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What to look for when choosing a Cloud provider

Oct 18 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

A plethora of emerging ‘cloud computing’ providers, both large and small, are offering an increasingly wide range of services in this emerging and therefore relatively confusing market place. Given this background, it’s fair to say it’s become increasingly difficult for business owners and managers to see the wood from the trees. In such a new and emerging market with so many different propositions all being made to fall under the same ‘cloud’ banner, it makes it extremely difficult for business owners and managers to understand what might be the right proposition(s) for their business and, critically important, who the right provider(s) is to deliver the capability?

We often get asked the question through different forums, both on and offline, “What are the most important factors when choosing a cloud provider”. Our answer is simple, we believe that it is critically important that due diligence is done before committing to any cloud provider and a number of factors need to be considered. We thought it may be helpful to our wider audience to offer our view on what we believe are the most important factors to consider when choosing a cloud provider:

1. Many IT companies are only now realising that the cloud will become the mainstream model for consuming IT functionality so there’s a tendency to characterise what they do as ‘cloud something’ in order to ride the ‘cloud’ wave. Remember it’s not about how long they have been in the IT industry but more about how long they have been delivering cloud services in the real world to real customers.

2. Look at the provenance and commercial track record of the company. Has the cloud provider recently been an on-premise IT support company that is trying to re-invent itself? or has it been in the business of delivering cloud services for a comparatively long time?

3. Ask to look at the provider’s current client base and ask to speak one-to-one to a small selection of existing customers to gauge how effective the delivery and therefore the user experience is.

4. What is the approach to their role as a service provider? What is their attitude to and understanding of their stewardship role in relation to customer data? Can you be certain that this service provider will protect your data in the same way that your bank protects your money?

5. What is the quality of the technical solution? Is it going to meet all your business requirements? Moving to the cloud should not be simply seen as a cost saving exercise; what makes it compelling is that it can enable companies to work smarter and more flexibly which will yield efficiency gains and cost savings in other areas. Ultimately it’s about whether the solution actually meets your needs and improves your business’ capability.

6. Technical competence of their staff. Is the company’s staff adequately skilled/trained to be custodians of your data, to offer great customer support and to continuously improve the solution they deliver?

7. Last and often overlooked is ‘organisational fit’. If your cloud service provider is going to provide the majority of your IT functionality, they will be one of your key trusted providers – Will you get on with them? Do they see you as a commercial partner to whom they provide a critical service or just another transactional sale? Are you confident that they have the ability to understand your business and proactively develop what your business will need into the future?

To find out more about the cloud, the different cloud catagories and some of the providers that fall into these you can download our white paper – Making Sense of the ‘Cloud’

If you have any questions related to this article or the points raised, then please get in touch. We would be more than happy to engage with you.

The Extrinsica Global Team

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Creating a Secure Cloud in Your Pocket

Sep 16 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

We have been shouting internally about our latest development, Secure Edge™ for some time now and it’s only now, with the filing of the patent application that we are able to show the rest of the world what an amazing product it is. The best way to describe Secure Edge is that it’s essentially a “secure cloud in your pocket”, a phrase that was coined by one of our friends over at Citrix. Based on an ultra secure, portable USB device known as an IronKey™ it either gives the user access to their cloud based applications and collaboration facilities when online or if there is no internet connectivity they can use the same, offline applications from the virtual working environment on the key – their ‘personal’ cloud if you like. Secure Edge effectively plugs the gap associate with the cloud – something that has become somewhat of a nirvana for cloud service providers.

So how does it work I hear you ask? Well you simply plug the Secure Edge key into any Windows® partitioned device and some clever software on the key begins end point analysis and threat detection to make sure there is nothing harmful on the device. Once done the user types in their passcode and either accesses their cloud apps if an internet connection is available or their offline applications if there isn’t sufficient bandwidth to access the cloud platform. The key also features file synchronisation software so that any files created offline are automatically uploaded to the cloud file repository when internet connectivity is available. To see the Secure Edge key in action you can view a demonstration video here.

So what situations benefit from this technology? Well almost any situation you can think of. To put the above in perspective it’s useful to give just one of the examples of how Secure Edge boosts productivity. When I write any Blog Article I find it useful to have it proofed before going live. However with colleagues constantly on the move it’s sometimes difficult to efficiently achieve this. However having a team equipped with Secure Edge keys is very different.

When I draft an Article using Microsoft® Word® from the Extrinsica Global® cloud platform; I always save a copy to the corporate file store as well as my colleagues ‘External Access’ folder. The other day before departing for London on the train my colleague synced his Secure Edge key with the corporate file store and was alerted to any changes to documents made by the rest of the team which were then synced to his offline workspace on his key. With no internet connectivity on the train my colleague opened the draft Blog Article in Word from his offline workspace on his key and began to review the Blog Article. Once the train arrived in London the Secure Edge key recognised that there was 3G Internet connectivity available and the changes made to my Blog Article were automatically synced back to the corporate file store where I was able to pick it up and review the changes made by my colleague. After reviewing the changes I posted the blog and within minutes my colleague was alerted by email that there was a new Blog post on the Extrinsica Global Blog site.

Using the seamless integration between the offline and online working capability Secure Edge gave my colleague and I the ability to work securely yet collaboratively on the move regardless of Internet connectivity whilst continuously keeping the corporate file store up-to-date with updated files made available to the staff at head office as well as those employees on the move. This is just one application for Secure Edge and there are many, many more.

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Cloud Insecurity – Perception or Reality?

Jul 27 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

More often than not when selling cloud services, one of the primary concerns that prospective customers have is the security of their data; that is understandable. It’s probably fair to say that a company’s data is up there with money and people as one its most valuable assets and potential customers would expect a service provider to take the same, if not more care of their data than the company itself would. Therefore, it’s important to examine this concern in more detail to understand whether it’s well founded or derived from perception.

When we talk to customer’s two things become evident: the first is that a lot of their concerns are not based on in-depth research or knowledge – more a visceral feeling that if their data is not physically in their business premises it’s somehow less secure. The second is, often, that the infrastructure configuration and user processes they have in place are, from a data security perspective, very poor.

More often than not we find it’s the intangibility of the cloud model that generates the generalised concern about security. For many people there is a perception that their mission critical data is ‘in someone else’s hands’ or that by placing their corporate data with a service provider, they are rendering themselves and their data hostages to fortune. It is true that some of the larger service providers have done little to enhance the perception of cloud services; a good example of this is documented in a recent blog post by a disgruntled Google user, It is a very interesting insight and can be seen here. Most incidents like this have a common theme – they have generally been perpetrated by huge service providers that are either doing things on a very large (and therefore impersonal) scale and/or they are providing services for which they charge either very little or nothing at all with no service level guarantees. They accept that their business models will generate a few ‘ripples’ and are prepared to manage those situations as they arise but this approach by high-profile service providers creates a perception among prospective customers that all cloud service providers take this approach.

The reality of the situation is quite different. Those service providers who provide mission-critical services to their customers take the security of their customers’ data very seriously indeed. As this market grows and develops, what will differentiate service providers will be reputation. Therefore, it is in their best interests for service providers to keep your data secure. Our underpinning ethos is that we must be to our clients in a data context what their bank is to their money.

That brings us to the second part of the reality of data security. If you had a million pounds, would you rather it was kept in a bank or locked in a metal box in your home? Cloud service providers can only survive in a competitive environment by offering prospective customers better capabilities to preserve their customer’s data than customers would themselves be able to put in place. This starts with Tier 3 or 4 data centres, infrastructures engineered for high availability, hardware and software encryption and strong network perimeter security. In our experience, companies’ data are almost certainly going to be more secure being held and managed by an appropriate cloud service provider than if it was held by the companies themselves.

Appropriate cloud service providers will provide a multi-layered backup system and, if you want them, instant failover disaster recovery facilities so that if a data centre was put out of action, your data would still be safe and operations could continue without missing a beat. Now think about your office building, the one to which you hold the keys, that has all your mission critical data sitting on servers inside it – what would happen to your data and your business if something happened to that building? Seen from this objective, rational perspective, it is fair to say that the right cloud service provider would improve rather than decrease the security of most companies’ data.

Nevertheless, the other reality is that the cloud services market is still developing and the quality of services and service providers varies. Therefore, it is important to choose your cloud service provider carefully. Look for a service provider that has a depth of real-world delivery and data security experience and customer references that demonstrate that the security of client’s data is a top priority.

…Extrinsica Global…

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Cloud Adding Value for Kawasaki

Jul 19 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

We strongly believe that the cloud approach is a game changer, but simply stating that the cloud is a game changing model isn’t enough to persuade business owners, managers and decision makers that they should embrace it. These stakeholders really need to see where the value is going to come from and how it’s going to benefit them and their organisations.

The cloud has become such a catch-all term for a wide range of offerings, technologies and competencies, all with different levels of embedded value that it has become difficult for business leaders to decipher which benefits come from which services or technologies and what parts of the cloud spectrum are the right fit for their business.

At a meeting with us yesterday, Paul Risbridger the Team Manager of the Kawasaki World Superbike Race Team articulated brilliantly how integrated cloud services offer that value. It was great to hear what Paul had to say about the Team’s three year experience of using Extrinsica Office Anywhere® and exactly what he had found were the compelling benefits of using cloud technology…

geebee images©

Paul enthused about how Office Anywhere “just works” for them wherever they are operating; they didn’t need to understand the nuts and bolts of the technology or do any complex IT management, configuration or setup. At any race location, anywhere in the world, they arrive and just switch on their laptops and the system is always available with the functionality they need to operate efficiently. Importantly, they no longer have to employ expensive IT personnel to look after IT systems. Paul’s words were “we no longer need IT personnel; we just work, no other delivery method can offer that”.

Paul went on to talk about the delivery of Office Anywhere and his ability to access the enterprise-class IT functionality on whatever device he chooses, whether it’s a laptop in the hotel, his iPad in the pit garage or his smart phone at the airport. Paul says “Having the ability to have your IT functionality delivered to you whenever you need it, on whatever device you choose, wherever you are really is incredible”.

Being able to access their data, applications and email anywhere in the world from any device, pay for it on a monthly subscription basis and have a team of specialists looking after it all for them gives the team the tools to focus on what’s really important… Racing at the highest level.

An integrated, flexible, any time, anywhere, any device approach to delivering IT functionality, which is also fully supported is where substantial value for your business is added. Offering out-of-the-box, unsupported, single function software simply doesn’t deliver the same value. The more comprehensive the cloud service you can consume, the greater the competitive advantage that can be achieved. This is because your IT system is no longer a burden that needs to be intensively managed just to maintain operations, it becomes a powerful, empowering tool that allows your organisation to focus on its core strengths.

For more information on how Extrinsica Global are keeping the Kawasaki World Superbike Team connected using the cloud, you can download the Case Study by clicking here.

…Extrinsica Global…

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A day in the life of a cloud user – Using Extrinsica Office Anywhere® & Secure Edge™

Jul 13 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

8:00 am

I start my day religiously with a cup of tea and two slices of toast. Once that’s done I make my way to my desk in my office at home where i boot up my desktop PC. As always I’m greeted by the Windows® welcome screen and i duly enter my password and access my desktop. The first thing I do once logged in is log into my Office Anywhere® account using my unique username and password – I can see what apps I have at my disposal from the Citrix® icon located on my taskbar and this combination of apps is unique to me and the role i play in the company.

At this point it is important to note that this is not a virtual desktop but my own personal desktop and I have no business productivity applications installed locally, all my applications are delivered to me from the Extrinsica Global cloud and fully integrated into my local desktop. This means that my applications run quickly and intuitively even over tiny bandwidths rather than having to use a lumbering remote desktop. (Click image below).

Like most people, I open my Microsoft® Outlook® email application first to see what new emails are waiting for me and the appointments i have for that day. I read the few emails I’ve had since yesterday afternoon and see that i have a 10:00am appointment in London with a client for which i still need to amend a proposal for. This shouldn’t be a problem as the train journey is about an hour from north Oxfordshire to London. As I’m going to be on the train almost certainly without a connection to the Internet, I know I’ll need to work offline so I sync the files I’m going to need on the train to my Secure Edge Device™ (for more information on the Secure Edge Device click the link)

8:30 am

I arrive at the train station armed with my laptop and my Secure Edge Device (SED™). The train pulls in and I hot foot it to the first available seat I can see; luckily this seat has a table! I open my laptop and plug my SED in, which needs to be authenticated with my password because the device is encrypted. With that done, I launch my offline workspace, which has the same set of applications available as my online workspace that I was using at home on the internet enabled PC (Click image below).

The SED gives me the ability to work with the files I sync’d to it before I left the office. If I don’t have everything I need, I can still sync files from the company file system to the SED on the move, even if I only have a 2G connection to the Internet via the mobile phone network. I’m now able to work easily and efficiently offline and when I’m done, the files I’ve changed or created will sync back to the company file system automatically and securely whenever the SED detects that there’s a hint of an Internet connection. The SED also gives me the ability to work directly with my cloud applications online when there is a continuous Internet connection but in this situation sitting on a train the offline working capability is perfect. I open the proposal using Microsoft® Word® from my offline workspace on the SED and i begin to work on putting the finishing elements together in order to present it to the client (Click image below).

9:20am

I arrive in London having completed the amends to the proposal on the train and proceed to Victoria on the underground.

09:40am

Once i arrive at Victoria station i grab a coffee and using my laptop i connect to the 3G network and the SED automatically syncs my amended files with the Extrinsica Global cloud platform. When I check, I can see that one of my colleagues had placed a new cost model spreadsheet into my external access folder and this had been sync’d down to my SED; I now have the most up to date prices with me for the meeting with the client. Once done, I log off, close my laptop and proceed towards the client’s location (Click image below).

09:55am

I arrive at the clients premises and begin the meeting. To adequately discuss the proposal, rather than huddle around my laptop I plug my SED into the client’s machine, locate the proposal and print 3 copies. During the meeting it is evident that parts of the proposal need to be amended. The beauty of Office Anywhere means that I can make those changes right here right now in real time, print the amended proposal and have it ready to sign off… Now thats efficient! The client also asks if I could give his colleagues a quick demo of Office Anywhere so I access our cloud platform using my SED on his machine and demonstrate what cloud applications look like and how they perform.

11:30am

Having had an extremely successful meeting, it’s time to go and grab a bite of lunch and brief the rest of the team on the meeting as well as assigning actions and next steps. I decide to plonk myself on a leather sofa in a well know coffee house; however at this point i find that my laptop is now about to run out of battery. It’s not too much of a problem because I have my iPad as backup which allows me to have the same functionality with my apps and files as I do on my laptop or desktop PC. Using the iPad I check my emails and send updates to the rest of the team. I also attach the amended proposal which had just been discussed. After lunch it’s off to the Cloud Computing World Forum at Olympia (Click image below).

13:00pm

I arrive at the Cloud Computing World Forum in order to give a demonstration of the Extrinsica Global cloud platform through Office Anywhere® and attend the various keynote presentations as well as meet some great people who are as enthusiastic about cloud technology and the way it’s completely changing the face of business IT as we are.

5:30pm

Having had a full day of meetings and demonstrations I head for the train back to North Oxfordshire. My data travelled with me wherever I went. I was able to work securely both online and offline with virtualised applications; the data i used was constantly secured when it was outside the data center, and was automatically sent back to our cloud platform at the earliest opportunity, keeping it both safe from loss or theft and making it available to the rest of the team regardless of their location.

I know I work for a company that creates and delivers these services, so it could be said that I have a slightly biased overview but I can genuinely say that I could never go back to the old way of working after experiencing the flexibility and efficiency that cloud services offer – it really is such a great way to work.

To see how Office Anywhere looks, feels and operates you can see it in action in our Office Anywhere demonstration video below

Contact Us to inquire about a 30 day trial of Office Anywhere and i guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

I arrive at the train station armed with my laptop and my Secure Edge Device (SED™). The train pulls in and i hot foot it to the first available seat i can see; luckily this seat has a table! I open my laptop and then plug my SED in, which needs to be authenticated because it’s encrypted. With that done, I launch my offline workspace, which has the same set of applications available as my online workspace that I was using at home on the internet enabled PC

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Everything you need to know about Extrinsica Global

Jul 05 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

The company

Extrinsica Global first came to life in mid 2005 when founder Simon Smith was working at Extrinsica Globals sister company Extrinsica Limited. Extrinsica Limited, also founded by Simon in 2000 specialise in providing interim-staff to UK Central Government departments to look after complex technical projects. Extrinsica Global was formed as a result of Simon’s experience working in these Central Government departments, working at the forefront of information technology. At the time these departments were using some great technology that provided fantastic flexibility by delivering software functionality remotely. The technology was commercially available but very expensive and required expert technical specialists to get it working to its full potential.

Simon thought it would be a great idea to build a platform and deliver this enterprise-class remote working capability via the Internet on a service basis to small businesses that normally wouldn’t be able to afford to build the capability for themselves… this capability subsequently formed what is now known as Extrinsica Office Anywhere®.

The idea worked really well in practice and Extrinsica Global started to get interest from customers who were astonished at the extent to which the technology could transform their businesses and the way they were able to operate. This was 6 years ago and some time before the concept was articulated as ‘the Cloud’ and began taking root in the consciousness of business owners and CIOs.

The People – The Expertise

Pioneering such new technology in a market that had little experience or expertise to draw on, Extrinsica Global relied heavily on it’s technical specialists who have been with the company since it’s inception to build a brilliant and robust cloud platform. As many service providers and cloud specialists will attest, there is still a short fall when it comes to individuals with the required technical expertise to put a robust, enterprise-class cloud platform in place, however Extrinsica Global is fortunate to have some extremely experienced people.

There is no doubt that at Extrinsica Global we have some bright young minds working to produce, manage and support our three mature cloud services, however Extrinsica Global is not only made up of talented technical specialists but also of experienced business and account managers with many years experience of working in the IT industry as well as for some of the UK Government’s largest and most technically complex departments. Individually, many of our staff have more than 20 years experience in their technical and business specialties.

The Platform – The Services

We built the Extrinsica Global cloud platform from the ground up with both security and end user usability firmly in mind. Because the platform has been developed and refined over 6 years of ‘in the trenches’ cloud services delivery experience we have been able to learn the many lessons that can only be gained from empirical experience.

We offer three mature, bespoke, software integrated cloud services. Our services are fully managed and supported for our customers; we don’t offer the commodity cloud services that only provide ‘vanilla’ out-of-the-box software with little or no support like some of the big software vendors.

Office Anywhere®

Office Anywhere® was the first service developed by Extrinsica Global and has been providing our customers with secure anywhere, anytime, any device access to their business productivity functionality since 2006. We use cutting edge technology to deliver whatever software and data access our customers need to enable their business operations. As a minimum, they get the latest Microsoft Office® and Exchange® facilities and access to a single centralised file system with anywhere, anytime access.

Everything is delivered as individual apps which are seamlessly integrated with the local desktop – whatever it is – on any device. This makes for an easy, intuitive user experience, which you don’t get with current remote desktop offerings. The service is also completely managed and supported for our customers so that focus can be firmly on what’s really important… their businesses. See how the Kawasaki World Superbike Team stay connected around the globe using Office Anywhere in our Office Anywhere Case Study.

Nomad™

Nomad™ is similar to Office Anywhere but allows customers to rapidly and flexibly deploy a secure remote working capability for the remote element of the workforce. The service provides integrated business productivity and data access facilities to mobile workers using our secure cloud platform that can work in conjunction with the client’s on-premise systems. After developing and supplying Office Anywhere for a couple of years we realised that some clients didn’t require their entire IT functionality to be served via the cloud but wanted to exploit the benefits of flexibility that come with cloud computing for the remote and mobile element of their workforce whilst connecting the service to their already established on-premise systems, a great example of this is when we supplied Nomad to the FIFA 2010 World Cup Security Team deployed in South Africa during the tournament.

Nomad uses the latest VDI software virtualisation technology to give every member of the remote team access to virtualised workspace, with the latest software applications and the ability to access and save files securely in a centralised file store, from anywhere in the world. It enables remote users to work securely from anywhere, at anytime from any device with an Internet connection.

Secure Edge™

Secure Edge™ is a virtual working environment that plugs the offline gap sometimes associated with cloud services. It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask “how do I use my applications and access my data when I’m offline?” well our simple answer is… Secure Edge. The ‘virtual’ working environment is held on a super portable, highly secured USB device that allows the user to work, collaborate and use their applications when working offline or have use of enterprise-class business productivity cloud applications when working online via the Extrinsica Global Cloud platform.

The Secure Edge service takes files created offline and automatically and securely syncs the data back to our secure cloud platform. Data cannot under any circumstances be saved to the client device but only to the key which is 256-bit AES encrypted where it is held securely away from any unwanted eyes.

Secure Edge came out of our intensive Research and Development work undertaken to find an answer to the question posed above. Our technical specialists worked extremely hard to bring this technology to market and it’s now paying dividends. Secure Edge had it’s toughest test to date when one of our clients, Ambrey Risk; an international risk and security management company used the service in Egypt during the recent civil uprising. Secure Edge was particularly invaluable when the authorities turned off all internet connectivity in the country. Find out more about how they got on in our Secure Edge Case study

Outro

So there’s a little bit of background on Extrinsica Global and a little bit about what we do… We would really like to hear about what your company does to see how Extrinsica Global could benefit your business. You can visit the Extrinsica Global Website @extrinsicaglobal.com for more information or Contact Us to find out how Extrinsica Global could transform the way you are able to operate.

…The Extrinsica Global Team…

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Cloud User Experience – Disaster Averted

Jun 24 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

Virus, cloud, Disaster, Cloud User

We have all at some point in our lives experienced some kind of computer related virus, malware or computer malfunction on our personal computers. Often it is simply a case of running a virus scan using some reputable anti-virus software and cleaning the problem up. However in some instances it can become far more serious.

This blog post will document the recent experience of Melanie, a user from one of our customer companies, to highlight how utilising the cloud saved both Melanie and her company a great deal of anguish.

Melanie plays an important role in her company as the Executive Assistant, often having to deal with commercially sensitive data and emails that are critical to business activities.

Because Melanie’s company use the Extrinsica Office Anywhere® service it means that geographical location is no longer an issue, as long as Melanie has an internet connection she can literally work wherever she likes. In this instance Melanie was working from her sister-in-laws in a relatively remote area of the south of England using her company laptop. Whilst working and seemingly out of the blue her laptop began behaving strangely and the laptop subsequently shut itself down and ceased working correctly. It was evident that a rather malicious virus had entered Melanie’s laptop causing the laptop to become corrupted and subsequently losing everything that was on it.

As anyone who has experienced this for themselves will attest, the feeling when you know you could have lost all your data and applications is not a nice one in the slightest. In a fit of panic the first thing Melanie did was call the Extrinsica Global Helpdesk. One of our support team was able to talk Melanie through getting back on to the laptop through the system interface where he found that the virus had indeed damaged the hard disk and other vital subsystems.

The Extrinsica Global support staff member talked Melanie through the options and suggested she used another laptop. Of course what Melanie had failed to realise is that because she uses the Office Anywhere service that is situated in an ultra-secure data centre that all of her corporate data and business productivity applications would be instantly available because data is never saved to the host device. Using her sister-in-laws laptop the support member initiated a remote session to load the required Citrix software onto the laptop which allowed Melanie to access her Office Anywhere account and begin working exactly as she was before her laptop died.

This experience resonated with Melanie so much that she wanted to make it known that using the Office Anywhere system not only saved all of her business critical information but allowed her to begin working only a matter of 30 minutes after a major technical catastrophe.

A quote from Melanie.

“I couldn’t believe it. It’s the worst feeling when something like that happens. In this day and age you just want your IT to work and when my laptop died I panicked. If I had been working locally I would have lost everything and there would have been a huge amount of explaining to do. Fortunately using Office Anywhere meant that my data and applications were never at risk and the Extrinsica Global support staff were brilliant at getting me back to work in only a matter of minutes. Great service, great team and such a great way to work”.

We find ourselves hearing so many stories similar to this. Having your business productivity fucntionality served to you via the internet has so many added benefits and this just highlights one of them. Working this way is not only far more intuitive but far more robust and ultimately secure. Having your corporate data and applications locally installed is fast becoming an outdated, risky method of operating. To find out more about the Office Anywhere cloud service visit our website at extrinsicaglobal.com or download the Office Anywhere data sheet and Case Study. For a more generic ‘non technical’ overview of cloud computing, the different services available and the many benefits then download our new White Paper – Making Sense of the Cloud.

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Categorising the Cloud

Jun 20 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles

So we have all heard about the cloud, its compelling benefits and how its going to transform the face of IT consumption around the globe but is that enough for business decision makers to go on? We think not… The cloud is a term that is used to bundle up a plethora of different service offerings from a wide variety of vendors around the world. We thought it would make sense to try and categorise these offerings in terms of the amount of added value you get from each cloud computing type.

To do this we have developed the Cloud Services Pyramid©. The Pyramid works brilliantly to help visualise the type of cloud offerings from Infrastructure-as-a-Service or IaaS and Platform-as-a-Service or PaaS through Single Function Cloud application offerings or SaaS all the way up to bespoke, fully integrated, Enterprise-Class cloud solutions, which we have coined ‘Integrated Cloud Services’ meaning the provision of all the IT functionality required by a business.

The pyramid provides a set of terminology that is a little more intuitive. The model also indicates which customer market segment each cloud service is aimed at (Principal User Group) and gives context to each term by giving examples of the cloud service from current offerings in the market.

The pyramid structure also gives an indication of the basic business model that underpins each cloud service. For example, the business model for utility computing is low value per transaction; low added value but with a very large volume of transactions. On the other hand, Integrated Cloud Services have, comparatively, much higher sales values (reflecting the substantial value added in the form of bespoke integration/customisation, technical management and customer
support/service) but the sales volume will be much smaller than utility computing.

To view the pyramid in more detail please click the image below or click here for the interactive pyramid

For a full overview and analysis of Categorising the Cloud using the Cloud Services Pyramid evaluating each step of the pyramid and the how each cloud service could benefit your business then download our ‘non-technical’ White Paper – Making Sense of the Cloud by clicking on this link.

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Cloud Connects the FIFA 2010 World Cup Security Team

Jun 17 2011 Published by Extrinsica Global under Articles, News

The team responsible for security at the 2010 FIFA World Cup were looking for an IT requirement that could be rapidly deployed to South Africa a system that could be extremely flexible to provision new users on the system when they needed them whilst keeping the data they created highly secure and available to all members of the teams on the ground and back at headquarters in the UK.

The operations manager approached Extrinsica Global to explore the possibilities of deploying the Nomad™ service to the entire team from the Extrinsica Global Cloud Platform based in the UK. The Nomad service allows you to rapidly and flexibly deploy a secure remote working capability for the remote element of your workforce. The service provides integrated business productivity and data access facilities to mobile workers using a secure cloud platform that can work in conjunction with your on-premise system.

Nomad uses the latest software virtualisation technology to give every member of your remote team access to virtualised workspace, with the latest business productivity software applications such as Microsoft Exchange® based email and the Office® suite of applications. Nomad also gives you the ability to access and save files securely in a centralised file store, from anywhere in the world. It enables remote users to work securely from anywhere, at anytime from any device with an Internet connection.

This unique working capability was provisioned for every member of the team before they left the UK for South Africa so that as soon as they stepped off the plane they could access their business productivity applications and files regardless of their physical location in the country.

To find out more about how the team used the Nomad service during the tournament see the full Case Study below by clicking on the PDF.