What can organisations do to protect themselves from the price increase? Digital Exchange is advising that its customers contact their account managers to review their options. So call us without delay on 0800 073 1701.

The increase will affect different organisations in different ways. There are many variables that determine the best course of action. For some customers, it will make sense to buy some products before 1 July 2012. Others may find they can benefit from agreements that lock their prices for three years. And others may find, after evaluating their needs and objectives, that they don’t need to take any action at all.

In any case, it’s better to explore the options than to risk making a costly mistake. That’s why we are inviting our customers to call us and talk it through.

It provides a platform for running line-of-business (LOB) applications that are based on the Microsoft^® SQL Server^®  operating system, role-based server deployments (such as additional domain controllers), and virtual servers that run in a Hyper-V™ environment. It also gives you the flexibility to access a
second application platform when you need it, yet requires minimal IT resources.

Designed as an add-on component for SBS 2011 Essentials, SBS 2011 Standard, or SBS 2008, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-On includes:

• Windows Server® 2008 R2 Standard: Windows Small Business Server 2011
  Premium Add-On includes an additional license for Windows Server 2008 R2
  Standard, which allows you to deploy another server on your SBS network.  Windows Server 2008 R2 builds on the
  award-winning foundation of Windows Server^®  2008, expanding existing technology and adding
  new features to enable businesses to increase the reliability and flexibility
  of their server infrastructure. New virtualization tools, Web resources,
  management enhancements, and exciting Windows^® 7 integration help
  save time and  reduce costs.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 for Small Business:  SQL
  Server 2008 R2 for Small Business contains a range of features that
  can help businesses maximize the value of their information with greater
  capabilities in development, manageability, business intelligence, and data
  warehousing. SQL Server 2008 R2 for Small Business has exactly the same
  capabilities as SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard, however it is only available to
  use in SBS 2011 and SBS 2008 environments.

Key Scenarios…

Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on can be used in a number of different ways, depending on your specific needs.

Running Business Applications

Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on is perfect for businesses that need to run a large number of applications but have
limited IT expertise. It combines the powerful server platform capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2 and the rich analysis, reporting features, and data management capabilities of SQL Server. It is an excellent way to run applications that require a centralized database and shared user information. From accounting and business planning to contact management software, you’ll be able to capture and harness your data and work more productively.

Virtulisation

With virtualisation powered by Hyper-V, it’s easier than ever to optimize your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines running on a single physical machine.

Remote Desktop Services

You can use Windows Small Business Server Premium Add-on to take advantage of Remote Desktop Services (RDS) to deliver additional desktops and applications to a wide array of client devices. For instance, you can create flexible work scenarios by installing and managing session-based desktops and applications—or virtual machine-based desktops— on the central server. All user interactions occur on the server itself, but look, feel, and behave like local applications.

Additional Domain Controller

Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on is an excellent way to implement an additional domain controller, giving you redundancy and protecting your role-based data against failure.

Branch Deployment

If you have branch offices or remote sites, you can use the Windows Small Business Server Premium Add-On to start improving application response time and reduce WAN traffic. BranchCache—a feature in Windows7 and the Windows Server 2008 platform—allows content from file and web servers to be cached on local computers, and either distributed across peer client computers or a centrally hosted server. In addition, you can use various branch office related technologies, such as Read only Domain Controllers, secure file and data access and higher fault tolerance for connectivity between sites.

Office Web Apps

Whether you’re in the office, at home, or on the road, Microsoft^® Office Web Apps help you get more things done virtually anywhere and anytime. Microsoft Office Web Apps are free online companions to Microsoft^® Word, Microsoft^® Excel^®, Microsoft^® PowerPoint^® and Microsoft^® OneNote^® giving you the freedom to access, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents from virtually anywhere on your PC, mobile phone, and Web browser. Office Web Apps are available as an optional download through Microsoft^® SharePoint^® Foundation 2010, which is easy to install on your Premium Add-on.

FAQ…

Q. Why does Windows Small Business Server now use an add-on model instead of just offering standard and premium editions?

A.  By moving to an Add-on model customers can purchase the SBS 2011 Premium Add-on when required.  There is no restriction on how many they can purchase, and the add-on model provides better flexibility and choice with SBS.

Q. Are there any restrictions for the server technologies included in the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-on?

A. There are no restrictions at all. You get full access to all SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard and Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard technologies. To ensure full access, the installation process includes a domain check to verify that SBS 2011 Standard or Essentials is present.

Learn More…

Windows Small Business Server 2011 Premium Add-On:  www.microsoft.com/sbs

Windows Server 2008 R2: www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2:  www.microsoft.com/sqlserver

Contact Digital Exchange to discuss this or any other Microsoft operating systems.

For example, a 10 x user Samsung telephone system would typically retail at £3100, but in this case you pay only £1860. The bigger the system swap-out the bigger the discount!

This offer only applies if you already own one of the following systems…

• Panasonic
• Avaya
• Nortel
• Meridian
• BCM
• SDX
• Norstar
• Lucent

In return for the discount we ask for your old telephone system, which is then disposed of in-line with the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements and to obtain a non-obligatory quote.

Prices stated are exclusive of VAT and subject to credit terms.

We can help you move to the future of dictation technology by buying back your old analogue hardware when you upgrade to digital.

To find out how much you could reduce your upgrade costs by please contact us, or call 0800 073 0701.

To learn about the benefits of upgrading from analogue to digital dictation, click here.

So, what does this mean? It’s simple…if you purchase a new telephone system from Digital Exchange we will buy-back your old system, irrelevant of its make and model.

We’re offering up to £800* for your old system, which would be used to help fund the purchase of a new system from ourselves.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements and to obtain a non-obligatory quote.

* Price may vary dependant on the age of the system we’re buying back.

Telemarketing:

Are you tenacious, professional, capable and driven? Yes, then
this might just be for you. We require people who can consistently generate new
business opportunities for IT Support from SMB’s regionally.

A competitive salary and bonus scheme will reward success, so to
be considered please email us a copy
of your CV explaining why you’re the best.

Candidates must have at least 2 years of prior telemarketing/appointment-setting
experience.

Internal Sales:

The same personality attributes apply here as they do above, but
this time we’re searching for track-recorded sales people who can join the team
with a deep desire to convert sales opportunities in to actual business. The
focus will be on IT support contracts, but our entire portfolio will be there
for you to make the most of.

Competitive salary bolstered with an un-capped commission
structure is yours for the taking, but that’s for you to convince us of. Please
send us a copy of your CV via email, and at
the same time detail why you’re most suited to this role.

Candidates must have at least 2 years of prior
phone-based sales experience.

Send your CV and supporting information to info@thedigitalgroup.co.uk

We’d also like to congratulate Dave Parsons who’s been promoted from Tech Support to Field Engineer, specialising in Microsoft-based IT Networking, Digital Dictation and Swyx IP-Telephony.

Dave’s promotion left an opening on our Tech Support Desk, which has since been filled by Nicky Mason who joins us this month to strengthen the support we provide to customers. Welcome on-board Nicky.

With an expanded Technical team we’re pushing on with our steady growth plans…onwards!

With an expanded Technical team we’re pushing on with our steady growth plans…onwards!

Unified Communocations is without doubt the future of telecoms irrelevvant of the size or nature of your business, and Digital Exchange can offer hosted or CPE (Customer Premises Equpment) solutions to help your organisation operate more effectivley.

Don’t take our word for it; read the BBC news article below that was featured on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14825020 earlier this month:

You’re sitting in the office with a client on the phone, ready to make the deal of your career.

They are ready to invest heavily in a shipment of your new and improved flux capacitor – a sale equivalent to the GDP of a medium sized African nation.

If you can clinch this you’ll be wearing a jet pack to fly up the greasy pole.

But the client wants to know if they can be delivered in three days – and he has to know now or he will go elsewhere. You need to find out if Bob in despatch can handle it.

But Bob isn’t answering the phone and you don’t know where he is, or who else may be able to help you.

Your dreams of early retirement on your yacht in the Caribbean slip away into the ether.

Is there anything that could have avoided this?

Well, if the hype is to be believed, unified communications (UC) may have saved the day.

Tech Talk

Jargon like this can seem daunting to those uninitiated in the dark arts of IT and telephony.

But what it actually means is bringing together all of the communication tools you use on a daily basis – phone, email, messaging, even video conferencing and social media – and running them from a single platform.

This should allow you to see where your staff are, if they’re available, if a colleague can help instead – in the office and also when they’re on the move – all from one simple interface.

You can then choose how you contact staff and customers.

Dial It In

Lebara provides low-cost international telephone calls.

At their contact centre in the City of London they expect to handle around 5m calls over the next year.

UC and a niche contact centre package is crucial to their customer services says Rodney Sheriff, Lebara’s head of customer service.

“We like to think of ourselves as best in class from a customer service perspective. ”

Having an integrated service means that the customer service centre is integrated with the back office operation.

“We can route customers calls to the best person to deal with their enquiries.

“We can leave messages for common-place queries so people can get fast access to that information, and if there is a problem it becomes very visible to us.

“The suite gives us instantaneous reporting so we can easily see that marketing, for example, have sent a message that’s been misunderstood by our callers, we can see a spike in calls in literally seconds, and we can respond right away.”

When agents aren’t busy, they can be redirected to customer courtesy calls, through a sophisticated “blended dialer” system. Customers can give feedback on the experience, and Lebara are able to analyse call data to make sure they have enough agents serving each country they operate in.

Matt Kemp is head of operations for customer services and he says that contrary to expectations, the system is easy to use.

“One of the beauties of the system is that I can probably train anyone to record a message and put it on in 10 minutes.”

“If we have a major issue we can get a message on there immediately.”

An industry specialist says this niche use of UC is just one of many.

“If you think about the different elements of UC, and you apply it to a business scenario here at Lebara, you have a front office and back office operation that need to be tightly integrated.

“If you have elements of the business that aren’t integrated, you end up with an ineffective way of dealing with customers, and perhaps a cultural set-up within the company that doesn’t allow you to be as flexible as you would like.”

Mr Moulton believes that the principles of UC can be applied to most businesses.

“If you think about the average day for the knowledge worker in any organisation – the things they have to process on an average day – email, voicemail, team meetings, collaboration, messaging, all of these things are now pretty prevalent on every employees desktop and they also by and large exist on mobile phones.

“If you want teams to be as productive and collaborative as they can be then you need to give them a common set of tools and applications to use on a daily basis, and these should integrate as seamlessly as possible with their telephony systems and messaging systems.”

Choices, Choices

There are no shortage of UC options – Microsoft, Cisco and Swyx are just some of the big names to choose from.

BT offers its own service, and also works with a range of UC providers.

“We think of ourselves as the great integrators,” says Steve Masters, head of global unified communications.

For him, collaboration is the key benefit of a UC system.

“It’s really about bringing your organisation far closer together, the ability to then extend that externally and have greater communications and collaboration with your partners.”

He acknowledges that cost can be a big consideration for smaller businesses.

“That market and the corporate markets are very different.

“They’re diametrically opposed almost. The corporate world views UC as a way of saving money, because there will be so much cost involved in running all these disparate systems.”

For a big multinational one factor is being able to move away from using the different technologies provided in different countries by telecoms providers.

“It’s not unknown for organisations to have voicemail systems in the hundreds across their organisations.

“So there there’s a need to move to a UC one to get better collaboration in the organisation but also to drive cost down in the business.

Mr Masters says that for a small single office operation however, the costs could be prohibitive with limited return on that investment.

He sees video as the next big growth area for the market.

“The analysts are all predicting great things for video over the next three years.

“When people are working remotely you can really enrich the dynamics of a remote meeting through having video.”

Changing Minds

Duncan Clark is UC specialist with analysts Canalys. He says although UC is nothing new, consumerisation – the drive from people inside companies to have technology that mirrors what they use at home – is changing perspectives.

“I guess people think of consumerisation in terms of people bringing in their own devices or going on the internet and using their own tools, I think it runs much deeper than that it’s actually the whole experience that people expect from their workplace that

“I think that’s what’s changed, and what’s really changing the focus, making UC more marketable to a wider audience.”

For companies considering adopting the technology, he says that cost doesn’t have to be a barrier.

“The beauty of UC is that it’s not necessary that you take the whole package, and I think that’s the thing that gets misunderstood.

“You don’t have to implement everything, it’s about saying what tools do I need to make the business work.”

“The reality is UC can make a huge difference but it’s something that’s difficult to measure in real terms.”

But he does have a few words of warning.

“The key thing for businesses is to really get the background information. I think there’s a severe lack of understanding about what the different aspects of UC will actually bring to your business.

“For example, you may think that video conferencing will bring benefits, but when you actually deploy it you find people aren’t using it.

“You need to look at what specific solution you choose, and how you implement it and use it in the business.”

Contact Digital Exchange to see how Unified Communications can benefit your business.

We’re now on Twitter, so please follow us to keep tabs on what we’re up to.

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We’re pleased to announce the launch of our buy-back scheme relating to new Samsung telephone system purchases.

If your organisation has an existing Samsung phone system, and you’re considering its replacement or upgrade to a current-generation Samsung solution, we will buy back the old system for up to £800*, which would be used to help fund the purchase of a new system from ourselves.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements and to obtain a non-obligatory quote.

* Price may vary dependant on the model of the existing Samsung system we are buying back.

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