To stay competitive on today’s changeable business waters, we’ve got to sail very tight ships. Businesses need to be able to extend their reach and grow efficiently, which means keeping a keen eye on costs. This blog outlines how Office 365 can help businesses trim costs to beat the weather and win the race in five easy manoeuvres.
With Office 365 you can…
- Lower your costs and hang on to your capital because with Office 365 you DON’T need to invest in:
- Server hardware for Office 365 applications (such as Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business and OneDrive)
- SSL certificates
- Upgraded network infrastructure to support new servers
- Basic level backup and disaster recovery
- Basic anti-spam, anti-virus or security software
- Server space, power and cooling costs
Instead, Microsoft has all that covered for you. And if you’re a highly regulated business that requires the highest levels of security and business continuity, we can help with that, too. We’re ISO 20000 and ISO 27001 accredited and have been helping highly secure businesses stay that way for years.
- Get the latest tools without CapEx investment
- Get access to the latest versions of the Microsoft productivity tools automatically, with no CapEx investment
- Get automatically upgraded to the latest server products (Exchange, Skype for Business etc)
- Avoid over-spending on IT hardware and software
- No need to invest and over spend for hardware or licencing capacity that you don’t need
- Increase/decrease your monthly licensing according to your business requirements – this helps you align your IT costs with your forecasted usage
- Control your costs
- You can scale your costs as your business changes – for example you may need to ramp things up August through December, and then decrease licenses come January
- Great for businesses with seasonal or temporary workers
- Spend less, get more
- If you’re looking to move to Office 365 we can offer you free email migration until the end of March 2015
- If you’re an existing Office 365 user and would like a few hours of consultation from our professional services team, please get in touch
Do business faster and better with cloud technology
20 years ago a ‘rush order’ meant overnight delivery. After-hours calls were recorded on an answering machine. And a growth strategy was measured in years.
Today, business moves faster. Communication is immediate and 24/7. Innovation happens overnight and anything is possible. Yet, it can also feel overwhelming. How can a small-medium business possibly keep pace?
This is where the right technology enters the picture. The advances that are transforming the business world are the same tools that you can use to transform your business. With cloud services and mobile devices, you can quickly adapt to change and expand your business efficiently, without expanding your budget.
Prepare your business for growth
At the point when your business is ready to grow, you can’t afford for your technology to hold you back. When a customer knocks on your virtual door to buy your product or service, you need to open it – immediately.
Buying and setting up new hardware can take weeks. But in the cloud, growth can take minutes. With Office 365, you can quickly equip new employees with the tools that they need without a lengthy deployment process. Plus, with per-user licensing, you can meet the demands of your workforce, pay only for what you use and support hundreds of different mobile devices.
Adjust to changes in customer demand
Need more storage? More support for your applications? Maybe you need to address seasonal fluctuations rather than long-term growth.
With a cloud hosting solution, such as Microsoft Azure, you can use services and apps – and add new ones – on an as-needed basis. For example, you can quickly expand file storage and apps such as order processing, stock and payroll in late August to handle a busy season from September to December; and just as easily reduce capacity in January to conserve costs. Instead of paying year-round for technology that is often underused, you pay only for what you’re actually using in a given month. And there are no costly delays or large capital investments when you change capacity, be it using Azure to host mobile apps or implementing a new customer service.
Expand beyond your walls
You can also use technology to expand your reach, work faster and be more productive.
Start with your employees’ devices. Are they all running Windows? If not, your workers might be wasting time struggling with different experiences across their devices. Standardising on one platform, such as Windows, will improve employee productivity, while allowing for broad device choice, be it based on personal preference or job function.
What about the applications running on your devices? Are they cloud-based? Move to Office 365 and your employees will still get the same Office experience that they’re used to, whichever device they use, whether it happens to be an iPad or an Android-based device.
And you can easily manage these devices and provide more secure mobile access to company data, through cloud-based device and PC management solutions like Microsoft Intune and Office 365.
In a nutshell
We know that the world is moving faster than ever. With the right technologies in place, you can grow effectively, respond quickly to seasonal fluctuations and outpace the competition.
Cloud computing growth is set to continue into 2016, according to new findings.
A report published by Technavio predicted that ability of cloud-based solutions to outsource work to third-party organisations will help to boost take-up of cloud technologies.
However, the cloud computing market still remains quite fragmented and this is mainly due to the presence of numerous small, medium, and large players, which are providing more innovative solutions to the market all the time.
The research also predicted that in the US, the cloud computing market will grow at the compound annual growth rate of around 24 per cent by 2020.
In the teaching sector in particular, the report claimed that cloud computing plays a vital role in reducing the costs of building and maintaining the infrastructure associated with the traditional form of teaching.
When it comes to cloud technology, the public sector will be responsible for the majority (66 per cent) of the total market share by 2020.
Rising concern among UK businesses for the security of UK and EU data transferred and stored in the U.S. came to a head last week when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the EU-US Safe Harbour Framework invalid.Safe Harbour was originally designed as a ‘streamlined and cost-effective’ way for US firms to transfer data from Europe without breaking EU law. In the wake of the Snowden allegations, however, the EC J has ruled Safe Harbour invalid.
While Cloud Direct customers have nothing to worry about (all of our data is securely stored within the EU and bound by strict ISO and DPA standards), we thought it worth outlining what the sinking of the Safe Harbour agreement means for UK businesses that DO have customer data stored in the U.S.Three reasons why UK businesses probably don’t want their customer data stored in the U.S.
- U.S. companies can no longer self-certifyThe safe harbour agreement that was made between the EU and the US government essentially promised to protect EU citizens’ data if transferred by American companies to the US. All the US company needed to do was “self-certify” that they would protect EU data. This agreement has now been declared invalid by the European Court of Justice.
- U.S. businesses must now seek to strike EU model clausesSince US businesses can no longer rely on self-certification to authorise the transfer of data outside Europe, they must now incorporate the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses – commonly referred to as ‘model clauses’.
- A new Safe Harbour agreement could take some timeWhile the good news is that an updated Safe Harbour agreement – called Safe Harbour 2.0 – is being drawn up, the bad news is that talks between the EU and the US have been ongoing for around two years.
If you’re thinking about taking the leap to cloud services, you want to be confident you’re doing the right thing for your business. Since 2003, we’ve migrated numerous organisations to the cloud. Find out about some of their experiences. This blog looks at:
- IT security
- Disaster recovery and business continuity
- Time and cost savings
- Quality of service and people
- Remote working
- Other cloud IT providers
Peter Howlett, CFO, Pactum Asset Management, said:
About our people
“I fully entrust 90% of our technology to Cloud Direct. They’re all true professionals who actually understand what you’re talking about. Right from the start they’ve been open and have got straight down to problem-solving. They’re really helpful.”
“In our size of a firm, you aren’t normally going to have cloud IT specialists. Even if you do have an IT person, they’ll be a software person who knows a little about hardware and infrastructure – but they won’t be able to touch what Cloud Direct can do for your business.”
About security
“Frankly, any small or medium business that isn’t considering cloud is off their head. (Peter doesn’t mince his words!) People need to get over any misplaced feelings of a lack of security. They need to come to terms with losing a degree of control. Once people get over their fears, their businesses can really benefit from packaged cloud.”
About our technology
“They give us proper remote access, truly integrated across our business, telephone and IT systems. The processing power of the servicers Cloud Direct provides far exceeds that of even relatively high spec PCs. They’ve even integrated us with Bloomberg. They’re streets ahead of the competition.”
About saving money
“Without a doubt it’s cheaper. Especially if you consider the costs of upgrades, processing and software – it’s dramatically cheaper.”
About saving time
“More than anything, Cloud Direct’s service takes 90% of the responsibility for IT out of my hands. Before Cloud Direct, IT management would suck up all of my time. If something were to go wrong, I could easily spend two days sorting it out. Cloud Direct takes away the big unknown from a time perspective and puts the IT responsibility firmly into the hands of people who truly understand it.”
About the competition
“No-one could give us everything we wanted – until we found Cloud Direct. Not only did Cloud Direct say they could do everything – but they actually could. I was really surprised to discover that our incumbent IT service provider – a major player in London – was unable to deliver more than around a third of what we wanted. My research results for other providers was equally sparse.”
John de-Pulford, IT manager, London & Continental Railways (LCR):
About our people
“Cloud Direct’s people are enthusiastically innovative. They’re always prepared to go the extra mile.”
About working from anywhere
“As long as employees have internet access, they can work from anywhere.”
Steve Pickering, practice manager, McParland Williams
About our technology
“One of the best technology investment decisions we’ve made.”
About our service
“It’s a service that really does do exactly what it says on the tin. I’m so delighted that I’ve recommended Cloud Direct to many of my commercial clients.”
Sam Carew, IT manager, Efficio International Consulting
About remote access
“We recently had a situation where an employee in Belgium lost his machine on a routine business trip. Fortunately he was able to use a web browser and securely log into the web portal and retrieve files.”
If you’d like to find out more about what our customers think, please visit the ‘case studies’ section of our ‘Resources’ page. You can find it here: Case Studies CTA
With businesses employing the use of a vast array of computer technology, it can become a challenge to keep on top of each and every IT process. If you are struggling to get to grips with the many programmes and services your company requires, it may be advisable to consider outsourcing to a professional team. The dedicated specialists here at Cloud Direct are able to work efficiently, offering a range of IT Services in London to give you the support you need.
The size of your company will determine what level of support is necessary, so read on as we take you through the possibilities for small, medium and large businesses.
Small (Less than 50 Employees)
Smaller organisations will most likely not have a fully-fledged IT department in place.
Medium (50-250 Employees)
Whilst some medium sized companies will hire an in-house IT team, others prefer to outsource due to the difference in cost, as a full time IT employee usually has a salary of £35,000-£50,000 a year. There are many other advantages of outsourcing your IT, most notably the fact that rather than just one individual taking charge, we can offer a selection of professionals with experience in different processes, so no matter what you need, you are guaranteed a high level of service.
Large (250+ Employers)
Outsourcing for large businesses can be highly advantageous as operations such as network management, helpdesk and server operations can be dealt with by us, leaving your IT department to concentrate on other technological procedures and developments.
The day to day running of your business can be greatly aided by many things, from outsourcing your IT for maximum efficiency to calling upon professional shredding services London that ensures confidentiality at all times.
Moving your in-house servers and fixed line phones to the cloud is today more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’. More so, it’s becoming increasingly urgent in organisations where in-house IT is holding back business growth and even putting the business at risk. However, many organisations see cloud migration itself as risky, complex and expensive. But it needn’t be. It doesn’t have to be hard to say goodbye to in-house IT.
If things start happening, don’t worry, don’t stew, just go right along and you’ll start happening too.
― Dr. Seuss
In 2013, more than 70% of companies surveyed by IDC were using, planning, or researching cloud strategies – and that figure continues to increase.
But here’s the bad news. Bloor Research gauges cloud migration failure at a shocking 38%. Added to that the confusing melée of cloud vendors out there, and no wonder small and medium sized organisations are concerned about how they can achieve successful cloud migration. Especially when they usually have fewer resources and more at risk than large enterprises.
When cloud migration becomes urgent
In 10 years, we’ve helped numerous organisations migrate to the cloud – simply, securely and successfully. And we’ve grown to understand the pains and concerns of our customers.
So today, I can share three signs that should shout loud and clear to you that your business needs cloud migration – and fast.
How to know when you’re ready for cloud migration
1. Your business has outgrown its in-house IT infrastructure
You’ll know that you’ve outgrown your in-house infrastructure when you see evidence of the following:
Physical signs
Your server room is a mess. It’s cramped and hot. There’s quite literally no room for your IT infrastructure to grow and meet your future business needs. You think that the only way you can grow is by major reconfiguration of people and office arrangements.
Rising cost of IT per head
Your business needs to flex according to projects and cycles. But regardless, cost per capita should remain constant. In your business, this isn’t happening. And whether that’s because you’re running more applications, dealing with security breaches or down to cost-cutting, you need to address this.
Merger or similar change
The total cost of integrating your disparate onsite IT systems and networks far outweighs the costs of moving multiple entities to hosted desktop and VoIP.
No flexibility for data
Your IT isn’t allowing for the peaks and troughs in data processing that your business demands.
It’s all too complex
The introduction of new services and applications is creating an ever-growing number of silos and blind spots across the business. Hopes for future change and the desire for an agile business are fading. Fast.
2. Your in-house time-bomb: Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS)
Organisations that run on Microsoft Small Business Servers (SBS) 2003/07 are most likely massively feeling the restrictive headache of old world IT. These old servers are poorly equipped to deal with today’s exponential data growth or adoption of new lines of business applications. And your businesses is poorly equipped to deal with the licencing restrictions of SBS.
But that’s not half the story.
Microsoft is pulling support for its small business servers. That means you’ll no longer receive new security updates, hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates.
With what is effectively now an insecure server, all your data, applications and processes are highly vulnerable to attack. At risk are your email, document storage and business applications. This means your Sage Accounts, CAD Drawings or legal case management software, for example, are all exposed. Yes, your server will still function, but basically it’s a ticking time bomb. And if a vulnerability were to be exploited, all businesses could be exposed to attack.
53% of small-medium business leaders consider growth their number one priority for 2015
If you’re running on SBS, your business needs to migrate to new platforms and technologies as soon as possible. Security risks aside, small businesses, more than most, recognise the need to grow – the need to be agile and adaptable. In a September survey of 232 business and IT leaders, we found that 53% of respondents’ number one priority for 2015 is business growth.
A cloud-based infrastructure hits the jackpot when it comes to allowing business growth. It allows a business to scale. It’s reliable. It’s affordable. It can be packaged according to industry needs.
Of course, each organisation is different; it may be that some areas of the business are left in-house. However the simplest, most agile and secure solution to the SBS problem, is to migrate your Exchange server to Office 365 and of all your other SBS components to hosted desktop (desktop-as-a-service – or DaaS).
3. You need to improve communications and productivity
To compete in business, you’ve got to have speed, mobility and security. But does your in-house infrastructure support the technologies required to function competitively? Are your people able to communicate and collaborate quickly and productively no matter where – or when – they are? Do you have a BYOD policy in place so that your business and customer data is secure if your employees are using their personal devices for work? Is your data encrypted and backed up? Do you have a disaster recovery solution in place?
These are issues that can all be addressed with cloud solutions. And they all rely on the availability of your critical business systems – your email, databases, file stores and business applications. Your business can’t afford poor availability and bandwidth to hold you back from these new working methods.
Business telephone migration to VoIP from a traditional landline/PBX can be painfully complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. You know it will improve your business mobility, business continuity and bottom line, however there are six key things you need to watch out for before you plan your VoIP migration.
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~ Dr Seuss
Why choose hosted VoIP?
But first, let’s look at why you’d want to move your business phones from a traditional landline to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP):
- It supports mobile working and BYOD policies
- It’s cheaper: you avoid CapEx, and instead pay a monthly subscription for what you need
- You get improved call quality with faster broadband
- It boosts business efficiency and productivity
And also:
- It’s suitable for businesses of all sizes
- It’s hassle-free
- It supports growth
- It’s in the cloud, so your business can continue to function no matter what – through flood or fire or mobile working
In May 2014, we covered the key reasons why businesses should switch to hosted VoIP in some depth. If you haven’t already, you can read about them in this blog: Why switch to VoIP for business?
You’ve decided to migrate to hosted VoIP; what next?
So now to the crux of the matter. Here are the six critical questions to ask when moving your business telephones to hosted VoIP.
1. Is my broadband good enough?
VoIP 100% relies on good internet bandwidth to transfer call data. So a slow internet connection will immediately affect the quality of your call.
2. What length of contract best suits my business?
Doubtless, you’ll be looking to minimise the monthly cost of your business VoIP. You’ll always find the cheapest rates if you commit to longer time-scales, so look for a provider that offers 12-, 24- and 36-month contracts. With the flexibility of cloud, you can add extra licences on a month-by-month basis, according to your business requirements, so you only pay for what you need. Opt for a rolling contract, and – while you’ll have more flexibility – you’ll pay premium prices.
3. What level of customer support does my business need?
Alongside email, your phone communications most likely underpin your functionality as a business. It’ll be critical for customer enquiries and sales activities. As with traditional PBX – or landline – any problems will immediately have repercussions in the form of frustrated customers and depleted sales.
This is where a top-rate, UK based customer service will make a world of difference. In this day and age there really is no reason for prolonged – if any – service disruption. There’s also the added benefit of a 24-hour ability to change any of your settings, such as auto-attendant options, hunt groups and call forwarding.
4. What hardware does my business need?
When migrating to business VoIP you’ll need to ditch your traditional analogue phones. It sounds wasteful, I know, but unfortunately they aren’t forward compatible. Business grade handsets offer high definition call quality on a secure network protected from hackers.
5. How mobile do we need to be?
Some service providers limit their packages to certain devices. Work out what your business needs and go from there. With a robust and compliant cloud solution for your industry, you should be able to access your hosted VoIP services from your PCs, laptops, tablets and mobile phones – wherever you have a suitable internet connection.
6. What hidden costs do I need to be aware of?
Make sure you’ve looked into costs. Go for per-second billing as opposed to per-minute billing – that’ll make your monthly expenditure a lot more attractive.
What you should expect from your business VoIP provider
So you’ve covered the six key bases and may well have chosen your VoIP provider. Now you just need to make sure they will provide you with:
- A telephony audit and cost analysis
- Solution design and call route planning
- Number porting
- Smooth implementation and early use support
- Product training
Microsoft Office 365 is essentially all your familiar Office applications, but hosted in the cloud. It supports business mobility and the Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) for work model, as you can access your office from anywhere, on any device and at any time. Security is addressed with encryption and intrusion monitoring. But how can you make sure you’re choosing the right Office 365 provider for your business? For example, what happens if you hit downtime and need to get your email back up immediately?
Why Office 365 is good for business mobility and BYOD
Before we look at the six critical questions you need to ask when considering the best Office 365 package for your business, let’s look at how Office 365 has great advantages for today’s modern business.
- Office 365 goes where you do: no matter where you are, your files, email, calendar, contacts, IM, online meetings and team sites go with you.
- It works across all your devices – for example your tablet, laptop, iPhone or Android.
- It’s fresh and familiar: the suite of Office apps are always up-to-date.
- It’s secure: you data is protected against malware, spam, phishing attacks and other threats.
- It’s available 24/7.
- Exchange Online makes your email accessible on your own devices. There are no major firewall changes and no Exchange servers are required.
- With Microsoft WebApps and a plug into Outlook, you can edit, collaborate and share documents in ABC and – in one click – attach a public link to emails. All while on the move.
- With Lync, you can communicate from your own devices, connect, share desktops and hold online meetings.
Six essential questions to ask when choosing your Office 365 package
So here’s the crux of it all. If you’re considering moving to Office 365 to support your business mobility and BYOD programme – or for any other reason – we think it’s important to ask yourself the following six questions.
1. Customer service: will you get the speed and quality of customer service support that you need?
Say, for example, you’re about to present at a client’s office and go to download the email with your presentation document on it when you realise your email is down. The obvious solution would be to call up Microsoft and ask them to fix it asap. But you haven’t paid for the top level of support, so you’re given a ticket and placed in a queue. Your important meeting is over long before your email is back up and running.
Make sure you have the level of support that suits your business requirements. Cloud Direct is a Microsoft cloud services provider (CSP) partner, so we can offer our highly-responsive 24/7 services on top of Microsoft’s basic package. So our customers get the best of both worlds.
2. Data security & privacy: are you comfortable that your cloud services provider will give your business data an acceptable level of security and privacy?
If yours is a small to medium business, you’re likely to experience better security using Office 365 than you can (probably) afford on your own. But, if security is paramount to your business, make sure your data is always recoverable and compliant with legal and industrial regulations. You should consider ISO 27001 accredited backup and disaster recovery.
3. Data uptime: will you get acceptable uptime and accessibility of your data?
Microsoft guarantees data uptime of 99.9%, which may be fine for some organisations, however the impact of downtime can be severe – especially if you’re in a heavily regulated industry such as financial or legal services, healthcare, energy or government.
We have addressed this with our offer of additional security for Office 365 that should afford you greater uptime. This means both productivity and legal requirements are addressed – you can keep working on the move, confident that you aren’t risking your business with a lower level of support.
4. Retrieving your data: if your cloud services provider stops offering one or more of the services, do you know how – or if – you can get your data back?
Your data is critical to your business success. Make sure you find out what the process is in this scenario, and make sure you’re happy with it.
5. Business exposure: if you stop paying your provider, do you have a mechanism to access everything your business depends on?
Don’t risk your intellectual property by getting caught out in a data grey zone. Make sure you know the answer and that your business is protected.
6. Your employees are, in fact your biggest threat. So have you got a BYOD policy in place?
Having said the first five points, in fact, when it comes to business mobility and a BYOD model, your service provider is not the most likely to be the cause of business disruption. Your biggest threats, in fact, are your own staff and associates.
“Nearly a third of smartphone users who bring their own devices into the workplace have suffered a security issue and not told their boss”. ~ a Gartner study
In the same study, Gartner found that only 15 per cent of respondents had signed any kind of BYOD usage agreement, and a worrying 59 per cent of employees are using their own devices in the workplace with no formal agreements or controls in place.
With the Information Commissioners Office threatening fines of up to half a million pounds for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act, a BYOD policy is a corporate must-have. Check out this blog: BYOD security risks.
You can download our BYOD policy template here. You’re welcome to edit and brand the template according to your specific organisation’s requirements.