Hector's Blog

Our first Partner Training Day proves a success for Clouds UK

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The inaugural Clouds UK Partner Training Day was hosted on Friday 3rd July at Eurosafe House.

Following the positive interaction, feedback and general success that came from our initial meetings with local IT companies, Clouds UK offered these companies the opportunity to attend the follow-up event.

Interested in our Partner Program? Earn commission by selling our products and promoting Cloud Computing. Contact us on 0800 158 30 93

The aim of the day was to give a more in-depth look at the products and services Clouds UK provide and also to build a close relationship between both parties.

The day began with Chief Executive, Alison Day (below), welcoming the attendees before giving them an insight into the company history and product backgrounds. Alison went on to explain the business opportunity Clouds UK were offering, with the company looking for forward thinking IT experts, who require a ‘Cloud Computing’ solution, to partner with us and follow our training programme to receive Clouds UK reseller accreditation.

Clouds UK IT Manager, Keith Williams, then came to the floor to present the technology behind our product range as well as explaining the benefits for small to medium size businesses.

This section proved a huge success as it enabled the IT consultants to gain a greater insight into how the products were built and in turn, instigated numerous discussions on this type of technology. This interaction proved invaluable to each party and raised some fascinating views and facts.

Following Keith’s presentation, Matthew Oates explained the ‘key features’ that Clouds UK products incorporate.

Permissions, alerts, ‘real time’ reports and unlimited users were just some of the areas covered. To demonstrate how the user would utilise these features and show how flexible and ‘user friendly’ the products are Matthew used a demo project on ‘Ultimate Manager’.

Following the initial meeting, the IT consultants had received a unique user name and password to enable them to access the practice area on the Clouds UK website – this was the first time since then to discuss experiences and raise any thoughts on the key features and user friendliness. Again, this was a useful session as many topics were raised and debated.

The lunch break gave all involved the chance to get to know each other a little better…

The afternoon began with Keith giving the attendees tours of Basic Manager, Letting Manager, Construction Manager, Property Manager and Insurance Manager before beginning an interactive training session.

All users were given a user name and password and were asked to log onto a demo site, set up their own project and use all the key features that had been explained earlier in the day.

Matthew then returned to explain the Sales Process involved with the Clouds UK products and opened the floor to a questions and answers session.

Numerous topics were raised and conversed with all parties coming up with fascinating and valuable points.

At the close of the day all attendees stayed behind to continue to build ties with Clouds UK and each other – there seemed to be an instant camaraderie with all involved and the first training day was deemed a great success.

What are the benefits of Cloud Computing for Small Businesses?

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve heard the buzz, your IT manager has muttered something about it, or maybe you’re wondering what it’s all about.

We’re talking about Cloud Computing.

More to the point, you might be wondering: “what’s in it for me?”

The idea behind Cloud Computing is that computer resources – either raw processing power and storage, or software to help you run your business – should be a commodity just like electricity, and as with the National Grid, end-users should have no concern as to how the system works, so long as they can plug into it.

We’re a long way from that ideal, but there are ways you can use Cloud Computing to save you money, time and worry today.

Using Cloud Computing in an SMB

A small business with one or two offices has little if any budget for servers to store their data on. They might store payroll information, inventories, sales reports, employee records, marketing brochures, procedural manuals, etc.

Keeping these on individual PCs is messy and unworkable, but the traditional solution – a central server – is expensive and complicated to install and maintain.

The new alternative is to subscribe to a Cloud service: the data is held online in a central location, and made available through a simple, friendly interface. The Cloud provider looks after the complicated stuff for you.

There are many Cloud services to suit a wide range of needs, from simple document storage to property portfolio management, human resources, accounting, scheduling, customer relationship management, and more.

Clouds UK provide a wide range of products for SMBs. Find out more at www.cloudsuk.com.

Better IT for less money

Economies of scale mean that a central Cloud Computing provider can invest in high-quality equipment, which it then rents out to customers for a fraction of the price that it would cost them to buy and install it themselves.

Access your data from anywhere

This is the killer feature of Cloud Computing. Your data is available online through a website, so all you need in order to access it is a computer (or a BlackBerry, iPhone, or PDA) with an internet connection.

Log on from a hotel room, an internet café, or from your home computer. Cloud Computing is ideal for facilitating home working, or even for companies that want to do away with a central office and work entirely online. It can also benefit employees on long-term sick leave, who can’t come into the office but are capable of working from home.

Rest easy – your data is secured by experts

Traditional computing is insecure – few employees know about security best practices, and will happily keep data on USB sticks, email, their laptops, on CD-ROMs in their briefcases, etc.

With Cloud Computing, your data is held centrally on a secure server guarded by high-quality firewalls and administered by professionals.

IT is complex, and you have better things to do

As an SMB, you probably don’t have the resources to build and maintain big, complex IT systems. Even running a single, small server can be time-consuming; could you afford to carry out the following checks every week?

Check the disk space
Investigate any errors in the event logs
Download the latest patches and test them before installing, in case they interfere with any of your software
Check for any intrusion or hacking attempts (this should be a continual monitoring process, and ideally you would set up an Intrusion Detection System to alert you – these are extremely complicated, so you’d end up paying an expert to configure it for you)

Can you afford to keep spare parts on-site for your server? Even something as simple as a fan breaking can take your server out of action for days until a replacement arrives. If you find an error in the logs, would you know how to troubleshoot it?

You don’t need to worry about any of that with Cloud Computing. You rent the computing power you need from a dedicated provider. They take care of the server for you, so no more worrying about whether Error ID#1382 is going to crash your server.

VPN isn’t good enough

If you’ve tried to use VPN, it’s likely you’ll have been disappointed by it. It’s slow, clunky, and prone to crashing your computer if you so much as dare to open a small Word document.

VPN is where you can connect from anywhere to the server in your office, and in theory work as if you were on the office network.

This isn’t entirely the fault of VPN as a technology; it’s more to do with BT, and the ancient telephone lines which simply can’t carry enough data to cope with VPN connections. Even the fastest ADSL connection can only carry a tiny amount of data compared to your internal network, and there’s nothing faster than ADSL on the market except for ultra-expensive fibre-optic connections, which start at around £10,000 per year.

Sharing data between offices is a nightmare

With traditional server computing, sharing data between offices is a nightmare. There are technologies that can synchronise data between servers in different locations, but due to slow internet connections there’s inevitably a long time lag between John saving a file to the server in HQ, and Jane being able to open it down in the branch office.

What if John and Jane both make changes to a file in different offices? Whose changes win? At best you end up with confusion, at worst corruption of your data.

You could rely on email to send files back and forth, but that quickly degenerates as people lose track of who has what, or work off an old version of a file on their desktop.

Cloud Computing keeps all your data in a central location. Everyone accesses the same website, and gets the latest version of every document. No more waiting for that document from John to synchronise, you get it as soon as he uploads it.

The development has been done

The Cloud Provider has already developed the software, and will be continually improving it over time. They will have incorporated feature requests from their other clients, and will have the resources to thoroughly test their software.

Developing software yourself is either extremely time-consuming or extremely expensive. You can outsource the development, but the programmers you hire probably won’t know much about your line of work, and so making sure they build what you want will take up a huge amount of your time.

And there will be bugs, which they’ll charge you to fix.

There’s no need to develop your own database, spreadsheet or software package to run your business. After all, why slog away fixing bugs in your own code, when you can simply lease someone else’s hard work, and make it work for you?

Upgrades are free and frequent

With traditional, packaged software that you install on your PC, you have to pay for upgrades: not just once, but for every PC you’ve installed the software on.

You could decide not to upgrade, but in many cases old versions of business software are incompatible with the latest computers – forcing you to either pay for the latest version, or keep a handful of ancient computers around the office to run your important software.

Cloud Computing does away with this. Because the software is web-based, everyone gets access to the latest version automatically, as soon as it’s released.

Clouds UK has an extra advantage here, as we don’t charge you for extra users – you can have as many people as you like using the site, all for a single fee.

‘Digital Britain’ white paper champions Cloud Computing

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The recently published ‘Digital Britain’ white paper has offered great encouragement to Clouds UK by recommending that more Government IT applications embrace and employ this form of technology.

An article relating to the report on Kable.co.uk (information for the public services community) picks up on some of the key points from the chapter eight section on procurement:

The report proposes the creation of a G Cloud for government business applications, to run alongside the Public Service Network. It says this could be used for function such as server and storage virtualisation and systems management automation.

The government Chief Information Officers Council and IT industry association Intellect have drawn up a route map for the creation of the G Cloud as part of the rationalisation of public sector data centres. They are now developing a business case to justify the investment in technical development and physical facilities.

The report acknowledges some of the many positives features Cloud Computing encompasses such as the 'on demand' service and the flexibility for organisations in demand for and spending on their IT resources.

Another area of heartening news for Clouds UK is the section of the report that identifies a need for a more competitive market in public sector IT, encouraging new suppliers to bid for the rights to provide their services. Kable.co.uk write:

It recommends that the CIO council should provide a simplified, fast track process for procurement — consistent with EU rules — initially focused on a small number of areas for tender. This would allow innovative companies to compete with incumbent bidders as main contractors rather than sub-contractors.

Clouds UK are already in the vanguard of government cloud computing with our involvement in key PFI projects and Primary Care Trusts. Following the encouragement given through this report we will build on these successes.

We've Changed!

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

So why a new look...?

Well, we have decided that as we now have a collection of web based products that sit along side www.e-constructionmanager.co.uk a rebranding exercise was necessary in order to present all the various products under one new brand...

The new umbrella brand is Clouds UK and you simply click the log in button on the top right hand side of the home page and then on the Ultimate Manager logo (or Lettings Manager logo as appropriate) where you will be asked for your user name and password.

The new branding reflects our successes in the field of Cloud Computing where we are at the forefront in offering bespoke Software as a Service (SaaS).

Franchising Opportunities Available

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:15:00 GMT

Clouds UK is now available as a franchise.

For more information, see our Franchisees page, or read our Frequently-Asked Questions list. There are a number of areas available; please call 0800 158 30 93 and speak to Andrew Newsham for more details.

Re-branding

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:20:00 GMT

We are having considerable success with re-branding our product for customers...

Whilst many companies are happy to work on their properties and projects within the Clouds UK products there is a large amount of interest in having the product re-branded with a client's own corporate logo, image, colour scheme, etc and then, linked from their own website.

Clouds UK is not mentioned on their site, therefore the client's own brand is further enhanced.

Welcome to V12!

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:00:00 GMT

This is our most exciting version yet, with powerful new features to help you work faster and better.

What's New?

The Home Page
The Audit Log
Linking documents between folders
Recent/Most Visited Lists
Edit Projects & Properties

What's Changed?

A cleaner look and feel
Better browsing through folders and documents
Compliance has been re-designed and made easier to use
Reporting has been enhanced, with more filtering and sorting options
We've expanded the Admin tab, making it easier to manage your data

Other Improvements

Faster! The site has been optimised for speed
You can now choose what title and description to give documents you upload
More consistent interface – permissions and auditing links on all folders (if you have permission)
Long lists of documents are split into pages for easier browsing and quicker loading times
Page icons show you what type of data you are viewing, making it easier to tell whether you’re in a property, property or misc. folder
Removing someone from a directory now asks you if you also want to remove their permissions
Properties now have directories and notes pages
Photos are now re-sized so you can see them on-screen without scrolling (you can still download the original, high-resolution versions)