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This January our director David attended the 2018 Microsoft Tech Summit held at the NEC, Birmingham. This was a technical learning event for IT professionals and developers and it was a great opportunity to build on cloud skills with the latest in Azure and Microsoft 365. Whilst at the summit, David took full advantage of learning from Microsofts’ top engineers, evolving his skills and deepening his expertise in Microsoft products.

The summit is a great place to discover the latest trends, tools, and products with a whopping 80 plus sessions covering a wide range of focus areas and topics. This gathering of like-minded business people was not only a chance to learn from some of the best minds of Microsoft, it was also a great way to meet and connect with other partners, visit the community theatre and share best practices.

Cloudy Group is dedicated to providing the versatile 365 Office packages to our clients and this summit was an excellent opportunity to find out the latest apps within this and how to pass this onto our clients. Naturally, the subject of the upcoming GDPR compliance was a hot topic and there was some very useful and informative discussion around Microsofts GDPR Compliance Manager tool and how best we can help our clients utilise this.

It was a really inspiring two days where David could experience how much the cloud is really changing expectations and transforming the way we live and work. It was an ample opportunity to discover the latest trends, tools and keynote speeches whether you were already cloud-savvy or just getting started on the cloud journey. Cloudy Group is proud to be MS Partners with Microsoft and attending summits like this each year not only helps us lead our organisation through real digital transformation, it also helps us arm our clients with the tools to do the same and shape our digital future.

-Sam Hall, Lead Copywriter

David, Neal, Martyn, and Denis spent the whole day doubling the capacity of our cloud, upgrading key equipment, wading through miles of cables to ensure that we bring our clients the best possible service from our data center. With over 2.5 billion Internet users worldwide we need to ensure that the centers we use can withstand the increasing amount of data usage and storage. Obviously, we don’t have to deal with the 2.5 billion but we certainly make sure our numerous clients receive the best possible data storage service from us. To help you understand a little more about why we make these regular and important upgrades we’ve written about some key reasons below. 

The total number of network-connected devices under management with Cloudy Group is increasing significantly, which has created more data to store and process. Disaster recovery is also increasingly a top priority and our data center holds capacity for this too.  In the US alone nearly 3 million data centers help power their economy thus making their lives easier. 

So naturally – we want to make your lives easier and the best thing to do was to upgrade our data center.  In a recent survey conducted by TechTarget (which covers the latest industry news, technologies, and trends that impact today’s IT professionals) 44% of respondents said the reason they upgraded was due to increased apps and data coming into their centers. 

It’s a common fact that servers consume a huge amount of energy in a data center – usually, the memory components and processors and upgrading servers can reduce the energy consumption. For us, it’s not only about a more efficient data center its’ also about decreasing the energy usage. This is done by using more efficient server models like Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS). 

We store a lot of yours and our information in the cloud so our data center networks needed to be upgraded to support this. By modernising old power and cooling equipment and embracing emerging technologies—such as economisers—many data centers can conserve increasingly scarce energy resources. Using our cloud storage, we offer improved scalability and agility that you can’t really get from the traditional in-house storage solutions, which is another reason why we work diligently to improve our facilities on a regular basis. 

By Sam Hall

We definitely roll with the winners here at Cloudy Group. Our Cloudy Comms team work with VoIP giant Swyx, who are based in Germany and we’d like to share with you news that they won FIRST PLACE at the IP Insider Readers’ Choice Awards! IP – Insider is the portal for networking professionals with topics related to network infrastructure and IP communication. Swyx were chosen as the best in category UCC – Unified Communications & Collaboration. A huge congratulations to their team and we are proud to be partners with this first-class company.  

PRESS RELEASE 

Swyx is number one: The readers of the German web portal IP-Insider voted the Dortmund-based company as best UCC provider. At the “Readers’ Choice Awards 2017” Swyx took first place in the category UCC – Unified Communications & Collaboration winning a Platinum Award. 

After the excellent result in the readers’ poll of the trade magazine Telecom Handel a few months ago, this new award proves that Swyx ranks not only highest among the resellers‘ favourites but is also the number one for users. 

In 2017, the seven specialist media portals of publishing house Vogel IT-Medien called on their readers for the third time in a row to select the best IT providers of the year. In the period from April 19 to August 31, IT decision-makers and professionals were able to choose their favourites from ten providers preselected by the editorial offices in various categories. A total of more than 32,000 votes were cast. 

Our partner Swyx champion the use of soft-phone technology which takes VoIP one step further in allowing users to connect with conventional phones through their internet-ready devices such as tablets, laptops and even desktop computers without the need for a telephone handset. To find out more visit http://www.cloudyit.co.uk/cloud-communications/  

By Sam Hall