Archive

The conversation around the shift to remote working is constantly ongoing, and we have all seen first-hand the positive impacts on businesses. This includes anything from improved collaboration and productivity, through to better mental health and wellbeing. Technology has been a key enabler in supporting the move to remote working.  

Technology adopted during lockdown to enable employees to work remotely has shaped not just organisations during lockdown, but strategic business planning moving forward. We have already seen announcements from large enterprise technology organisations, shifting their working model to remote, either entirely or in part.  

The productivity benefits of working from home centre around the loss of the need to commute. With the average person’s work commute at 60 minutes each way, this has saved on average a staggering 10 hours per week spent mostly in the car, on the train or bus. As a result of this, the European Environment Agency’s data confirms large decreases in air pollutant concentrations, of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations, largely due to reduced traffic and other activities, especially in major cities under lockdown measures.  

Reductions of around half have been seen in some locations, for example: 

• In Milan, average concentrations of NO2 for the past month have been at least 24 % lower than the month prior. The average concentration during the week of 16-22 March was 21 % lower than for the same week in 2019. 
• In Rome, average NO2 concentrations for the past four weeks were 26-35 % lower than for the same weeks in 2019. 
• In Barcelona, average NO2 levels went down by 40 % from one week to the next. Compared with the same week in 2019, the reduction was 55 %. 

• In Madrid, average NO2 levels went down by 56 % from one week to the next. Compared with the same week in 2019, the reduction was 41 %. 
• In Lisbon, average NO2 levels went down by 40 % from one week to the next. Compared with the same week in 2019, the reduction was 51 %. 

(European Environment Agency, 2020). 

After achieving and analysing this reduction in pollution, will the Covid-19 lockdown result in real progress to tackle climate change?  

Whilst addressing long-term air quality problems requires ambitious policies and forward-looking investments, the Covid-19 lockdown demonstrated the capability we must vastly reduce our emissions. When the noise of airplanes and traffic was gone, it helped us understand and have empathy for the effects of climate change on future generations. The lockdown also demonstrated to employers that employees can effectively work from anywhere with best placed technology, and in turn contribute toward a greener and more sustainable future.  

Is your business set up for remote working?  

XMA have been supporting businesses throughout Covid-19 to achieve efficient digital workspaces. Get in touch to discuss your Digital Workspace now. 

Reference:  European Environment Agency (2020). Air Pollution. Available at: https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/air-pollution-goes-down-as [Accessed: 24.08.2020] 

Technology has long been an important consideration when developing more creative and engaging learning opportunities. It is also an important tool for classroom management and assisting teacher workload. However, there has never been a year like 2020 where the importance of embracing all things digital is critical for the continuation of education.

It is safe to say the re-opening of schools, colleges and universities has been a rocky and uncertain road during and since the UK Lockdown. Educators planning ahead for the new academic year will no doubt have lots of obstacles to face, with the need to plan for multiple scenarios. This might include:

• The possibility that all students will not be able to return to the classroom and need to continue distance learning
• Social distancing measures will still be in place so education will need to be delivered with out physical contact
• Learning hours may need to be extended to allow students to catch up on missed work

It has become clear that the only way to face some of these challenges is through the use of technology. The deployment and adoption of technology can be challenging when not properly executed and aligned with educational objectives – not to mention navigating during an unexpected pandemic!

That being said, institutions have been forced to develop or re-design their digital strategies to suit remote learning and contact free classrooms, while also maintaining security and safeguarding provisions. While considering this new way of working, senior leadership and IT departments will have a lot of questions.

• How do we deploy and manage our digital strategy to meet short and long term objectives?
• Can our infrastructure support this technology and how will this affect our existing safeguarding measures?
• How do we ensure education is accessible for every type of learner?
• How do we support teachers, parents and carers to deliver education digitally?
• How can technology become the primary method of delivering a full, well rounded curriculum?
• What financial implications could this have on my education budget?

What is the solution?

Apple technology partnered with our expertise and capabilities to deploy, manage and support adoption provides the perfect solution to form your digital strategy. iPad and Mac work in perfect harmony together to provide devices that can benefit both student and teacher, in the classroom and at home. The App Store provides thousands of apps to enhance creativity, develop critical thinking and teamwork skills and manage workflows. Our dedicated Digital Learning team are also best placed to train educators, introduce unique ways to use your technology to deliver a well rounded curriculum and collaborate with learners and faculty both in school and at home.

We want to help answer your questions and the many others institutions are likely to have when planning for the new academic year. Find out more about what to consider when developing your digital strategy, as we move forward to ‘the new normal’ here.

One thing which 2020 has taught us all is the need for adaptability for businesses to survive.

Having turned your working practices upside-down, reducing the number of workers in your building and enabling employees to work from home – now you’re encouraging them to return to the office. How do you follow that up and create a plan for the future? What should that future look like?

We believe the next challenge is to create a plan which includes:

• The stability which creates opportunities for growth and development.
• Enough flexibility to allow for changes which will keep coming.
• Security and comfort from returning to some traditional working practices and spaces.
• Continuing beneficial new working practices, including enabling employees with greater responsibility and rewarding them with openness and cooperation.

But, how can we do this?

Reinforcing the Digital Workspace

Many businesses will have spent the last four, or more, months getting to grips with the opportunities enabled by their digital capability.

With the transformation made necessary by lockdown, businesses will have considered security and management as well as functionality. And, having developed these systems, ensuring they are stable enough for the future makes much more sense than going back to pre-lockdown limitations.

That’s not to say it will be easy, the changes made by many companies will have been developed in haste – ensuring these are the right changes (and changes made in the right way) will be a complicated task. As covered in a previous article, Navigating the New Normal, “Having taken those steps to change, now is the time to review, refocus and reinforce – to ensure these changes aren’t short-term fixes but strong, positive developments which will lead to future growth.”

So, while it will be necessary to review and reinforce these processes to ensure long term stability and opportunities for growth, this is the first step to creating the digital workspace your business needs going forward.

Reintroducing the Physical Workspace

Returning to a subject we explored in Navigating the New Normal, the question is ‘How do we use our offices moving forward?’

At the most basic level, some of our issues can be managed through signage and provision of sanitising stations. However, to ensure the confidence of your people and efficiency within your space, it may be necessary to implement smarter measures – maybe using technology to manage the density of occupancy or monitor routes used by employees to avoid congestion.

In the future, it will be important to use your understanding of your employees and the technology you have available to ensure a safe, smart office environment.

Allowing staff to book desks for working is the first step; however, this needs to include an understanding of the other processes surrounding this desk use. Of course, nearby desks (within an agreed radius) must be kept free and, once used, a desk must be appropriately cleaned before being made available to anyone else.

As well as looking at how smart workspaces are allocated and managed, you might promote the use of smart meeting areas, to enable collaboration regardless of location, and adopt smart document solutions – with contactless printing or digital signatures. These changes, prompted by our current situation, will likely remain, so need to be focused on your goals of increasing productivity and engagement for the long term.

Understanding the Hybrid Workspace

So, how do we ensure the changes we’re making are building systems which are fit for the future? This is something we’ve talked about before, in How Agile Working is Changing our Future.

We’ve already looked at the need to build intelligence into processes to ensure ease of use and efficiency for the workforce as a whole. Now is the time to be considering the possibilities as well as the precautions, to learn from our experiences and build stronger and more flexible systems which benefit everyone in the business. This will be particularly true as we develop systems enabling personalised digital workspaces – again improving efficiency and engagement.

In terms of our digital workspace, providing systems which are available wherever your employees are, tools which enable easy and efficient management and allow for easy communication – these are the most basic standards we have come to expect. Employee performance and engagement is improved by allowing individuals to have some element of choice over where they work.

Physical spaces should also work as well for our teams as they do for our customers and managers. One benefit to the business will come from providing the best workspace for employee engagement and efficiency, and this should be the aim when returning to work. There are additional benefits, of course, in the efficiencies now possible within these physical spaces.

As you look to provide the right environment for your customers and staff, how will you ensure you’re building systems and processes which are helping build your business?

If you need help to understand what’s possible – how you can build a hybrid agile workspace with room to grow and flourish – get in touch. It would be great to talk.

Written by Terry Chana – Director of Workspace Solutions @ XMA

I hope everyone is safe and well during lockdown and people are still finding fun ways to stay active and social. Like many people I’ve been having regular quizzes online with friends, often ending up in ‘JD Wetherzooms’ for a few drinks. I recently hosted a Britain’s Got Talent spoof on Teams and people were impressed at how some of the features were in the free version of Teams and how well it integrated with Windows 10 features!

I’ve been a windows 10 user for so long I’ve almost forgotten what Windows 7 looks like for those feeling nostalgic here you go..

With the evergreen Window 10 OS features are rolled out so regularly that often they can be missed! I’ve handpicked some of the top ways I have been more collaborative and productive during current COVID remote working!

Let us begin at the start…

Just like organising your apps on your phone, or bookmarking your favourites within your internet browser, by customising you Start Menu you will have you go to applications and documents just one click away!

Pin apps to the Start menu for quick access to what’s important by selecting Start> press and hold (or right-click) the app you want to pin > Pin to Start.
Treat your start menu to a spring clean by unpinning the apps you don’t need to make it less cluttered!

To get really organised you can actually create your own Start Menu folders.

Drag one tile on top of another to make a folder, then drag more tiles into it. To open the folder, just select it.

Share the workload!

Most people are aware of OneDrive and being able to save and share documents from their own cloud hosted folders. Once a document is in your OneDrive if you want to share the document for joint working you can simply do that via right-clicking the file and selecting More OneDrive Sharing Options.

To edit this document in real time with colleagues, once opening the document you can select Share, enter the email address of the people to share with and select Send. Now the file is shared with everyone on your list.

Whilst editing each user will be assigned a coloured flag to illustrate where they are in the document. This saves time emailing around the document and loosing track of versions, and allows maximum productivity when on a team call.

If you are not on voice call, you can still chat with colleague within the shared document. When editing a shared Microsoft Word document if you select the picture of someone who is editing at the shame time, you can hit the Chat.

Many screens make light work…

You may have had a dual screen set up in your office or an external monitor that would allow you to view multiple applications at the same time. A prime example for me is switching between a Excel spreadsheet price file and XMA quoting system. Windows 10 provide a handy way of allowing you to snap applications side by side. If you select any open window, then drag and bounce it against the side of your screen. All other windows you have open will appear on the opposite side. Select a window to have it fill the open space.

If your finding yourself spending more time looking at your phone screen as well, you can actually use the phone directly from your Windows 10 machine. The Your Phone App allows you to link your android phone to your device to respond to text, share photos, make calls and more. iPhone users can also use the all-in-one Office app to stay productive wherever you are. Ideal for when you want to get some fresh air and sit in the garden!

Saving your bacon!

Never underestimate the pain of losing documents and folders if your PC breaks when your darling daughter accidentally knocks a whole glass of orange juice over your keyboard!

Thankfully like me, you can automatically back up document, picture and desktop folders to OneDrive so they are protected whatever happens to your PC!

On the right side of the taskbar, select OneDrive > More > Setting and on the AutoSave tab, select Update Folders and specify which folders you’d like to keep automatically synced.

To prevent the offspring from deleting my work when I’ve left my laptop unattended whilst getting a cuppa I’ve also setup Automatic locking on my PC.

You can use Dynamic Lock setting to lock your PC once a paired Bluetooth device (possibly your headset or phone) leaves the proximity around your PC.
Under the Start menu go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options.  Select the check box under Dynamic lock, and then take your device and walk away, safe in the knowledge that you PC screen is locked!

Oooo work-friends…

Keep your favourite people nearby… by using the People app you can keep important contacts right on your taskbar, so they’re always within reach when you want to chat.

People pulls in contact info from apps like Teams and Mail. Once you’ve connected those apps, use People to find your favourites and pin them to the taskbar for easy access.

Pin a contact to the taskbar

Easily get in touch with your favourite contacts. Select People > Find and pin contacts, then pick who you want to pin! Obviously, our marketing team are pinned in mine! ?

I hope that you’ve found the above features interesting and useful and honestly this is just the scratching the surface [no pun intended] of ways that windows 10 can help. For more tips and tricks please check out Microsoft’s Windows 10 page here

On the 5th of June I am running a webinar with Dan Boyles from Microsoft to discuss some of our favourite features in Windows 10 and how they are making our remote working lives easier. You can view the webinar here

In the meantime if you have any questions on Microsoft licensing, products or feature please drop me an email on James.Thorogood@xma.co.uk 

Stay safe. Stay connected.

All the best,

James

Enhancing engagement and creativity with Chromebook in the classroom with LEO academy trust and Google for Education

A 1:1 deployment of thousands of Chromebooks into Leo Academy Trust has resulted in a reduction in teacher workload, an increase in accessibility for children of all abilities and an overall enhancement of pupil engagement.

A New Approach

In today’s world of software-defined datacenters, infrastructure is increasingly complex and change is constant. The potential for change-related risk to applications is greater than ever before. In spite of the abundance of tools available, IT administrators lack the ability – and time – to study all the known or unknown configuration issues in their vSphere infrastructure. They struggle to understand whether changes – intended or accidental – result in smoldering performance and availability issues waiting to ignite.

Further, when things go wrong, there’s an inability to replay the changes over time to correlate events or trends that caused the current problem. This creates a significant drag on administrator effectiveness especially as they are thrown into firefighting mode to minimize the impact of unexpected application disruption and related costs.

The goal of CloudPhysics is to provide organisations with an analytics-driven approach to managing infrastructure that enables administrators to preempt emerging hazards and gives them the confidence to act boldly to reduce risk and waste in their vSphere environments.

To learn more , please fill in your details below to receive a free copy of the CloudPhysics whitepaper.

XMA’s Infrastructure Solutions Team are seeing a growing interest in dHCI from HPE.

XMA Solutions Director for Infrastructure – Jen Norman – and her team of Datacentre Architects take a closer look..

We’ve been designing and installing Hyperconverged Infrastructure solutions for some time now, and between Myself and my Datacentre team we have over (*cough) 115 years (*ahem) engineering experience between us.  So when HPE came to us with a disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure solution last year, apart from repeating the name several times over to ourselves, we got onboard and got involved.  Now we are privileged to have completed our first dHCI live production solution deployments earlier this year.

What could you be facing?

So maybe your VMware system is running out of storage capacity, your servers are dated and you can’t upgrade to run the latest versions.

Ok. Well you’ve done some research and investigation. You want a hyperconverged replacement where you can run concurrent workloads, and like the idea of being able to scale out storage or compute separately. BUT it would be great if you could get this delivered, supported and managed as a single product.

What else might you need?

Well as standard, you want a storage system that has options for encryption, compression and deduplication, application consistent snapshots and advanced replication (ether synchronous or asynchronous) with near all-flash speed and sub-ms latency for always-on apps. That’s a given.

Definitely VMware clusters running on the latest compatible server hardware and block level storage.

A complete turnkey solution? One that is monitored from the application to the storage, proactive alerting and with the ability to predict and prevent infrastructure problems before they happen.

Nothing less than a system designed for 99.9999% availability – no single point of failure, hardware redundancies with the ability to tolerate 3 simultaneous drive failures!

And you’re pretty sure that Procurement will want the choice on finance options – including future proofing, cloud like financing, with integrated support.

Then you definitely need a HPE disaggregated hyperconverged solution (dHCI)

And you are not alone. Since its inception in 2019 we have seen successful installations in Local Government and Education, with interest and opportunities growing in the Corporate, Commercial Enterprise and Healthcare sectors.

 It’s a winning combination

You take the power and performance of the HPE Nimble Storage array, with its self-managing flash storage.

Add industry-leading HPE ProLiant Servers, include HPE storage switches, and deploy VMware vSphere.

Then this is all preconfigured as a turnkey solution!

Then automate with full-stack intelligence and policy-based automation for VM-centric management.

But here’s the best bit……

Add the power of HPE InfoSight over all this, and you have full-stack predictive analytics and support automation working for you that predicts and prevents issues. Infosight auto-routes any complex issue directly to L3 HPE Nimble support.

HPE have streamlined their support portfolio to offer four service levels that are easier to understand, easier to align to business needs which gives you visibility into IT assets and support status from anywhere.

You can flexibility and independently grow compute and/or storage – adding new dHCI compatible storage and/or servers when required – for scale-out upgrades that are non-disruptive and transparent to applications.

Eliminate over provisioning and add only the resources when needed. The Timeless Storage means no worries today or tomorrow with all-inclusive software licensing, flat support pricing, no forklift upgrades, and an option to receive a free faster controller upgrade after three years with Timeless Storage.

And, if you’re reading this thinking ‘well this sounds great but I’ve still got Gen9 (or 10) Proliant servers that are in warranty and I don’t want to replace them yet’.. Well HPE read your mind, (just kidding, they leave that to your home speaker system and asked Alexa what you thought), and have designed the solution so you can use the existing compute you already have in place, add a Nimble array and the dHCI software allowing you to convert everything in to a dHCI solution!

Is this Complex?

HPE Nimble storage arrays can be installed and be up and running in half a day requiring no external tools or software – we have completed installations where the HPE Nimble arrays that have been physically installed, configured, integrated and have test VMs running within hours ready for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). They can be All-Flash (AF) or Adaptive Flash (HF) for mixed, mainstream workloads, where cost-efficient flash performance is important. It is a Secondary Flash array for backup and DR while allowing you to put your backup data to work.

For the compute you have the HPE ProLiant Gen10 DL360 a performance driven dense server or DL380 for performance and expandability. These servers deliver security, agility and flexibility without compromise – with the knowledge that you can confidently deploy for virtualisation.

These are completed with a choice of Ethernet HPE storage switches to meet your budget and installation size.

Root Cause…. Could it be the network? A server fault or a storage fault?

Once installed HPE InfoSight can help you stop spending days searching for a root cause deep in your hybrid environment. Every second, HPE InfoSight collects and analyses data from more than 100,000 systems worldwide, and uses that intelligence to make every system smarter and more self-sufficient. The result? HPE InfoSight predicts and automatically resolves 86% of customer issues.

 Where to go for more information:

HPE dHCI

Why choose XMA?

We are an HPE Platinum partner and have trained and Certified HPE sales and engineers with Master Accredited Solutions Experts (top-level credential validates technical skills) with experience in building and sizing advanced enterprise systems. Continually staying up to date with the latest technology updates, strategies and programs. One of our core values is “customer focus”. We put our customers at the heart of everything we do. We don’t just provide technology we provide solutions.

Written by Jennifer Norman, Solutions Director for Infrastructure

With more and more of us needing to work from home, we wanted to collate some resources and share some links to items that should help organisations and end users get started quickly!

Definitely check out the ‘Remote Work Checklist’ from Microsoft. We found the most important one was setting up your workspace… even if you’ve got an orthopaedic mattress you can’t ‘Work from Bed’ for 3 weeks [if not longer]! Also get that video on! Turning the video on your Teams call can really makes a difference as it ensures all members stay focused and always good to get some human interaction and also prevents working in your pyjamas!

Teams hints and tricks

Watch the Welcome Video to get an overview of ‘What is Teams?’

Download Quick Start PDF Guide as a cheat-sheet for Teams basics

Watch the short Quick Start Videos for a walkthrough of Teams

Learn how to use meetings in teams

Check out the Teams training portal or the Bite-sized Video Tutorials for Teams training.

Other helpful Windows / Office hints

Windows 10 keyboard tips and tricks (windows + D is my fav new command!)

Office 365 training centre – hints, tips and much more on demand

Windows hints and tips

FREE Training sessions!

XMA and Spongy Elephant have partnered to share £FREE training modules that can enable you to use Microsoft’s remote learning/working tools more effectively.

• Create the perfect Team from the start and add members in a variety of ways
• Understand the Microsoft Teams interface and how to use powerful features like commands
• Discover how conferencing works in Teams with Teams virtual meetings
• Learn how to minimise the “noise” of notifications and alerts to limit distractions

Offer code – Free4XMA access your training here https://lnkd.in/dvpyrt9

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can sign up to this free 1 hour session to help ‘Run effective meetings with Microsoft Teams’

Here you can learn how to make your meetings engaging, productive and effective.
Use Teams for your entire meeting experience, including:

• Sending agendas and setting context before the meeting, creating momentum
• Sharing live applications and taking meeting notes, keeping attendees engaged during the meeting
• Posting files and action items after the meeting, ensuring timely follow-through
• Record your meeting, making it easy for those who couldn’t attend to get caught up
• Keep important meetings at your fingertips by pinning them for easy access
• Assess which audio and video devices are best for your meeting needs

Like all businesses, XMA are concerned about the recent Covid-19 outbreak.

After the announcement by the Prime minister on 12th March we are continuing to follow government advice closely and are primarily focused on ensuring the safety of our staff, customers and suppliers.

The company has a business continuity plan in the event of any significant disruption and will endeavour to keep as near to normal levels of service if a period of quarantine is imposed by the government. Clearly, if our warehouses are closed, this will be more disruptive. We will post updates regularly on our website as the situation alters.

We work with a number of technology partners as do our customers and have consolidated links to our partners Covid-19 messaging in one location. Many of them working to assist their customers where they can with their relevant technologies in areas such as “how-to” webinars, providing software at no or reduced cost – mainly around remote working as well as general updates on their business during this time.

Please see below links to our Vendor Partner updates:

Cisco

Cisco Webex

Dell

VMware

Citrix

Microsoft

HPE

Nutanix

Rubrik

Palo Alto

Trend Micro

HP

Lenovo

Google for Education

If you have any questions or concerns around your Infrastructure, please get in touch with your XMA Account Manager or contact us on the form below.

To read our response to the COVID-19, please read here

We all know that technology is going to play a pivotal role in reducing the impact of COVID-19 on people and organisations, including helping them stay productive at work when they’re not able to be there in person. However, lots of businesses, as well as education and public sector organisations, are not geared to sudden mass home working.

For our customers at XMA I wanted to update you as to how you can work remotely without sacrificing collaboration, productivity or security.

Microsoft launched an interactive map that allows visitors to click on the country to see the specific number of cases of COVID-19  based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO); the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

View the interactive covid map here

Whilst it is scary to see this data outlined on a heatmap, I’m pleased to report that this website is not the only way that Microsoft are supporting in the COVID-19 crisis.

JP Courtois [Microsoft’s executive vice president and president of Microsoft global sales, marketing and operations] announced that Microsoft are making their paid for collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams, free for six months to help organisations deal with the demand of end users needing to work from home.

The Teams trial is part of a new Office 365 trial for enterprises (Office 365 E1) which includes full meeting, collaboration and workflow capabilities.

Read Microsoft’s full statement here

Microsoft rolled out a new update on March 10 which lifted restrictions on how many users can be part of a team in the free version of Teams.  The newly released features include being able to set up Office on personal devices such as phones and tablets; 1TB of cloud storage; enterprise video-sharing service; and being able host online video conferences.

For me the key obvious benefits of this are the online meetings, increased file storage and Office Suite on a personal device.

• You will be able to host online meetings with audio, HD video, and web conferencing. Even being able to present ‘Broadcast meetings’ which will allow up to 10,000 people join with just a web browser. This can be done on almost any device – perfect for large, companywide, conferences or events.
• With OneDrive for Business each user has 1 TB of personal cloud storage that can be accessed from anywhere, on any device. This means that you can securely save the documents that you work on at home and share with others inside and outside your organization, whilst being in control of who can see and edit each file. You could then sync these documents when you get back into your place of work with your local drives.
• Installing the native Office suite of products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint will enable most workers to continue being productive especially if their own organisation can not afford to provide them with company owned hardware or the licences.

At XMA we were already regularly seeing the benefits of Teams but now with imposed travel reductions it is becoming a go to solution. Being well verse in the Microsoft Eco-structure internally as well as via our consultants, if you require any assistance on getting your trial setup, please let us know and we are of course happy to help.

In addition to this extended 6 month trial there are also specific ways that Azure AD can help enable remote access to work resources.

Please check out the Microsoft blog

At XMA we want to help our customers in this time of need. So any support you require from your Account Manager, please let them know. For the more specific items I have covered here today, please feel free to reach out and contact me directly.

In summary stay safe, travel less, collaborate more.

James

James.Thorogood@xma.co.uk

CSP Software Business Manager