Alstom Will Be Provided Developed IT Infrastructure from HCL!

On Monday, January 25, 2016, a new IT infrastructure deal has been signed between the HCL technologies and the French multinational firm Alstom. Throughout the France and Benelux, the engagement of the Alstom would be the HCL’s largest infrastructure services engagement as narrated by the Corporate Vice President of the HCL Technologies Ashish Gupta. According to this agreement, the HCL Technologies will influence and control its IT infrastructure support services capabilities in order to deliver the workplace engineering services, roll out PC as a Service (PCaaS) to 30, 000 clients across the world and allow the local client support services all over 360 locations in 62 countries.

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Furthermore, multilingual global service desk offers will be given to the Alstom in 11 languages that will be established by the HCL in which more than 50 percent of the French-speaking users will be involved. HCL has three global delivery centres that are situated in the Brazil, India and Poland while the services will be offered by controlling these centres. Being a part of the partnership, HCL will also establish the Services Integration and Management (SIAM) as an organisational function with a concept that will allow the Alstom to accomplish the multi-sourcing service integration.

As per the statement of the Alstom CIO, Christine Heckmann, they wanted continuous and smooth IT operations and it was their priority. Alstom needed an IT Partner that could easily define, develop and implement the roadmap involving the IT transformation for the following five years and HCL has been proved a right partner for them.

Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/hcl-to-develop-it-infrastructure-for-alstom_5153901.html

How Managed Service Providers Can Streamline Operations

There is no doubt that in this technological era, the networks have become multifaceted, complex and sometimes inflexible. To deal with these issues, technologies like NFV, SDN and open source projects have helped a great deal in this respect.

Cisco senior manager, Wayne Cullen, who is a service provider architecture, stated that a single network is insufficient. Mutually, they have the potential to bring the automation and self-service, lower operational costs and simplified processes. This also enables the expert personnel to free them for innovations by relieving themselves from the important low-value tasks.

The question arises that how the simpler operations can transmute your today’s business? Cullen disclosed that there are three ideas that can be considered in the current scenario which are as follows:

Take Into Account the Technologies That Improve Dexterity: Planning and automation strategies are required that could integrate SDN, NFV and other various technologies into the current networks so it can allow you to reposition and gauge the elements of the software rather than the hardware.

With the above strategies, the adjustments can be made in hours or days instead of the weeks or months. This will assist in driving down the cost and getting you ready as what next could be done.

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Use Openness to Hasten Innovation: To get the advantages of the open partnerships, services and collaborations, there is a need to progress to a more flexible infrastructure that has a lower cost. The software defined network has the capability to integrate new services around numerous vendor technologies, as described by Cullen. To maintain the services framework so they can be vibrant, lucrative and speedy, there is a need to retain the developmental model and APIs simpler and open.

Promote New Business Models: In the case, you have a fast and dexterous network, more competitive pricing options and modifications as per the changing market conditions can be offered. The new market segments that were not practicable due to the cost, size and location can, later on, enable us to reach there. According to Cullen, it is necessary to know the means by which the clients can be pleased and where exactly the value can be added.

To gain success means to understand the connectivity that is changing the behaviours at a faster rate than before. Furthermore, the ability to accustom new behaviours can play an important role in success.

Cullen finally concluded that if steps are taken to enhance dexterity along with working on the SDN or NFV strategies so there can be an open working with the partners, the organisation can gain a powerful position in terms of profit.

For more details on solutions for service providers, go to http://www.cisco.com/web/EMEAR/offers/sp04/simplifying-operations/index.html.

This article was published in partnership with NetPartnering.

Source: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/industrynews/153295-3-ways-service-providers-can-simplify-operations.html

Managed Service Providers – Getting a Boost from Security Products!

A continuing overall growth has been observed in the managed service companies particularly the ones that are providing the security services, as revealed by the IT management specialist Kaseya according to the new survey.

The data has been gathered from the Kaseya’s Global Pricing survey in which 400 managed service providers across 30 countries were scrutinised that offer the exceptional visibility in IT services to the customers. The result which has been concluded is that most of the MSPs have gone through more than 20 percent growth over the last three years.

As per the results, the high growth managed service solution providers offer more evolving services than the ones that are facing the lower growth counter parts. This may involve hosting services and cloud monitoring for the clients owning the equipment. One of the most important thing that has been observed is that the high growth MSPs offer an effective portfolio of services such as the desktop and server management, cloud, backup and recovery services.

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Increased security risks will be the top demand of the customers in the year 2016. Security is always considered as the high rated services that usually gets the competitive advantage in all age times.

Kaseya’s SVP and GM of MSPs, Miguel Lopez narrated that Kaseya is in the privileged position because it is the vendor that delivers IT security, management and automation technology to MSPs and this is what separates it from the crowd of managed services provider. For every successful MSP, clients’ concern is their top priority, so they design bolder strategies for this purpose. Their client success model is based on the year over year growth instead of the business’s sales, and this is what successful MSPs always do for their clients.

Besides this, around 85 percent of the high growth MSPs deliver hosting services to the clients owning the equipment while around three quarters of the high growth MSPs deliver desktop security services.

Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2016/01/21/security-products-give-managed-service-providers-boost/

How to Know Your Business Is Not Cut Out For IT Managed Services

When we talk about companies, we should never forget that there are different flavours and kinds of businesses, for instance, there are entrepreneurial businesses, startups, small or medium sized and lifestyle businesses. Each business has different goals that are targeted to be achieved, so the business owners set distinct priorities depending upon the financial plans and the growth rate. Some companies have high technology involvement so they prioritise their routine operations according to the internet. If an internet connection, email server or phone line is down, their business has to face a shrieking pause. Specifically, when it comes to technological businesses, they require an IT managed services provider that could assist them in maintaining the security, designing and managing the strategies along with providing assistance to the employees. Still there are some small and medium-sized companies that need to focus on the devising of the strategies that involve an adoption of the managed services. A concise self-analysis can help you to understand which businesses are not cut out from the managed IT services.

Technology is Not Used to Enhance Client Experience: You need to analyse what kind of services you are delivering to the clients. You need to consider whether technology is involved in it? Whether some software interface, app or web portal is included in accessing the client records or booking their appointments? Are the client services delivered via the email or a phone? If the above elements do not have any involvement, then probably, there is no need to get the managed service solutions to get the client service experience.

Replacing of an Equipment is Waited Till the Last Possible Second: We should always remember that the workstations must be in warranty and at least, they should enable the companies in supporting the operating systems and the software updates that appear. Workstations always represent the employees’ efficiency and productivity. So it is necessary to refresh, repair or replace the equipment immediately in order to boost the staff members’ efficiency so it can match with the IT services.

You are Not Considering Technology as a Means to Appeal Customers: Efficient and talented employees always require technology that can be operated at a high speed. Slow connections, sluggish networks and obsolete technology usually frustrates the employees. Expert professionals always need technology that could help them in boosting their efficiency.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/5-signs-business-not-cut-managed-services-01430729#UpFwi8rvIzdrLSD6.97

Three Fantastic Predictions for 2016 Related to Managed Services

As we are in the start of the New Year, it’s the time when the companies are either waiting or focusing on the trends that have been emerging, the new and innovative technologies that are arriving on the scene and the business models that have been evolving from a considerable time. In this season, there are three areas that are showing a continuous positive impact on the IT channel that are as follows:

Sanguinity Enclosing the Future of the Managed Services and the IT Channel Will Remain High

According to the survey held in October 2015, it was found out that around 66 percent of the people were optimistic about the future of the IT channel. Strong demand of the clients regarding managed services, a strong and continuous desire for the IT channel, new opportunities in the cloud computing and wider use of the IT by all kinds of the customers have been observed.

In this year, it is believed that the IT channel will prolong or maintain it’s continuous increase regarding relevancy for the IT companies of all sizes. It is being expected that the IT service providers will improve their abilities so to help the companies in increasing their revenues. It will also help the organisations in maintaining their business by focusing on the technologies like computer security, cloud computing, and financial services to healthcare, public and private sectors.

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Sellers Alliance will continue

To gain a competitive edge in this highly crowded market place, vendors usually prefer to amalgamate with the companies and drive the activities all through the technology industry. Service providers always tend to evaluate the portfolio of the vendors so they can decide whether to enhance the vendors’ association or not. This assists in solving both the client’s organisational challenges and offering them the opportunities to influence the synergies involving the seller partners to expand their businesses.

Applications, Infrastructure and Data Protection, will be Given Much Emphasis Irrespective of the Location

Incalculable divisions of the high profile data are kept secure both for the clients and businesses alike. Since more and more companies are relying on the cloud to aid the routine business operations, strong emphasis is given on securing the critical data, infrastructure and the applications, irrespective of whether they are on the premise or the cloud.

Source: http://mspmentor.net/blog/trends-managed-services-three-predictions-2016

How Business Intelligence Applications Benefit Telecoms

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No doubt that in this competitive era, the telecom industry is working aggressively with the businesses that have either engaged in merging and procurements so to gain an influential control over the other businesses. The telecom sectors provide numerous choices to the clients so to help them in making a selection of their own from a vast variety of choices. The strategy and pricing options vary from company to company. To gain a competitive edge, telecom businesses design their strategies via using the platforms as the business intelligence.

You would be thinking as to what benefits the telecom industry gets from the business intelligence, particularly when it is associated with the client’s experience. Here we will discuss all those benefits along with the key factor as to how business intelligence assists in reducing the clients’ turnover, retains them and increases their satisfaction.

How BI Enhances Client Retention

The applications of the business intelligence and consulting services are quite influential because it holds the key function of finding out what went wrong and how the problem can be fixed. Such applications can be applied to campaigns that were not generating the proposed results due to which the clients were leaving at a horrible rate.

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To retain the clients, it is necessary that:

• Installing and disconnecting activities should be fixed on the spot. Strategies should be revised, and strong emphasis should be given on the rate of disconnection to see how it will influence the revenue figure.
• Reasons for disconnection should find out. Marketing campaigns need to be devised with the custom messages to relieve the clients for a particular concern so to give them a good personal experience.
• With mobile assistance, business intelligence allows for timely responses. This helps the clients to get follow up communications that ultimately reduces their stress.

How BI Enhances Customer Experience

The telecom businesses can enhance the clients’ experience in the following ways:

• Cloud services with business intelligence platform can explore the data that could identify how the services will benefit the clients.
• Information regarding the client’s feedback must be proactively reviewed to see whether the provided services are up to the mark or not. The BI applications can be influenced so that the problems can be identified in order to reduce or eliminate its severity in the future.
• Assimilating CRM systems with the BI and other applications gives employees the tools and techniques to tackle the clients’ needs. Clients always give a positive feedback when they are served appropriately. The employees always treat the potential clients in a well-mannered way when they are satisfied with their jobs and employers.

Opera Application Support Services – IGMAS Extended Hospitality IT Services for Its Inclusion

A proclamation for the inclusion of Opera PMS Application Support has been made by the IGMAS Technologies to their current collection of Hospitality focused Service and Support Services. Hotel Systems Solutions’s (HSS) founders, Scott McGraw and Erik Strom will grow the team of IGMAS. Both the founders have brought decades of experience of the Micros Systems to the new-fangled Application Support Services division. Complete and customised application solutions along with the training and support will be particularly provided for the Opera Property Management System (PMS), PMS Interfaces and a diverse range of Oracle’s other Hospitality products. The HSS’s Micros-trained hospitality will have experienced professionals that would be dedicated with the additional hospitality support resources so they can provide on time training, configuration, assistance and troubleshooting to hotels and resorts that either use or intend to use the Opera. IGMAS support team, when joined with the other forces, will let the HSS grow continually their national and international growth efforts in the field of Application Support and Services.

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Michael Breindel, President of IGMAS Technologies, stated that IGMAS has created a group and providing industry-changing application services for more than a year. With HSS that have 20 years of hospitality and Micros experience, they can now deliver an international single source solution that would be completely independent and exceptional in the hospitality industry.

According to the Scott Mc Graw, the HSS founder, IGMAS Technologies holds proficient, innovative and technology experts that have the capability to deliver the hospitality community, the assimilated solutions and assistance so that the industry can grow and improve its market size that it serves.

IGMAS provides entirely different customer support services in a timely manner while inexpensive software solutions are delivered to the clients that lead to valuable property savings, enhanced financial controls, improved productivity of the staff and perfect guest experiences to the clients.

Reference: http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/igmas-expands-hospitality-it-services-to-include-opera-application-support-services/391533/

What Businesses Must Know About IT Infrastructure Services

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Everybody knows that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides effective and simulated computing resources throughout the network connection, usually via the internet. Just similar to the cloud computing packages, IT infrastructure holds an extensive range of cloud services that are used by most businesses. These infrastructure service packages vary from company to company but normally include storage, servers, hardware, security elements and system maintenance. The businesses that have limited budgets find it difficult to buy and maintain their own hardware so they feel it interesting to attain the services provided by the cloud service providers. Still it involves the risk so the businesses must make sure about the services they are going to get prior to making any decision for hiring the services.

It is necessary to understand how the IT infrastructure services provider differentiates between the IaaS, SaaS, DaaS and PaaS. Infrastructure as a Service varies from the cloud services in a way that it offers hardware components so that the businesses can generate their own applications and cloud platforms. Organisations that implement cloud solutions allow the suppliers in terms of the third party to provide the IT resources, thus shifting the intricacies and expenditures to the cloud vendors. IT infrastructure is mainly used to provide applications, preserving the data, hosting the websites on computer servers or making a virtual data centre.

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Benefits of IT Infrastructure Services

Reasonable Cost: Similar to the other cloud packages, IaaS is offered through a subscription model to assist the businesses to evade huge costs in terms of periodic or annual payments. Getting the services of the IT infrastructure support helps to save large amounts that may otherwise be incurred while getting the hardware equipment. Before signing any contract, businesses should always make sure that there are no hidden costs and that the partnership with the service providers should be flexible.

Scalability: In order to update the hardware by means of purchase, the businesses should initially assess the IT infrastructure so to know how much the business will grow. The businesses must make sure that their resources can manage the business growth and the hardware will be appropriately utilised.

Flexibility: Usually, most IT resources are judged through the internet connection. With IaaS, the employees and the businesses are mobile. With online access and user login details, the work can have greater flexibility. It can help the companies to become geologically independent.

Consistency: The infrastructure service providers offering managed services offer consistency and greater reliability as compared to the on-premise IT. This is so because the resources can be spread across various platforms, multiple servers and data centres. In case, if the hardware components fail or the data centres go offline, the company’s infrastructure won’t be affected.

Reference: http://www.itproportal.com/2016/01/06/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas-what-businesses-need-to-know/

The UK Will Enjoy Microsoft’s First Laptop on Tuesday!

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What a great offer Microsoft is providing in the shape of its first Surface Book laptop being offered in the UK, Germany, Australia, France and others on January 5, 2016, as per the company’s blog post.

Initially, these Microsoft’s first laptops were available in the US. A professional who was a liaison between the Microsoft and the developers informed that the books will be made available in March, but it seems that the Microsoft is working ahead of the schedule.

In the US, the Surface Book was launched on October 26. Contrary to the Surface Pro, the Surface book is primarily a laptop and then a tablet. Due to the lacking of the keyboard dock, its display can only last for three hours that makes it look more suitable to laptop style when in use.

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From the past few years, Microsoft is progressively increasing its hardware that it has started with the Surface Pro and now moving onto the Book and Band which is a fitness wearable. In 2016, the company will also create HoloLens, which is an augmented reality headset.

After opening two stores in the New York City and Sydney, Australia, the Microsoft is planning to open a store in the London.

Besides this, Microsoft has also invested around $1 billion in security to double its security executives. It has designed new managed services strategy so to launch a new managed security services group and cyber defense operations centre.

Reference: http://uk.businessinsider.com/microsoft-surface-book-is-coming-to-the-uk-on-january-5-2016-1

Why Microsoft Has invested in New Managed Service Strategy

Microsoft has integrated the security approach throughout its software and service while a new managed services group and cyber defense operation centre has been announced according to the briefings of the Executives.

Over the past year, Microsoft has invested around $1 billion in security so to double the number of security executives and make thorough research and development in security. Now, it has broadcasted the launching of a new cyber defense operations centre and the managed services security group in which the security is integrated with the products and services.

Microsoft executive Dark Reading explained how the new strategies related to the security had been established inside the internal network of the company and throughout the Office, Windows and cloud services offered to the clients.

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The primary aim of the Microsoft is to secure, detect and respond to threats. The executives have pointed billions of services, endpoints and systems from where the Microsoft has drawn threat intelligence so to use the Intel for detection, fortification and respond to the security issues.

In addition, Microsoft has bought three security firms in the last year that involves cloud security firm Adallom, behavioural learning and Active Directory security firm Aorato and most recently, data and file protection firm Secure Islands.

One thing that should always be remembered is that Microsoft wouldn’t reveal how many security executives it has again hired for the managed services security in the last year. Microsoft Enterprise Cybersecurity Group (ECG), a new managed services arm, emphasises on sales and services particularly the cyber defense. This group is intended to work with the Microsoft’s security partners, Office 365 and the Azure teams.

Reference: http://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/microsoft-invests-$1-billion-in-holistic-security-strategy/d/d-id/1323170