Comparing Cloud Solutions the Your Office Anywhere Way

Customers need to be able to compare the different Cloud Solutions on the market today. At Your Office Anywhere we unlock the questions you need to be asking.

The following services are included in our solution

• • • All issues/support of the Your Office Anywhere platform performed by certified Microsoft Professionals and the platform support costs are included as part of the service.
    • Installation (by us) of any software on the platform that is supported on a Windows Remote Desktop Server solution.  In complex cases we will work with the software vendor to install the software as part of the setup cost.  We don’t limit customers to a subset of applications but allow customers to install the applications that make their business work
    • Installation of additional software at a later date it doesn’t have to be installed at build time
    • Anti-Virus on the server
    • Windows Updates on the server
    • Microsoft License reporting for compliance
    • Rental of Microsoft licenses including Office Standard and Professional under the Service Provider Licence Agreement.
    • Rental and Hosting of Office 365.
    • Rental or purchase of Sage Accounts licenses.
    • UK Helpdesk contactable by both phone and email (tickets)
    • Upgrades to the latest version of Microsoft products as they are release for example Microsoft Office and also Sage Accounts (if rented)
    • UK data centre – this is very important for customers who must keep their data in the UK for information security and GDPR compliance
    • Server Backups
    • All servers, switches, storage are owned by Your Office Anywhere. This is very important. Other solutions we have researched, the hardware is often rented to the cloud provider by another provider. This means they are not in control of the underlying hardware. We are.
    • Ability to utilise a dedicated SQL Server (for performance optimisation). We have SQL Servers that are running all supported versions of SQL.  Alternatively an installation of SQL Server locally on the server built for the customer
    • Data Backups taken at 08:00 12:00 and 17:30 providing a recovery point in time of 4 hours for data restores
    • Ability to restore individual files not just the whole server
    • The server generally only contains the operating system, and storage for this is included in the cost. This doesn’t need to be factored in to the storage allowance. Data/Documents are stored separately on an EMC NAS
    • Remote Desktop licensing server – this provides dynamic remote desktop licenses as users log on to the remote desktop
    • Users can logon to the customers dedicated server as username@companyname.com and the setup of the users is included in the setup costs provided as part of any quote
    • Configuration of security to allow specific groups of users access to specific data folders as requested by the company contact.
    • Hardware failover to a different server should the underlying hardware fail
    • Remote controlling end user PC’s to assist should there be issues connecting to the hosted platform
    • Locked down desktop that ensures users can’t access parts of the operating system that would cause them to “break” the system and cause unnecessary downtime and support for that user.
    • Ability to take a snap shot of the server prior to any major software updates – the server can be rolled back prior to the software update in a matter of minutes
    • Monitoring of disk, CPU and memory usage for performance of the server
    • Uses just the Microsoft solution for remote desktop (no Citrix or other 3^rd party software requirement) which adds both complexity  (Citrix is an additional layer of software on top of the Microsoft software) and unnecessary license costs
    • Run the remote desktop from Apple Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices as well as Windows PCs, Laptops and Tablets

Unlock the Questions to Ask

So if you are serious about a cloud platform make sure they are serious about you as a customer and are offering you all of the above services as part of their solution.

At Your Office Anywhere we understand that for a lot of SME businesses “Cloud Computing” as it has become termed is confusing. It is very difficult for businesses to understand what each provider is actually providing. However what the majority of providers are actually offering is just a server in a data centre. The customer is then expected to specify how much processing capability they require, how much memory, how much disk space (including the operating system). These providers will then give you a server with Windows on the server and that is it – nothing more. So if you have very little or no technical expertise they might as well have given you the controls to a plane and asked you to pilot it down the runway and take off!

We expect customers to test the market and get competitive quotes (and quite rightly) however we believe (as we monitor the market) that we are as competitive as any other provider in the UK plus we offer other value added services as part of the whole solution included in the cost which other providers don’t. So before you decide to sign up with another provider here we have a list of questions that you should ask a potential cloud provider before signing up to their service.

The Your Office Anywhere solution is a fully managed platform and that is the key differentiator.

If you have any questions please post a question to the blog.