Earlier on this month I was fortunate enough to find myself jetting off to the spectacular city of Rome for NetApp’s annual Technical conference, Insight 2011. The aim of which is to provide NetApp employees and Partner Companies the opportunity to gain an in-depth review of new NetApp technologies and have a sneak-peak into what NetApp are planning in terms of products and developments in the near future.

Arriving at Insight I was astounded at the size of the event:

• 2000+ delegates
• 26,600 hours of Technical Learning
• 200+ breakout sessions

As expected, new storage hardware was discussed in detail with the new FAS2240 receiving a lot of attention.

The FAS2240 is aimed at the SME market and as such has a price to match. Perhaps the most impressive feature of this hardware is its scalability; capable of storing up to 432Tb with the ability to transform the FAS2240 into a standard disk shelf which can be incorporated without any data migration into a larger NetApp storage platform. This all fits in very nicely with the new “Start Right, Keep it Simple, Grow Smart” strategy.

Storage Efficiency technologies are an area that NetApp are very proud of. So much so that Dave Hitz (Founder and Vice President of NetApp worldwide) made it the topic for his breakout session and keynote speech. What was very impressive is some of the statistics that were covered:

Using FlashCache, SATA can be used instead of SAS to achieve the same performance meaning less than half the cost, power and rackspace. Oh and you get double the storage capacity!

Deduplication carried some very impressive figures, so far worldwide has saved NetApp customers over 5 Exabytes of data!! To put that into perspective that’s 5,000,000,000 Gb! The message with Deduplication was simple..

Just turn it on!

So what can we expect NetApp to bring over the next year or so?

Well, the term “infinite and immortal” has become more popular in recent months with NetApp folk, this is their vision of the future for their storage platforms. Infinitely scalable in both size and performance and immortal through hardware resiliency. Reflecting back on the breakout sessions I attended it’s clear to see that they’re on the right track.

With Data ONTAP 8.1 cluster-mode (due early 2012) linear scale-out performance can be achieved by simply adding another node which in turn adds to the overall reliability and resiliency of the storage cluster as a whole.

There is also a strong belief that ‘Big Data’ will be the cloud of 2012, with NetApp’s recent announcement of the e-Series aimed at High Performance Computing, Seismic data and full motion video data capture they may be ahead of the curve.

On Wednesday 24^th August we staged our Personal and Business Security Day. Sixty delegates were able to hear from a selection of experts which included Merseyside Counter Terrorism Officers. The subjects ranged from specific threats posed by trips abroad to how those threats can turn into very significant problems for the individual and their employer.

Industry security specialists then presented on reasonable counter measures which can be adopted and where the future lies for such processes. The day was one of the best we have run and the feed-back has been excellent. Such is the response from our clients that we are strongly minded to re-run this event in an updated version early in 2012.

One of the biggest issues people have approached us with over the last 18months has regarded their need for increased protection of their key data systems.

Enterprises are realising that these days their business is usually entirely dependent upon their critical data, when in the past IT was often just an adjunct to the business process. Given sufficient planning, the IT process can now function from pretty well anywhere and play a big part in your business continuity plan.

With this in mind, we thought it would make sense to offer a forum to share our experiences and present some of the solutions we have put in place to offer protection of critical business systems to a range of organisations.

Looking at how we have used technology from NetApp, Microsoft, Platespin (Novell) and VMware to name but a few, to help companies deliver a range of different solutions, from off site backup of data, to replicating entire infrastructures and giving them somewhere to house key staff, so they can access business systems in the event of a major failure.

So we have decided to run an event here at Gardner Systems on March 17th, to show how this mix of technologies, with  the addition of some cloud and hosted services, has offered a number of our clients a really flexibly way to ensure they protect both their critical data and importantly their business from all kinds of eventualities.

If it sounds like something you’d like to attend, then please click here and visit our events website to register.

Hope to see you there…

At the end of last year we entered into an agreement to deliver some IT presentations to members of the St Helen’s Chamber of commerce and on March 16th, we’ll be doing our first event with the Chamber on “The Future of IT”.

Here is the official release from the Chamber;

The future of IT – Gaining a competitive advantage

Throughout 2011 and probably well beyond, most companies will want to either reduce existing costs through better use of IT or will consider an entirely new IT process as long as it offers a new and promising income stream. Discover where the key industry players see major returns on IT investment taking place.

Benefits:

• Gain an insight into the way IT providers are shaping and delivering their solutions in 2011 and beyond
• Find out how key topics such as Cloud computing, Dynamic IT, Data Efficiency, Backup and recovery solutions, Unified communications and Virtualisation continue to evolve
• Give yourself a competitive edge by understanding what technologies will be relevant to your business and how IT can help you to continue to grow in challenging times

Lunch and refreshments will be provided

so expect lots of information on topics such as Office 365, Lync, NetApp, Systems Management, Automation, desktop solutions, data centre efficiency, control of data and any other hot topics that pass our way between now and then.

It’s a very exciting change for us, working closely with a Chamber like this, and congratulations to the Chamber for doing something new, if it sounds like something you think you could benefit from, visit the Chambers website by clicking here it would be great to see you there.

Gardner Systems is a major advocate of companies developing a business continuity plan. Many see such a plan as a different name for the familiar concept of an IT disaster recovery strategy. The two are of course inextricably linked but are fundamentally different.

An IT disaster recovery plan aims at just that – planning the ability to recover IT from a catastrophic failure, or a more likely a threatening event. IT premises being destroyed by fire is usually catastrophic for anyone, but the inability to access the same premises for even a limited time is also threatening and needs a contingency plan.

Enterprises are however realising that these days their business is usually entirely dependent upon their critical data, when in the past IT was often just an adjunct to the business process. Given sufficient planning, the IT process can now function from pretty well anywhere and play a big part in your business continuity plan.

Gardner Systems has joined the Liverpool Business Continuity Forum. This forum of Liverpool Businesses now has regular meetings of up to one hundred city enterprises. The Forum was launched by Steve Lambert of Liverpool City Council and now has an influential Advisory Board chaired by Neil Scales of Merseytravel. The Forum presents on all continuity issues, including security, health, weather and of course IT.

We hosted and provided speakers for the LBCMF event of 23^rd November and this month our MD Frank Coward joined the inaugural Advisory Board.

As part of our commitment to the challenge of business continuity on Merseyside, we are currently offering free consultation to interested parties. This has led to a number of local enterprises taking advantage of our hosted and back-up services.

A recent survey of SMEs by Symantec, has found 5%, around 240,000 UK firms, are not taking any steps to backup data and are leaving themselves exposed to risks of data loss and downtime. This is bad enough, but how many of the remaining companies have actually tested their back-ups? Gardner found one company diligently using a cleaning tape as a back-up! Funny until it happens to you………

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:-

Top Product Families

· Backup Exec

· Endpoint Security

· NetBackup

· Brightmail

For those users less familiar, these are comprised of the following popular product sets:-

Most Popular Products

· Backup Exec for Windows

· Endpoint Protection

· Ghost Solution Suite

· NetBackup

· Enterprise Vault

· Client Management Suite

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.

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.

Following our latest series of Microsoft events covering Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Server 2008 R2 we are pleased to announce that we can now offer training on these subjects.

For a detailed response to your own specific requirements, just call our technical sales team on 0151 220 5552 or email us at info@gardsys.co.uk.

On 24th September 2009, Gardner Systems and Microsoft will be presenting Essential Business Server 2008. This event is free to attend and runs from 9am – 1pm (including lunch).

This is the perfect opportunity for you to come and speak with Microsoft and Gardner Systems about how your IT infrastructure can save you money. Save money by providing an easy-to-manage technical solution which can address issues you are currently experiencing in your business.

EBS has been specifically designed by Microsoft for the mid-market to address the following issues:

If you wish to attend the event or to find out more click here

On the 14th July, Gardner Systems will be teaming up with Microsoft to showcase two new Operating Systems, Windows Server 2008 R2 and the brand new Windows 7 which we think is excellent.

This event takes a look at Microsofts latest offerings for both the server and desktop Operating Systems. Windows Server 2008 Release 2 has Microsoft’s powerful Hyper-V server virtualisation built-in allowing you to free up server resources so nothing goes to waste. As a result you can dramatically reduce power consumption, lower hardware cost and make more space in your data centre.

Windows 7 has received a lot of interest over the past few months. This is a new and very exciting Operating System which makes using your computer simpler, faster and more enjoyable. This new desktop OS includes virtualisation technologies which enables the user to run all of their old XP applications inside one Windows 7 machine.

To register for this FREE event click here