Archive for the ‘Press Releases’ Category

Novosco wins three-year IT hosted services contract

Pictured from left:Mike Tesar, Chief Technical Officer, ezetop with Eddie O'Rourke, Sales Director, Novosco and David Shackleton, Chief Operating Officer, ezetop

Dublin, 6th Oct, 2009 — Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced that ezetop, the Irish-headquartered international mobile top-up group, have chosen them to host their key line of business applications.  The hosted applications service will provide ezetop with dramatically improved levels of application availability and resilience. ezetop enables people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from a significant online website, www.ezetop.com.

Providing the service for over 80 mobile operators , ezetop services are available online via the ezetop e-commerce website or at over 80,000 retail stores that rely on ezetop’s large global network.   Due to the critical and real-time nature of ezetop’s e-commerce business, ezetop required a highly available application system which would also allow it to grow globally, without infrastructure constraints.

To deploy a new virtual infrastructure to support ezetop’s platform, Novosco was the chosen provider to first host their critical ‘business to consumer’ (B2C) applications, in particular their key e-commerce website applications supporting hundreds of thousands of consumers across the globe.  In addition, Novosco were also selected to host and fully manage ezetop’s internal user applications, which include various Microsoft tools.

David Shackleton, Chief Operating Officer at ezetop said, “The performance and stability of our online platform is of paramount importance. Novosco demonstrated their understanding of our commercial and technical requirements and came up with a robust solution, to cost effectively meet our requirements as well as most importantly, being able to scale to meet our future growth”.

Eddie O’Rourke, Novosco Sales Director for Ireland said,  “Instead of ezetop buying traditional infrastructure to support the internal company services, which were not core to their service offering, they availed of Novosco’s existing cloud platform which allowed greater operational and financial benefits”.

Mike Tesar, Chief Technical Officer with ezetop was impressed with Novosco’s integration skills: “What was important to us was having our applications tailored to work the way we need to use them.  This meant that Novosco had to understand our requirements in detail.  The transition was made easier by the fact that Novosco had such strong experience in systems integration, meaning that they could help with all aspects of the changes.”

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.

About ezetop

ezetop enables people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from over 80,000 retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from a significant online website, www.ezetop.com.

ezetop’s services benefit mobile operators as they generate additional revenue outside their domestic market.  ezetop currently offers services in over 80 mobile operators/countries across Asia Pacific, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Eastern Europe and is adding operators on a regular basis.  Existing operators include Airtel, Claro, C&W, Dialog Telecom, Digicel, Globe Telecom, MTN, Orascom, Singtel, Telefonica, Telenor, Tigo, Ufone, Vodafone, Warid and others.

ezetop’s global headquarters is in Dublin, Ireland with regional headquarters in Miami, USA and Dubai, UAE.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Microsoft, virtualisation, VMware

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

 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

John Stone, CTO, Cisco; Novosco MD, Patrick McAliskey;Jimmy Kehoe, Partner Manager, VMware;Brendan Crossey, Territory Manager, EMC

Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual IT infrastructure and services, held an industry leading ‘Virtual Datacentre’ briefing in the Europa Hotel, Belfast on 11th June.   With 140 IT end users registered, the event focused on the IT industry’s first Cloud offering now becoming a reality.  Novosco held the briefing in conjunction with key technology partners VMware, EMC & Cisco. 

 The exclusive briefing featured Novosco’s new Cloud network offering and how Novosco, VMware and other technology partners can deliver a new cloud computing platform.

The benefits of IT virtualisation, such as server consolidation, cost savings and desktop/application centralisation have always been widely known, but clients are realising more and more the future operational benefits that a virtual IT infrastructure has to offer, including the move to a cloud infrastructure.  Cloud computing essentially is the delivery of applications/files, (anything from storage to email and CRM), over the internet.

“As Ireland’s leading virtualisation expert, Novosco is best placed to bring the new Cloud offering to the IT market”, said Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director, Novosco.  “Cloud computing has long been a buzz word within the IT industry, but until now its true implementation has not been possible.  With a reputation for delivering industry firsts and working alongside our technology partners, VMware, EMC and Cisco, we are set to transform the IT industry once again”.   

During the briefing, VMware released its new vSphere 4 product, which is the leading platform for building cloud infrastructures.  Novosco technical staff supplemented this with a LIVE vSphere demo.   EMC also discussed virtualised storage and Cisco presented virtualised networking. 

Registered delegates included Novosco customers such as Belfast Trust, Belfast International Airport, and Progressive Building Society.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Cloud Computing, EMC, virtualisation, VMware

Novosco awarded ICT Excellence Award for market-leading performance in supplying and integrating systems solutions.

Dublin, 27th May 09 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual IT infrastructure and services has been awarded ‘Systems Integration Company of the Year at ICT Excellence Awards, Dublin.  The awards took place on Thursday 21st May at the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, where the ICT excellence award was presented to Novosco technical director, Justin Winston by Dr Tom McCarthy, CEO, IMI.

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Excellence awards are in their ninth year and recognise outstanding achievement in the sector.  Novosco was delighted with this award which commends market-leading performance in supplying and implementing systems solutions. Special recognition was given to Novosco who clearly demonstrated integration of diverse systems from multiple sources. 

This award was based on the integration of two projects, John Sisk & Sons & Lagan Holdings where multiple technologies where implemented including Microsoft Exchange, Citrix XenApp for remote user access, VMware for server virtualisation and Riverbed technology for accelerating application performance and data transfer.   Other technologies included EMC Celerra & VMware Site Recovery Manager for disaster recovery and Mimosa Nearpoint for email archiving. 

“We are extremely flattered to receive this award and we take great encouragement from this recognition of our unique approach to IT infrastructure.  Our clients have always told us that they want to see real solutions, not just product pitches” said Eddie O’Rourke, Sales Director of Novosco.  “By figuring out which blend of technologies is right for each client, we have achieved some great results over the past year.  Despite, or maybe even because of today’s economic challenges, it is encouraging to see so many organisations looking at new ways to increase their efficiency by using technology, particularly virtualisation technology”.
 
Novosco’s philosophy is that the answer for customers is rarely black and white. With the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for virtualised solutions and with more staff than any other provider accredited with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware technologies, Novosco has a high level of in-house expertise that allows engineers to integrate multiple technologies seamlessly. 

A customised and fully integrated solution unique to each clients IT infrastructure is designed.  This is what makes Novosco a trusted advisor for many clients such as John Sisk & Sons and Lagan Holdings. 

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.  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.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: awards, virtualisation

Novosco virtualise servers using VMware technology to cut costs and implement disaster recovery plan

Ken Kennedy, Sisk Group IT Manager & Eddie O'Rourke, Novosco Sales Director

Dublin, 16th April 09 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual IT infrastructure and services is to implement the second phase of John Sisk & Sons IT virtualisation project.  Part of a strategic phased virtualisation project to centralise John Sisk & Sons IT network, Novosco will implement VMware technology on all servers, with the benefits of consolidating hardware and reducing core infrastructure costs. 

The largest general contracting company in Ireland with turnover in excess of €1.2 billion, John Sisk & Sons’ IT infrastructure serves approximately 700 IT users and a vast number of remote construction sites.  Landmark construction projects include Croke Park and more recently, Lansdowne Road. 

“Over the past year we have been working with our preferred supplier Novosco, to centralise our IT infrastructure using VMware virtualisation technology, as well as to risk manage the move of our IT infrastructure to a 3rd party data centre,” said Ken Kennedy, IT Manager, Sisk Group. “Our VMware environment has grown significantly and has become the lynchpin of our IT systems. Within the last 4-6 months we have removed 15 of our physical servers and virtualised them onto two hosts. We feel virtualisation is the way forward for us to further centralise IT and to reduce both ongoing support and capital costs.”

With virtualisation phase two, Sisk will consolidate all servers into the external data centre. This decentralised platform is particularly beneficial given the low level of bandwidth in Ireland and has provided Sisk with a solid disaster recovery plan. From a return on investment perspective, the second phase of virtualisation will create ‘significant’ cost savings, which is particularly important given the current economic climate.

“With 60 to 70 construction sites throughout the country, reducing servers has greatly improved the Sisk Group’s ability to setup new remote sites. Virtualisation creates the ability to rapidly provision servers and applications to meet the needs of the business,” said Eddie O’Rourke, Sales Director, Novosco.  “We brought virtualisation to the table and advised Sisk Group on a staged virtualisation approach.”

“We have a very close relationship with Novosco. We chose Novosco as a preferred partner not just because of their virtualisation experience, but because they added value with their wide range of knowledge of other technologies such as thin client and core infrastructure,” said Daragh Doohan, Network Infrastructure Manager, Sisk Group.

With virtualisation phase two, Sisk & Sons will endeavour to make IT a business enabler, as opposed to being just a cost centre within business operations.  Virtualisation will free up more resources and will add value to projects, rather than be a cost contributor.  Over the next couple of years, Sisk & Sons will also focus on the whole area of desktop virtualisation in order to provide an even better experience for all IT users.  

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.  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.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: business continuity, datacentre, virtualisation, VMware

Belfast, 12th March, 2009 — Novosco, who is Ireland’s leading provider of virtual IT infrastructure and services, has been awarded the prestigious and internationally recognised ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications.  This formed part of an integrated achievement with Novosco also being awarded the Investors In People (IIP) award.   Novosco achieved the awards with the assistance of CIMAOMEGA, experts in transformational change in the workplace.

The Novosco NIMS system contains details of the procedures and processes that meet ISO requirements for business continuity, data security, and disaster recovery, as well as providing Novosco management and staff with an objective method of maintaining excellent working practices.

Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director for Novosco explained, “As an IT service provider, Novosco customers trust us with their confidential data and their IT infrastructure.  The awards reinforce our commitment to providing our customers with service excellence and they formally recognise that the products and services which we provide are consistently on par with world class standards.  Despite the current economic climate, Novosco felt it was important to invest in the awards as it gives us further competitive advantage and has reinforced Novosco’s position as Ireland’s leading IT provider to both public & private sector customers”. 

“Novosco has been our trusted partner since 2003 and we congratulate the company on the achievement of the ISO awards.  Novosco implemented the virtualisation of our IT infrastructure, which decommissioned over 20 servers and saved around £200k compared to the cost of a non-virtualised environment.” said Jim Fennell Information Systems Manager, Lagan Holdings Ltd.

At the end of last year, Novosco also received the Investors in People (IIP) recognition.  The company was formally assessed with regard to staff training, development and overall company performance. 

Patrick McAliskey continues, “The IIP award shows that we take our commitment as an employer very seriously.  The process has helped us to organise our development programme so that it delivers focused, up-to-date skills to our workforce.  The award is integrated with the ISO accreditation to ensure the high standards needed for these awards are continually maintained.”

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.  This approach enables Novosco to develop and deliver cost-effective IT solutions that enhance client operations.

Novosco have provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes including Acheson Glover, Belfast Trust, Lagan Holdings and many more.   
For more information visit www.novosco.com

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: awards, business, business continuity, Quality, security