Even More Virtually Certain Than Last Time!

The level of interest in our last article about virtualisation was high and so, back by popular demand, Director John Bilyj returns to the blog this week to give a practical example of how the technology can work in an active business environment.

Ripon Select Foods is a large manufacturing operation in (you guessed it) Ripon, North Yorkshire, and their processing lines are monitored at many points with weighers which measure the flow of raw materials in and finished product out. The weighers are all connected to Atlas systems, distributed throughout the plant which take the weights and, as well as providing visibility for operatives of how lines are performing, feed the figures back regularly to the main system, which runs the Atlas ‘BarRed’ application, providing them with complete and live capacity & performance analysis of the whole plant.

The issue was that the 6 distributed systems are all slightly different, as different weighers throughout the plant provide their own, usually unique, interface for taking readings, so each system has its own unique combination of interfaces.

The mission was to provide backup in case of the failure of any of these individual systems. Atlas came up with a solution which provides a single machine with 6 VMs, each with an exact image of one of the systems out in the works. In case of the failure of any of these, rather than the machine being disconnected for a time whilst being repaired or replaced, and the attendant loss of vital production information, the PC with the virtual machines is connected in its place and the VM configured for that system is started and production monitoring is continued with minimal loss of information. The fact that one PC covers all the systems out in the works made the project a viable and valuable business backup solution.

If you have a similar requirement that lends itself to virtualisation, or indeed have production monitoring requirements of your own that Atlas could help you with, please contact your friendly Atlas consultant on 0333 666 3330 and discuss this mission-critical component with him / her.

One For The Ladies - A Man In Uniform!

Many of you will have met and spoken to Malcolm Black, who was a valued member of our sales team until he left Atlas in 2010 to join the Royal Navy. He is progressing very well with his Officer Training and really enjoying the experience.

Malcolm’s fame in the Navy appears to be growing following an appearance on the Discovery Channel this week! As part of his training he was lucky enough to go aboard the flagship aircraft carrier “HMS Ark Royal” on her final voyage for her final deployment before being decommissioned. It just so happened that the camera crew were aboard filming whilst the Officer Cadets were preparing for an exam. The highlight of the show was hearing the results being called out, “Mr Black, top of the class, 99%”. A big well done Malcolm, keep up the hard work.

The series has been interesting to date as it follows the illustrious ship during its mission to head up the largest International Naval peacetime exercise whilst trying avoid the ash cloud and experiencing having engineering issues forcing her to dock back at Portsmouth. You can watch the show on the Discovery Channel at 10pm each Tuesday. Episodes are currently repeated on Thursday at 10pm, Saturday 3pm and Sunday at 5pm. Keep an eye out for Malcolm.

Globe Works – The Colourful History Of Our New Home

Company secretary Daphne Butler has delved into the archives and explored the history of our new offices at Globe Works. From its build in 1895 to its use today as offices, the colourful history of a remarkable building is all here...

Globe Works is a building with attitude; it has history; is well-connected; and has always embraced new trends and technology. It stands four-square to the weather, in Cheshire, on Hospital Street, the east road to Manchester and London from Nantwich. Constructed out of brick in 1895, Globe Works was a state-of-the-art factory for the tanning industry which along with salt production had long been fundamental to local prosperity, but times and technology change, leather tanning dwindled, and Globe Works fairly soon was re-utilised as a warehouse for animal feed. Thus it remained until the 1970s when it was abandoned, became derelict, a ‘brownfield’ site, dangerous, fenced off; a blot on the genteel townscape.

Probably it would have all ended there, but in 1981 Crewe and Nantwich Council, with some relief, approved the plans of a local businessman with an eye for a bargain, to rescue the shell and restore it as Globe House, a five-bedroom home for his family plus an adjacent workshop for his repro furniture business. A ‘grand design’ that was an eco-friendly mix of reclaimed materials, original features and modern amenities including, in addition to central heating and double glazing, a heat-exchange system, an indoor swimming pool, a billiard room and a music theatre. Pool parties and music sessions became a source of notorious gossip.

Attracted by this trendy life-style, a local dentist put in an un-refusable offer for the property which was promptly accepted. But the odour of chlorine proved too much for his wife; the swimming pool was filled-in, and the heat-exchange system abandoned. The dentist experienced a professional hiatus, and another dentistry team took over, living in the main house and converting the one-time workshop into a modern surgery. The business grew to enjoy a very respectable reputation around the town.

Arthritis in the thumb joints (bad news for a dentist) forced early retirement, and so it was that in August 1991 John and Daphne Butler moved into Globe House complete with two teenage children, two large hounds, one Siamese cat, and a live-in Granny. They had come from ‘down south’ escaping to the country long before the notion became a gleam in a TV producer’s eye.

An out-sourced job turned into Globe Enterprises, and in 1996 the resulting IT business, Atlas Business, began trading with offices in the now updated and refurbished former workshop. Atlas grew tentatively but steadily. Cat-5 cabling networked Globe House, fibre-optics connected it to the internet. In 2001, a data centre was added just 4 miles away in the ‘Secret Nuclear Bunker’ at Hack Green – a new venture – what we might now call ‘cloud computing’.

By 2003 Atlas had out-grown its accommodation and moved out.

Seven years later, like the prodigal son, Atlas returned, now considerably bigger and stronger, to occupy the whole site, with space to spare for growth. ‘Globe Works’ etched high onto the south wall was re-adopted; an up-front Victorian building with modern high-speed links extending around the globe; a fitting and poignant location for a 21st century IT company.

Atlas Business - IT that works @ Globe Works – Moving still faster and better than the world around it!

Pisted Off

More used to meetings of the board room variety, Atlas Director Craig Cameron had a different type of 'meeting' on a recent skiing holiday: with a Swiss family who were trying to teach their young children to ski.

Craig was skiing down what was a challenging Red Run in the Swiss resort of Les Crosets when he saw ahead of him a family with small children stopped right in the middle of the Piste immediately after a particularly steep and icy section. Slowing down, as you should, Craig approached just as the family member on the right looked as if they were beginning to move off.

Keen to avoid a collision and (wrongly) believing he had the time (and the ability) to make one final left turn above them, Craig “lost an edge”, landed sideways on the slope and because of the gradient started to slip down the hill and towards the family.

The end result was Craig’s skis became entangled with the skis of the familiy's youngest child. No one was hurt but as the little girl tried to move away she fell over backwards and in the process knocked over her father and two others .... leaving Craig lying against the slope and the Mother screaming as she watched her family roll down the hill.

Fortunately they didn’t go far and were soon getting back up on their feet again. Feeling a sense of responsibility Craig skied down towards them and asked if he could help. The Father’s shouted reply was “OK please go” which Craig likes to think really meant “thank you for enquiring after the wellbeing of my family but we are fine and it’s OK for you to go on’.
P.S. We are pleased to at least confirm that no animals were harmed during the Cameron skiing holiday. Any keen skiers will also be pleased to know that Craig currently has no holidays booked for next ski season and will be conducting all his 'meetings' in the Atlas boardroom for the forseeable future.

Microsoft Mainstream Support End Dates

With windows 2011 small business server now available we felt customers should be aware of the Microsoft products which have been or soon will be taken from mainstream support, some of which are still being used.

 

 

Key mainstream support end dates;

• SQL Server 2000 -              08/04/2008
• Windows Server 2003 -       13/07/2010
• Windows Server 2003 R2 - 13/07/2010
• SQL Server 2005 -              12/04/2011

 

As you can see only SQL server 2005 is still on mainstream support and that runs out shortly,.

 

 

If you are running any of these older or obsolete versions, there are many reasons to talk to us about an upgrade:

 

•  Enhanced Security,
•  Much Better Performance,
•  Increased Stability,
•  Easier Administration,
•  Access to Microsoft updates and service packs

 

 

So, if you are still running any of the above and would like some advice on what this means to you please feel free to contact us on tsm@atlasbiz.com or by calling 0333 666 3330.

 

We Are Virtually Certain This Will Interest You

Director John Bilyj has long been an advocate of virtualisation and all of the benefits it can bring to a business. Here he blogs about what it is, what it can do and why you need it!

 Virtualisation is the use of a single machine to run more than one operating system session. All sessions may be the same operating system or each one may be different. This has obvious attractions to us in the IT business - testing programs on different versions of Windows may be done on one computer rather than one for each operating system, for instance.

What attraction does it have for the IT end-user, though? Well if you have more than one server at your office (say one for storing documents, one for email, one for hosting your database) it may be that consolidating all of these onto one physical machine may have advantages for you. These advantages include:


• Save time - administering virtualised servers over physical servers can save a huge amount of time.

• Save money - any way you measure it, virtualisation comes out as a cost-saving proposition. Money is saved in less administrative time, fewer infrastructure requirements and less energy utilisation.

• Simplify management - virtualisation enables the use of advanced features like resource optimisation, high availability and point-in-time snapshots of servers.

• Recover from disaster – having a reliable disaster recovery plan is essential for ensuring business continuity.


Virtualisation offers hardware independence and decreased recovery time in case of a disaster or failover.

If any one of these is of interest to you, please contact us at Atlas Business Group of Companies to discuss what we can help you do to get more efficient, in reality as well as virtually!

Atlas can be contacted on 0333 666 3330 or by e-mail; sales@atlasbiz.com.

Further Reading; Expert Opinion on IPv6

You don't just need to take our word for it that IPv6 is coming and that the implications of the change could be enormous, check out the following articles by industry-leading publications covering the change from a variety of angles.

Fox News ran a story on the change in Internet Protocols on Wednesday of this week, leading with the line that the change would be the 'end of the web as we know it'. The article goes on to explain both the situation and the problems associated with it in very easy to understand, non-technical, language.

The English edition of Xinhua, a popular Chinese news site, ran an article which included an interview with one of the founders of the Internet, Vint Cerf. Cerf described the problem as 'his fault' before the article runs on to detail some of the 'solutions' that have been explored.

This Network World article provides a view from the U.S. focusing on how the cable companies there are adapting (or not) to the forthcoming changes. A second Network World article covered the story the BBC ran with detailing how sites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo! were helping to trial the new protocols.

For help or advice on any of the above, contact your account manager or e-mail ipv6@atlasbiz.com.

Atlas Kick-Off Meeting 2011

Selected photographs from our 2011 Kick-Off Meeting, the annual gathering of all the Altas staff, this year held at our new head offices at Globe Works, Nantwich. A summary of the day's content can be found on our main website.

The L-Shaped Executive Meeting Room at Globe House made it a perfect venue - albeit a difficult one to get all attendees in one shot! Rest of staff members just off-camera, to the left.

Group Managing Director, John Butler opens proceedings.

Members of the technical department (right) along with ASM engineer Tony (far left) and consultant David (back left) get stuck in to one of the morning workshops.

Customer Services Manager Kelvin Redmile lead a lively session involving ventriloquist's dummies!

John Butler took to the floor again to end the morning sessions.

Lara Bailey delivered a presentation about evolving both our own website and those of our customers.

As has become custom at Atlas meetings, John Bilyj sang us out. The crowd went wild!

Another Atlas tradition of awarding high performers was also adhered to. Here, Ruth Doe collects her award for contributing to our excellent customer-facing team.

Ben Butler collects his award for pitching in and helping out with a variety of our bigger projects - just when they needed him!

Yulia Ellis from our accounts department collects a long service award to recognise the great years she has had with Atlas. Yulia will be leaving at the end of January and will be greatly missed by the whole Atlas team.

Catherine Ball was another award recipient for her hard work on a number of intricate projects this year.

The final award went to Matt Watson for leading the way on streamlining communication within the technical department.

Atlas Team Help Kath Celebrate 60th Birthday

Congratulations go out to Kath Welsh who many of our customers will be familiar with and who celebrated a milestone birthday last week in the company of friends and co-workers. When asked if we could use some pictures for the blog Kath responded with a 'yeah I guess so – could have been much much worse' which suggests everyone had a great time, especially Adam, whose novelty donkey ears went down a treat.

Many happy returns Kath, we hope you had a great evening!

Where Are They Now?

Where are they now?

One of our ex colleagues Nick Chan popped in to see us recently and kindly dropped off a Christmas card and tin of chocolates. It was great to catch up with Nick who left seven years ago to work for the courier firm ‘DHC’. Nick recognised most of the current Atlas team as many of us have worked here for over 10 years. The name Nick Chan may ring a bell to many of you long standing customers, Nick was part of our sales team and assisted with numerous client implementations, those of you that were on the receiving end of one of his hand shakes certainly won’t have forgotten him!

Nick’s visit got us thinking about other previous team members, many of which we’re still in touch with; so we thought you might be interested to know what some of them are up to nowadays!


Team Member: Steven Nottage

Atlas Department: Application Helpdesk

Current Job: Fireman



Team Member: Malcolm Black

Atlas Department: Sales

Current Job: Navy


Team Member: Kim Flook

Atlas Department: Sales

Current Job: (Last we heard she was working for GCHQ...but don’t tell anyone because it’s top secret)


Team Member: Steve Borwell

Atlas Department: Technical Services Management

Current Job: Working for Toiletry Sales Ltd - an Atlas customer.


Team Member: Teresa Chappell

Atlas Department: Sales

Current Job: Accountant (Emigrated to the Isle of Man)


Team Member: Phil Oakley

Atlas Department: Sales

Current Job: Started his own “open source” company http://www.outserveweb.com/


Team Member: Marilys Yaselli

Atlas Department: Developer

Current Job: Now Marilys Jardine (married Joe) & is a freelance web designer but currently stays at home looking after their little newborn daughter.


Team Member: Mike Skaife

Atlas Department: Developer / QA

Current Job: BAE Systems (Ian Skaife’s son, now relocated to Yeovil)


We’re sure you’ll agree with us when we say that the training and experience they gained at Atlas has served them well and set them up to progress their career paths, follow their dreams and make a difference. We wish them and all other previous Atlas team members success in their chosen paths. Don’t be strangers.
We know you follow our blog Nick.... Happy Christmas and thank you for the choccies!!!!