but also taking part – giving our team a welcome opportunity to bond with one of our long valued Partners as well as the chance to meet with others in the industry. We can’t wait to talk about the things that matter and of course to show just what MAX is made of as we tackle the tricky challenges set for each stage of the adventure!

Passing through Germany, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Finland the teams will be covering 2,500km to complete the 8 day challenge – and of course enjoying the amazing culture and scenery of Europe along the way.

Follow us on Twitter #maxontour and LinkedIn as we take on the acmeo Rally challenge and don’t forget to cheer us on!

Learn about GFI MAX and/or sign up for a free trial today!

This webcast will introduce you to the exciting new product from GFI MAX and the next big thing in Backup! Register now to learn how you can harness the speed and security of the cloud to grow your business, tie in customers and earn increasing revenues.

This is one webcast you can’t afford to miss!

Webcast: Harness the Speed and Security of the Cloud!

Date: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

Register now

And if you’re still looking for reasons why this webcast is not to be missed maybe these will help:

-          Get an introduction to the new MSP service

-          Find out how it fits with existing services

-          Learn why Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud (D2D2C) is the way to go

-          Discover how MSPs will make money from this service

-          Find out more about additional free services to help you sell Backup!

What more could you need?

To find out how you can earn extra revenue with the latest product from GFI MAX all you have to do is register now!