business focus 11 of the month


HW, Chartered Accountants, presents a series of articles based on the HW blogs. They offer analysis, reviews and comments and welcome your feedback at www.hwca.com/blog


When is a euro not a euro? writes Rodney Style, partner at Haines Watts


You probably imagined that euro notes are all the same but did you know that the prefix letter, just before the serial number on each note, indicates the country which issued it? Unhelpfully the choice of letter is not obvious like 'F' for France, 'D' for Germany, 'G' for Greece etc but appears to be rather more random, as exemplified here:


Austria – N Belgium – Z France – U Germany – X Greece – Y


Ireland – T Italy - S Spain - V


As I write, the eurozone debt crisis continues, with some countries teetering on the brink of crashing out. This raises the interesting question of what would happen if, for example, a Greek euro becomes a drachma? It might be fairly easy to convert any euros in a Greek bank account to a drachma overnight but what happens to the Greek-issued euro notes?


My point is, euros handed out by a bank or cash point in, say, France are


Pulsant advises SMEs to take a fresh look at cloud


Since cloud started stealing headlines five years ago, its role within SMEs has changed dramatically – according to leading cloud hosting provider, Pulsant. No longer seen as purely a capacity/cost balancing tool, ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ (IaaS) is fast emerging as the most flexible storage option for handling the complex data applications that are essential to driving competitive advantage.


Involved in cloud hosting since its inception over 10 years ago, Pulsant confirms that it is increasingly SMEs – not large corporates – that represent the vanguard behind Software as a Service (SaaS), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)-style technologies, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and mobile cloud apps.


Pulsant believes that these new web and mobile applications, richer digital presence and growing online sales will accelerate demand for cloud


storage in 2012. It also predicts that many SMEs will re-examine cloud storage to help them cope with increased data footprints as information management, analytics and remote and mobile working become vital to their performance.


Mark Howling, CEO of Pulsant, stated: “Private and public cloud is now a major strategy for any CIO aiming to help their organisation deliver high-quality services to internal audiences and customers, over a variety of channels, while operating efficient data flows. Both types of cloud use virtualisation software to create ‘virtual server’ environments – on infrastructure either owned and shared across a single organisation (private cloud) or rented and shared across many different businesses (public cloud). Offering elastic provisioning and optimised data performance, cloud reduces the volume, power and costs associated with traditional server solutions.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – JULY/AUGUST 2012


just as likely to be Greek or Spanish euros. If we take our Greek example, Greek euros are found all over the place, not just in Greece so if you cancel them, do you make them useless everywhere? If you kick this can down the road, you would then consider "Which euros should we spend first?".


One would assume that this scenario would not be allowed to happen but it is no doubt just one of many potential headaches zooming around in the heads of eurozone leaders.


Meanwhile, there is one ‘silver lining’ to the euro cloud - as we head into


holiday season, some British tourists will enjoy the fact that £1 now buys you around €1.25 – 10% more than this time last year. Where will you spend yours?


Details: www.hwca.com


HW is running the Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition for those who have started up their own businesses.


Details: www.hwye.co.uk


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