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The Children are Our Future: So Let’s Welcome Them to the Cloud

Think back to your first day at work. Were you nervous? Did you wonder how you were going to remember everyone’s name, or find the way to the toilet? Probably. Chances are you also had a few concerns about how to work the office computer, send a fax or simply ‘dial 9 for an outside line’.

It’s natural for people to be scared when they’re starting a new job, all the more so if it’s your first ever day grinding away at the coal face. These days, the pressure is even greater as those who start work know that they’re the lucky ones; that they can’t afford to slip up and risk being out of work.

So, how can our education system help prepare pupils for life in the big wide world? How can they ensure they have the best possible chance of success?

Well, one small step might be using cloud based hosted email to get youngsters familiar with the way business communication gets done.

You might be raising an eyebrow now thinking that the younger generations are more tech-savvy than us oldies… and you’d be right. Except that in many cases, young people are now leaping straight past traditional email and communicating via Facebook or SMS instead.

Installing hosted exchange in a school environment means that pupils can practice how to deal with real life office scenarios, using exactly the tools that they are likely to find when they enter the workforce.

What’s more, the fact that cloud services such as hosted email are cheaper and quicker to install than traditional email packages makes them an ideal choice for an education system that is desperate to cut costs and improve efficiency.

I’ve talked about the advantages of cloud platforms such as the Giacom ThinkCloud many times over on this blog. For businesses, increased flexibility, better security and reliability and lower implementation and running costs makes hosted exchange 2010 a no-brainer, but when it comes to increasing efficiency, it’s usually the public rather than the private sector that offers the most room for improvement.
Using hosted email within schools is a simple way to put teachers and students in touch with each other quickly and cost effectively. It can make sharing documents, keeping track of homework, commenting on progress or simply keeping each other updated much more efficient.

Using cloud based hosted exchange also gives students a chance to work where they’re most comfortable – online – and because everything is safely hosted in the cloud, days off or holidays don’t need to mean that pupils are cut off from school, they can easily stay in touch and access information wherever and whenever they need it the most.

So, with a chance to cut costs, improve efficiencies, provide some valuable work experience and give students more control over their education, it seems the cloud could be just as useful in the classroom as it’s proven to be at work. Next stop the headmaster’s office to get things moving cloudwards….

Tags: cloud computing for schools, email in education, Hosted Email, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Small is Beautiful When it Comes to Cloud Computing in India

India is a country experiencing unprecedented development. Its boasts one of the world’s fastest growing economies with GDP growth of 10.4% during 2010. Seven of the globe’s top 15 IT outsourcing companies are based there and it ranks ahead of several more advanced economies when it comes to innovation.

It might surprise you, then, to learn that cloud adoption in India continues to edge forwards, led mainly be small and emerging companies rather than the outsourcing giants that have made India famous.

Why the hesitation? Well, like many of their western counterparts, Indian CIOs are worried about security paranoia and technology. There’s a chicken and egg scenario too with large corporations all waiting to see who will move first and prove the concept of cloud computing in India.

Despite this relatively slow uptake from the big boys, 75% of Indian CIOs agree that cloud computing will play an important role in their future strategy… it’s just that for the time being they are content to learn from those with far smaller, less established businesses to run.

Yes, the baby steps of cloud computing in India are being taken by newly formed companies, SMEs for whom agile technology, efficient operating procedures and lower start up costs are absolutely key to building a successful strategy.

Starting with cloud services such as hosted exchange these firms are proving the worth of cloud platforms and proving that, provided you partner with reputable hosted email suppliers, security and reliability improve rather than suffer from a move to the cloud.

For these businesses, services such as hosted exchange 2010 are likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Convinced by their early experiments with cloud based data storage, these are the enterprises which will lead India’s march to the cloud.

The expansion of mobile devices, the exponential growth in data and the increasing trend for mobile workforces means that India will soon have no choice but to change. Airtel, India’s largest mobile services firm is already one of the country’s most aggressive cloud users and this will model is bound to become the norm rather than exception soon… it’s just that for now, the big boys seem to be content letting smaller companies lead the way. Perhaps for once, small really is beautiful.

Tags: Apple iPhone Hosted Exchange 2010, cloud computing in india, cloud services, Hosted Email, Hosted Exchange

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Can Regulation Ever Mean Less Control?

Most people assume that with increased regulation comes increased control and increased safeguards. Much of the time, that is indeed the case, but when it comes to the cloud it seems that regulations sometimes get in the way of people adopting and benefiting from the latest cloud technology.

Back in December, BAE Systems appeared to be bucking the growing trend of cloud adoption by pulling out of a plan to use Microsoft’s cloud based productivity platform. Why is such a huge corporation pulling back from the step that so many businesses agree makes sense?

Concerns about regulation. That’s why.

Not a lack of regulation, mind you, or concerns about how cloud computing itself is controlled. Rather, it’s concerns about the impact of US data regulation and more specifically, a small piece of legislation called the Patriot Act, that’s got people running scared.

I’ve written before about the Patriot Act and how it could easily give the US government control over your data. Our own UK government now even takes the precaution of warning would be cloud providers that “data transferred to servers outside of the UK becomes subject to the laws of that country. For example, under the USA Patriot Act, the US Government can ask for data that is held on Microsoft EU data centres to be handed over as Microsoft are a US based company.”

The reality of this legislation is now causing businesses to shy away from the cloud and when it starts to affect the behavior of giants like BAE Systems, it really is time to sit up and take notice.

So how should you deal with the Patriot Act if you’re keen to benefit from the reduced costs and improved efficiency of cloud services such as Hosted Exchange 2010?

For someone like BAE Systems who is used to doing deals with only the biggest players and needs to partner with someone of the strength and size of Microsoft it’s a real headache but luckily, for smaller businesses out there’s a simple solution.

Choosing a cloud provider like Giacom, who offer hosted email and cloud computing from an entirely UK based operation, means that you can neatly sidestep all worries about US data laws. Since Giacom are a wholly UK owned company and all of our data centres rest firmly on UK soil there’s no concerns about the wrong people getting access to your information.

Perhaps this is one case where small does turn out to be better. After all, you can start enjoying the advantages of hosted exchange while BAE Systems are still searching for a cloud solution that’s right for them.

Tags: Cloud platform, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010, the Cloud, UK Data Centres, US Patriot Act

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Can Hosted E-mail Really Stop You Becoming Depressed?

OK, I admit it, that title might be a little bit enthusiastic but it’s not without a kernel of truth since the topic for today’s post is the trend for longer and longer working hours… and the harm it’s wreaking on health and happiness.

Last week, The Independent ran a story claiming that “three hours’ extra work a day doubles the risk of depression”. Read on and you learn that people who put in over 11 hours of work a day are twice as likely to fall victim to major depression, as well as a whole host of other health and lifestyle issues.

What’s all this got to do with cloud computing you ask?

Well, actually the link is clear.

The fact that working hours are increasing is no surprise. We are in the middle of the worst economic crisis in living history, potentially ever. Established businesses have to try harder and harder to survive and grow whilst the barriers to new entrants get lower and lower – which only serves to hot up the competition for business even more.

Under such circumstances, it’s really no surprise that employees – particularly those at the top – find themselves working longer and longer into the evenings and weekends. Yes, we’d all prefer to be doing something else but sometimes needs must and then it becomes more about making the best of a bad situation – and that’s where a hosted e-mail service can help.

Providing secure and reliable access to business e-mail from home means that employees can put in the extra hours without having to entirely neglect their personal lives. What’s more, using Hosted Exchange to enable remote working is likely to make your team happier and more productive.

In a survey carried out by Mashable last year, the flexibility to work outside of the office or at home came 3rd on a list of factors that drive overall job satisfaction. What’s more, of the managers that responded, 56% of them thought that remote workers were more productive.

So, I’m not suggesting that cloud computing will let the nation throw away their anti-depressants and start smiling but perhaps cloud services like Hosted Exchange 2010 do have a little part to play in our country’s health and happiness and if remote working can improve morale and productivity, surely everyone’s a winner.

Tags: Cloud computing, hosted e-mail, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010, remote working, working from home

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

E-discovery and Why Data Retrieval Should be a Vital Feature of Hosted E-mail

If you’re a regular visitor to the Giacom blog, you’ll have heard me mention the phenomenal growth of cloud computing many times before. The potential to save money whilst improving business efficiency has really captured the imagination of SMEs and, as a result, cloud computing services such as Hosted E-mail seems to be one area of the economy which is not feeling the pinch.

There’s a big difference, however, between rapid growth and a trend that’s become mainstream. 2011 was the year that cloud computing really took off. Hosted Exchange 2010 led the march to take cloud computing into a whole new world of enterprises, but there is still a lot of ground to be made up by corporations and enterprises – large or small – who are yet to turn their thoughts to the cloud.

2012 will be the year that cloud services really bed in and gain real traction within the business world. Cloud computing will quickly turn from a ‘nice to have’ into a ‘business necessity’ as businesses realise that exploiting the latest trends represents the best chance for today’s SMEs to steal a march on the competition and get ahead of the curve when it comes to IT.

So, hosted e-mail will become the norm rather than the exception to the rule. With it will come many benefits – most noticeably in the key areas of cost control, security and reliability – but of course there will also be new challenges that cloud adopters will have to face.

E-discovery, or the methods by which a company ensures that they have a reliable record of the e-mails that have been sent and received by the business, will become absolutely crucial. Increasingly, legal disputes between a firm and its customers, partners or suppliers are settled using electronically stored information (ESI) or archived data.

So, when choosing a hosted e-mail provider, look for one who can not only provide reliable access to Hosted Exchange 2010 but who can guarantee to put safeguards in place to ensure your business has quick and easy access to the electronic records it needs.

Giacom’s hosted e-mail archiving knows exactly what, and what not, to archive. Its ‘intelligent’ systems can identify spam and have proven accuracy in detecting genuine e-mails. It archives messages securely off-site to ensure that you have ready access to information in the case of data failures or disputes.

Making sure that your cloud provider supports, rather than hinders, business continuity and compliance could not be more important and it is the businesses who recognise this – and who team up with reputable, well established hosted e-mail providers from the start- who have the real opportunity to benefit from cloud computing.

As we see the continued expansion of cloud services, let’s hope that 2012 is also the year that people get serious about information security and retrieval and demand nothing but the highest standards from the cloud vendor they do business with.

Tags: Cloud computing, data retrieval, e-discovery, Hosted Email, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Capacity Planning: Why it’s Easier From the Cloud

If yours is one of the many businesses that spent December struggling to keep up with a deluge of Christmas business you might be using January to take a well earned break. You might be revelling in the slowdown in business, pleased to have a chance to catch your breath… or you might be one of the businesses worrying about the troughs that inevitably follow the peaks and wondering how you can insulate your business from such swings of demand.

There’s no magic wand that can smooth out business flows and make it easier to plan and manage your workload but the benefits of cloud computing that I’ve used this blog to explain over the past few months can be instrumental in minimising the impact of elasticity on your business.

Aside from the physical demands of coping with a huge increase in workload, one of the big problems for SMEs is capacity planning. Every business is elastic, and every business will have busy times and slow times. The problem is that historically, capacity planning most often meant ensuring that you had the operational mechanisms in place to deal with your busiest periods.

Knowing that you have the IT back-up to cope with any eventuality is reassuring – and crucial to success – but during slower periods, the cost of maintaining that infrastructure can be crippling. Cloud computing has the power to transform businesses because it brings a new flexibility to capacity planning.

Take the example of Hosted Exchange, hosted e-mail being many people’s first experience of cloud services; in the past, things like the number of mailboxes or server space were fixed. Changing things often took up valuable in-house development time and had significant cost implications. Moving your e-mail to the cloud removes those concerns.

With Giacom, Hosted Exchange 2010 means that you can scale your business up or down with ease. You’ll only pay for what you use and you can add more mailboxes at the drop of a hat. As well as saving money by streamlining business efficiency, it will be easier to plan for expenditure, you’ll have more peace of mind about being able to cope when things get busy and, most importantly, you’ll know that everything is under control at the touch of a button. Make 2012 the year that your capacity planning really gets in touch with your business and move to the cloud, you won’t look back.

Tags: capacity planning, Cloud computing, cloud flexibility, hosted e-mail, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 11:50 am and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Painting the Sky Green

I’ve already written a couple of posts about the new year and new beginnings so I’m wary about stretching the analogy too far but there is one important area of new year’s resolutions left to touch on… those that are less about you or your business and more about helping the world; finding ways for your business to be more charitable, community focused or – more often where IT is concerned – greener.

Apparently, by 2020 15 per cent of total global emissions will come from the ICT sector. Even during 2011, the amount of energy consumed by US data centres doubled compared to the previous year, and, overall, worldwide demand for ICT services is expected to quadruple by 2020.

That’s great news if you are an IT consultant, but all those services will require some pretty hefty energy consumption in the background to keep them rolling and so it’s vital that, together, we find ways to make IT as environmentally friendly as possible.

To me, cutting out waste is exactly what cloud computing is about. Cloud services such as Hosted Exchange eliminate business waste by allowing you to scale up and down with ease and cloud platforms also reduce cost wastage associated with paying for services you don’t need. Moving to pay as you need IT is, after all, all about maximising efficiency, and those efficiencies extend to the planet as well.

Every single business is different, consuming different power and using energy in different ways so it’s impossible to say how much energy any one company could save by jumping to the cloud but the experts agree that cloud computing is one key way that business can help preserve the world we all live in.

Large companies who have moved their applications to the cloud frequently reports a reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions of up to 30% and the great news is that, for smaller businesses, the rewards can be even greater. Some forecasts suggest that for SMEs the reductions could even approach 90%!

Now, moving your e-mail to the cloud via Hosted Exchange 2010 – which is a typical way to start making the move to the cloud – won’t instantly halve your energy bill, but it will make a difference right from the start.

From the moment you move your business to the Giacom ThinkCloud platform you’ll be cutting out waste and that means less waste for your business and less waste for the planet. Too often, being ‘green’ or protecting the environment can seem like the harder option… yes, we all know what we need to do, but saving the planet is hard work. Moving to the cloud is one way which really is easy and which offers a genuine win:win scenario. Improve your operational efficiency, cut your costs and do your bit for planet Earth – in one simple, cloud based step.

Image by freeimageslive.co.uk – Y-Z

Tags: Cloud computing, green technology, Hosted Email, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 10:50 am and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Why the Growth in the Cloud is Good News For IT Consultants

2011 was the year of the cloud, the year it went mainstream and the cost benefits, flexibility and operational efficiencies of cloud services such as hosted e-mail were widely accepted as the path to improved IT efficiency.

As we begin 2012, the growth forecasts continue to look rosy. Morgan Stanley’s Alphawise global survey suggests that cloud workloads will continue to grow at 50% over the next three years. As the breadth and depth of cloud adoption expands, moving out from hosted exchange to more complex cloud offerings, more and more CIOs will be forced to fundamentally redesign their IT strategies to exploit the benefits of the cloud.

Letting the cloud take centre stage can seem a daunting prospect for IT consultants. Recommending that a client moves to hosted e-mail can seem counter-intuitive at first but, in fact, all these business moving to the cloud actually creates growth potential for forward looking IT consultants.

Any change of strategy relies on advice and direction and SMEs will be looking for just that from the IT consultants they know and trust. Provided that there is a cost effective way for IT consultants to recommend cloud products such as Hosted Exchange 2010, a route that delivers mutual benefits to all concerned, then a move to the cloud need not mean an end to the long standing relationship between an IT consultant and their clients.

By embracing the cloud, a consultant will improve their chance of retaining client accounts and ensure that they remain at the heart of IT decision making. Of course, such advice can’t be given away free, which is why the Giacom resellers network was built – to help IT consultants share in the rewards of cloud computing.

The Giacom resellers network is the largest and most successful network in the UK and offers a partnership which keeps a consultant in control of their clients whilst helping everyone to benefit from the Giacom ThinkCloud Platform. There are no long term contracts, no upfront costs and no hidden catches to tie you in. You simply continue doing what you do best – giving clients reliable and informed IT advice – and Giacom rewards you for the clients that are active on your account at the end of each month.

The benefits of the resellers network are much like the advantages of the cloud itself… more flexibility to work in different, more lucrative ways; pay as you go billing instead of lengthy contracts and enhanced operational efficiency for all concerned. Put like that, what’s not to like? So here’s to another year of exceptional growth in cloud computing.

Tags: cloud service, Giacom reseller's network, Hosted Email, IT consultants

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 at 10:30 am and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Why Would a Business Not Opt for Hosted Exchange?

I’ve spent a fair amount of time on this blog singing the praises of Hosted Exchange 2010, or explaining the cost and service benefits to be gained from a move to the cloud so today, I want to look at the issue from a different perspective, honing in on some of the reasons why a business wouldn’t opt for hosted exchange; the situations in which in-house IT might seem preferable to a hosted e-mail solution.

Top of the hit list has got to be cost. Some SMEs shy away from Hosted Exchange because they believe that it is cheaper to host in-house. For some of the largest companies, that assumption would be correct – hosted exchange is not designed to power huge corporations – but for the vast majority of small to medium businesses it’s really about finding a cloud services provider who can offer great value for money.

Giacom’s UK wide price promise guarantees that you won’t find a cheaper like-for-like service anywhere in the country plus our commitment to delivering value for our customers means that you’ll more than recoup the cost of paying for Hosted Exchange 2010 in the efficiency, security and reliability gains for your business.

Next comes the issue of service uptime. If you spend even a few minutes browsing through business IT forums, you’ll quickly find a whole raft of IT experts who claim to be able to out-deliver hosted exchange when it comes to uptime. What’s more, many claim to sleep better at night knowing that everything is under their control.

The challenge for business owners is really to think whether such an approach is in the best interests of the business as a whole. Yes, for the IT expert, having e-mail hosted in-house might feel like the safer, more under control option. And it might well be… until something strikes that IT expert down. Business contingency planning in SMEs rarely stretches to back up IT support so when disaster strikes, many are left high and dry struggling to carry on.

When it comes to uptime, it’s back to that old chestnut of finding reputable providers. Giacom is so confident in its own uptime guarantees that its SLAs are financially backed. With that sort of confidence on offer from a hosted e-mail provider, it can actually be a huge weight off your mind to leave the constant worrying about systems failure to somebody else.

And finally, there will always be some businesses who simply find it too hard to hand over the reins, cede control or in any way ‘let go’ of an aspect of their business. That’s understandable. Many SMEs rise to greatness through just that sort of microscopic control and focus from the management but there comes a time for any business when outsourcing services such as IT isn’t simply another, often cheaper, option, but is actually the only way that management can devote enough time to driving the business forward and delivering growth…. and when your IT worries are standing between you and growth, you know it’s time to jump aboard a cloud and float your way to the next level of business success.

Tags: cloud service provider, Hosted Email, Hosted Exchange, hosted exchange 2010, IT services, SME hosted exchange

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 at 11:06 am and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

The Cloud in 2012: A Look into the Crystal Ball

2011 has generally been heralded as the “year of the cloud”, the year that cloud services such as hosted exchange really hit the mainstream. As 2012 beckons, the future certainly continues to look bright for cloud computing and hosted e-mail, but just what might be around the corner? I dusted off the Giacom Thinkcloud crystal ball for a sneak preview…

Cloud services will continue to spread… and spread…
One thing I don’t need a crystal ball to tell me is that the cloud is certain to keep on growing for the foreseeable future. According to a recent report from IDC, spending on cloud computing, including packages such as Hosted Exchange 2010, will account for at least 80 per cent of IT spending growth between now and 2020.

In 2012, cloud services – trail blazed by hosted e-mail – will become the default platform for business software. The IDC predict that 80 per cent of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms and businesses will be more and more keen to snap up the advantages of using the cloud for business services such as e-mail. The attractions of Hosted Exchange, such as pay-as-you-go billing, increased security and reliability and price backed SLAs, will only seem more tempting as more and more businesses move skywards.

Some less reputable companies will try and enter the fray… and be found wanting
Unfortunately, all that growth has got to have a down side. I think it was Forrester research analyst James Staten who used the phrase the “awkward teenage years” when describing cloud computing in 2012, and certainly that rings with truth.

When any industry grows rapidly, it dangles huge temptations under the eyes of would-be cowboys and hosted-mail is no different. Whilst signing up for Hosted Exchange 2010 will be easier than ever before in 2012, due to the growth of cloud service providers, it has never been more important to choose wisely.

Make sure you look for IT providers who guarantee service reliability and offer the type of financially backed SLAs that have made Giacom’s hosted e-mail service so popular with SMEs.

IT channel players will embrace the cloud
And finally, it looks as if 2012 really will be the year that IT channel players have to embrace the cloud wholeheartedly. Whilst initiatives such as the Giacom resellers network have proved popular, allowing IT consultants to sell on Hosted Exchange 2010 whilst retaining their client base and lucrative peripheral contracts, some IT professionals have continued to resist the march of SaaS.

2012 will be the year that makes such attitudes impossible. As cloud technology has matured and grown, more and more businesses have made the leap to a new era in IT services. There may be awkward years ahead will the industry grapples with regulation, a burst of new players entering the scene and the public sector catches up but one thing’s for certain… Come 2012 cloud cred will matter and it will matter a lot.

Tags: Cloud computing, growth in hosted exchange, hosted e-mail, the cloud in 2012

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 at 10:38 am and is filed under Hazel McHugh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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