Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

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 has been invited to take part in a ‘Unified Communications workshop’, hosted by Clarity Telecom.  

Friday 11th September 2009

Clarity Telecom has invited industry leaders including Novosco and Microsoft to educate companies on the commercial benefits of unified communications, including cloud networks, IP telephony, hosted applications.       

AGENDA in brief:

This event will feature break away sessions and will enhance your knowledge of:

* Novosco CloudStream Net  -  Cost effective private and resilient Cloud Network Service. “Go faster Spend Less and do more”
By John Lennon, Business Development Director, Novosco

* Clarity Telecom – an introduction to the next generation of hosted applications; delivering commercial benefits with NO additional investment!

*Microsoft OCS – learn how the power of Microsoft’s desktop can be integrated with ip telephony whether you are in the office or working remotely.

Who should attend?

IT professionals and management involved in: Networks, Datacentre, IT Infrastructure, Communications, Security

Spaces are limited!
Email: edwina.nugent@novosco.com

Posted in: Events Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft

“The announcement of XenServer being made available for free download means that all companies, especially those with restricted budgets, can now realise the benefits of server virtualisation.  For any existing customers running XenApp or Presentation Server, this news makes the virtualisation of their existing farms extremely compelling.  In addition, the performance statistics for workloads such as Microsoft Exchange on XenServer has resulted in an unprecedented level of demand from our customers for demonstrations and trials of this technology.”

Eddie O’Rourke, Novosco Sales Director, Ireland

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, Microsoft, virtualisation

Do you want the frustration of reporting to end? 

Did you know Novosco could provide you with the missing piece to simplify reporting? 

Serco did! 
Software development by Novosco enabled Serco to have quicker analysis of business costs, greater efficiency through data automation and most importantly in today’s economic climate, the ability to make informed decisions both quickly and accurately. 

Attend the Novosco Smart Reporting Workshop to find out more… 

Agenda 

- GUEST SPEAKER – Microsoft Finance Director
- How Software Development can help your data reporting
- Novosco projects in action
- GUEST SPEAKER – SERCO case-study
- Demo & Questions

Who Should Attend

Financial Directors & Managing Directors

Register now to ensure your place!
Email edwina.nugent@novosco.com  telephone +44(0)28 9081 7171 or complete the below event form.

REGISTRATION FORM:

Posted in: Events Tags: Microsoft

END OF LINE PRODUCT ADVISORY BULLETIN

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 support ends on April 14th, 2009

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Support for computers running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 ends on April 14th, 2009.  After that point there will be no hotfixes, security updates, or support for this operating system.  http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?1=3198

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO?

To protect against server vulnerability support, Novosco recommends that you upgrade to Windows Server Pack 2. 

NEXT STEP? 
To receive upgrade advice from Novosco then please complete the form below.

ASK AN EXPERT

Posted in: business Tags: Microsoft

Last week Microsoft published Security Bulletin MS08-067. This bulletin describes a vulnerability in the Windows server service, affecting Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 2003 and 2008.

Microsoft have also released a corresponding “out-of-band” (i.e., not contained in the monthly batch of updates) update in the shape of KB958644. The update is available from Microsoft Update.

Novosco are actively encouraging all of our customers to deploy the update as soon as possible (on all Windows hosts – clients and servers). You can do so by visiting the Microsoft Update website or by deploying with Windows Server Update Services or some other 3rd party deployment tool.

But why all the fuss? Well, this particular vulnerability is wormable – meaning that potentially (more on “potentially” later) the vulnerability can be exploited by a worm, i.e., self-replicating malicious code that seeks out vulnerable hosts and infects them from your laptop while you’re writing your blog post…

Talking about worms in this way takes me back to those bygone halcyon days when Windows anti-virus was “optional”, host based firewalls were unheard of and the only reason to use a firewall in the enterprise was to take advantage of its NAT capabilities and not fork out for expensive publicly routable IP addresses for your network. It was also the time before we had all deployed WSUS or some other automatic update solution. Right?

Wrong! Even though we now have written policies defining that laptops must have host-based firewalls and AV, and we have fancy UTM devices at the network perimeter, all too often we still have the problem that updates are being ignored. Consider this situation: a user goes home with their company laptop (which hasn’t been updated in the last 8 months) and browses the web for a while from their home internet connection. Because Internet Explorer hasn’t been patched they get burned by some exploit which drops a Trojan containing code which in turn exploits the MS08-067 vulnerability. The user didn’t really do anything wrong, wasn’t an local administrator and knows nothing of the infection. Next day they plug their laptop into the corporate network and while they’re at the coffee machine ten minutes later they see the IT admins running past on their way to the server room as the “whole network’s down!!!!”.

Update mangement would have saved that company on two counts – the first by patching the user’s laptop. If it wasn’t vulnerable the malicious code wouldn’t have got onto it in the first place. The second; even if the laptop hadn’t been patched (say the user was off work for a while and got infected anyway) the servers would have been patched and wouldn’t have been vulnerable so no downtime would have occurred.

That example’s a bit simplified, certainly a layered security solution of best practices, AV and UTM would have helped. But I think it serves to get the message across – the fuss surrounding this update is symptomatic of a bigger problem.

Now I put “potentially” in bold above for a reason – there is no worm exploiting this vulnerability (that we know of, yet). Right now, there is however a recognisable trojan which is being used in targeted attacks. And, there’s publicly available exploit code in the wild which means you can bet that VXers are beavering away trying to develop a suitable worm. So you have a choice – patch now or don’t. You can choose not to and give me the old excuses about the risks of deploying patches (breaking applications etc) but that’s why Microsoft genuinely recommend that you test their updates with your applications and if you’re really that worried you should seriously think about a test environment, but if (maybe when) the worm hits and you get burned I’ll try not to say “I told you so”.

Remember folks – “Proactive patching is better than reactive repair”.

Posted in: Technology Tags: Microsoft, security, update

A tremble was felt around the blogosphere at the news just out from Microsoft’s App-V (formely Softgrid) Team, revealing the “release to manufacturing” of App-V 4.5.

This release brings an end to months of Beta and RC testing on an exciting new feature set, and we’re looking forward to providing our customers with even more innovative implementations than we have with previous releases.

I won’t repeat the feature list here (you can check the comprehensive announcement linked above) however you may want to read the post on Virtualization.info for a decent summary.

Posted in: Technology Tags: App-V, Microsoft, virtualisation

It looks like Microsoft have finally announced virtualisation support for their enterprise server software running on Windows Server on VMware’s hypervisor (VMware joins Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program). This is a validation of VMware’s technology and further enhances Microsoft’s integration story with other third party virtualisation solutions. In fact, Microsoft now support six virtualisation platforms including their own Hyper-V product.

This is great news for customers who have been holding back on running applications such as Microsoft Exchange on VMware due to support concerns. Those “not officially supported” barriers, that we’ve heard here in Ireland time and time again, have now been removed.  Now we just have to figure out the licensing.

Posted in: Technology Tags: Microsoft, virtualisation, VMware

Over 300 CIB users across the country realise the benefit of email migration project.

Citizens Information Board (CIB) has chosen Novosco to centralise email operations and facilitate migration for over 300 users in offices across the country using Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Novosco’s solution allows CIB to have an online central view of all CIB and Citizens Information Centres (CIC) email countrywide for the first time, facilitating central backup of all data and greater collaboration possibilities for all users in offices across Ireland.

A web-based system was implemented by Novosco to make the solution accessible to all the CIB’s offices and the national network of CICs. CIB currently has 15 offices throughout the country, including the Head Office in Dublin, five regional offices and nine branch offices. The Board provides the Citizens Information website (www.citizensinformation.ie) and supports the voluntary network of Citizens Information Services (106 Citizens Information Centres nationwide) and the Citizens Information Phone Service (Lo-Call 1890777121).

“The new solution means that email downtime is substantially minimised” says Eddie O’Rourke, sales director with Novosco. “It has also introduced additional functionality such as central calendaring and collaboration.”

The CIB (formerly known as Comhairle) has a broad range of functions, which are set out in the Comhairle Act, 2000. A function of the CIB is to support the provision of information, advice and advocacy services to ensure that individuals have access to accurate, comprehensive and clear information relating to social services and are referred to the relevant services.

“Email is an every day part of The Citizens Information Board and CIC life, supporting communication and data management, responding to customer queries and disseminating information,” says Sinead Forde, ICT Manager at CIB. “We chose Novosco for this strategic project because of their skills in Microsoft Exchange together with their relevant experience with networks of a similar size and shape.”

Exchange Server 2007 was chosen as the technology platform, as it provided the most flexibility in terms of the diverse client requirements as well as the reliability to ensure that access was provided 24×7.

The new application acts as a contact database for CICs, CIB, its suppliers and contacts, also allowing email capability – including send/receive, calendar and task capability-, groups management and group calendars; data management; email archive, backup and restore capability, and also instant messaging and collaboration tools.

The second major factor in making this solution an exceptional experience was continuous replication (CCR) only available with Exchange Server 2007. The CIB wished to move to a more robust e-mail platform, providing cost-effective, centrally managed e-mail and messaging facilities with low administrative overheads, based on proven technologies.

“Changes in the nature of CIB’s email and collaboration requirements were not being met by the existing system,” adds O’Rourke. “The new system is extensible and scalable which means it doesn’t just meet CIB’s current needs but it will also be able to support additional activities and functions that CIB may undertake in the future.”

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Microsoft, Novosco

A couple of days late, but I wanted to wait a while just in case it was an April Fool.  Citrix have just announced a new “per server” pricing model for XenServer – not per socket or per core, just per physical server.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons: It will increase the size of servers being purchased – a 4U powerhouse can do much more than a blade, in terms of capacity.  So what becomes the expensive part, the license or the rackspace? The other reason, is that it puts it on a par with Microsoft Windows and Hyper-V, since the pricing model is the same.  I’m sure VMware will have an answer to this, otherwise the competition might start to get some traction.  Either way, competition like this is always good for the customer and will only ensure that virtualisation get’s further entrenched into IT infrastructures and datacentres that bit quicker.  And when the pricing differences become negligible, it will be all down to capabilities, that’s when we’ll really start to see some innovation…hopefully!

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, Xen