Issue 6
Bytes have helped Tesco make significant savings by effective and intelligent management of our licensing entitlements. Their knowledge and ability to answer queries and sort problems accurately and quickly has made us more efficient and able to turn projects around at a pace that aligns with our business needs.
Bytes have given us a fantastic service over many years. Our account manager understands our industry and our organisation well, so is able to offer products and services which meet our requirements and provide best value for the organisation. It feels like Bytes work with us as partners.
% 97would
Head Of Global Procurement Tesco
Information Management Directorate Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals
Recommend 93% rate the service
Good or Excellent
Bytes SP focus on strong and proactive account management, provide excellent support and are therefore a partner we can work with long term. The rollout and on-going support we receive is first class.
Software Asset Management audits are usually very painful, labour intensive and time consuming exercises, but this time round it was as painless as it could possibly be. It’s the people who are experts in their field, but they also care about their clients sufficiently to get to know them and their infrastructure. Head of IT Kingsley Knapley
IT Manager De Montfort University
Bytes SP have enabled our in-house teams to effectively run security solutions for 9 years. They have found us the best technologies Europe wide for our business, educated our teams on making the most of these, and provided first class on-going support. European IT Manager, P & O Ferrymasters
The RFU have been in partnership with Bytes for the last 7 years. Bytes has been at the forefront of getting an understanding of how we work as business, how we can leverage costs and reduce expense. Head of IT Rugby Football Union
Without the skills and professional approach displayed by the Bytes team, the minefield that is Oracle, could not have been negotiated by us alone. What Bytes promised was delivered and working with them as a team and partnership was a pleasure. Other organisations could learn much from the Bytes approach. I will always recommend Bytes to any of my colleagues and my wider network. Manager, IT Service Delivery Allianz Insurance Plc
Welcome to the latest edition of the Bytes Magazine! If you source software or get involved in software licensing agreements, or are concerned about managing your increasingly large software assets then read on!! We want to help you make great purchasing decisions and we want your organisation to do great business. Your success as an organisation is very important to us and we want to help in any small way we can.This magazine has been put together by Bytes staff and great
hello
people from some of the best software publishers and IT
& welto cbytes ome distribution businesses in the world.
Every day your organisation and
its users demand ever increasing
levels of service, productivity and
efficiency both from the software deployed and
also the team that procures or evaluates it. This demand puts ever increasing pressure on your IT department or your procurement teams. Our desire is to help lift this pressure and to work with you to simplify your choices and to provide you with an expert level of guidance and support so that you make the right buying decisions for your organisation. Whether buying off premise cloud software on a pay as you go basis or on premise software on a perpetual or subscription basis; allow Bytes to partner with you through the process. After all, it’s
our business to know the business of software procurement, it’s all we do everyday of the week, week in and week out since 1982 when we were formed. Now with 250 people in the UK we have a raft of expertise and account management to help you do great business for your users and your organisation. Our objective is to provide you with a great service and to exceed your expectations in the years ahead. If you are an existing customer then thanks for your business so far, we know you have choices as to which partners to work with and so we appreciate you working with us.
Neil
Neil Murphy Group Managing Director
contact us Head Office: Bytes Technology Group, Bytes House, Randalls Way, Leatherhead, Surrey, KT22 7TW phone - 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 03
contents virtualisation
p32 Virtual Vision
The latest trends from our own Jessica Hendy
p34 Citrix Windows 10 Migration
Using XenDesktop to make the move
p36 VMware’s NSX
A new level of Security for Network Virtualisation
microsoft
p09 Azure Offerings from Bytes
Explore your next step into the Cloud
p10 Microsoft Azure Customer Survey Real opinions of using Microsoft Azure
p12 Bytes Enterprise Modernisation Assess, determine and execute your modernisation roadmap
p14 Windows 10
Our 5 step approach to supporting your migration
p16 Azure Site Recovery, StorSimple & OMS
A number of options for your disaster recovery
p18 Application License Control
How to license on a per-device basis
p20 Windows Server 2016 & System
Center 2016 Moving from Processor to Core Licensing
p38 Nutanix
Power your mission-critical workloads at any scale
p40 AppSense
Freedom from device based management & policies
storage
p41 Storage Spotlight
The latest trends from Stuart Curry
p42 NetApp
Matt Watts tackles the hybrid evolution
p44 Veritas
Huw Owen describes how data can work for you
p46 Barracuda
Easy cloud-connected backup
p48 Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash The power of Adaptive Flash
p21 License Mobility Rules
Small changes, major implications
p22 Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
Changes How does the rise in minimum commitment effect you?
security
p50 Bytes Security Partnerships A Bytes guide to IT Security
p23 Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit
p52 Cylance
p24 Flexible Short-Term Durations with
p54 RSA
Your chance to reduce costs by 40%
MPSA New short-term subscriptions for your temporary needs
Silencing Cyberattacks Saying No to Ransomware
p56 Check Point
Overcome the vulnerability of varied endpoints
p25 VMware Licensing Changes
p58 Symantec
p26 SQL 2016 Licensing for Virtualisation
p60 Sophos
p28 SQL & Virtual Infrastructure
p62 Mimecast for Office 365
Major changes to key VMware products New Editions and Licensing Options
SQL Workloads Modernisation Engagement
Security advice from the leaders A synchronised security approach to threat protection Enhancing O365 with Mimecast Services
p64 Good
Take control with a Secure Management SuitE
p66 Trend Micro
The Snoopers Charter and Online Extortion
p68 Skybox
Advanced security analytics and attack surface visibility
04 |
applications
p70 Snow
Your licence manager come rain, shine or….snow
p72 Adobe Creative Cloud
Surely you’re not still using Creative Suite?
p73 Adobe Stock
40 million inspiring images and graphics
p74 Oracle Linux
Use the calculator to work out your savings
p75 Oracle Licensing
Are you optimising your Oracle investment?
news bytes
p76 Adobe Acrobat Document Cloud
p06
p77 Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
p08 Breaking News - ElastaBytes
Whether in the office, at home or on-the-go, make it DC What’s new and improved versus prior versions?
deployment
p78 Bytes Deployment Team
Unlocking the technology in your Licensing Agreements
News Bytes
What’s hot in our world The new services company dedicated to Microsoft Azure
p85 Bytes Software & Licensing Services
p86 Bytes SAM Services p87 Bytes Learning Services
p79 IT Premier Support
Support for Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and more…
p80 Microsoft System Center
How to define, deploy and configure SCCM
p81 VMware vSphere changes
A complimentary assessment to navigate the changes
p82 Skype for Business Cloud PBX
Innovation and simplicity in an all-in-one telephone system
p83 Core Aurora OneStop
Security and identity management services
p84 Microsoft Azure
Design and migration services from Elastabytes
regular bytes
p69 Try Before You Buy
Take the opportunity to trial before you make that important purchase
p88 In The Hotseat
An interview with Matt Ellard, SVP EMEA, Veritas
p90 Vendor & Industry Awards p91 Our Vendor Accreditations
case studies
p02 What customers think of Bytes Satisfaction survey results revealed
p30 Everest & Delivering Cost Efficiency
How Bytes helped Everest move to a new Microsoft platform
www.bytes.co.uk | 05
news
bytes Catch up on all the latest news from the IT world from
new product launches, latest software and licensing updates to business acquisitions.
The Sunday Times names Bytes Best Company to
work for:
IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON THE MICROSOFT VOLUME LICENSING CENTER Microsoft HAS upgraded the Volume Licensing Center (MVLC) to the Microsoft Business Center to improve your online volume licensing experience. In the Microsoft Business Center, you will find all the data and functionality you have in the MVLC for your Microsoft Product and Services Agreement purchases, with a new dashboard view that surfaces relevant information when you sign in. When you sign in as you do today, you will be taken to your dashboard in the Microsoft Business Center. There you will see the licenses, subscriptions and benefits you’ve purchased through your MPSA. You will find all the familiar tasks you’re used to in the MVLC through a menu and links on the dashboard. The
We are delighted to share that Bytes have received the award for The Best Companies to Work For 2016. This sought after award measures and acknowledges excellence in workplace engagement - where only organisations with the highest level of overall employee engagement qualified. “At Bytes, we see a strong correlation between happy staff and happy customers - for us they go hand in hand.” Neil Murphy, Group Managing Director adds, “Continued strong growth has enabled us to really invest in our people and working environment. New purpose built offices with plenty of parking, a gym and even an outside tiki bar for Friday evenings all contribute to happy, healthy employees - not to mention the various incentive trips where everyone, not just sales, are included. Our staff work hard to make sure are customers are happy, so it’s the company’s job to make sure our staff are happy!”.
06 |
Microsoft Business Center dashboard will grow over time and become more developed, allowing you to access more resources and tools to manage your relationship with Microsoft moving forward.
WEBSENSE REBRANDS AS FORCEPOINT Texas-based cybersecurity firm Raytheon Websense has acquired firewall business Stonesoft from Intel Security with the companies to now be known as Forcepoint. Forcepoint’s acquisition of Stonesoft brings with it the company’s next generation firewall (NGFW) and Sidewinder proxy firewall technologies, with the newly-named business saying the new purchase will expand the cloud and hybrid
capabilities of Forcepoint’s Triton security platform. As part of the company’s debut, Frocepoint has also released three new core products. Maury Garavello, APAC Vice President of Raytheon Websense and now Forcepoint, said “We don’t have any fear in our future. We are super stable and we have years and years ahead of us for growth”
VMware Re-Releases Enterprise Email App Boxer Last year, VMware acquired the mobile email app, Boxer and they have just re-released it for the enterprise by combining the popular and easy functions with the enterprise mobile security of VMware. Boxer integrates all corporate communication from emails and contacts to calendars, in one place to make it easy to share your availability with your team and organise emails. Boxer is currently only available for iOS users.
Microsoft Announces UK-Based Datacentre Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday announced plans to offer commercial cloud services from the UK. Microsoft Azure and Office 365 will be generally available from local UK-based Datacentres in late 2016 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online following shortly thereafter. Built on foundational trusted cloud principles of security, privacy and control, compliance and transparency, these services will offer customers data residency in the UK, bringing world-class reliability and performance to government organisations, regulated industries and other businesses. Microsoft also announced completion of the latest phase of expansion for its
Adobe Document Cloud and Box Team Up to Transform Digital Document Processes
Datacentre facilities in Ireland and the Netherlands, both of which serve as
Adobe and Box today announced
cloud computing hubs for European customers. These new cloud offerings
they are teaming up to make
and expanded facilities will provide customers with more choice and increased
working with digital documents
opportunities to innovate more quickly, enabling growth for local economies.
in the enterprise an effortless experience. The companies are
Appsense UK Partner of the Year Bytes is delighted to have been awarded Appsense UK Partner of the Year 2015. The awards, presented during AppSense’s annual Elevate Partner Conference in Windsor, UK, recognised partners for their exceptional achievements in the areas of customer engagement, revenue growth and implementation innovation. “We are pleased to recognise Bytes as our 2015 Partner of the Year, UK Region,” said Jim Airdo, Vice President of Channel, AppSense. “Bytes continues to demonstrate an exceptional commitment to our mutual customers, driving new opportunities for AppSense solutions and providing sales, technical and support excellence. We look forward to our continued partnership in 2016 the years ahead.”
MICROSOFT IS MAKING BIG DATA REALLY SMALL USING DNA:
announcing a set of powerful new integrations that seamlessly connect workflows between Adobe Document Cloud, Adobe Sign and Box’s secure enterprise content collaboration platform. Digital transformation has quickly become a strategic imperative in almost every industry, requiring organisations to transform their business processes and reimagine how they connect with customers, partners and employees. More and more, this means managing massive amounts of content and digital files that are home to mission-critical data and
Microsoft has partnered with a San-Francisco based company to encode
intellectual property. With more
information on synthetic DNA to rest its potential as a new medium for data
than two billion PDFs alone in
storage. Twist Bioscience will provide Microsoft with 10 million DNA strands for
Box today, these new integrations
the purpose of encoding digital date. In other words, Microsoft is trying to figure
from Adobe and Box will help
out how the same molecules that make up humans’ genetic code can be used
enterprises across the globe
to encode digital information. While a commercial product is still years away, early
organise, manage and collaborate
tests have shown that this approach to data storage is a possibility. Finding new
on their most valuable content.
ways to store information is increasingly important as people generate more and more data in their daily lives. With Microsoft operating one of the biggest public cloud platforms, finding more efficient ways to store data is essential in reducing its costs. Furthermore, this DNA-based storage approach has the potential to last longer than existing media.
www.bytes.co.uk | 07
news
BREAKING NEWS...
ElastaBytes
Q&A the new services company dedicated to Microsoft Azure We catch up with Neil Murphy, Group MD Bytes Technology Group to find out more about the new joint venture with ElastaCloud.
Q. Neil, what is the reason you’ve decided to invest in this Services business?
A. Customers are asking us to assist them in their cloud journey. They want Bytes – their trusted licensing advisor - to become a trusted technical advisor and help them with their cloud adoption.
Although we could leverage our well established partner eco-system to deliver technical services, specifically around Azure, we felt there was a gap in the market that needed Bytes to step up and take ownership and accountability for planning, migrating and supporting customer’s Azure workloads. Q.. Why did you choose to form a new business instead of acquiring an existing Q System Integrator?
A. We wanted to ensure that we built a business to address precisely what our customers are asking for. Customers want help in deciding what is suitable to migrate to the cloud, they need help in planning the migration, help in supporting the workloads that are moved to the cloud and equally important, a partner that can offer them clear visibility of what is consumed and how much it costs.
We chose what we believe to be the best Azure specialist to partner with – Elastacloud - they provide the technical expertise and together we’ve developed a unique Azure billing and monitoring dashboard to provide a superior customer experience, together with a vast array of deployment services and support. Q. So who is ElastaBytes? A. EB is formed of Bytes - the number one Azure Licensing partner in the UK with 40% market share - and Elastacloud - who is one of the most well respected Azure partners in the UK. Together, through ElastaBytes, we offer consultative, operational and services excellence to our customers. We believe that with the whole Azure Platform covered from Design to Deployment to Management, we will be able to offer the best user experience to our customers. Q. What does success for ElastaBytes look like initially? A. Quality for us is paramount. We strive to provide a service that delivers what the customer wants, runs securely and provides license & usage clarity. Our success depends on it. So we need to make sure we don’t bite off more than we can chew, that we are selective in the work we take and that we are transparent with our customers.
For more information on ElastaBytes, see page 84
08 |
microsoft
Bytes
can support your
NEXT STEPS
Microsoft Cloud into the
Here’s how we can help with Licensing, Technical Support and Management Services Azure Licensing Workshop A simple session to explore what Azure can do for your business with the aim of reducing storage costs by 40%. We can help you to decide which Azure contract is right for your business in terms of Usage, Monetary Commit and Contract Flexibility. There are plenty of licensing factors to consider when moving to Microsoft Azure: • Windows Hybrid Use Benefit • Windows Server and System Center 2016 • Windows 2003 EoL • SQL 2005 EoL • License Mobility Bytes can provide financial modelling to help you to decide where to deploy your new workloads. Onpremise vs Azure. We can even make recommendations on how Azure can support your DR strategy.
Azure Technical Workshop
Would you like to explore the potential evolution of your Datacentre infrastructure? Our Microsoft Azure Cloud Value Workshop will give you: • An increased understanding of Azure capabilities and the relevance to your business covering: - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Identity - Networking - Storage - Backup and Disaster Recovery • Key Information on Security and Compliance • A demonstration of the key use cases of the Azure Cloud Platform based on your business needs with a view to designing a Proof of Concept • A whiteboard session showing possible scenario’s and architectural overviews.
Cloud Platform Management Service We can ensure that your cloud platforms are managed effectively and efficiently for optimum performance. Our Management Service covers Microsoft Azure, AWS and many other cloud platforms. Managing your Cloud Platforms: • Designing and enforcing policies and procedures • Monitor usage across teams, departments and business units • Creating standard and tailored Reporting for multiple workloads • Using Alerts across the business • Cross Charging and Billing • Optimising Azure usage As your use of Cloud platforms grow, now is the time to take control.
know more...
If you would like to know more about any of these Bytes offerings, simply email tellmemore@bytes.co.uk or speak to your account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 09
microsoft
what’s on your team’s TO DO LIST Bytes Customer Survey* – Microsoft Azure Q. What does your organisation currently use the Microsoft Azure platform for? Backup and recovery Test and development Storage Data analytics Virtual machines Building web apps Building mobile apps
Answer Choices
Used by %
Backup and recovery
22%
Test and development
43%
Storage
22%
Data anlytics
8%
Virtual machines
33%
Building web apps
25%
Building mobile apps
15%
Q. Microsoft Azure - Tell us what your using it for
High performance... Business applications Web production and hosting Identity and access... Disaster recovery... 10%
20%
30%
40%
Subjects
Used by %
High performance computing
11%
Business applications
33%
Web production and hosting
36%
Indentity and access management
29%
Disaster recovery
11%
50%
Q. Are you using Microsoft Azure more or less than you originally planned?
Q. Do you see your usage of Microsoft Azure changing in the future?
More
Increasing
Less
Reducing
The same
Staying the same
0%
10 |
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90% 100%
Bytes have 40% market share for Azure, so we asked our customers what they are using it for….
Q. Would you recommend using Microsoft Azure to other organisations?
Yes
No
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Answer Choices
Used by %
Yes
93%
No
8%
BYTES Named Microsoft Cloud Licensing Partner of the Year, EMEA
Q. How would you describe your experience of using Microsoft Azure? “The basics are very simple and it’s easy to start using it. Refining it, adding layers of stability and other business-critical additions are complicated, documentation and examples are scant or non-existent and the only support available is via Premier.” Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc
“A change of culture and a steep early learning curve but, once done, easy to set up and get to grips with and swift in response. My only concern is around control around technical employees spinning up servers “because they can” because it’s so easy and they may not realise the financial consequences.” City of Wolverhampton Council
“It has by and large been very positive. Any negatives are very small and probably not worth mentioning. Microsoft are updating and improving the service all the time.” Metacompliance Limited
93%
Recommend using Microsoft
AZURE “Good but managing consumption across multiple depts and accounts is difficult.” Marks and Spencers plc
“Good so far” Merlin Entertainments plc
*Bytes Survey of 250+ Azure customers in Jan 2016
www.bytes.co.uk | 11
microsoft
Bytes
Enterprise Modernisation
BEM
works with businesses to undertake an assessment of their current IT estate and assets, helping to determine future business and technology options and execute a modernisation roadmap. What you can expect to achieve • Remove costs or risks from your current operation • Improve efficiency and agility of IT to respond to business needs • Create innovative business services aligned to user needs • Support increasingly diverse and flexible working models • Gain greater transparency and control over IT spend • Ensure ROI is being made in IT across the board - from people, infrastructure, software and services • Move current workloads to modern environments such as the cloud Modernisation drivers
} Windows 2003 EOL (July 2015)
} Disaster recovery strategy
} SQL 2005 EOL (April 2016)
} Shift from Capex to OpEx
} Hardware warranty periods
} Development agility
} Datacentre capacity constraints
12 |
BEM engagement A BEM engagement will consider all aspects of the IT landscape covering existing IT platforms, software and services along with security and storage. A planned journey will be established that determines how IT should change, over time, to either meet new business objectives, address risks, or remove IT constraints. The BEM engagement will also enable organisations to start their journey to the Cloud and manage this environment whilst optimising cost alongside normal operations - a Key focus for organisations today.
Our 5 stage structured methodology
DISCOVER
ASSESS:
ENVISION
MODERNISE
MANAGE
The current IT environment covering technical infrastructure, software products, services deployed/ used and software and hardware assets owned. Information will also be gathered on the organisational structure, business processes and business objectives.
The current state of the organisation and IT environment will be assessed to determine any gaps or vulnerabilities, areas for improvement or new opportunities. These will be considered against best practice, business objectives as well as technology roadmaps and vendor data e.g. end-of-life analysis.
Bytes will work with you to “envision� what the future could look like and what this would mean from a transition and cost perspective for the organisational, technology and software or hardware agreement changes.
Depending on the options envisioned, Bytes will work to deliver the organisational, process, technology and contract changes required. This may entail a period of piloting or proof of-concept prior to embarking on a full modernisation programme.
Post modernisation, Bytes can undertake periodic reviews of the business, IT estate or software environment as well as help you manage the estate. This will ensure the business continues to achieve desired goals and that investments are being used to best effect.
more info...
To find out more about Bytes Enterprise Modernisation contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 or email tellmemore@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 13
microsoft
ARE YOU
10
thinking of Migrating to
Windows
If so, Bytes can help you:
• Windows 10 is familiar and better than ever. With welcome similarities to Windows 7, including the Start menu, your people will feel like experts right away
• Understand what you need to do • Design your target estate including Operating System, Licensing and Core Applications • Conduct a Pilot Migration using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) • Complete the Full Migration of your entire/ partial estate, providing the right tools & skill sets
• New features like Continuum and Microsoft Edge provide new, innovative productivity experiences, only available on Windows 10 • Introduction of entirely new ways to protect your systems, with Windows Hello and Microsoft Passport, it’s easier to adopt biometrics and multi-factor authentication. Providing a user-friendly way to move away from passwords once and for all • Delivering management flexibility, Current Branch for Business deployment schedule and Windows Update for Business service help reduce management costs, provide controls over update deployment and offer quicker access to security updates from Microsoft on an ongoing basis
Our 5 step approach to supporting your Windows 10 migration
14 |
DISCOVER:
ASSESS:
TARGET:
MIGRATE:
MONITOR:
Understand the current OS profile, applications deployed and licenses available.
Assess eligibility to upgrade current OS to Windows 10, the compatibility of applications across the estate to run on Windows 10 or the remediation activity required, and the compatibility of the IT asset to support Windows 10.
Design of the target estate and platform (“SCCM”) to support the migration to Windows 10.
Implementation of production ready SCCM primary site and deployment of Windows 10 to a pilot set (up to 10) of devices incorporating Microsoft Office.
Bytes will leave you with a set of reports within SCCM so that on a scheduled or ad hoc basis you can monitor the progress of your migration project.
Ensuring Migration Success STAGE 1 10 days
OEM Licenses
ASSESS
Upgrade Eligibility
User profile
Application Strategy
OS
Win 10 Compatibility
OS Profile
DEVICES
Application Profile
Device Profile
TOOL
APPLICATIONS LICENSES
DISCOVER Volume Licenses
SCCM or MAP
STAGE 2 10 days
REVIEW
Win 10 Compatibility Device Strategy
TARGET Target Licensing Options
REVIEW
MIGRATE (Pilot)
MONITOR
License Procurement
Target Applications
Office Migration
Migration Plan
Win 10 Migration
Migration Plan
Upgrade/Replace
SCCM HLD
SCCM Pilot
Inventory Analysis
Simple Pricing, Clear Deliverables The cost for Stage 1 + Stage 2 is ÂŁ10,000 with the following deliverables: * Note: License fee will be required for more than 10 applications
1. Windows 10 application compatibility assessment* for all desktop applications. 2. Licensing strategy to support your Windows 10 environment. 3. Application strategy and remediation plan for your desktop applications. 4. Design and implementation of SCCM to support full OS and application deployment. 5. Creation of device independent OS image to support two target device makes/models. 6. Creation of Office 2013 and/or Office 365 application package.
more info... To find out more about how Bytes Migrate can help your transition to Window 10 contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 or email tellmemore@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 15
microsoft
SITE AZURErecovery Microsoft Azure Site Recovery
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery
Communication & Replication
Replication channel
ASR Microsoft Azure Site Recovery was first introduced in January 2014 and helps organisations protect important services, by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center 2012 private clouds at a secondary location. Approach 1 Azure Site Recovery provides three key functions: Simple, Automated Protection Your environment can be protected by automating the replication of the virtual machines based on policies that you set and control. Azure Site Recovery coordinates and manages the ongoing
16 |
Primary Site
replication of data by integrating with current technologies such as Hyper-V Replica, System Center, and SQL Server AlwaysOn. Continuous Health Monitoring Azure Site Recovery monitors the state of System Center Virtual Machine Manager clouds continuously and remotely from Azure. When replicating between two sites, only the Virtual Machine Manager servers communicate directly with Azure - your virtual machines’ data and replication remains on your networks. All communication with Azure is encrypted. Orchestrated Recovery The service helps automate the orderly recovery of services in the event of a site outage at the primary Datacentre. Virtual machines can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly, even for complex multi-tier workloads. Recovery plans are simple to create through the Azure management portal, where they are stored.
Recovery Site
Approach 2 Azure Site Recovery also provides the capability to replicate virtual machines to Azure, which means you can avoid the complexity and costs of establishing and maintaining a secondary site of your own. Today you can do this with Hyper-V virtual machines. InMage Scout software capabilities will be integrated and expanded over time to provide this capability for physical servers and VMware virtual machines in 2015. The basic capabilities remain almost identical whether you choose to replicate to your own secondary site or to Azure. (You cannot run custom PowerShell scripts in Azure, as you can at your own secondary site, but we do provide integration with Azure Automation.) Notice that System Center and VMM are no longer required for smaller sites. However, customers with a large number of hosts will still want System Center for all of it’s management capabilities.
OPERATIONS management suite
Extend Your System Center Investment with the Operations Management Suite Leveraging the System Center IT Management Platform Today System Center continues to be the centerpiece of Microsoft’s IT management offering, providing world-class management for traditional IT environments. Helping customers gain a unified Datacentre management experience with out-of-the-box monitoring, provisioning, configuration, automation, protection and self-service capabilities.
Extending System Center with OMS System Center
Value today
Added value with OMS
Operations Manager
Monitoring and alerting on-premises
Analytics, dependency discovery, reporting
Configuration Manager
Secure, scalable deployment and compliance
Support shift to desired state configuration management and monitoring
Orchestrator
Datacentre workflow management
Workflow for cloud & hybrid-cloud workloads
Data Protection Manager
Enterprise backup
Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery
Virtual Machine Manager
Virtualised Datacentre management
Orchestrated replication & recovery in the cloud
STORSIMPLE cloud-integrated storage Connects Windows and VMWare Servers to Azure Storage in Minutes with No Application Modification. Benefits • Consolidates primary, archive, backup, DR thru seamless integration with Azure • Cloud Snapshots = revolutionary speed, simplicity and reliability for backup and recovery • Reduces enterprise storage TCO by 60-80%
know more...
about Azure Site Recovery, Operations Management Suite or StorSimple? contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 or email tellmemore@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 17
BYTES have a 40% UK market share for Azure
microsoft
explain
LICENSING
Application License Control
John Gorton Microsoft Licensing Lead, Bytes
This model is simple to adhere to when the applications are only available through local install on a PC or Notebook, but requires more consideration when applications are installed on a network server and accessed in a variety of ways or delivered to a range of devices. The licensing terms (Microsoft Product Terms) state that for each application you must assign a licence to a single device, this device may then use the software remotely from a network server – i.e. the software is actually running on the network server but is being used/displayed on the licensed device. Without control the user has the ability to log on to their RDS session from any device within the organisation and therefore licences must be assigned to them. The customer has the rights to reassign a licence but only once every 90 days.
18 |
Many Microsoft desktop applications, including Microsoft Office, Project and Visio, are licensed on a per-device basis. This means a desktop application licence is required for each device that is able to access or use the application. A device may be a PC, Notebook, Thin Client, iPad, Surface, Tablet or any digital electronic device that is able to access the application. Publishing or making available applications to a limited user group is not a valid approach to licence restriction, since users within the group can potentially access the application from any device that can connect to the server hosting the application. This means desktop application licences may need to be purchased for devices where the user of that device does not actually use the application. As an example, a user in the ‘Project user group’ is able to log onto their Citrix/RDS session from any device within the company. They log on using their credentials from a colleagues’ PC and are given access to Project over Citrix which they can now use on their colleagues’ PC. As this device has access to Project it will need to be assigned a Project Licence. Microsoft technologies such as group policies and software restriction policies cannot be used as a means of enforcing licensing control, as these methods apply to users, or groups of users. For Microsoft applications which are licensed on a per device basis, application access must be controlled at the device
level. Microsoft acknowledge technologies such as AppSense Application Manager and RES Workspace Manager as solutions that organisations can use as part of software asset management to provide device-based control. If a customer has an unmanaged estate and the potential for unrestricted access to Citrix or RDS, licensing by worst case would show a company’s exposure to noncompliance.
General Rules • The general rule is ‘one licence for each device able to access the Microsoft desktop application’, which is the per-device licensing policy • Microsoft desktop applications licensed per device cannot be licensed on a concurrent basis under any circumstances. • A Windows Server CAL and a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) CAL are required for each user or device using Windows Remote Desktop Services • Retail and OEM licensed copies of Office released in 2007 or later do not permit network use
ed Exceptions • Software Assurance on Office, Project and Visio provides ‘Roaming Rights’ - rights to remotely access desktop applications through RDS or VDI from third party devices such as a home PC when away from the corporate premises • Office 365 applications such as Office 365 ProPlus, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365 are all licensed on a per user basis. A technology called Shared Computer Activation lets you to deploy Office 365 applications to a computer in your organisation that is accessed by multiple users. The most common shared computer activation scenario is to deploy Office 365 ProPlus to shared computers by using Remote Desktop Services (RDS). By using RDS, multiple users can connect to the same remote computer at the same time. The users can each run Office 365 ProPlus programs, such as Word or Excel, at the same time on the remote computer
Advice • Understand the rules surrounding remote access of Microsoft’s desktop applications • For full details refer to the current Microsoft Product Use Rights and Product List documents available from www. microsoftvolumelicensing.com
For an organisation going through an audit or review, Microsoft reviews each customer on a case by case basis and often view in a fair and reasonable way as to how they are controlling their application being delivered through VDI or a Remote Desktop Session.
• If applications are to be published to a subset of users, then technologies such as AppSense Application Manager or RES Workspace Manager should be used to provide device-based control • Consider licensing the application on a per user basis through Office 365 • If in any doubt, then all devices with potential access should be licensed for the desktop application For an organisation going through an audit or review, Microsoft reviews each customer on a case by case basis and often view in a fair and reasonable way as to how they are controlling their application being delivered through VDI or a Remote Desktop Session. In Bytes professional opinion, if a customer can demonstrate their processes and documentation of the process around which the application lockdown is done and due diligence has been taken, these will be viewed favourably by Microsoft.
It is up to the customer to manage their estate and we can never guarantee being compliant, however if it is demonstrated that all/best measures available have been taken in the process - then this will be viewed favourably by Microsoft.
for all your...
licensing needs, speak to your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 19
microsoft
explain
LICENSING
Windows Server 2016 & System Center 2016 Moving from Processor to Core Licensing The key things you need to know • EA and SCE customers may continue to purchase Processor licenses through the term of their agreement
How to license the physical cores for Windows Server 2016 Standard and Datacentre Editions
• Core licenses will be sold in packs of two
• License all the physical cores in the server
• All physical cores in the server must be licensed
• Minimum of 8 core licenses required for each proc
• For each physical processor in the server, a minimum of 8 Core licenses are required
• Minimum of 16 core licenses required for each server
• For servers with one processor, a minimum of 16 Core licenses are required • Software Assurance customers will exchange Processor licenses for Core licenses at the point of renewal • Processor licenses will be exchanged for 16 Core licenses or the actual number of physical cores in use
Cores and CAL Licensing To license a physical server, all physical cores must be licensed in the server. A minimum of 8 core licenses is required for each physical processor in the server and a minimum of 16 cores is required to be licensed for servers with one processor. The price of 16-core licenses of Windows Server 2016 Datacentre and Standard Edition will be same price as the 2 proc license of the corresponding editions of the Windows Server 2012 R2 version. Standard Edition provides rights for up to 2 OSEs or Hyper-V containers when all physical cores in the server are licensed. Multiple licenses can be assigned to the same cores for additional OSEs or Hyper-V containers. Each user and/or device accessing a licensed Windows Server Standard or Datacentre edition requires a Windows Server CAL. Each Window Server CAL allows access to multiple licenses Windows Servers.
• Core licenses will be sold in packs of two*
SA customers moving to Core Model Software Assurance (SA) customers can upgrade to Windows Server 2016 at no additional cost. At the end of the SA term, processor licenses will be exchanged for core licenses and customers can renew their SA on core licenses. Windows Server Datacentre and Standard Edition 2proc licenses with SA will be exchanged for a minimum of 8 two-core pack licenses (16 core licenses) or the actual number of physical cores in use. At the end of the agreement term, customers should do a self-inventory to document the number of physical cores in each processor in use that are licensed with Windows Server processor licenses with SA. This will enable customers to receive the appropriate number of core licenses to continue deployments. Customers can do self-inventory using the Microsoft Assessment Planning Toolkit, the Microsoft Software Inventory Logging Aggregator (new tool) or other inventory tools and processes to achieve a time/date stamped inventory of hardware on which Windows Server is installed.
Assistance from Bytes
A Windows Server CAL gives a user or device the right to access any edition of Windows Server of the same or earlier version.
• Dedicated Software License Review engagement from the Bytes Software Asset Management (SAM) team
Some additional or advanced functionality such as Remote Desktop Services or Active Directory Rights Management Services will continue to require the purchase of an additive CAL.
• Delivered Free of Charge through Microsoft funding.
20 |
• Focused on Windows Server and SQL Server
Entitlement Review
Usage & Consumption Analysis
Current License Position
Impact Analysis and Strategy
ed License Mobility Rules
The following small change in language could have a major implication on your Microsoft licensing. Following a change to the wording within the Product Terms, Microsoft has confirmed that in order to take advantage of the ‘Licence Mobility Across Server Farms’ Software Assurance benefit Software Assurance is required on both the server licence and all Client Access Licenses (CALs). Not only does this impact organisations looking to deploy the latest technologies, but will also effect those taking advantage of downgrade rights. For example, organisations who are running Exchange Server 2013 who are looking to add an additional server would need to purchase Software Assurance for all of their Client Access Licenses (CALs) as well as the new server licence in order to use License Mobility. Microsoft has confirmed that this change does not apply to server products that were released before October 2015, when the rule was clarified to say Software Assurance was required for both servers and CALs. This means it does apply to Exchange 2016 and Skype 2015 but does not apply to the current versions of SharePoint Server, Project Server or SQL Server.”
How It Was Within the April 2014 Volume Licensing brief - Licensing Microsoft server products for use in virtual environments, Microsoft, referring to License Mobility within Server Farms stated that, “These rights do not apply to software licenses for the Windows Server operating system, CALs, User Subscription Licenses (USLs), Device Subscription Licenses (DSLs), Add-on Subscription Licenses (Add-on SLs), or MLs.”. It was therefore understood that for Licence Mobility within Server Farms, Software Assurance was only required for the server licenses and not any associated CALs.
coverage for both Server License and access Licenses, if any (e.g., CALs).” This means that organisations must now maintain Software Assurance on both the Server and the CALs in order to take advantage of License Mobility rights. In addition to this change the Licence Mobility within Server Farms benefit has undergone a name change, it’s now called Licence Mobility Across Server Farms.
What is License Mobility License Mobility means that the licenses can, in effect, follow the virtual machines across physical servers, therefore simplifying your licensing. Licence Mobility within Server Farms and Licence Mobility Through Software Assurance are a Software Assurance benefit. More Information on the License Mobility Software Assurance Benefit can be found on our website here: www.bytes.co.uk/info/licensingupdates/license-mobility-through-software-assurance/
How Bytes Can Help... Contact your Bytes Account Manager today to understand the implications this may have within your organisation when upgrading to future versions, implementing new servers and looking at Software Assurance renewals. If you are new to Bytes, simply call 01372 418500. Bytes can conduct a Licensing Value Assessment – let us request your Microsoft Licensing Statement (MLS) and we’ll do the rest!
How This Changed Microsoft has now combined the Product Use Rights and Product List into one document called the Product Terms. Included within the new Product Terms document is a subtle change to the Software Assurance benefits section, which included new language to clarify the rules “..requires
for all your...
licensing needs, speak to your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 21
microsoft
explain
LICENSING
Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Changes Microsoft have announced that they are making a strategic change to the Enterprise Agreement (EA) program by raising the minimum commitment from 250 to 500 users or devices. Beginning on 1st July 2016, the minimum commitment for commercial customers signing new Enterprise Enrolments and Enterprise Subscription Enrolments will rise from 250 to 500 users and/or devices. Existing customers approaching renewal with fewer than 500 users and/or devices will be able to extend their current Enrolments for 36 months, in keeping with current program rules.
The Changes • The Enterprise Agreement (EA) program is being raised from 250 to 500 users or devices • This change will go into effect on 1st July 2016 • It applies only to new commercial customers • Existing EA customers may renew their agreement for one 36-month term • This change affects both EA Perpetual and EA Subscription agreements
How does this change effect you? If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) with between 250 and 500 users or devices, that expires before 1st July 2016, you now have two options: Option 1: Microsoft will allow you to either renew your EA normally for three more years plus an additional three-year extension for a total of six years (optional), or you have the option to migrate to a Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) Option 2: As long as you have not already used your right to a one-time 36 month EA extension, you will have the option to extend your current EA for 36 months when it expires, or you have the option to migrate to a Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA).
Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) The MPSA offers a better solution tailored to the needs of smaller customers. The MPSA, with recent enhancements including Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS) and multi-year subscriptions, provides a full hybrid solution: All the Cloud Services and Software You Need: • Buy Microsoft on-premises software and cloud services including Windows, SQL, Office 365, Azure and CRM Online • Upgrade cloud investments to a full per-user licensing model with suite discounts across Office 365 E3, Enterprise Mobility Suite and Windows SA Per User with Enterprise Cloud Suite (ECS) • Buy Azure application, data, and infrastructure services with no upfront monetary commitment in a true pay-asyou-go model • MPSA offers greater flexibility via one, two and three year durations (it will soon offer short term durations of between 1 to 11 months) Fast, flexible purchasing: • Move quickly from agreement to use within hours • Easily add any number of users and cloud services at any time • Choose from multi-year subscription durations – or pay-as-you-go for Azure • Choose from flexible payment options, including upfront and annual More value in a single agreement: • Optimised pricing by consolidating purchases in one simplified agreement • Benefit from price protection and budget predictability • Easily manage and track everything, including SA benefits – in one place
Next Steps... Please speak to your Bytes account manager or simply call 01372 418 500 to talk to a dedicated Microsoft licensing adviser who will provide guidance on the best Microsoft agreement for your business.
22 |
ed Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit for Windows Server Under the Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB), an organisation with Windows Server Licenses covered with Software Assurance may upload to and use its own Windows Server image on Microsoft Azure and only need to pay for the Virtual Machine compute. One Windows Server Standard license allows you to install Windows Server on up to 2 VM in Azure* only. Datacentre Edition allows you to install Windows server on up to two VMs in Azure* In addition to the existing on-premises installations.
*2 VMs with up to 8 cores each, or 1 VM with up to 16 core each. The below is a cost comparison between paying for a Virtual Machine in Azure with Windows versus without (with Linux in this case):
A, D, or G Series Virtual Machine Options
BYTES
Hourly Price
A or D Series General Purpose Instances Instance Tier Select OS Instances Usage Total Instance Price A4 Extra Large (8 cores, 14GB RAM)
Standard
Windows
1
744
£0.32
£238.89
A4 Extra Large (8 cores, 14GB RAM)
Standard
Linux
1
744
£0.21
£159.26
D4 (cores, 28GB RAM)
Standard
Windows
1
744
£0.61
£454.98
D4 (cores, 28GB RAM)
Standard
Linux
1
744
£0.35
£257.47
Annual cost of a D2 Windows Server virtual machine in Azure
41% savings**
One two processor license for Windows Server Standard on an Enterprise Subscription Agreement (level A) is £252.72 per year and would cover the Windows Server OS for 2 D4 Azure VM’s, a saving of £4,020 per year.
Windows Server Software Assurance Annual cost of a D2 base compute virtual machine in Azure
for all your...
licensing needs, speak to your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 23
hold over 75 MCP exam passes for Microsoft
microsoft
explain
LICENSING
Flexible short-term durations with MPSA There’s a new, flexible way for customers to meet their temporary and seasonal needs: short-term online services subscriptions through the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA). This new capability provides organisations with a way to license common short-term business scenarios not previously addressed by existing licensing options. Short-term subscriptions let customers subscribe to select online services for one to 11 months in situations where a full year subscription isn’t necessary to meet the organisation’s temporary need.
This option will be particularly valuable for customers who: • Hire additional retail workers during holidays • Manage fluctuating volumes from one season to the next • Initiate special projects that require additional capacity for less than one year Short-term online services subscriptions, paired with multi-year durations with price protection launched on September 1, 2015, provide flexible options for customers to purchase in ways that make sense for their organisations. Meeting the unique needs of the people who use Microsoft technology is the goal and the reason to transform licensing, making it easier for Microsoft customers do business. To learn more, please visit www.microsoft.com/ en-us/Licensing/MPSA.
Short-term subscriptions PURCHASE
1
month
to
11
months
Subscribe at any time
Meet project-based or seasonal needs for an organisation
Available services
✓Office 365 E1 ✓SharePoint Online Plan 1 & Plan 2 ✓Exchange Online Kios, Plan 1 & Plan 2 ✓Office 365 K1 ✓Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) ✓CRM Online incresed capacity Add-ons Available through MPSA, March 1, 2016
24 |
vmware
ed VMware Licensing Changes VMware have made strategic changes to their product portfolio. Here’s an overview of the changes that are covered in detail within our webinar… Key Product Changes* • 30th June 2016: End of Availability for vSphere Enterprise, vCenter Server Standard, vSOM Enterprise and vSOM Standard • 1st March 2016: End of Availability for vRealize Suite 6.0 and vCloud Suite 6.0 • 1st March 2016: 25 x OSi of Log Insight becomes available with vCenter Standard * products will be supported by VMWare until the End of General Support date.
Your Upgrade Options with Promotion Offers • vSphere Enterprise to vSphere Enterprise+ (50% off upgrade until June 2016) • vSom Enterprise to vSom Enterprise+ (50% off upgrade until June 2016) • vSom Standard customers fulfilled to vSphere Standard + vROP’s Standard (a la carte)
How standalone products are affected? • vRealize Operations & vRealize Log Insight – No change in price/editions • vRealize Operations Insight – Discontinued • vRealize Automation & vRealize Code Stream – Price decrease • vRealize Business – New line up • vRealize Suite Add-on – New App Monitoring Add-on for vRealize Suites only
Price Changes to reflect the addition or removal of functionality below: • vCloud Suite Standard and Advanced now includes -vROps Advanced, Log Insight, PLU license metric, Cloud Casting • vCloud Suite Enterprise - No SRM included • vCenter Server Standard - Now contains 25 x OSi licenses of Log Insight • vRealize Suite Advanced - No longer includes vCM • vRealize Suite Enterprise - No longer includes vCM on Advanced IT Management
Next Steps... Speak to your Bytes account manager or simply call 01372 418 500 to talk to a dedicated VMware
Watch our 10 minute webinar to understand the changes in more detail -
www.bytes.co.uk/webinar
licensing advisor who will provide guidance on the best licensing option(s) for you.
www.bytes.co.uk | 25
microsoft
explained
LICENSING
SQL 2016 Licensing for Virtualisation Virtual machines
SQL Server 2016 Editions
Licensing Server + CAL
The Server/CAL model offers the ability to virtualise workloads in Standard Edition. In this scenario, for each virtual environment where you install an instance of one of these editions, you must purchase a Server license. Legacy Enterprise Edition servers will continue to have the use rights they have today, which means that one virtual server can have up to four virtual machines. However, there is a maximum of 20 v-cores per server license.
Enterprise Express SMALL-SCALE DATABASES
✓ Development and management tools
✓ Easy backup and restore to Azure
Standard NON-BUSINESS CRITICAL DATABASES WITHMODERATE PERFORMANCE
✓ Basic security and availability ✓ Basic reporting ✓ Basic analysis ✓ Hybrid scenarios: Stretch Database, backup
✓ Basic two node failover
Private cloud
License with Enterprise Cores Customers who want to deploy very high scale and very dense SQL Server private clouds have an ultimate licensing option to provide increased flexibility
26 |
major platforms in-memory
✓ Enhanced hybrid scenarios including Stretch Database, HA, DR and backup.
Free
Licensed either by Server + Cal or Per Core
Licensed Per Core
Note: Text in blue indicates new features for 2016
SQL BI
Licensing
Pricing and Licensing
Pricing
Pricing & Licensing Summary
Migration
Virtualisation is how customers can carve out a subset of the physical server’s compute power and pay for just the power they need. Again, they do that based on the number of virtual cores they need. There is a minimum of 4 core licenses required for each individual VM. Software Assurance offers License Mobility which enables customers to move virtual licenses around on a machine, or to a hoster. This is about carving out the compute power you need through a VM. It is available for Enterprise and Standard Editions.
✓ Enhanced in-memory performance for all workloads ✓ Most secure database with Always Encrypted ✓ PB scale data warehousing ✓ End-to-end mobile BI with rick visualisations on all ✓ Advanced analytics built-in as scale with R plus
Licensing with Cores When thinking about moving workloads into a virtual infrastructure; whether consolidating and moving an existing workload into virtual machines, or whether deploying new workloads, Microsoft offer new, industry-leading innovations in licensing with simplicity and flexibility. This means customers will be able to license individual VMs for just the power they need. So in this example, there are 8 virtual cores allocated to VM1, and that customer would purchase 8 core licenses. For VM2 there are 12 virtual cores allocated, and so the customer would purchase 12 core licenses.
MISSION CRITICAL IN-MEMORY PERFORMANCE, SECURITY AND HIGH AVAILABILITY
SQL Server 2014
SQL Server 2016
• Standard Per Core and Server + Cal • Enterprise Per Core
• Standard Per Core and Server + Cal • Enterprise Per Core
• None (price Per Core/Server/CAL and pricing models are unchanged
Net change
• Primary license with active SA grants secondary running “warm” instance • License mobility for SA overrides 90 day reassignment rule
• Primary license with active SA grants secondary running “warm” instance • License mobility for SA overrides 90 day reassignment rule
• None
• SQL PDW through PDW software SKU
• SQL PDW software SKU discontinued
• PDW licensed through SQL EE Per Core
• Introduction of failover servers benefit for cloud deployments using license mobility
• Introduction of failover servers benefit for cloud deployments (intro. in Dec. 2015)
• SQL BI Server offered for Server + CAL deployments
• Transition paths in place for customers who purchased BI edition with SA
• SQL BI Server is no longer offered
and cost management. They can do so with Enterprise Edition cores. In this case, the most cost-effective and manageable route is to license all of the physical cores in their SQL private cloud with Enterprise Edition. With Software Assurance, the customer has unlimited virtualisation rights within that infrastructure. If they don’t purchase SA, they receive the right of one VM Per Core license.
Summary of SQL Server 2016 Licensing Changes • Business Intelligence Edition has been retired with the functionality being available within Enterprise
- Existing SQL BI Edition customers will be provided with a licence grant to use SQL Server Enterprise • SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse is now licensed through SQL Enterprise Edition Per Core • Introduction of failover server benefit for cloud deployments using license mobility to allow failover to or 3rd party shared servers • No more core factor table. A minimum of 4 core licenses is required for each physical processor on the server Would you like to modernise your SQL estate? See our SQL Workloads Engagement on page 28.
microsoft
Bytes
SQL & Virtual Infrastructure Modernisation The SQL Workloads Engagement is designed to provide your organisation with an endto-end analysis and mapping of your SQL environment, taking into consideration current deployment, usage and licensing implications. The Problem
Benefits from SQL & Virtualisation Engagement
• It’s difficult to get a clear picture of what’s being used and what is licensed
• Identify all SQL Servers and workloads in your organisation
• IT projects are under pressure to scale rapidly to meet business demand, and be cost effective • Management not aware or in sync with what IT are doing?
28 |
• Understand the infrastructure supporting SQL workloads including virtualised infrastructures • Gain visibility of any resident financial risks • Identify key areas where infrastructure can be optimised to reduce financial risk and meet organisational goals • Understand whether introducing a dedicated developer infrastructure would address some of the risk • Identify gaps in governance process and agree how to address them • Reduce risks associated with non-compliance • Develop a roadmap for future evolution of the IT environment, based upon a clear understanding of the existing infrastructure and evaluation of cloud
...use the new insight to help decide the right path for the future
DISCOVER
ASSESS:
ENVISION
MODERNISE
MANAGE
The current IT environment covering technical infrastructure, software products, services deployed/ used and software and hardware assets owned. Information will also be gathered on the organisational structure, business processes and business objectives.
The current state of the organisation and IT environment will be assessed to determine any gaps or vulnerabilities, areas for improvement or new opportunities. These will be considered against best practice, business objectives as well as technology roadmaps and vendor data e.g. end-of-life analysis.
Including the key stakeholders in an envisioning Workshop we will capture and align business and IT goals and define what the future could look like. Providing a clear roadmap for the transition including costs, organisation, technology and software or hardware agreement changes.
Bytes will work with you to deliver the technology, organisational, process and contract changes required. This may entail a period of piloting or proof-of-concept prior to embarking on a full modernisation programme.
Post modernisation, Bytes can undertake periodic reviews of the business, IT estate or software environment as well as help you manage the estate. This will ensure the business continues to achieve desired goals and that investments are being used to best effect.
more info...
To find out more about Bytes SQL & Virtualisation Modernisation contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 or email tellmemore@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 29
case study
casestudy delivering a
COST
&REFRESH
EFFICIENT future proof
TECHNOLOGY for EVEREST Dominik Firsow High Flying Account Manager, Bytes
30 |
Everest Home Improvements is a market-leading, UK-based manufacturer and installer of door and glazing systems. With a clear desire to transition their IT infrastructure to a new Microsoft platform, Everest selected Bytes to help ensure that the maximum benefit was gained from their impending investment. This meant the right solutions, at the most efficient cost, that would allow for future growth and meet the evolving productivity needs of the business moving forward. Challenge It was no secret internally that Everest’s IT systems were stifling the business. There were frequent outages of key services such as Lotus Notes, locally hosted servers, printing and file storage.
Everest wanted to move to a new standardised Microsoft platform and this required a complete technology refresh. The primary solutions that were creating this desire for change were Office 365 and Azure cloud solutions from Microsoft.
As a new supplier to Everest, Bytes needed to understand how the new technology would be used by both office based and mobile staff and propose the right licensing solution – this meant looking at costs for the immediate technology upgrade whilst allowing for future updates which included Skype for Business and Dynamics CRM. Bytes needed to provide a no-nonsense approach quickly to ensure Everest strict timescales were met. Solution With Office 365 and Azure being a key component of the upgrade, the first step was for the Bytes Cloud Team to work with Everest to determine and verify the technology options. Following a personalised Customer Emersion Day at Microsoft, Bytes conducted a User Profile Assessment to determine the specific license types needed across the range of job roles within Everest. The findings identified profiles that were surplus to requirements together with an overall need for a split profile solution that could be tailored to meet the business needs of the 500 office based and 650 external sales consultants. The next step was to look at the financial model options, where it was decided that the benefits of an OPEX approach out-weighed those of the traditional on premise CAPEX model. With the complete technology solution scoped and the most intelligent way to license and finance established, Bytes were able to negotiate a strong discount with Microsoft for a new Subscription Enterprise Agreement (EAS) with Software Assurance (SA), which incorporated a hybrid Office 365 E1 plan for mobile users and the E4 plan for office based staff - together with the additional solutions within the Enterprise Agreement such as Skype for Business, System Center and Storsimple. The subscription licensing model provided Everest with the flexibility of an annual true-up/true down based on actual consumption and the Software Assurance element meant they had future-proofed their new Microsoft platform, allowing for scalability to support growth and the evolving productivity needs of their business moving forward.
Bytes used their extensive relationships within Microsoft to help us define the right solutions for our business and then worked hard on our behalf to negotiate a good price with added benefits. Adam Haydon IT Director, Everest
In addition to a sizable discount, Everest also received additional Fast track funding for deploying their new Microsoft platform and training vouchers for Office 365 - which are currently being managed by the Bytes Learning Team with the aim of providing a tailored program to ensure high user adoption. Overall Bytes were able to work at a pace to match the quick turnaround required from Everest, ensuring the delivery schedule of 5 weeks was achieved from initial proposals to the final go live. Key Benefits A cultural change in the business, where faith in IT systems has been restored. Everest’s initial goal was to remove the headache of system failures by creating a stable platform and to simplify processes for its staff by ensuring that standard productivity tools were in place. By pro-actively pursuing a full Microsoft platform adoption and then deploying 95% of the solutions within the new Enterprise Agreement, Everest have truly maximised the benefit from their investment - therefore achieving their goal and more. Adam Haydon, IT Director explains, “Office 365 alone has transformed the way we work and as a business we are far more responsive to communication.” Adding, “with Bytes helping us to identify the right solution with Microsoft and then designing the best way to purchase them – via a new Subscription Enterprise Agreement – we now have the flexibility to choose software and cloud services specifically for different user types and deployment scenarios within our business. This allows us to optimise our technology spend to best fit our IT and user needs. Which is where we want to be!”
customer profile Company: Everest Industry: Manufacturing & Retail Country: UK Employees: 1,150 Bytes Solutions Provided: Software Asset Management Services Microsoft System Center 2012 Windows Server 2012 Enrolment for Application Platform - MS Dynamics CRM Enrolment for Application Platform - SharePoint - BizTalk - SQL Enrolment for Core Infrastructure - Core Infrastructure Suite Datacentre Edition - Window Server Datacentre - System Centre Suite Datacentre Key Benefits: • Immediate & long-term cost savings with predictable license cost going forward • Platform standardisation across the desktop & Datacentre • Flexible & scalable deployment whether on premise or via the Cloud • Simplified license management through vendor consolidation • Reduction of upfront year 1 costs of £224,000 • Overall 3 year savings of £132,000
Watch the Everest case study www.bytes.co.uk/bytestv
www.bytes.co.uk | 31
virtualisation
virtual The needs of business today are ever changing and demands on IT are only increasing as the business requires IT to be agile and innovative, all whilst decreasing costs and maintaining security. Traditionally IT has consisted of silos of infrastructure with server, network and storage management often separated and little integration of strategy between departments. Today, it is commonplace to virtualise server workloads with a Hypervisor but customers are now challenging the status quo and looking to virtualise other aspects of the Datacentre to bring their organisations a true Datacentre transformation. Jessica Hendy Virtualisation Sales Specialist, Bytes
32 |
By moving towards a software defined Datacentre, organisations will no longer need to rely on specialised hardware and can reap benefits such as, improved efficiencies and capex reductions from standardisation, management and virtualisation; improved agility from application delivery automation; additional control over application availability and security using policy-based governance and the flexibility to run new and existing applications in multiple platforms and clouds.
Software-defined Networking Vendors such as VMware are now breaking through the limits of traditional physical networking. Virtualising the network layer has many benefits to the organisation. Like a server hypervisor allows the creation of software Virtual Machines, the NSX Network Hypervisor enables the creation of software Virtual Networks. It’s really as simple as that. These virtual networks can be created, saved, deleted, and restored, just like virtual machines but for the network allowing for simplification of complex network rules and ease of deployment. According to IDC research, interviewed organisations can improve application deployment speeds by two thirds. By removing the networking intelligence from the hardware, and instead leaning on software, organisations can also reduce cost by using white-box networking hardware. Outside of the management and automation benefits of network Virtualisation, gains can also be gained from implementing the associated security functionality. Traditionally security policies are often focused on the perimeter, and firewalling within the Datacentre can be operationally infeasible. With micro-segmentation through NSX, security can be applied per workload allowing centrally managed, virtual machine level, policy based security that follows the VM. Integration with vendors such as Trend Micro and
Software-defined Datacentre is a vision that is transforming the way businesses look at IT Checkpoint allow an even deeper level of security, and allows control over previously unchecked eastwest traffic.
Hyper-converged Infrastructure If you’re in the market to refresh your storage or server platforms, you’ll run across the term hyper-converged systems. A hyper-converged infrastructure refers to an infrastructure system that is largely software-defined with tightly-integrated compute, storage, networking and virtualisation resources. This stands in contrast to a traditional converged infrastructure, where each of these resources is typically handled by a discrete component that serves a singular purpose. The advantages of hyper-converged infrastructure lie in the simplified architecture and simplified administration. The flexibility and scalability of this platform makes Hyper-converged infrastructure an ideal platform for VDI environments.
Mobile Working IT are trying to keep up with the demands from users who are used to using their own devices, and having access to their applications whenever and where ever they are. Work doesn’t just happen at work. The challenge for IT is understanding the new management and security problems that this brings. If an employee uses a device native mail application to view and respond to corporate mail, what happens when that device is lost or stolen? There is no way for IT to secure that data that is now tied to that device. With the likes of AirWatch
or Citrix XenMobile, organisations can regain the control of this data, allowing policy controls of the business application such as the user being unable to copy and paste out of a document editing application. Through Mobile Application Management or Mobile Device Management, users can get access to the data and applications needed for business in a consistent, simple and secure manner.
Infrastructure Optimisation and Monitoring To keep all of this running smoothly, it is crucial to have the correct tools to monitor and optimise your environment to be able to demonstrate a return on investment to the business. It’s easy to find yourself with a sprawl of virtual machines, and it can be difficult to understand which of your machines are over-provisioned, or idle. A tool such as vRealize Operations Management by VMware can reclaim this capacity, thus extending the lifespan of your infrastructure and reducing ongoing costs. For future projects, “what if?” scenarios allow capacity planning and therefore better visibility of required resources for projects and the effect the project may have on the performance of your environment. It is also important to be able to relay the cost of these virtual workloads back to the business and there is capability to analyse cost data from different potential target
environments (eg. Azure, on-premise or vCloud Air) and establish which platform is most cost-effective taking into account the size and resource requirements of the workload.
Software-defined Datacentre Software-defined Datacentre is a vision that is transforming the way businesses look at IT, by commoditising hardware and moving intelligence and control to the software layer by abstracting, pooling and automating resources across the Datacentre organisations can move to deliver IT as a Service, allowing more time and resource for innovation rather than just keeping the lights on.
In conclusion there are many different approaches to take to developing your IT strategy to suit the needs of users today. As Bytes, we can help you assess and prioritise these by looking at the ideal IT outcomes for your business, and the steps we can take to move towards these.
more information... Please contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 or the Virtualisation team directly at vTeam@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 33
virtualisation
With Windows 10, IT is facing a milestone. For organisations that seized Windows 7 migration as an opportunity to move to VDI, the upgrade couldn’t be simpler. For those that didn’t, now is the time to take a serious look at app and desktop virtualisation.
CITRIX windows
10
migration With app and desktop virtualisation, you can get in front of OS migration challenges once and for all. It provides a centralised way to accomplish OS migrations simply, quickly and efficiently so that any device can run any Windows app. Employees gain greater flexibility and mobility, ensuring that ongoing management and future upgrades become much easier.
34 |
Challenges With any OS migration, there are three questions you have to address: • How do I embrace the diverse devices my employees will use to run Windows 10, including BYOD? This includes ensuring hardware compatibility and delivering instant access to business apps from Windows 10 devices for users everywhere. IT must maintain full control over the environment to keep user effort from undermining security and manageability.
• How do I move my apps to Windows 10? While Windows 8 apps may be largely compatible with the new platform, IT will still need to test the full range of current Windows apps in the environment to ensure that they’ll run correctly after the migration, and perform remediation where needed. • How do I standardize on a Windows 10 desktop image? At a time when many organisations are still running a mix of Windows operating systems and dealing with the resulting management complexity, the advantages of standardisation are clearer than ever. When you introduce a standard desktop image for your organisation, you’ll want to be able to do so quickly and efficiently to accelerate the resulting benefits. Citrix XenDesktop, including the full power of Citrix XenApp, gives you the answer.
By using Citrix XenDesktop to make the move to desktop virtualisation, you can standardise corporate desktops quickly and efficiently for on-demand delivery to hundreds of employees.
every location in the organisation. Employees face no interruption in supportability – even if you haven’t performed application compatibility testing. For users continuing to run older laptops and PCs, thin clients and other non-Windows 10 compliant devices, Citrix ensures the same high-performance experience as those using newer endpoints. IT maintains control over access and data protection, including new security features focused specifically on protecting sensitive resources from loss or theft.
Move apps to Windows 10:
Access Apps and Desktops on Any Device
Embrace Windows 10 devices: When you publish virtual desktops and apps with XenDesktop, users can simply download Citrix Receiver on their new or upgraded Windows 10 devices – whether companyowned or personal – and get to work. In this way, IT can provide instant access to business apps and Windows 10 desktops on any device, from anywhere, without timeconsuming manual deployment across
While there aren’t many architectural changes from Windows 8 to Windows 10, many users are still on Windows XP or Windows 7. You still need to make sure these apps are compatible with the latest versions of you desktop OS. This is a time-consuming and costly process of installing and testing apps one by one. Citrix AppDNA lets you automate and analyse application compatibility and remediate any issues quickly, reducing the cost and complexity of application upgrades, migrations and updates by as much as 90%.
When the time comes to standardise on Windows 10, the rapid provisioning of XenDesktop can be used to push out Windows 10 virtual desktops to every user instantly. With a single golden image in the Datacentre, management becomes far simpler and more efficient. The same is true for support and security; if a user’s desktop becomes corrupted or infected, a simple reboot will restore a pristine image, eliminating the need for further intervention.
Conclusion By using Citrix XenDesktop to make the move to desktop virtualisation, you can standardise corporate desktops quickly and efficiently for on-demand delivery to hundreds of employees. The solution lets you instantly deliver your organisation’s apps to any device your employees use, including new Windows 10 devices. When you’re ready to move your apps to your new standard Windows 10 image, built-in app compatibility assessment tools make it easier than ever. A flexible architecture, inherent security and high-definition user experience ensure that XenDesktop meets the needs of employees and IT alike. OS migrations now and in the future become quick and routine – so you can focus on driving strategic value for your organisation.
nows the time...
to take a serious look at app and desktop virtualisation with Citrix Xendesktop. For more information please call your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 35
virtualisation
Datacentre
networking challenges Current network and security solutions are rigid, complex and often vendor-specific. This creates a costly barrier to realising the full agility of the software-defined Datacentre. In the current operational model, network provisioning is slow and workload placement and mobility is limited by physical topology and manual provisioning. Limitations of physical networking and security tie an increasingly dynamic virtual world back to inflexible, dedicated hardware, creating artificial barriers to optimising network architecture and capacity utilisation. Manual provisioning and fragmented management interfaces reduce efficiency and limit the ability of enterprises to rapidly deploy, move, scale and protect applications and data to meet business demands.
VMware NSX VMware NSX is the network virtualisation component of the Software-Defined Datacentre (SDDC), transforming Datacentre networking and making a new level of security possible. NSX brings the operational model of a virtual machine to your Datacentre network, allowing you to transform the economics of network and security operations. NSX treats the physical network as a pool of transport capacity with network and security services attached to VM’s with a policy-driven approach. This model breaks through current physical network barriers and allows Datacentre operators to achieve order of magnitude better agility and economics. The only requirement from a physical network is that it provide IP transport. There is no dependence on the underlying hardware or hypervisor. NSX Gateway allows legacy VLANs and physical hosts to be mapped into virtual networks. VMWare NSX, network virtualisation platform delivers the operational model of a virtual machine for the network via reproducing the entire network model in software. This allows for any network topology to be created and provisioned in seconds. It enables a library of logical networking elements and services, such as logical switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, VPN and workload security. Users can create isolated virtual networks through customer combinations of these capabilities. How Does It Work Like server virtualisation for compute, the NSX network virtualisation approach allows Datacentre operators to treat their physical network as a
36 |
pool of transport capacity that can be consumed and repurposed on demand. Like a virtual machine is a software container which presents logical CPU, memory and storage to an application, a virtual network is a software container that presents logical network components to connected workloads—logical switches, routers, rewalls, load balancers, VPNs and more. Virtual networks are programmatically created, provisioned and managed, utilising the underlying physical network. Network services are programmatically distributed to each virtual machine, independent of the underlying network hardware or topology, so workloads can be dynamically added or moved to anywhere in the Datacentre along with the attached network and security services. Reproduce the physical network model in software. NSX reproduces the entire networking environment in software within each virtual network, as well as offering a distributed logical architecture, including, logical switch, router, firewall, load balancer and VPN. These logical network services are provisioned programmatically when virtual machines are deployed and move with virtual machines. Existing applications operate un-modified and see no difference between a virtual network and a physical network connection. Security Unlike traditional hardware-defined solutions, NSX brings security into the Datacentre with automated fine-grained policies that are tied to virtual machines, while its network virtualisation capabilities let
organisations create entire networks in software. This approach securely isolates networks from each other, delivering an inherently better security model for the Datacentre. Automation In large Datacentres, manual processes are time consuming for IT admins and a drain on the IT budget. Network virtualisation through the NSX platform helps address these challenges by automating labour intensive, error-prone tasks associated with network configuration, provisioning, management, and more. Network provisioning, which used to take days or weeks, now takes seconds. Because network services are now delivered to applications by the virtual network, no manual reconfiguration of physical network devices is necessary. NSX Service Composer offers a way to automate the consumption of services and their mapping to virtual machines using logical policy. Customers can build advanced workflows automating security, compliance and network provisioning including load balancing and firewall rules.
Application Continuity Keeping applications up and running is one of the top mandates of IT organisations and NSX can help maintain the availability of applications by dramatically improving disaster recovery time objectives by eliminating the need to re-IP workloads and re-configure security policies at the recovery site. Extensibility NSX offers a platform to insert other vendor services. Integrated software and hardware partner products can range from network gateway services, application delivery services, and network security platforms to security services.
find out more... please visit www.vmware.com/go/nsx or get in touch with the Virtualisation Team at Bytes at vteam@bytes.co.uk
virtualisation
technology to power mission-critical workloads Nutanix delivers an enterprise cloud platform that natively converges compute, virtualisation and storage into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The world’s most advanced enterprise Datacentres rely on Nutanix technology to power their mission-critical workloads at any scale. Two comprehensive product families, Nutanix Acropolis and Nutanix Prism, simplify the entire IT lifecycle and free applications from the economic and architectural restrictions imposed by legacy on-premise infrastructure.
Prism - Comprehensive management solution built with one-click technologies to radically simplify Datacentre storage and virtualisation operations.
Acropolis - Turnkey infrastructure platform that converges compute, storage and virtualisation resources to run any application, at any scale.
Only Nutanix provides true web-scale engineering married with consumergrade management to simplify every aspect of the IT infrastructure lifecycle. • Simple: Bring uncompromising simplicity to every aspect of the infrastructure lifecycle, from buying and deploying to managing and scaling • Scalable: Scale compute and storage quickly and incrementally, going from three servers to thousands with 100% predictable performance • Versatile: Run any workload at any scale on a versatile infrastructure platform, eliminating silos and management complexity • Resilient: Run business-critical and mission-critical applications on selfhealing infrastructure that is built for always-on operation
38 |
How Will Your Enterprise Benefit? • Lower Costs: 40-60% reduction in overall CapEx and OpEx • Limitless Scalability: Scale infrastructure predictably with no limits • Fastest Time-to-Value: 8x faster time to value in buying, deploying, and managing • Smallest Footprint: Up to 90% reduction in power, cooling, and space with a 2U form factor • Time for IT Innovation: Free IT resources to focus on important business initiatives and true innovation
Enterprise Cloud Virtualisation vendors are delivering the technologies and products to turn Datacentre into a flexible and productive corporate asset. But the move to virtualisation has given rise to the need for a more intelligent approach to virtualisation and infrastructure management. Nutanix hyperconverged platforms are the ideal IT infrastructure for your private cloud deployments. Nutanix accelerates your organisation’s journey to the cloud, turning your Datacentre into a flexible and scalable asset. The 100% software-defined,
hyperconverged Nutanix solution merges server and storage resources into a single appliance, bringing the benefits of web-scale technologies to enterprise private and hybrid clouds, at any scale. You gain the ability to support multiple workloads with their unique performance needs on the same platform with Nutanix. Nutanix Prism APIs and PowerShell toolkit easily integrate with your cloud stack of choice. So you can deliver ITaaS using popular cloud and orchestrations offerings including VMware vCloud Suite with vRealize Automation, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012, Windows Azure Pack, and KVM. In summary, Nutanix web-scale solutions deliver the agility and economics of public cloud infrastructures, but with the control and security of an on-premise infrastructure.
Nutanix advantages: • Simple, out-of-the-box deployment: Deploy pre-validated and tested cloud solutions in just a few hours • Pooled resources consolidation: Eliminate under-utilised silos and support an on-demand model, leveraging resources across all nodes using as much as 80% less space and 50% lower CapEx
• Self service: Quickly enable self-service provisioning through toolkits, including VMware vRealize Automation, vCloud Director, and Microsoft Windows Azure Pack with integration of VM-centric cloning and remote replication • Excellent performance: Get fast random and sequential scale-out performance with the ability to mix nodes to run multiple applications on the same web-scale private cloud – no noisy neighbors • Predictable scalability: Start small and linearly scale by adding different nodes, eliminating forklift upgrades and disruptive data migrations • Improve availability: Deliver a variety of VM-granular service levels with VM-centric backups, efficient disaster recovery, and nondisruptive upgrades • Reduce infrastructure operational complexity: Reduce administrative overhead by hundreds of hours per year by practically eliminating the need for storage management, using intuitive, consumer-grade centralised management, VM-centric operations, and unprecedented performance insight • Deep performance insight: Simplify and speed performance troubleshooting from days and weeks to hours, with end-to-end visibility into application VMs
find out...
more about Nutanix technology to power your mission-critical workloads. Call your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 39
virtualisation
from device based mangement & policies Devices, Apps and data are multiplying everyday whilst IT teams are constantly striving to simplify what is becoming an increasingly complex environment. AppSense changes the game completely! Freeing IT from user complexity achieving great levels of productivity whilst liberating the workforce from chains device based managementand policies. Endpoint Security: Secure Your Endpoints without Compromising User Experience
BYTES won Appsense Partner of the Year 2015
Traditional antivirus and endpoint sandbox technologies aren’t enough to keep your endpoints secure. You need additional layers to compliment your defence-in-depth security strategy. Using AppSense as part of your overall security strategy helps you enhance your user experience and protect your endpoints. With the proliferation of end point devices and the average employee having more than one device that they can access their data and applications from – Endpoint security is fast becoming the focus of IT departments across the world. Antivirus effectiveness is decreasing and experts recommend application control and privilege management as the practical way to ensure employees remain productive and secure. AppSense’s approach to making application control manageable through Trusted Ownership & making privilege management more user friendly - through granular control and self-elevation, and providing prescriptive analytics through Insight – is forging the way for organisations to take back control of the endpoint. The AppSense Endpoint Security Bundle
+
Application Manager User Application Entitlement It is essential that users receive only the applications they require and are unable to introduce unknown executable files into the environment. The use of unauthorised software destabilises user environments and makes it more difficult for IT to troubleshoot corrupt desktops; these costs are exacerbated in a shared user environment, where the action of one impacts many. Trusted Ownership Protect the system without complex lists and constant management. Only code installed and owned by ‘trusted owners’ is allowed to execute. The trusted owners list can be extended to suit any environment or content directory infrastructure.
40 |
Using secure, kernel-level filter drivers and Microsoft NTFS security policies, AppSense Application Manager intercepts all execution requests and blocks any unwanted applications. In additions to executable files, AppSense Application Manager also manages entitlement to application content. Privilege Management The privilege level of a user, group or role can be elevated or reduced for applications and control panel applets. Local admin accounts can be removed yet users can still access select applications or tasks that require admin rights. This dynamically controls end-user privileges with surgical precision, providing users with only the administrator privileges they need while keeping IT support costs from skyrocketing. By removing the need for a local administrator user account, AppSense manages privileges at the application or individual task level instead of at the session or account level.
Insight The Power to Transform AppSense Insight takes it’s 14 years of experience with end-user computing environments to harness and analyse an enormous variety of real-time data related to device, platform, applications and usage. AppSense Insight provides the foundation for making targeted and effective changes to the desktop environment, which will lower TCO while improving employee satisfaction and compatibility. This combined security suite will help you with: • Guided policy creation – enabling IT to effectively role out policies for better business outcomes • Intelligence for effective application control & privilege management – keeping users secure, happy and productive • Reports on impact of policy changes – supporting future business growth decisions
live demo...
To see the AppSense Security bundle in action, please email us at vteam@bytes.co.uk or call your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
storage
storage
Sp tlight WITH
STUART CURRY
Bytes Storage Specialist
Working with Bytes customers, the key areas that we discuss in our meetings are business continuity, cloud, virtualisation, application performance and local data recovery. How Flash Stacks Up: One of the main desires of these organisations is to control escalating costs and manage performance across their applications. A quick win to address this, is to focus on the storage using Flash technology. Traditionally companies have bought far too many disk drives to ensure performance is available for their applications, which in turn creates challenges around overall storage footprint, power and cooling. Continue with Tradition or Invest in Innovation? With IOPS growing exponentially clients are facing a crisis. Should they continue down the traditional route or invest in innovation? In parallel to rising application and data demand, budgets for new equipment, power, space, cooling and staff are all flat, if not declining. Following Moore’s Law, servers and networks have been getting faster and cheaper for decades. Storage has failed to keep pace because of the inherent limitations of mechanical spinning disk drives, a technology first introduced in 1956. While storage capacity and cost have grown explosively, hard drive performance has been flat. Although SSD technology has been accepted as a technology to support small consumer electronics devices such as Apple, only a small handful of storage vendors had looked at it as a Datacentre
• 10x Performance • Up to 90% Reduction in Storage Costs • Up to 80% Reduction in Cores/Servers
300% Capacity overprovisioning on spindles to meet performance requirements
solution. While its performance attributes were well recognised, the high cost of Flash put the technology out of reach for mainstream enterprises. In the last few years, reductions in the price of raw Flash modules and economies of scale, combined with technologies like inline data compression and inline deduplication, allow the new generation of all-Flash arrays to compete with hard disk arrays on a £-pergigabyte level, whilst delivering a host of performance benefits and reduced TCO. According to recent Gartner research (‘Critical Capabilities for Solid-State Arrays’, August 2014), 50% of traditional general-purpose storage arrays used for low-latency, high-performance workloads
• Up to 70% Reduction in Licensing Costs • Up to 90% Reduction in Power, Space, Cooling.
Better performance with 90% less raw capacity
will be replaced by all-Flash arrays by 2019. All-Flash storage can be a competitive advantage for your entire company – it has the potential to unlock a new level of productivity by reducing the amount of time employees wait for their databases, virtual desktops and other applications. Flash’s speed, space efficiency and reliability make it a highly attractive alternative to spinning disk as a storage medium for enterprise applications. If you would like a fresh look at your storage setup, I’d be happy to take a look and share with you the latest technologies and cloud options, which are currently available.
lets talk...
if you would like a fresh look at your storage setup, call me on 07889 535765 or email stuart.curry@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 41
storage
the newHybri flashtodisk tocloud Server: mail.hostedpg.co
42 |
d; Of course there are many cases where simply installing a Hybrid array will make sense, but does it hit the extremes? The All Flash Array (AFA) vendors will tell you that the only way to get great performance is to use an AFA that was ‘built from the ground up’ for Flash, the Hybrid vendors will tell you they have an array that’s good enough for all workloads from high performance to high capacity and low cost. But why should you have to choose?
Matt Watts Director, Technology and Strategy EMEA at NetApp
Hybrid has evolved. When we consider Hybrid in terms of storage it’s very often in the context of mixing different media types inside the same array, which is okay for many traditional workloads but, in a world of scale out and cloud scaling, does this still make sense? Some would say that to truly make use of Flash you need a dedicated architecture, a dedicated platform, a new silo of storage in your environment that doesn’t integrate with anything you already have and comes with a whole host of compromises in terms of functionality. But why should this be the case? after all Flash is just another media The industry has spent years trying to bring technologies together, using advanced virtualisation to create a seamless delivery platform for compute resources across hardware with very different physical characteristics, with mobility to ensure that workloads can have Quality of Service and can be relocated across the underlying physical infrastructure to take advantage of different hardware characteristics. So why treat storage differently?
This is where I believe Hybrid has evolved, we need to think of it ‘outside the box’ (see what I did there) and consider it as a completely integrated environment that can deliver everything from Extreme Performance nodes with Flash only to low cost and High Capacity nodes. This is exactly what our Clustered Data ONTAP Operating System enables, think of it as the virtualisation layer that spans the controllers. Rather than just mixing media types inside the array (which we also do extremely well) why not have controllers that are optimised to deliver the extremes all brought together as a single cohesive storage platform?
For example, you want Extreme performance? then our AFF8080 (All Flash) system delivers this in abundance, but maybe you’re also looking for a high capacity / lower cost environment, well this can be delivered from our FAS8020 platform using Disk. Yes that’s right I’m suggesting
two different platforms, but here’s the key part, what if these can exist as a Hybrid Cluster, where workloads can seamlessly move across them to match the performance required at the time, with quality of service, full application integration, one common and consistent set of API’s, one mechanism for data replication, one way to manage them and to monitor them. Now what if you could also extend this scalability by including Hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services? well you can! using NetApp Private Storage (NPS) or by installing our software based Cloud ONTAP into an AWS instance you can simply replicate any application, any virtual machine and any data from your storage environment straight into it for test or for development. Why not try it for yourself and see how simple it is to use. A customer recently said to me “Your All Flash FAS is fast, incredibly fast, but being able to use Cloud ONTAP with Amazon Web Services has revolutionised the speed at which we can develop”. There’s a great post from our Cloud Czar Val Bercovici on this topic.
This is the new Hybrid, no more silos, no more compromises, from Flash to Disk to Cloud and it’s just one aspect of our vision for a ‘Data Fabric’
further info...
on NetApp and building with Data Fabric contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500.
www.bytes.co.uk | 43
BYTES are NetApp EMEA Midsize Market Partner of the Year 2014
storage
it’s
!
YOUR DATA started working for you
NOT the other way round Huw Owen Regional Vice President for Northern Europe
Bytes Magazine:
Why don`t they delete irrelevant files?
Veritas was reborn as an
Bytes Magazine:
organisation on February
Why is Veritas strategically relevant for customers?
1st, 2016 following its
Huw Owen:
acquisition by the Carlyle group. Huw Owen, Regional Vice President for Northern Europe (UK & I and Nordics) at Veritas talks about the
In the era of the cloud, many organisations don’t own their Datacentre and many may not even own their applications. Yet data is their most valuable asset. We’re uniquely positioned to, and totally focused on, helping customers better manage their data.
Bytes Magazine:
goals of the new company
Why is information management important?
and how it will help
Huw Owen:
customers get the most out
Data should deliver on its potential and work for the organisation, but it’s clear that in the UK it’s often the other way round. Companies invest significant resources to maintain data that is totally irrelevant for their business. Our recent Global Databerg Report found that a typical midsize company wastes nearly a million pounds every year maintaining trivial files, such as photos, personal documents, music and video content.
of their data.
44 |
Huw Owen:
Most organisations aren’t able to identify the value of their data, and don’t know what exactly they are storing – this is what we call ‘dark data’. How can you confidently delete a file when you don’t know its contents? So rather than analysing the data, organisations tend to have a culture of data hoarding, accelerating the amount, and cost of useless data being stored. At Veritas we can help customers take back control of their data. And this is something they fundamentally have to address as a priority, because the amount of data companies are storing is doubling every two years.
Bytes Magazine: How can customers achieve this?
Huw Owen: First of all we help them identify and understand what data they are actually storing, where they’re storing it, how often and recently the data has been accessed, and by who. We have solutions - Data Insight or Information Map, for example, which give businesses the insight they need to assess the nature and therefore the value of their data. This means they can make better decisions about what to delete, and improves their management of data more generally.
!
THE DATABERG REPORT: THE STATE OF INFORMATION Bytes Magazine:MANAGEMENT
Will this help them to overcome data hoarding?
Huw Owen: Yes it will, and it comes at a time when businesses need to reevaluate their information management policies anyway - to ensure they’ll be compliant with incoming regulation like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This kind of regulation is going to revolutionise how global organisations have to collect, manage and share data across international borders. We have an archiving solution - Enterprise Vault 12, which introduces a centralised flexible classification framework. This simplifies the process of identifying which data is regulated as well as deleting non-essential data. This means customers that have petabytes of already archived information, can review and classify it far more easily – making the longer term process of adapting their information-retention strategy to regulatory change far easier.
THE DATABERG:
DISCOVER WHAT LIES BELOW THE SURFACE Companies of all sizes in the UK and around the world have amassed an enormous ‘Databerg’ of dark and useless data. As outlined in a new global report by Veritas, the Databerg is threatening organisations of all sizes. Managing the explosion of data volume in the digital age is one of most pressing challenges facing business leaders everywhere. Our report found that a company that has over 500TB of data wastes £320,000 every year maintaining Redundant, Obsolete or Trivial (ROT) data in its corporate networks. Globally, this is expected to cost businesses a staggering £2.2tn by 2020.
SEE WHAT OTHERS DON’T
However, even this figure only reflects data which has been identified as useless, and doesn’t recognise the huge amount of unidentified dark data stored by each company, which our report found to comprise a whopping 59 percent of corporate data stored in the UK. Dark data may include nuggets of incredibly valuable undiscovered information, or it could be JUST high risk, non-compliant data, which places companies at great legal risk in a shifting regulatory environment. And of course it probably contains a great deal of ROT data too, wasting valuable resources on unnecessary maintenance costs. Indeed, further research by Veritas mapping the ‘genome’ of corporate data, shows that globally, 40% of companies files OF CORPORATE DATA haven’t even been accessed or looked for three years.
Every company has a Databerg. Our global report covering 22 countries and 2,550 IT decision makers highlights the causes, risks and solutions to thisBytes looming data crisis. Magazine: And what if data is fragmented and stored in the cloud?
Huw Owen:
We can help customers to manage their data wherever it resides. We want to help customers to get the most value out of their cloud deployment models without compromising their control over that data or its availability. This is one of many reason why Bytes is such an important partner Veritas. We both share a Cloud WHOfor HAS THE MOST ROT DATA? mentality. This is reflected in many of our key solutions, like NetBackup, where you can use cloud infrastructure % Americas for external disaster management and data %recovery. Asia Pacific
29 30 Magazine: 32Bytes % EMEA
What else can we expect from the new Veritas?
Huw Owen: The sole mission of our new executive team is to reinvigorate the company and its culture. With Bytes on our side as a highly educated partner, we are already the leader in information management. But we want to become even stronger and drive even more innovation by acting with the drive and determination of a startup. We think WHOit’sHAS THE MOST DARK time for a change. In fact, we thinkDATA? it’s time for Veritas.
54% Americas 56% Asia Pacific 54% EMEA
Dealing with the growth
15%
IS BUSINESS CRITICAL
So how can Byte and Veritas help to tackle data hoarding? THE FIRST STEP is bust the myth that “storage is free”, and make that understood throughout your company. SECONDLY, we can help you take action, and shine a light on your dark data. We can advise on allocating IT budget for applications which can identify where your dark data resides, exposing the risks and illuminating the useful information.
33%
FINALLY, take control – regularly delete the ROT data clogging your network and wasting your storage resources. Establish a data governance strategy that’s based on the value of information, not its volume. Veritas and Bytes can help organisations clean theirIS data and REDUNDANT, OBSOLETE bring transparency to the Databerg OR TRIVIAL DATA (ROT) below the surface. ULTIMATELY, 2016 is the year when business leaders must steer clear of the Databerg, or risk being sunk by it.
further info...
52%
Call your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500 for more help with your companies Databerg!
IS DARK DATA: UNCLASSIFIED, www.bytes.co.uk BENEATH THE LINE OF SIGHT | 45 OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT
BYTES hold over 75 Technical & Sales Accreditations for Veritas
storage
ACHIEVE
best-of-breed traffic and access control with BARRACUDA
NG FIREWALL The modern network includes a combination of local servers, remote devices and cloud-hosted applications. If you use cloud-based platforms such as Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, you need to ensure that all of your critical applications and devices are available when needed Conclusion and secured. Microsoft Azure feels like a natural extension Barracuda NextGen Firewalls are Microsoft Azure for establishing site-toto your Datacentre – purpose-built for the modern, site and/or client-to-site connections distributed network in which network to its cloud services, and creating a you enjoy the scale performance and availability is as virtual DMZ in Azure to implement an and economics of the important as security. Unlike traditional additional high-security layer. public cloud without port-based firewalls, Barracuda The Barracuda NextGen Firewall firewalls are application-aware, having to compromise F-Series meets enterprise enabling you to regulate application requirements of massive scalability, on network performance. usage and intelligently prioritise efficient configuration and lifecycle network traffic. ExpressRoute management across dispersed The Barracuda NextGen Firewall networks, and performance connections do not go F-Series fills the functional gaps guarantees for business-critical over the public Internet, between cloud infrastructure security applications. and offer more reliability, and a defense-in-depth strategy As part of the shared security by providing protection where the faster speeds, lower model – customers need to application and data reside, rather secure the applications or latencies and higher than solely where the connection networks they are running or terminates. security than typical building in Microsoft Azure. Beyond its powerful network firewall, That’s where Barracuda can connections over the high availability, and VPN technologies, help. Internet. the Barracuda NextGen Firewall Barracuda NG Firewall Key User F-Series integrates a comprehensive set of next-generation firewall technologies, including Application Control, IPS, anti-malware, network access control enforcement, and comprehensive user awareness. The F-Series is fully compatible with
46 |
Cases: • Securing & connecting VNETs in Microsoft Azure • Secure high-performance VPN connections • Deploying secure multi-tier network architectures (diagram below) • IDS/IPS protection between VNETs • View, control, and log (for compliance) all traffic (in & out) • Hybrid cloud with ExpressRoute providing security, reliability, and intelligence
Deploying Barracuda NextGen Firewall F-Series both in Azure cloud and in the local network additionally enforces best-ofbreed traffic control, access control, traffic prioritisation and limits.
Barracuda Backup is the unified, cost effective data protection solution for your physical and virtual environments: a complete backup solution with remote storage that is easy to buy, install and manage. What is Barracuda Backup? The Barracuda Backup is an integrated local and offsite data backup and disaster recovery solution. The Barracuda Backup combines an onsite appliance with a flexible monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription that replicates data offsite. Combining local and offsite storage provides the best of both worlds – onsite backups for the fastest restore times and secure, offsite storage for disaster recovery. How is the Barracuda Backup different than other product offerings? The Barracuda Backup creates a local copy of protected data and efficiently transfers the data offsite without additional burden to production servers. The offsite storage is monitored and managed by Barracuda Central as part of the monthly Barracuda Backup Subscription. With three secure copies of data and several different methods to restore an organisation’s assets, the Barracuda Backup is a comprehensive, flexible and efficient solution to achieve your disaster recovery needs. All-in-One Backup Solution A complete backup solution from one vendor. Barracuda Backup combines software, in-line deduplication, and offsite cloud or private replication without per-server or per-application licensing fees.
Barracuda Backup
EASY
Cloud-Connected BACKUP software solutions, the Barracuda Backup Server protects data using standard networking protocols from computers running a wide range of operating systems. Other benefits of using the appliance for backups include dedicated processing power for deduplication and compression to increase efficiency in storage and transmission, reduction of load on production servers by not having to run backup software and the creation of a dedicated restore device on your local network. Physical and Virtual Most businesses today have a mixed environment of physical and virtual servers. Barracuda Backup is a single solution to protect physical servers, and virtual machines with snapshot and granular file recovery – all with unified policy management for replication, scheduling and retention.
Can the Barracuda Backup help achieve compliance with common regulations? Yes. Barracuda Backup addresses the security requirements necessary to support compliance with a wide range of industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA for the healthcare industry, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley for financial organisations.
Why should I use a dedicated appliance for my backups? There are several advantages to using an appliance to conduct automated data backups and offsite replication. An appliance created for backup, like the Barracuda Backup Server, is a purpose-built appliance that enables centralised management of backup connections to multiple devices and provides the local storage necessary to keep a primary backup copy onsite for fast recovery in the majority of data loss scenarios.
Flexible Deployment Barracuda Cloud Storage, Barracuda Cloud Control and Cloud LiveBoot recovery allow simple remote replication, seamless multisite administration, and rapid recovery of virtual machines during disasters.
Software backup solutions need installation and management on every server they protect, plus requires the administration and support of additional hardware to provide recommended local storage of the backup data. Unlike many
store and save...
Box-to-box replication, Local Control local management, and Local LiveBoot recovery allow complete protection for those operating in private environments or deploying private cloud technologies.
Does Barracuda Backup help retain and produce data for litigation requests? Yes. Retention policies using Barracuda Backup assists organisations in preparing for discovery requests by simplifying the retention and reproduction of electronic data. The flexible data retention options with the Barracuda Backup allow you to enforce specific policies for your various types of data.
To find out more about the Barracuda Backup solution contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 47
storage
the
Nimble
STORAGE
ADAPTIVE
FLASH PLATFORM
48 |
Eliminating Performance and Capacity Tradeoffs The speed of flash technology has made it an essential component of the modern Datacentre. But, flash’s superior performance comes at a steep price, making it impractical for all but a handful of today’s enterprise applications. This forces businesses to erect infrastructure silos—resulting in complexity and sprawl—to meet their basic performance and capacity requirements. Nimble Storage’s Adaptive Flash platform eliminates this trade-off with a single storage architecture that can address the needs of all critical applications, and delivers performance and capacity in the most efficient way possible.
Adaptive Flash
The Nimble Adaptive Flash platform provides enterprise IT organisations a single architectural approach to dynamically tune storage resources to the needs of demanding workloads. Adaptive Flash is based on CASL™, Nimble Storage’s patented CacheAccelerated Sequential Layout architecture, and InfoSight™, the company’s automated cloud-based management and support system. CASL allows performance and capacity to be scaled seamlessly and independently to accommodate efficient Datacentre growth. InfoSight ensures flash will be deployed intelligently to satisfy the fluctuating requirements of enterprise applications, eliminating the wasteful overprovisioning of storage resources. Nimble Storage’s Adaptive Flash platform enables customers to intelligently and dynamically allocate storage resources to meet the fluctuating needs of business-critical applications – all within a dramatically smaller footprint. The Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Platform brings customers the benefits of storage consolidation – all without compromising service levels of applications and workloads. An IT organisation that uses the Nimble Adaptive Flash platform can predict, manage and deliver the storage that is required to optimise applications and workloads across the enterprise – and across varying service levels. The Adaptive Flash platform is ideal for eliminating storage tiers and silos, deploying storage resources efficiently to meet changing SLAs, protecting data and maintaining peak storage health.
CASL
TM
Performance and Capacity
Integrated Protection
Scaleto-Fit
Proactive Wellness
Flash-Optimised File System Software
Our Customers Require Up To 10x Less Rackspace
Our Customers Get Blazing Performance
InfoSight
TM
Cloud-Based Management/Support
Our Customers Enjoy Virtually Zero Downtime
UP TO 500K IOPS
Actual Results for Nimble Customers
>99.999%
AVAILABILITY Actual Results for 4-Node CS700 Cluster
IT OBJECTIVES Meet Performance SLAs
TRADITIONAL STORAGE
ALL FLASH SOLUTIONS
ADAPTIVE FLASH
Reduce Datacentre Footprint Improve IT Productivity Grow Seamlessly Ensure Data Availability
All-inclusive Data Services
The Power of Adaptive Flash Adaptive Flash instantly adjusts to address all critical application requirements. Adaptive Flash can: • Provide multiple service levels to eliminate storage silos with a single architecture for all applications • Grow seamlessly by scaling compute, cache, or capacity independently and non-disruptively • Minimize risk with integrated SmartSnap snapshots and consistent backups, SmartSecure encryption, and efficient SmartReplicate disaster recovery
Measured Across Entire Nimble Installed Base (July 2012 - June 2014)
THE ADAPTIVE FLASH DIFFERENCE Dynamically assign service levels that align with application needs Up to 10x less footprint required compared to traditional storage Automated, analytics based support and insight Single architecture: no migrations, no forklifts Proven over 99.999% availability across entire installed base No additional software or hardware to purchase
Adaptive Flash customers realise dramatic benefits, including: • Up to 10x reduction in Datacentre footprint • 60% less spent on power and cooling • Up to 500K IOPS performance • Greater than five-nines level of system availability • 60-90% less administration time
• Improve IT productivity with push-button deployment and the proactive, analytics-based support of InfoSight
further info...
on the Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Platform contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 49
security
ITsecurity the Bytes view...
50 |
As one of the first dedicated IT Security Resellers in the UK, Bytes Security Partnerships has seen countless changes in the IT Security landscape since it was founded in 1999. The change in industry has accelerated exponentially over time and the most dramatic changes have only occurred in the last 12-18 months. Whilst technology is evolving at an ever increasing rate, the main change is the acceptance and realisation that companies can no longer be sure that their systems will prevent their networks being attacked; instead they must plan for what happens once they have been breached. The demand for IT security is at an all-time high with vendors now stepping up to the plate to deliver solutions for an ever growing workforce that is operating from more locations, with more types of devices, often owned by the employee as well as the organisation.
Say Hello to End-Point Security… Once only available at the network perimeter due to its high cost, high levels of protection are now accessible to be run on end-users’ laptops, tablets and phones. The outcome of this is that an end-user can enjoy the same level of security on their device whether they are in the office, working from an airport lounge, or on a beach from the other side of the world.
Challenges for 2016… However, whilst this technology is becoming more and more resilient and capable, the challenges are becoming greater every day. The simple fact now is that the numbers of different ways an attacker can extract data from a company’s network are so numerous that the focus of any Board of Directors must now be on how to mitigate any incident that occurs. Any well-run company will have a documented plan for how to invoke their Disaster Recovery plan, and we at Bytes have heard many times that this would also be used in the event of a Cyber Attack. Unfortunately this is not a viable option. Let’s take Cryptolocker as an example of a common Ransomeware attack tool. If a business has a permanent Disaster Recovery (DR) site, and is hit by Cryptolocker, the data at the DR site would also be encrypted. Then what? How does a business retrieve its data, get its staff working again and ensure there is no reputational damage done to their business? If a business considers itself in need of a DR plan then it also needs to provide a plan for how to deal with any cyber security incident.
A Bytes Guide… Typically, the team at Bytes is seeing our customers deal with this in three ways; the first and most obvious path taken is to simply ensure that the employees of the business know who they need to contact for help if a cyber attack does takes place, in the same way a business needs to know who to call should their phones go down. A second course of action would be to have established documentation on how to use the tools that the company has purchased in case of such an event, so that an immediate response can be carried out internally before any third party companies need to be contacted. The final response, and becoming the most common option and one which we would recommend, is to have an Incident Response service. More and more companies are looking to their IT Security supplier to recommend an incident response vendor and/or service to deal with any issue that could potentially take place. This can simply be a technical solution that comes together to provide a “kill-switch” for the network that can eradicate any attack that is on-going, or an all-encompassing solution that includes how to deal with the general public, shareholders and the press. This can help mitigate the damage caused by any incident and ensure that a business doesn’t end up tying itself in knots, a position Talk-Talk found themselves in recently.
Our Summary for 2016… In summary, businesses need to look at their internal documentation and policies to ensure that the very real threat of Cyber Security is taken every bit as seriously as their long-proven Disaster Recovery solutions and ensure that every individual knows how to respond to an attack in the most effective manner. Without this in place, no business can consider itself to have done everything possible to safeguard itself against the every evolving danger posed by the Cyber Security threat.
further info...
To speak to a security expert at Bytes Security Partnership to see how you can put these policies in place, call our team on 0845 075 0560 or email securitysales@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 51
security
SILENCE CYBERATTACKS
Prevention isn’t a myth. Find out how we’re using artificial intelligence and machine learning to stop threats from ever executing on your endpoints. Learn more at cylance.com
52 |
PREVENTION IS EVERYTHING Cylance® is revolutionising
Traditional antivirus and endpoint
The Cylance Professional Services
cyber-security with products and
security solutions routinely fail to
team specialises in securing Critical
services that proactively prevent
detect even 50% of threats and
Infrastructure and Key Resources
execution of advanced persistent
require constant network connectivity
(CIKR), education, energy, financial
threats and malware. Cylance’s award-
to access frequent signature updates.
services, government, healthcare,
winning product, CylancePROTECT®,
In addition, these solutions consume
heavy industry, oil, gas, retail, and
enables a level of security that far
vast system resources and are
other complex industries.
exceeds current industry solutions
increasingly complex to deploy and
deployed throughout enterprises,
manage.
Should an organisation not be using one of our products but experience a
governments and organisations worldwide. CylancePROTECT stops what others don’t, without requiring a cloud connection or frequent updates, all while using a fraction of the system
“Challenge any company to accurately predict a threat and stop it before it starts Cylance can prove it.”
resources associated with traditional antivirus and endpoint security
Mike Dierickx, CISO, Panasonic Aviation
software. CylancePROTECT is a radically
CylancePROTECT addresses all of
different technological approach to
these problems in a single product
cybersecurity that employs artificial
that delivers true enterprise end-
intelligence to analyse the DNA of files
point security with a low total cost of
before they ever execute.
ownership.
Cylance combines a deep under-
Complementing CylancePROTECT
standing of hackers and attack vectors
are professional services that provide
with the most sophisticated artificial
pre-attack penetration and vulnerability
intelligence and machine learning to
testing, compromise assessments and
neutralise malicious files before they
post-attack incident response.
breach, our professional services team will step in and help with discovery, recovery, remediation, compliance, and even handling law enforcement investigation responses. Standing apart from a cybersecurity industry reliant upon outdated detection and response models, Cylance secures through prediction and pre-response at the enterprise endpoint, preventing malware and advanced threats before they ever cause harm.
can execute.
live demo..
To arrange a live demo or find out more information about Cylance - please speak to a Bytes SP expert on 0845 075 0560 or email securitysales@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 53
security
KEEPING
Yourself SAFE ONLINE Where do you start? By watching for cyber threats! What’s the most important advice? Think before you open that attachment, before you click on that link, before you friend that stranger in Facebook. Don’t take your safety and security for granted. A couple of years ago, some attackers wanted to get access to the personal files of the Dalai Lama. How did they do it? By tricking the Dalai Lama’s office staff into clicking on attachments in fake emails. Unfortunately, all of us have to keep in mind that emails can be faked, even legitimate web sites
can be infected by malware, and even legitimate smart phone apps may contain malicious code. The first step in being secure is to be aware that there are threats to your safety and security that you have to watch out for. Drive defensively when you’re online, just like when you’re on the road!
Protecting Yourself
those challenge questions you get in banking applications. Take advantage of these improvements on passwords when you can – and push your online environments to provide them if they haven’t. A lot of what’s important in protecting yourself is how you use the technology you have:
OK, so you’re keeping a watchful eye on those email attachments, on those apps that ask for special privileges on your smart phone. Isn’t there anything that technology can do to help?
• Be careful where you go online, including taking advantage of tools that help you identify and avoid infected or malicious websites and applications
Many of us open the door to attackers by neglecting some really simple precautions, like managing our passwords and keeping our online tools up-to-date.
• Be careful about how much and what kind of personal information you keep in your devices and that you share online
Do you want to save this password?
54 |
The scene: your at your desk, working on a last-minute report. Suddenly a message blasts across your screen:
There are also better ways than passwords to secure your laptop and smart phone, especially multi-factor authentication methods like
• Back up the information you keep on your devices, not only to make sure you can still get to the information if your device suddenly stops working, but also so that you don’t have to pay ransom to get access to it Putting information into the cloud works great to protect you when you drop your iPhone over the side when you’re doing a selfie on a cruise boat. But you need to keep offline backups that you can go to if you are attacked by ransomware.
Your personal files are encrypted!
Looking for problems One of the discouraging things about cyber attackers is that they are very persistent, very inventive and very well-organised. You have to watch not only for indicators of attacks, but also for indicators of compromise: that is, signs that an attacker is already inside your laptop, tablet or smart phone and is ready to do damage. What should you look for? • Unusual activity or behavior in your system: your system is much slower than usual, or is doing a lot of network activity, or is asking you for privileges to run an app, or suddenly has much less disk space than it used to • Unusual activity in your online environment. If you’re using online banking, check your accounts for unusual activity and check the last login information whenever you connect to a site for indications that someone has stolen your credentials
You’ve just been hit by the latest cyber threat: ransomware! Do you pay the ransom demanded by the attackers so that you can get back to work? A difficult question! Is there anything you can do to keep from getting into this situation in the first place? Is there anything you can do about all the cyber threats you face?? Yes, there are! Let’s explore them together.
This site’s security certificate is not trusted! • Warnings from organisations you work with, web sites you visit and so on. There are many resources that can help you, such as e-government sites that provide information about current threats and what you can do to protect yourself, like NIDirect in the UK. There are also great resources provided by organisations like www.staysafeonline.org and www.rsaconference.com/about/ rsac-cyber-safety
The good news So, is there anything you can do to keep yourself safe and secure online? Absolutely! Just remember – it starts with taking cyber security seriously!
are you safe?..
To stay safe and proctect you and your organisation online speak to a Bytes SP expert on 0845 075 0560 or email securitysales@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 55
security
Protecting employees’ PCs and laptops is critical, but endpoint security has not kept pace with the evolution of advanced, targeted threats. Check Point shows how new security approaches can better prevent and resolve endpoint attacks
all’s well if
the Endpoint’s
WELL
The problem with today’s endpoints is that they are so varied: a mix of desktop PCs, laptops and netbooks, and frequently running different versions of OS and applications. This variety of endpoints also means that security may not be as robust as it could be. This was highlighted in Check Point’s 2015 Security Report: it found that 25% of enterprise endpoints do not have updated antivirus signatures; 25% don’t have the latest software updates and fixes for vulnerabilities; and 20% do not run a local firewall on their PC. This can leave endpoints vulnerable to sophisticated malware, infected external storage devices, or malicious web content.
It’s no surprise, then, that hackers are now increasingly targeting endpoints, looking to exploit their relative lack of protection with advanced new attacks. These can include evasive variants of Cryptowall and Cryptolocker ransomware, or other stealthy agents intended to compromise the PC or laptop, and then infect the enterprise network. Once even a single system has been compromised, there’s a real risk that the malware could move into the heart of an organisation’s IT,
56 |
which in turn demands a multi-layered security approach.
First, protecting the endpoint device needs to move beyond traditional signature-based antivirus that can only detect known threats. Second, organisations need better capabilities to identify and respond to emerging attacks across their network and endpoint estates, to quickly identify the source and scope of attacks, and find the best way to resolve them. Let’s look at each of these stages of security in turn. The moment of attack As touched on earlier, endpoints are vulnerable in large part because they often only have basic levels of malware protection. However, it’s also easy for a hacker to use readilyavailable toolkits to make small changes to existing malware, and these changes make the infection invisible to conventional, signaturebased antivirus solutions. There’s also the risk of hackers employing highly advanced, purpose-made malware to attack an organisation. A security technique increasingly used to counter these threats is threat emulation, or sandboxing, in which
suspicious files are intercepted as they arrive, and the files’ contents inspected in a Virtualised, quarantined area (the sandbox) for unusual behaviour. If a file behaves suspiciously, it is blocked. Sandboxing dramatically increases malware detection and boosts security – but it can also consume significant processing power when running on a conventional laptop PC, which impacts on the user experience. Smarter sandboxing What’s needed is a way to securely inspect and block any malicious files and data arriving at an endpoint, without inhibiting the user experience. By assuming that any email attachment or download received could be infected – and removing any potential threats from it before passing it to the user – we can eliminate many common vectors of infection. This is called threat extraction: documents
build a complete map of the attack’s lifecycle, including any damage done. To help analyse such incidents, the endpoint security solution must first be able to continuously capture attack forensics data, giving visibility back in time into the origin of the attack. With the growing number of security events every organisation is facing, today’s manual methods of reviewing logs to determine entry points, methods and damage scope, are simply too time consuming to pursue for every event. To help teams understand the complete attack lifecycle, automated incident analysis leverages the forensics data to generate detailed reports, accelerating the process of remediating any affected systems. By combining advanced threat prevention that defends against new, targeted malware on the endpoint, and automating collection and analysis of complete forensics data to give deep insights into attacks, organisations can protect both users’ systems and their core networks without inhibiting the business. To paraphrase the title of the Shakespeare play: when it comes to security, all’s well if the endpoints are well. are reconstructed using only safe elements, and any suspicious content (such as macros, embedded objects and files, and external links) is removed. The clean document is available to the user in a couple of seconds, so the process doesn’t hinder their work. The original document is then sent to a sandbox environment running in a public or private cloud, where it can be examined in detail for threats, and blocked if malware is found. If the document is infection-free, it can be safely retrieved by the user. This approach minimises the processing overhead on the endpoint, and enables users to work seamlessly while protecting against threats from attachments in email messages, web downloads, content copied from removable storage devices, and so on.
Attack aftermath As enterprises have so many potentially vulnerable points that can be targeted, even if an attack has been identified and stopped at an early stage, it’s still critical that IT teams understand what the attack was, how it happened, and what damage was done, to enable the fastest possible remediation. However, the complex ecosystem of endpoint devices within a company can make analysis of security events difficult. It can often be tricky to even pinpoint where an incident started, let alone
need more...
information or advice on Check Point SandBlast please speak to a Bytes SP expert on 0845 075 0560 or email securitysales@bytes.co.uk
www.bytes.co.uk | 57
BYTES is a Checkpoint Elite partner - one of only two in the UK!
security
secure
EVERY DAY
withSymantec The CISO today has to balance security challenges – working to identify and protect business data, preventing threats from gaining access to infrastructure and being able to fast remediate when they do.
Symantec is here to help. Not only do we have leading product and service franchises (SEP, DLP, MSS) but our portfolio helps to plan, protect, detect and respond to any threat to data. Symantec’s security leadership is built on a long history of product innovation that brings to life the insights we generate by running one of the world’s largest intelligence networks.
58 |
I’m not ready for tomorrow’s threats The threat landscape is ever changing – in fact research for Cyber Insurance has shown that predicting a Cyber Attack is as complex as predicting damage from a hurricane. So if an attack can’t be predicted, then where should business focus?
My data is mobile and in the cloud With the EU-GDPR driving thought-leadership conversation in EMEA, there is a second-level and more functional focus to activities. The GDPR describes how data should be processed, who is responsible and what happens should data be lost. With Symantec Information Protection solutions to prevent data being shared outside the business, you can ensure suitable controls, and encrypt to prevent unauthorised access.
Moving to the cloud has different risks. Everyone is moving to the cloud – today it’s simply a way to do business. Data is exposed, devices are mobile, servers are open to the internet; the original network perimeter of brick and mortar is decaying and becoming virtual. There are elements of risk with this move, decaying and becoming virtual. There are elements of risk with this move, but they can be simply mitigated by securing against attack at all perimeters – virtual or physical.
I never have enough time or resources The growth of Cyber Security is faster than any other single security product area – businesses are struggling under a weight of security alerts, incidents and requirements; but they just can’t get enough staff to work through them, and when they do the skills shortage means that they are hard to retain. Partnering with Symantec for Cyber Security means that we become an extension to that security team, using our Symantec is here to help. Not only do intelligence and analytics to wade through the alerts so we have leading product and service franchises that they can focus on just what is important. This means that it is possible to take an overworked and stressed (SEP, DLP, MSS) but our portfolio helps to plan, security team and switch them from a tactical deployment protect, detect and respond to any threat to resource, to a strategic security resource.
How can Symantec help?
data. Symantec protects and secures customers across potential attack surfaces.
As the largest Cyber-Security company in the world, with the breadth of our solutions covering everything from the smallest connected light-bulb to the biggest computer or cloud-service and with the depth of our intelligence and insight gained from running one of the largest civilian threat networks in the world Symantec is positioned today to help businesses reduce risk, speed up remediation, retain staff and grow their business confidently. Symantec protects and secures customers across potential attack surfaces. Starting with our Managed and Cyber Security Services we are able to stop attacks before business is aware – turning them to ‘white noise’, focusing in turn toward the stealthier and persistent attacks that may infiltrate past the security perimeter. With malware on the inside Threat Protection can work fast to identify what it is, how widespread, and contain the threat so that a remediation plan can be built and activated. Whilst this is happening Symantec Information Protection solutions protect valuable data ensuring that you know where it is, who’s accessing it and that should it be sent outside the business it is properly encrypted to prevent access by malicious third parties.
further info...
on Symantec security, contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 59
security
SECURITY
a new approach to IT Security
With Synchronised Security, Sophos has introduced a brand new approach to threat protection. The new technology directly links next-generation network security with next-generation endpoint security so that they actually share information and work together to provide better protection. It’s a smarter; better way to beat today’s advanced threats. For decades, the security industry has been treating network security and endpoint security as completely different entities. It is just like putting one security guard outside the building and another inside the building, but not allowing them to talk to each other. Synchronised Security is revolutionary and yet so simple – we have now handed each security guard a 2-way radio, so that when one of them spots an issue the other knows about it instantly.
60 |
At Sophos we are delivering Synchronised Security through our revolutionary Security Heartbeat capability which links firewall and endpoints for the very first time. By automating threat discovery, investigation, and response, Synchronised Security revolutionises threat detection. Incident response times are reduced exponentially and tactical resources can be refocused on strategic analysis. Synchronised Security allows NextGeneration Endpoint and network security solutions to continuously share meaningful information about suspicious and confirmed bad behaviour across an entire organisation’s extended IT ecosystem. Leveraging a direct and secure connection called the Sophos Security Heartbeat, endpoint and network protection act as one integrated system, enabling organisations to prevent, detect, investigate, and remediate threats in near real time, without adding any staff. As an example, when the Sophos Next-Gen Firewall detects an advanced threat or an attempt to leak confidential data, it can automatically utilise the Sophos Security Heartbeat to take a series of actions across both the network and endpoint to mitigate risk and stop data loss instantly. Today’s world of Cyber risk with its increased risk surface and complexity and volume of attacks, combined with small teams and very tight labor markets, creates a very challenging world for IT security teams in small and midsized organisations. Today’s layered approaches are not succeeding, and the efforts to solve their shortcomings with analytics and more analysts are also falling short.
Don’t just take our word for it: We consider Sophos XG appliances and Sophos Heartbeat software to be a significant innovation that can raise security performance standards for medium-sized organisations - 451 Research
DeskAid: Sophos Security Heartbeat
BYTES won Sophos Partner of the Year 2015
We must implement new solutions that are simple, yet effective, automated and coordinated, in short solutions that are synchronised via technology innovation such as the Sophos Security Heartbeat. The good news is that this capability is available today from Sophos and can be evaluated easily. To learn more and see how Synchronised Security from Sophos can enable you to win in today’s risky world: www/Sophos.com/heartbeat
further info...
on Sophos & Synchronised security, contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 61
security
offi ce 365 security it’s just one lock
TO PICK Orlando Scott-Cowley - Cyber Security Strategist, Mimecast
Services like Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity suite are revolutionising IT infrastructure, shifting budget and strategy into the cloud. Yet on their own, single cloud services represent a greater exposure to risk as we flatten all our protections, services and applications into a single cloud vendor – creating one giant lock to pick. As an organisation, when you do that you’re essentially being asked to accept that risk by Microsoft or Google - you shouldn’t. Managing the risks presented by a single cloud vendor strategy is essential. An excellent example of this can be seen with our email security infrastructure. Historically we’ve adopted a defence in depth strategy for email security, ensuring we have layers of technology each providing a different security service. Each layer was built up over time to solve a specific problem for the business. Anti-spam, anti-virus, malware detection, anti-phishing, email
62 |
“Subscribing to a SaaS monoculture presents attackers with a single environment running on a single code-base.”
different vendors to ensure protection for services like email. As a result of the ‘belt and braces’ approach we’re all familiar with, your security was comprised of many environments running on many code-bases, attackers had to circumnavigate all of these ‘locks’ and pick them one at a time, in series, in order to compromise your users. You managed risk well.
encryption, disclaimer management, data loss prevention and other security gateways all applied protection to our inbound and outbound email.
By contrast, the reliance on a single vendor security strategy in the cloud and subscribing to a SaaS monoculture presents attackers with a single environment running on a single code-base from a single vendor. Our many locks have been swiftly dumbed-down to become a single lock to pick. And when that lock is picked (or brute forced) all the tenants on that service could be affected. On Office 365 you become one of many interesting targets co-located on a significant cloud service, rather than a small target in a sea of small uninteresting single IP ranges.
Risks of a SaaS monoculture In the case of Office 365 this flattening would be Exchange Online Protection (or EOP). We’re essentially subscribing to the idea of a SaaS monoculture when we migrate to Office 365. From a security perspective that monoculture presents us with many new risks to address. A few years ago, if I were a consultant in your business and suggested the same single vendor strategy, you would have politely shown me the door. Previously your security stack presented a well mitigated set-up, with overlapping technologies from
One lock to pick So how do you solve this problem, how do you ensure that single lock isn’t easy to pick, or at least you
On Office 365 you become one of many interesting targets co-located on a significant cloud service, rather than a small target in a sea of small uninteresting single IP ranges.
BYTES overlay other controls to protect your users? Defence in depth has been given a bad rap recently; it sounds a lot like the 90s called, wanting its security strategy back as we learn how to deal with new threats and problems. But in a cloud-only world we can still apply some of the thinking that drives defence in depth as a way to helping us protect our cloud productivity suites like Office 365. From an email security perspective we need to replace all the solutions, or layers, we once had on the LAN or from a variety of cloud providers and ensure we can map that technology one to one into our single cloud vendor. If we can’t, then applying an additional cloud security overlay, from a specialist cloud security vendor that works with Office 365 is vital. We need to ensure we reinstate the defence in depth we’re leaving behind as we migrate to Office 365 or Google for Work, and we’re protecting their single
locks with more security, more technology and more protection than the default. Default is a single cloud vendor strategy, a single lock to pick and the acceptance of risk. Default as we know is a weakness. Reducing those risks removes the default and protects you on your journey into this cloud productivity revolution.
Mimecast Services For Office 365 Provide: • Comprehensive security coverage with multi-layered, multi-vendor protection, including defence against spear-phishing and advanced persistent threats • Mailbox level compliant archiving for an independent, verifiable backup of email data that supports legal hold, e-discovery and recovery
• Protection against service outages for uninterrupted employee email access via Outlook for Windows, Mac, mobile apps and web portal • Faster migration from on-premises systems like Exchange with cloud mailbox archiving and message routing
Other services for Office 365 include: • Mimecast Legacy Archive Data Management for Office 365 • Mimecast Advanced Account Administration for Office 365 • Mimecast Large File Send for Office 365 • Mimecast Mobile and Desktop apps • Mimecast Secure Messaging • Mimecast Advanced Email Signature and Disclaimer Management
further info...
on Mimecast comprehensive security services, contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 63
Mimecast Growth Partner of the Year 2014
security
?
QUICKLY
&easily‌ How do you quickly and easily deploy
mobile devices across a growing range of device types and platforms?
64 |
GOOD SECURE MANAGEMENT SUITE
?
The enterprise is going mobile. Whereas in years gone by only a few users used mobile devices in the enterprise, today the mobile population is immense. Some organisations are even allowing users to bring their own devices (BYOD) into the FEATURE GOOD SECURE MANAGEMENT SUITE enterprise. IT needs to stay Enterprise Mobility Management on top of this growing set of Mobile device management (MDM) • Jailbreak/root detection • mobile users by enforcing Unlimited devices per user • device policies, controlling Mobile application management (MAM) • app distribution and securing Mobile content management (MCM) Secure Business Productivity access to the corporate Email, calendar and contacts Corporate intranet access & web browsing • intranet. The Good Secure IM, Document Editing & SharePoint/ Management Suite enables IT OneDrive/File Share access Apps and App Distribution with the control they need Unified launcher to access all apps • Good-secured ISV app ecosystem to manage this growing Good-secured custom app development mobile population from Secure Documents Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) a simple cloud-based Integrated Rights Management (DRM) solution. Document Tracking for Audit, Compliance &
GOOD SECURE GOOD SECURE GOOD SECURE ENTERPRISE COLLABORATIVE MOBILITY SUITE SUITE SUITE
Business Intelligence
GOOD SECURE CONTENT SUITE
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Provide Control and Visibility to Mobile Devices:
As organisation enable mobile devices they must ensure these devices comply with their organisation-specific IT policies and that configuration is pushed to devices. However, the increasing complexity of the landscape challenges IT. Unlike traditional PC management, mobile environments are highly heterogeneous. Therefore, organisations must adopt a single mobile device management (MDM) solution that supports a wide range of technologies such as Apple iOS,
Android, Windows Pro, Windows Phone and a growing set of wearable devices and ownership models such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Corporate-Owned, Personally-Enabled (COPE) and Corporate-Owned Business-Only (COBO).
• Employ a wide range of technology option for Android devices including Samsung KNOX and Android for Work
• Set policy controls across a wide array of mobile devices
• Support multiple ownership models, use cases and security requirements from a single solution
• Detect and restrict access from jailbroken or rooted devices • Support iOS, Android, Windows and Windows Phone and other from a single console
Provide Access to Corporate Resources and Apps: Managing the mobile device, however, is insufficient for the needs of mobile users. Increasingly, users are relying on mobile apps as well as access to resources behind the corporate firewall. The Good Secure Management Suite enables organisations to manage apps on the device and provide a secure browser to access key corporate resources. The Good Secure Management Suite enable organisations to:
• Manage policies, whitelists, blacklists and other app controls and report on app installations
• Control a growing set of wearable and IOT devices such as Android Wear and Apple Watch
• Deploy and manage simply through a web based console with the option of a cloud-hosted service
• Utilise a containerised browser for deploying HTML5 apps to laptops and desktops
• Provide mobile intranet access with a fully encrypted and secured connection back into the enterprise
further info...
on The Good Secure Management Suite contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 65
BYTES are proud to be named Good Technology Partner of the Year 2015
security
why
the Snooper’s Charter could Open the Floodgates for
online extortion
in 2016 Several reports have suggested recently that internet users’ browsing history could be the next major source of online blackmail for hackers, in the wake of the Ashley Madison attack.
Raimund Genes CTO, Trend Micro
Several reports have suggested recently that internet users’ browsing history could be the next major source of online blackmail for hackers, in the wake of the Ashley Madison attack. Rest easy netizens: there’s not much chance a cybercriminal is likely to go to the effort of targeting an individual, working out their name and circumstances and then crafting an online extortion plot. But there is danger ahead. If the proposed Investigatory Powers Bill is passed in its current form then I fear the worst. It requires ISPs to retain the web history of everyone in the UK for 12 months. These massive
data stores would be an incredibly attractive target for online extortionists. Home secretary Theresa May has claimed that these records will not include the individual pages of a site a user visits, but a site address alone could be enough for a blackmailer. The government must make sure if this law is passed that it mandates the highest data security standards for the ISPs tasked with following it. However, as we see with each passing breach of customer data by a big name organisation (JPMorgan anyone?) – even those firms which spend millions on security can be hacked by a determined adversary. Someone will almost certainly try to hack these records, and eventually someone will succeed.
66 |
Bring in the DPOs So what can these firms do to minimise the risk of a damaging breach? Well, follow the basics for sure. Enforce strong two-factor authentication, reduce the number of privileged users to the bare minimum and operate an access policy of least privilege. You also need good visibility into what’s going on inside your network. If it was breached via a simple SQLi, TalkTalk should have been able to spot and block the huge number of customer records flowing out to an individual IP address. Systems also need to be patched and up-to-date to minimise the chances of any software flaws being exploited. And remember to regularly pen test systems to ensure they’re as secure as they can be.
‘By the end of next year less than 50% of organisations will have employed a Data Protection Officer (DPO)’
But perhaps the most important step from an organisational perspective is to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO). We predict that by the end of next year less than 50% of organisations will have one, despite it being a requirement of the forthcoming European General Data Protection Regulation. Unlike a CISO, the DPO has a role specifically focused on protecting the organisation’s most important resource – its data. And even better – they are independent of the IT department and can’t be fired as easily by the CEO. In short, they occupy as objective, dispassionate and critical a role in improving data security within an organisation as you can get. The sooner more firms realise this, the more secure all of our data will be.
further info...
on Trend Micro security services, contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 67
security
68 |
regular
before you BUY
Software vendors offer a huge range of products and solutions on a try before you buy basis, below is a small selection of some of the most popular:
Offers a broad range of products on a trial basis, to view the current selection visit: www.adobe.com/uk/downloads/
A comprehensive Trial centre, providing downloads of many Citrix products: www.citrix.com/site/SS/downloads/index.asp
Offers various free trials on its site located at www.checkpoint.com/products/trials/index.html
Download a free 30 day trail of Good for Enterprise at: www1.good.com/resources/trygood
To try RSA secureID for free visit: www.emc.com/security/index.htm
We wouldn’t expect you to select a new SAM solution without first getting behind the wheel and feeling the performance first. Take a free SAM test drive here: http://www.snowsoftware.com/int/campaign/ take-snow-test-drive
Put Sophos products to the test at: www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-trials.aspx
Offers a comprehensive range of trialware on its site: www.symantec.com/en/uk/business/products/ downloads/index.jsp
Trial versions of McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection Suite & McAfee SaaS Total Protection + several others are available at: A good selection of Trend Micro products available to download here: www.mcafee.com/us/downloads/downloads.aspx http://downloadcenter.trendmicro.com/index. php?regs=uk To trial a broad selection of Microsoft software and service packs visit: www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx
A broad range of Oracle products available for educational and trial purposes are available free of charge at: www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/ downloads/index.html ‌If you already have a commercial licence you should use the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud located here: https://edelivery.oracle.com/
Offers a free download of Veeam ONE for VMware and Hyper V at: www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-reporter-free.html
Download and evaluate VMware Desktop and Datacentre products from: www.vmware.com/tryvmware/
Live and video online demos + evaluation products available at: www.websense.com/content/evaluations.aspx
For flash storage guaranteed for all workloads, all administrators, and all budgets visit: www.purestorage.com/guarantee/
www.bytes.co.uk | 69
applications
70 |
BYTES were named the largest Snow Partner Award 2015
www.bytes.co.uk | 71
applications
WHY
Creative Cloud for teams Tons of new features added since CS6. And you’re always up to date. With Creative Cloud for teams, you get the latest features as soon as they’re released. Since CS6 we’ve added over a thousand features in Creative Cloud to improve productivity, make everyday tasks easier, support the latest standards and hardware and help you create even more amazing work. A frictionless workflow between desktop and mobile. New Adobe mobile apps for iOS and Android extend the power of your desktop apps to your devices so you can create anywhere. Plus services like Adobe Stock and collaboration tools like Creative Cloud Libraries - powered by CreativeSyncput all the assets you need at your fingertips across desktops and mobile devices. Lower up-front costs. With an annual membership, you can budget more predictably, lower up-front costs and leverage volume discounts. Set your own anniversary date to align to your buying cycle, and rest assured your software will always be in compliance. Created for evolving teams. The Admin Console makes it easy for IT to add or reassign seats anytime with just a few clicks. Billing catches up at your next payment cycle so noncompliance is a non-issue. Deploy apps and updates your way - either handle it centrally or let users install as needed. Users can start downloading and using apps immediately. Secure cloud storage and team collaboration. Get up to 100GB per user of secure cloud-based storage to collaborate and share files and folders-all accessible from your desktop, smartphone or tablet. Maintain version control, stay on top of changes and collaborate more seamlessly thanks to CreativeSync technology, which keeps everything connected. Expert help and training. With access to hundreds of video tutorials plus exclusive phone access to Adobe product experts, creative teams can quickly learn new skills and solve workflow issues. Plus IT now has access to advanced 24/7 tech support - including a dedicated phone line for Creative Cloud for teams admins - to help deployments run smoothly.
72 |
FOR MANAGERS: • Licenses that can be reassigned • Predictable budgeting and lower up-front costs • Expert training and consultations for your staff
FOR IT: • Maximum control with flexible deployment options • Dedicated, 24x7 advanced technical support • Powerful data security
FOR CREATIVE PROS: • The latest versions of the world’s best creative tools • Easy collaboration with shared asset libraries • Mobile apps for creating on the go
million 40 & over
inspiring images graphics.ONE
Keep your creative team inspired with access to over 45 million high-quality, royalty-free images and graphics from Adobe Stock - available right inside their Adobe Creative Cloud apps. And one single subscription makes it easy to manage.
SIMPLE PLAN.
Add images to projects without leaving your creative apps. Adobe Stock is built right into Creative Cloud desktop apps such as Adobe Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC and InDesign CC. So your team can browse, test and purchase images without leaving their favorite apps. And they can easily convert watermarked images to licensed images as they work - without IT support. Browse an extensive image marketplace. With a stunning collection of images and graphics curated by Adobe, your team has access to creative assets right at their fingertips. Foster team collaboration. Everyone on your team can license and share images from the same Adobe Stocksubscription, so it’s easy to collaborate on projects and instantly access assets across desktop and mobile. Streamline software management. For one flat subscription, your entire team can use Adobe Stock. And you can purchase, manage and renew your subscription through the same Admin Console you already use to manage Creative Cloud for teams. There are no extra charges for additional users and no credits to track. Get the best value for teams. Adobe Stock offers the industry’s most competitive price for teams. You need only one subscription for all your team members - and everyone can share the images licensed under that subscription. And with the 10 images per month plan, your team can even roll over unused images for up to a year.
further info...
on Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Stock contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 73
applications
ESCALATING
LINUX
COSTS
Evaluate your options for
low cost, business-critical support As one of the most widely deployed operating systems today, Linux is increasingly being adopted for cloudbased solutions. However “free” operating systems from the likes of Red Hat & SUSE are contributing to the escalating costs of open source that organisations are now facing. Bytes offer customers choice, flexibility and value and through Linux subscriptions can offer: alternatives to RHEL with no re-install required, simple switch of a patch server and significant reduction in Linux support costs. Oracle’s support for Linux is the most complete and integrated operating system for the cloud offering: • Scalable: Unlimited VMs with all subscriptions • Value: 24/7 support, management, cluster, resilient storage & XFS included • Accelerated Cloud deployment: Docker , Linux containers & OpenStack support included • Secure & Low-risk foundation: Proven reliability. Tested, trusted, and certified by major server vendors Maximize your security, Minimise your downtime:
Maximise your security, Minimise your downtime:
When administrators take physical or virtual servers offline to load a debugging kernel, apply updates, or install security patches, it results in outages and increased load on the remaining servers, yielding slower response times. The
consequences of downtime are often direct losses in user productivity and missed revenue opportunities. Oracle Linux Premier Support features Ksplice technology that allows administrators to apply updated kernels without downtime. Ksplice eliminates the need to take a server off-line when applying a debugging kernel for troubleshooting or to implement errata, thus eliminating these risks. Ksplice Key Features: • Enables zero-downtime kernel updates for critical security updates and bug fixes • Minimizes security risks by easily keeping system up to date without downtime • Improves application availability for users • Provides kernel diagnostics on production systems • Easily integrates into your environment’s change management practices with rollback feature • Support for Ksplice is included with Oracle Linux Premier Support subscriptions at no additional charge
Oracle Linux Cost Calculator You could save $29,000 with Oracle Linux! $39k
$39k $32k $26k $19k $13k
$10k
$6k $0k
Oracle
* Based on a 1 year support contact for 20 servers, 2 sockets per server and up to 4 virtual guests per server.
Red Hat
See for yourself the kind of cost savings you can get with Oracle Linux: www.oracle.com/us/media/calculator/linuxtco 74 |
Oracle Licensing
MADE EASY
Oracle Licensing is complex. You need to have ongoing access to accurate, up-to-date data on the Oracle software you have deployed and are using - to ensure you optimise your investment while remaining compliant.
BYTES We can provide you with an accurate and complete view across physical, virtual and cloud-based servers to ensure you gain, and maintain, control of your Oracle licensing.
Common Mistakes
Many of our customers are surprised at the challenges they face in trying to accurately determine their true Oracle position. These include: • Discovering all instances of Oracle installed across the network
We find the most common causes of inaccuracy are: • Errors in CPU and core counts especially when dealing with multicore, multi-threaded and virtualised servers
• Correctly identifying all options and management packs in use
• Failure to understand and identify which options require licensing based on installation and which options require licensing based only on use
• Uncovering details of all CPUs and cores in all servers where Oracle is installed • Understanding “hard” and “soft” partitioning rules in virtualised and partitioned environments • Accurately interpreting the information discovered
• Changes made to infrastructure as part of transformation, consolidation and virtualisation projects causing an unintended impact on Oracle licensing
free
OFFER
Your Challenges
were named Oracle Linux Partner of the Year 2015
Discover what Oracle is being used in your business for FREE • An Inventory of your Oracle Apps, Database and Middleware
• A follow up meeting to discuss your usage and compliant position • 100% agentless and mutli-platform • A guarantee that this information is NOT shared with Oracle Simply email tellmemore@bytes. co.uk with the subject line “Free Oracle Licensing Discovery” Alternatively watch our Oracle Licensing Webinar, type into YouTube “Bytes Webinar - Optimising your Oracle Licensing”
www.bytes.co.uk | 75
applications
WHY
upgrade to
DC
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Document Cloud is a revolutionary, modern and efficient way to get work done with documents in the office, at home or on-the-go. At the heart of Document Cloud is the all-new Adobe Acrobat DC, which will take e-signatures mainstream by delivering free e-signing with every individual subscription.
Acrobat DC with Adobe Document Cloud is the complete PDF solution for working anywhere with your most important documents. All-new Acrobat DC is reimagined with a simple user experience. The new Tool Center offers quick access to the tools you use most, while elegant new tool experiences work consistently across desktop, web, and mobile – including touch enabled devices. With extensive updates, it’s a breakthrough in workforce productivity. If you currently own Acrobat X or Acrobat XI, you are eligible for upgrade pricing. Free Adobe Document Cloud PDF services are included with every purchase of Acrobat DC, enabling users to be even more productive with PDFs across desktops, mobile devices and the web.
76 |
Edit PDFs and scans • Turn scanned paper documents into instantly editable PDFs with custom fonts that match the original text (Pro only) • Turn PDFs into editable Word, Excel or PowerPoint files with improved formatting accuracy • Edit text and images in a PDF and reflow text across a page without having to adjust individual paragraphs • Add new lines to existing bulleted or numbered lists in a PDF without reformatting • Run spell-check on your entire PDF document and correct typos • Magically remove backgrounds and instantly adjust perspectives in document photos • Preview and correct suspected text recognition errors in scans with a side-by-side view • Quickly complete PDF forms with smart autofill, and then apply your e-signature Create PDFs • Create, protect and send PDFs directly from popular Office apps for Windows • Create high-quality PDFs in Microsoft Word for Mac with links included (Pro only) • Create a customised collection of Acrobat features to simplify specialised business tasks
Interact with PDFs • Select the Save ink/toner option to reduce costs when printing from Windows • Instantly find the right tools through a task-based onscreen experience • Work with touch-enabled devices • Read PDFs aloud with VoiceOver support on Mac computers • Read text more easily in highcontrast mode on your PC with dynamic background adjustment Work anywhere • View, search, print, sign and comment on PDFs with the Acrobat Reader mobile app • Easily access and edit files in Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive Deploy and manage Acrobat and Acrobat Reader • Deploy Acrobat in virtualised environments with support for Citrix XenApp, Microsoft App-V and UE-V
Adobe Acrobat DC version comparison Acrobat DC is the next release of Acrobat - after Acrobat XI. See what’s new and improved versus prior versions. Acrobat X Pro
Acrobat XI Pro
Acrobat Pro DC
Edit PDFs and scans Edit Scans
Turn scanned paper documents into instantly editable PDFs with fonts that match the original text
•
Export PDFs
Turn PDFs into editable Word, Excel or PowerPoint files with improved formatting accuracy
•
Edit PDFs
Edit PDF text and images intuitively, clicking and dragging to reflow paragraphs
Reflow Paragraphs
Reflow text across a page without having to adjust individual paragraphs
•
Edit Lists
Add new lines to existing bulleted or numbered lists in a PDF without reformatting
•
Check Spelling
Run spell-check on your entire document and correct typos
Replace Text
Find and replace text in a single step
Enhance Photos
Magically remove backgrounds and instantly adjust perspectives in document photos
•
Enhance Scans
Preview and correct suspected text recognition errors with a side-by-side view
•
•
•
• •
•
Create PDFs Combine Files
Drag and drop to preview and arrange documents and pages before combining them into one PDF
Create Custom Tool business tasks
Create a customised collection of Acrobat features to simplify specialised
Action Wizard
Create guided Actions to step workers through PDF tasks consistently and efficiently
•
• •
o
•
•
Interact with PDFs Find Tools
Instantly find the right tools through a task-based onscreen experience
•
Touch Enabled
Work with touch-enabled devices
•
Reduce Ink & Toner
Select the Save ink/toner option to reduce costs when printing from Windows
•
Validate Accessibility
Create and validate PDFs based on WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA accessibility standards
Mac OS X Accessibility
Read PDFs aloud with VoiceOver support on Mac computers
•
High Contrast Accessibility
Read text more easily in high-contrast mode on your PC with dynamic background adjustment
•
Acrobat Reader mobile app
View, search, print, sign and comment on PDFs with the Acrobat Reader mobile app
•
Access files
Quickly access and edit files stored in Dropbox, Box or Microsoft OneDrive accounts while working in Acrobat
•
Fill & Sign
Quickly complete PDF forms with smart autofill, and then apply your e-signature
•
Microsoft Word integration
Create high-quality PDFs in Microsoft Word for Mac
•
Microsoft Office integration
Create, protect and send PDFs directly from popular Office apps for Windows
•
Microsoft SharePoint integration
Connect to Microsoft SharePoint for PDF storage and sharing, form data collection or shared reviews
•
•
Work anywhere
Microsoft integration
•
•
Deploy and manage Virtualisation
Deploy Acrobat in virtualised environments with support for Citrix XenApp, Microsoft App-V and UE-V
Deployment
Streamline Acrobat installation and configuration using standard tools such as Microsoft SCCM/SCUP, Apple Remote Desktop, Adobe Customisation Wizard and Creative Cloud packager
Contains a portion of the capability
• •
•
further info...
on Adobe Acrobat Pro DC contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 77
BYTES has won 3 Adobe Channel Partner Awards in recent years
deployment
to
help
customers... Andy Walker Deployment Services Manager
OUR
...fully utilise the technology locked in their software licensing agreements, we offer Deployment Services that can scope and implement many projects, including but not limited to, Cloud, Virtualisation, Unified Communications, Business Intelligence, Security and Data Back-Up services. With deployments ranging across SME, Mid Market and Enterprise organisations, Bytes has built a strong reputation as a Partner that can not only bring sense, clarity and cost control to software licensing but also excellence in the delivery of solutions, with the specific aim of driving true benefit to our customers. If you’d like to know more about how our Deployment Services can help you unlock the true value in your licensing agreements, with the potential to receive additional funding from Microsoft, please read the following articles or ask your Account Manager for more information about the spectrum of technologies that we can deliver.
78 |
FLEX SUPPORT WITH
MICROSOFT premier Bytes is delighted to offer Microsoft Premier Support
Whether you require support in rolling out new systems or business processes, expert guidance on technology adoption, knowledge sharing and workshops, or 24/7 support for mission critical applications, our enhanced support offering will help you manage your Microsoft infrastructure with confidence.
Our support offering provides the services, tools and experts to help you maximise your investment in Microsoft technologies. By offering detailed technical assessments, reviews and advice - backed by Microsoft Premier Support - we can keep your systems running, healthy, and ahead of the competition.
A Dedicated Team of Microsoft Experts Our dedicated team of support professionals are able to resolve issues proactively or monitor your IT operations and help alleviate any issues that may arise. Calls are taken by our existing UK based support desk where initial diagnostics will be carried out with the aim of resolving issues through our triage and support teams.
Support Tailored to Your Business Bytes offers a wide spectrum of comprehensive solutions that are backed with Microsoft Premier Support to ensure your technologies stay highly available, well-maintained, and up to date at all times. With direct, 24/7 access to the world’s top Microsoft technical experts, Microsoft Services Premier Support provides escalation for urgent issues, strategic advice for optimising current systems and knowledge sharing tailored to your unique IT environment, enabling you to get the most out of your Microsoft platform.
Bytes support solutions includes priority break/fix support from Microsoft and response times as fast as 1 hour for the most critical issues. • Expert assistance for technical problems - 24 hours a day, seven days a week • Support escalation to the highest level necessary • Priority access to hotfixes and critical product updates
Your Support Options Option 1: Microsoft Premier Support (Vendor Support Model) • Calls logged with 24x7 Service Desk • We will back every call off to Microsoft Premier Support under their umbrella agreement • All calls will be resolved by Microsoft Option 2: Bytes Support & Escalation to Microsoft (Hybrid Support Model) • Calls logged with 24x7 Service Desk • We will resolve where possible internally with in-house resources • We will escalate when necessary to Microsoft Premier Support under their umbrella agreement Option 3: In-House Support (Internal Support Model) • Calls logged with 24x7 Service Desk • We will resolve all calls with in-house SME Resources
next steps...
If you would like to understand more about Premier Support from Bytes please contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 79
deployment
packaged
System Center Simple, Quick and Comprehensive Deployment Solution for Enterprise Systems and Devices Management Announcing the upcoming release of a packaged solution that you can use to fully define, deploy and configure an enterprise grade deployment of System Center Configuration Manager, with the other components being released later in 2016 For many years System Center Configuration Manager has been a staple for many organisations to manage their user’s devices and configuration. With extended capabilities leveraging the cloud via Intune and Azure AD to provide a full Enterprise Device Management platform delivering capabilities for Mobile Device Management and integrated security for Applications, Single-sign on and password reset. The value this system can bring has never been higher. For many though, deployment has been a task that has been difficult to contend with, being an expert system requiring specialised knowledge
or reasonable amount of external consultancy to setup. Many times hearing that “we had it deployed but could never get it to work for ourselves”. These challenges have now been eliminated by leveraging the tooling and specialist support brought to you by Bytes and our partner PowerONPlatforms. These System Center Packages are a modern, easy-to-use deployment solution that enables your teams to quickly and comprehensively setup the capabilities of the toolsets to provide rapid and significant return for your business. These solutions have been used by our consultants for the last 3 years delivering implementations of System Center for both SMB organisations and large multi-national organisations. With this comes a trusted and reliable tooling with a guarantee of the deployment outcome.
• Online Provisioning Tool – Deployment Solution to provide a personalised deployment • Remote Engineer Support – for Customisations or Configuration Support • User Knowledge Subscription – Regular Online Instructor Training Combining the strength of the deployment solution with a training approach that focuses on regular instructor lead sessions and ondemand content over a 12 month or ongoing period, means that your team can get the knowledge they need both in the immediate and long term to make the most of the solution.
This solution brings together a number of key elements: • Comprehensive Step by Step Design Guide
next steps...
If you would like to understand more about Packaged System Center options from Bytes please contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
80 |
the move to
vSphere Enterprise Plus VMware vSphere licensing is changing and we are offering complementary assessments to help our customers understand and plan for these changes.
What’s changing? From 30 June 2016, vSphere Enterprise edition and vSphere with Operations Management (VSOM) Standard and Enterprise editions will no longer be available, although they will be supported until 12 March 2020. Customers with multi-year Support and Subscription Services (SnS) will see no effect until renewal, when they may see an increase in their SnS price. Customers currently using vSOM Standard edition will have their licencing fulfilled to the individual components, and may add new licences to their environment by purchasing vSphere Standard and VROps Standard. Why Enterprise Plus? Enterprise Plus offers a robust feature set designed to transform
your Datacentres into a dramatically simplified cloud computing environment, with enhanced application availability and performance including: • vSphere Distributed Switch • Storage DRS • Host Profiles • Auto Deploy, and more….
Your complementary assessment Will work with you free of charge to assess your existing vSphere environment and explore the full features of vSphere or VSOM Enterprise Plus edition. How can we help? • We’ll start by undertaking a discovery assessment of your vSphere environment using the Sonar cloud-based analytics and reporting service • The findings will be presented to you in a review meeting, so you can understand exactly how the features of Enterprise Plus edition could benefit your environment
• We’ll cover off any other questions regarding your environment and outline the next steps available to you If you decide to upgrade to Enterprise Plus, you can take advantage of additional consultancy services: • Accelerator services – expert advice, demonstration, objective evaluation of your options, scoping your requirements, producing a project plan, etc • Implementation services – design, validation and deployment of the upgrade, workload transfer, etc All delivered by industry-leading consultants, highly accredited and certified in the entire VMware competency set.
Licence upgrade price reduction Until 25 June, save 50% when you upgrade to vSphere or VSOM Enterprise Plus edition.
next steps...
If you would like a FREE assessment of your VMware estate from Bytes please contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 81
deployment
CLOUD
PBX
Voice Your Way The perfect combination of innovation, simplicity and choice in a virtual all-in-one telephone system… We live in a world of Unified Communications (UC). People use many software applications to communicate. A phone system is still needed, but its use as a “stand-alone” audio solution is changing. With UC, you now have a wider range of communication options - IM/chat, video calls, phone calls, calling from PC clients and mobile devices (BYOD). Unlike the traditional PBX, where communications usually starts with dialing a number, UC often starts with an instant message (IM). As IM becomes the new dial tone (‘You there?”, “Can you talk now?”) – Skype for Business Cloud PBX becomes the new virtual telephone solution. Currently, many companies manage their telephone communications using a PBX system, which is essentially hardware that acts as a private telephone switchboard. Now, with Skype for Business Cloud PBX, you can eliminate separate, legacy PBX systems and move functions of the PBX into the Cloud - assign and manage phone numbers using Skype controls within your Office 365 admin console, and easily enable dial-in telephone numbers for your Skype meetings. It enables you to leverage Skype for Business Online and integrate voice calls with the rest of your Skype for Business investment and communication and collaboration strategy. All while enjoying cost savings
and operational simplicity of a Microsoft Hosted or Hybrid Service. Skype for Business Cloud PBX provides a set of features directly delivered from Office 365 and tightly integrates into Cloud PBX CCE and Gateway your company’s cloud productivity experience. You can take care of basic call control tasks such as; placing, receiving and, transferring calls, and muting and unmuting calls. Cloud PBX gives you the Cloud PBX Hyrbid freedom to use your mobile device or a headset with a laptop or PC – it is available on Lync 2013 and Skype for Business 2015 and 2016 desktop clients. Hosted or Hybrid? Cloud PBX can be implemented, one of four ways: 1. Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling Service (Hosted Model) – mobile phone and landline calling, on a global-scale, which is an add-on to Office 365. 2. Skype for Business Server Existing Deployment (Hybrid Model) – receiving and sending calls, through an existing voice infrastructure. 3. Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition (CCE Hybrid Model) – deployed at your premises, allowing existing PSTN connectivity to be utilised. 4. SBC Gateway Cloud Connector Edition (Gateway SBC Hybrid Model) – a ‘OneBox’ solution provided by a third-party PSTN Gateway, integrating Skype for Business with an On-Premise PBX and PSTN Connectivity.
Need Advice?
We can design and implement a voice deployment of your choice – whether its hybrid or moving completely to the cloud.
next steps...
If you would like to explore your options for a Hybrid or Cloud PBX system, contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
82 |
Keeping you
SAFE while you SAVE
A new approach to outsourcing Cloud security and identity management The outsourcing of security and identity management services to SME’s has gained recent momentum as companies start to entrust their security and privacy to external organisations who can manage it cost-effectively. Security and Identity management as-a-service can offer customers a broad range of benefits including identity governance, simple and secure access management for users and groups, virus definition updates, fast user provisioning and delegating administrative activities and tasks to security experts. Aurora OneStop offers secure desktop, networking, mobile and cloud services under one managed service umbrella. You can make use of the whole service or any part of it to manage how and when you move to the cloud. Aurora OneStop has four key options:
Option 1 – OneStop for User Identity
We can synchronise multiple systems – such as HR software and Active Directory – and keep them in-sync with seamless single sign-on to cloud or on-premise applications, and support multiple merged directories. • A shared admin’ view that both you and our support staff can access • New user/group workflows with rules for name generation and duplicate handling • Joiner and Leaver workflow • Full automation and provisioning with Office 365 • Single-sign-on to cloud and applications • User self-service and password reset • Multi-factor authentication with biometric support
Option 2 – OneStop for Networking
We have two secure Datacentres, from which we can provide breakout / connectivity and Hosted ExpressRoute straight into Azure/Office 365 in a load-balanced configuration. We can install, configure and support new routers on-premise and connect them straight to our Datacentre. • Direct MPLS connections and point-to-point VPN straight into our managed rack – with all other tasks managed in the cloud • Fast set-up – you can be up and running within days instead of months with high-speed, dedicated connections • Fully-managed NOC capability with 24/7 support • Skype for Business infrastructure available in the rack for a fullfeatured unified comms
Stage 3 – OneStop for Security
We can provide enhanced services for all of Azure managed and hosted options and servers. • 24/7 Security Operations Centre • Qualified Certified Information Systems Security Professional / Certified Ethical Hacker • Threat Analytics
• Intrusion Detection & Prevention tool • Password Manager • Privileged Account Management • Disaster Recovery Service.
Stage 4 – OneStop for Desktops and Mobile
Once you have identity, security and networking in place, you will be ready to move to a new Windows 10 or MacBook desktop and Core has penetration-tested builds that we can deliver right away. • 24/7 Desktop and mobile support • Windows 10 Pro and Windows Azure or Enterprise joined to the domain, to suit your needs and budget • IOS, Android or Windows 10 phones • Mobile Device Management • Asset management, support desk, Inventories and self-service software portal with authorisation workflows • Rights Management Services Wherever you are on your own journey to the cloud, OneStop can make it easier and faster and help you to reduce cost and risk for your organisation. We provide exactly what you need, as a fully managed service – as and when you need it. If you’d like more information about Aurora OneStop services, please get in touch…
next steps...
If you would like to understand more about the Aurora OneStop solution please contact your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 83
deployment
ready to
EXPLORE AZURE? Introducing ElastaBytes - a joint venture between Bytes and Elastacloud to support significant customer demand for Microsoft Azure Deployment.
By bringing together the technical expertise of the best Azure partner – Elastacloud - with the licensing and account management expertise of the largest UK Azure partner – Bytes - we are able to offer a unique service to our customers by designing solutions that are secure and reliable and provide license & usage clarity. Quality of service is paramount to Elastabytes which is why we do not engage in large PaaS workloads or High Performance Computing or Internet of Things but instead are solely focused on providing design and migration services to Azure as well as generating, understanding and reacting to real-time telemetry from Azure deployments.
Tailored Azure Services • Identifying what is suitable to Migrate • Planning the Migration • Design & Migrations services • Telemetry – Generating, Understanding and Reacting • Clear Visibility on Consumption & Cost
At ElastaBytes we address precisely what customers are asking for. Customers want help in deciding what is suitable to migrate to the cloud, need help in planning the migration, require someone to manage and support the workloads that are moved to the cloud and equally important, a partner that can offer them clear visibility of what is consumed and how much it costs. We have also developed PowerBi powered OMS and Billing dashboards to address customer demand for operational efficiency and clarity on their Azure consumption.
learn more...
and to arrange an exploration meeting, please contact John Garidis on 07525 903872 or email johng@elastabytes.com
84 |
regular
BYTES SOFTWARE & LICENSING SERVICES UK and Global Software Licensing Experts Bytes Software Licensing Services With over 600 different vendors to choose from, and with over 20 years’ experience providing software solutions to businesses, Bytes is perfectly positioned to meet your software licensing needs. Amongst other benefits, Bytes utilise their purchasing power and strong relationships with software vendors to negotiate the best possible rates, whether it’s volume licensing or specialist software. But we’re not simply about maximising your procurement budget. All of our team are experts in software licensing which enables us to provide you a truly focussed level of software licensing knowledge and support. We provide information about current software enhancements and other announcements as they happen and can recommend the solutions from established and emerging technology vendors.
But of course, the key benefit to you is how much we can save you. By analysing and assessing your current software usage (see our TLC offer below) we can re-shape your licence model to fit prevalent vendor discounting offers, and by using our intimate knowledge of vendor licence agreements we can maximise the right deal for all parties. Imagine a situation in which your software requirements are accurately predicted both now and years into the future. Bytes can make this a reality by analysing your IT infrastructure and comparing it to growing trends in the market, allowing us to recommend licensing agreements that are both cost-efficient and flexible enough to grow with your business. Bytes International Licensing International companies with a global software requirement will benefit from our specialist knowledge of international licensing. We are highly experienced in handling the myriad of different approaches to managing ICT systems internationally, helping you to overcome the technological and cultural barriers to local adoption. In order to gain you the best price possible, we can also use the foreign exchange markets to purchase the software in the most costeffective currency.
“The RFU have been in partnership with Bytes for the last 7 years. Bytes has been at the forefront of getting an understanding of how we work as a business, how we can leverage costs and reduce expenses”. Head of IT, Rugby Football Union
The Bytes Portal Everything comes together through the Bytes Portal, including: The Service Desk – a quick and easy communication channel into Bytes. Online Ordering – purchasing your software has never been easier, and the flexible system is entirely tailored towards your company’s needs. Contract and Maintenance Management – existing licences are tracked with atraffic light system and warnings issued when the licence renewal dates are approaching. During each stage of the process the system feeds back information, which we can use to negotiate favourable rates for software renewals.
Jack Watson Bytes Sales Director
learn more...
about Bytes Software & Licensing Services and SAM services, please speak to your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 85
regular
BYTES SAM SERVICES Software Asset Management isn’t just about compliance, it’s importance in large corporations for increasing performance and profits is becoming clear. Software Asset Management has been a necessary consideration for large companies for the past ten years, and Bytes have been at the forefront of this industry since day one. Many companies claim to offer SAM, but very few prioritise it as a core service. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner for SAM and were instrumental in establishing the ISO19770 standard in 2007. For companies that are using, or looking to use a Software Asset Management company, Bytes have three packages that will ensure your company is maximising the efficiency of its software estate. Taking one package does not restrict you from utilising parts of another; in fact many of our clients will later pick and choose various products from within another service range because either their internal structure changes, or because they find they waste less time, resources and money by outsourcing some of their SAM requirements to us. 1. A Software Licence Review (SLR): The first package is a full software asset audit, which gives companies a clear picture of their current software portfolio status and a definitive account of software users. We can utilise your existing SAM software, such as Altiris, SCCM, LANdesk, to name but a few, or we can use our own system to conduct the review. Fundamentally this package is designed for customers that need to inventory their software assets either for compliancy reasons, or to ensure they are making full use of their software investment. In both instances it is imperative that a completely accurate picture is generated from the audit, and Bytes will provide you with exactly that.
86 |
2. Asset Management Platform (AMP): For a continual overview of your software portfolio, we can supply and implement one of the world’s most respected SAM platforms – Snow Licence Manager. Snow Licence Manager is fully ISO 19770 and ITIL compliant and comes highly recommend by us. This package principally involves supplying and implementing the software; however, we can also provide both technical support and assistance with system controls and data entry. 3. The Bytes Asset Management Service (AMS): For those who do not have the time or resources to manage their software portfolio, Bytes offer a fully managed SAM solution. From initial audit and installation of an Asset Management Platform, we can take total control over usage, licenses, vendor audits, procurement and end-of-life software. To augment this service we have created a bespoke online resource that allows you to monitor and control your software estate in real time. The Bytes Portal is easy to use, extremely practical and very cost-effective.
Maria Singleton SAM Licensing Practice Manager
“ Throughout the SAM process, Bytes demonstrated a tremendous level of knowledge and provided us with an extraordinary service. They’ve proved their value to the firm and have earned their place as one of our trusted business partners”. IT Manager, Martineau Johnson
BYTES LEARNING SERVICES Finding the right training course for you and your organisation just got easier! In 2010 Bytes organised 2,786 courses across 400 companies, in both the UK and internationally. Our independent position, coupled with our extensive knowledge and close relationships with all major vendors, means that we can source the highest standard of courses covering all forms of software learning, management and personal development. We can cater for all requirements and budgets, utilising our buying power to offer our customers the best rates. Our Learning Solutions team was established in 2000 and continues to grow as the importance of software and management learning becomes recognised. Our experience, systems and partners, means that whatever the course you’re looking for, we’re confident we can find it for you in less time and at lower cost.
The range of training courses offered: • Vendor specific courses including Microsoft, Oracle, Unix, VMware, Adobe, Citrix, Symantec, Cisco, Juniper, Novell, IBM, Lotus and many more • Management & Personal Development • Information Technology Areas including Virtualisation, Infrastructure, Networking, IT security, PC Maintenance, Software Licensing • Data & Telecommunications • Project, Programme & Service Management including Prince2 and ITIL • Desktop Applications from Adobe, Lotus, Microsoft to bespoke
“Bytes Software Services were able to provide us with a flexible approach in providing a team of high quality and appropriately qualified trainers to deliver training in a number of our offices. They quickly understood our requirements and provided us with a robust and well supported solution.” Director of ISS, Linklaters
Bytes offer a range of learning services to meet our customer specific requirements: Bespoke training If you need something that’s not ‘off the shelf’, let us know what you are looking for and we can put together a training solution to fit. Whether it’s a mix of technologies and vendors or the need for tailored on-site or off-site courses we can help. eLearning The most cost and time effective method of on-line training available. Whether it’s standalone or as part of a blended training solution, eLearning courses can provide the most flexible solution. All our eLearning courses are provided by our training solutions partner, Arc IT Training.
Bytes Licensing Academy We offer two courses: ‘Licensing Essentials’ and ‘SAM Best Practice’. The Bytes Licensing Academy has been developed for our customers to help understand the complexities of software licensing and software asset management. These half day courses - vendor-specific or generic - are run by Bytes and they are for both the novice and experienced. Rachel Gill Learning Solutions Operations Manager
Training Budget Services To help our customers maximise their training budgets, we offer a range of services designed to fit a variety of budgets and payment systems. Prepayment discounting and price freezing along with prepayment budget management are some of the payment methods offered.
learn more...
about Bytes Learning Services, please speak to your Bytes account manager on 01372 418500
www.bytes.co.uk | 87
interview
in the
hotseat Matt Ellard
Senior Vice President - EMEA Sales, Veritas. In this feature we interview a senior figure from the world of IT. We ask them a bit about their view of technology from their perspective, but mostly we like to be nosey and find out about the person behind the job title! As a child what did you want to be when you grew up? Journalist or a lawyer. What was your first job? I had various part time jobs, cleaning, bar job and teaching English but my first full time job was a graduate working for Chemical Bank. What was your first job in IT and what year? Account manager for Computacenter, 1997.
88 |
What is your current job title? Senior Vice President, EMEA Sales, Veritas. In a nutshell what does your current job entail? My job is to manage, coordinate and collaborate with all the customer facing Veritas resources in Europe, Middle East and Africa and to ensure that we always deliver value and benefit to our customers and partners in their ongoing challenge to better manage and govern their information. What do you think was the single biggest and most beneficial influence on IT in the last 20 years and why? I am not sure about IT specifically but the introduction and development of the internet over the last 20 years has
undoubtedly transformed our ability to access and share information more readily. Although this has brought its own challenges, it is truly beneficial. What do you think will be the next ‘big thing’ in IT and why ? Further developments in machine learning will be interesting to observe. If you could have lunch with three famous people, past or present, who would you choose and why? Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare and James Corden.
What was the last book you read and what did you think of it? About a Boy by Nick Hornby. Good, but not as good as Fever Pitch. What is your favourite TV programme? I am not sure, House of Cards, West Wing and Sopranos are probably my favourites of all time. What is your greatest achievement? I have been married for 18 years and have two great sons. I am very proud of that. What are your hobbies? Pretty much being a dad. Do you have a favourite saying or motto, if so what is it? John Wooden said, Whatever you do in life surround yourself with smart people who will argue with you. I think that’s a very smart perspective. What is your favourite biscuit? I will be quite retro with this and say Jammie Dodger. If you were asking the questions for this piece what single question would you ask? What makes you want to go the extra mile.
If you could trade places with any person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional, with whom would it be and why? Tony Stark. Very cool toys and suit. If you were given a month off and the money for fares and accommodation, where in the world would you go and why? It would have to be Tahoe and I would time it exactly right to enjoy both skiing and the lake. You’re going to a desert island for 90 days. What do you pack in your carry-on? As my family won’t fit in a carry on it would have to be Gin, Tonic, Limes, Life of Brian movie and an album called the Big Calm by Morcheeba. What and where is your favourite restaurant? For my family, The Greyound pub/ restaurant. We have been going there for some time, great food and lots of memories created. Outside of that, any NOBU around the world.
…and what would your answer to the above question be ? My family. Oh and I hate losing.
If you could recommend one person to follow on Twitter who would it be and why? I am a social media dinosaur, probably best to ask my kids.
www.bytes.co.uk | 89
awards
&
Key achievements A small selection of some of the awards we have won recently:
accred
awards • Sunday Times Best Companies to Work for 2016 • Oracle Linux Partner of the Year 2016 • Appsense Partner of the Year 2016 • Sophos Partner of the Year 2016 • Microsoft EMEA Operations Licensing Solution Partner Excellence 2015 • Microsoft EMEA Operations Cloud Licensing Solution Partner 2015 • Microsoft Sales Achievement for Cloud Sales 2015
Our vendor team is made up of a number of specialists who are dedicated to specific vendors and technology areas. Acting as an overlay to the sales teams, they ensure that our customers receive the best advice on the solutions available and negotiate hard with vendors in order to receive the most competitive cost.
• Microsoft Country Partner of the Year Finalist 2015 • Snow Largest Partner of the Year 2015 • Good Technology Partner of the Year 2015 • CRN Enterprise Reseller of the Year 2014 • SC Awards, Best Security Company 2014 • Microscope Aces, Innovative & SME Reseller of the Year 2014 • NetApp EMEA Midsize Market Partner of the Year 2014 • Mimecast Growth Partner of the Year 2014 • SC Magazine CSO of the Year Finalist, Bytes CTO David Rawle • CRN Sales and Marketing Awards 2014 Sales Team of the Year • Computing Security Awards - Security Service Provider of the Year
“Bytes Security Partnerships has long been a key partner for Check Point, and the acquisition by Bytes Technology Group will further strengthen our relationship. The company adds real value in the solutions it delivers to customers, using Check Point technology to simplify complex security challenges.” UK Managing Director, Check Point
Adam Thornton Vendor Solutions Director, Bytes
90 |
accreditations
itations Strategic Partnerships
“Bytes are one of our most proactive and dynamic partners and work with us and our mutual clients to deliver very high levels of service. They have continually demonstrated a first class knowledge of the products and solutions to the clients with the customer’s business priorities at the forefront of their minds.” Director ERM Sales and Marketing UK, Citrix
Platinum Partner
4* Elite Partner
Gold Partner
Silver Partner
Platinum Partner
Gold Partner
Authorised Reseller
Gold Partner
Gold Certified Partner (Volume Licensing & SAM)
Certified Partner
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Affiliate Elite Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Premier Partner
Strong Relationships Certified Partner
Preferred Partner
Gold Partner
Certified Solution Partner
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Accredited Partner
Authorised Partner
Business Partner
Authorised Reseller
Authorised Partner
Gold Partner
Authorised Partner
Business Partner
Accredited Partner
Cloud Connected Reseller Partner
Authorised Partner
Silver Partner
Business Partner
Member Level Partner
AIP
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Elite Level Partner
Silver Partner
Gold Partner
Approved Partner
Premier Partner
Red Hat Ready Partner
Gold Partner
Premier Partner
Silver Partner
Gold Level Partner
Gold Partner
Affinity One Partner
Authorised Partner
Gold Partner
Accredited Partner
We source over 500 software brands for our customers
www.bytes.co.uk | 91