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In 2020 BT have announced they will stop taking new ISDN orders and will complete switching off the ISDN network in 2025. This article will enable you to understand what the impact of this is upon your business and what options are available to you to ensure your business is well prepared.

What is ISDN?

‘Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switched telephone network’.

Why are ISDN services being terminated?

ISDN was introduced in the 1980’s allowing both voice and data services to be delivered simultaneously. For the technology and services at the time, it served its purpose very well and continued to do so for many years. Now we’re well into the 21st century, technology has moved on and old telephone solutions are lagging behind the alternatives in an increasingly fast paced digital world.

What does this mean for businesses who currently use ISDN?

Quite simply it means that now is the time to review your organisations approach to data services provision in order to avoid the negative consequences in lost revenue that will be experienced if you do not have an alternative network service in place come 2025.

It can take time to review your strategy and understand what the right option is for your business going forwards therefore it is never too early to start planning. Read on to learn all you need to know to ensure you do not end up scrambling to get a solution in place at the last minute, a solution that ultimately might not be right for your business.

So, what options do you have?

If you are currently on an ISDN phone contract now is the right time to start exploring the option of switching to VoIP and SIP technologies.

What is VoIP?

Voice over Internet Protocol, also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks such as the Internet.

What are SIP technologies?

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signalling protocol that is used by technology products for creating session-oriented connections between two or more endpoints in an IP network. These endpoints could be IP telephones, instant messaging clients or a collaborative multimedia conference application.

Whilst the transition may seem complicated and a big disruption to your business, it doesn’t need to be. With upfront planning and budget allocation we can help make the transition as smooth as possible. As always, it’s important to take into consideration some of the below points:

Can your phone system support VoIP?

The latest desk phones already support this technology, however, if yours doesn’t now is the time to upgrade.  Luckily a lot of telephony and IT solution providers offer options to roll handsets into a new contract. You can also look to trade in old hardware for new handsets in order to recoup residual value.

With the switch to cloud becoming ever more popular and feature rich it might be the time to ditch physical handsets for soft phones, replace on premise exchanges with cloud hosted systems or embrace collaboration applications which allow telecommunication integration. There are many options and we can help you identify which is best for your business.

Is my network strong enough to meet the demands of a VoIP phone system?

Having a strong and reliable bandwidth connection is important when switching to voice rather than the traditional circuit-switched telephone system. You don’t want to invest the time and money into switching to a new solution but being let down by poor audio quality due to a poor connection.

We can help you determine how much we predict you will need and work with you to achieve the high Quality of Service your business needs.

So, what’s next?

Now you better understand the impact the ISDN switch off can have on your business and what options are available to you, the next step is to review how your business consumes voice, video and data services now versus what how you anticipate that changing in the future.

At XMA, we are specialists in this field and guide organisations of all sizes and in all sectors to make the right choices. Our wealth of knowledge and team of technical experts can guide you through your decision-making journey, from designing and implementing your solution all the way through to helping you to manage your new network.

Contact us today to begin your journey and to ensure your business isn’t cut off when ISDN services are switched off.

The latest model in the HPE hyperconverged portfolio, is now shipping and available worldwide.

Built on the HPE ProLiant DL325 Gen10 server platform, the HPE SimpliVity 325 provides security and performance in a highly dense, 1U model.

HPE SimpliVity 325 Gen10, based on the HPE ProLiant DL325 Gen10 Servers, is a compact, scalable, 1U rack-mounted building block that delivers integrated server, storage, and storage networking services. The HPE SimpliVity 325 Gen10 Server is the secure and versatile single socket server for virtualization and I/O intensive workloads is ideal for remote office or space-constrained locations.

This 1P, 1U server delivers an exceptional balance of processor, memory and I/O for 2P performance at 1P TCO.

Get the most out of your virtualized environment with this versatile server delivering a lower hypervisor software cost and better cost per virtual machine (VM).

HPE InfoSight: Now on HPE SimpliVity

HPE InfoSight has been extended to HPE SimpliVity HCI offerings. HPE is integrating HPE InfoSight AI operations to provide customers with global visibility into detailed system, performance and capacity utilisation – enabling predictive data analytics and recommendations for system and performance optimisation. Automatically predicts and resolves 86% of problems before you even know there is an issue.

Check out the specifications below

Nutanix and HPE announced a global agreement in April this year to produce Nutanix Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) available on the HPE ProLiant Server platform known as Nutanix DX Appliances.

This offering will also be available on a consumption-based model utilising HPE GreenLakes Infrastructure as a service. This means more flexibility and cost savings using a pay per use model so you can start implementing this new technology today, without the worry of upfront costs and planned budgets.

Nutanix DX Appliances are now available and ready to ship and will be available as a consumption-based model using the HPE GreenLake solution from October 2019.

Nutanix are market leaders for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) and have added HPE ProLiant Server as a hardware platform choice, with such strong reputations as market leaders in their own rights this joint partnership means Nutanix DX Appliance combines cutting edge technologies to bring this new product to the market.

XMA are a platinum HPE partner and a Nutanix Scaler partner meaning we have strong alliances with both vendors and have unrivalled in-house technical resource, to help plan and implement this new technology across your organisation.

What does it mean for your organisation?

More choice with Nutanix in terms of Hardware platforms from XMA; Nutanix, HPE, Lenovo or Dell as well as broad Hypervisor choice; Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. Nutanix Software on HPE Hardware, with world class support from both organisations.

Contact us today to find out more about this exciting new announcement

XMA, HPE and London Borough of Enfield

Enfield is a UK Local Government (Federal) agency in North London with a population of about 330K. They had been using a small local recycler for their end-of-use assets, but needed to work with a partner that could provide a secure collection service. As a governmental agency, WEEE compliant recycling is important as is strict data security.

XMA were the best company to address this situation. We were already Enfield’s resource for new IT solutions but until now had not been involved in the retirement of assets for the Borough. Combining a strong commitment to the environment (both in its own business practices as well as services it delivers to customers) and deep expertise in working with governmental agencies, XMA put together a solution that not only solved the customer’s immediate need but also provided extra funds back to the agency.

We teamed with HPE Financial Services to provide a Circular Economy approach to Enfield’s challenge by employing HPE Asset Upcycling Services. HPE Financial Services would take out the governmental agency’s existing hardware, securely remove data, then expertly refurbish the equipment and remarket it, returning value from the sale back to the Borough. By remarketing the assets, technology is returned to the circle and there is no e-waste, both of which are tenets of Circular Economy thinking.

Students are faced with a massive decision when choosing a University to continue their education and carve out their futures.

With so many University’s battling to enrol the best students onto their courses, how does the student make this decision?

What if every University they have applied for offers the exact course they want?

What makes YOU the institution stand out to THEM the student?

Facts

• In 2017 – 2018 it was recorded that there are 164 Higher Education Institutions in the UK¹

• When applying through UCAS a student can apply for a maximum of 5 Universities²

That’s a lot of choice.

As an institution you need to make your offer more appealing than the rest, you want students to pick you above the other institutions on offer and here is how Aruba Networks can help.

Offering your students, the best network connectivity across campus allows your students to work intelligently and unrestricted. With Aruba’s secure and reliable offerings, you can equip your University to meet and withstand the ever-growing demands of user technology.

Download the benefits of Aruba OS8

HPE InfoSight and its recommendation engine can pave your institutions path towards an automated, self-learning and self-managing data centre that can free your IT department to focus on creating value and allows your institution to turn exponentially growing data into valuable, actionable insights.

Learn how it ensures 99.9999% guaranteed availability and predicts and resolves 86% of problems before they can disrupt the business of learning, research, and administration. Analysing millions of sensors a second, everyone benefits as the university’s systems grow continuously smarter and more reliable.

Download the whitepaper below to find out more

Achieve the flexibility of the public cloud on-premises under your control with consumption-based and flexible IT solutions from HPE GreenLake pay-per-use model.

HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity offers a consumption-based model on-premises, giving you greater flexibility, scalability, and control. Design your own infrastructure solutions, selecting from a broad range of HPE and partner technologies, as well as optional services that can span your infrastructure to your apps and workloads.

World-class expertise from HPE Pointnext

Every HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity solution comes with enterprise-grade support from HPE Pointnext and active capacity management to ensure that your solution grows with the business needs.

4 benefits of using consumption based IT

Outcome-based IT consumption delivers a range of benefits that you can’t get from solutions solely built from scratch or bought from the public cloud. Delivering the best of both worlds, HPE GreenLake enables:

• On-premises for better control over compliance, performance, and security
• Simplified IT that’s operated for you to free up resources and add business value
• Faster time to value with solutions that are ready quickly and evolve ahead of your needs
• Better economics with a flexible, pay-per-use model that offers simplicity and financial clarity

HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity with HPE Nimble Storage

• All-flash storage and predictive analytics with 99.9999% guaranteed up time
• Active capacity management and pay-per-use consumption from HPE GreenLake Flex Capacity meaning simple, secure, storage solution that grows with your business needs.

Read more about how HPE GreenLake can benefit your IT Infrastructure using IaaS

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Click below to view the full Infographic 

With almost 100% shift to digital across the healthcare industry, having a strong, secure and reliable network has never been more important.  Staff are using a multitude of devices to connect to the same network, along with patients and BioMedical devices.  Aruba offers solutions to solve these challenges and add benefits such as indoor navigation for the patients to enhance digital services whilst visiting a patient or as a patient themselves.

Total economic impact of IoT in healthcare in 2025 is $170B-$1.6T, making it one of the top three vertical for IoT solutions¹

How Aruba enables a digital workforce within the Healthcare Industry

A Secure, Strong and Reliable network throughout your Healthcare Institution Seamless Connectivity: indoors and outdoors utilising technologies such as satellite clinics to support numerous devices per user wherever you are.  With HPE Smart Rate multi-gig Ethernet you can enable high speed connectivity over Cat6 cabling. Future proof support for emerging IoT devices and standards.   Making sure equipment is connected, secure and reliable at any time. Point of care decision support.  Allowing clinicians to use their mobile devices to make critical decisions.  Aruba Ao8 features of reliability in a 24/7 environment – using Aruba technologies such as LiveUpgrade, Hitless Failover, ClientMatch and AppRF.   Creating an unrivalled user experience for patients and guests with location-based services Patient facing applications which allow indoor mapping, location specific content, proximity-based notifications, user opt – in location sharing (great for visiting family) using Aruba Beacons and Meridian.  Making it easier to make your way around the hospital and find a specific bed. Secured, easy to use Guest Access Portals with ClearPass meaning security even when on a guest wifi network.   Adding an extra layer of security and peace of mind for expensive and critical equipment Location of expensive assets through Meridian Asset Tracking.  IT Managers can keep on top and track their most critical and important equipment at all times.   Visibility and Control for IT Management Giving clear visibility to the IT managers to control and maintain the hospital’s infrastructure using 20/20 Visibility with Aruba AirWave.  Adding the extra layer of support with technologies such as Client-to-network E2E visibility, RF Visualization, Historical reporting, Automated Configuration Management, In-Line monitoring: Radius, DHCP, DNS critical services, role and device – based network access control. All these technologies complimenting each other to give the ultimate experience to the IT manager and securing a strong and stable environment through the hospital network.

Learn more about ‘A hospital’s health starts with its network infrastructure’

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¹McKinsey Global Institute, Unlocking The Potential Of The Internet of Things, June 2015

Take it from us, the experts; there has never been a better time to migrate your business to Azure, and we believe that the success made possible by the cloud should be accessible to every business and every organisation—small and large, old and new. But not all businesses are created equal. Some of you are just beginning your cloud journey.

Every company—regardless of industry, legacy, or technology pedigree—can thrive in the cloud. We want to paint a picture of the cloud landscape, and explain how Microsoft Azure can solve complex business problems while also making new business models possible. Now is the time to ‘spring clean’ all your apps, data, and infrastructure and migrate them to Azure.

Why cloud migration?

So, why are more and more businesses considering it a priority to migrate to the cloud? Well… do any of the below sound familiar to you?

• Your datacenter contract has an expiry date
• Your business does (or will in the near future) need a software and a hardware refresh
• You know that there is all of this amazing technology solutions out there, but it’s too much pressure on your internal IT resource to solely deliver
• As an IT manager, you’re expected to know about all the new technology available to you, but you can’t keep up and the delivery of new infrastructures is a little overwhelming
• The business is growing, and as such, so is the expectation to host a technology solution that can serve as high capacity. But you need to deliver this without a huge capital investment..
• Windows 7 End of Support is fast approaching, and you are concerned about the cyber-security threats to your business if you do not migrate in time

But for us, this is about guiding you through your journey to the cloud – not just providing the technology.

The 4 pillars of Azure

There are 4 key pillars that explain why Azure is different to any other cloud solution. Our customers choose Microsoft Azure time and time again, because of the value that can be provided in one central cloud platform.

1. Productivity: Your business can build applications, and get those apps to users more efficiently than ever. You can also manage applications no matter how large or complex. The best part is that Azure provides built-in support for an end-to-end management experience. Think about monitoring… logging analytics… patching… backup… and site recovery. With built-in security and management features, you have the assurance that security, compliance and policies are in place.
2. Hybrid: This is so much more than just being able to move an application into the cloud. You can increase end-user productivity by using Azure Active Directory for single sign-on to both cloud and on-premise applications – your business is now working on a unified platform, which provides a consistent experience across the entire organisation.
3. Intelligence: Azure provides an SQL server that connects to Artificial services. This enables the quick adoption of technologies, the ease of integration, and the development of breakthrough apps with built-in intelligence. Azure offers comprehensive set of services, infrastructure, and tools to build AI-powered experiences including bots that naturally interact with users and built-in advanced analytics tools, such as R, to make faster predictions for your business.
4. Trusted: Compliance and trust is not an afterthought for Microsoft. With Azure’s security centre, you can get a unified view of all of your on-premises and cloud workloads. Collect, search and analyze security data from a variety of sources, including firewalls and other partner solutions. By finding vulnerabilities and being able to remediate them quickly, you can limit your organisation’s exposure to threats and respond swiftly to attacks. Did you know that 90% of Fortune 500s trust the Microsoft Cloud for security, privacy and transparency?

We understand that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’

There’s no one-size-fits-all any more for your IT. Make it as bespoke as you want with Azure’s easy-to-use platform, it can do so much more than replace hardware and software; the way you communicate, analyse data, prepare marketing campaigns and deliver new and innovative features to your users will be revolutionised. And, bottom line, it saves a ton of space, money and the IT helpdesk headaches.

XMA can help you successfully move your business to the cloud.

To find out more, please contact us on:
01727 201890 | softwarelicensing@xma.co.uk

“The Modern Classroom”. A term that reminds us that the face of education is changing the way that teachers teach and students learn. Schools are constantly striving to achieve better learning outcomes, and technology is shaping the way in which this can be delivered. As technology becomes more and more sophisticated, so do the expectations of teaching staff, parents, and even students. So, what steps can schools take to meet these high expectations? How can they embrace “the modern classroom” and maximise learning and teaching outcomes all at the same time?

Microsoft 365 Education empowers teachers to unlock creativity, promote teamwork and better collaboration across the classroom, as well as provide a simple and safe experience in one affordable solution. Schools can ensure that students and educators always have access to the latest feature innovations; with automatic updates for Office 365 and Windows 10, as well as being able to experience new technologies such as Minecraft: Education Edition for students, and OneNote for teachers.

This is how we think Microsoft 365 can transform your school:

Giving students the tools they need to succeed

Microsoft 365 Education can level the playing field, and ensure every student has the tools they need to succeed. Minecraft: Education Edition has had a broad impact on teaching and learning, and connects educators right across the globe. It facilitates a project-based learning environment that allows students to develop skills that can prepare them for the modern workforce:

• 97.7% is Problem Solving
• 95.5% is Creativity 
• 93.3% is Critical Thinking
• 91.1.% is Collaboration
• 88.8% is Decision Making
• 86.6% is Communication

Promote teamwork and effective communication with Teams

Microsoft Teams enhances collaboration, the sharing of ideas and documents, connecting with peers inside and outside of the classroom, and can bring teacher and student conversations together in one digital hub. Schools can promote equity and student voice with collaborative classrooms, and connect in professional learning communities – all from a single experience in Microsoft 365 for Education. This really is a hub for every type of teamwork, and can be the most empowering form of communication for students who may struggle to connect with others in an education environment.

“With Teams, I communicate better with my classmates and my teacher. It has changed the way we relate to each other, and it lets us post useful information to help peers who are struggling with a lesson.” – Student, City of Westminster College

 

Provide a simple and safe experience

We understand that the most important thing for schools is the safety of their students and teachers. With new technologies there may come additional risks in terms of access to appropriate content, the misuse of devices and breach of data confidentiality. Microsoft 365 Education has been built around the delivery of a simple and safe experience.

• Manage users, data and devices with a single dashboard
• Protect identity, apps, data and devices with intelligent security enhanced by machine learning
• Manage data archiving, governance and discovery.

We want you to get the very most out of Microsoft 365 Education, and provide you with affordable devices that can maximise your school experience.

Discover the best devices for your Microsoft experience 

Find out more

To find out more, please contact us today.
01727 201890 | softwarelicensing@xma.co.uk