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Lumison Mailer_

Remote Working: The answer to the British Weather?

Remote Working: The answer to the British Weather?

With the weather becoming less predictable, more and more companies are realising the potential of allowing employees to work remotely. Not only does it mean they remain productive whilst they are ‘snowed in’, but it also helps reduce costs long term. Some employees do not need to work in an office environment on a permanent basis or even at all. So organisations are starting to allow more remote working, providing hot desks in the office for when they do need to be in enabling them to remain productive, and ensure a secure, manageable environment.

So what do you need to consider if you are thinking about this route for your organisation? Well, we have put a few questions you may want to ask, along with some hints and tips for you:

  • Do your employees working remotely have their own devices, or will you be providing them? Either way, with remote desktop services or VDI, you have more freedom to provide standard hardware across your organisation, with processing confined to the central server architecture rather than each individual device. If employees do bring their own devices it also helps you reduce your investment in depreciating assets and the need to maintain devices.
  • What is your current server infrastructure? You may need to consider whether you have the capacity and resources to manage a remote desktop server, or VDI solution.
  • Do you have a number of programs that multiple users require? Again, save cost and time installing these on every machine, by making them available centrally.
  • This isn’t just a solution for remote workers. Although that does become easier. Even office based workers, no matter how disparate, can have basic desktop devices which connect to a powerful central infrastructure.
  • Why VDI and not remote desktop services – well it provides additional functionality, removed the blockages sometimes caused on a terminal server infrastructure, and ensures users are managed individually.

These are just a few thoughts, but with more and more employees needing to work in a number of locations, no matter what the time of day, or the needs of that individual, they can access your infrastructure through a secure connection day or night.

For more detailed information, or to see how VDI could work you, contact us today.

Call 0845 1199 911
Email info@lumison.net

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Forecast: Cloudy but Clearing

Forecast: Cloudy but Clearing

Clouds seem to come in all shapes and flavours whilst still remaining largely technologically-led. But based on feedback from clients and analysts, other hot technology topics from 2011 are now directly contributing to cloud developments and evolution.  Many of the most interesting development projects are now sitting just below the cloud. The main challenge for business is how to incorporate and integrate customer behaviour and feedback to shape adoption and evolution in a dynamic environment where demand is uncertain.

For example, in 2011, many more people completed their festive shopping online, attracted by the benefits of shopping from home, and the ability to easily compare the value and price of goods and services before purchase. The attractions of online shopping have reduced retail point of sale transaction volumes and shifted the load onto business systems that support online transactions and data storage. The emphasis has now moved towards forecasting and managing the peak in capacity to support these increased online activities.

Last year, we also found that we can test, develop, evolve and modify new initiatives far more effectively within cloud environments. The ability to leverage “cloud” capacity to smooth out demand peaks is also gathering considerable momentum, particularly in retail, product and service development areas in the commercial environment. This provides a real differentiator to any business seeking to make the most of their capital, and ensuring that there is sufficient capacity to support potential peak demand or to enable testing of a try-and-buy platform.  

Looking back, we survived the rise of words prefixed by  “e” and “i”, and have wholeheartedly embraced open source, observed the continued rise of Google and Apple, used smarter devices and welcomed clouds.

The pervasion of cloud has moved beyond a technological fashion and taken a central role in businesses because it makes aspects of our lives and jobs easier and “just works”. The initial security concerns are still there but adoption rates are increasing our overall confidence in the technology. It can take time to build trust in new technologies, particularly when we can no longer see systems, touch servers and know how our data is actually managed. But adjusting to the physical loss of equipment has become easier for our customers as they begin to realise the cost savings within their businesses. 

Returning to the forecast for 2012, economic challenges are predicted to have a major impact on IT investments.  It is estimated that at least 29% of IT managers and CIOs anticipate smaller budgets and a further 68% are now prioritising cost reductions. Given these initiatives, the trend towards consolidating to hybrid cloud solutions is expected to increase in 2012. The most significant area of growth is forecast in business intelligence and analytics as companies seek to adapt, exploit and understand how best to invest and respond rapidly to market changes.

Interestingly, in 2011, significantly more CIOs were appointed internally than through external recruitment, and the average percentage of time focused on operational matters exceeded 20%. To achieve 2012 objectives, these trends will undoubtedly continue and open up many new opportunities and challenges.

Call 0845 1199 911
Email info@lumison.net

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Keeping Your Virtual Tills Ringing

Keeping Your Virtual Tills Ringing

Many of our ecommerce customers are coming to the end of their busiest sales season ever, but we are still working hard behind the scenes to make sure their systems can support simultaneous hits throughout the sales season and into the New Year.

British shoppers spent a staggering £19 million per hour during ‘Cyber Monday’, the busiest shopping day of the year which took place on 5 December 2011. Despite the economic climate, business was booming with online purchases up by nearly 30% compared to the same peak in 2010.

Matt Lovell comments; “Industry analysts predicted that over half of Christmas sales would occur in the first two weeks of December. We recognise that keeping websites live is not just mission critical, it is crucial for commercial survival. With Christmas now over but New Year sales in full swing, we’re working hard to keep your infrastructure optimised and ensure your virtual tills ring right through 2012.”

Things to consider for the year ahead:

  • Do you have a fail-over in place so you can switch instantly to the back-up system if ever there is an issue?
  • Special promotions - do your marketing teams send seasonal promotions? Then you should consider the impact on online traffic. If you get in touch with us in advance then we can make sure you have the necessary capacity to support the increase in traffic.
  • Think about your traffic at other seasonal peaks. High levels of concurrent hits could knock out your platform but these can be easily handled if we know when they are likely to occur. Remember, we are here to help you achieve your business goals, and ensure that you can always deliver for your customers!

Contact us today for advice and more information.

Call 0845 1199 911
Email info@lumison.net

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Ex- Microsoft executive joins Lumison as Chairman

UK, 3 November 2011 – Lumison has today announced the appointment of Pieter Knook as non-executive chairman. Knook, who previously held senior roles at Microsoft and Vodafone, joins Lumison to develop future growth strategies to support the company’s aggressive expansion plans.

Knook brings a deep knowledge of internet, mobile and cloud-based services, which he will utilise within Lumison as it aims to become the largest UK managed services company to specifically serve the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. The Group will focus on providing practical, cost-effective solutions to customers’ business IT issues, by providing reliable IT infrastructure-as-a-service, as the need for a scalable and flexible way of working grows.

At Vodafone, Knook was responsible for Internet Services, building a suite of cloud based services to reinvent Vodafone Live. Prior to this, Knook spent 18 years at Microsoft, where he was one of the top 25 executives. His career at Microsoft started in the UK, before he moved to the USA and Japan. During this time, he took the role of Vice President for the Asia Region. Following this, Knook was Senior Vice President for the mobile and communications sector at a global level.

Lumison recently announced the acquisition of Dedipower Managed Hosting Ltd. This acquisition was part of Lumison’s business growth strategy, which has seen the company’s revenues increase from £6.4m to £27.5m over the last three years.

Lumison offers colocation, managed hosting and cloud services to UK ‘mid market’ companies hosting their online operations, business applications and development environments. It employs 130 staff across the UK and provides managed IT services to 2500 British businesses.

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Reading, Steady, Go!

Reading, Steady, Goo image

Earlier this month, we announced that Reading-based DediPower Managed Hosting was coming into the fold as part of the expansion of our business.  Many of our customers expressed an interest in learning more about DediPower and the team, and we would like to give you a quick introduction. 

DediPower was established in 1998, and developed a strong position in the market for Managed Hosting services and Data Centre solutions via three Tier III data centres located in Reading, Berkshire.   The business brings extensive technical capabilities to the group, and these strengths are complemented by a clear customer focus, and the wealth of skills and experience within the team:

http://www.dedipower.com/why-dedipower/our-people

The Group now provides services to 2500 customers in more than a dozen different sectors from Retail/Ecommerce to Creative Media, Software, Legal and Financial Services.  Additional services now available include a wider range of Managed Applications, for example, Microsoft Sharepoint and Microsoft Dynamics. 

Looking ahead, further expansion plans are underway to increase capacity and connectivity across our data centre network, starting with the sites at Imperial Way in Croydon and Milton Keynes. 

If you would like more information on DediPower then please visit: www.dedipower.com

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Cloud Innovation - The Key to Personal Fulfilment

Cloud Innovation image

For many businesses, the question of how to manage their IT effectively has increasingly become a choice between outsourcing and the use of cloud solutions. These two methods operate in different ways to achieve similar cost, performance and efficiency savings. 

Standard outsourcing solutions generally follow a linear, transactional approach with the emphasis on large scale processes, stability, reliability, and continuous business process improvement. Cloud solutions tend to be more driven by two-way social engagement models - the focus is on listening to the customer/user, assessing their needs, behaviour, sentiment and influence to generate tailored follow-up actions, i.e., to drive customer retention or acquisition activity.  Both methods have a place within the business environment, and current business demand is relatively evenly split between the two approaches.

Outsourcing is often used by larger businesses with the necessary scale and budget required to attract larger outsourcing vendors.  This doesn’t exclude SME’s from exploiting the business value of outsourcing but to achieve this, they may need to consider aggregating business requirements to exploit the available benefits. Contracts often involve migrating operational processes or functions to a larger specialised partner, enabling companies to gain from reduced costs and higher service levels supported by credits. The outsourcing approach often realises these benefits through transactional strategies aimed at exploiting economies of scale, optimising delivery costs, and creating structured processes and systems with standard outcomes.

These outcomes introduce new business challenges, for example, how to leverage smarter intelligence and real time social interaction to enhance user experience and deliver innovation. To avoid disappointment and manage expectations effectively, equal emphasis should be given to improving customer interaction and user input, whilst remaining objective regarding current issues which are transitioned and require supplier focus.

Consumption of Cloud services is driven by the ability to adopt and evolve at a faster engagement rate than transactional-driven services. The “sense and respond” approach can be tailored to absorb user context and sentiment, for example, through multimedia channels, social networking interfaces, and the use of real time resolution tools.  These methods create and enable environments to tap smarter intelligence and resolve key issues with a more personal touch.  But consistently achieving the right level of service personalisation in a scalable and manageable way remains a significant business challenge.

Businesses are often too descriptive and inflexible when capturing technology requirements and attempting to deliver innovation and continuous improvement to IT users. The needs and priorities of different users vary, and should be factored into decisions on the selection of systems and solutions.  For example, some users may prefer not to use real-time social engagement support tools, even though they can help to speed up issue identification and resolution.

Support representatives need the ability, skills, and systems to resolve service-related issues quickly to help maintain customer experience levels. To deliver these next generation support systems and experiences, businesses need to embrace Experimental and Personal Fulfilment systems. (Larger transactional solutions tend to target and measure efficiency at the point of the central IT process instead of focusing on the quality of the customer experience.)

Globally, significant investments are being made in context-aware services (which use information about the user, e.g., location, to deliver better customer experience) and decision support systems within people-to-people networks.  These networks replace traditional user service desks, email and web incident tools. Businesses need to experiment with these tools and methods to understand and refine the most effective route to achieving innovation and personalised fulfilment. 

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Old Dogs, New Tricks

Old Dog New Tricks image

Most innovative businesses rely on superior technology and simplified delivery models to find new ways to create, capture and deliver value.   Technology certainly plays a key role in facilitating innovation but we cannot forget that innovation is also about nurturing and improving performance within traditional dimensions including price, accessibility and simplicity of use.  For example, the dominance of iTunes and Apple technologies has largely been based on these three principles, and an initial focus on developing user confidence in the brand and the innovative nature of the products to generate demand and promote customer loyalty.  

The global economic climate has placed capital constraints on many businesses and restricted the budget available to drive innovation and growth.  The focus for many companies is now on cost reduction and evaluation of current performance.  But innovating to improve performance may not necessarily require capital investment depending on our approach. Moving IT services out to Cloud solutions continues to intrigue and drive our strategic thinking, although some systems can still be problematic to operate on a cloud platform for performance, stability, supportability or security reasons.

Through careful planning with cloud partners to move more defined workloads to the cloud, we can consider continuing to exploit the available capacity on legacy internal systems. IT Managers need to clearly target legacy systems, technologies and data to address the question of criticality to business operations and appropriate compliance, and help to improve our performance and optimise cost.

All too often, technology is used to answer the question of how to innovate and improve performance whilst retaining the data or accepting that new technologies can interface and duplicate copies of data, thereby increasing the workload. There is a delicate balance between the need to provide employee flexibility and workplace optimisation, and the drive to fully understand our performance and costs.  

A lack of planning and control can undermine performance.  IT Managers need to evaluate their current systems, applications and data and bring these into a simplified and consolidated view.  Once this has been completed, the systems that are easily planned and controlled can be moved into the cloud.

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Choosing Cloud - A Mixed Forecast

Mixed Forecast

As the choice of cloud services has grown, CIO’s and IT Managers are now faced with difficult decisions in choosing between providers, understanding Return on Investment, Total Cost of Ownership, and partner financial stability. The current economic climate has also increased the importance of selecting the right IT model.

For the majority of businesses, there are several options for operating computer room or data centre facilities:

1/ Host your own assets to provide complete control and governance over your operations.

The main disadvantages for businesses include the heavy costs associated with purchasing and operating their own facilities, and the need to manage variability in electricity prices.

2/ Host your services with a specialist.

This option offers more predictability of pricing in power usage and lower capital investment.

3/ The third option comes in two flavours:

i. colocation of your own assets

Colocation provides companies with continuing return on investment on existing capital IT hardware and is generally the preferred solution for businesses that require guaranteed security, performance or scalability. But companies should choose carefully - only a limited number of providers will offer high service levels on customer-owned hosted solutions across all of these areas.

ii. a private cloud service

Private cloud offers a number of benefits for businesses that are able to operate within assured secure 3rd party solutions where the performance thresholds are defined by private cloud suppliers. Rental resources are available immediately, saving businesses setup time, reducing costs and minimising risks. The service also becomes easier to procure and manage as it is now a utility operated through one partner interface rather than via multiple hardware, software, professional services and hosting providers.

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Mobile Meets Cloud

Mobile Meets Cloud

The acquisition of many mobile application software companies looks set to accelerate by Telcos globally. Identifying applications which will drive bandwidth usage and overall consumption has become a strategic priority. But as the power of devices increases, it can be difficult to know which applications are the most useful and how to benefit from their functionality.

Cloud services have enabled many smaller software organisations to respond quickly to market demand for specific mobile applications. These applications, compatible across different various mobile device operating environments, are often released within hours of development and their download popularity is closely monitored. Success can be illusive in such a fast-moving sector but this has not deterred connectivity providers from continuing to acquire innovative mobile applications businesses.

As businesses seek to securely leverage smart devices to provide richer, “always-on” employee experiences, cloud and mobile applications are converging, enabling companies to extend their global reach and access regardless of product, service or size of company. Product placement, advertising and market intelligence has now expanded into many new areas beyond social networking and review services, and mobile applications play a crucial role in the marketing mix in driving customer engagement and lead generation for an increasing number of businesses.

Cloud applications which provide price comparison, review and recommendation services, remain one of the strongest growth areas of the market. When integrated into smart devices via mobile applications, these services can provide a highly personalised window to target new and repeat business.

Managers need to identify which services and applications work best for their businesses but choosing from the wide range of services currently available on the market can be a challenge.

The focus should be on the needs of the customer:

  1. Understand how your customers are leveraging cloud services, market intelligence, price and feature comparison.
  2. Identify any underperforming business areas and the underlying reasons for their lack of effectiveness. 

 

Analysing your own business needs will help you to build a deeper insight into how to develop profitable mobile applications and blend more traditional insight with mobile intelligence.

Cloud platforms and applications are expected to grow rapidly in their sophistication and ability to provide user insight. Regardless of which platform we use, this insight, within the constraints of privacy laws, provides a gateway to understanding how and where the market is converging, and profiling customers and their choices. To stay ahead of competitors, business should take note of the trend and converge their thinking.

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Lumison continues growth strategy with acquisition of DediPower Managed Hosting Ltd

DediPower Managed Hosting

Lumison has today strengthened its position in the IT Managed Services sector by acquiring DediPower Managed Hosting Ltd, a Reading-based managed hosting and colocation provider. The acquisition brings Lumison’s combined turnover to £27.5million, and continues its business expansion strategy, which has seen the company’s revenues grow from £6.4m to £27.5m over the last three years.

The acquisition, which closed today, will see Lumison employ 130 staff across the UK and provide managed IT services to several thousand British businesses. This is Lumison’s second acquisition since it received investment funding from Bridgepoint Development Capital in October 2010. In March 2011, Lumison acquired Blue Square Data for £22 million.

Lumison offers colocation, managed hosting and cloud services to UK ‘mid market’ companies hosting their online operations, business applications and development environments. DediPower brings experience in colocation and managed hosting services with 70% of their revenue coming from managed services. This complements Lumison’s existing capabilities and the combined business will provide customers with enhanced managed IT services (dedicated and shared), managed network and colocation services across eight UK datacentres.

DediPower (www.dedipower.com) has grown successfully since it was formed in 1998 and is one of the fastest growing technology companies in the UK, receiving a number 41 position in the 2010 Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

Lumison Group CEO Mark Howling said: “The addition of DediPower to the business is a strong strategic and cultural fit and will consolidate our position as a leading player in the IT Managed Services sector. The Group will remain focused on providing practical, cost-effective solutions to customer business IT issues. Customers increasingly demand reliable IT infrastructure-as-a-service as the need for a scalable and flexible way of working grows; with DediPower’s expertise, Lumison is even better placed to deliver this.”

 

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