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Ancoris Blog

The Ancoris blog covers all our latest views and news about our company, cloud computing and enterprise security.

Tuesday, 15 May 2012 10:35

Will Google Drive be a Dropbox killer?

  With the launch of Google Drive, Google looks like it’s going head to head against established cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Box. But we think what Google is offering is head and shoulders above existing services, because it provides another key piece in the puzzle for companies looking for effective collaboration tools. Of course Google Drive, like Dropbox, provides cloud storage and synchronisation with local devices – 5GB for free and a flexible pricing plan if you need…
Thursday, 26 April 2012 08:21

Ancoris enters the Post-PC era, switches to Google Chromebooks with full legacy application access

In 2009, we started our transition to cloud services both for our business, as a Google Premier Enterprise Partner, but also for our own internal applications. As we started this change we were very aware that the transition to the cloud was a journey and not an event. Like many of our customers we wanted to benefit immediately from cloud email and collaboration applications with Google Apps for Business but some of our existing on-premise applications would not be replaced…
Friday, 30 March 2012 10:40

Ancoris Strengthens its Cloud and Remote Access Offerings with Ericom’s Access Solutions

Ericom Software, a leading global provider of application access and virtualization solutions and Ancoris have signed a partnership agreement that gives Ancoris the rights to market  Ericom’s AccessNow, a high performance HTML5 RDP zero client, and Power WebConnect, a centralized management solution and the #1 Alternative to Citrix – to organisations that are turning to native cloud applications but still relying heavily on Windows-based applications and desktops.Ericom AccessNow provides access to both Cloud-hosted as well as on-premise Windows resources from…
Monday, 27 February 2012 10:14

European Union provides welcome backing for cloud computing

The European Union's recently announced plans to overhaul data protection legislation and create a Cloud Partnership, similar to the UK’s G-Cloud Initiative, look to be good news for both users and providers of cloud computing services. Like the UK Government, which announced the first providers in its G-Cloud store this month, Ancoris among them, the EU is backing the use of public software-as-a-service solutions as the way forward for meeting public sector IT needs.The EU is also looking to make…
Monday, 20 February 2012 14:14

Ancoris Named G-Cloud Supplier

Ancoris has today been announced as a G-Cloud supplier. As a supplier to the Government’s CloudStore, Ancoris will now be able to migrate the public sector to Google Apps for Business, without a formal tender process. The CloudStore will work as an online marketplace and will include information allowing buyers to make comparisons between suppliers. The carefully selected catalogue of cloud providers will enable the public sector to confidently buy cloud services.This is likely to see a big push into cloud computing…
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 16:46

Ancoris becomes one of the first Google Apps Premier Enterprise Resellers

Ancoris has been appointed to the new tier as a Premier Enterprise Reseller of the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools. Ancoris has moved from Authorised to a Premier Reseller status based on our expertise and success in helping businesses deploy and use Google Apps. Two years ago, we made the decision to transition our business to the cloud and were awarded Specialist Reseller of Year for 2011 for our expertise in this area.  Today, becoming one of…
Tuesday, 17 January 2012 14:09

Enterprise maturity of Google Apps for Business confirmed by deal with BBVA

We've heard many CIOs say that, while they like the benefits provided by Google Apps for Business, they're still not completely comfortable entrusting the success of their organisation to Google's cloud solutions. We can understand such caution, but the recent news that Spanish banking giant BBVA is to roll out Google Apps for Business to 110,000 users demonstrates that Google Apps can be the right choice for even the largest of companies in the most security-minded and regulated of industries.…
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 10:49

2012 Predictions: The government’s push into cloud computing will reduce security fears

The coming year will see a big push into cloud computing by the UK public sector as it becomes easier to buy cloud-based services following the creation of the G-Cloud applications catalogue. For the private sector, the message is that if cloud computing is secure enough for government, it's secure enough for them.The Government expects to open the G-Cloud "app store" in January 2012 and to have 50 accredited products in place by the end of the year, which the…
Thursday, 05 January 2012 22:06

2012 Predictions: Social and collaborative computing will begin to come of age in the business world

Just as email displaced paper memos and letters in the workplace, 2012 will mark the beginning of a shift from email to social and collaborative computing for interaction with colleagues and external partners. Both large companies, like IT giant Atos, and small companies, like online news and reviews publisher Notebooks.com, are eliminating email by deploying collaboration solutions such as Google Docs, Google Chat and Google Voice alongside tools such as Yammer and Jive that allow organisations to create private social…
Monday, 19 December 2011 13:06

2012 Predictions: Increased user mobility will drive virtualisation of legacy applications

Increased agility will be a critical success factor for organisations looking to weather the continuing economic turmoil in 2012. As organisations look to flex staff numbers and locations to match changing business needs, and users themselves choose to become increasingly mobile, IT departments will be asked to deliver 100% web-based access to all IT applications.While they can turn to native cloud applications such as Google Apps for collaboration and productivity solutions, many organisations also depend heavily on specialist business applications,…
Monday, 12 December 2011 22:39

2012 Predictions: Bring Your Own Device strategies will go mainstream

According to analysts at IDC, 40 per cent of devices used by information workers to access business applications are already personally owned. As users become more mobile, and as consumer devices outperform their business equivalent, this trend will increase.While this growing consumerisation of business computing has been shown to increase employee satisfaction and productivity, it also poses a number of security and support challenges for the IT department. During 2012, we expect IT Directors to move away from dealing with…
Thursday, 08 December 2011 09:49

Ancoris selected for Google’s Chromebook Reseller Pilot Program

Ancoris is delighted to have been selected as a UK partner in Google's Chromebook Reseller Pilot Program. The launch of the Chromebook, as the first enterprise ready web-only device, complements the increasing momentum of both the Chrome browser and Google Apps platform in the corporate marketplace. The Chromebook Reseller Pilot Program enables us to supply Google Chromebooks bundled together with the Google Chromebook software management console service; a centrally managed web administration console which allows enterprises to track Chromebook assets,…
Monday, 05 December 2011 17:21

2012 Predictions: “Private clouds” will be exposed as old-fashioned hosting masquerading under a new name

It's that time of year already, when we take stock and think of what's in store for the coming year.  So here we go.  Over the next few weeks, we will share what we believe will be the top 5 trends and technologies for 2012. “Private clouds” will be exposed as old-fashioned hosting masquerading under a new name Vendors have muddied the “cloud” waters by rebranding hosting services and traditional data-centre managed services as “private clouds”. As more organisations begin…
Monday, 21 November 2011 16:01

Ancoris awarded CRN Specialist Reseller of the Year 2011

We were delighted that Ancoris was recognised as the winner of the Specialist Reseller of the Year 2011 against a strong competitive shortlist at the CRN Channel Award on 18th November 2011. This prestigious industry award was presented at Battersea Park with an audience of over 1600 people. There were several hundred entries over 10 main categories. The panel of judges included leading industry figures from vendors, channel organisations, the investment community and the media. Other winners on the night…
Monday, 07 November 2011 15:01

Top reason # 5 for choosing Google Apps: A platform built for the future

Historically, IT departments have spent 70 per cent of their budgets on simply maintaining their existing infrastructure. But analysts at Forrester Research warn that future success will require organisations to cut "business as usual" costs to just half their budget and devote the savings to business expansion and innovation to deliver competitive advantage. The headache for CIOs is how to free up those resources so they can use them in ways that support expansion and innovation in the business.A key…
Monday, 31 October 2011 16:08

Top reason # 4 for choosing Google Apps: Enhanced communications are made affordable

Email is now a mission-critical tool without which few businesses could function. Recent figures from the Radicati group suggests the average user sends and receives around 100 emails a day. However, email doesn't provide a competitive advantage; today, it's just a cost of doing business. That means you need to be able to provide quick, easy and reliable access to email at the lowest possible cost. If you can improve the way your staff communicate and collaborate at the same…
Monday, 17 October 2011 11:08

Top reason # 3 for choosing Google Apps: Pure cloud architecture offers superior data protection

With collaboration being a key driver for business success, users want to be able to share information easily, but the IT team needs to make sure data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. If corporate systems don't allow staff to collaborate, they'll turn to unofficial channels outside the control of the IT department - creating a whole new set of security headaches. IT teams need solutions that support collaboration while ensuring information is only shared with the people who should…
Monday, 10 October 2011 09:15

Top reason # 2 for choosing Google Apps: Users are productive from anywhere

Employees are increasingly using their own smartphones and tablet PCs to work while they’re on the move: 40 per cent of devices used to access business applications are now personally owned, up 10 per cent on last year. This growing "consumerisation" of enterprise IT is boosting staff morale and productivity, so it's not something to be discouraged. Instead, IT departments need to find ways to easily support secure access to enterprise systems from all kinds of devices, not just Windows…
Monday, 03 October 2011 12:44

Ancoris Top 5 reasons to choose Google Apps over Office 365: Improved collaboration leads to business innovation

Innovation is going to be the key weapon for success over the next five years, according to a recent survey of senior executives. The key to innovation is collaboration.  A report by The Future Foundation found employees who are given the opportunity to collaborate at work are more than twice as likely to have contributed new ideas to their company.The personal productivity tools of the last twenty years - such as wordprocessors and spreadsheets – have changed the way individuals…
Tuesday, 27 September 2011 10:13

Gartner hails Gmail as credible alternative to Microsoft Exchange

Gartner has recently hailed the Gmail enterprise service as a credible alternative to Microsoft Exchange. That puts Google Apps for Business head-to-head with Microsoft’s recently launched Office 365 for enterprises looking for cloud messaging and collaboration solutions - and the evidence so far is that Google Apps is more than holding its own.Gartner estimates that around half of enterprises who’ve moved to web-based email have chosen Google Apps.  Many of those businesses are former Exchange users: at least a quarter…
Thursday, 08 September 2011 13:19

Microsoft finally boards cloud computing train but fails to impress users

With the launch of Office 365, Microsoft has provided its endorsement of the ongoing shift to cloud computing. Though it’s playing catch up with the rest of the IT industry, Microsoft’s validation will at least help to create confidence among business users that the cloud computing approach spearheaded by Google is the right one.However, we’re hearing from many of the businesses who’ve already evaluated Office 365 that they’re underwhelmed by what Microsoft has to offer. They’re telling us Office 365…
Monday, 22 August 2011 10:11

How to use cloud computing to simplify business continuity plans

Moving to a cloud computing solution can simplify business continuity plans. Organizations can take advantage of the resilience and high availability that cloud solution vendors must provide as part of their own infrastructure simply to be able to deliver software as a service. While individual companies would find providing replication of data across clustered servers in multiple data centres would cost many times more than running the application on a single server, cloud computing providers can deliver that cost effectively…
Wednesday, 27 July 2011 10:05

New Look for Google & Google Apps

Google has announced a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you will see more updates to their look and feel. The way people use and experience the web is evolving, and their goal is to give you a more seamless and consistent online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on. To learn more about the new design, see the Google…
Thursday, 21 July 2011 15:33

Is Cloud Computing a solution to the problem of project overruns?

Traditional IT projects have had a reputation for being completed late and over-budget. Should CIO’s see cloud computing as a solution to the problem of cost overrun? The answer to this really depends on the type of cloud computing project being considered.Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) projects: Applications, developed from scratch or re-hosted in a cloud platform, are probably subject to many of the same risks as a traditional on-premise project and require the…
Thursday, 07 July 2011 11:47

Cloud Computing gives a new meaning to "local"

Recent research has shown many small and medium-sized companies are reluctant to move to the cloud because they want the reassurance of a "local" provider.With a traditional IT setup, having support from someone in the same city or town makes a lot of sense. You need someone to be able to hotfoot it round and swap out a failed router or fix a particular user’s PC that has all their data on it. When you move to the cloud, though,…
Wednesday, 22 June 2011 15:21

Are old-fashioned hosted solutions preventing business from reaping the benefits of cloud computing?

We all know how the IT industry loves its buzzwords – and how the current buzzword becomes a bandwagon, used to rebrand all sorts of products that it doesn’t really apply to. "Cloud computing" is a victim of this trend, with many "cloud" solutions really being old fashioned hosting services.Hosting has its advantages, of course: moving your IT systems off site to a secure data centre where they’ll be managed by experts can result in more reliable IT at lower…
Wednesday, 15 June 2011 16:18

Retailers using Google Apps for Business find innovation is the 'killer app’

We’ve noticed a trend emerging over the past few months. A number of retailers have talked about the impact of moving to Google Apps for Business – and all of them have said Google Apps isn’t just benefiting their bottom line through cost savings. It’s also driving revenues by allowing them to become more innovative.As Google – one of the world’s most innovative companies – has itself proved, a key enabler of innovation is improved collaboration, especially between different teams.…
Monday, 06 June 2011 10:36

The phishing attack on GMail users highlights Google's excellent security procedures

The news of the spear phishing attack on GMail users has highlighted a number of interesting points around GMail and its security. The attack, believed to have originated from Jinan, China, specifically targeted users with an email that included a malware link prompting them to enter their GMail log-in details again. This information was then used  to access and monitor their GMail accounts illegally.This breach has not come about through any vulnerabilities in Google’s security systems. As with all phishing…

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