Intrinsic Technology

Death of the credit card....

2012-05-02T10:54:00.003+01:00

Credit and debit cards may soon be a thing of the past, as newer, more efficient ways of paying emerge. All technologies must adapt to the changing demands of users, and payment methods are not immune to this. But as card payments are used so frequently by so many, the implementation of a new process will not be easy.

There have already been some exciting and innovative ideas for how to move the payment system forward. Back in 2004, an approach was trialled in which fingerprints were linked to bank accounts – meaning items could be purchased using just fingers and thumbs. However, not enough key high-street players were prepared to invest, so it fell by the wayside.

More recent times have seen the launch of mobile wallet apps, which hope to speed up online purchases by ‘digitising’ customers’ credit and debit cards. It’s looking promising too, with over 100 retailers having agreed to accept payments from O2’s app service. As this is a relatively untested technology, security is the main stumbling block for implementation – although personal details, such as pin codes, passwords and other financial data, are held on remote central servers rather than on the mobile devices.

It’s not just the end users that are affected by impending changes though – certain types of businesses will feel the impact the most.

In the UK, retailers are currently required to use Chip-and-Pin to authorise card payments. The problem with this is the cost for vendors: because the terminals handle the encryption of data, they are more expensive than the old magnetic card readers. This can price out smaller retailers from accepting card payment – which may equate to substantial revenue losses.

A new form of payment that negates this encryption charge could be excellent news for the estimated 20 million companies that are currently priced out of accepting card transactions.

The mobile wallet technology could also be of great benefit to tradesmen, such as plumbers, decorators and electricians - who are disadvantaged due to not being able to accept card as a form of payment. Customers could simply use their phones to transfer the money on the spot.

At Intrinsic Technology, we are acutely aware of the importance of efficient service and customer satisfaction in the retail sector. As customer demands for mobility and flexibility increase, the security required also alters – so our solutions must adapt.

By staying ahead of the curve and improving our understanding of upcoming technologies, we can better serve our customers with the bespoke support they need.

Never miss a tweet: Social media and the contact centre

2012-04-02T14:08:00.001+01:00

There are some conversations that organisations cannot afford to ignore.

Social media is one of the internet’s most powerful innovations. Conversations across sites like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums have an enormous impact – spreading news, making products and videos go ‘viral’, and allowing customers to engage with businesses as well as with each other.

Comments about products and services are more visible and more swiftly disseminated than ever before. It is critical for organisations to be able to access these comments, to respond where necessary and to engage with both criticism and compliments.

Disengaged companies are all too likely to be accused of being stuck in the past, of not caring about their customers, of being irrelevant and outdated.

But with millions of conversations taking place every day, and content relevant to particular products or companies being generated every minute, keeping engagement simple is a real challenge.

It is not enough to simply open a Facebook page and let an intern create a stream of tweets.

Converged solutions are becoming more important than ever before.

For most organisations, the point at which engagement with social media can best take place is the contact centre. This is the hub of more traditional customer interaction channels, such as telephony.

At Intrinsic Technology we have long been specialists in the deployment and management of contact centre technologies. We are now increasingly seeing organisations requesting solutions, which manage social media alongside telephony, and which actively seek out content as well as waiting for it to arrive. Avaya’s Aura Contact Center, for example, integrates social media monitoring with text, email and other communication channels.

The social web is an open and complex place, and our role is not merely to connect organisations with it, but to make the process smooth and simple. Our expertise can introduce companies to a new era of customer engagement whereby you keep abreast of what your customers and would-be customers are saying across multiple channels. We help you to quickly identify the social media conversations most relevant to our business, analyse that date and respond appropriately all through a centralised contact centre.

Spending to Save

2012-02-23T17:04:00.000Z

The public sector has a matter of weeks to tie up the last of this year’s budgets. Unspent money allocated for IT investment will not be carried over.

It should go without saying that money should never be spent purely for spending’s sake. Organisations with remaining budget to allocate before the new financial year should not be blindly choosing one-off purchases, but seeking ways of spending to save.

It might sound oxymoronic. But all good IT solutions should drive efficiencies, and that means making cost savings.

This could be in the shape of unified communications solutions that streamline communications between services and end users. It could mean video conferencing tools that negate the need for travelling to meetings, a server virtualisation project that cuts energy expenditure, IP telephony that reduces phone bills or a pre-pay services plan. It could even mean investing in flexible, agile IT that grows and develops with the organisation it serves, or cloud computing that enables a move to managed or hosted services.

In the current economic climate, return on investment is the hottest phrase on IT managers’ lips, and rightly so. In the public sector, where IT budgets are fixed in advance and spending is transparent, it is absolutely crucial.

At Intrinsic Technology we have extensive experience working with public sector organisations of all shapes and sizes. We have relationships with colleges, health authorities, emergency services and local governments. These projects have achieved a range of goals, but the common denominator is always a healthy return on investment.

As the new financial year approaches, and public sector bodies clamour to finalise their budgets, it is important to view return on investment as an ongoing strategy, not a standalone issue.

Budgets next year are only going to get tighter. Clever use of the remainder of this year’s will put the public sector in a position to maximise their 2012/2013 money and strengthen their services.

Bring your own.....

2012-01-30T12:42:00.000Z

With the festive season over, manufacturers can reflect on bumper sales of smartphones, tablets and laptops. Tablet sales grew by over 250% throughout 2011.* Sales figures released in January by many retailers, from John Lewis to Argos, were bolstered by sales of personal computers and other consumer tech products.

Millions of people worldwide are the proud owners of shiny new mobile Christmas presents. On their return to work, these devices have gone with them. IT managers might be afraid, but there are real business opportunities.

‘Bring-your-own-device’ (BYOD) policies aren’t new, but they are becoming increasingly common.

An interesting point is that businesses are starting to realise that there are more benefits to these schemes than simply keeping employees happy.

Citrix launched a BYOD programme three years ago and has already achieved its targeted 20% IT cost savings. Other businesses are enjoying increased flexibility, as more employees can work remotely or out of hours.

Less tangibly, but no less importantly, employees who can choose which device to work from are happier, more efficient and more productive.

The concern is, of course, security.

As BYOD schemes multiply, those of us in the business of deploying desktop virtualisation tools are in a great position. VDI is the backbone of any BYOD policy, ensuring that everything from a corporate issue laptop to a brand new Christmas iPad can connect safely and securely to the business network.

53% of IT professionals in the UK have implemented desktop virtualisation tools to support the influx of employee-owned devices – an encouraging figure.** It underlines how mainstream VDI is becoming – but leaves plenty of space for new deployments!

As Christmas presents bring a fresh influx of employee demands for BYOD policies, it is great to be able to deliver the tools that make them safe. BYOD and VDI projects can work together to create better businesses.

*Latest figures from market research firm NPD DisplaySearch.

**Independent survey of 1100 IT professionals by Vanson Bourne.

Flexible working requires an enhanced IT support model

2012-01-18T09:30:00.002Z

Home working policies, hot desking and flexible hours mean it is no longer the norm to see people at their desks throughout the working day. Laptops, tablets and smartphones have made it easier than ever to work remotely, and much more likely that work will takeplace out of normal hours.

Flexible working can have great business benefits – but it is also placing new demands on IT support staff.

Email, access to shared networks and corporate infrastructure are no longer just business critical from 9 to 5 and within a company’s walls. They are essential out of hours and remotely, even for the smallest businesses.

For IT support staff, this means that the environments they are supporting and the hours they are expected to cover have expanded enormously.

Who will take a call when the chairman or CEO cannot access email on his BlackBerry on a Sunday afternoon, or if the sales director cannot access a file for that important presentation because his password has expired? If servers go down or passwords need resetting out of hours, it is no longer enough to wait until the morning.

The old mechanism of a chain of calls to the CIO, then the IT director, then the IT support staff no longer works – it is inefficient, costly, and out of hours, often impossible. Monitoring the corporate IT environment 24/7 is a growing challenge, and one that many in-house IT departments cannot afford to meet.

At Intrinsic Technology we are being approached by more and more companies seeking to outsource their IT support. They are looking for proactive monitoring of their IT infrastructures on a 24/7 basis, and for level 1 and 2 support out of hours.

Our flexible, bespoke solutions provide levels of service that can be impractical or unaffordable for in-house IT departments to deliver, but essential to support the new mobile workforce.

End of Sale for Cisco Catalyst 3560G, 3560E, 3750G and 3750E products

2012-01-06T15:19:00.012Z

Cisco is about to announce the End of Sale for the following products:

- Catalyst 3750G
- Catalyst 3560G
- Catalyst 3750-E
- Catalyst 3560-E

The official End of Sale notification is not yet posted on Cisco's website, but is expected to be released shortly.

The recommended products moving forward to replace these are:

- Catalyst 3750-X to replace the Catalyst 3750G and 3750E series
- Catalyst 3650-X to replace the Catalyst 3560G and 3560E series

The X-Series products allow either 1Gig-E or 10Gig-E uplinks to be used depending upon the module inserted in the front, along with the appropriate SFP or SFP+ modules. In addition, both the 3750-X and 3560-X support Cisco's new Power Stack technology, allowing power to be shared across a stack of switches. This feature makes more efficient use of power within the stack, whilst improving resilience.

The Catalyst 3750-X switches are stackble using StackWise Plus, in the same way as the older Catalyst 3750G and 3750E products, providing a 64Gbps backplane connection across the stack, which can house up to nine switches.

By ordering the X-Series switches, end users also benefit from a Cisco Enhanced limited lifetime warranty with next business day advance hardware replacement, and 90 day access to Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support. This enhanced warranty was not available on the G-Series and E-Series products.

Ethernet storage: When will FCoE gain traction in data centres?

2011-11-15T09:22:00.000Z

Ethernet storage: When will FCoE gain traction in data centres?

NetApp adds FAS2240 entry-level unified storage array

2011-11-08T16:20:00.000Z

NetApp Inc. upgraded its entry-level FAS2000 storage platform with the FAS2240 unified storage array today while reducing the price of its FAS2020 in the wake of increased competition from its main rival EMC Corp. in the low end of the market.

NetApp is launching SAS and SATA versions of the FAS2240 and lowering the price of the FAS2040 that it rolled out in 2009. The new systems have faster Intel processors and more physical memory than the previous generation of FAS2000 storage. NetApp is also making solid-state drives (SSDs) an option for the FAS2240. SSDs weren’t available on previous FAS2000 systems.

The FAS2240 comes in two models. The FAS2240-2 is a 2U system that scales to 144 SAS drives and 374 TB of capacity, and the FAS2240-4 is a 4U system that scales to 144 SATA drives for 432 TB. Both systems come in single- or dual-controller configurations with four on-board Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and two on-board 6 Gbps SAS ports per controller. Four 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) or 10 GbE ports can be added through an optional I/O card. The new systems run DataOntap 8.1 and have 6 GB of physical memory per controller.

The FAS2240 systems also support up to one shelf of single-level cell (SLC) SSDs, for a minimum of 6 TB of flash. FAS2240 systems don’t have the Flash Cache array-based PCIe card option that NetApp sells with its higher-end FAS3000 and FAS6000 systems.

NetApp claims the FAS2240 is at least twice as powerful as the FAS2040, a 2U model that scales to 408 TB and has 4 GB of physical memory per controller.

NetApp will phase out the four-year-old FAS2020 and FAS2050 systems, and lower the price of the FAS2040 to an entry price of $7,500 for 6 TB. NetApp’s lowest-cost system has been the FAS2020 at $8,000. Pricing for the FAS2240 systems starts in the $20,000 to $40,000 range, according to Chris Cummings, NetApp’s vice president (VP) of product marketing.

NetApp has also upgraded its OnCommand System Manager software for the 2000 series. Version 2.0 lets administrators perform tasks such as storage partitioning, thin provisioning, and setting up LUNs and mirrors between systems from a GUI with wizards.

The FAS2240 is designed for organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees, which NetApp said accounts for one-third of its business. The competition in the market has changed over the past year. EMC and Dell ended their partnership, and EMC launch unified VNX and VNXe multiprotocol systems to replace the lower-end Clariion CX and Clariion AX systems EMC and Dell co-branded. Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co.’s P4000 LeftHand Storage Systems and Dell EqualLogic iSCSI systems are the other major players in the entry-level market.

Cummings said the difference is that NetApp uses the same architecture for all its FAS storage, and the lower-end systems can be upgraded to higher-end boxes or deployed as expansions shelves with the bigger NetApp systems. All FAS systems run the same Data Ontap OS.

“Other systems reach a certain threshold, and it’s time to rip and replace,” Cummings said. “With us it’s not a rip and replace. You’re doing an in-place upgrade to add capacity or add a controller, or you take a 2040 or 2240 and make it a shelf. There are no massive re-cabling or migration exercises.”

Cummings said one of the new features -- the SSD option -- probably won’t get much adoption in the price-sensitive low end, “but it’s something that channel partners wanted to see. They want to have that flexibility.”

Brian Babineau, VP of research and analyst services at Enterprise Strategy Group, said he expects SSDs to eventually catch on in the lower end of the market, but for now customers are looking for simple management.

“In a lot of cases, it’s a question of pure ease of use; how fast can I get it out of the box, move my applications on it and let it run,” he explained.

The VNXe and the lower end of the VNX line is the closest competitor to the FAS2240 from an architectural standpoint. When EMC launched the midrange VNX and entry-level VNXe systems last January, it moved directly onto NetApp’s turf by making its main platforms multiprotocol. HP LeftHand is iSCSI only, while Dell added a NAS option to its EqualLogic SAN earlier this year.

“It’s a nice grudge match between those two,” Babineau said of NetApp and EMC, “but Dell and HP are other contenders in this market.”

EMC faced questions about its multiprotocol capabilities when it brought out the VNX, but NetApp competitors still try to paint it as primarily a NAS vendor on the low end. “Many will question NetApp’s ability to deliver this system in a block storage environment,” he said. “It supports iSCSI but it will have to overcome some biases about this being only a file solution.”

Head in the Cloud

2011-10-31T17:03:00.002Z

One in three small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are planning to adopt cloud computing in the next 12 months, according to figures revealed this month*.

Not a huge surprise for those of us working in the cloud computing industry. At Intrinsic Technology, we’ve long been saying that 2012 will be the year that talk turns to action when it comes to cloud computing.

Something that is surprising is the reason these SMEs are giving for looking to take up cloud services.

At the moment, nearly half of SME cloud users say they were drawn to the cloud as they felt it could help them reduce costs. This makes sense in the current climate – who wouldn’t want to take away a big capital expenditure cost and replace it with a flexible, operational expense?

However, nearly half of those planning to make the move in the next 12 months will do so because they believe they will benefit from better functionality through remote access to data and applications.

It’s a positive sign and shows that the next step in the evolution of the way companies think about their IT is well underway. SMEs are clearly becoming more aware of the productivity and infrastructural benefits that cloud computing can deliver.

Whilst we still believe that cost savings will be the benefit that ensures cloud computing gets the nod in SME boardrooms up and down the country, it is great to be in a position to deliver something that has both financial and operational benefits.

*CompTIA, an IT industry non-profit trade association, surveyed 400 IT and business

professionals in UK SMEs

Dell pulls the plug on EMC relationship

2011-10-18T17:37:00.000+01:00

Dell today officially ended its 10-year partnership with EMC, saying it would no longer sell EMC products after making a series of storage acquisitions over the past four years.

Customers who purchased EMC storage from Dell will continue to receive support, Dell said in a statement, but it is ending its OEM and reseller deals for EMC Clariion, Celerra, Data Domain and VNX systems.

The move isn’t much of a surprise, considering Dell had already driven a large wedge into the relationship by buying its own storage companies – including several direct competitors to EMC.

Dell has sold EMC storage since 2001, and in late 2008 the vendors said they were extending their OEM agreement through 2013. Dell also widened the deal in March of 2010 by adding EMC Celerra NAS and Data Domain deduplication backup appliances to their OEM arrangement. However, the relationship had already started to deteriorate by then, going back to when Dell acquired EMC competitor EqualLogic in early 2008. The rift became irreparable last year when Dell followed an unsuccessful bid for 3PAR by completing an $820 million acquisition of Compellent in December.

Dell also acquired data reduction vendor Ocarina and the assets of scale-out NAS vendor Exanet in 2010, giving it more storage IP to integrate with its platforms.

Even before Dell bought Compellent, EMC CEO Joe Tucci a year ago said the once tight relationship between the vendors “cooled off” after Dell tried to buy 3PAR. A Dell spokesman responded by saying EMC still played an important role in Dell’s storage strategy.

There has been no OEM deal for EMC’s VNX unified storage system launched last January, although Dell did have an OEM deal for the Clariion and Celerra platforms that VNX replaced. EMC has built up its channel this year, making the SMB VNXe product a channel-only offering that directly competes with Dell products. Last week EMC launched a channel-only Data Domain DD160 SMB system.

Escaping the Rip-off Label

2011-08-11T15:26:00.000+01:00

With regards to the recent report from the Public Administration Committee entitled ‘Government and IT: A Recipe for Rip-offs’, comment from Dave Griffiths, Head of Major Accounts at Intrinsic Technology:

The Public Administration Committee’s summer report on massive technology overspends in Whitehall is entitled ‘Government and IT: A Recipe for Rip-offs’. It’s a damning tagline.

What the report attacks – and rightly so – is the ‘small ‘oligopoly’ of large suppliers’ that the government currently relies upon to deliver its IT projects, which are subsequently overcharging (some departments apparently spent up to £3500 per desktop computer). It’s been a long time coming and there are plenty of players in the channel fairly saying it hasn’t come quickly enough.

Nevertheless, there’s an exciting opportunity here for smaller providers, as the report recommends a shift in government policy towards small and medium sized suppliers, in order to encourage competition and drive down prices.

But any organisation, large or small, can be guilty of the ‘rip-off’ label, and now that smaller organisations have a window of opportunity it’s important not to squander it. The title of that report attacks not just the ‘large system integrators’ the government currently relies upon, but a whole perceived legacy of overcharging and under-servicing.

Clear, straightforward communication and absolute transparency have never been so important. They should be standard practice. But half of the battle is simply cutting out jargon and being clear about capabilities; small and medium suppliers have the ability to step out of the shadow of the big guns simply by being open.

Now is the time for resellers to prove themselves the best – and most trustworthy – partners for government IT projects, and as the essential the link between end-users and major suppliers.

Please see a link to the report here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubadm/715/71502.htm

Commuters to customers: Switching on to Unified Communications

2011-07-27T15:24:00.002+01:00

Billy Haining, Head of Cisco Business Unit at Intrinsic Technology, highlights the missed opportunities for retailers

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the unified communications market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa is forecast to more than double over the next four years, with the market worth $16.6 billion by 2014.

The benefits of unified communications are widely known. Few would debate the distinct advantages of an easy to deploy system that allows you to communicate more quickly and reduce the total cost of ownership. However, there remains real, untapped potential in the market. As retailers find their way into the cloud, they are spending more time and focusing even more closely on their unified comms strategy – a tangible offering that can be delivered today. The potential of unified comms to increase revenue and drive new promotions in the retail sector is hugely significant.

Unified comms providers like Cisco are developing their portfolio on a monthly basis, meaning that the offering and the way customers are using it is changing dramatically. A definition a few years ago would have been restricted to telephones and instant messaging. Now, it encompasses multiple communication channels and is part of a huge drive to reduce costs and become more collaborative. This trend is set to continue, with many communication channels yet to be fully explored and exploited, especially in the retail arena.

For retailers, the collaborative effects of unified comms are twofold. Firstly, it can be used internally to drive efficiencies. Systems such as video conferencing are already used to cut the travel time and money spent on meetings, but some more innovative retailers are harnessing it in other ways. High-definition video links allow organisations to assess the quality of materials from thousands of miles away; the standard of Indian silks has been checked from Britain in this way.

However, external applications are where unified comms can add really inventive value. South Korea’s subway platforms recently unveiled backlit billboards designed to look like supermarket shelves; QR codes next to each product can be scanned to add goods to a virtual basket, and bored commuters are turned into engaged (and spending) customers. With a massive proportion of retail customers owning smartphones, this is a vivid illustration of the potential for considered upselling through customers’ personal communication channels.

Personalisation is key to retailers embracing unified comms and can be best adopted by integrating social media within a unified comms strategy. The power of Facebook groups and an active Twitter feed will not be new to most online retailers, but products like Cisco’s SocialMiner can fuel much more active engagement. Retailers can not only monitor what their customers are saying about them across multiple platforms simultaneously, but also tailor their customer service in response.

Virtual dressing rooms are another exciting development, allowing customers to upload photos of themselves and dress up a personal avatar in clothing from a particular range. Meanwhile, a forward-thinking retailer in India is already allowing customers to shop directly via its Facebook application as well as through its website. ‘F-commerce’ – selling through social media platforms – has enormous ‘snowball’ potential, as purchases can immediately be shared with a customer’s friends and followers.

The changing role of social media as retailers recognise its power to connect with both employees and customers is clear when we consider the massive rise in Facebook advertising costs over the past year. Where it leads, others will follow; in the retail world, the most powerful means of communication are between company and customer.

As with so much in the world of technology, the future of unified comms will be in the cloud. Many providers are working on systems in which everything is centralised into one core data centre and delivered to a desktop at any time, anywhere on any device – and, indeed, tablets and smartphones will be key. Video will also play a major part in the coming years.

Perhaps the most telling sign of things to come is Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype; it is clear that the looming cloud will mean the barriers between manufacturers and delivery becoming blurred. As one of the world’s biggest technology businesses moves into the space, it will be interesting to see what the future holds, what it will mean to consumers, and how a new, collaborative approach can be applied to the retail sector.

Whats New in vSphere 5 - Part 1

2011-07-19T21:41:00.004+01:00

VMWare have just announced their vSphere 5 platform. This update secures their position as the industry leading virtualization platform for building hybrid cloud infrastructures.

The update provides new features requested from partners and clients alike and improved automation capabilities, essential for cloud deployments.

As expected, vSphere compute will be converged onto the ESXi hypervisor, dropping support for the service console in favour of the remote scripting environments such as vCLI and PowerCLI. These technologies have been adopted widely throughout by VMWare professionals, in particular to automate the provisioning of new hosts and this is an area in which vSphere 5 improves upon. vSphere Auto Deploy is a new deployment and patching model for ESXi which will allow complex standards to be deployed to new physical hosts quickly and easily.

On the virtual machine front, a new virtual-machine format is included, with support for 3D graphics to support acceleration for VDI workloads using host adapters within the server and support for USB 3.0 devices.

Apple XServe servers running OS X Server 10.6 (Snow Leopard) is now supported as a guest operating system and machines can now have up to 32 virtual CPUs and 1Tb RAM to cope with the most intensive of workloads.

On the storage front, some of the technologies utilised in their vCloud Director has been brought to the hypervisor. Profile-Driven storage will identify the most appropriate storage from the pool given a specified service level and storage DRS provides automated placement and balancing.

The vSphere Storage API program has been updated to extend the Array Integration API to offload tasks such as thin-provisioning and snapshots and the new storage awareness and discovery API's integrate directly with the new storage DRS and profile driven storage features.

Those with experience of the upgrade from v3 to v4 will also be pleased to hear that the file system update is non-disruptive in this release.

Networking gets Network I/O control per virtual machine to allow more granular SLA enforcement and improvements in the distributed switch stack have been made with support for Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) and Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) support.

Additional improvements have been made in the vMotion feature, which now supports migration over higher latency networks, a feature that has a significant benefit in distributed datacenters that extend over a virtual network fabric, enabling migration of machines between geographically distant datacenters (or to a vCloud enabled cloud provider) without downtime.

vCenter server is now available as a linux based virtual appliance ("About time!" I hear you say!) and the vSphere client can now be run from any web browser for improved remote administration.

All in all, a significant release to the base product, addressing the extra functionality required for resilient private and hybrid cloud deployments.

In my next blog I will take a look at the new features provided with the refreshed vCloud Director 1.5 and vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 and vShield 5 to build the ultimate private cloud platform.

Intrinsic offers industry leading Wireless Site Surveys

2011-07-18T11:42:00.003+01:00

Intrinsic have recently deployed the latest version of the industry leading Ekahau Site Survey software, this software provides us with the ability to conduct both desk based(passive) and physical (active) site surveys for upcoming deployments as well as post implementation coverage assessment.

Below is a list of key features, important to note is the integration with both Cisco and Avaya management platforms.

Full 802.11n support, as well as 802.11a/b/g

Automated off-site 3D network planning

Comprehensive planning and analysis of wireless capacity

Integration with WiSpy RF spectrum analysis hardware

GPS assisted automated outdoor site surveys

Integration with Cisco WCS and Avaya 8100 WMS

Any questions about our wireless offerings and services please contact your account representative.

Cisco Prime NCS ordering information

2011-06-21T17:28:00.005+01:00

Hot off the press Cisco have unveiled the ordering information for their new Cisco Prime Network Control System.

NCS brings switch management into the successful Wireless Control System (WCS) platform to create a single monitoring and troubleshooting platform for both wired and wireless access.

In brief existing customers wishing to migrate to the new NCS platform need to order the migration license WCS-NCS1.0-MIGRATE. Whilst there is a small cost associated it comes with a 25 device license thrown in to sweeten the deal!

New deployments (or those with the old WLSE appliance) need to either order the new Prime appliance PRIME-NCS-APL-K9 plus the NCS license L-NCS-1.0-K9 or the virtual appliance L-NCS-1.0-K9. To each of these you will need to add the device count licensing.

L-NCS-1.0-50 is the lowest device count obviously for 50 devices all the way to a whopping L-NCS-1.0-10K for a 10,000 device deployment.

We are hoping to get this up and running in the customer demo lab very shortly so I will keep you posted with the new features and functionality NCS provides!

Citrix acquisition of Kaviza strengthens VDI portfolio

2011-06-10T11:10:00.002+01:00

Citrix announced at Synergy the acquisition of former desktop visualisation partner Kaviza in a move to strengthen its VDI portfolio in the small and mid-size markets.

Previously Kaviza had licensed Citrix HDX technologies to improve user experience on its 'VDI-in-a-Box' platform, a turnkey product that bundles all the core VDI functionality into one single virtual appliance.

As an all-in-one VDI product, 'VDI-in-a-Box', offers a solution that focuses on affordability with a broad-based scope but without the complexity.

Some highlights of the product include:

• Contains all the necessary software in a single virtual appliance
• Simple to scale-out by adding more desktop host servers
• Promotes simple and cost-effective adoption without additional capital expenditures
• Less servers and no shared storage or managed servers means lower VDI costs and quick ROI

This brings the realization of a simplified, inexpensive desktop virtualization appliance to a large segment of the market that can be deployed in a fraction of the time of other solutions.

Businesses that are an ideal fit for ‘VDI-in-a-Box’ are:

• Only interested in a VDI solution
• Have limited infrastructure (e.g. SANs)
• Have limited storage and server expertise

Intrinsic technology are able to deliver this solution, from 1st July 2011, through the Citrix solution advisor program and can provide assistance in assessing your current infrastructure for VDI readiness, including application compatibility, LAN/WAN capability and voice integration.

Switch on to Unified Communications

2011-06-09T10:09:00.000+01:00

The benefits of unified communications are widely known. Few would debate the distinct advantages of an easy to deploy system that allows you to communicate more quickly and reduce the total cost of ownership. However, there remains real, untapped potential in the market. As clients find their way into the cloud, they are spending more time and focussing even more closely on their unified comms strategy – a tangible offering that can be delivered today.

Unified comms providers like Cisco are developing their unified comms portfolio on a monthly basis, meaning the offering and the way customers use it is changing dramatically. A definition a few years ago would have been restricted to telephones and instant messaging; now, it encompasses multiple communication channels and is part of a huge drive to reduce costs and become more collaborative. This trend is set to continue, with many areas of communication, such as social media, yet to be fully explored and exploited.

There are a number of sectors, too, that have yet to embrace the possibility of unified comms. Retail, for example, is only slowly waking up to the potential of unified comms to increase revenue and drive new promotions, which could make it of significant value to them and to their business strategy.

Perhaps surprisingly, another area that is likely to be a real growth sector is government and the public sector. As it looks to invest to save, unified comms can provide it with an architectural platform that can deliver cost savings and significantly increase productivity.

Of course, the challenges that face us are almost as limitless as the opportunities. It is more important than ever that providers adopt a consultative approach to ensure that clients get the best fit for their business when a unified comms solution is deployed.

With certain clients, perceptions need to be changed, particularly if they have been using the same telephony or video conferencing technology for a number of years. This is particularly relevant in the context of the financial crisis, which has put up a number of barriers when it comes to investing in new technology. In these situations, it is a case of working hand in hand to make sure they fully understand the return on investment and value it can bring to them and their employees, and its ability to reduce overall capital expenditure in the longer term.

As with so much in the world of technology, the future of unified comms will be in the cloud. Cisco, for example, is working on systems in which everything is centralised into one core data centre and delivered to your desktop at any time, anywhere on any device – and, indeed, tablets and smartphones will be key. Video will also play a major part in the coming years, and we will certainly see increasing integration into social media to enable businesses to connect with their customers and employees.

VMware Acquires Enterprise

2011-06-01T07:04:00.001+01:00

VMware has been expanding its product line-up beyond virtualisation in the past 18 months. It acquired the Web-based e-mail and office suite Zimbra from Yahoo in January of 2010. In April of this year it took control of Mozy and announced its cloud computing platform CloudFoundry. Later that month it acquired SlideRocket. This month it launched Horizon App Manager, a single sign-on service for various Web applications. App Manager is just one part of Project Horizon, VMware's cloud identity initiative.

Socialcast, which raised nearly $10 million in funding, combines a corporate activity stream that ties into CRM and ERP systems with social bookmarking, Outlook and SharePoint integrations, mobile (iPhone and Blackberry) and desktop (Air) apps, and analytics. Co-workers can share knowledge and updates in a semi-private setting. The company, which has over 7000 customers, offers both hosted and behind-the-firewall options.

The company recently launched Socialcast Reach, which allows companies to bring these conversations into applications that employees are most familiar with, like CRMs, so that they don’t have to leave their work to view contextual information from the communications platform.

For VMware, Socialcast expands its reach into social enterprise. The space is competitive, with a number of players like Salesforce, Yammer and Jive all vying for customers. It looks like VMware will now have a presence win the space with Socialcast’s offering.

Socialcast joins the recent acquisitions of SlideRocket™ and Zimbra™, along with the introduction of VMware Horizon App Manager™, in helping advance VMware’s vision for a modern end-user computing model. VMware’s vision is to transform the traditional PC desktop by equipping today’s mobile workforce with secure access to applications and data from any location and any device, while driving increased productivity through modern collaboration and communication models.

More than ever, enterprises are dealing with two fundamental client computing pain points — providing secure access to an increasingly mobile workforce; and managing the burgeoning diversity of data, applications and devices needed to run their business. These challenges result from the transformative nature of cloud computing and the coming post-PC era.

In this environment, a new way to work will be required. The growing VMware End-User Computing portfolio seeks to free end users and IT organisations from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing and deliver a more user-centric, consumer cloud experience for the enterprise.

Socialcast is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2005. It was funded by True Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

VMware’s vision is to transform the traditional PC desktop by equipping today’s mobile workforce with secure access to applications and data from any location and any device, while driving increased productivity through modern collaboration and communication models. These new collaboration models promise to better support modern work streams, that are increasingly more iterative and interconnected, as information is assembled and coordinated among virtual teams that cut across organisations.

VMware Project Horizon

2011-05-27T12:57:00.001+01:00

IT managers don't dislike apps, cloud computing, or virtualisation, but they need to rein them in and make employees use them in consistent, secure, and responsible ways. And that is what VMware's "Project Horizon" App Manager is all about.

For the first time in many decades, your desktop – both the physical one and the abstract one encapsulated in your PC – is not necessarily the place where you do all of your work. But no matter where you are and no matter what device you happen to have at hand – PC, netbook, smartphone, tablet – you want to be able to get work done.

And in many cases, you have locally running applications, cloud-based applications (Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Workday, Facebook, and so on), and still other applications that are running on corporate servers somewhere behind the firewall that are streamed down to your thin client or PC using various virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) tools.

The goal of the Horizon App Manager, which has been in development for about eighteen months, is to stitch together all of the different applications we use into a new kind of workspace that shifts with the devices we access them from, and yet gives the IT department a consistent and controlled means of letting us subscribe to applications and run them from PCs, tablets, and smartphones.

Here's the conceptual image of Project Horizon, which as you can see puts VMware at the centre of everything you do:

The first release of the Horizon App Manager, which does not have a release number and which is actually sold as a SaaS application, manages access to cloudy applications and presents them in a catalogue.

Rather than come up with its own alternative to Active Directory and other LDAP servers that do authentication of user names and passwords to gain access to files and applications on corporate networks, Project Horizon leverages these installed LDAP servers to create a single sign-on for cloud-based applications.

At the moment, Horizon App Manager can only do provisioning on Google Apps, but with subsequent releases of the Horizon service, VMware will add others.

Eventually, the Horizon App Manager will also be used to authenticate users on VMware's Cloud Foundry platform cloud.

Because VMware knows that people use a mix of application provisioning and VDI solutions, Microsoft's App-V and Citrix Systems' XenDesktop tools will eventually be linked into the Horizon App Manager so applications could be published to user accounts on various devices.

The initial incarnation of the Horizon App Manager only delivers catalogue and authentication services for cloud applications.

The app manager doesn't just keep track of access to applications, but also licensing, and it knows how to harvest back a license if you are not using it. For example, system admins could set a rule that if you subscribe to an app and you don't use it in 90 days, your app is revoked and that license is then available to another user. The provisioning portions of the App Manager can do annual, monthly, or perpetual licenses as well as concurrent or numbered user licensing.

Well Done Cisco with UCS!

2011-05-27T10:22:00.001+01:00

Two years ago, Cisco started something that many in the industry said was crazy. They delivered a new system that united compute, network, storage access and virtualisation into one cohesive system. There was rampant speculation that Cisco had taken a crazy path to doom and destruction.

Yet, sales of the Unified Computing System are outpacing market growth for x86 blades, and Cisco has become the #3 player worldwide in x86 blade server factory revenue.

Blades are forecast to be the fastest growing segment of the x86 server market and market data illustrates the impact of UCS innovation: businesses worldwide shifted over 10% of the x86 blade market to UCS, and in the U.S. nearly 20%. Cisco’s rapid growth underscores their leadership in the industry transition to fabric computing and converged infrastructure. On their most recent earnings call, Cisco reported 5,400 UCS customers and an annualised order run rate of $900M for UCS product orders.

A few key milestones

As Cisco near the 2^nd year anniversary – July 20, 2009- when they first shipped the Cisco Unified Computing System, it seems like the perfect time to look back on what Cisco has accomplished so far.

July 2009: Cisco begins shipping the UCS B-Series blade server
October 2009: Cisco delivers to market the UCS patented Memory Extension Blade
Nov. 2009: Cisco ships the UCS C-Series rack mount server
December 2009: Cisco delivers the Virtual Interface Card for adapter consolidation and virtualisation optimisation; enables each virtualised adapter to define up to 128 Ethernet or Fibre Channel connections.
April 2010: Cisco delivers next generation servers based on Intel Xeon processor 5600 series and Intel Xeon processor 7500 series; adds 4-socket servers to the UCS portfolio
April 2011: Cisco now offers 9 systems in UCS portfolio; wins nine new industry benchmark world records
May 2011: Cisco captures #3 spot in worldwide x86 blade server market

From the awards, product reviews, and customer comments, I think it’s clear why UCS is succeeding in the market.

Well done Cisco.

Citrix Synergy Highlights

2011-05-26T19:31:00.001+01:00

So it is Citrix Synergy in San Francisco this week, and a number of key announcements have been made and we thought it would be diligent of us to share them with you.

Citrix has previewed overhauls to nearly every component of its virtual desktop product lines, reaching from the data centre to the iPad.

Citrix's goal is to make all data and applications available to users on any device, without threatening IT security. The PC era, which replaced the mainframe era, is now being replaced by the cloud era, and each user will have a "personal cloud," said Wes Wasson, Citrix senior vice president of marketing.

"A personal cloud is something that is much bigger than just a Windows desktop," Citrix said. "It's the way people want to work, from any location, at any time, on any device, with everything they need to be successful."

The devices -- PCs, thin clients, smartphones, tablets, etc. -- are already there. What's needed is better software to deliver applications and data, and more sophisticated data centres and networking tools to connect people to their personal clouds, he said.

Among the numerous announcements at Synergy, Citrix is unveiling "Project Olympus," which combines its own XenServer virtualisation product with OpenStack, a new open source cloud computing project launched by Rackspace and NASA. Olympus will help cloud providers or enterprises build scaled-out, self-service infrastructures with commodity equipment, Citrix said. An early access program for Olympus is opening now, with general availability planned for the second half of this year.

Citrix's other announcements fall into a few categories: improving the end-user and IT manager experience, boosting efficiency in the data centre, and providing secure connections from the data centre and client devices to cloud services.

Highlights on the end-user side include:

HD Faces for GoToMeeting, a high-definition video client for Citrix's Web conferencing software, is entering a public beta.
GoToManage for the iPad, which lets IT pros access physical and virtual desktops remotely to diagnose and fix problems, will launch for free in the Apple App Store this week.
Citrix Receiver, the software that delivers virtual desktops and applications to user devices, supports 149 smartphones and 37 tablets. At Synergy, Citrix will demonstrate Receiver working on Google's Chrome OS laptops, the HP webOS tablet, and Motorola's Atrix 4G smartphone/laptop combo. Multitouch support on tablets is being upgraded, Citrix said.
The second version of XenClient, a bare-metal hypervisor for installing virtual desktops on PCs, will be shown in a technology preview that expands the software to more types of laptops. Bare-metal desktop hypervisors are not widely used, but may offer greater security by isolating virtual machines, and a richer experience than streamed desktops by using the PC's native horsepower. Citrix is upgrading XenClient to improve the user interface, synchronisation, backup and remote data wipes.
Citrix will also preview XenClient XT, a higher-end version with "extreme security, isolation and performance," designed for government and other organisations in need of multi-layer security, Citrix said.
Improving usability of virtual desktops, Citrix will preview an upgraded version of its HDX technology. With three times faster performance, Citrix said virtual desktop technology will deliver better multi-tasking, graphics support, real-time collaboration, and delivery of rich multimedia to branch offices.

With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, users often have several devices to connect to corporate networks. But unless you use only cloud-based services and trust your security to someone else, enterprises need robust technology in the data centre to deliver applications and secure the network.

Two new Citrix technologies target these needs:

NetScaler Cloud Gateway, to be available in physical and virtual appliances, sits at the "front door" of the data centre, connecting Web applications and Windows apps to any device in a secure manner, while providing single sign-on to users, Wasson said. The Gateway will also monitor a customer's licenses and service-level agreements.
NetScaler Cloud Bridge, a companion piece, sits at the "back door" of the network to provide a secure connection between the data centre and cloud services. WAN optimisation improves data flow and reduces use of bandwidth, and lets you split up the components of an application between data centre and cloud. For example, a customer could run most of an application in a cloud service but keep Active Directory and sensitive data in-house for security reasons.

A sale date for Cloud Gateway is not available yet, but the software will be available on NetScaler VPX, a software-based virtual appliance that starts at $2,000, or on NetScaler MPX, a hardware appliance that starts at $12,000. Cloud Gateway will also be available for a NetScaler services package that starts at $90,000.

Cloud Bridge will ship next month with pricing starting at $5,000 as a standalone appliance, or as part of the NetScaler Platinum edition.

Rounding out Citrix's Synergy announcements are a few pieces that bolster the company's virtual desktop software:

An acquisition of virtual desktop vendor Kaviza, which targets small and midsized businesses with VDI that doesn't require load balancers, connection brokers or attached storage. Citrix said this will move VDI "downmarket" to the masses.
XenDesktop 5, which was released a few months ago, is being updated with Citrix's IntelliCache to reduce the need for network-attached storage by running more processes on the server. (XenDesktop costs $95 to $350 per user or device.)
A free online service called "Success Accelerator" will give customers guidance in deploying Citrix virtual desktop products.

Citrix's desktop products put it in a good position against rival VMware, which has lagged behind Citrix in delivering features such as profile management, virtual desktops on the iPad and a bare-metal hypervisor.

One problem for Citrix is that many potential virtual desktop customers still use VMware to virtualise the servers that are likely to host desktop images.

Google Chrome OS and the space in the Enterprise

2011-05-25T21:58:00.001+01:00

Well, it has taken nearly two years since the announcement by Google to challenge Microsoft for a place at the desktop from the operating system upwards. We all know that Google has tried to challenge Microsoft for a place at the table for cloud based applications; Google Apps. They have had some high profile wins and made people consider cloud seriously.

Now, Google has officially unveiled Google Chome OS, its availability, pricing and supported hardware, and we believe it will seriously make people think about their desktop computing model. Like most things entering the Enterprise IT space nowadays it will probably come in through the consumer channel and we will need to support it.

In a very bold move by Citrix they have come out and said that they will fully support the Google Chrome OS (a vision we had two years ago) to access windows based desktops and applications in the datacentre – a very smart move by Google. VMware have also stated support for Chrome OS too.

Google, in partnership with Samsung and Acer, is pitching the laptops in a hardware, software and support package to businesses starting at $28 per user per month. The three-year contracts allow users to upgrade to new computers at the end of the term, and get replacements earlier if a device malfunctions.

While the price may be appealing to some customers, the problem of transitioning users from Windows applications to Chrome will be a roadblock, especially for customers who haven't installed any type of virtual desktop software.

But users of Citrix would have a much easier time, since the Citrix Receiver for Chrome OS technology will be very similar to what they already use to stream applications to other user devices.

VMware, which lagged behind Citrix in bringing virtual desktop functionality to the iPad, is in the same boat with Chrome OS. Google said it has a partnership with VMware to deliver similar functionality through VMware View, but Google Apps executive Rajen Sheth said it is unclear whether VMware will be ready in 2011.

"VMware is building a version of VMware View to work within the browser," Sheth says.

Using HTML5, Citrix says Citrix Receiver will create a rich user experience in the Chrome browser. Citrix engineering teams have been working on the project for six months to make it fast and secure.

At today’s Citrix Synergy key note Citrix have announced that their is a new Citrix receiver for web. This works with any browser.

We are pretty excited by this move and it should start to shape the VDI market further and some of the constraints around licensing models. And who better than Intrinsic to discuss this with…. Google Enterprise Partner, Citrix Gold Partner, VMware Enterprise Partner underpinned by hardware from HP and Cisco.

Citrix XenDesktop 5.0 SP1 includes support for Intellicache

2011-05-23T10:50:00.001+01:00

A new service pack for Citrix System’s XenDesktop 5.0 adds a migration tool and reduced storage costs thanks to support for IntelliCache technology.

XenDesktop 5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) became available last week. It supports the IntelliCache storage technology in XenServer 5.6, which caches temporary and non-persistent desktop files on the local disk of the host server.

By caching locally, a portion of runtime reads and writes of the virtual machine happen on lower-cost server attached storage instead of NAS or SAN. Citrix claims this reduces storage requirements for central storage by as much as 90%. Some analysts agree.

XenDesktop 5 SP1 also includes support for the XenDesktop 5 migration tool that launched in March, which gives admins a quick way to migrate their data from XenDesktop 4 to XenDesktop 5. This tool is necessary because XenDesktop 5 is based on different back-end architecture and requires a rip and replace upgrade from previous versions.

XenDesktop 5 SP1 also includes bug fixes, printing optimisation and XenVault for virtual desktop security, a setup wizard for using Citrix Provisioning Services in hosted XenDesktop 5 environments.

Desktop Studio, the new interface in XenDesktop 5 that lets administrators build, test and update desktop images in one place, now supports licensing reporting as well.

This service pack also adds supports Microsoft Server 2008R2 SP1, Microsoft Hyper-V 2008R2 SP1, VMware vSphere 4.1 update 1 and Windows 7 SP1.

Great news for Hyper-V organisations!

2011-05-17T09:38:00.001+01:00

Veeam has announced that its Backup and Replication product will support Microsoft Hyper-V later this year. With Hyper-V support, customers will be able to manage backup, replication and restores for both VMware and Hyper-V from a single console. The solution will include changed block tracking and built-in deduplication and compression.

For Hyper-V Veeam is going to provide the following features:

2-in-1 backup and replication for Hyper-V, providing near-continuous data protection (near-CDP)

Changed block tracking for Hyper-V, to enable fast, frequent and efficient backup and replication of all VMs, including those running on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).

Built-in deduplication and compression to minimise consumption of network bandwidth and backup storage.

With this announced support Veeam is providing a solution for multi-hypervisor environments. Microsoft itself has a product called System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), currently in version DPM 2010, providing backup for Hyper-V environments only.

So at long last our requests to Veeam and Distribution have been answered – this is good news!

Some elements to consider when looking at cloud

2011-05-06T10:48:00.001+01:00

One of the best places to start when you have determined that cloud computing is right for your business is to assess your IT architecture. It is only by aligning your internal IT architecture and that of a cloud provider will you truly simplify your architecture and achieve greater ROI. The following are some of the elements that you should consider when looking into cloud:

Security.

Security is still the number one issue that is on the mind of the CIO when considering cloud, and those concerns are far ranging from notification of attempted hacks, IDS/IPS, firewall configurations, operating system security, hypervisor security, the overall loss of control of their data and ultimately compliance and governance with external standards.

Organisations need to know how a shared, multi-tenant environment is segmented to prevent customer overlap. How is the solution architected and is the service provider’s cloud infrastructure – network, virtualisation and storage platforms – secure?

Availability.

Not all cloud platforms are the same. Organisations need to tier their applications and data, identifying which need to be highly available, which can accept downtime and how much downtime is acceptable. They need to understand the business risk associated with a lack of availability of their data. For those applications that need to be highly available, businesses should consider private cloud either hosted or on premise and enjoy the benefits that a hybrid cloud brings to the table. It’s also important to look at multi-site solutions and disaster recovery/business continuity planning.

Organisations need to understand how entry into the cloud is achieved and also importantly how they exit from the cloud and retrieve their data.

Compliance.

Organisations need to understand where their data will reside, how many live copies of that data there is, as well as who will interact with it and how. They need to understand which areas of compliance the service provider controls and how to audit against the standards and regulations to which they need to adhere.

Manageability.

Businesses need to understand what they are accountable for versus what they expect from a service provider. Organisations need to either have the technical expertise in-house to design the right solution or seek the services of an outside provider. There should be an understanding of what level of management their applications require and have an identified change management process.

Performance.

As with a more traditional hosting model, it’s important to understand workload demands on the infrastructure. Companies also need to understand what the bottlenecks are and how the cloud architecture they have or are evaluating can meet those needs. Organisations should perform their own testing to understand how a cloud environment affects compute, storage and network resources.

So, if this has identified some elements that has got you thinking, you really should talk to Intrinsic. We have the ability to undertake Cloud Feasibility and Due Diligence, build you your own private cloud, migrate and transition you to an Intrinsic hosted cloud and indeed establish a hybrid cloud whilst providing a full managed service wrap, allowing you to concentrate on business value and not just keeping the lights on.

Interested call us on 0844 474 0440 or email me