Category Archives: The Cloud

Should You Use Cloud-Based Phone Systems?

March 23, 2017 Callum Huddlestone

The traditional, on-premise phone systems are being replaced by equipment-free, cloud based phone systems. The reasons are simple. Traditional phone systems come with many limitations. They are expensive, difficult to scale up or down, and can’t be reconfigured easily. As a result, a large number of businesses have started using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems instead. Not only VoIP systems are easy to install and maintain, but can also be integrated with existing business services easily.

Since cloud services are becoming more and more popular — as businesses have started moving their existing services to cloud servers — it is natural to wonder whether you should consider moving to VoIP system. Cloud services are in demand for a reason — they allow you to focus on the critical aspects of your business, and leave technicalities to an expert, who specializes in the field. Apart from reduced upfront expenses, and equipment maintenance costs, using cloud based VoIP services can offer many benefits. These are:

Full Control Over Communication

A cloud-based phone system is easily customizable, and allows you to switch the features on or off on the go. Scaling both up and down is always a breeze. New users can be added or removed on the fly. Cloud service also makes it possible for the employees to access it from anywhere they might be, using their smartphone, laptop, or even a desk phone.

Premium Business Features

One of the major advantages of using cloud-based VoIP service is that even small businesses can enjoy top line business features that are usually available only for large corporations, at affordable rates. Examples include call centre solutions, virtual assistant, queues, conference calls, auto attendant, etc.

Maximum Uptime

Cloud service providers take all kinds of measures to ensure that their systems are prepared for data breaches and disasters. They also monitor the systems 24/7. As long as you have a stable network with good dedicated VoIP bandwidth in the system, it is rare for the service to go down. For the most part, you get to enjoy seamless phone communication with your clients.

Conclusion

In today’s digital world, where both business and social interaction is done via emails, instant messages, website and blog content, the significance of phones has not diminished. Important matters are still discussed on the phone. Thus, if the phone service is down for even an hour, it can cost a tremendous loss, not only in terms of money, but also in terms of the potential customers who couldn’t connect. On-premise, traditional system is as good as the network infrastructure constructs. However, IT admins have the the ability to control all of its variables. Because of this, they might be reluctant to switch to the VoIP system. Keep in mind that VoIP is affordable, easy to scale, and gives a peace of mind that your phone communication is secure and is supported by experts in the field.

Cloud Backup for the Distributed Enterprise Made Easy by BTL

November 30, 2016 Sam Broadbent

What if you could get all your data into a well-organised repository by installing software that automates it all for you? What if the process took just a few hours and not the thousands of man-hours you thought it would take to complete the task? What if all this could happen continuously (even as you slept or worked on other mission-critical projects) and you wouldn’t have to worry about missing backups? Backup Technology Limited (BTL) has answers to all these questions!

BTL’s solution is designed with people like you in mind. This private cloud solution is equipped with local and remote management features, which allow users to seamlessly perform local backups to their private cloud infrastructure, or perform offsite backups to a public cloud. Even better, users can carry out such backups while they’re away from the office, or choose to manage remote backups from once central location, as BTL permits one to manage all distributed backup jobs via a web-based browser interface.

To address the challenge of backing up distributed data, BTL comes equipped with a web-based management tool, called the Central Management Console (CMC). The CMC enables an IT administrator to handle and maintain all backup and restore processes on distributed employee laptops, PCs, and servers from one centralised location. The data can then be backed up to a single repository in the cloud or to their private cloud infrastructure via the Internet. If need be, the employee may also be given access to the management console, and if so desired, they can manage their own backups and restores.

The CMC is innovative as it allows users to share data or collaborate on backup processes and restores without moving an inch from wherever they are located. They can easily schedule automatic backups and/or continuous backups of information and then relax with confidence that the backups are successfully taking place even if they are engaged elsewhere.

BTL gives your enterprise complete control over its data. The administrator, operating from the CMC, can set up user accounts for all members of the enterprise whether they use a PC, laptop, or are working from a remote location. Authorised and authenticated users can then back up their data over the Internet and store this data on the enterprises private cloud infrastructure or to an online storage repository. If need be, this stored data can also be restored to any machine via the software’s web-based browser and a WAN connection.

Even more appealing, BTL can handle huge data loads and does not need constant monitoring, thus leaving your local computing resources free to be redeployed for other business activities. Data access can be orchestrated independent of available bandwidth from anywhere in the world, and databases can be reconstructed flexibly and quickly on local machines (existing or new) using the data restore wizard provided with the software.

BTL’s cloud backup and disaster recovery solution has recently released with a number of new feature add-ons. For further information on the latest BTL software version, please visit http://www.backup-technology.com/

Controlling your Cloud Data in the Face of Outages

November 29, 2016 Kris Price

It’s hard to imagine that one quick lightning strike could disrupt the business of several companies across Europe, but this is exactly what happened in the summer of 2011 in Dublin.

After a lightning bolt struck a utility pole, causing an explosion and fire, power supply was cut to several businesses and data centres in the surrounding area. According to Amazon and Microsoft — the two companies whose data centres were worst affected — the bolt disrupted power supply to their massive data centres. While Microsoft was able to kick start its services after a few hours, Amazon’s services weren’t resumed until a good 48 hours later. Amazon’s customers spent several frustrating hours waiting for Amazon to report on the status, as the company struggled to set things right and quickly restore their services.

You might say, this is an old news that happened more than five years ago, but this very instance shows how unplanned disasters can strike at any time. With this in mind, Backup Technology Limited (BTL) believes there are several lessons to be learnt from this and many other data centre outages.

Complete dependency on the service provider’s ability to maintain uninterrupted service is foolhardy, to say the least. Customers signing up for cloud services must ensure that they maintain control over their data by making local backups of their data in addition to riding the cloud for all the benefits that accrue from it. BTL urges its customers to take advantage of its Asigra powered software, a hybrid cloud backup solution that ensures full-proof data availability.

BTL is equipped with local and remote management features, which allow users to seamlessly perform local backups to their private cloud infrastructure or offsite backups to a public cloud. Even more beneficial, they can do so even while they’re away from the office. A web-based management console allows one to control and manage all backups and restores via an Internet connection.

To ensure full business continuity, BTL stresses the importance of performing both local and offsite, cloud backup. If backing up data to the cloud, BTL recommends that customers add disaster recovery and business continuity to their list of services.

Unlike larger cloud customers such as Amazon’s public cloud users, BTL users who backup data locally to their private cloud infrastructure, in addition to a cloud service powered by BTL, will not have to wait endlessly for reports about the restoration of services in the event of an offsite data centre disaster. They can connect their network to the local copy of the data and resume their business activities almost instantaneously.

When handling business data backup plans, smart IT admins look at all their options and will not hesitate to implement local backup AND offsite cloud backup with an MSP to ensure security and business continuity at all times. BTL recognises the ground realities surrounding data management by large third parties. This is why BTL focuses its attention on customer needs and urge its customers to build in an extra resilience and maintain data redundancy.

What is Continuous Cloud Backup and What are its Many Advantages – Part I

November 3, 2016 Callum Huddlestone

As any user of cloud backup knows, one of the biggest advantages to backing up in the cloud is the fact that backups can be automatically scheduled, making for one less task that has to be monitored by a company’s IT department, while also avoiding any chance for human error to get in the way of the scheduled backup process. However, recent advances in cloud backup technology have brought about yet another level of consistent, dependable data backup practises, continuous cloud backup.

What is Continuous Cloud Backup?

With continuous cloud backup (also known as continuous data protection or real-time backup), your small to medium-sized or enterprise business can enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that anytime certain files are modified in any way that this change in information will be automatically sent off to the cloud backup provider’s servers, offering you true continuous protection from data loss. Indeed, even the tiniest change in a file will be instantly copied to the cloud backup servers at the time that the user makes it, and, through the use of a process called “file versioning”, previous versions of files will be available for retrieval from the cloud backup cache, even if these versions no longer exist on the company’s system! Critical to this process is the automatic generation of a time stamp to go along with each new version of a file that is being automatically saved, rendering the finding of the correct previous version of a file easily and quickly achieved.

Continues Backups and Bandwidth

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the word “continuous” makes it sound as if continuous backup is indeed “more backing up” than scheduled backups, continuous backups actually take up much less bandwidth and system resources, with only the parts of files that have been changed being backed up, and not the whole file. These changes are often quite small, sometimes only amounting to a few bytes of data, so system resources are thus preserved at both ends. For this reason, continuous data protection is the ideal backup solution for any company that finds it difficult to find consistent times when their networks are dormant enough to perform all their backups at once, without detracting from system performance. In the same way, companies that are generating large quantities of highly important data 24 x 7 also benefit greatly from this cutting edge data protection technology.

In Part II, we will further discuss the many advantages of continuous cloud backups.

BTL Cloud Backup Product Features – Part I

November 1, 2016 Damien Garvey

Cloud backup software has come a long way. Today, the average software has powerful and sophisticated features. One of the best breeds of software in the cloud backup space is Backup Technology Limited (BTL) software. BTL’s software is powered by Asigra, a leading cloud backup enabling company since 1986. The most striking feature of BTL is its agentless architecture. Professional data administrators will always appreciate the advantages of BTL’s software. Security is never compromised, as it comes with encryption key that can save and recover data to and from the vault systems. The complexity and size of problems are thereby minimised; upgrades are centralised from the vault system, and data backup and recovery becomes a streamlined process. Furthermore, licensing is easy to set up, as a single license acquisition takes care of all the future needs of the organisation.

BTL manages file databases intelligently. Every single file of the database is identified and managed by proprietary algorithm, and the end-user can remain completely unaware of the intricacies that enables the backup of different kinds of data files, from multiple operating system environments, using a single interface.

How does all this happen? BTL’s cloud backup technology consists of two components: the DS-Client, and the DS-System. The DS-Client is installed on a dedicated Windows, Macintosh or Linux server and target backup machines are identified. The DS-Client also allows versioning, which means that backups can be available for a quick restore.

Using standard APIs on the target machines, the system automatically logs into the backup system and captures the data securely. The DS-Client, then processes, compresses, encrypts and transmits the data from the target machines using delta blocking and common file elimination technologies, commonly knows as de-duplication. The system is very intelligent in that it runs un-interrupted in the background, segregating corrupted files; correcting them or marking them for re-try at a later date.

The DS-System is at the core of Asigra Cloud Backup technology. It is installed in an enterprise or service provider data center, or in an IaaS cloud. The DS-System efficiently aggregates data from all remote DS-Clients and maintains, manages and validates the online backup repository.
BTL allows the use of Local Restore tool in order to speed up LAN restorations. Depending on your needs, you can use such tools, as:
• Long Term Storage Policy Making Tool — is a discovery tool to automatically ascertain characteristics of primary data, Client and System Monitoring, Email Message Level Restore, Bare Metal Restore capability, and SNMP Integration.
• File Summary Tool — provides both a synopsis and detailed scanned file information. The report is easily modified with several filters allowing a group of files to be specifically analysed.
• LAN Discovery Tool — identifies the characteristics of data, such as when the last time it was accessed, its age, and file size. This will help the user to make business decisions about how they want their data stored and recovered.
In Part II of this series, we will further discuss BTL’s main features in details.

How Can You Earn Carbon Credits

September 2, 2016 Rob Mackle

Earning carbon credit is a complex business. It all begins with the Kyoto protocol. Your country needs to be a part of the protocol for your enterprise to even entertain the thought of carbon credits. Second, there should have been an eligible quantifiable reduction in your enterprise carbon footprint before you can even think of applying for the credits. Finally, your tax laws must ascribe value to your carbon credits.

To start with, going green also has a lot to do with your awareness of what it means to go green. Employers and employees must be conscious of the enterprise policy in context. They must be educated about what green really means and how it must be implemented across the organisation. Managers at different levels of the organisation must be encouraged to report on possible infractions of the policy and also come up with ideas on how carbon credits can be earned.

Carbon reduction must be measurable. Cloud computing is considered to be one sure methodology of proving that your enterprise is going green. But, carbon footprints, consequent upon computing in the cloud, are not very clearly quantifiable! Conscious efforts must be made to measure and quantify the carbon credits earned from cloud computing. Clearly defined and acceptable measures must be implemented at every level, and measurements must be tracked constantly to ensure that carbon credits earned are being accounted for, and your enterprise is moving towards the eligible levels for instituting an application for carbon credits.

Carbon saving activities must be definable. Carbon saving activities in cloud computing will gain definition, if you use energy saving devices in setting up your computing environment. Energy saving devices could be less energy consuming clients or air conditioners that use power sensibly. The source of energy itself must be green or a renewable energy source. Enterprises that use coal coke to power their generators cannot claim to be green!

Greening policies must be pervasive and all encompassing for carbon credits to pile up in your favour. The boundaries of your greening policy can extend beyond the enterprise and carbon credits can be earned by riding on greening policies of associates. Enterprises can ensure that they associate only with service providers who have policies in place for carbon footprint reduction. Else, it may defeat the very purpose of your greening policy and your efforts to compute in the cloud.

Backup Technology Limited is a globally trusted company, which provides simple, automatic, secure and encrypted cloud backup services. It is based in the UK, with a branch in the USA. For more information, please visit www.Backup-Technology.com