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Data Jurisdiction For Cloud Computing
When you adopt a 'Cloud Computing' paradigm, or even use on online backup or colocation hosting service, you are entrusting the storage of your data to a third party. This can present a conflict of interest in the protection of your data as different laws may apply to the different parties involved.
There is a link to further information below, but a brief summary is included here. In the EU (where most of Online50's customers are based) there are strict laws protecting personal data. These laws include criminal sanctions and a stipulation that any data releases should be notified. In contrast the Patriot Act in the US requires that US controlled companies (including subsidiaries operating in Europe) comply with requests for data from the US government, regardless of that data's location. Furthermore, the Patriot Act stipulates that the revealing company is not allowed to disclose that the data has been shared.
As an EU based company, if you entrust data to a company that is, or is controlled by, a US company then that company could have to reveal that data to the US government. This would leave you, as an EU based company, in breach of the European law, and exposed to action taken against you.
Both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft have confirmed that they would comply with requests made under the Patriot Act to release data that they store in their European clouds.
Representations have been made to the European Commission that EU data privacy laws should be relaxed. There are a number of arguments and some of these seem to be compelling — however at Online50 it is our opinion that relaxing laws protecting data would be dangerous and is uneccessary. While it is true that the current laws require companies to take care with personal data that is entrusted to them and limits what they can do with that data, that is a good thing. To remove that level of care seems similar to the relaxation of regulations in the financial sector that preceeded the current financial crisis. Professionally managed companies will take appropriate care of data entrusted to them — and if companies are not professionally managed, then they should not be entrusted with data. I certainly wouldn't want them to be entrusted with my data!
Online50 are a UK based company, and own all of the equipment that is used to deliver our services. As such we operate under UK and EU law. We do use the services of third parties, but not to store data as we own and operate all of the storage ourselves. We are certified to ISO 27001 - the International Standard for Data Security - and to maintain that accreditation we must undergo regular external audits to show continued adherence to the standard. It is quite clear in our contracts that we are responsible for protecting your data, and that data is protected by EU law.
If you currently have your data hosted elsewhere and you are concerned about the legal implications, or whether the level of protection is adequate call our Sales Desk to discuss your concerns on 0800 195 0835.
Improve Team Efficiency With Hosted Exchange
Tired of manually syncronising your mobile with your work Outlook? Fed up with wasting time tinkering with servers? Boost your team's efficiency with shared and automatically up to date calendars, contacts, to do lists and of course emails across multiple devices using hosted Exchange — and leave our engineers to deal with the servers.
In the early years of a business, Outlook is likely to be setup with individual email accounts, downloading email from the mail server and storing in folders on the computer. With all emails coming into this machine and leaving from this machine, everything will work fine. Each user will have their own calendar, contacts and task list — all resident on their own computer. For users working alone or in a very small team, this might suffice. However this creates separate "islands of data" which presents an increasing challenge as the number of users grows.
Challenges Of Stand Alone Software For Growing Teams
Team Collaboration
Growing teams require collaboration to ensure customers recieve the best possible service — why should a customer query wait until someone returns from holiday when another member of the team could easily have dealt with it? In order to collaborate teams need to be able to share at least contacts, task lists and emails if not also calendars.
Mobile Working
Other problems emerge when one or more members of the team needs to be more mobile. They may have a machine at the office and need to work from time to time at home or from another office or on a mobile device while commuting.
Maintenance And Backup
Stand alone software has to be maintained fairly often. Time spent tinkering on computers is not going to help the business grow or pay the bills.
Too often Outlook is not properly backed up (it cannot be backed up like other files because while Outlook is open the file is 'live') which can result in the loss of significant and important files or information.
Hosted Exchange For A Collaborative And Mobile Workforce
Email
Exchange overcomes the problem of Outlook data only being available on a single device. For example if the email comes into the phone first, or the home machine, that is the only copy. Reply to an email or send a new email from the phone or home machine and that is the only copy. When back in the office there will have no record of that email.
With hosted Exchange all your devices access the master copy on the server which results in all devices displaying the same content. Whether you are looking at emails in a web browser from an Internet cafe, on your home or work computer, on your iPad, Android tablet or mobile phone, all received and sent emails will be syncronised.
Also, any number of users can have full access to any number of mailboxes. For example, a sales mailbox could be managed jointly by the sales team. Everyone in the team can see all incoming emails and monitor the responses made by other members of the team. They can all send emails which are from that mailbox so replies come into the same shared mailbox.
A further Online50 benefit is that we allow a single mailbox to have as many incoming email addresses as you want. This means that the shared sales mailbox could support email addresses: sales@ info@ enquiries@ howtobuy@ and whatever else you need in your business. These email address don't even have to be for the same email domain (so you could have sales@mybusiness.co.uk, sales@myotherbusiness.com and info@mybusiness.co.uk all delivered to the same mailbox).
Finally, Exchange allows people without an Internet connection to work on their emails (and other Exchange content) offline and then syncronise them again as soon as there is an Internet connection. This is especially important when using Exchange as a mobile user, for example on a train.
Online50 hosted Exchange is charged on a per user basis and not per mailbox or email address. User 1 could therefore have sales@, enquiries@, support@ as well as firstname@ and a range of others all from just £7.50 per user per calendar month.
Contacts, Calendars and Tasks
Managing company contacts when each person has their own contacts list is like trying to herd kittens. Does everyone have all the contacts? What about the contact with the changed mobile number - has everyone updated that?
The ability to share calendars and task lists can drive up the productivity of a team because information is available rather than held in isolation.
Exchange gives each user the opportunity to have individual and shared contact and task lists and calendars. In addition all items are automatically syncronised across any range of devises. Where necessary individual data can be shared with specific people (so that a PA could see the MD's diary, but no other users have access to that data).
For example if a call came in from a potential new customer, their details could be added to the contact list. An appointment can also be added for the sales person's calendar. Let's suppose that they were going to be in the area that afternoon and were going to be in a meeting just five minutes away earlier in the day. When the sales person finishes their first meeting they check the calendar on their phone and their diary would have been updated with the new appointment. They can then call ahead to confirm using the updated contact list which has also synchronised to their mobile.
See Exchange Data Across All Your Devices
If you work on a PC or Mac, iPad or Android tablet or practically any Internet enabled mobile phone, all your Exchange data will be fully available.
Hosted Exchange from Online50
Hosted exchange can be taken as a stand alone product or as a software combination suited to your specific business needs. When taken alone, it is possible to access the Exchange data either online using Outlook Web Access, on a mobile or on any range of devices all of which will remain syncronised.
(For the relatively small number of Blackberry users, we can support Blackberry devices but you will need to purchase third party software and load it onto your Blackberry).
From just £7.50 per user per month including unlimited mailboxes and email addresses, why not consider improving your team's efficiency in 2012. Call us today on 0800 195 0835
