Cloud
Winter newsletter out now
Winter newsletter is out now.
DownloadIt’s winter time; so why not put another log on the fire, get comfortable and read our latest newsletter…
Cloud Applications – Hosted Voice
In this edition we look at one of the more surprising applications that can be run from the cloud – Hosted Voice. We’ll find out why one leading law firm chose Abtec’s Hosted Voice service and the benefits it will bring the organisation.
We’ve witnessed the recent storms cause chaos in the north of England and Scotland first hand; we support organisations and have employees across the north east and north west of England. We’ve protected these organisations’ IT resources from the floods, and this has prompted us to issue a reminder to readers about keeping on top of their business continuity plans.
Also, we’ve seen another unwelcome visitor recently, phishing emails with macro enabled attachments. Richard Pitman, one of our senior network engineers, offers advice on how to protect your organisation against these unwelcome visitors.
Happy reading!
Veeam Cloud Connect Free Trial
To celebrate the launch of our Veeam Cloud Connect service we’re giving you the opportunity to take a free trial. You can test drive the service for a month to see if it improves your backup regime.
Veeam Cloud Connect tackles an ever present problem for IT managers; off-site backup storage. The issue of limited bandwidth and growing data volumes rendering backing up off-site too problematic.
Cloud backup
Not for much longer though. You can now strengthen your off-site backup regime with Abtec and Veeam Cloud Connect. We can store your primary or secondary Veeam backups in our secure cloud. Our Veeam optimised network connections can help speed up your backup and recovery process.
Free trial
Find out more about the Veeam Cloud Connect service here, and apply for free trial. It could change your backup regime forever.
Read all about it – Mortgage Finance Gazette
Our Darlington Building Society Project features in Mortgage Finance Gazette
Mortgage Finance Gazette, the premier trade magazine for banks and building societies, has featured our recent project with Darlington Building Society in its latest issue. The project, in which we enabled the Society to create a more agile IT infrastructure, took a year to implement and has helped create significant efficiencies.
You can read all about the project here or view the Mortgage Finance Gazette article here.
Latest Newsletter Available Now
It’s difficult to talk about IT at the moment without talking about the ‘Cloud’. In this month’s newsletter we look at the business case for centralising your IT resources and creating your own private cloud. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to find that you’ve probably got much of the equipment needed to create your own cloud already. As well as providing some hints and tips we also examine a recent project with Darlington Building Society. We helped the Society centralise its IT infrastructure, cutting costs and improving the organisation’s agility, and in the newsletter you’ll see some of the benefits this created.
Download the latest newsletter here:
DownloadAbtec’s Tips for Creating a Private Cloud
Creating your own cloud
Our tips for creating a private cloud
‘The Cloud’, it’s one of those phrases that is difficult to avoid. I’m sure that, like us, you receive lots of emails telling you how your IT would be easier and lower cost to manage in a public cloud. The interesting thing is that you may already have many of the components to build your own cloud. As this uses your own infrastructure you could get all of the benefits of ‘the cloud’ whilst still having full control of the data.
Phil Kennerdell, Abtec’s Sales Director, was instrumental in helping Darlington Building Society (read the case study here) centralise its IT infrastructure. He gives us his top tips for creating your own cloud.
Audit
Audit your IT resources. The first place to start is to build an inventory of all of the systems, applications, hardware and network used in your organisation. Record which users access those resources, and where they physically reside. Review the capacity of your existing data centre, does it have the capacity to take on all of these new resources or do you need some new servers?
Prioritise
Once you have your database of resources the next step is to prioritise them. This could be based on how critical they are to the business’ operations. A good tip here is to separate the objective of the technology from the technology itself. For example, each office may need to make and receive calls, but that doesn’t mean that each office needs a telephone system. Next, many of these resources will be working in a virtualised server environment, check to see if the resources can operate in that environment.
Plan
Creating your private cloud will put extra demands on your network. Do you have the right bandwidth to deliver those resources? Do you need to add quality of service to the network to mitigate potential latency issues with applications? Rigorously planning your network will ensure users will continue to get a great experience when using those resources.
Timing
Don’t try to move everything over to your private cloud at once. Take a phased approach. Base this on the prioritisation you identified earlier. A good tip is to start by moving the lowest priority items over first. Give yourself plenty of time to test those resources to ensure they work properly in your data centre. Once tested move on to the next phase.
The final tip is not to struggle alone. Bring in experts like Abtec who have delivered projects like this successfully. Our experience can help you avoid pitfalls and problems, and can make your project go much smoother.
Ring us on 01858 438 500 if you need help with your cloud
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