Dear subscriber,

Welcome to Opality O-Zone, our quarterly newsletter for partners and customers.

Depending on where you are in the World, you're either freezing cold, or too hot, but wherever you are, we wish you a happy festive season from all of us!

Seasons Greetings

John Butler, Editor

Cloud Wars: How the IT landscape is changing forever

Unless you're very focussed on making money and surviving the recession, or just not interested in computing, you can't read any technology related article without some journalist gushing about "clouds", Microsoft, Google, Amazon or otherwise.

Everyone is rushing into or onto "the Cloud". Before you dismiss (this article) and others though, you need to be aware of something: Cloud computing in general, and the slow, looming battle of the software and hardware giants ARE most definitely going to change the way we all do things in ways that are VERY different from now.

Despite ever faster hardware and newer, slightly slicker and thankfully more bug-free operating systems, the world of IT in business has not really changed all that much over the last TWO DECADES. Yes, the Internet changed the world, but while that was all happening, most business kept on buying whatever version of Microsoft OS and particularly MS Office version was around. Generally they did this a few years after the latest shiny, new and improved version had one or two service packs thrown at it, to ensure the most serious bugs were tamed.

At home, people might have been facebooking and sharing photo's and embracing change, but businesses generally haven't - or at least not in disruptive, industry-changing ways.

Things are different now though. Sometime over the last 18 months, something happened. Whether spurred on by the credit crunch or by Google's free beta products appearing to reach a level of maturity.(Note: I said appearing!) or by some other sea change in thinking that isn't clearly attributable to anyone. Now things ARE changing - rapidly.

Small, medium and large businesses are turning their back on traditional vendors, turning off many of their servers and moving business-critical operations into the cloud. Suddenly, many people seem to get it.

As a hosted solution provider, we have spent years educating people as to the benefits of doing this. Increasingly, we don't have to. They are not asking "why?" anymore. Now they are asking "Besides email, can you also host my files?" or "Can you do backups so I don't have to?" or even "What else can you do?",

If this is happening (and it is, I believe) globally, then it is no wonder the heavy guns are barrelling into the cloud landscape, desperate to grab a piece of the new Wild West. Except..it's different. You don't have to be a giant to be in the cloud. You don't have to be a telephone company to offer voice calls. You don't have to be a major software vendor to offer solutions that scale to thousands and millions of users. Solutions and options are proliferating at a startling pace.

This isn't about interesting websites or online shopping. It is about solutions and functionality that can materially change the way a business works, at cost levels that were previously never available to all but the biggest spenders.

In future articles, I will delve deeper into the changes I see and provide some examples of how the "cloud", not the Internet is indeed the big agent of change to business, and how companies can thrive and even gain competitive advantage in the changing IT landscape.

If you are interested in this article, and would like to know more, please drop me a line. I'd love to hear your views.

Smartphones: A real-world opinion of the current device marketplace

(Note: the views expressed in this article represent the opinions of the Author)
 

The choice of a personal or business mobile device is, like other technology choices nowadays, in many ways quasi-religious.

Just as Mac, Windows or Linux users seem to fall into different camps, so do Smartphone users.

To help you leave the hype behind, this article presents a no-holds-barred, hype-free assessment of the current state of the Smartphone market. Beware of strong opinions!

Apple iPhone: Because it is the flavour of the day, let's start with the most talked about device: Apple's iPhone. Slinky, beautifully engineered and massively over-hyped, the iPhone is really rather good.
However, if you type a lot of emails, travel extensively or don't care too much about music, it should not be your first choice. The iPhone is also rather expensive to run. If you don't care about cost, or your mobile email process largely involves reading the odd email while you listen to music, then the iPhone is your ideal device. And if you already own a Mac...well then, why are you reading this!

For anyone else, besides simplicity, the iPhone's strength right now is in applications. Apple's App Store has thousands of applications for download. The BlackBerry application store is making a credible attempt to match this, but they are still way behind, as is the Android platform (see below).

For email, the iPhone uses Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to keep emails, calendar and contacts in sync with your Outlook/Exchange mailbox. It cannot synchronise tasks and notes though (only BlackBerry does this too). Note that Activesync is a fairly "chatty" technology, so you have to really have an unlimited data plan if you want an iPhone and do a lot of email. Without one, it could end up costing you a lot more than you bargained for.

BlackBerry: For the more serious workaholics amongst us though (including this author), BlackBerry smartphones remain the device of choice. With all the Apple hype that goes on in the press, one could be forgiven for thinking that Blackberry smartphones are no longer as popular. You'd be VERY wrong.

Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry SmartPhones, was recently named by Fortune Magazine, as the fastest growing company on Earth. In the US, BlackBerry SmartPhones occupy 2 out of the top 4 slots in device sales.

There's a good reason why: They’re the best mobile email devices by a country mile. Rather than just looking flash, or having a great keyboard, or a big screen, or whatever feature list each device manufacturer uses to lure you into buying their latest shiny toy, BlackBerry smartphones represent balance: good battery life; a decent keyboard; a good screen; clever shortcuts; and usability features worked out over the course of a decade of constant improvements. These add up to make for a mobile experience which you will never be unhappy with. You might not be able to wave your fingers around or open some trivial application which tells you if you are on a slope, instead of looking down, but you’re highly unlikely to return it because it doesn’t do what you want it to.

You’ll never end up in a foreign country trying to figure out how to make your BlackBerry work. Most likely it will just work. Turn it on as you get off the plane, and your emails will be there. (Please don’t take me up on this if you recently returned from Antarctica). Whilst other people are left scratching at their devices to make them work on the local network, you’ll be waiting for your baggage, answering emails.

Recommended BlackBerry Device: BlackBerry Bold 9700.  Opality can provide these for you. Contact sales.

So, as you might have gathered, BlackBerry is a favourite! What about the other device manufacturers you may ask? Let’s look at the remaining alternatives:

Android: Google’s answer to Apple and Microsoft. This is a hot topic right now, as the Interwebs are steaming with news that Google will be releasing their own branded SmartPhone early next year. Word on the street is that this phone will be called "Nexxus One", but that may be a temporary name. Google's Android mobile platform has been out for a while, and some devices have recently started showing up which appear to be rather nice and may present credible opposition to Apple/BlackBerry. If Google does launch an "iPhone-killer" in the New Year, you'll NOT want to be an early adopter. You'll want to wait for at least 6 months or more (or until your current contract runs out) to allow the dust to settle and the market to decide if it is really a contender. Androids application market is growing pretty well but is a long way behind the others at the moment.  As regards synchronisation with Outlook and Exchange, Android is POOR. Don't get this phone if you care about any email other than GoogleMail. It is in it's infancy when it comes to email synchronisation with business email solutions, such as our Opality hosted Exchange platform.

Nokia: The biggest casualty in the smartphone war. Apple and BlackBerry have been carving out vast chunks of its market share, whilst Nokia has desperately tried to come up with devices even remotely close in functionality. Unfortunately Nokia has only produced a string of also-ran products. Some of them look quite nice, but just fall short of the mark.

Don’t hold your breath for any major change. Even Nokie's latest BlackBerry look-alikes, whilst feature-packed, don’t do email, calendar, contacts etc. nearly as well, and seem to suffer from many annoyances and software bugs, which have the online forums full of fuming customers who wished they’d never done it. Don't be fooled by claims of full Exchange functionality by the way: Many Nokia phones which claim to synchronise with Exchange, only do a half job. So sub-folders within an inbox are not visible or synchronised, for example.

Windows Mobile: I have to hold myself back here, lest I say something too nasty. Out of date, hopeless, behind in almost every aspect of usability, Windows Mobile is another big casualty in the smartphone market.

Even today, Windows Mobile devices loaded with fancy iPhone-like waving and touching features still have to fall back to the ugly Windows Mobile interface when you need to configure, change or do anything beyond reading email or browsing the web. That’s when you end up needing your little stylus and end up pecking on the screen like a chicken. Oh and the call quality on Windows Mobile is pretty much universally terrible. Oh and you need to reboot the phone once or twice a week to keep it from freezing up. I’ll stop there.

Windows Mobile Version 7 is set to arrive late to the party sometime next year, and will likely be much better. By then though, Apple, Research in Motion and Google's Android will be another year ahead. Microsoft has their work cut out for them trying to play catch up in this very rapidly growing market.
 
Note: All the devices on the market, work on Opality’s Hosted Email platform but note the cautions outlined above, particularly for Android and Nokia devices.

Opality Email Vault: secure archiving for compliance

Along with our existing Opality hosted email, mobility and online backup solutions, Opality has recently introduced Opality Vault, for customers who need to run their own email servers. Opality Vault is a secure, encrypted "email bucket" that holds all emails sent and received by your organization. Searchable over the Web using a secure login, Opality Vault allows you to search and read all emails, going back as long as you want.

As long as you have an email system that allows you to forward all incoming and outgoing emails to another source, you can use Opality Vault. All versions of Exchange since Exchange 2003 support this function, known as email journaling.

What does Opality Vault do?
Vault satisfies compliance requirements for legal and financial customers, by allowing them to show a record of up to 7 years of email history, held securely and searchable in the event of legal disputes or audits. Besides compliance, Vault offers other benefits. Business owners may need to review email communications to ensure staff haven't been corresponding with business rivals or forwarding information to 3rd parties. If your top salesperson leaves suddenly, how do you know that person hasn't been in contact with your biggest competitor? A former employee applies for compensation on the grounds of unfair dismissal and you are convinced old emails will exonerate your company. Opality Vault gives you the ability to search for such information, especially in cases where staff may have carefully deleted sent and received emails from their mailbox.

Opality Vault can even act as a last line-of-defence email backup solution. It isn't a replacement for a proper email backup, but in the event of a complete backup failure, server melt-down or other event, the email "bucket" is still there.

Why use Opality Vault and not some global compliance solution?
Opality is a private hosted solution provider. That means your sensitive email information is encrypted and stored on our secure private platforms in the UK, not moved off to a data centre somewhere else in the world.

You know who we are and where we are. If you need your data back, you can call us and arrange for an external hard drive to get your data back and moved somewhere else if you choose to. If you have a support issue, you can call and speak to a support agent (a human one) who will attend to your issue quickly. Some providers don't even have telephone numbers. You have to email them and wait days for a response!

How do I get it?
Opality Vault is available via your Opality Hosted Solutions reseller. Pricing is based on a one-off set-up charge, and then a very low monthly charge per Gigabyte of data archived. Since all emails are compressed, and de-duplicated (meaning only one copy of an attachment sent to multiple recipients is actually stored), the solution is highly efficient at storing large volumes of emails. That means you get charged far less per Gigabyte of data storage than with other solutions or live mailboxes!
Call us for information on +44 (0)845 241 9183 or email sales

Exchange 2010: Thanks a bunch Microsoft

Note: When reading the article below, please be sure to realise we're talking about Exchange (the back-end mail server) and not Outlook 2007. All Opality customers happily use Outlook 2007, which is part of Microsoft Office 2007 and so have all the PC-side functionality that Outlook 2007 offers. Don't get confused between the two!)

Many of you (especially Mac Snow Leopard users) will know that Opality's back-end exchange platform still runs on Exchange 2003. We've been asked before why we're still not using Exchange 2007. This was a conscious decision on our part, based on a number of factors.

The "feature" list of Exchange 2007 server, to customers, was surprisingly low and it wasn't until Service Pack 2 came out recently, that they managed to put back a number of features that Exchange 2003 always had. Even after service pack 2, there are still missing features which have only been added back into Exchange 2010 (and will never be retrofitted into 2007)

Thinking ourselves rather clever, we decided instead to look at completely bypassing Exchange 2007 and move to Exchange 2010 when it was released this year.

However, the finest laid plans are sometimes laid to waste. In this case, it was by Microsoft themselves. When Exchange 2010 was released a month ago, they announced they would not be supporting Exchange 2010 in a hosted environment until late 2011.

From a technology point-of-view, we can implement Exchange 2010, but we're not too happy about the lack of support from Microsoft.

This means that rather than wait, we will indeed look to moving onto Exchange 2007 to enable primarily our Mac user base to enjoy native exchange support within MacMail.

We expect the move to Exchange 2007 to start happening in Q1 next year. We'll keep you posted on progress.

Note that you won't experience any downtime as a result of this work, as it will take place in parallel to the existing service.

If you have any questions about this changeover, or would like to know more, contact me.