Reduce Power, Space and Cooling With Virtualisation

According to VMware, the term virtualisation broadly describes the separation of a resource or request for a service from the underlying physical delivery of that service. Modern virtualisation within the data centre enables organisations to benefit from much higher utilisation rates for their servers and storage.

Virtualisation provides a layer of abstraction that hides the physical computing resource from an application or end user. It masks complexity and enables much more efficient utilisation of resources. Virtualisation extends to servers, storage and desktops.

Some of the most signifcant benefits of virtualisation include:


Better usage of server capacity. Typical server usage rates can be as low as 5 or 10%. Virtualisation enables managed usage of spare server capacity, reducing systems costs.
Better usage of storage capacity. Pooling storage can help administrators improve upon the typical 40% to 50% capacity utilisation rates. And where you're mirroring to a secondary site, this can represent significant benefit.
Saving physical space and energy consumption. Higher utilisation rates equates to fewer servers, in turn reducing physical footprint, power and cooling requirements.
Ability to deploy a new system without ordering new hardware saving installation, build and testing time.
Quicker backups. By taking a data snapshot, virtualisation software can eliminate the bottleneck between the application server and backup server.
Automated management. Automation can include automatic capacity addition if a database is running out of space.
Application testing. Instead of testing an application against actual production data, you can use virtualisation to create a replicated data set to safely test an application against.
Application & database performance. Critcal files can be assigned to very high speed storage devices without affecting the function of the application.
High availability. By separating storage from the application, virtualisation insulates an application from a server failure.
Resource sharing between heterogeneous servers. A virtualisation engine can ensure that servers running different operating systems can safely coexist.

In addition, the virtualisation of storage provides greater efficiency and flexibility, while desktop virtualisation improves manageability and makes software roll-out much simpler.

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk

Trustco Plc. has one decade of experience of helping businesses maximising return on their technology investments.

To receive a whitepaper from VMware, which presents an overview to virtualisation and the key benefits that can be achieved. Please email annabelle.r@trustco.co.uk quoting 'Overview to virtualisation ' in the email title.

To receive a whitepaper that presents 10 techniques for improving power efficiency in your data centre, from NetApp. Please email annabelle.r@trustco.co.uk quoting '10 techniques for improving power efficiency' in the email title.

If you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp

Reducing Costs - Review Telephone Costs

One of the most overlooked ways to save money is examining your utility costs and in particular, your telephone bill. Many companies happily pay this without examining where the costs are arising. Pareto Law kicks in, and whilst most people worry about the 80% of calls, it is the 20% that hides 80% of the costs. This is normally calls from the office to mobiles. So if you really want to home in on costs, cut the calls to and from mobiles, it is as simple as that! It is not unreasonable to also put a limit on how much you will contribute towards staff mobile phone costs and ban unreasonable levels of mobile to mobile/fixed personal calls.

Most telephone systems will allow selective call barring so a simple way to cut mobile calls, is to have all your essential mobile numbers located in the central dialling memory and bar all others. Do not shoot yourself in the foot by overdoing this though. Your system supplier should be able to do this remotely for a nominal fee. Whilst you having the system reprogrammed, have premium numbers (09XX) barred unless you are happy to pay £1.50 per minute! If you are using a non BT provider, you may find their off peak mobile rates are higher than BT so you can always ask for your LCR (Least Cost Routing) to be programmed to send mobile calls off peak to BT or another carrier instead of the daytime provider. Also, consider a call management package. These are usually PC based and cost from £300 upwards, which can quickly be recovered in savings. If your system can provide extension number data to your call provider, you may be able to get this in an Excel format to analyse manually with your bill. Not all of them can do this though. A really simple option is to get your call data output sent from the system to a printer or PC. Most systems have a call logging port but it may need to be turned on by an engineer so get this done whilst programming any of the other options. If you have the time, get an itemised bill and pick out the numbers with high call costs.

Let everyone know that you are homing in on call costs, particularly personal calls to mobiles as this will have an instant effect. How many of your staff have a little chat with their girlfriend/boyfriend during the day? A 10 minute call will cost you over £1. If 5 people do this over a month and every day it is easy to see where savings can be made. Install a payphone which can attach to an extension of your system and they will have no excuses and you are complying with your employer obligations to allow personal calls.

Check how many lines you have on your system or in the building. It is surprising how many could be sitting there doing nothing other than attracting a nice hefty charge per quarter. Also, if you have 20 people, do you need 10 ISDN channels or lines? Are 10 people on the telephone at any one time?

Finally, change supplier to one that follows these rules and just remember if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Deals where you pay a monthly charge are usually bad. For £5 per month you can make a considerable amount of local and national calls especially when the supplier has hiked the cost to mobiles to subsidise the deal. He knows about the 80/20 rule as well! Next time you see a deal headlining savings on national calls and the odd international route, you can smile to yourself because you know what they are up to! The following is not exhaustive but comes from several years of examining scams and are things you should check for with a provider: No minimum call charge, no call set up charge. No rounding up to the nearest minute. Check their normal fixed and mobile and particularly off peak rates if you call outside normal working hours as this is where claw back can occur. Maximum contract length 12 months with 1 month notice thereafter. Read all the small print, particularly for the minimum term and any roll on. For example, some contracts are for one year but roll on to another year if you do not give notice in time - beware.

In summary, if you do the following, you are guaranteed to cut costs:


Cut calls to mobiles. Also consider putting a cap on what you will pay toward staff mobile phone call costs if you provide them as part of their employment. You will be amazed at how many personal calls go on your bill
Bar premium rate numbers and unnecessary mobiles with system programming
Install a call logging/management system or printer
Install a payphone on an extension for staff personal calls
Do not call 0870 numbers and get the underlying geographic number
Cut the amount of lines/ISDN channels into your building
Change supplier but be careful of scammers and misleading deals
Do not just file your bills, examine them in detail and renegotiate rates frequently
If your bill is big enough, consider using a consultant that charges by the hour. Avoid paying a % of savings to a utility consultant unless you are sure that you will be the winner

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk

Trustco Plc. has one decade of experience of helping businesses maximising return on their technology investments.

Sign Up For Trustco Newsletters

If you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp

Ensuring Successful Virtualisation Projects

The growing size and complexity of enterprise data often leads to poor resource utilization and administrative headaches. To achieve greater efficiencies, many organizations are turning to server consolidation initiatives that leverage blade servers or virtual infrastructures.

Performing an IT Audit

The benefits of a successful server consolidation project include the retirement of old or underutilized hardware, savings in floor space and power consumption and an overall reduction in total cost of ownership. However, successful consolidation initiatives often require considerable upfront planning, time and effort.

If you are planning for virtualisation, an audit of your server and storage infrastructure will help you to optimise your environment and to choose the right solutions.

Are you using all the software licences you are paying for? Could some staff be using lower spec, lower cost packages of software? Ensuring you're making the most of what you're already paying for just makes sense.

Auditing your desktops also makes sense. If you're planning Vista roll-out then an audit of what you have got and whether your existing desktops need to be upgraded will be invaluable. The alternative route is to look at desktop virtualisation.

Over the past year we have delivered increasing numbers of virtualisation projects, and often corrected projects where they have gone wrong - prior to our involvement.

An IT Audit will provide you with cold hard facts and not "guesstimates" with best intent. Part of the process is to initially complete a full server and storage audit to ensure an understanding of key elements such as:

Server peak usage - What can your servers be consolidated to?

Amount of data stored - How much data do you currently have on your network?

Daily power consumption - Will help with your ROI and deliver a greener environment

Data location - Where is your data located and how is it being accessed?

All of these will be accurate figures derived from your network, created over a period of time ranging from two to four weeks.

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk

For a sample copy of a virtual report, please email annabelle.r@trustco.co.uk quoting 'Virtual report' in the email title. Trustco has a decade of experience of helping businesses maximising return on their technology investments. Sign Up For Trustco Newsletters.

If you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Reducing Desktop Costs

The traditional PC as the corporate 'thick client' has long been at the forefront of desktop computing. It has represented a favourable compromise between functionality, performance and cost. However, a number of challenges remain:

Desktop Management: Centralising desktop management is an extremely difficult task in the face of a broadly distributed computing environment and the corporate workforce, who increasingly require secure on-demand access to their desktop environment from anywhere. Furthermore, desktops are notoriously difficult to standardise because of the variety of PC hardware and users' needs to modify desktop environments.

Total Cost of Ownership: The relatively low cost of PC hardware is often more than offset by the high cost of PC management and support. Ongoing PC management including deployment of software, updates and patches can be labour-intensive and time consuming because of the need to test and validate deployments for a wide variety of PC configurations. Likewise, the lack of standardisation and the need for support personnel to troubleshoot issues in person and on-site raise support costs dramatically.

Data Security: Ensuring that data on PCs is successfully backed up and can be restored when PCs fail or files are lost is a significant challenge. Even when data is successfully backed up, the risk of PC theft threatens the security of important data.

Low Resource Utilisation: The distributed nature of PCs makes it difficult to pool resources to improve utilisation and reduce costs. As a result, PCs are often less than five percent utilised, remote offices require duplicate desktop infrastructures, and remote desktop solutions may be required for mobile workers.

According to Wikipedia, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a server-centric computing model that borrows from the traditional thin-client model but is designed to give system administrators and end users the best of both worlds: the ability to host and centrally manage desktop virtual machines in the data centre while giving end users a full PC desktop experience.

This form of desktop virtualisation provides many advantages, including:


Instant provisioning of new desktops
Near-zero downtime in the event of hardware failures
Significant reduction in the cost of new application deployment
Robust desktop image management capabilities
Normal 2-3 year PC refresh cycle extended to 5-6 years or more
Existing desktop-like performance including multiple monitors, bi-directional audio/video, streaming video, USB support etc.
Ability to access the users' enterprise desktop environment from any PC, (including the employee's home PC)
Desktop computing power on demand
Multiple desktops on demand
Self provisioning of desktops (controlled by policies)

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk

Trustco Plc. has one decade of experience of helping businesses maximising return on their technology investments.

If you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp

Reducing costs with technology solutions - WAN Acceleration

According to Gartner, WAN optimization is about improving the performance of business applications over WAN connections. Most networks carry a variety of types of traffic, of differing characteristics and importance.

Many organizations are striving to manage this traffic to optimize the response times of critical applications and reduce costs, given that bandwidth continues to represent a significant proportion of operating expenditure for wide-area data networks.

The primary function of a Web Optimization Controller (WOC) is to improve the response times of business-critical applications over WAN links, but they can also help to maximize return on the investment in WAN bandwidth, and sometimes avoid the need for costly bandwidth upgrades. To achieve these objectives, WOCs use a combination of techniques, including:

- Ensuring fair access for mission-critical applications during periods of congestion by prioritizing business critical traffic, through QoS policing and traffic shaping, for example

- Minimizing the effects of network latency using methods like protocol- and application-specific optimization

- Reducing the bandwidth required to transfer WAN traffic by compressing it, for example.

Click here to read more from Gartner about the WAN optimization market.

The WOC market is maturing rapidly, but it is still dynamic with a high level of vendor innovation.This has led to different vendors offering different combinations of features. In order to ensure that the most effective solution is put in place, providing the best overall return on investment, a detailed analysis should first be undertaken. This will establish:

- The real bandwidth you are achieving

- The real usage of that bandwidth

- Applications and services running on your network and the protocols they use

Also conduct a detailed analysis of your network traffic to identify specific problems, for example, excessive latency, bandwidth over subscription or lack of prioritization for certain types of traffic.

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk

Trustco Plc. has one decade of experience of helping businesses maximizing return on their technology investments.

Sign Up For Trustco Newsletters

If you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp

Reducing Costs - Promote Your Products With Cutting Edge Web Video

Video on the web has become more sophisticated with companies competing to have their message heard on the internet, those who are trying video content are finding a dramatic increase in interest in their products and services.

Green Screen video technology gives the ability to have diagrams, words and images move in front and behind a presenter who can be digitally placed in front of any background, for your web site, a plain backdrop, an animated graphic or another video.

In this technique a subject is shot in front of a green or blue screen. it could be any solid colour, but these are the most common. Video editing removes this colour from the video clip, and fills in the empty space with the picture from another video clip, or a still picture. For example the weather forecast report shown on television is created by combining a video with an animation. The video shows weatherman standing in front of a green screen while the animation displays maps and graphics. The green background of the video is replaced by the animation.

Green screen video could be used for a video on your home page, an announcement from your CEO or a product launch. Your own web TV channel or high impact marketing video will add impact to your website and bring your marketing to life. It can help sell to, communicate, educate or guide your clients, partners and stakeholders and could skyrocket your profile and deliver your messages in a clear, compelling and simple way.

It is proven that people, combined with pictures and animation communicate better than text. A well put together video can transform the performance of your website & marketing overnight, and with memory learning techniques your offerings can become unforgettable, from greeting and guiding to explaining your products and services.

Annabelle Ross - Green Key Media. http://www.greenkeymedia.co.uk/

Green Key Media can help you produce a quality, high definition video that grab the attention of your website visitors, bringing together a team of creative and technical experts to produce cutting edge green screen web videos.

Our in-house studio uses the very best equipment and latest technology. Whether you want a simple low budget production or a full blown green screen show reel with custom graphics and animation. We have the perfect solution and set up for you. Take a look at our video example guide to get some ideas and see the different production formats available.

http://www.trustco.co.uk/infocus/2008/08_autumn_s4.asp

Reducing Costs - VOIP - Can it Really Save You Money?

Voice Over IP is often cited as a cost-saving technology. But will it really save you money?

What is it?

VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a protocol used to make voice conversations over your organisation's private data networks and internet connections.

How does it work?

VOIP services convert your voice into a digital signal that travels over the Internet or network as data. At the destination it is converted back to an analogue signal for use with traditional telephony services.

Ready For VOIP?

For organisations with multiple offices, whether it be in the same town or a different country, the answer is 'Yes'.

How much do you currently spend on calls between your own offices? Using IP handsets or by linking your communication platforms to each other can offer considerable savings. Other scenarios that would indicate benefits from moving to VOIP include:

- Voice recording. If you are required to record voice conversations, VOIP together with a digital recording system is a very cost-effective and flexible solution .

- Remote office reception. Due to the flexibility of VOIP systems, remote office reception provision is easy and cost-effective.

- Re-cabling your building. Eliminating the cost of renewing your voice cabling - and just re-cabling the data network - can be justification for a VOIP deployment.

However, if you are a more centralised organisation VOIP may well not be for you. Where your office to office calls are minimal, or non-existent, the pure cost argument for VOIP will fail.

Annabelle Ross - Trustco Plc. http://www.trustco.co.uk/

Trustco Plc. has one decade of experience of helping businesses maximising return on their technology investments. Sign Up For Trustco NewslettersIf you would like to subscribe to our InFocus newsletter and other offers, please register at http://www.trustco.co.uk/resources/edm/signup.asp