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breathe technology

infrastructure | support | security | cloud

Cloud Computing for Businesses and Schools

The Cloud isn’t new anymore. Everyone has it..

Cloud Technology has been around for some time, and it’s changed from a buzzword and hype to a standard part of most businesses and schools networks.


During the pandemic and the lockdowns, there was a real shift in the way we think about our premises and offices. For some, it’s caused a real problem, and for others, it’s proved that we can work in a different way.

Today this working model is evolving further and many organisations have returned to the office to some degree.

Either ways, Your IT needs to be more flexible than ever. 
You’re more reliant than ever.

But there are other topics of concern like Cyber Security and the world has become an expensive place.


Craig van Aswegen, MD Breathe Technology

What’s the current state of play

Most organisations now use the cloud and most of the time it is some kind of Hybrid setup.

Hybrid in the sense that you may be using Office 365 or Google Workspace.

Azure Servers and possible AWS. However, you most likely have some limited Hardware remaining at your premises.

What are the challenges?

The challenges most businesses and schools face relate to:

  • Correct licensing
  • Costs that spiral out of control
  • Sloppy management of the Cloud Infrastructure
  • Cyber Security, Backup and Disaster Recovery isn’t clearly defined
  • Resources are managed well and there are issues related to things like storage
  • You don’t actually know if there is a better way or what your provider is doing

If this the case, we can help!

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Differences between Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud & traditional Co-location

Public Cloud

Systems like Microsoft Azure (Office 365 is part of this) or AWS (Amazon Web Services). Cloud services are a no-brainer, but some Public cloud services become very expensive and complex, and they do not offer much flexibility as to how you want to work. Finally, the location and ownership of Your data is another topic of discussion, which the Breathe Technical Team can assist with. 

Hybrid Cloud

A combination of Private and Public clouds. This has become a very common way of working and works well. Often, there might be some on-premises and equipment remaining too. 

Traditional Co-location

This is where the concept of the cloud started. Big data centres that would host your equipment. Often in aircraft hangers or ex-military bunkers. You would pay them for rack space. This was measured in U’s and then specific resources, such as your power consumption, are billed in Watts. Every function is billed based on consumption. Typically confusing and too complex for most small- to medium-sized businesses and schools. These facilities are super secure, but the end-user experience isn’t great if you need to physically access your equipment. They aren’t very customer-friendly or in easily accessible locations. 

Private Cloud

A modern, new-generation approach that has all the benefits of the public cloud and Co-location but is much more cost-effective, easy to work with, and has great customer service. A no-brainer for SME’s, mid-market businesses, and schools. 
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Private Cloud is a real game changer for many small to medium businesses and schools.

The concept is great. You could move your systems to the cloud and get the following benefits: 
  1. No longer do you have to keep the equipment in a server room with the right cooling, power, connectivity, and security
  2. Massively reduced upfront (CAPEX) costs for buying and owning servers
  3. Significantly increased security
  4. Significantly increased redundancy—no more single points of failure
  5. No future costs or effort to update and replace old hardware
  6. You’re always on the latest version of the software
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  • Simplifying the Cloud for SME, Mid-Market Businesses, and Schools
  • Easy and cost-effective
  • Anytime, Anywhere Access
  • Your infrastructure can be in our Cloud, or we can provide the hardware
  • High availability and always available
  • Secure Systems, Easily Accessible by You

What’s the deal
with cloud?

Cloud Technology has been around for some time, and it’s changed from a buzzword and hype to a standard part of most businesses and schools networks. 

During the pandemic and the lockdowns, there has been a real shift in the way we think about our premises and offices. For some, it’s caused a real problem, and for others, it’s proved that we can work in a different way. 

This, in turn, has affected the way we think about our IT and how we use the cloud. Every change within an organisation has some kind of IT impact. 

Craig van Aswegen, MD Breathe Technology

What’s the catch?

In reality, all these things are achievable; however, for most small to medium businesses and schools, it’s expensive (and complicated)! 

Azure has a consumption-based model, making it difficult to accurately specify and budget for, but it’s also very costly. 

Have you heard of private cloud?

The latest developments in cloud technologies for small to medium businesses and the education sector 

It’s simple to use; in fact, it’s a very friendly process. 

We take care of all the specifications, helping you understand the process migration of systems and can even support it. 

To top things off, it’s less than half the price of Azure, making private cloud affordable for small to medium businesses and schools. 
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At Breathe many of our customers were looking at the following scenarios

  1. They realised they could work entirely from home. As employees were no longer required to commute to the workplace, they gained greater flexibility and expanded their recruitment reach. Not to mention the substantial savings on office space and related costs.

  2. IT equipment ages over time, and installing these systems frequently involves significant costs and professional services. You might entirely offload this cost and strain through using cloud services as a potential long-term option.

  3. Some organisations require specific systems to remain accessible at all times, therefore high availability is critical. These systems are utilised by staff as internal resources or to share information with customers and business partners. They would like to offload the responsibility ensuring that these systems are always available without the cost and headache of providing the solution themselves.
  4. The organisation did not need as many offices. They were looking at a model in which they could keep the headquarters while removing the satellite offices, making savings while maintaining a physical presence with meeting rooms. Some schools would be office-based, while others would be home-based.

  5. If you only have one physical business to start with, such as a SME Business, Primary school, or Corporate downsizing office space, there is a need for a secondary location or a backup and disaster recovery setup. This may be a simple secondary location with a copy of your data and server backups or a full business continuity solution, allowing fallback of your systems on the verge of a disaster.

  6. By rotating the team, with some staff working from home and others in the office, there could be a reduction in office space. Some Smart Working: A new take on Hotdesking.
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What can you put in the Private Cloud?

Backup and Disaster Recovery

  • A Complete Business Continuity Solution. Servers are not only backed up and able to be restored, but they fail over to the second data centre, meaning no downtime.
  • All your IT Resources, Servers and Data can be backed up to the private cloud location 1 with a secondary disaster recovery set of backup data held in the secondary location
  • You may have a local backup but need a secondary backup offsite
  • Offsite/ Offline backup as a last stand. Ensuring that you have a more secure, invisible backup in the event of Cyber Attack.
  • We primarily use VEEAM and Arc Serve but can create a customised deployment for you, consisting or hardware or virtual resources. Even your own hardware can be hosted.

Specific Servers or Applications

  • There are sometimes servers that you would like to host in a more secure and reliable environment. Perhaps a CRM, Finance Application, Web Server or any resource that your staff may want to access from anywhere.
  • Our servers can be specified to your required specification at a very reasonable cost, removing the burden or ownership and simplifying speed of deployment.
  • This solution means that you only pay for the server resources you need and no complicated infrastructure to host the server. We provide that.

Storage

  • Storage for almost any application can be provisioned. Examples are file and folder storage, customer project storage, storage for designers or data intensive work loads for the education or research environments, such as university, Biotech or Pharmaceutical. 
  • You are even able to place your current system in the Private Cloud in a Co-location environment, working with your private Cloud tenant. Once these resources reached a refresh age, they simply migrate to cloud resources.

Features

  1. Cost Effective – Significantly more cost effective than MS Azure
  2. Flexible – Systems can be built from Virtual resources such as MS Azure or Physical Equipment can be hosted as you would in a co-location data centre. Or a mix of both, making it more flexible than traditional services.
  3. Simple – Our pricing model is simple and straight forward. The complete opposite to MS Azure or a Data Centre. There are no varying monthly fees either.
  4. Friendly – Data Centres are super secure, but typically far away and not accessed by the customer. Azure is completely virtual and there is very little human service or interaction.

The Breathe Easy Private Cloud provides a more personal approach to service and you’re able to visit and access your equipment, supported by our friendly team. Additionally, the Breathe Team will take care of the entire migration process and provides super support once the system is setup.

Specification

  • 2 UK Locations available to create a disaster recovery scenario, in Cambridge and Suffolk. The locations are far enough apart, to provide protection from most disasters and close enough to commute to, when access is required.
  • The Private Cloud Environment is only accessed by Breathe and used for Breathe customers, unlike Public Cloud.
  • All Data Held in the UK – GDPR Compliant
  • Options for both virtual resources and co-location hosting of physical equipment is available, making it more flexible than Public Cloud such as Azure or traditional Co-Location. Both can run side by side.
  • Breathe is ISO9001 (Quality) and ISO27001 (Security) Certified 
  • Bomb Proof Security Glass Enclosure (Cambridge)
  • Enhanced Cyber Security in comparison to our average customer network and server room
  • Redundant Cooling
  • UPS & Generator Power for Redundant Power
  • Environmental Monitoring
  • CCTV
  • Monitored Alarm System
  • 99.9% Uptime Guaranty (Maintenance Pre-Booked)
  • Instant Technical Support Access
  • Personal access to your equipment when you need it 
  • 24/7 Monitoring
  • Can provide cloud services for the entire IT Network or specific components such as a server, application or off-site/offline backup
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Losing the Server Room

If you no longer need the dedicated, secure space of a server room and can remove it from your list of requirements, it saves money and makes the demands around your work space much simpler. 

Apart from the physical space for the server room, you need to consider good internet connectivity, power supply, UPS, and possibly generator failover, air-conditioning, physical security such as locks, and key cards, environmental monitoring for heat, and humidity, CCTV, cabling, cabinets, etc. 

All of these have a cost and a management overhead. 

Most of these scenarios and questions around the location and costs of IT can be answered with a single solution.

Cloud Computing. This may be in the form of a Hybrid Cloud or Private Cloud network; however, Private Cloud has a strong story. 
It’s Cloud, but simple and cost-effective

Breathe Easy – Private Cloud, was our response – replace with the following

The concept?

Essentially, outsourcing your IT space or server room has all the benefits of the cloud but is simpler and more cost-effective than public cloud or traditional co-location. 

We wanted to create a simple, cost-effective place for you to host your IT, offloading the headache and giving you the flexibility to run your organisation in the way you would like, without the worry of where to put the IT. 

Additionally, for a low cost, you can move your IT into a hosting environment with all the bells and whistles that meet most business requirements and could pass any audit. 

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What is included in the Breathe Easy – Private Cloud?

Not only are you offloading the cost and responsibility, but you are also adding functionality, redundancy, and failsafes you probably didn’t have yourself. These include: 
  • 99% uptime guarantee
  • Connectivity from the best-performing ISP in the UK
  • Guaranteed bandwidth
  • Environmental monitoring for things such as humidity and temperature
  • UPS power and automatic generator failover
  • Enhanced Physical Security (CCTV, Monitored Alarm, Bomb-Proof Glass, Intruder Deterrents, Secure Business Park Location)
  • Fire Suppression
  • Easily accessible for you to visit and access your equipment in a comfortable, friendly environment
  • Ultrafast IT Support response times
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3‑Most common execution scenarios

  1. You relocate all of your IT equipment to the Breathe Easy Private Cloud Facility. 
  2. We provide you with storage, virtual servers, security, and backup on our infrastructure. 
  3. We host new IT equipment for you that’s paid for at a low monthly fee rather than paying for everything upfront (reduced CAPEX), and you own the equipment. 
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The Costs

Some of our customers host all their IT equipment for the price they were paying for their fibre-leased line internet connection. 

Never mind the premises required: connectivity, Power, UPS, air conditioning, CCTV, Environmental monitoring, etc. 

Our pricing is simple to understand and includes all the facilities. We do not price the rack space and then add everything as an extra, such as power or bandwidth. 

You get everything included at a low monthly cost. 

Our Technical Services

Breathe can assist you with the relocation and set-up of your IT equipment in the Breathe Easy—Private Cloud facility. It’s an End-to-End service that will ensure you are working. This can be done after hours to avoid the impact of downtime on your organization. 

If you require new systems, we can help you specify, procure, and then install your IT equipment in the Private Cloud Facility. 

Finally, ongoing support is quick, friendly, and cost-effective. Maintaining the Cloud Hosting of your equipment is included in your service fee. Additional IT Support is available if you would like that too. 

Our Team is based on the same premises, ensuring ultra-fast response times. 

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Other Cloud Services that we can offer

  • Fully Featured, Cost-effective Cloud Telephony, starting at £7.99 per user per month.
  • MS Azure: Complete Cloud Servers and Infrastructure
  • Office 365, including MS Exchange Online, Teams, and SharePoint
  • Expert SharePoint Migration and support
  • Business Hub Solution for SharePoint, centralising all your software and documents on an intuitive user interface that becomes the centre point of resources for your staff.
  • Cloud Backup and Disaster recovery
  • Cloud Security for Email (Anti-Malware and Anti-Spam)
  • Cloud Security scanning for data held in the Cloud, such as SharePoint
  • Virtual Firewalls for the cloud
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Download the Outsourced IT Support Checklist

Every Manager responsible for IT (Finance, Office Manager, Ops etc), that's not an IT Manager by profession should review their IT Support experience. How do you know if your expectations are realistic, is the team performing, are you at risk and didn't realise? Do you have doubts? Or are they simply great,

This Check Outsourced IT Support Checklist has been created, after performing hundreds of IT Audits over more than 20 years, revealing the most commonly found problems caused by IT Support Providers.

How does yours compare? Download for free today!

(PS. Your details remain confidential and will never be shared with anyone else)