SCS * IT Solutions for Business

SCS offers various online, offsite backup solutions, all of which basically achieve the same thing: Backing up your data over the Internet to a secure offsite location.

Why Online backup?

Conventional backup methods (e.g. tape) are often not good enough:

• High failure rates during restoration
• Problematic backup will not be detected until restoration is performed
• High maintenance cost
• Fixed capacity per backup media makes backup job less flexible
• Prone to negligence induced problems, e.g. lost or misplaced media

Data loss makes your business suffer:

• Your business data goes hand-in-hand with your business operations. The loss or just temporary inaccessibility of this data may threaten your hard-earned business edge
• Loss of business data may ruin your company’s reputation or lead to expensive litigation
• Most importantly, it interrupts your business operation

Is it safe to perform backups via the Internet?

Absolutely. Your data is securely stored on 1 or more remote backup server(s) hosted by SCS’s partner company, using the same level of encryption employed by most multi-national banks. All of your data is encrypted and compressed before being uploaded and stored on our offsite servers using a secure SSL channel.

Encryption and decryption is only performed on the client’s machine with the user’s credentials, which are not transmitted during uploading downloading. Therefore, nobody can read the data except the user.

More Benefits

Secure and reliable:

Unlike conventional backup methods, your critical data is encrypted, compressed, and uploaded to a remote server hosted and managed by SCS and their partner company via Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with enhanced security.
Everything is run automatically with no human intervention required (after initial setup). This eliminates all possibilities of negligence induced problems. This robust design guarantees an extremely high success rate of data restoration. SCS will monitor backups as well ensuring that there is no time where the data is unprotected.

Limited cost, Unlimited Protection:

Once the online backup software is deployed in your company, your invaluable data is protected from fire, vandalism, terrorist attacks, was, natural disasters, etc. While the cost of online backup is limited, the value of critical business data it protects is unlimited.

Versioning and Retention:

All our online backup solutions have some form of versioning, where previous versions of files are preserved for a certain length of time. We also offer data retention options where a copy of your data is kept for a longer period of time, out of the normal backup cycle. Virtually unlimited retention options are available, including the financial industry standard of 7 years.

Flexible Options:

SCS do not have an exclusive arrangement with any provider for backup services, meaning that we can choose which solution works best for the client. We currently partner with companies offering several different backup solutions.

It has become more popular over recent years to site email servers outside of a company's mail offices. There are many good reasons for this, including:

• No need to maintain an on-site server.
• Much easier to cater for remote users or multi-site companies.
• Anti-spam and email anti-virus is often taken care of as part of a hosted solution.
• Less reliance on the company's Internet connection.
• More secure - the company network is protected from email-based attacks.

Various hosted email options are available but probably the most popular and flexible is Hosted Exchange. With this solution a 3rd party maintains the Microsoft Exchange Server and staff can access their email from anywhere that has an Internet connection.

• Staff can use Outlook or Outlook Web Access just as they could with an in-house Exchange server.
• The vast majority of Exchange features are available, including:
  • Shared contacts, calendars, tasks etc.
  • Public Folders
  • Folder Permissions
  • Distribution Groups
  • Various server-based features such as email routing and Out of Office functionality.

In addition, various mobile options are available:

• Push email to your smartphone and sync your email, contacts, calendar etc. using ActiveSync
• BlackBerry support (without needing a separate BlackBerry server) - push your email out and sync everything over the air.

Plus of course, basic email access using POP3 or IMAP is available, allowing access to email from just about any email client or mobile device.

We can offer flexible agreements for when you may need either ‘simple’ mailboxes with no filtering right up to ‘advanced’ mailboxes with multiple contact/distribution groups, Outlook licences, archiving, redundancy and Anti-Spam/Virus filtering. Or to make things easier a mix of these.

We have a few customers that have a handful of remote workers that only need the web interface to get email, so why should they or you pay for all the other features they are not using? Simple. Don’t. We only charge for what you will use and the accounts can be upgraded and changed as little or as often as required and we just charge you the difference each time and only ever for the time you have had it.

This is a relatively new way of working and we have had positive comments about the way we are heading with this method of billing and account management being very simple to understand from a customer’s point of view.  Whatever your requirements please feel free to contact us to find out where you can save money and bring order to your current email system.

Hosted Exchange services also integrate with Email Archiving.

Just because you can't install software directly on the Exchange server doesn't mean you can't have managed signatures; we offer the range of products from Exclaimer, including Signature Manager, which allows you to centrally manage signatures and disclaimers without needing your own Exchange server

Hosted Exchange isn't right for everyone. There are various reasons why companies might opt for an in-house email solution. See here for more information.

 Also consider Google Apps!

Google have moved into enterprise email and collaboration in a big way, making their proven Gmail and Google Docs platforms available for businesses to use. SCS is an authorised Google Apps reseller.

Firstly, let's look at email:

It has become more popular over recent years to site email servers outside of a company's mail offices. There are many good reasons for this, including:

• No need to maintain an on-site server.
• Much easier to cater for remote users or multi-site companies.
• Anti-spam and email anti-virus is often taken care of as part of a hosted solution.
• Less reliance on the company's Internet connection.
• More secure - the company network is protected from email-based attacks.

As well as the webmail interface familiar to so many (and the usual options of using POP3 or IMAP email clients such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird), Google Apps offers the ability to use Microsoft Outlook. This provides similar functionality to Hosted Exchange (see our Hosted Email page), but at a fraction of the cost.

• Mobile Access: Google Apps supports a variety of mobile devices, including any device that supports ActiveSync.
• Anti-Spam: Anyone who's used Gmail will know that Google have an excellent anti-spam system. This same system is available to all Google Apps users.

Google Apps can optionally be integrated with Postini - one of the industry standards in email security.

This solution is not suitable for everyone - it very much depends on your requirements, but we have deployed Google Apps to good effect with several of our clients. Plus there's the fact that Google is not a company that stands still - improvements and enhancements are being made all the time, so the service just keeps getting better! 

 But email is just the start!

Google Apps also offers a host of collaboration features. Users can access and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations from anywhere there's an Internet connection. They can even collaborate with colleagues in real-time. Google documents have compatibility with other applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, giving you maximum flexibility.

For companies that have remote users or a need for a central repository of information (such as a corporate intranet site) then this may be the solution for you. With Google Apps you can create your own company intranet website with ease, integrating it with other Apps features such as Docs and Calendar.

Sharing Calendars is easy. Through the Google Apps website you can grant people read or write permission to your calendar and view others calendars, overlayed on yours if you want. Plus you can embed your company calendar in your website to keep your customers aware of upcoming events. Shared calendars work in Outlook too!

 Google are continuing to enhance Apps and make more features available. For instance you are now able to access more of your favourite Google websites from Apps (e.g. Maps, Talk and Reader).

With more business being conducted over email, the need for email archiving is growing.  Many businesses come up against one of more of the following issues:

• Mailboxes growing too large: putting pressure on the mail server(s), backup facilities and often the client PCs if they are synchronising the mailboxes locally.
• Email archives being kept by staff in the form of Outlook PST files, which may be held centrally or on individual PCs or laptoips, making them difficult to control.
• Email being accidentally deleted, with the staff realising too late for it to be restored from the backup cycle.
• Messages from departing staff need to be kept.
• Important business transactions or negotiations happen over email and there is a need to keep records of these emails such that they cannot be altered.
• Managers need to be able to monitor emails for compliance with company policy and legal requirements.
• Requirements to pass FSA / ISO standards for retention and operations.

In it's most basic form, email archiving is literally keeping a copy of all emails sent and received, including internally.

SCS has access to several archiving solutions, including those from Google Postini and Global Relay, both of which exist in the cloud in a highly protected form such that no user, including managers or SCS, can change the archive.

Global Relay's solution includes sophisicated tools for selecting emails for compliance review, and also reporting back that the review has taken place.

 Archives are typically held for 7 or 10 years, although Google Postini does offer a 1 year solution.

Archiving solutions can be integrated into many systems, including on-site Microsoft Exchange servers and many hosted Exchange services.

Every company these days needs some sort of web presence, be it a full blown website with ecommerce abilities or  a simple landing page to let your customers find out a little more information like contact details. Buying domain names, managing hosting and especially in the advent of combining in house systems with hosted the configuration can get quite complicated. This is all without introducing multiple offices with failover points and possibly even multiple websites for one domain.

SCS can take the stress and billing overheads out of the equation and deal with all your 3rd party providers, sites and configurations to either host your site at SCS or just manage all your accounts for you.

We have multiple customers which just require simple sites which we can set up for you and also host small mailboxes on the same server driving costs down to a minimum and usually beating a lot of consumer sites on price. For larger or more advanced sites we have subcontractors and partners to work with on sites and also have ecommerce contacts who we are familiar with if you need this set up. So whatever your needs we can provide a solution.