Novosco Marketing's Blog

Novosco ranked 41st place in Ireland’s top 50 fastest growing technology companies

Patrick McAliskey, Novosco Managing Director & John Lennon, Novosco Business Development Director

Belfast & Dublin, 29th Oct 09 – Novosco, a leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, announced today that it has been ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards for the 10th consecutive year.  Novosco is uniquely one of only three companies to receive a ranking since the beginning of the Deloitte Technology awards in 1999. 

The Technology Fast 50, now in its 10th year in Ireland, is an awards programme honouring business growth, technological innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.  The programme ranks the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in Ireland based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period. 
      
“It is a great achievement for Novosco to have been ranked for the last 10 years as one of Ireland’s leading Top 50 Technology Companies,” said Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director for Novosco.  “As criteria is based on percentage growth each year, it is notoriously hard to maintain your ranking in the FAST 50 technology awards.  The fact that Novosco has been recognised since the beginning is testament to our success in sustained growth, despite the challenging economic year”. 

Novosco has sustained yearly growth levels for a number of reasons.  As an innovative IT provider, Novosco continually adopts the latest technologies into its IT service portfolio.  With over 18 year’s virtualisation experience, Novosco’s implementation of virtualisation technologies have offered organisations of all sizes great cost savings and IT efficiencies.  Novosco is now taking customers to the next stage of virtualisation with the ever growing concept of cloud computing.    

To capitalise on the growth of cloud computing, Novosco in June 2009 acquired dooloop Ltd, an IT & Communications provider.  This enabled Novosco to quickly grow the business into the field of cloud networking/infrastructure.  As a result of the acquisition, the dooloop technology and Intellectual Property was rebranded as Novosco CloudStream™, with the CloudStream™ range of solutions leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.

 “To maintain growth and satisfy customers you have to continually adopt business benefiting technologies.  Given today’s economic tide, Cloud Computing is proving an extremely popular option for customers”, continued Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director for Novosco.  “Using the CloudStream range of services, our customers have innovative cloud solutions at affordable prices.”

With hosting facilities in a series of Tier 3 data centres throughout Europe and UK, Novosco is fast becoming a cloud provider of choice, with CloudStream enabling Novosco to continually grow in export markets outside Ireland.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud based IT infrastructure and network services.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions.  The Novosco CloudStream™ range of solutions is leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.   
Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.
For more information visit www.novosco.com

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: awards

InterTradeIreland realises cloud IT efficiencies and productivity gains

Pictured are (l-r) Laurence Lord, Corporate Services Director, InterTradeIreland & Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director, Novosco

Belfast & Dublin, 14th Oct 09 - Novosco, leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, announced today that it had been awarded a ‘cloud & managed services’ contract by InterTradeIreland (ITI), Ireland’s cross border trade and development body.

The contract was awarded to Novosco following a competitive tendering process and incorporates a hosted disaster recovery solution and resilient internet connection to the datacentre using Novosco’s CloudStream Network service.  The contract also included a managed service agreement where Novosco will pro-actively support the local IT infrastructure  at InterTradeIreland HQ’s in Newry.

InterTradeIreland has the responsibility to boost trade and business growth throughout the island of Northern Ireland and Ireland.  Through North/South economic co-operation and by encouraging better use of collective resources, InterTradeIreland creates an environment to increase the competitiveness of individual companies and the two economies in the global marketplace. 

“InterTradeIreland are looking forward to working with Novosco in exploring ways to realise efficiencies and savings within IT” said Laurence Lord, Corporate Services Director, InterTradeIreland.  “Using Novosco’s CloudStream IT services we are getting more for less and realising savings and productivity increases in the short term through utilising emerging cloud technologies.”

The Novosco CloudStream range of IT services leads the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.  As a disaster recovery solution, InterTradeIreland will effectively rent virtual, cloud servers that reside in one of Novosco’s Tier 3  hosting facilities.  These hosted server files will hold replicated data from InterTradeIreland HQ’s so that the IT environment can be quickly recreated in the event of a disaster.

“The Novosco Cloud based servers for disaster recovery will provide InterTradeIreland with computing resources on demand and will leave the worry of IT hardware/infrastructure failures to Novosco” said John Lennon, Business Development Director, Novosco.  “Instead of ITI buying secondary traditional hardware for disaster recovery, they will simply avail of a hosted server platform using virtualisation technology, which will offer great IT efficiences and savings”. 

To ensure resilient internet connectivity to the datacentre, ITI also opted to use Novosco’s CloudStream Network service.  Unlike traditional network providers, Novosco CloudStream Net service is typically half the price of leased lines and utilises multiple telco/transit providers.  This has the unique advantage of offering ITI multiple layers of network resilience and maximum continuity of network service, without having to purchase costly leased lines.

In addition to cloud services for disaster recovery, Novosco will also assist ITI in the support of their local day-to-day, traditional IT infrastructure in Newry.  The Novosco ‘Managed Service Agreement’ will proactively monitor and support InterTradeIreland’s local hardware / software infrastructure.  Beyond this Novosco will also continually ensure the optimisation of InterTradeIreland’s IT network to keep IT systems lean and highly available.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud based IT infrastructure and network services.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions.  The Novosco CloudStream™ range of solutions is leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.    

Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.
For more information visit www.novosco.com

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Cloud Computing, datacentre

Novosco will be holding a ‘Cloud Computing Breakfast Briefing’ on Thursday 5th Nov 09, Dublin.  (Novosco Dublin HQ office in Blanchardstown Corporate Park)

Agenda

- Breakfast
- What is Cloud Computing?
- Overview of Novosco CloudStream services
 - CloudStream Net (Private & Resilient Cloud Network Service)
 - CloudStream Servers (Virtual, Secure Severs On-demand)
- CloudStream Apps (Hosted applications, Always Available & Secure)
- Q&A

Who should attend:

Existing customers looking to extend into the cloud, Consultants & Solution advisors looking to add cloud computing to their portfolio.   

To register please complete the form below

Posted in: Events Tags: Cloud Computing, datacentre, virtualisation

What is Cloud Computing?

By Andrew Gregson, Novosco Creative Technology Director

Cloud Computing has long been a buzz word in the IT industry. Everyone is jumping on the cloud trend, but what does it really mean for businesses? What options are available today and what are the customer benefits of adopting a cloud IT infrastructure?

It is not surprising that companies find the cloud computing model confusing or fuzzy. Among the jargon however lies a fundamental change in the way IT operates. It’s about looking at ongoing IT costs per user and having a trusted ‘cloud provider’ to worry which technologies/hardware to host your infrastructure on. With cloud providers hosting the infrastructure, companies simply pay a fee per user/per month, with no capital expenditure (CAPEX) to spend. Only when businesses (large & small) start to actively embrace this model, will they realise both the immediate and future benefits of cloud computing.

Novosco’s definition of cloud computing…

Cloud computing provides computing resources on demand and leaves the worry of IT hardware/infrastructure to cloud providers.  Instead of companies buying traditional hardware, they simply avail of a hosted hardware/software platform and rent ‘IT as a service’; taking the form of hosted servers, hosted software applications and hosted online backup.

FIND OUT MORE
To receive the full PDF copy of the article please complete the form below:

Posted in: Technology Tags: Cloud Computing, datacentre

Novosco will exhibit at the ‘Northern Ireland Civil Service’ ICT Conference 2009. 

The conference, organised by IT Assist, Delivery and Innovation Division, & Department of Finance and Personnel, will take place on Tuesday 20th October and Wednesday 21st October 2009 at the Radisson SAS Roe Park Resort Hotel, Limavady.

Novosco will exhibit to share its virtualisation experiences including:
° Desktop Virtualisation

For more information on the conference please email edwina.nugent@novosco.com

Posted in: Events Tags: virtualisation

Cloud computing is reforming the IT marketplace offering a much cheaper way for businesses to acquire and use IT.

iQuest & The Sunday Business Post in association with the Irish Software Association and The National Digital Research Centre will host the ‘Cloud Computing Summit’, 23rd September, with exhibitors including Novosco, VMware, Salesforce.com and eircom. 

The summit focuses on how traditional enterprises can adopt Cloud Computing and features thought leaders, industry experts and end-user experiences of cloud technologies.

Novosco will share its experiences on cloud computing and will exhibit to discuss its CloudStream™ range of cloud IT services, including:

° Cloud Networks
° Cloud Servers
° Cloud Applications

The main cloud summit conference is on the 23rd September, with technical sessions on the 22nd September.

For more information on the summit please email edwina.nugent@novosco.com

Or Register online at http://www.cloudsummit.ie/index.php?show=booking

Posted in: Events Tags: Cloud Computing, datacentre, virtualisation

Videoconferencing uses telecommunications of audio and video to bring people at different sites together for a meeting.  Videoconferencing has traditionally been an expensive communications luxury for companies.  Its availability has been around for years, but with its high implementation cost and associated low quality & video streaming problems, organisations have weighted the opportunity cost of its purchase as high.  These problems have indeed prevented videoconferencing from becoming a standard form of communication within companies. 

Novosco CloudStream Net makes affordable Videoconferencing a reality.  All customers need is:

1) Any PC & webcam – One per site.  (Apple iMac is a popular choice as the camera resides in the screen.)   
2) To use free software or web plugins such as  Skype, ichat, google talk
3) Novosco CloudStream Net – Cloud Network Service (charged at a monthly rate)

HOW?

CloudStream Net is a cost-effective network service that among other benefits increases broadband speed and upload/download speeds.  This allows phenomenal improvements in VoIP and video conferencing quality, but without huge costs.  Without the frustrations of poor video quality, companies can audio and visually communicate as well as quickly share documents and computer-displayed information.   With improved broadband speed, even if miles from the local exchange, communicating with remote offices through videoconferencing is now a refreshing reality with CloudStream Net. With a reliable, fast line using CloudStream Net, customers can get the most out of tools such iMacs and ichat/Skype.           

For more information:

Posted in: Technology Tags: Cloud Computing

 CloudStream Net saves customers 50%, whilst improving network performance

Pictured are Andrew Gregson, Novosco Creative Technical Director & Patrick McAliskey, Novosco Managing Director.

Belfast & Dublin, 30th July 09 -  Novosco announced today the release of the revolutionary CloudStream™ network solution – a unique and cost-effective network service that enables organisations to connect to the internet or multiple office locations, but at the fraction of the cost of leased lines. 

The Novosco CloudStream service has been added to the Novosco portfolio as a result of the acquisition of Dooloop Ltd, a former innovative IT & Communications provider.

“As a result of acquiring Dooloop and merging the two companies and technologies together, Novosco is delighted to launch the new CloudStream range of services”, said Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director, Novosco.  “CloudStream Net is a revolutionary communications technology and is the most cost-effective, yet feature rich network service available on the market today. CloudStream Net offers customers major cost savings and enables organisations of all sizes to benefit from a Cloud infrastructure.”  

CloudStream Net is unique in that the service typically lowers ongoing IT expenditure costs by as much as 50% when compared to the cost of a traditional leased line type service.  It allows multiple lines to be aggregated together, providing much improved upload and download bandwidth speed.  This is beneficial for customers using ‘real time’ applications such as video conferencing, CCTV or VoIP or for customers that require more bandwidth for cloud services like online backup.  

Unlike traditional network providers, Novosco CloudStream Net service utilises multiple Telco/transit providers.  This has the unique advantage of offering customers multiple layers of network resilience – a benefit not normally within reach for small to medium sized organisations.   Using multiple service partners and dual lines, CloudStream can seamlessly re-route traffic to a failover line/connection should network interruptions occur.   

CloudStream service has successfully been implemented at customer sites including McAvoy Group, Tobermore Concrete and Redhead International where CloudStream Net is connecting multiple office locations including to/from Dublin and Paris.

CloudStream has also been recently implemented at SDC Trailers, with offices locations spanning the UK.  “We replaced our MPLS network with CloudStream Net and achieved double the network performance for half the previous costs”, said Robert Patton, IT Manager, SDC Trailers.

As Ireland’s leading virtualisation expert, the new CloudStream offering compliments the network infrastructure of those clients that have already virtualised, whilst offering non-virtualised clients the ability to prepare for a future proof and affordable Cloud Computing platform. 

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud based IT infrastructure and network services.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions.  The Novosco CloudStream™ range of solutions is leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.    

Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.
For more information visit www.novosco.com

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Cloud Computing

Zero Capital costs: Three year contract

John Timmins, Financial Controller, Burlington Hotel & Eddie O'Rourke, Novosco Sales Director

 Dublin, 23rd July 09 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual IT infrastructure and services, today announced that the Burlington Hotel, one of Dublin’s best known landmark hotels, has chosen Novosco to host their back office and email applications for the next three years.

“We have been extremely impressed with how quickly Novosco were able to get our applications up and running”, said John Clifton, General Manager of the Burlington.  “Since the system went live, we have had no complaints about the speed, security or usability.”

“This approach made a lot more sense than installing applications locally and having to worry about keeping them safe from harm”, continued John Timmins, Financial Controller at The Burlington. “As we don’t have any full time IT staff, a service like this was very attractive to us.”

Eddie O’Rourke, Novosco Sales Director was quick to outline the value of the service, “Novosco’s CloudStream application service allows customers to get up and running quickly without the need for any capital investment.  This is the case for new or existing applications.  In the case of the Burlington, this is attractive from a cash flow point of view but more importantly, they now have a consistent and predictable cost for running these applications for at least the next three years. This brings some comfort at a time when businesses everywhere are looking to reduce and manage their costs”.

O’Rourke goes on to explain how this approach is possible: “Novosco have already made the upfront investment in our fault tolerant cloud infrastructure so that our customers don’t have to.  This gives them valuable piece of mind.  Our customers’ virtualised applications and data reside inside a state of the art data centre, making both the physical systems and the surrounding environment completely resilient.  It also means that our customers have one less headache when it comes to disaster recovery, as they can securely access their applications from any location over the Internet”.

Novosco are the Irish leaders in virtualisation and application delivery and were recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as Best System Integration Company for 2009.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual IT infrastructure and services and is committed to assisting customers in the evaluation and optimisation of their IT systems.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions. Novosco has pioneered the use of end to end virtualisation with server, desktop and application technologies to redefine the dynamic data centre.  This approach enables Novosco to develop and deliver cost-effective IT solutions that enhance client operations and enable them to get the most out of their IT infrastructure.

Novosco have provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes including Lagan Holdings, John Sisk & Sons and many more.  Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.  For more information visit www.novosco.com

About The Burlington Hotel

A place that has inspired a thousand stories, the Burlington Hotel has held a special place in the heart of Dublin since 1972. If the walls could speak they would tell tales of gala events and sumptuous social gatherings, of great sporting legends whose passion ignited the hearts of many.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Cloud Computing, datacentre, virtualisation

Ireland’s largest car dealer group selects Novosco to virtualise their entire server infrastructure

Eddie O'Rourke, Novosco Sales Director & Enda Martin, Group IT Manager, Windsor Motors

This new dynamic computing environment, implemented by Novosco, provides Windsor Motors with a flexible and resilient back-end infrastructure, which will allow the car industry leader to enjoy the benefits of a virtualised environment, providing ease of management, increased server utilisation, increased availability, as well as simple and effective disaster recovery. 

“While we continue to trade strongly through the economic downturn, every aspect of the business needs to look at how we can operate more efficiently”, said Enda Martin, Group IT Manager for Windsor Motors.   “By virtualising our production server environment, we were able to reduce the costs associated with IT management, power consumption and data centre space.  At the same time we were also looking for increased user performance and better utilisation of hardware.  We are very happy with the results.”

The solution enhances resilience and availability by utilising technologies such as VMware ESX HA and DRS cluster, supported by an EMC Clariion storage array.   This platform protects against single component failure or complete server failure and provides the most optimal use of server resources at the data centre.   In order to facilitate maintenance, live servers can be moved from one piece of server hardware to another using the features of VMware ESX.

 “Windsor Motors have reduced the physical server footprint of their production infrastructure from twenty to two” said Eddie O’Rourke, Sales Director, Novosco. “This has had a hugely positive impact on the total cost of ownership of their IT infrastructure and the entire swap out of Windsor’s enterprise servers was achieved within three months.  This was a strategic project, meaning that Windsor Motors’ entire server infrastructure now runs on VMware technology.”

All Windows servers with heavy workloads such as production application servers were reduced down to two physical hosts.  In future, by using live migration technology, production servers never need to go offline, so routine maintenance can be carried out during normal working hours. 

All servers have been made highly resilient using VMware’s High Availability features.  The backup solution leverages Symantec Backup Exec and esXpress to allow online replication of virtual machines to the Disaster Recovery (DR) site.  DR testing of key functionality is easily achieved by bringing up the replicated virtual server at the DR site within a non-live virtual switch.  VMware VirtualCenter also delivered the added benefit of an excellent remote management tool.

At the DR site, where the emphasis is on recovery in the event of a disaster, a single host has been configured. This DR solution was designed to provide enough storage to house virtual machine images and allow Windsor to take advantage of replication facilities, while also providing them with an environment which can be used to test and develop future services. As virtual machines were encapsulated into a small number of files, backup and recovery is streamlined and simplified.

For the purposes of Disaster Recovery, copies of the virtual machine files are required at an offsite location, where esXpress allows the replication of live virtual machines from one host to another.  This eradicates the need to maintain a live virtual machine at the DR destination, saving on licensing costs and providing a simple, effective and controllable DR model.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual IT infrastructure and services and is committed to assisting customers in the evaluation and optimisation of their IT systems.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions. Novosco has pioneered the use of end to end virtualisation with server, desktop and application technologies to redefine the dynamic data centre.  This approach enables Novosco to develop and deliver cost-effective IT solutions that enhance client operations and enable them to get the most out of their IT infrastructure.

Novosco have provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes including Lagan Holdings, John Sisk & Sons and many more.  Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.  For more information visit www.novosco.com

About Windsor Motors

Windsor Motors Group was established in 1968 and since then has grown to be Ireland’s largest and favourite dealer group. It is best known for its strong relationship with Nissan as it operates eight Nissan dealerships in Airside, Belgard, Bray, Cork, Deansgrange, Galway, Liffey Valley and Raheny. In addition it also operates four Chevrolet and SsangYong dealerships at Airside, Bray, Deansgrange and Galway and two Opel dealerships in Liffey Valley and Airside Motor Park. It has a turnover of €270m and 350 staff. Windsor is committed to ensuring customer retention and securing new customers by providing an excellent service every time.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: virtualisation, VMware