CASE STUDY A SERVICE PROVIDER OUTSOURCERY
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Mark Seemann is product and strategy director of Bury-based company Outsourcery, which provides hosting and cloud computing services.
"We have a cloud hosting product based on Windows Server 2008. It provides a virtualised environment, run from our own data centres we don't outsource that stuff. Anything that can run on a customer's Windows system will run on our system," reveals Seemann.
"We've spent more than £10m on two data centresin Leicester and Manchester including Urn on a Hewlett-Packard SAN [Storage Area Network], which replicates all the data held at one location to the other. If a plane falls on one centre, the data is safe."
Seemann reveals that his customers are happy that their data is secure, and, most importantly, kept separate from other customers. He says: "We host data for the government and for a number of public sector organisations.
"The big strength of the products we supply is in mobility These cloud services hook on to a mobile device and allow a similar experience to working at your desk. The whole point is that they sync up to whatever sort of device you use."
The service can be accessed via desktop PCs, web-equipped laptops, BlackBerrys, iPhones, Windows Mobile and some Nokia phones, and is being tested on Android phones. The Apple Phone has been a surprise. "Due to the size of the screen, it makes a very good mobile CAM device. The shift is towards using phones for home and business. We can keep these applications separate. In terms of data, it's very secure."
When an employee leaves your firm, their phone can be wiped remotely Outsourcery offers a CAM package that is based on Microsoft Dynamics. "Hosted CAM is an important application for transport companies," says Seemann. "It's more than simply a contacts system. CRM out of the box will give you sales support and marketing but the application is designed to be customised from the outset. You can include job workflow scheduling jobs, task lists and sending out automated emails to drivers, for instance and we have done substantial integration with ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] applications."
Outsourcery is introducing a system called Unified Communications, based on Microsoft's Communications Server, which includes voice calling, video, webchat and 'presence' you can see where everybody is and their work status, or contact all employees currently within one area. "It integrates with Outlook and all our other services, so when you receive an email, you can see the contact details and status of the sender. These services work well in the office, but they work best with people working remotely or on the road."
Seemann says that hosting is not just for smaller firms: "A year ago, I would have said that the sweet spot was between five and 50 users. Smaller firms come to us because they can afford to run this sort of operation themselves. Due to the recession, we've had a lot of larger companies up to 500 employees come to us."
"We're saying it's cheaper and better for us to do it. The great thing about cloud computing is that it's scalable."