• Office365 – Microsoft Exchange, hosted at Microsoft.
• GoogleApps – Enterprise version of Google’s E-Mail system.

Both have their good points and their bad points, and PC Correct can implement both. If you want to move your E-Mail to the cloud, speak to us and we’ll work through your requirements and make a recommendation as to which one to use. But here are some pros and cons of each system to give you an idea of what they’re like.

E-Mail interface
Most businesses already use Microsoft Outlook and this is the “native” client that’s used with Office365. You can also use “Outlook Web Access”, something that many people are already familiar with, to access it via a web browser. And of course as well as E-Mail, both of these programs give you access to your calendar, contacts etc which are all stored on the Office365 server.

GoogleApps is best used via the GMail web interface, something which many people are familiar with. There is also a GoogleApps synchronisation tool for Microsoft Outlook to allow you to stick with this if you’re already familiar with it, although this is less polished than using Microsoft Outlook talking directly to a Microsoft Exchange server. GoogleApps also provides calendars, contacts etc again both via the web interface and the Outlook synchronisation.

E-Mail – the technical side
Both systems offer you 25 GB of storage space. This should be more than you’re likely to need! Microsoft Outlook has a long standing archiving system which can be set to automatically archive E-Mails into local folders on your machine periodically (eg “Every month, archive everything older than 1 year”). GoogleApps at the moment doesn’t have this facility.

Office365 incorporates Microsoft Forefront anti-virus / anti-spam on all packages, to ensure that nothing dangerous or annoying gets to your Inbox. GoogleApps incorporates the Postini system which while less powerful is also effective.

Chatting and Colaboration
GoogleApps has the GoogleChat system, which is integrated with your contacts and can be used either through the web interface, or by installing the GoogleTalk application on your computer.

With Office365, Microsoft have introduced their new Lync service, an advanced system which as well as chat supports file transfer, audio and video chat, and integrates with Microsoft Outlook. It can also link to users who run Windows Messenger and AOL chat, and supports meetings with up to 250 participants.

Office365 also includes Sharepoint, a platform for hosting web sites (public facing Internet or internally facing Intranet), and for file sharing and collaboration.

Other Applications
GoogleApps gives you access to Google’s impressive online office application system – GoogleDocs. This includes a web based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application, all designed to work from the bottom-up “online”. And because of this, they allow online document sharing and collaboration to work really well.

Office365 also provides online office applications, again including Word, Excel and Powerpoint. However while they may in some ways be more familiar to existing users of Microsoft Office than GoogleDocs is, they are perhaps less well designed to work online.

However, some configurations of Office365 also a license for the full Office 2010 Professional Plus, which you can download and install on your computer and use this to access all your Office365 resources using the latest versions of the Microsoft Office applications.

Offline working
What if you’re not connected to the Internet for a while? Can you still work? Of course, the web-based Outlook Web Access and GMail interfaces can’t be used, but what other options are there?

If you’ve configured Microsoft Outlook on your computer, then you can continue to work with both your Office365 and GoogleApps E-Mail offline, although of course E-Mails won’t be sent and new E-Mails won’t be received until you’re back online.

Cost
Last, but by no means least, is of course the cost of the two systems.

GoogleApps is simple – £33 per user per year.

Office365 varies depending on what options you want. It’s priced on a “per user, per month” basis and varies from about £4 to £18. More expensive packages include more of the options listed above, and better support services. There are also bulk discounts available.

So what next?
Give us a call or drop us an E-Mail. We at PC Correct are resellers for both Office365 and GoogleApps and can set up either service for you. We’ll listen to your requirements make a recommendation as to which one we think suits you best.

Whether you decide to go with our recommendation, or to go with the other package, we can configure it and migrate over your existing E-Mail and documents, to enable you to work in the best way possible.

Correct Group have provided IT services and Disaster Recovery Planning in accordance to the needs of the Skills Funding Agency. Using Double Take the infrastructure replicates itself so that in the event of a site failure, an up to date environment can be spun up, allowing the team to keep working. For more information on Double Take clicke here or contact us on 0207 372 4106 and press 3 for sales.

WorldSkills London 2011 will be the world’s largest, international skills competition with young people from across the globe competing to be the best of the best in their chosen skill. For more information on WorldSkills London 2011 please visit their website here.

Crucially we are now able to spread the cost of this enterprise business continuity solution with our software rental model enterprise. Disaster Recovery Planning is now within reach of SMBs.

We are able to offer 2 levels of protection with this service:

1. Advanced Backup with Same Day Recovery Service
2. High Availability with 1 hour Recovery Service

Advanced Backup with Same Day Recovery Service

This service utilises Virtual Private Servers to give business continuity reassurance by mirroring the Clients protected servers to a repository server (either on a continuous or scheduled basis). We are able to offer up to 15TB of storage for your backups (that’s 15,000 GB or 15,000,000 MB!). As this is housed off site, it gives protection from any disaster that may occur to the Client’s site allowing us to recover whole servers or even individual deleted or corrupted files.

All information is transferred over an encrypted IPSEC site-to-site VPN, ensuring that your data is not accessible to any unauthorised parties. Where bandwidth is insufficient to allow continuous backup to the hosted repository server, we can install an on-premise repository server to aggregate the data before it is pushed up to the cloud. This can be installed on a standard PC, as long as it has sufficient hard drive space to service the backup requirements.

Double Take Advanced Backup Model

Should there be a total loss of the Client’s onsite server(s), we can provision a VPS for the Client to use on a temporary basis, or if required, the Client can take the opportunity to move to a hosted cloud solution for their server(s) on a permanent basis. Obviously the data can also be returned to the Client premises either over the internet, or couriered on a USB hard drive for re-importing back onto the restored hardware.

Key features of this service include:

• Continuous protection of onsite Servers
• Encrypted communication between Client site and the Data Centre
• Can be scaled from 1 server to as many servers as required
• Fast recovery to Virtual Private Servers for same day restore

High Availability with 1 hour Recovery Service

Building on the Advanced Backup service, this solution takes things a step further. Instead of simply using a hosted repository server, the High Availability service maintains a mirrored copy of the on-premise to dedicated ‘warm’ standby infrastructure. This mirrored server is kept up to date with real-time data syncing allowing critical services to be resumed within minutes of a disaster scenario.

Doubletake High Availability Model DRP

Our new services allow you to ensure continuity of your business in almost any scenario. Why not give Nick Brennan a call on 020 7372 4106 to discuss how this could benefit your business today.

“Well it’s not really that common in your sector. Mac use is traditionally limited to the creative world and the software available is very limiting”.

But times are changing! Mac growth in business is astronomical and the pace of growth is outstripping growth in Microsoft Windows (source IDC). Microsoft is still the overwhelming choice of operating system in office environments but the massive surge in use of iPads, iPhones and the increase in Mac PCs used at home has meant that increasingly companies are looking to either use entirely Mac set ups in their business or integrate several Macs on the network.

So what does that mean in terms of general IT policy and support? Mac Correct, Correct Groups dedicated Mac support team, are noticing a fast increasing client base. Often the perception is that “Mac just work” and don’t really need support is proving to be misleading.

As Macs growth in use continues, the amount of viruses and malware targeting Apple operating systems grows too. All too often environments are set up without adequate and compatible virus protection; without using Open Directory Apple’s version of Active Directory so permissions on shared folders are non-existent; and without a centralised back up strategy.

Apple provide excellent in store support, but anyone who’s had a problem help in correctly and professionally setting up a Mac or mixed Mac environment on site is severely lacking. That presents a massive opportunity Mac Correct to fill the void in business Mac Support. Contact the Mac Correct team on 0800 093 6579 to ask how they can help support your Apple Machines.

This is the single biggest factor driving organisations to make the decision to outsource. An experienced and qualified IT support professional could cost between £30,000 and £50,000+ to employ.
On top of their bottom line salary is:

• the expense of the Employers contribution to National Insurance payment
• training and personal development (in an ever changing field
• staff cover for holidays, sickness and other forms of absence

In addition, recruiting to a post in the first-place (and re-recruiting, if it should become vacant) costs significant amounts of money and resources.

Only larger organisations can experience economies of scale from having large IT teams, that can also cover each other’s absence and supplement each-others knowledge as part of a wider learning.

Companies without a core IT function don’t warrant large specialist IT teams within them. IT support companies fulfil that need. That’s what Outsourced companies are for.

Managerial Headache:
Whether a Director, a COO, Office manager or someone else is responsible for the technology within a company they must eventually answer difficult questions such as:

• Do we have robust systems in place that if the server was stolen or burned in a fire tomorrow we could continue to operate soon afterwards?
• What would happen if one or more of our IT support staff quit or left abruptly due to ill-health? Can we be sure that we have the required knowledge to continue to function?
• How can we know how much IT investment and proactive work should be undertaken to prevent serious problems for the organisation in the future? Particularly as in-house staff are discincentivised to actively upgrade or renew the corporate infrastructure.
• How can we retain a competitive edge over our rivals using modern hardware and software, if our staff are insulated from the outside world and have no experience other than working on our own systems?
• The in-house team that might be asked to answer these questions has a vested self-interest in the answers. It can often be difficult to challenge the accepted wisdom within your own organisation.
• So how do you safely out-source such an important function?
• All organisational change carries risk which needs to be managed. Care and discretion are key to a successful transition. You might wish to:
• Invite an IT support company to discretely assess how suitable your IT support function is for outsourcing.
• Fully cost the staffing costs and associated on-costs (such as NI tax, office accommodation, training and recruitment) over the past few years for the purposes of comparing IT support quotations and tender responses.
• Identify key individuals that hold specialist knowledge and skills valuable to your organisation. Identify the replacement or retention of these skills and this knowledge as a key requirement of any outsourcing proposal. Identify strategies for addressing this:
  • Raise the possibility of retaining the one staff member alone as a specialist, or
  • Investigate the possibility of key staff members joining the new support company to continue to support you (and to personally develop in a more IT relevant environment)
  • Develop a plan of knowledge handover and documentation, preferably well in advance of any change taking place.

Not all organisations would necessarily gain from completely outsourcing their IT support, but the overall benefit certainly would suggest that it’s worthwhile looking at whether you can.

Our Servers come installed with Office 2010 Standard (which includes; Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Publisher), Anti-Virus, Adobe Reader, a PDF printer tool and we can also install other software that you have a licence for (subject to compatibility).

Many of our clients are now asking the question; should I be doing the traditional thing and investing in my office equipment now or going for a hosted solution? What are the advantages of each?

PC Correct are proud to be able to say that we’re happy in both scenarios, we make recommendations based on what we feel is right for our clients and not for our pockets. Cloud hosting gets better all the time, but it’s not right for everyone.

So when is it right?

Hosted desktop allows true sharing of data and directories and eliminates the need for changing of backup tapes and local maintenance.

If you’re a company working across several sites, perhaps on limited budget or with restricted budgets, hosting your data can really work for you. Whilst buying a server with user licenses, installation costs and ongoing maintenance can add up, many people find that renting a virtual server and renting licenses on a monthly basis works better for their cash flow.

What’s more if you have several sites, each one with a fair few people, hosting all the data in just one of them can cause problems for the others, if for example the internet at that site fails or isn’t fast enough. Our data centre has high-speed connectivity to the internet back bone and fail over should one connection drop, virtually guaranteeing you availability.

In a disaster situation, such as the closure of one of your offices, you can simply send staff home, ask them to work from an internet cafe or hot seats in another office. Business Continuity Planning just became so much easier.

When should you think again?

If you have one site, you have to think carefully about e what would happen if people couldn’t work there. How much would a simple internet outage cost your business. There are always ways to mitigate that, maybe by increasing the strength of the internet connectivity, but as ever you have to weigh the costs against the benefit.

If costs is an overriding factor it might be cheaper in the long run to simply enter a lease agreement and even bundle the installation charges with that. PC Correct have strong partnerships with several leasing companies and can quickly convert a quote into a monthly agreement.

Stephen brings with him a wealth of experience as both a well qualified  IT professional and having structured and led customer service teams in large blue chip companies.

Stephen writes “Correct Group are a professional and fast growing  company and I’m excited and looking forward to being a part of their continuing success. I’ve already spoken to many of our clients and feel that we have a very strong platform on which to build. As ever we’ll continue to learn and get even better”.

Brandon Coppel MD of Correct Group has said “We’re delighted to welcome Stephen to the team. His appointment reflects our increasing focus on customer service and client satisfaction. Stephen will undoubtedly help us retain high standards as the company looks to grow”.

Google apps is not a panacea for all problems however it does offer and excellent value hosted solution for certain types of clients. We have implemented Google migrations for clients who use Mac and PC workstations and a variety of Server architectures (Including Microsoft and Apple). Generally migrations go well, however there are three issues currently that one should consider before embarking on a migration:

1) Google currently does not officially support IMAP connectivity to a Google apps account from Entourage or Outlook 2011 on a Mac – it can particularly cause issues if there are large mailboxes involved – Our IT Support team here in London have managed to find a way of working with this.

2) When migrating legacy mail there are often failures during upload. You must always plan for how to deal with failures.

3) You must plan for how you are going to with shared contacts – Google has an interesting way of dealing with this –that is not intuitive to people coming from a Mac or PC Support Background.

If these issues are not relevant to you then a migration to Google Apps should be fairly simple. If you are interested in a Google apps migrations – Please contact our London based IT / ICT Support Helpdesk The Correct Group – PC –Correct , Mac Correct and Phones Correct are always available to offer PC Support , Mac Support, ICT Support , Phone Support, VOIP Support and Implementation from our office in North London.

The importance of Google to website owners (that wish their site to be found) remains obvious. In late 2010 Google accounted for approximately 91% of searches on the internet. The next highest Search engine, Yahoo, only accounted for about 4%, figures not lost on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals and the wider IT support for business.

Google’s complex trawling of the internet – following links and building up rankings for the relevance of sites to any given search term has placed them in the enviable position of deciding the destination for most casual viewers of the web. The commercial significance of that is enormous and in recent years Google has successfully changed from just being a free website-finding-service to providing “paid for listings” too.

On the back of this global rise in prominence, they have also changed themselves into a very successful software and service provider, designing and distributing web applications and services that are (in effect) simply different ways to search (for example, geographically, in the case of Google maps or visually in the case of Goggles).

They now have firmed their grip on this position by offering their own web and desktop operating systems and browsers Chrome and mobile device platform, Android.

It is their cheap and free Cloud hosted applications, Google Apps that have enabled them to challenge Microsoft as the IT Support services productivity-software choice for their clients (challenging the position of Microsoft Office and especially of Microsoft Exchange as untouchable business products).

All of these developments are strategic and certainly support Google as the gatekeepers to our internet. If Google own and control the code that powers the search site, the browser (and other internet accessing software), the operating system and mobile devices then Google is truly the gatekeeper to our internet. They control our view to the online world.

However, change has been in the air for some time. A second phase of the internet has seen the rise of a new type of internet gatekeeper.  Google for all their dominance, failed to spot the importance of social networking as early as others have. Facebook and Twitter users (in particular) are able to signpost and recommend web-content to their known friends and associates. The strength of these recommendations is much stronger than a search engine because we know (and probably trust) the individuals directing us.

This change is well established now and Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and all the other Social Networks are strong in their positions. Their users are unlikely to desert them in any numbers and risk losing contact with all the friends, followers and links that they have gathered. Their consumers have made a huge investment in time and effort in growing their network through them. Now the Social Networks can direct traffic to paid for listings, and can do so based on more personal information about their users than Google could ever offer.

Whilst no-one would argue that Google is no longer important, web analysts can now draw conclusions that their position as the only gatekeeper worth watching is no longer true. So if Google’s seemingly unassailable position as the only gatekeeper of the web has been shown to be challenged by the rise of others (the Social Networks), then could there be others yet to come that will challenge Google, Twitter and Facebook further? Well possibly yes.

There are now sites whose aim is to be the platform from which we all view the internet. A force for democratisation of the web, they will provide platforms for us all to recommend and comment on the web where only webmasters themselves once had control.

StumbleUpon is one such site. Where each web user can make recommendations to others who can simply press their stumble upon button and their webpage within will randomly go to a recommendation of other users based on their interests.

Stumble upon is possibly just a flavour of the web-democracy that is coming. Yet another, “Pushnote” is a new “layer” to the internet. By signing up users can browse the internet and share recommendations and commentary on anything they see. This is a real democratic development in social browsing. It could be very soon that Pushnote or a similar service erodes the reliance on Google, Facebook and others a little more.

The commercial significance of having more ways to be found in the internet has broadened the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals remit from optimising websites to be found using search engines to also be found through social networks and now social browsing. There are more and more gatekeepers as there are more gates.

Copyright © 2011Correct Group Ltd

Again this year instead of sending Christmas cards we are making a donation to our favourite Charity – The Parkinsons Disease Society If you’d also like to make a donation please go to https://supporters.parkinsons.org.uk/SSLPage.aspx?pid=236