J A N U A R Y
Quarterly Insider
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Welcome. Hello, Welcome to the first Quarterly Insider of 2017. We would firstly like to welcome all of our new customers and secondly, thank you to those that have signed up to our customer satisfaction programme to become ANS ‘Raving Fans’ (you can find out more about how to become a Raving Fan on page 8). We’ve had another great quarter having sealed lots of new deals and welcomed new customers and new members of staff. Significantly this quarter, we were awarded Cisco’s Case Study of the Year 2016 at the UK Partner Forum for our work with ODEON Cinemas. In the last issue, we mentioned we would once again be running our me Christmas campaign to raise gifts for underprivileged young people in the Manchester Area. The campaign was a huge success as we managed to donate over 200 gifts! You can read more about this on page 10. All that’s left to say is pop the kettle on and enjoy reading through the magazine. As ever, thank you for your continued custom. We look forward to continue working with you in the future.
Paul Shannon, CEO
Helen Thomas Writer Natalie Yates Graphic Designer
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Contents.
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ANS in the Press.
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This Quarter’s Raving Fans.
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This Quarter’s Blogs.
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Update from our CSR team.
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Update from the ANS Academy.
Tech Update.
Dates for the Diary.
ANS in the Press. ANS Awarded Cyber Essentials Certificate ANS has been awarded the Cyber Essentials certificate. The certificate is a government-backed cyber security certification scheme that sets out a good baseline of cyber security suitable for all organisations across all sectors. The certification highlights ANS’ sound Cyber Security practices and ensures the company is protected against common online threats. Having undergone an external independent review of their practices and a rigorous test of their systems and networks, ANS has demonstrated that its technical security practices further underpin their supporting accreditations under ISO/IEC 27001:2013. Read the full press release here. www.ans.co.uk/ans-awarded-cyber-essentials-certificate/
ANS give helping hand to Salford City Council ANS has assisted one of their key public sector customers, Salford City Council in achieving their ISO27001 accreditation. The ISO27001 accreditation offers a comprehensive set of controls, based on internationally recognised best practice in information security, ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information is maintained at all times. With the provision of guidance and expertise from the Business Assurance Manager at ANS, Salford City Council has been accredited with their own ISO27001 certification. The Council are now in a better position to give residents the confidence and trust that their information is safe and secure as well as enabling the council to demonstrate due diligence and compliance to regulatory and contractual requirements. Find out what Debbie McCarron, Senior ICT Consultant at Salford City Council said by clicking here. www.ans.co.uk/ans-give-helping-hand-salford-city-council/
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No sweat for Total Fitness with ANS Northern health club chain Total Fitness has partnered with ANS to transform its membership systems through the cloud service provider’s flexible hyper converged solution, RAPID. The project involved the development and deployment of a pre-validated, pre-integrated and pre-tested private cloud solution, enabling Total Fitness to move away from its aging and fragmented infrastructure to a faster and more streamlined, integrated system. This will also act as a foundation to facilitate the creation of new applications and allow the company to expand its IT capabilities in the near future. Read the full press release here. www.ans.co.uk/no-sweat-total-fitness-ans/
ANS Awarded Customer Case Study of the Year 2016 at Cisco’s UK Partner Forum ANS were awarded Cisco Case Study of the Year 2016. Cisco unveiled the eight winners of its UK Partner Awards on 24th November at its annual Partner Forum. Presented to exemplary channel partners, the Cisco UK Partner Awards recognise the achievements of a select group of Cisco partners and their innovation in 2016. Speaking of the award, ANS’ CEO, Paul Shannon said, “We’re thrilled to have won the Cisco Case Study of the Year award for our RAPID Private Cloud project which is enabling ODEON Cinemas to enhance their customer experience. We are always proud to be recognised by Cisco for our successes, but this award is particularly meaningful for us as it demonstrates our strength in delivering outstanding, innovative solutions to our customers.” To read the full press release click here. www.ans.co.uk/ans-awarded-customer-case-study-year-2016-ciscos-uk-partner-forum/
This Quarter’s Raving Fans. It is our goal to achieve industry leading PR for ANS and our customers, recognising the innovative solutions we collaboratively provide for organisations and their community of users. We aim to sign up 200 Raving Fans to our customer satisfaction programme, which will only be achieved by maintaining the current exceptional level of service to our customers. This quarter we have welcomed the following Raving Fans...
Become a Raving Fan! At ANS, there is no such thing as the bare minimum. We endeavour to always go above and beyond for our customers, and every project is a chance for us to deliver first-class solutions and welcome customers into our Raving Fan Club. Our Raving Fans know there’s more to a great customer relationship than technical knowledge or timely delivery – those may be the building blocks of our success, but for them it’s about partnering with a company they can trust, a company that they enjoy working with and a company that is just as invested in their success as they are.
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This Quarter’s Blogs. 2017: RAPID Disruption Awaits ANS’ Executive Chairman, Paul Sweeney has been blogging about how we have developed RAPID over the last 12 months. 2016 was the year RAPID took the industry by storm. We launched our most ground-breaking RAPID series, comprising of three system architectures, RAPID FIRE, FLEX and RAIL. Each of the systems is built as a cloud enabled platform utilising API driven Converged or Hyper-converged Infrastructure reference architectures from industry leading vendors. In the blog, Paul then turns his attention to 2017; the year that hyper-convergence – and software-defined storage and networking – come into their own and ANS will be leading the charge. To read the full blog and discover what ANS has in store for 2017, please follow the link below. www.linkedin.com/pulse/2017-disruption-awaitspaul-sweeney?trk=prof-post
VNOs: The Future of Corporate Connectivity
A Day in the Life of a Systems Engineer
In Andy Barrow’s latest blog, he talks about 2016 as the year we cemented our positioning as a Virtual Network Operator. This means we take a multicarrier approach in order to create bespoke connectivity solutions while still using the Tier 1 infrastructure our customers expect. This carries multiple benefits for the customer who will experience much shorter change SLAs, higher grade performance and resiliency while still being able to rely on a traditional tier 1 core.
Paul Shannon continued his ‘Day in the Life’ campaign throughout Q2. In this blog, Paul recounts his day in the life of ANS Systems Engineer, Tim Hynes. During the day, Tim showed Paul the detailed roadmap for RAPID. Paul explained that even though he was aware of what’s coming up, seeing how everything works in fine detail really brought RAPID to life. it Throughout the day Paul fostered a new-found appreciation for the whole team Tim works within.
This positioning comes at a crucial time as we expect to see more organisations turning to VNOs because the large carriers simply won’t be able to meet organisations’ diverse business needs. To find out what else Andy had to say click here. www.linkedin.com/pulse/vnos-future-corporate-connectivity-andybarrow?trk=prof-post
To read the full blog and interview with Tim, click here. www.linkedin.com/pulse/day-life-systems-engineerpaul-shannon?trk=prof-post
Update from our CSR team.
You may remember from our last update that we were preparing to launch our second meANS Christmas campaign in aid of our partner charity, The Factory Youth Zone. The charitable event was devised in an effort to provide gifts for local disadvantaged young people in order make their Christmas morning that extra bit special. During November and December, we encouraged all of our employees to buy one extra gift when they were out doing their Christmas shopping and once again, everyone stepped up to the plate, bringing our total number of gifts to 209! Once our Christmas elves had wrapped all the gifts, four members of the ANS CSR team (and a mini bus full of presents) made the journey to the Factory Youth Zone in Harpurhey to deliver the presents. To find out what the Factory Youth Zone’s Development Manager, Phil Ascott had to say about the Christmas mission, click here. www.ans.co.uk/ans-bring-christmas-cheer-factory-youthzone/ The ANS Foodbank This quarter we will be Turning our attention to our ANS Food Bank campaign in partnership with Manchester South Central Foodbank. 10
Imagine if you had to choose between heating your home or eating? We don’t think anyone in our community should have to face going hungry, but the sad reality is that a number of people do. In fact, 1-in-5 people live below the poverty line in the UK. Manchester South Central Foodbank opened in April 2014 in response to the need for a foodbank that covered the Hulme, Moss Side and Whalley Range areas. The current economic climate means more and more people are struggling to put food on the table and It’s not just people on low incomes who are feeling the pinch, increased redundancy and fewer jobs are having a real financial impact on local people. Nationally, the single biggest reason that people were referred to Trussell Trust foodbanks was benefit delay, followed by low income. Other reasons for referrals include delayed wages, domestic violence, sickness, unemployment, debt, benefit changes, refused short-term benefit advance, homeless and absence of free school meals during school holidays. From February 2017 onwards, we will have a dedicated Food Bank area near the reception of the Manchester and London offices. This is an ongoing campaign so we will be collecting food items throughout the year. // Catherine Astles, CSR Leader
Update from ANS Academy. This quarter two new apprentices have joined the Academy – Emma McQuillan has recently started her role as a Contracts Apprentice and Lauren Williams has joined as a Sales Support Apprentice. We’d like to welcome both ladies on board! In December, the apprentices, headed by Alex Clifford, started a competition to see who could supply the most food for the food bank in central Manchester. All the apprentices rose to the challenge and delivered their donations in person on the 13th December (see photo below). As a thank you for their kindness, we gave them the afternoon off to enjoy themselves in the Manchester Christmas Markets. This quarter the Academy has been working closely with the Marketing Team’s Graphic Designer, Natalie Yates to create a brand new Apprentice Academy Brochure and posters to promote the apprenticeship positions. The new brochure is now live on the website which you can view here: www.info.ans. co.uk/ans-apprentice-academy-brochure // Anna O’Brien, ANS Academy Manager The Apprentices over in Enterprise House have been working extremely hard leading up to Christmas to ensure all their assignments were handed on time; they are now waiting with baited breath for their results. The group have performed exceptionally well so far in their previous assignments, so we are expecting good results all round. We are also receiving great feedback from the managers of the apprentices that are in placement in Synergy. The level of commitment from the team is fantastic and they are progressing at a tremendous pace. All fourteen of our current Academy Apprentices deserve a well-earned pat on the back. // Mark Sourbutts, Training Manager
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Tech Update. In Q2 we updated the Service Desk Customer Surveys for Incident and Change feedback. The refreshed surveys include a more modern look and feel which in in line with the latest ANS branding and other ANS business Systems (see below). A new Service Desk Dashboard has been developed that provides the relevant stats for The Desk in a clear and concise manner as well as utilising a slick look and feel. This quarter we also deployed ANS GLASS Mobile. The app, with native iOS and Android compatibility, is now available on iOS 9.0+ and Android 5.0+ smartphones. The app will enable you to add incidents and changes and view updates on the move. The majority of functionality that is available via the Portal will be available using the smartphone app. Our Directors, Account Managers and Service Managers will also be able to utilise GLASS mobile to view your information on the move.
Dates for the Diary.
Feb
28th- Public Cloud Seminar South
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We invite you to join ANS for an afternoon of networking and discussions around adopting Public Cloud. The seminar will take place in South Place Hotel, London. You can find the full agenda here. www.ans.co.uk/adopting-public-cloud-london/
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2nd- Public Cloud Seminar North We invite you to join ANS for an afternoon of networking and discussions around adopting Public Cloud. The seminar will take place in King Street Townhouse, Manchester. You can find the full agenda here. www.ans.co.uk/adopting-public-cloud-manchester/
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ISO 27001
ISO 22301