With 140 company mail boxes Faber and Faber was operating with a dated version of Microsoft Exchange that had become restrictive to their needs. Looking initially to upgrade their original software they quickly realised it would prove too costly, and the requirement to upgrade would present itself again in due course. Faber and Faber needed a mail server that would support user communication and collaboration. They were looking for an alternative I.T. solution to reduce resource requirements and improve efficiencies. Most importantly they needed to migrate with minimal disruption to the working day, whilst simultaneously revolutionising the way they operated.

After considering various tools they settled on Cloud Technology Solutions Cloud Migrator which would successfully migrate them from their existing on premise applications to Google Apps. Cloud Technology Solutions was able to adapt the solution to meet the requirements of Faber and Faber. One of the most attractive parts of the migration is the ease of deployment – they didn’t need to own, manage, or deploy any software. Performing the migration remotely, Cloud Technology Solutions successfully and swiftly migrated 140 mailboxes to Google Apps for business in a matter of weeks.

With Faber’s new system employees are able to directly log in to their accounts from any device at any time. This allows them to access to all of their emails and calender appointments. Moving forwards Faber and Faber are now looking towards collaboration with the aid of documents and Sites. Remote access takes away the usual restrictions of working in the office 9 to 5 giving Faber and Faber the flexibility they need to run effective, smooth and fruitful operations.

The move to Google Apps for Business dramatically reduced Faber’s I.T costs. An upgrade of Microsoft Exchange along with the costs of running the technology would cost in excess of £30K. A single Google mailbox costs approximately 20% of a Microsoft Exchange License. Google Apps is constantly updating and evolving under the surface and so incurs no add on costs or annual stings. Faber and Faber has become a more productive company with better communication and collaboration, continuing to embrace this technological revolution.

Gmail’s spam detection is amongst the best in the industry and has the benefit of being able to automatically learn a user’s individual preferences when they mark a message as spam or not. Our experience has shown that users prefer being in control of their spam but were confused by having to go to a separate interface to manage their settings in Postini, so this change should be welcomed by administrators and users alike.

Benefits

If you have created an organisational hierarchy within Google Apps you will be able to apply different policies at different organisation levels. Settings at a parent level will be inherited by sub-levels and additional filters can then be applied. This allows businesses to apply baseline policies for the entire organisation at the top-most level and then apply department or function specific policies further down.

A particularly useful feature is the ability to create multiple mail footers which can be enabled and disabled a needed. This give businesses the flexibility to create specific marketing messages and apply them to all outbound emails during a particular marketing campaign, then disable them centrally when the campaign is over. You can also decide which footers are added to internal emails so that you don’t need to clutter up internal mail with all the branding and compliance information that you would include on external messages.

Transitioning

Administrators that have integrated Postini enabled will be contacted directly by Google with transition instructions. However, there is nothing to stop businesses starting to move over straight away. Policies can be created within the Google Apps settings today and left in a disabled state until it’s time to cut-over.

DNS and Control Panel Changes

Cutting over from Postini will require a change the to DNS MX records associated with any domains you have in Google Apps. This includes domain aliases as well as primary domains. This change will route incoming mail directly to Gmail instead of Postini so it’s important to have the policies in place at this time.

If SPF records have been entered for Postini these will also need to be replaced by Google’s SPF details.

Changes will also be needed within the Google Apps settings to remove Postini as the inbound and outbound gateway.

Available Features

The Google Apps control panel now includes the following email management features:

• Content Compliance and Objectionable Content filters
• Compliance Footers
• Approved and Blocked Sender lists
• Attachment Controls
• Restricted email delivery

Last year Norbulk saw an opportunity to revolutionise their operations on land too. With over 100 staff based in their Glasgow office and a further 150 across the world, better communication throughout the company was essential and proving difficult with a legacy Novell GroupWise system. Prior to switching to Google Apps Norbulk were experiencing niggling downtime of servers, occupying a noticeable amount of time and IT resources. Haakon Karlsen, Ship Manager, described this as the ‘tipping point’ and the assurance of more secure and efficient computing with the cloud proved the wise option.

After exploring many avenues Norbulk decided Google Apps for Business would fit best within their company. Acting on Google’s recommendation, Norbulk chose Cloud Technology Solutions to help move their IT systems into the cloud. Cloud Technology Solutions helped plan a strategy for Norbulk Shipping starting with a pilot scheme in the U.K Office. They ran their pilot through various levels of the company for two months. After getting great feedback they rolled out Google Apps for Business throughout the rest of the company. With the use of Cloud Technology Solution’s CloudMigrator, Norbulk Shipping were able to move email, calendars, contacts and appointments from their old mail server to their new cloud based environment.

During and after the migration, our technical support team went to Glasgow to help train the staff with the new software. Stuart Cummings, our deployment specialist, worked one-on-one with a selection of staff, allowing the training to be passed on internally through the company. Our training style at Cloud Technology Solutions has proved successful, working with staff hands on, and showing new users how they can work more efficiently. We bring in real world examples as much as possible, veering away from simply instructing staff how to use it. Haakon Karlsen, Ship Manager, commented on their training with Cloud Technology Solutions

The training with Cloud Technology Solutions was great. The training team were often around during the migration to help users and when they weren’t there they were always available online. The success of the pilot and the training they received meant the staff on the pilot scheme could then go on to do one on one training with new users.

Google Apps for Business was well received by staff. One of the features that Norbulk Shipping greatly benefited from was Google Docs. The collaborative nature of Google Docs allows people to access and work on a document simultaneously at any time. With remote access staff are able to work on the go accessing their data on any device by simply logging in.

Norbulk Shippings’ migration was a great success due to the planning and preparation. Haakon Karlson speaks enthusiastically about moving to the cloud:-

When moving to the cloud you really should research all the services that are out there. Looking at cost comparisons alone there are great savings to be made in a relatively short amount of time. It’s important to look at how it will effect your functionality. Your success depends on how well you do your planning, strategy and implementation. We found an extended pilot including members right up to the top was useful to ensure Google Apps for Business would work throughout the whole company. On the whole the staff reacted positively to the move and now it’s plain sailing!

Approximately 22,000 employees will make the move to Google Apps. The state of Utah plan to use Google Apps for emails, calendar and collaboration tools such as Google docs and video chat. In 2010 they saw an opportunity to dramatically cut costs and improves communications through the Google offering. With Google Apps for Government workers ‘on the go’ can have access to their mail, calendar etc through a unique log in. With help from Tempus Nova the State of Utah hopes to have completed the full migration by the end of year 2012.

Both of these large scale migrations were made possible with the use of our CloudMigrator, the world’s leading migration tool. We’re proud of the resilience that this has demonstrated and as our proven track record continues to grow it’s exciting to be a key part of such big projects.

The U.S.A government are moving to the cloud at a high pace and we’re looking forward to the U.K following suit in 2012.

The Cloud Migrator is the world’s only multi-platform migration tool, that can now migrate data from Lotus Notes/Domino directly into the Google Apps platform, Google Postini Services and Microsoft Office 365/Exchange 2007/2010. The tool has the power to take on whatever needs our ever expanding customer spectrum has. It is written and supported in-house and supports all Notes platforms from 6.02 upwards. This chameleon like approach to development enables us to successfully cater to all customers, from any sector into the cloud.

The Cloud Migrator 2.0 will move all of your emails, calendars, contacts and appointments from your mail server to your new cloud based environment. The Cloud Migrator Tool is enriched with several new features and improvements. The tool can now move unlimited mailboxes simultaneously resulting in a much faster migration. When using the Cloud Migrator from Cloud Technology Solutions, there is no need to install any software on to your server in effect this makes your migration much more secure with no risk of downtime. As well as allowing better delegation of rights. The tool has superior and extensive reporting for both end users and central administrators.

So why are thousands of organisations choosing to move to Cloud based servers ?

• Dramatically lower costs freeing up some of your I.T budget.
• You can access all your data and cloud application, anytime, anywhere.
• The cost of ownership is much lower as you no longer have to own or maintain servers.
• You can work on the move on any device with an internet connection. Whether that’s your laptop, tablet or smartphone.
• You no longer have to worry about software updates, licensing fees or virus protection this is all done for you.
• You can focus your business on your core goals rather than I.T maintenance.
• Reliability: How reliable is your back up plan if your mail server goes down? With Cloud Applications this is all mapped out.

Why are people choosing to move away from Lotus Notes?

• Managing Lotus Notes servers is proving to be an increasingly costly experience.
• Lotus Notes has proved difficult to use in smaller organisations
• Lotus Notes has diminishing engineers and system administrators available in the marketplace to maintain and develop.
• Lotus Notes has become dated and limiting in comparison to other offerings.

2012 looks to be the year people are going to make the move. This is the year companies should be making steps towards the cloud and we can make it it much easier for you. Read 10 Reasons you should choose Cloud Technology Solutions to move to the cloud.

As a business we aim to make companies move to the cloud turbulence free and help you to adapt once you’re there. As well as dramatically saving costs our tool is guaranteed to safely move your legacy mail to the cloud without losing any of your data.

The Cloud Migrator will move all of your emails, calendars, contacts and appointments over from your original mail server to your new cloud based offering. The Cloud Migrator Tool is constantly being developed to cater to our customers needs the latest version of our tool enables users to migrate from messaging systems such as Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003, Novell/Groupwise 6.5.6, Scalix 11.0 or higher and Microsoft Exchange BPOS/2007/2010. We take companies to many cloud offerings including, Google Apps for Business, Google Postini Services and Microsoft Office 365, Exchange 2007/2010.

Everyone here at Cloud Technology Solutions is very excited to have broken our record and 2012 looks to be the year people are going to make the move. This is the year companies should be making steps towards the cloud and we can make it it much easier for you. Read 10 reasons you should choose Cloud Technology Solutions to move to the cloud.

Cloud Technology Solutions are excited to announce that in the true nature of a company on the climb, we are expanding through opening a new office and taking on several new team members. We are excited to announce that we will be opening our sister office in Holborn, London this January. With it’s plush surroundings and extensive facilities we are both excited and proud to call MWB Business Exchange Holborn our new Southern home.

In other exciting news we have Three new members joining the Cloud Technology Solutions roster with immediate effect. We all know that 2012 is going to be the ‘year of the cloud’ and we are looking forward to helping businesses make the move. We have exciting plans for 2012 and moving closer to our Southern clients will only help us to thrive throughout the year.

Usually, the decision-making process that goes into such a choice is shrouded in secrecy. But Berkeley decided to be transparent, and published a matrix explaining the pros and cons of both solutions.
In basic terms, Cal decided it could get Google Apps up and running faster and for less money.
Particularly interesting: to move to Office 365, the university would have had to do a double migration — first to an on-premise version of Exchange, then to the online version in Google Apps. This pokes a hole in Microsoft’s claim that Office 365 is a true cloud-based competitor to Office 365. (This double migration wouldn’t be required in all cases, but it’s NEVER required with Google Apps.)

Here’s where Google had the biggest advantages.

Cheaper support during the migration. Because other universities in the UC system have already migrated to Google Apps, Cal can rely on them to provide some support. With Microsoft, it would have to turn to Microsoft Consulting Services “at a significant cost to the project.”

Faster to set up. Deploying Gmail will take six to ten weeks, and the university will be able to keep some recent changes it made to its email routing system. With Office 365, the university has to move from its current system to an on-premises version of Exchange first. Then, it can move from Exchange to Office 365. It will also have to throw out most of the routing infrastructure it just installed.

Works with existing software. Gmail integrates with other Google products that some university departments use, and with the document storage and management system from Box, which the university already bought. Office 365 can work with SharePoint and Lync (which it mistakenly calls Lynx), but it was not interested in those solutions and didn’t even consider them.

Easier to develop on. More people on campus know how to work with Google’s APIs than with Microsoft’s Exchange.

Migration of email groups. Google has a product that could be used to migrate Cal’s existing Mailman mailing lists to Gmail. Microsoft recommended against even trying to migrate Mailman to Exchange.

The solutions were pretty close in other areas, like delegated administration (neither was great, but Google was slightly better), user familiarity (it depends on what product people are using today), and mobile support.
Microsoft won for authentication and the ability to integrate with on-premise systems.

No two customers will have the same needs, but this is a good exercise to show how these decisions are made — and why Gmail increasingly has an advantage among highly cost-conscious organizations like educational institutions and governments.

We believe that by applying and following a recognised Information Security Management System Cloud Technology Solutions:

• Increases the management of company information and ensures continual improvement
• Ability to fully demonstrate client’s management of information is internally controlled and regularly assessed for suitability
• Ensures compliance to laws and industry regulations
• Allows businesses to significantly lower the risk of security threats including: Fire, Misuse, Theft, Vandalism, Viral attack, Terrorism

Paul Lees our VP of technology at Cloud Technology Solutions said:

This certification is an example of out commitment to the highest standards of compliance in the industry. With our experience and focus on helping organisations in the public sector, data protection is essential and in today’s environment information security is a concern that needs to be addressed.This certification is a reinforcement of our commitment to providing our customers with a secure environment. This gives us a competitive edge when looking at new business opportunities.