Posts Tagged ‘EMC’

Gordons Chemists chooses Novosco’s CloudStream™ as corporate standard

Belfast, March 31st 2010 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced it has been appointed to implement and maintain a comprehensive Wide Area Network for all Gordons Chemists’ sites throughout Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Left to right Mark Frizell, IT Manager (Gordons Chemist),John Lennon, Sales Director (Novosco)

A period of sustained growth for the company, coupled with continued expansion in the Scottish market meant decisions had to be made around how best to implement a secure, scalable infrastructure as well as flexible and reliable connectivity between all sites in both territories. After examining the existing infrastructure and going to market, Gordons Chemists decided on the Novosco CloudStream™ range of services to provide the primary connectivity, edge security and filtering services for all branches.

The CloudStream™ offering provides Gordons Chemists with a scalable WAN platform, with greater security and enhanced capability to transfer of information throughout all branches.  As well as these benefits, the CloudStream™ based Wide Area Network allows increase performance in connection speed to branches all whilst removing the overhead of internal management of the network. This is especially critical for all Scottish branches that need to securely transfer patient data to the N3 network, as stipulated by NHS Scotland. The flexibility of the CloudStream™ offering allows additional improvements to corporate services, such as Voice over IP (VOIP) telephony and Backup as a Service (BAAS) across all branches in the future.

Patrick McAliskey, Novosco Managing Director said “The challenges facing Gordons Chemists are similar to those facing many other companies. The ability to provide a secure, dynamic and scalable WAN infrastructure will be intrinsically linked to their well deserved success. By doing more within their current budgets we feel we have helped them achieve more than had been envisaged. We look forward to working with Gordons Chemists in the upcoming months and years.”

About Novosco

 is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud IT infrastructure and network services. With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Cisco, 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 has provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes, such as the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Queen’s University Belfast, Burlington Hotel, SIAC Construction, Windsor Motors and many more.

For more information visit www.novosco.com

About Gordons Chemists

Gordons Chemists is Northern Ireland’s largest independently owned pharmacy chain.  We were established over 30 years ago in Donaghadee, County Down. Today, we now have more than 60 pharmacies on the high street in Northern Ireland and Scotland. We have a simple goal – to give you great value for money, and to deliver the friendly, courteous and professional customer service you expect.

For more information visit www.gordons-chemists.com

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: Avamar, Backup, business continuity, Cisco, Citrix, Cloud Computing, datacentre, EMC, gordons chemist, Networking, Novosco, press, Quality, storage, virtualisation, VMware

Zero Capital Costs, Peace of Mind plus Application Mobility

Dublin, 12th April 2011_In November 2010, Anne Brady McQuillans DFK moved to the Cloud and have not looked back since.  This involved moving all of their key applications and data into the cloud using Novosco’s CloudStream™ Apps tailored private cloud service.  Moving to this service means that Anne Brady McQuillans DFK’s key applications are now being delivered securely and efficiently over the Internet, eliminating the need for servers, backups and all of the associated headaches.

Left to Right: Anne Brady (Senior Partner; Anne Brady McQuillans DFK) and Eddie O'Rourke (Sales Director; Novosco)

Anne Brady McQuillans DFK is a progressive and growing firm of chartered accountants and business consultants. The firm has two partners, Anne Brady and Natalie Kelly, a management team of 5 and 25 employees. Anne Brady McQuillans DFK is a member firm of DFK International, a top 10 international association of independent accounting firms and business advisers.

 
The company expects to save thousands of Euros every year by moving to CloudStream™ Apps, as well as converting potential capital investment in rapidly decreasing assets to a lower ongoing operating expense.  This is in addition to the less easily quantifiable benefits including; no more local backups, all data in a single location, access to files from anywhere with an internet connection, extended life of PC equipment and allowing staff to use a range of  devices.

“We have been extremely impressed with the Novosco service and with how well our applications are performing” remarked Anne Brady, Senior Partner.  “For our business there are a few reasons why this cloud solution is attractive to us.  Firstly, it removes our dependency on local servers and having to use certain PC devices at certain locations.  Our staff can now securely access the applications and data they need from anywhere, anytime and using virtually any device.  Another major benefit was the reduction in the cost of acquiring and maintaining our IT systems.  By moving to this service, we have replaced a potentially large upfront capital spend with a smaller monthly operating expense.”

Eddie O’Rourke, Sales Director with Novosco pointed to the value of the service for the wider private sector marketplace, “Novosco’s CloudStream™ Apps 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.  This is attractive from a cashflow and expenditure point of view but more importantly, it provides a consistent and predictable mechanism for maintaining your applications. This brings some comfort at a time when businesses in Ireland are looking to further reduce and efficiently manage their costs”.

O’Rourke goes on to explain how this approach is possible: “Novosco have made the investment in fault-tolerant cloud infrastructure so that our customers don’t have to.  Our customers’ virtualised applications and data reside inside state of the art data centres, making both the physical systems and the surrounding environment highly resilient.  It also means that our customers have one less headache when it comes to disaster recovery, as they can securely access their applications and data from any location over the Internet.  Probably the biggest difference between our cloud service and other offerings is that we manage the entire transition process to the cloud so that the end user does not have to worry about the moving process or the technology required to make it all possible.  We also believe that it is vital for any cloud service to offer comprehensive service level guarantees.  Our objective is not just to drive down the cost of IT but also to improve performance, reliability and security.”

About Anne Brady McQuillans DFK
Anne Brady McQuillans DFK are registered auditors and are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland to carry on investment business.

Click below to see IT Services Committee members, Anne Brady McQuillans DFK and Joanne Griffin FCA, Financial Controller, Flogas discuss Anne’s recent move of her entire office system to the Cloud; What was involved? How long did it take? Were there security concerns? Has office productivity increased? Have IT and associated costs come down? Would Anne recommend the cloud?

http://charteredaccountants.newsweaver.ie/technologynewsletter/1fchbr6tyur

About Novosco
Novosco is Ireland’s leading Virtualisation specialist with extensive enterprise experience using Citrix, Cisco, EMC, Microsoft and VMware. Novosco has pioneered the use of end to end virtualisation with server, desktop and application technologies to redefine the dynamic datacentre.

For more information please contact Lynsey Corbett or Eddie O’Rourke at +353 (0)1 2455114.

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: Cisco, Cloud Computing, datacentre, EMC, Networking, Novosco, Quality, security, storage, virtualisation, VMware

Whether you are small or large enterprise join Novosco at this exclusive half day event and find out how to

• Employ more efficient storage strategies
• Increase the amount of data your staff can manage without additional headcount.
• Move information dynamically in a fully automated, self-managed process.
• Realise maximum value from your storage with de-duplication technology out of the box.
• Achieve significant increase in performance and reliability from storage
• Easily introduce the capability for disaster recovery and business continuity.

Posted in: Events, Workshops Tags: Backup, business continuity, Cloud Computing, EMC, Networking, Novosco, security, storage, virtualisation, VMware

Using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Find out how Novosco can help you to …

Ensure Reliable Recovery by eliminating common causes of failure during recovery and making it possible to execute non-disruptive testing of recovery plans within an isolated environment.
 
Accelerate Recovery for the virtual environment by automating the recovery process to eliminate error prone manual steps and ensure consistency in the recovery procedure.
 

Simplify Disaster Recovery by centralising the process of creating, updating and managing recovery plans and eliminating complex manual recovery steps. 

Dowload the presentations covered below; 

VMware Site Recovery Manager Overview.pdf

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EMC Avamar Overview.pdf

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Real World Case Study_VMware SRM in progressive Building Society.pdf

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Agenda                                                                                                                  

Posted in: Events Tags: Backup, business continuity, Cloud Computing, EMC, Novosco, Quality, virtualisation, VMware

SEHSCT appoints Novosco to install Trust-wide EMC backup solution

Belfast, September 30th 2010 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced it has been appointed to implement a centralised data backup and recovery environment throughout the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust (SEHSCT).

Left to Right - Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director Novosco and Steven Stewart, Assistant Director of IT & Telecommunications, SEHSCT

Built on EMC’s Avamar backup platform, where disk is the primary backup storage medium, the need for tape based backup regimes is removed – a benefit universally welcomed amongst the Trust’s ICT department. This disk based backup also means that Trust staff can forecast future growth in capacity with greater accuracy, and budget for it accordingly. With capacity based growth and scalability, the need for inherent resilience is all the greater. This has been provided by configuring the installed solution with Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes (RAIN) architecture. RAIN architectures in this type of environment offer data-storage and protection systems that are more distributed, shareable and scalable, as well as being cheaper to deploy and maintain.

Moreover, the new environment will provide greater flexibility for ICT administrators, by way of global de-duplication of data both at source and target destinations. This ensures that duplicated objects are identified at source and only objects not already stored are sent across the network, thus saving time, effort, whilst reducing network traffic. Such benefits to the Trust are in addition to the fact that the solution works on standard IP network architectures, removing the need for a dedicated backup network.

The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust was formed in April 2007 by the merger of the Ulster Community Hospital Trust with Down & Lisburn Trust. It is an integrated organisation, incorporating acute hospital services, community health and social services and serves a population of approx 440,000 people. It employs over 10,000 staff delivering a range of health and social care services across the local government districts of Down, North Down, Lisburn and Ards.

Stephen Stewart, Assistant Director for ICT & Telecommunications said, “Novosco’s EMC accreditations and experience in delivering this type of solution, along with their relationship with EMC was instrumental in the Trust choosing Avamar for its backup regime. Global de-duplication for backing up the remote sites as well as its built in resilience makes this offering very compelling.”

John Lennon, Sales Director for Novosco, said “SEHSCT’s approach to data backup and recovery is undoubtedly the right one. Removing the logistical headache of tape based backups and centralising the process will ensure that the already over-stretched ICT team can focus on the delivery of healthcare applications and infrastructure to the healthcare professionals and ultimately benefit patients. It will be the blueprint for other organisations of this size and scale in Northern Ireland.”

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud IT infrastructure and network services. With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Cisco, 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 has provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes, such as the Queen’s University Belfast, Burlington Hotel, SIAC Construction, Windsor Motors and many more.   

For more information visit www.novosco.com

About South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust

From 1 April 2007, the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust has assumed responsibility for the services delivered by the Ulster Community Hospital Trust and Down & Lisburn Trust.

Both legacy Trusts which join to form the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust have a successful and distinguished history and come together to provide an integrated and comprehensive range of health and social care for the people in the local government districts of Ards, North Down, Down and Lisburn.

As outlined in its corporate plan 2009-2010, the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust will:
• improve the health and well-being of the people we serve in partnership with key stakeholders;
• provide person centred, safe and effective care and
• ensure best value for money.

The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust employs over 10,000 staff, providing services for more than 440,000 people in its catchment area.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Avamar, awards, Backup, business, business continuity, Cisco, Cloud Computing, datacentre, EMC, Novosco, Quality, security, storage, VMware

Novosco virtualised Acheson & Glovers IT server infrastructure.Novosco virtualised Acheson & Glovers IT server infrastructure. This reduced and consolidated the number of servers from 35 to six. An EMC SAN was also put in place to manage storage and data.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdO1PeSBqE

Wilson Nesbitt Solicitors provides legal services to commercial /private clients in Northern Ireland. With extensive IT requirements, Novosco has implemented many projects at Wilson Nesbitt including server virtualisation, desktop virtualisation, disaster recovery and Sharepoint intranet developments. Servers were reduced from 20 to two physical servers using VMware virtualisation technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C20ZgWfiV6c

Spence and Partners has been a customer of Novosco for approximately eight years. During this time Novosco has provided consultancy and advice on system data management to ensure its integrity and consistency. Novosco has also implemented server virtualisation using VMware technology, as well as designed a robust data recovery plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGVAJfWY_1U

Belfast Health & Social Care Trust (BHSCT) is one of the largest in the UK and has had a long standing relationship with Novosco for the delivery of innovative, cost effective and strategic ICT solutions. Projects include a centralised email solution, server virtualisation, faster access to applications and a centralised storage solution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4yeCHFzUAw

Posted in: Technology Tags: business, Cloud Computing, datacentre, EMC, Microsoft, Networking, security, storage, virtualisation, VMware

Queen’s University Belfast appoints Novosco to build private cloud

Belfast, June 10th 2010 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced it has been appointed to implement a VCE based virtualised Data Centre infrastructure into Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). This project represents the first major V-Block deployment throughout the Higher Education sector in the UK and Ireland.

Built on Cisco’s Unified Computing System, the new virtualised infrastructure will facilitate significantly greater numbers of virtual machines on the same piece of hardware. Cisco UCS offers centralised management over the compute, networking and storage elements needed to deploy virtual ICT infrastructures. This “wire once, walk away” approach will help address the power management targets within the University’s data centres.

The flexibility of the VCE approach within QUB will also afford management greater control over the support and management of the environment, with the potential for new and improved innovations delivered to an increasingly sophisticated end user base. Future investments in the platform will also be significantly less than additions to physical environments, all of which future proofs QUB’s investment. Novosco’s DataCentre Architecture Solutions’ Practice is underpinned by the VCE “DataCentre 3.0” vision. This approach, allied with EMC storage, Cisco’s UCS and VMware’s VSphere Could Operating System allows QUB the potential to optimise DataCentre resources with increased flexibility compared to traditional hardware based solutions.

Queen’s University is recognised as one of the best universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the UK’s Entrepreneurial University of the Year, and a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s 20 leading research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge.

Founded in 1845, Queen’s University Belfast has been providing higher education to students from around the world for over 165 years. Currently it caters for more than 17,000 students and 3,500 staff, with some 100,000 alumni graduates worldwide.

Jim Cunningham, Assistant Director for Information Systems said, “Novosco’s experience in delivering enterprise scale virtualisation environments, along with their strong relationships with each of the VCE technology partners, made them an easy choice to deliver V-Block into the University’s Data Centres.”

John Lennon, Sales Director for Novosco said, “QUB’s approach to the next generation data centre is instrumental in helping it remain one of the most innovative Higher Education providers in Ireland. Giving staff and students a better ICT experience within existing financial and resourcing commitments will ensure that this competitive edge is maintained”.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud IT infrastructure and network services. With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Cisco, 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 has provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes, such as the Queen’s University Belfast, Burlington Hotel, SIAC Construction, Windsor Motors 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 Queen’s University Belfast

Queen’s University is recognised as one of the best universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the UK’s Entrepreneurial University of the Year, and a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s 20 leading research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge.

Founded in 1845, Queen’s University Belfast has been providing higher education to students from around the world for over 165 years. Currently it caters for more than 17,000 students and 3,500 staff, with some 100,000 graduates worldwide. This is reflected in the University’s Mission Statement:

“Queen’s is a broadly-based, research-driven university with a dynamic world-class research and education portfolio and strong international connections. The University promotes the widest possible access to this portfolio of excellence in an environment of equality, tolerance and mutual respect, and it fully embraces its leadership role in Northern Ireland and beyond.”

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: business, business continuity, Centralised Management, Cisco, Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Networking, Novosco, press, security, storage, Unified Computing System, Virtual Computing Coalition, virtualisation, VMware

Company’s UCS accreditation and all Ireland approach, instrumental in winning industry accolade.

Left to right: Bernadette Wightman, Managing Director, Channels (Cisco UK and Ireland), Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director, (Novosco),
Kim Majerus, Director, General Manager – (Ireland Cisco UK & Ireland).

Belfast, April 19th, 2010 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced it has been awarded Cisco Ireland’s UCS Data Centre Partner of the Year for 2010. Novosco won the award against stiff competition from other companies in the data centre arena.

In addition, Novosco is the first, and currently only, Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) technical solutions and sales accredited partner in Ireland.

The main factors contributing to both successes have been primarily the company’s focus on the provision of V-Block service offerings to its customer base, and secondly delivering these solutions throughout the whole of Ireland.

Novosco has been awarded a number of high profile UCS contracts in recent months. These include the delivery of the first public sector UCS environment in the UK and the current largest public sector UCS deployment in Europe.

Novosco’s DataCentre Architect Solutions’ Practice is underpinned by the “DataCentre 3.0” vision extolled by each of the key technology partners of the VCE coalition. This approach, coupled with our experience of the Cisco UCS platform, EMC’s storage offerings and VMware’s Cloud Operating System allows Novosco’s customers to experience innovative, flexible and dynamic IT environments at competitive price points.

Patrick McAliskey, Novosco Managing Director said “Our investment in Cisco and the other VCE partners’ technologies allows Novosco to be innovative in solution design. This coupled with understanding the issues facing our customer base, has allowed us to deliver the flexible and dynamic IT experience expected by all our customers. Cisco UCS gives us a real chance to get ahead of the competition in this rapidly changing market, and translate these benefits to our customers. Doing more with less gives both us and our customers an edge in the current economic climate.”

Owen McAllister, Channel Partner Manager for Cisco Ireland, said “Novosco has demonstrated a willingness to challenge the traditional method of server based computing. Their adoption of the UCS platform as well as their knowledge of cloud based computing and their strong customer relationships throughout Ireland makes them the obvious choice for this award in 2010.”

About Novosco
Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud IT infrastructure and network services.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Cisco, 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 has provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes, such as the Queen’s University Belfast, Burlington Hotel, SIAC Construction, Windsor Motors and many more.   

Novosco was recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.

For more information visit www.novosco.com

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information on Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.

About VCE Alliance

The Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition, formed jointly by EMC and Cisco with VMware, represents an unprecedented level of collaboration in development, services, and partner enablement to minimize risk during an organization’s infrastructure virtualization journey to private cloud implementation.

Vblock Infrastructure Packages are integrated IT offerings from the VCE coalition that combine best-in-class virtualization, networking, compute, storage, security, and management technologies with end-to-end vendor accountability. Pre-integrated to provide a new way of delivering IT to businesses, these offerings are validated to help enable the creation of customized solution packages.

Vblock Unified Customer Engagement includes capabilities to help customers understand the business benefits of VCE and deploy Vblock Infrastructure Packages to minimize risk in the journey to private cloud.

Unifying customer engagements, the VCE coalition offers comprehensive professional and technical support services to provide a smooth end-to-end customer and partner experience.

The VCE coalition professional services, jointly developed and delivered, will help customers understand how to maximize value and speed time to virtualization and private cloud solutions. These offers include executive and architecture advisory services, strategy services, and design and implementation services.

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: awards, business continuity, Cisco, Cloud Computing, EMC, Novosco, press, virtualisation, VMware

Join us at this exclusive half day workshop to find out how we can help you to address the daily challenges facing IT managers  such as;

• Increasing numbers of users, application and productivity requirements.
• Increasing expectation from end users on quality of service.
• Continuous performance and stability issues.
• Complex patch management issues.
• Heightened security risks and compliancy concerns.
• Increasing costs for support and maintenance.
• Rapidly changing form factor and connectivity options

Agenda

09:00-09:30   Breakfast  & Introduction 

09:30- 10:00  Session 1 

•  Using VMware View 4 to meet the top desktop management challenges, whilst also reducing costs.
• Learn how to simplify your migration to Windows 7 through application and desktop virtualisation.
•  Q&A’s

10.00-10:15  Tea/Coffee break

10:15-10:45  Session 2                      

• Using VMware tools for virtual Infrastructure management.
• Investigate the availabilty of 3rd party tools to help manage Virtual Infrastructure.
• Reflections of our real life deployment in the field.
• Q&A’s

10:45-11.15  Session 3

•  Virtualisation in BHSCT
• The Business Challenges ‘Do more with less’
•  Why Virtualise?
• Future Plans & Developments(Next Generation Datacentres/ Building the BHSCT Private Cloud)                 
•  Q&A’s

11:15-12:00  Session 4 

• Overview of Cisco UCS
• Live BHSCT Demo               
• Q&A’s

12:00-12:30  Session 5                  

• Virtual Infrastructure Backup 
•  The challenges and methodologies of how to restore  
• How various backup products fit business requirements.                 

12:30-13:00 Buffet Lunch & Conclusion

Posted in: Events, Uncategorized Tags: business continuity, Cisco, Cloud Computing, datacentre, EMC, hosting, virtualisation, VMware

Join Novosco for an exclusive Private Cloud Briefing

Agenda

• Introductions and Novosco Overview

• Overview of VCE/VBlock

• Overview of conventional Server Design for VMware implementations

• Challenges when Scaling Out VMware Infrastructure

• Demonstration of Unified Management Console

• Tour of the data centre and UCS infrastructure
  Discussion / Whiteboard

Who should attend?

CIO’s looking to build their own private cloud infrastructure

or extend into the cloud

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Novosco, virtualisation, VMware