Welcome to the Catalyst Blog

This blog is not about selling any of the big cloud providers, as many of us only have a small number of options when considering the required feature set, locality (data sovereignty laws) and capability of an internal team or contracted provider. Rather, this blog aims to provide some pointers – things to consider - when making high level decisions such as moving to cloud and choosing (or changing) a cloud provider.

One great thing about hosting in the cloud is that there are many more automation and management tools available for your sites and applications. Most layers of a cloud solution technology stack have automation workflows built-in and infrastructure teams do take advantage of these functions for a more streamlined, consistent and systematic operation. Here is how it works.

As each new year begins, education providers are hit with more data and articles on ‘the very latest’ trends and things they must consider. Prioritising the steps in your organisation’s road map to success is becoming more and more difficult, so what do you do? Let's look at the not so new but continuing trends we believe you should keep up with.

"What are the options in Moodle for hiding students’ personal information from other users?” is the question we get asked a lot. In this blog, we provide you with some “how to” tips, as well as explain Moodle contexts which exist within Moodle sites and are important to differentiate when addressing this.

Custom enterprise software solutions definitely offer more flexibility than off-the shelf products. They are, however, laborious projects that need to tick many boxes. While there will always be some factors that are not in your control, there are definitely measures you can take to reduce some of the common pains including time and budgetary over-runs as well as your team’s stress levels.

Location, reputation, price, cooperation and work processes, relevant accreditations and certifications, values – there is a lot to consider when choosing a software development partner for your enterprise custom development project. Here, we've summarised some of the key considerations to keep in mind.

With so much choice in application development languages, how do businesses make sure they are making the best selection for their needs?  This post looks at top programming languages to help you choose the right one for your organisation.

“Archiving the data and learning content that is housed in Moodle is something that we’ve been talking about more and more with our clients in recent times,” says Andrew Boag, Catalyst IT Australia’s Managing Director. If you didn’t get a chance to attend Andrew’s presentation at the Global Moodle Moot 2023, we have summed up a few key points for you in this blog.

Moodle version 3.9 runs out of official security support on 11 December 2023. Don't have time to upgrade before Christmas? Reach out to Catalyst for help! Click below to learn more.

Not all businesses survive after a single data breach, let alone a significant supplier end of life. The interruption to your operations, loss of revenue and damage to your brand value is unavoidable, and complete business shut down is not out of the question. You may have a business continuity plan but is that enough?

“Security of services on the internet is NOT optional,” stresses Catalyst IT Australia’s Project Manager and Software Developer, Peter Burnett. “Intellectual property (IP) such as training materials and course design, as well as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of users needs to be protected and it’s your organisation’s responsibility to do so."

Is your organisation currently using Moodle LMS version 3.9 (LTS) , 3.10, 3.11 or 4.0 ? If yes, this important message is for you. Running an unsupported version of software increases the risk of cyber-security attacks and dealing with various bugs, as well as limits your access to latest features that are designed to improve your Moodle LMS performance and your user experience.