News from Glo Networks

The Future Tech Seminars - from Glo Networks

How to keep one step ahead in business is always key to ensuring that you remain competitive. This applies to many different aspects of a company’s operation but one area which is essential to ensure your business remains efficient and customer focused is the correct implementation and development of IT systems to give a competitive advantage.

In conjunction with Glo Networks, the Bridgend based IT Support and Consultancy Services company www.glo-networks.com , the South Wales Chamber is running a series of networking and information events – The Future Tech Seminars.

This series will focus on a variety of different topics which are crucial to SMEs and which can make a real difference to your business. Don’t worry, these events are not specifically targeted at IT Managers and their staff, but would also be especially helpful to:

• Managing Directors
• Finance Directors
• Operations Managers
• Business Owners
• Marketing and Sales Managers
• Customer Service Managers and Team Leaders
• Consultants and Advisers
• Individuals with an interest in IT or corporate efficiency

The first three Future Tech networking seminars are:

Green IT – Visions of a greener future - presented by Ian Brooks – Sustainability Consultant, IBM

Chambers of Commerce Business Exhibition, Celtic Manor Hotel, Newport 22nd September 2010

Discover how Green IT practices are helping companies across the UK to reduce costs, energy and their environmental impact. Discover how to:

• Plan or update IT infrastructure to be energy efficient, comply with government and industry regulations
• Implement Virtualisation- Increase server utilisation by consolidating workloads onto fewer servers, thereby lowering your IT maintenance costs
• Reduce energy consumption in a Green IT environment

Are you ready to respond? Is your organisation ready to do ‘more with less’? - Presented by Patrick Nash, CEO - Connect Assist

Park House Club, Cardiff – Tuesday 19th October 2010 - 5.00pm

SMEs have shouldered the brunt of the recession and although the economy may be improving, public sector cuts are going to have a big impact on the private sector – and the brunt of this may well be borne by SMEs again. As contractors demand ‘more for less’, Patrick Nash will discuss how companies can use customer experience technology to deliver services and engage people online – thereby managing increasing demand for less cost.

Patrick Nash is an engaging entrepreneur and speaker who set up Connect Assist four years ago. The company helps organisations in the private, public and third sectors improve the quality and efficiency of their services and operations, using technology, lean methodology and smart thinking. This session will highlight some case studies and demonstrate some technology to create a lively discussion.

Cloud Computing – A Case Study - presented by Chris Connor, Glo Networks and Jon Stacey, Partner at Riley Chartered Accountants.

Legacy Cardiff International Hotel, Junction 32/M4 Merthyr Road, Tongwynlais, Cardiff - Wednesday 10th November 2010 - 5.00pm

Riley have been enthusiastic adopters of Cloud Computing. The ability to communicate as a team with their customers is paramount to the firm as is the recording and storing of information in the most efficient and accessible format. Hear how “Cloud Computing” radically changed this organisations business practices and the positive impact it achieved from making the change.

For full details contact Glo Networks on 0845 5210 140 or visit their website www.glo-networks.com. Entry to all events is FREE.

There must be another way! Only Microsoft – think again!

Sometimes you have to think out of the box to achieve the most surprising benefits and this is often the case when making decisions in respect of your IT systems and software.

The majority of companies take the orthodox route and choose Microsoft for their email and back office suite requirements but there are alternatives that many companies are now finding are more cost effective and which provide them with similar functionality to the traditional offering from Microsoft.

Increasing numbers of our clients are now looking at other solutions and this has seen many of them migrating e-mail, calendars and instant messaging to Google. The migration process is easily undertaken allowing communication IT processes to be switched to web-browser access without any “pain”. For more information read about our client’s experience here

What are the advantages in changing to Google?

• As it is web browser based all information becomes immediately accessible from anywhere in the world from any computer or device with an Internet connection
• The Google APPS solution allows the storage of templates for letters, spreadsheets and many other management tools without the requirement to purchase any hardware or software
• Significant cost savings – a typical 20 user company using Microsoft emails and Office software can cost in the region of £20,000 whilst using the Google alternative could cost as little as £4000
• No requirement for an office-based back-up solution
• No issues with software updates

If you’re thinking of reviewing your office systems, take time to consider all the options. There are increasingly more options available as cloud computing breaks new ground and provides greater flexibility to business owners.

Becoming a Green Office is as easy as A B C

Chris Gledhill is the Managing Director of Future Directions. Chris is a science graduate with post graduate qualifications in Management Studies, and Ecology and Behaviour. Chris established Future Directions in 2009 following a 30 year career. He has experienced aspects of environmental and tourism challenges at all levels- from a countryside ranger dealing with front-line issues, to land management balancing the many different needs, constraints and customer demands with the hard realities of managing to a budget, to most recently as a CEO of a National Park Authority, dealing with the strategic and tactical goals of a large organisation. Chris has extensive experience working across the public, private and voluntary sectors engaging with them on a variety of projects including rural development, conservation, tourism and destination management.

In a recent editorial on Green IT - see below - Chris discussed various issues impacting on business and the support Glo Networks can provide in these areas:

Several years ago I attended a seminar on the paperless office. It was a fascinating presentation and I was really taken by what could be done to become more sustainable in the ways that we operate while significantly reducing our environmental footprint. However, as most of the audience were thinking about what steps we could take to eliminate paper, one wag at the back of the room called out “you stand as much chance of having a paperless office as having a paperless loo!” As I visit businesses today to conduct environmental reviews and audits, I can’t fail to see that our joker in the pack’s prediction is sadly still very much the norm. Many offices today are not maximising on the use of modern technology and are still using inefficient and energy consuming IT in their day to day operations and don’t stop to think what steps they can take to green their office.

It doesn’t matter what the size of the office is, there are significant benefits to running a Green Office. Some of these include;

• An energy efficient office helps reduce waste and reduces pollution.
• Introducing energy efficient IT such as Virtual servers can save as much as 80% on energy consumption costs and bring other valuable efficiency savings
• By reducing waste you save money. Waste includes the electricity, heat and water that you don’t need to use!
• Reductions in your CO2 emissions by using less electricity and changing to a green power supplier
• By switching off office equipment when not being used significantly reduces your power consumption.
• Eliminating or reducing your paper consumption not only saves money, it saves trees as well. If you have to print, print double sided copies, it reduces your paper consumption by half. How much do you spend on paper and printer inks alone each year?
• Involve everyone and you and your team will feel good about helping to reduce costs, waste and Green House Gas Emissions.
• Having one over on your competitors and being a more attractive choice in the supply chain

Becoming a green office sounds a no brainer, so why are so few offices doing it? The standard office I see has the usual desks complete with in/out tray, adjacent filing cabinets and printing facility, and a room dedicated to the storage of servers, the purpose of which for most employees is shrouded in mystery and where few staff venture!. This is what we generally expect an office to be like. But could it be different? If we don’t experience any different examples of office life, is it likely that we will change our attitude to the way that we can work?

Well one business I worked with recently was the exact opposite of the norm. There was not a printer, filing cabinet or piece of paper in sight. Glo Networks is a technology company, providing IT business support and consultancy. From the outset of establishing the business the Managing Director made a commitment that the company would operate paperless offices and this is built in to the corporate behaviour for all employees. Any incoming paper documents are scanned and shredded within an hour of receipt. Occasionally they have to send paper documents out as some organisations still refuse to accept digital documents, but in any one year they still use less than one ream of paper. The majority of their cash transactions are carried out using digital banking and every customer is encouraged to do likewise. But the commitment doesn’t stop there. The business measures its energy and water consumption and works hard to eliminate waste. Its recent environmental review highlighted its commitment when working with their clients to encourage an environmental approach. This is reflected in their newly adopted Environmental Policy. They want to be seen as a model for others to follow and in doing so are encouraging their clients to adopt a green approach.

In carrying out their recent environmental review, I asked their MD Chris Connor how they encourage their clients to go green he said, “When we’ve chatted to customers about being greener they’ve never been that interested. I suppose it’s still an emerging thought process that many managers / owners haven’t appreciated yet. However when we have explained the real benefits to them which include lower energy bills, reduced costs, more efficient use of technology and the more effective use of office space they are keen to embrace the Green IT concept. For example, we’ve just carried out a project to remove six physical servers from a customer’s premises and replace them with two rented, hosted server in a UK data centre. They’re saving money, getting a faster system, saving office space and cutting down on their energy consumption by as much as 80%.”

Chris Connor is quick to point out that operating a Green IT policy involves a variety of energy saving as well as money saving initiatives. “When we deploy desktop PCs for our clients we ensure that power-saving features, such as turning off the monitor and powering down the hard disks, are turned on. If only more businesses would commission an environmental review they would be able to see how they could improve their energy and environmental performance and reduce their costs.

In addition, we ensure that everything we do with the machines that we dispose of is compliant with the WEEE directive; we also have a green purchasing policy and are working closely with our hardware providers to provide greener products. We only replace equipment with new technology that has a smaller footprint and is compliant with the Energy Star standard”.

By far the most dramatic impact of greener IT for businesses is the use of IT virtualisation.

Virtualisation enables multiple operating systems to run on a single server. Server virtualisation improves IT asset utilisation and creates a resilient IT infrastructure that can quickly adapt to a company’s IT requirements. A typical room housing standard servers and storage facilities would require a data centre 10 times the size of a virtual server. By creating a virtualised environment savings of typically around 80% can be achieved.

The average server in operation within a business operates at only ten percent of its processing capacity, while using 80% of its maximum power.

Virtualisation reduces this inefficiency, as multiple virtual servers can run on a single piece of hardware. As a result, a business implementing a virtual server can operate at a fraction of the same power usage, heat production and floor space of single application servers. It provides a cost-effective and efficient method of conserving energy and space.

Another significant IT development over recent years is the introduction of Remote Working. This provides enormous benefits to a company whilst at the same time providing tremendous environmental benefits by reducing traffic congestion, fuel bills and office space requirements. In addition remote working has shown to be a great tool for recruiting and retention can reduce absenteeism and even curb stress-related illnesses. Many companies with remote employees report that they work an average of an hour more per day. And when disaster strikes whether its snow or ash clouds and staff are stuck at home or in the Caribbean they can still carry on working regardless ensuring sales are not lost and no detrimental impact on customer service is experienced.

In conducting the environmental review of this IT business I was impressed by the way the consideration of their impact on the environment was central to all their work practices and reflected in corporate behaviour. It was very clear that they had adopted an attitude that in everything that they did, they wanted to minimise their impact on the environment and in doing so this was reflected in their corporate behaviour. This behaviour is extended to their commitment to assist their clients to take those first steps in recognising that an environmental approach can reduce waste and save money.

Reducing our use of paper in the office is only the tip of the iceberg. The real savings to businesses come from a sea change in our attitude to the way that we work and deploy IT equipment in the office. This does require a commitment from managers/owners to review their environmental and energy performance. For many businesses this will require a change in office behaviour and the way we work, but when weighed up with the significant environmental and economic benefits it has to be a win-win situation. Who else is prepared to join with the growing number of businesses who have made the commitment to change their office behaviour and attitude to making a “greener” office a success?

Chris Gledhill

Director

Future Directions

Glo looking for new Team Members!

Here at Glo Networks the past few months have been full of new projects, new customers and all the fun that come with them. We certainly appreciate the business and as a team we all enjoy being kept on our toes with new and interesting challenges, however we also want to maintain the standard of excellence that we strive for in all our work. In order to keep growing as a company and keep all our customers 110% satisfied with our service we are looking to expand our team.

We are looking for the right technical person to join our team, ideally this person would have experience in some of the following:

• Microsoft software, primarily current desktop and server OSs
• Hypervisor technologies, in particular Hyper-V
• Structuring SQL queries and Powershell scripts
• Programming in PHP and ASP
• Must have fantastic people skills

Though we're also not adverse to taking on an enthusiastic person willing and prepared to learn the lot!

The position is full time; working from your home office. The only requirements are you must have access to a vehicle and you must have an active internet connection.

If any of the above sounds interesting and you'd like to know more than please email a copy of your CV to job201004@glo-networks.com

We look forward to hearing from you!

Apple's iPad breaks Internet!!

Apple's iPad launch was of such interest that it literally brought the Internet to a near-standstill.

While the launch of the iPad was taking place, IT departments across the country were frantically trying to get their servers back up and running. The impact of the launch caused Twitter to grind slowly to almost a halt and Twitter has reluctantly confirmed there was a problem, indicating it was trying to highlight the "source"

PC World was also caught out by the days events as they rely on the Cover It Live platform which is used to power live events, which again came to a virtual stop for almost 30 minutes. The problems seem to have been caused by the traffic for the event being twice as much as past live event broadcasts.

Problems were even felt by Internet service providers, many of whom told customers that the iPad launch was literally bringing the Internet to its knees.

Glo Networks drives business growth

IT Support Services company – Glo Networks - has announced a major new branding and marketing initiative to assist in their further growth in Wales and the West Country.

The Bridgend based company has since its formation in 2007 seen rapid growth through the acquisition of new clients across the region. Offering IT Support services through onsite technical support and remotely via their online monitoring and resolution system - Glo Help - the company provide a quality helpdesk support facility to SMEs through a team of experienced IT consultants, available 24/7 – 365 days a year.

Following a review of its business strategy undertaken in 2009, Glo Networks have embarked on an ambitious marketing initiative including a significant rebranding project designed to communicate the advantages of the Glo Networks service. Chris Connor, Managing Director at Glo Networks explains “The service we provide to our clients is exceptional and typically we have been able to cut our customers IT Support costs by over 50%. This is the result of ensuring our clients systems are set up correctly in the first place to manage their day to day requirements and also by using our online remote IT Support service which can identify issues before they occur.”

Incredibly the company has a 100% customer retention record since its formation, with clients all recognising the quality of service and value for money they receive through the Glo Networks support. The marketing strategy initiative has seen the company introduce a revitalised branding communications strategy to highlight these service quality standards and this includes the launch of a new website and plans to extend further its distribution channels through strategic alliances with other IT related businesses across the region.

To assist in the implementation of this strategy the company has appointed Cardiff based integrated marketing agency – Stepping Stones Marketing Solutions. Paul James, Managing Director of the agency commented “The opportunities for the company in the present market are excellent. Many SMEs are looking to cut costs in areas such as IT Support whilst at the same time make their operations and processes more efficient and robust by maximising the use of their IT systems across their business. Glo Networks has an excellent record in achieving cost reductions for its clients and its 100% client retention is a remarkable achievement in this industry”.

8 days a year wasted fixing computer problems

Following a survey of UK computer users undertaken by Microsoft, it has been revealed that people in the UK waste up to 8 days a year at work and at home dealing with computer problems.

All the day-to-day irritations faced by computer users were reported in the survey with users reporting that they get most annoyed with:

• Waiting for computers to load
• Searching fro files
• and the battery in a laptop running out
• Pop ups
• Installing new programs
• Printer issues
• Internet security threats

Not surprisingly 20% of users took their anger out on their keyboard or mouse and over 30% shouted at their computer. In the UK, users suggested that they wasted as much as 30 minutes a day dealing with computer related problems.

Glo Networks IT Support Services aims to alleviate this strife and worry by ensuring that any problems with PCs in the workplace are highlighted and fixed immediately by the use of their Glo Help remote support facility. The system allows Glo Network IT consultants to log on remotely to a companies IT network and identify problems and provide immediate solutions - thereby saving a company significant time and money.

Winter Freeze – Wales needs to continue development of remote working to keep business open.

The winter weather is beginning to take its toll on Welsh business as staff remain at home stretching company resources to keep offices, call centres, retail outlets and distribution hubs operating as normal.

Disruption caused by the heavy snowfall could cost UK businesses about £1bn, business groups have estimated. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) estimated 20% of the UK's working population, or 6.4 million people, did not make it to work in the recent bad weather.

A leading Welsh IT expert, Chris Connor from It Support Services Company Glo Networks thinks that much of the problems caused by the snow could be eliminated if Welsh companies implemented more flexible remote working practices.

So what stops companies implementing such innovative practices? Chris Connor says “It’s usually the misplaced perception that it is very costly or a lack of knowledge of how to implement remote working effectively. In order to consider remote working properly the first step is always for the company to recognise the benefits.

Companies who use remote working use a variety of ways to assist keeping their business running smoothly. This includes the use of webmail and remote access to all files and bespoke company systems that allow correspondence and communication to distribution depots, suppliers and customers. Just providing remote working on a piecemeal basis often causes more problems. Companies must have their remote working practices laid down so that the operation of the company’s key business processes continues as normal. Most companies have the technology in place already to operate remotely but either don’t know it or have it set up incorrectly”.

In addition to the impact on production other important aspects of business including sales and invoicing are all affected by bad weather disruptions. Chris Connor believes that every successful company will have a continuity plan for prolonged periods where access to premises is affected. “Companies should always consider the data that is vital for people, processes and technology. Remote working can ensure the majority of companies keep open for business.”

A previous study undertaken by YouGov and mobile phone firm Orange, in 2009 confirmed that around 30% of companies in the Welsh capital said they allowed their workers to operate remotely. The study also confirmed that remote workers in Wales were also provided with an array of technology to assist in remote working - 58% have laptops, 50% have mobile phones, 17% have smartphones like BlackBerry handsets and 39% have broadband internet access.

Glo Networks develop strategic alliances

Glo Networks has developed excellent relationships with a variety of companies (in the IT sector and beyond) to work together in developing business opportunities across the UK.

The Glo Networks IT Support Services have been found by many business to business companies to be an excellent added value service which they are able to offer to their existing client base. If you would like to discuss how your business could work in conjunction with Glo Networks to provide additional services to your clients please call Chris Connor on 0845 5210 140 or click here for further contact details.