Featured Tender: Data Analytics Solution Installation and Configuration

Namibia – DTA 940108

Contract Number:

BID/GIPF/RFP004/2022 – Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF)

Description:

The Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF) was established to provide retirement benefits to employees in the services of the Namibian Government and other participating public institutions. The Fund’s membership includes active members and a variety of annuitants. The Government Institutions Pension Fund’s mission is to safeguard and grow the Fund for the benefit of its stakeholders and Namibia. The Government Institutions Pension Fund is embarking on a project to implement a data analytics solution. Reputable and experienced service providers are hereby invited to provide a solution for data analytics installation and configuration.

Category Industry
IT & Telecom Institutional
Region Site Inspection
Namibia No Details
Closing Date Contract Period
31 October 2022 at 12:00 (Local Time) No Details

Please visit Leads 2 Business for more information on this Tender Notice.
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Why does IT ask you to clear your cache?

posted in: Did You Know 0

Have you ever called into L2B with a website functionality query and our staff ask you to clear your cache? Ever wondered why we, or IT, ask you to do this?
Caching helps with data retrieval from websites that you have visited on a web browser. Cached data assist web pages to load faster, as a portion of its content gets saved on your hard drive when loading it for the first time. Depending on your web browser settings and the number of websites that you have visited, cached data can potentially use up a lot of your computer memory. Clearing your cache protects your personal information from being picked up by a hacker and helps your web browser to run expeditiously.

In many instances when troubleshooting a website issue, caching is usually the culprit that prevents a web page from loading correctly. For example, when a new version of a website is rolled out, the cached data from the old version can cause the new version not to load up correctly. In most cases just clearing your cache would resolve the issue as this action forces the web browser to pull down a new instance of the website.

Like many things, it’s about finding the right balance. Clearing your cache frequently is not recommended, as you lose all the data acquired from all the websites that you have visited. This is not exactly ideal because when visiting any of these websites again your web browser will re-download all the data again, hence increasing your web page loading time and probably using more of your data. So, it’s best to clear your cache when there is an issue or if you have not done so in a month.

Sources:
Viteom
Ionos


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To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit Leads 2 Business Wiki.

About Andile Shange

I'm a Software Developer at Leads 2 Business since 02 June 2014.

A Day in the Life of the IT Department

posted in: General 18

IT is the backbone of most offices and day-to-day operations. IT individuals often have an obsession with all things tech-related but that works to everyone’s advantage as keeping up with the latest tech keeps things relevant.

Ever wondered what we get up to in IT?
Let’s dive into A Typical Day in the Life of a Company IT (Admin) Person:

7:20 – Arrive at the office
7:25 – Coffee & Water is the first priority
7:30 – Start Morning checks – confirm daily email generation, notifications, errors, backups, emails and prioritizing and responses and tasks.

Some emails may include the following: “My computer is frozen. Please can you help? Do you have a spare laptop I can use in the meantime?” “The internet isn’t working.” “My computer won’t turn on.” “I can’t print.” “My signature is missing.” “My email to x recipient keeps failing.” “I keep getting this error and I don’t know what it means.” “I locked myself out of my computer/account.” “I did an update and now isn’t working?”

8:30 – Update tickets, go through daily scheduled tasks and send necessary reminders to staff
9:05 – Remote to a PC out-of-office to assist with some technical queries off-site. Check back-ups and software updates.
9:25 – Investigate the dead PC, and set up a spare until the drive can be wiped and restored.
9:50 – Order some IT inventory, schedule deliveries/pickups for purchases or returns
10:00 – Check the internet connection in another department – replaces a faulty cable.
10: 15 – In-between most tasks telephonic queries are also handled according to priority
10:30 – Check a PC that “won’t turn on.” Pushes start on the tower which works as required.
10:35 – Restarts a PC after some updates, clears cache, cookies and history and the PC checks out.
10: 45 – Liaise with Dev Team on priority projects and current daily issues, testing and reviewing new developments
11:30 – Respond to more email queries such as, “I clicked on a suspicious link. I think it was a virus. Oops.”
12:00 – Source, edit, create and schedule content for social and blogs. Respond to any queries on social.
1:00 – Solve hunger problems with lunch and a much needed mental refresh. Catch up on news, socials and possibly a podcast.
2:00 – Set up and test equipment for scheduled demo in the conference room. Give a run-down on how to handle the equipment.
2:30 – Compile requested reports for Meetings.
2:50 – Assist with PABX and user mail setting queries.
3:00 – Bob, asks “So what exactly have you been doing all day? I was looking for you at lunchtime and you weren’t at your desk.”
3:10 – Virtual Meeting with a client to explain website functionality and answer any additional queries
3:30 – Time for the new employee on-boarding; computer station, phone extension setup, new profiles on various systems.
4:15 – Failed emails are checked and sent to relevant departments
4:20 – Mail server settings are checked, requested logs are pulled, whitelisting and liaising with external IT.
4:25 –  Scheduling Meetings for developers where there are API queries
4:30 – Colleague calls to say the company website is down. Check and determines an outage due to ISP issues and report to the ISP. Issue a company-wide notification advising of the outage.
4:40 – Eskom announces load shedding for the week. Pull some hair out while preparing to leave the office.

Although the above paints a picture of what happens in IT there is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes and we could be here for a month if I had to list each task each member of the IT team does throughout the day. While it’s difficult to pin down, there are some very clear skills that individuals in this field possess. Some of these include but are not limited to the ability to work independently and unsupervised but collaborative when required, logical, methodical, direct, strong-willed, responsible, flexible, practical, dependable, stable and often introverted.

Although we may not always have all the answers to your questions on the spot, in IT we make it our mission to find the answers (in detail). Our biggest wins are usually centred around any sort of automation as it’s directly linked to efficiency and progress and one of our biggest challenges is the ‘Because I’ve always done it that way, and, ‘It’s not my job,’ mentality.

The importance of IT in general increases as information technology becomes a more integral part of today’s business landscape. IT can have a direct impact on growth, continuity and success. IT Admins specifically have arguably the most diverse job in a company plus throw in the need to regularly communicate with clients and staff in a variety of departments while dealing with unenviable challenges. Specific tasks may vary on a day to day basis and adaptability is the name of the game. At the end of the day, a solid IT team goes the distance and together contributes to the consistent, progressive and high standard of culture and excellence already existing in a company like Leads 2 Business.


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About Sasha Anderson

Millennial Mom + wife living the hash-tag life. Remember: If You Fail - Fail Forward

Staff Spotlight: Andile Shange

Andile Shange STAFF SPOTLIGHT - doc

To view more Articles, please visit our Leads 2 Business Blog.
If you are interested in becoming one of our subscribers, please visit Leads 2 Business.
To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit Leads 2 Business Wiki.

About Andile Shange

I'm a Software Developer at Leads 2 Business since 02 June 2014.

What happens when Your Computer connects to the Internet?

posted in: General 0

What happens Your Computer connects to the Internet?

Your PC needs to be connected to an AP via WIFI, CAT, or UTP cable to the WLAN or LAN.

DHCP will assign an IP to the PC using the MAC of the NIC which allows access to the LAN and, using NAT via the CGI, to the WAN.

TCP or UDP are core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. However, UDP does not provide the reliability and ordering guarantees that TCP does

For IP resolution; WWW, VPN, MX, AAAA, FTP, and HTTP/S also require a TXT entry in the DNS which is a requirement of the IETF and ISOC.

This is referred to as a DNS-SD unless a No TXT record has been specified then it is known as an NXDOMAIN.

Connecting to the WWW the DNS will resolve the IP using a TXT looking for an A record using HTTP or SSL enabled HTTPS.

When searching the WWW the website with the best SEO will display at the top of the SERP.

A website may be HTML or PHP or a standard WP, which may use JS, CSS, or JSON. Some even display CCTV.

A SQL or MySQL server will store the data usually hosted on a DMZ.

What happens when I send an email?

When you send an email, which may contain ASCII, DNS checks the NS and resolves using the MX record which looks for a PTR and will validate using SSL and TLS

which both require a valid DKIM in order for the DMARC to verify. Once verified, SMTP, POP, APOP, or IMAP protocols will retrieve or send your email where they are stored in a PST file on your local PC.

What happens when I make an internet telephone call?

This type of call is known as VOIP.

VOIP requires DNS SRV which specifies a unique host and port when signaling SIP or IAX protocols. The SRV record is named in the PTR.

This is important when using NAT from within a corporate LAN which forwards to the WAN using a public IP. QoS along with either a G729,

uLAW or aLaw codec is used to avoid JITTER. Remote extensions should connect using PPTP over VPN.

 

Essential IT Acronyms

AP – Access Point

CAT – Computer-aided translation

UTP – Unshielded Twisted Pair

MAC – Media Access Control

NAT – Network Address Translation

CGI – Computer-generated Imagery

UDP – User Datagram Protocol

AAAA – Authentication, Authorization, Accounting, and Address (Internet infrastructure)

IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force

ISOC – Information Security Operations Center

DNS-SD – DNS-Based Service Discovery

NXDOMAIN – Non-Existent Domain

DMZ – Demilitarized Zone

PTR – Public Test Realm

SRV – Service Record

AWS – Amazon Web Services

GCP – Google Cloud Platform

IG – Internet Gateway

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SCM – Search Content Marketing

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

WP – WordPress

PPC – Pay Per Click

CPC – Cost Per Click

SERP – Search Engine Results Page

CTS – Click-Through Rate

CR – Conversion Rate

CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions

SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics

DMCA – Digital Millennium Copyright Act

CMS – Content Management System

CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization

CTA – Call to Action

CTR – Click Through Rate

PR – PageRank

ROI – Return on Investment

UI/UX – User Interface/User Experience

SEA – Search Engine Advertising

SMO – Social Media Optimization

SMM – Social Media Marketing

SERM – Search Engine Reputation Management

AMA – Ask Me Anything

B2B – Business to Business

B2C – Business to Consumer

CX – Customer Experience

GA – Google Analytics

SMP – Social Media Platform

ToS – Terms of Service

UA – Universal Analytics

CPL – Cost Per Lead

NPS – Net Promoter Score

QDD – Query Deserves Diversity

QDF – Query Deserves Freshness

HITS – Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search

LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing

PBN – Private Blog Network

AI – Artificial Intelligence

IMS – Intelligent Maintenance Systems

ML – Machine Learning

NI – Natural Intelligence

MI – Machine Intelligence

SR – Speech Recognition

M2M – Machine to Machine

SQL – Structured Query Language

DQL – Data Query Language

DDL – Data Definition Language

DML – Data Manipulation Language

PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language

JS – JavaScript

CSS – Cascading Style Sheets

API – Application Programming Interface

XML – Extensible Markup Language

XHTML – Extensible Hypertext Markup Language

JSON – JavaScript Object Notation

EOF – End Of File

ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange

I/0 – Input & Output

IPSec – Internet Protocol Security

SSE – Server-Side Encryption

SSL – Secure Socket Layer

WAF – Web Application Firewall

DMARC – Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance

OSS – Open Source Software

SSD – Solid-state Drive

RAM – Random-access Memory

SLA – Service Level Agreement

OLA – Operational-level Agreement

SSO – Single Sign-On

UPS – Uninterruptible Power Supply

DC – Data Center

GUI – Graphical User Interface

BI – Business Intelligence

IT – Information Technology

DW – Data Warehouse

DNS – Domain Name System

HTTP – HyperText Transport Protocol

HTTPS – HyperText Transport Protocol Secure

LAN – Local Area Network

WAN – Wide Area Network

DHCP – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

TCP – Transmission Control Protocol

IP – Internet Protocol

WWW – World Wide Web

IoT – Internet Of Things

D2D – Device to Device

VPN – Virtual Private Network

BGP – Border Gateway Protocol

VLAN – Virtual Local Area Network

ICMP – Internet Control Message Protocol

LB – Load Balancer

SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

FTP – File Transfer Protocol

RDP – Remote Desktop Protocol

NIC – Network Interface Card

ISP – Internet Service Provider

URL – Uniform Resource Locator

PDF – Portable Document Format

IE – Internet Explorer

DM – Direct Message

FB – Facebook

PM – Private Message

QoS – Quality of Service

MIME – Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions

POP – Post Office Protocol

IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol

MX – Mail Exchange

PPTP – Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol

WPAN – Wireless Personal Area Network

WLAN – Wireless Local Area Network


To view more Articles, please visit our Leads 2 Business Blog.
If you are interested in becoming one of our subscribers, please visit Leads 2 Business.
To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit Leads 2 Business Wiki.

About Mark Meyer

I joined Leads 2 Business in February 2009 and serve as IT Director.

Staff Spotlight: Mark Meyer

posted in: Staff Spotlight 0
MM STAFF SPOTLIGHT - doc

To view more Articles, please visit our Leads 2 Business Blog.
If you are interested in becoming one of our subscribers, please visit Leads 2 Business.
To view notes with screenshots on how to use our website, please visit Leads 2 Business Wiki.

About Mark Meyer

I joined Leads 2 Business in February 2009 and serve as IT Director.