Gardner is please to present the first of our “No Brainer” IT consultancy days. Now that the worst of the recession is hopefully behind us, what are the obvious IT strategies and tactics we can adopt to improve and grow our businesses at last? Our presenters will be drawn from current industry leaders who will give you the best advice on how to get the best from your IT, with specific reference to the significant technology changes taking place in 2009/2010.
If you are just a bit confused or bewildered about what it all the challenges mean to you, then come along and have things explained simply. Our agenda will include:-
Microsoft “The New Efficiency” including Virtualisation, Business Management
NetApp Storage Efficient Technologies
IBM Energy Efficiency Servers
Hosted Services
Cost Effective Security through IP cameras
Power and cost saving tools including PC PowerDown and DocSense
The venue is the Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port. The only sharks present will be those in the aquarium! Much of the advice offered on the day is around energy and cost saving, so we will all be doing a lot towards saving the planet. The session will finish around 11-30 am, leaving you plenty of time to network with the advisors or just take the opportunity to wander around Blue Planet and add to the enjoyment of your morning.
Over the last few years we have seen demand for hosted software applications rapidly increase. Due to the success of Microsoft’s online services (Business Productivity Online Suite) they have decided to reduce the price in order to continue to deliver a competitive and compelling offer that will help to drive continued customer adoption. In addition mailbox storage has now been increased from 5B to 25GB. From 3 November 2009 the new price structure for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite is as follows:
The market is rapidly changing – IDC research forecasts +30% YOY growth, 2007-2011 for hosted applications. We believe that 50% of email seats in the small to medium size business segment and 20% in the enterprise market will be delivered via hosted email within five years.
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We continue to offer rich cross and up sell opportunities with associated service opportunities. Our Software-plus-Services strategy means you can mix and match our products to deliver the perfect solution to your customers.
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Selling Online solutions delivers increased sales margins for partners and provides annuity revenues. Microsoft Online Services deliver a 18% fee in the first year and 6% every recurring year.
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You can earn revenues from implementing, integrating and managing a solution for your customers. A survey of 300 partners found that on average, for every £1 spent on licences, partners made more than £6 in service attach revenue and also benefited from shorter sales and delivery cycles.
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You can deliver a secure and reliable service to your customers, providing a streamlined communications and collaboration experience, while leveraging economies of scale for infrastructure and utilities costs.
Microsoft yesterday announced some new pricing for their excellent BPOS solution, for those who don’t know, Microsoft hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Comms Server and Live Meeting.
These price drops make a very attractive solution, even more so, driven by the market a little, but still some excellent unique point especially with Exchange, the ability to mix on premise and cloud exchange as far as I can see is unique to Microsoft’s offering, nothing forcing you all on premise or all “cloud” for quite a few people we’ve met with regarding “cloud” projects this is a big winner.
Couple of other things where announced a biggy been the increase in mailbox size from 5gb to 25gb, believe this brings it in line with what Google offer.
With security threats to any computer based enterprise seemingly endless and ever more sophisticated, Gardner has established closer ties with the Symantec Corporation. From Q1 2010 onwards, it is our intention to offer clients regular briefings direct from Symantec but offered at Merseyside locations. Many will be familiar with the Symantec product groups of:-
All of these will be covered at events throughout 2009 with the additional ability to see new releases of security products designed to counter emerging security threats. For more information, go to the Symantec site at http://norton-symantec.co.uk or contact our sales staff on 0151 220 5552 or email us at info@gardsys.co.uk.
During the summer, Gardner Systems partnered with the world leading IP camera manufacturer Axis to provide IP based security cameras to businesses in the north-west. Based on open IP standards, Axis network cameras connect to any kind of IP network, including the Internet, and enable remote viewing and recording from anywhere in the world. They also provide advanced video analytics features, such as motion detection, audio detection and tampering alarm.
With our extensive LAN and WAN experience, it has been a straightforward step for us to add IP cameras to our portfolio of products and services. This has seen major results in one of our client IP camera sites being able to offer key assistance to Merseyside Police in combating a very serious crime. In due course we hope to offer more specific details to our clients for them to appreciate just how much more effective is this new technology compared to traditional CCTV systems. It is undoubtedly cheaper, more versatile and easier to deploy than traditional camera systems.
Axis offers the market’s broadest and most consistent range of high-quality network camerasincluding those suitable for indoor low light use, outdoor all weather models, Pan Tilt Zoom cameras and the latest PTZ High Definition cameras suitable for shopping centre security. We at Gardners have recently progressed through a proof-of-concept where the live images are streamed instantly to our Gardner Systems Cloud Storage to further protect the data being captured.
For more information, contact our technical sales team on 0151 220 5552 or email us at info@gardsys.co.uk.
As we have already announced, we are pleased to have SkillsGen on-site with us at our Wavertree offices. Skills-Gen is a Microsoft Gold partner and one of the leading training companies in the North-West. Gardner has an agreed bespoke and also an off-the-shelf training programme for all users. We cater for users who wish to do anything from just familiarising themselves with the new Microsoft technologies up to obtaining professional certified qualifications. We can jointly agree work “coaching” and enterprise-wide certification.
