Case Study: Cloud Computing
July 6th, 2011 | 
Author: 
Introduction
As a foundation client of Computer Whisperer, we have seen The Improve Group grow from strength to strength over the years. As Australasia’s Leading Productivity Improvement Provider, Bob and his team have always pushed for customer service and technology excellence. With an ever expanding team of coaches across Australia and New Zealand their IT Infrastructure needed to be reliable, flexible, and cost effective.
Challenges
- Restricted office space for IT Infrastucture
- Reduce PC maintenance
- Increase asset lifecyle
- More flexible Microsoft licensing
- Server resources accessible for staff across Australia and New Zealand
Solutions
- Replaced all onsite physical Servers with our Virtual Private Servers in our Data Centre
- Replaced PCs with Dual-Screen Wyse Terminals
- Renting Microsoft licenses on a month-to-month basis
- Setup remote access via a secure web interface
Impact
- Turned IT Infrastructure costs from CapExs to OpExs
- Zero PC/workstation maintenance
- Functional remote server access across Australia and New Zealand
Posted in 
Scheduled Maintenance
Public Reminder For Customers
As per our previous emails to affected customers, we will be moving our hosting environment tonight between 6pm and 8pm.
Virtual servers and our website will be unaccessible between these times.
How the Cloud can save you money.
Here’s a great video from PC Authority on how Cloud Services can save small businesses money.
iPhone Time Management Tips
Had a great time at Peppers Ruffles Resort this morning helping a client get the most our of their iPhones. We covered:
- Updates, Folders, Home screen apps
- Outlook Task sync with ToodleDo
- Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search
- Voice4Mail
- Evernote
The fur flies as Microsoft and Google punch it out again
We’ve started looking at the Office 365 beta and found it very usable. Online versions of Word, Excel, etc are similar to Google Apps however Microsoft’s Sharepoint document management integration is more fluid.
Apple tightens it’s hardware further
It looks like Apple is making it harder for “self-upgraders” who want to put larger drives in the new series of iMacs.
Could you suffer 6-9 hours of email downtime?
Another feather in Google Apps’ cap.
Microsoft has apologised again to business customers for three outages that hit clients running Exchange on its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) cloud.
So what have 77 Million Playstation users been doing for the past month?
It has nearly been a month since Sony shut it’s Playstation Network down after what has been known as the biggest security breach of all time. Australian gamers should be back online by the end of the month. A recent system patch (3.61) was available to download indicating it’s not too far away.
Microsoft confirms Skype buy for US$8.5 billion
Microsoft plans to buy Internet phone service Skype for US$8.5 billion in cash, a rich price as it seeks to regain ground on growing rivals such as Google.