Smart Teaming

Risual are one of 21 partners within the Microsoft Consulting Services Smart Teaming Agreement. Established in January 2011 the Smart Teaming agreement has been setup to enable efficient, predictable, and transparent partner sub-contracting relationships by standardizing the engagement process, sharing skills / capability, demand data, and driving consistent value for Microsoft and its partners.

The Smart Teaming agreement runs for three calendar years ensuring a strong relationship is established and maintained between partners and Microsoft Consulting Services. The agreement enables partners to support Microsoft with augmenting key engagements by providing skills that cover the Microsoft stack and also supplying niche and in demand skills.

In the UK, Microsoft are committed to ensuring 80% of all sub-contracting is covered by the Smart Teaming partners and to date has been a great success in achieving this metric.

Wow! What a year!

As 2011 draws to a close Richard, John and Alun are reflecting on the exciting developments that risual has faced both as an organisation and with our customers. Over the last twelve months risual has helped customers:

• develop their Windows 7 deployments through jumpstarts and Proof of Concepts
• simplify the move to a Cloud infrastructure using System Center
• drive out telephony costs and improved collaboration by deploying Lync and Exchange 2010
• collaborate internally and with their customers better using SharePoint and CRM
• globally with a diverse range of customers from Blue Light and Local Government to Retail Fashion, Finance and Legal

To date, no other Microsoft partner in the UK has delivered more Windows 7 Jumpstart Proof of Concept engagements.

Here’s to 2012, the Olympics, major Microsoft releases and many more opportunities to support our customers business objectives through technology.

System Center 2012 is almost here…
Having just completed the System Center 2012 road show event in Manchester, where our friends at Paul Smith presented on their experiences to a capacity crowd, our minds are turning to wrapping presents, devouring mince pies and a well-earned rest.

In Redmond, meanwhile, they are hard at work putting the finishing touches to the 2012 wave of System Center products with significant investments in Operations Manager which will bring better cross platform support and network monitoring; Virtual Machine Manger delivering a more cloud and service centric approach to virtualisation management; to the new user centric approach of Configuration Manager

Take the pain out of budget planning with ROCR…

Identify tactical savings and support your new year budget planning in good time for April with risual’s Operational Cost Review. risual recognise the cyclical pain that both Public and Private Sector organisations have to go through each year. But with the constraints around spending getting ever tighter and the constant pressure to reduce cost without impacting Service Delivery, it makes any budget planning exercise a daunting task and one that requires detailed work in a busy time for everyone. risual can help….Read More…

risual is committed to making our customers successful, and this begins with delivering the highest quality of service within the timeframes that are critical to our customers operations. risual Support Services (RSS) offers unparalleled levels of support and guarantees customers a smooth experience therefore operating and maintaining support cover throughout Christmas and New Year (24X7x365). During the festive break, RSS will ensure business continuity at a time when resource may be low and another freeze captures our shores. The snow may fall to give us a white Christmas, but you are assured that RSS will be there whatever the weather to proactively monitor your infrastructure and patch the environment to ensure it does not fall behind – allowing you to concentrate on opening your gifts from Santa!!!

The risual team grows

Matthew further bolsters our team of subject matter experts in our System Center practice. Matthew brings a broad set of skills across the System Center suite and years of experience across both public and private sectors, delivering at complexity and scale.	As a key member of the Project Management Office Phillippa has a strong background in administration and excellent organisation skills, Philippa fronts the Project Management Office, co-ordinating the efficient delivery of the the Technical Consulting team.	Joining the Collaboration practice Mike brings 10 experience in the IT industry working across Finance, Insurance and the Legal sectors. His experience ranges from Developer to IT Professional covering all versions SharePoint Portal Server 2001 to SharePoint 2010.

System Center 2012 pre-launch..
As one of the key partners with strong skills and experience in helping customers to save money and improve IT Service Delivery using Microsoft System Center tools, risual was chosen by Microsoft co-host the System Center 2012 preview event in Manchester on 6th December. Over 150 customers attended to learn about more about the exciting, new System Center 2012 solutions and how they can take the next steps to gain value from these solutions with assistance from risual.

For more information on risual’s Systems Management offerings please click
For more information on System Centre 2012, read here.

As a key partner of Microsoft’s around System Center, risual can gain access to additional funds to assist you with planning and deployment of System Center and Private Cloud solutions.

Customer Immersion Experience Event

risual hosted two Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) workshops in Manchester on 6th December at which customers were able to see and experience the latest versions of Microsoft technologies such as Windows 7, Office 2010, Office 365, SharePoint, Lync and Dynamics CRM.

If you missed out on this event, you can see these solutions in action again on the “Microsoft Productivity Days” that risual is delivering in conjunction with Microsoft on January 25th at our offices in Stafford and on 13th February at Microsoft Cardinal Place in London.

For more details and to register for one of these events please click here

Police data centre event

On 29th November Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and risual ran an event hosted by Wiltshire Constabulary at their headquarters in Devises. The title of the event was “How to improve service with lower costs from Police data-centres”. Attendees from several forces came along to learn about how Police forces are reducing costs and improving service delivery using solutions from, Microsoft, HP and risual and looked at real case examples on how costs are being significantly reduced in Police data-centres.

We are running another event hosted by Greater Manchester Police at their new headquarters on 1st February 2012. For more information and to register for that event please click here

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risual, Parker Court, Staffordshire Technology Park, Stafford, Staffordshire, ST18 0WP
T: 0845 680 0077
F: 01785 226555
enquiries@risual.com

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© 2011 Risual Limited. All rights reserved.

Season’s Greetings

What a fantastic time of the Year, we even have snow to make it feel even more Christmassy.

It’s been a while since you last heard from us and a lot has changed at risual in the last six months which we thought you would all like to hear about. So we’ve created our latest newsletter now branded “Progress” and this is below for your reading delight. One for the calendar is the risual Communications event on the 27th January 2010 at risual Head Office in Stafford, just email events@risual.com to secure your seat.

We do hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year and look forward to seeing you soon.

Merry Christmas from all of the risual team

risual marketing team

Have you visited our website and blogs at www.risual.com and www.risualblogs.com

It’s a common sight: staff crowded round a laptop, cradling their coffees, or wasting valuable time sending countless e-mails to each other to get a group project finished. But in an economic environment where you need to maximise your resources, it’s time to discover a better way of working.
There is a far better way to work, which improves both productivity and collaboration. Your team can work together faster and more effectively, with help from Microsoft products. Freeing them to:

• Collaborate better — Forget the restrictions of offices. Teams can share vital documents and information through team worksites and portals
• Work simpler — Group work can be effortless. Produce documents seamlessly with features such as update notifications and alerts, online/offline access, built in version control and workflow functionality
• Boost productivity — be more productive and efficient by sharing information, analysing data and creating professional-looking documents easily

We can help you find the right solution to boost collaboration and productivity. Contact us today to find out more:
E-mail us: enquiries@risual.com
Call us: 0845 6800077
Visit our Web site: www.risual.com

Microsoft are hosting a Virtualization Summit 2010 – From the Desktop to the Datacenter on Monday 12 April 2010 at Shepherds Bush Vue Cinema in London.

Can you and your staff only access your e-mail, desk phone and calendars when in the office? Are your staff wasting time sitting in traffic just to meet with potential customers?
We’re facing one of the most challenging business environments in 60 years. But there is a better way to work that allows you to cut costs without affecting customer relationships, and keep in touch wherever you are.

Keep your business connected
Help your business get better connected with advanced communications solutions like Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.
By freeing your staff to easily keep in touch with colleagues and customers,
you’ll be able to:

• Reduce travel costs — by setting up meetings online, you can present to customers as if they’re in the room; including showing presentations, amending documents and collaborating on a virtual whiteboard
• Find, communicate and collaborate quickly and easily — by bringing together e-mail, calendaring, voicemail, instant messaging, VoIP, and Web conferencing
• Stay up to date out of the office — with easy access to all of your communications, through your mobile device, Web browser or telephone
• Be more responsive — edit documents and review presentations wherever you are
• Organise meetings faster — by viewing each other’s availability and status
• Prepare for the unexpected — make sure your teams are able to work remotely, in the event of incidents like road closures, rail strikes or floods

Save money — with a complete communications solution throughout your entire business, including voice call management from your desktop and on-site conferencing

Contact enquiries@risual.com today to see how risual can help you.

editorial welcome to our first issue!

Hello and welcome to the first issue of our monthly newsletter from the support services team at risual. Each month we will be sharing our progress as we improve the services we offer to our clients.  We will keep you updated on technology developments, and share our experi­ence of managing hundreds of servers and clients for many customers.

This month as the memories of long summer days leave us behind and our attention focuses on the impending clocks going back, we look at ways to improve your organisation’s backup and data retention, along with details of risual’s events programme and our adoption of in­dustry recognised standards to improve the service we offer you.

Regards, Kate Lincoln, Editor

P.s. Also this month we have launched our new blog site at www.risualblogs.com and you can stay in touch with our twitter feed at www.twitter.com/risual

service focus fully managed DPM solution

A new risual support service, Managed DPM, provides businesses with the peace of mind that important data, applications and services are fully protected and managed daily by risual. Under our Managed DPM service, risual will manage your on premise Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM) server instance/s including services for data protection, recovery and full return to service capability. This, coupled with tape data being stored off site in secure and environmentally controlled vaults, offers a flexible and reliable Disaster Recovery solution and service. risual will provide remote administration and operations for your DPM servers and take control of user and application data protection and recovery. The risual service goes a stage further, provisioning a full return to service solution for Microsoft applications and services. Couple this with secure weekly off site tape data storage and all your protection, recovery, and disaster recovery scenarios are covered.

So, what is included in this Service?

Sound interesting? email support@risual.com or hardeepb@risual.com

Hardeep Bains, Support Lead

risual event smart communicator

did you know?

Risual’s phone system is 100% based on Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The unique features allow us to provide single number reach for consultants and directors, dynamic routing for in or out of hours access for support and has allowed us to cut our call charges and provide our own conferencing service.

next month

Risual has recently achieved several ISO accreditations, find out how these enable us to deliver a world class service for our customers.

risual group ltd the company

risual is a dedicated Microsoft solutions partner delivering cutting edge technology solutions and consultancy enabling businesses to gain the most of their technology and their technology investments. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, using our high level competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies and business solutions, risual deliver customer focused Consulting; Solutions and Support services. Our breadth of experience and depth of knowledge allows us to provide a best fit solution for your organisation.

We are interested in the issues facing your business and how we can assist you in utilising the technology available to resolve these.