Cloud Computing by Sector

Control, productivity, compliance and security

Business Challenge

Enhance remote, flexible working for advisers
An increasing number of advisers are on the road to meet and report to clients. The availability and ease of access of data can be crucial to create and retain a good business relationship.

IT Solution
Hosted virtual desktops provide a fully isolated, customisable, familiar environment that can be accessed from any device including smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs. Hosted Exchange enables easy communication with colleagues and customers anywhere, from any device. It is a great alternative to running email services locally because of cost, scalability, flexibility and security considerations. Some users turn e-mail into a document repository, increasing the need of being able to rapidly add storage and scale the solution. The integrated e-mail archiving and compliance module, ensures regulatory compliance. The two solutions open the way to a virtual office that can be scaled from user to business requirements.

Business Challenge

Develop a unified infrastructure across sites
As the business grows and multiple locations are added, the cost of infrastructure needed at each site is high. Difficulties in sharing files and server applications appear.

IT Solution
File and application servers provide businesses with a centralised, secure, and scalable storage solution that is easily accessible from within a Hosted Virtual Desktop or Virtual Server environment. Incorporated daily backup, permission management and easy, anywhere access provide you with a simple and secure solution for building a centralised company network.

Business Challenge

Business continuity and disaster recovery
Companies within the financial, banking and insurance industry deal with highly confidential, sensitive client data. They need to pay extra attention to security and business continuity.

IT Solution
Hosted Virtual Desktops and Hosted Exchange solutions both come with integrated backup and disaster recovery modules. Data is stored in tier 3 & 4 Datacentres, that guarantee high availability, redundancy and resilience. Cloud backup can also be implemented as an independent solution. Online backup is a reliable solution works for both simple file data and large complex datastores such as Microsoft Exchange or SQL. Losing data at both user and company level can have a devastating impact on the business. Data restoration with cloud backup can be done in a matter of minutes, with a few clicks and based on a predefined point in time. Our end-to-end solution benefits from daily backup, that unlike other solutions on the market takes up less space and provides better usability and security. Access to data is granted solely via an encryption key, secure data transfer, and there is no storage-side decryption.

Business Challenge

Specialised Applications
Industry specific applications such as SAGE, QuickBooks, Bookkeeper, Quickbooks, Infusionsoft can very costly (licensing) for SMEs.

IT Solution
Software as a Service (SaaS) offers a cost-effective, fully scalable alternative to buying software. There is no need to buy, install or maintain applications as they are offered on an on-demand basis. User experience is identical to using a locally installed application, the added value being in the accessibility, adding and removing the application in real time to replicate business needs. Applications can be streamed from within the hosted virtual desktop, that benefits from a one-click application catalogue. The software you need is available when you need it and can be accesses securely. Upgrade costs are also eliminated, as your business will always be on the latest software version.

Business Challenge

Flexible, scalable server infrastructure
IT Infrastructure is key to supporting aspects such as teaching, learning and business systems. The amount of data that needs to be stored, the number of applications and unique users grows from year to year. Hardware and software investments as well as the additional support, upgrade and maintenance can be very high. As the business grows and several campuses are inaugurated, the challenge of multi-site collaboration arises.

IT Solution

Dynamic servers represent the next generation of server environment, replacing the conventional concept of the dedicated or managed server. They are scalable on demand, ready to meet the needs of the business in real time. There is no up-front investment, the set-up time is under 5 minutes, management can be done via a user friendly control panel, helping minimise support, management and training costs. As the business grows and there is more demand for courses, the need of another campus may arise, this in terms posing challenges such as multi-site collaboration, centralised management of files and applications, additional IT costs. File and application servers can serve storage, file sharing and application accessibility needs, all from a unified, centralised location. You can tailor your IT infrastructure to meet your business needs with VPN, VLAN and networking offerings. You will even have the option to mix and match your infrastructure with our Hybrid Cloud options.

Business Challenge

Centralised desktop and application management
Both staff and students need to be able to access a diverse range of applications and learning environments. With the number of study options increasing – evenings, weekends, online – both staff and students will want to access data from various devices. Licensing costs for applications will rise as the institution grows and adds users.

IT Solution

A hosted virtual desktop infrastructure can comprise of not only hosted desktops, but also File and Application Servers, Active Directory Management Module and Hosted Exchange. It provides a centralised, secure, scalable, customisable and highly familiar environment for users. Your staff can easily access data, learning tools and modules remotely, increasing productivity and work flexibility. On-premise traditional or terminal service type infrastructure can be replaced with hosted desktops, having a direct impact on costs and security. Using Thin Clients and encouraging the BYOD trend for students, will help cut down costs significantly. The on-demand model characteristic to cloud computing, means you can scale resources and number of users up and down in direct line with your institution’s needs. Application virtualisation can help you save on licenses, decrease the risk of application malfunction and incompatibility. Via hosted desktops, users can access a one-click applications catalogue, being able to easily add and remove applications at user and organisation level. The build in cloud backup module will work towards your business continuity plan.

Business Challenge

Enhanced communication and collaboration
Internal and external communication and collaboration is of essence in order to maintain a high level of staff and student satisfaction.

IT Solution
Hosted Exchange and VoIP are two common ways of cutting down CapEx costs while improving staff productivity and flexibility. Hosted Exchange allows users to access their email from anywhere, anytime, on any device. The build in e-mail archiving and compliance module ensures a high level of security and flexibility in recovering e-mails. Sometimes, an entire campus might be served by a handful of phones, not every member of staff having their own phone, or extension. This can result in poor internal and external communication. With VoIP’s enhances features such as conference calling, call forwarding, automatic redial, hunt groups, emailed voice-messages, IVR; your organisation can benefit from a highly scalable platform, at a reduced cost. VoIP gives staff enhanced off-premise communication flexibility.  Soonr Workplace, a new file-sharing and collaboration solution, can help increase productivity by offering staff and students a secure, user-friendly platform for adding, sharing and managing files. With regular backup, versioning and automatic sync, users can access the files they need when they need them. Permission levels can be adjusted instantly, as teams and requirements change.

Business Challenge

Business continuity and Disaster recovery
Year on year, the level of data stored on campus increases significantly. Institutions need a simple and cost effective way to back-up and restore their data as needed.

IT Solution
Where hard-drives and tape are sometimes unsafe and unreliable, online backup allows for truly agile incremental backup policy, maximising efficiency and minimising storage and bandwidth overhead.

Cloud Backup allows smaller backup windows, has low resource requirements, and supports all commonly used platforms & databases. The pay-per-use model ensures a cost-effective way of saving your data. Versioning and recovery of data from different instances in time, ensures that no student papers, corrected papers, student results will ever be lost.

Business Challenge

Multi-site collaboration
The geographical dispersion of offices can prove a challenge when looking at hardware interments and the need to have a centralised network. Difficulties in sharing files and server applications appear.

IT Solution
With infrastructure as a service, the hardware costs associated with physical servers is eliminated. Hosted virtual servers can be easily set-up and managed, and can provide a centralised environment for storing, sharing and managing files and applications. Full scalability and a on-demand payment model, help you make the transition from CapEx to OpEx. File and application servers can be used in conjunction with Hosted Virtual Desktops and Active directory modules which provide users with a familiar, secure, customisable environment to work with and access from anywhere.

Business Challenge

Increase mobility
Due to the nature of the organisation, most staff and volunteers will require the ability to work off-site to meet potential sponsors, raise awareness and raise funds. The ability to access and present data easily is a necessity and can increase the number of volunteers that help the organisation.

IT Solution
Hosted virtual desktops are an alternative to on-premise traditional desktops. They provide organisations with a fully isolated, secure and customisable virtual machine that can be accesses from anywhere, any device. A virtual desktop infrastructure grows seamlessly alongside your business. You can simply add or remove virtual desktops as your business needs dictate. Active Directory and build in backup modules ensure you have full control over access permissions and keep your data safe. The hosted virtual desktops allow any Windows application to be installed and can also provide organisations with a one-click applications catalogue. This means that business applications relevant to your organisation can be virtualised, helping you save on licensing costs. The applications are available when you need them, can easily be added or removed at both user and organisation level.

Business Challenge

Efficient communication and collaboration
As most staff and volunteers can work off-site, being able to communicate and collaborate with all relevant stakeholders is extremely important.

IT Solution
Keeping in touch with colleagues, sponsors, the public is can be made easy with Hosted Exchange and VoIP solutions. They are both cost-effective, scalable solutions that grow with your business. With a single sign on, Hosted Exchange and a powerful collaboration tool – Soonr can increase productivity even more. Soonr is a file sharing and collaboration platform that allows easy storage, sharing and management of files. Using a secure link encryption, files and folders can be shared not only internally but also with external stakeholders. Real-time sms notifications and on-and offline sync means staff, volunteers and sponsors are better connected.

Business Challenge

Business continuity
Because a large number of employees and volunteers work off-site and may use their own devices to access the organisation’s network and store and download files, the possibility of losing data increases.

IT Solution
Cloud backup is a powerful alternative to hard-drive and tape-backup. It is more reliable and secure when you think of the physical damage, process behind recovering data, frequency and replication of data. Data is backed up daily, in highly secure tier 3 & 4 datacentres, there is no daily maintenance needed to ensure backups run; files can be easily restored within seconds, they are saved when changes at block level are done thus compressing the data and minimising backup time. Multiple backup and restore tasks can run concurrently, and if appropriate, granular user permissions can be set to allow users to restore their own files.