Quick Tips from the IT TrenchesA lightning round of tech topics from your fellow IT pros.

Nicole Tanzillo, Director of IT Product Marketing

The details.

• 13 minutes per speaker.

• Questions if we have time.

• And our speakers are…

Anthony Sutcliffe

Bottman

Tino TodinoTino Todino

Ben Snape

Hubba Bubba

Peter Craine

peter

Virtualisation VoIP Wireless Display BYOD

Anthony Sutcliffe

Bottman Virtualisation to provide a multi-language support environmentA P Sutcliffe P G Dip CCI, MBCS

• A privately owned SME in the manufacturing & service sector

• 3 sites in the UK, 1 in France, 3 in Germany, 1 in Hungary

• Dealer partners in other countries

• Increased reliance upon IT in all areas of the business

Background - The nature of the business

European Coverage

• Manufacturing – process driven, scheduled

• Service – customer driven, flexibility is key

Two main streams of business

Workshop supplies

Vehicle fitting

• 5 people, 3 on systems, 2 on web development• Web development support for sites in all countries

within the group• Provided full support to users for all ICT systems

within UK & France• Growing support for ERP systems for Germany &

Hungary

UK IT Team

• Sites located a considerable distance apart with UK IT staff based at the UK H.Q.

• An increase in operational staff in the UK, increasing support needs; for both IT use and business process changes driven by ERP

• The UK IT team had limited foreign language skills

• End users were not fully IT literate

Support Issues

• Server virtualisation started in 2009

• Cut server estate in half in first 6 months

• UK IT staff continued to work on other projects at the same time

• In most cases, used P2V process to migrate servers – end users did not realise the work had taken place

• A large proportion of work done remotely out of hours

Virtualisation

Virtual landscape

Equallogic PS6010

Dell R710 serverPowerConnect 6224

The project to virtualise servers proved that it works well• It saved money – reducing physical servers in first

phase of project cutting utility bill by 15%• It saved time – admin time cut by about 40%• Increased server up time to 99.97% per annum• It saved effort – easier & faster to deploy and scale

servers to meet user needs• It was easy to operate and manage!

Virtualisation Works!

To create a virtual platform to provide improved multi language support

facilities

The Proposal

• HP Proliant DL380 G4 (re-used)• 2 x Dual core processors• 16 GB DRAM• 400 GB HDD (in RAID 5)

The Hardware

• Windows Server 2003 (Standard)• VMware Workstation• Windows XP – En, Fr, De, Hu• Windows 7 – En, Fr, De, Hu• Office 2003 – En, Fr, De, Hu• Office 2007 – En, Fr, De, Hu• Office 2010 – En, Fr, De

The software

• Windows XP & Office 2003• Windows XP & Office 2007• Windows XP & Office 2010• Windows 7 & Office 2003• Windows 7 & Office 2007• Windows 7 & Office 2010

Configuration of VMs

• 1 image, cloned then the relevant Office package added

• Virtual machines left offline until needed – average 30 seconds to start up and boot OS

• Select the appropriate VM for OS & Office combination

• Could run several VMs at a time for multiple support needs

Virtual Machines

En Français

Die Deutch

Screenshots of processes - in the specific language to provide training material for the end user

Improved support – IT staff became familiar with the different terms in each language

Increased end user confidence in support staff – making the support process easier

VDI for Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery – this was a practical demonstration of how VDI might work

Benefits

Tino TodinoTino Todino

VoIP

BabblevoiceA fully-fledged phone system in <15 mins.

• Babblevoice is a HOSTED VoIP TELEPHONE SYSTEM based upon the FreeSwitch Open Source product hosted in 3 fully redundant UK based datacentres.

That

• …uses the SIP protocol and supports a variety of VoIP handsets, soft phones and Smartphone's as SIP clients.

• …is designed to be managed by resellers or end-users.

• …is ‘contract free’ and can be used as an internal telephone system free of charge.

What is Babblevoice?

• Comprehensive Voicemail facility• Unified messaging (voicemail to email)• Conference calling (unlimited parties)• Call grouping/hunting (ringing several

handsets at once)• Call routing (what happens if the original

destination is busy)• Call recording • Interactive voice response (IVR)• External and internal call rules• Assign geographical and 0845 numbers

to your account

• Natural language GUI to enable complex rules to be set up easily.

• Calendar integration – Works with Google calendars and anything that can create/publish iCAL files (Mac OSX, Outlook, etc)

• Babblevoice API: The API is intended for developers who wish to develop client applications to extend the core functionality of Babblevoice.

• Open Source projects including a power dialler app which can be used with CRM systems.

• iGoogle/Netvibes gadgets integration that give various information about your Babblevoice domain.

Babblevoice - Features

• Each line you have (a line is defined as an external geographical number) is charged on a monthly basis.

• 1 to 4 lines = £3.00 per month per line

• 5 to 9 lines = £2.00 per month per line

• 10 to 29 lines = £1.50 per month per line

• Over 30 lines = £Negotiable rental per month per line.

• Each line can support a theoretically unlimited number of devices (tested to around 1000 devices)

• Link to Box.com (for IVR) £2.50 per month

• Phone call recording £1 per GB per month

• Number porting to Babblevoice (£20 + VAT - discount for quantity)

Babblevoice - Costs

Babblevoice - Typical Call Costs

Demo

Ben Snape

Hubba Bubba

Wireless Display

NFC Tags and Wireless Display

Near Field Communication

NFC

• Choose your chip

• NTAG203 137 bytes of data

• Max size 4k

NFC Tags

Android Application

Program the tag

• Technical Specs

• Case Studies

• Trade show “Follow us”

Delivering Content

Fun with NFC

@benpsnape

Apple TV

Wireless Display

Miracast WiDi

Netgear PTV3000

Agile Working

Peter Craine

peter

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device(you’re not using mine)

Reasonable GPS locator (better if you install the app) Can stop end users from uninstalling it Remotely install apps from store and enterprise Can lock and wipe phones Set up range of email notifications to be triggered Free version – good enough for a lot of small company needs to start with Recommended and found through Spiceworks

If you do install the app you get push messaging as well

Main Pluses why I chose Meraki

Good GPS Locating

That’s all, folks!

Let’s head to the Great Halls for the wrap-up… and raffles.