Posts Tagged ‘press’

Dublin, 9^th December 2011 – SIAC, one of Ireland’s largest construction groups, have chosen Novosco to provide a customised private cloud infrastructure, to support their collaborative motorway construction project in Debica, Poland.  These motorway upgrades are being undertaken in preparation for the country’s hosting of the Euro 2012 football tournament.

Construction companies from Ireland have been shown to have some of the best résumés in Europe for motorway construction. Amid fierce competition SIAC closed the €350m contract for a stretch of Poland’s A4 Autostrada. This motorway runs along the south-east of Poland and is part of the E40 route, the longest motorway in Europe running from Calais to Ridder in Kazakhstan.

SIAC were awarded the contract, the Group’s largest ever, in a joint venture with one of Poland’s largest contractors, PBG. The 35 km motorway from Kryz to Debica in Poland is valued at ca. 1.4 billion Zloty (or approx. €356M) and is scheduled to be completed in 24 months.

A cloud solution was chosen to provide a common infrastructure, with equal access to information and information governance for both parties.  It also provides greater security and reliability of centralised backup and disaster recovery than locally based servers. Novosco solved the challenges of the project by leveraging its existing virtual platform to provide the server-side computing infrastructure.  This private cloud platform is located at Novosco’s primary data centre location in Dublin with the site offices in Poland accessing the data centre over the Internet via secure VPN.

“Novosco’s private cloud solution was attractive to us for a number of reasons,” says Eamonn Buckley, group IS & IT manager for SIAC Construction Ltd. “Firstly, it allowed us to deploy the infrastructure in a fraction of the time that a conventional hardware rollout would have taken. Another major benefit of this solution is that we only pay for our consumption within a given month.  Novosco ensure that we always have enough head room when things get busy but conversely, we do not need to pay for that extra capacity when it is not needed.  It also avoided the issue of who owns the hardware, during the project and after the project has been completed.  This can sometimes be a bone of contention on collaborative projects such as this.  Finally, the fact that all of the infrastructure required for this project is being paid for out of operating expenditure instead of capital expenditure was of major benefit”

Eddie O’Rourke, Sales Director with Novosco, pointed to the SIAC project as a signal of wider interest in cloud computing in the Irish marketplace, “This year we have seen a dramatic upward trend in enterprise organisations who want to explore the tangible benefits of cloud computing.  For businesses such as SIAC, it makes a lot of sense to leverage existing virtual real estate as a service, rather than having to worry about acquiring and managing infrastructure that will only be needed for the finite duration of a project.  Another common use-case we are seeing is the use of cloud computing for the purposes of disaster recovery.  People who have already virtualised their server estate can now replicate their virtual servers to an external provider, such as ourselves.  These virtual servers can then be powered up on our platform in the case of a disaster at the primary site.  For smaller businesses, we have seen exponential growth in our CloudStream Apps platform which is designed to completely outsource the delivery of all business applications to staff and partners.”

About the SIAC Construction Group

Founded in 1913, SIAC’s business has grown through their reputation for delivering quality projects that always meet and often exceed clients’ expectations. SIAC are now one of Ireland’s largestcontractors and have built a strong reputation and growing business in Ireland and the UK. Through a programme of alliances with major international civil engineering contractors and specialist contractors, they are able to undertake multidisciplinary projects of scale and complexity.

About Novosco

Novosco is a leading provider of virtual and cloud based infrastructure solutions with offices in Dublin and Belfast.

Our vendor accreditations include:
•Ireland’s only accredited VCE Partner
•Ireland’s only EMC Velocity Premier Solution Partner
•VMware Enterprise Partner
•Cisco Premier Partner
•Citrix Platinum Partner
•Microsoft Gold Partner

With a track record of building and hosting some of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects on the
island, our expertise with virtual and cloud infrastructure is second to none. Novosco works with both public and private sector organisations in Ireland,
helping them define and deliver their infrastructure strategies across a broad range of technologies. Recent awards include our 12th consecutive listing in
the Deloitte Fast50 awards and Cisco Data centre and Premier Partner of the year.

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: Backup, business continuity, Cisco, Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Novosco, press, Quality, security, SIAC Construction, Unified Computing System, virtualisation, VMware

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

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

Yesterday saw the official launch of Novosco in the Baby Grand in the Grand Opera House, Belfast. The day proved to be a huge success with almost 100 attendees from the combined RTSL and 4sol customer base. We had 2 guest speakers, Donal Durkan from Invest NI and Guy Levine from Search Engine Optmisation. Also in attendance were Citrix, EMC, Microsoft, Riverbed and VMware.

The core Novosco message of Virtualisation and reducing energy consumption was very well received by the audience and press. In fact, Patrick McAliskey, our Managing Director was quoted on the radio alongside HP Group Manager, Brad Kirby who was hosting another event at the Waterfront on the same day.

Listen here

Mentioned on Belfast City Beat and Downtown.

Below are a selection photographs taken on the day.

Posted in: News, Novosco Tags: launch, Novosco, podcasts, press