Podiatry website launch showcases new software.

Congratulations to Jennifer and the team at Butler Pelvin & Associates who’ve just launched their new administrative software at the NZ Podiatry conference to rave reviews. As Jennifer said, “everyone loved the new website.”

The administrative software means Butler Pelvin can easily manage the membership database for any not for profit organisation. Features include:

• Membership joining and renewal
• Membership insurance
• Advertising and registering for events
• Membership CPD
• Classifieds
• Supplier Information

Podiatry NZ is the first organization to use this software. Members can promote their business to the public as well as mange their own education and membership details online. Check out the website here www.podiatry.org.nz .

We’d like to thank Jennifer for the opportunity to be involved in this project.

-Audrey and the team at Spiral Web Solutions Ltd.

Cloud Computing for SME's

Last week I attended a packed presentation on cloud computing from our friends at LANtech. This well thought out presentation explained clearly what cloud computing is good for and when you wouldn't use it. The room was full of, mostly, business people with no interest in computers but a lot of interest in protecting and growing their business. There are two important messages relating to cloud computing.

1. Cloud computing takes the hardware out of the equation for you

2. You can use it anywhere you have an internet connection.

Consider cloud computing before you lock yourself into an expensive local server

If you have software running on a server in your office you will know how expensive and time consuming it can be to keep the server running  and the software up to date, virus free, add  all the microsoft updates and patches plus the new versions etc etc

With cloud computing it’s a no-worry scenario because you let your developers look after that for you - of course you need to establish a relatiuonship with someone you trust. But cloud computing also means you can move your apps from one developer to another or one server to another without it being your bother.

Do you wish you could be free of the office?

With cloud computing you can. Because its out there on the internet, you can access your files and work anywhere. This one is very dear to my heart and in my last newsletter I touched on some of the things we do and tools we use  at Spiral to enable the team to work from anywhere. 

All the software we develop goes out into the cloud. As well as the bespoke development we do to assist people manage their databases, we also have our own products used by so many of you i.e.

- Nautilus for updating your website

- Mailroom for managing your email communications and marketing campaigns

New server - true cloud computing

Most of what we do at Spiral, all that software development, happens out there in "the cloud".  This week we gave our customers the same dependability and flexibility enterprise applications enjoy by going truly, madly, deeply into the cloud with our new VMWare server.

VMWare enables us to virtualise our server. Virtualisation dramatically improves the efficiency and availability of resources and applications. Our server "sits" on a collection of pooled computing resources in the form of CPU, disk space and memory - between our server and the hardware is a 'hypervisor' layer that manages the server resources. Virtualisation is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute. Today’s powerful x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and a single application. This leaves most machines vastly underutilised. Virtualisation lets us securely, share the resources of our physical environment with other organisations thus conserving the Earths energy.

Energy Savings

As a member of the Sustainable business network we are constantly looking for ways to reduce our impact on the environment. Virtualisation provides energy savings as high as 70-80% without sacrificing reliability.   Most servers today are in use only 5-15% of the time they are powered on, yet most x86 hardware consumes 60-90% of the normal workload power even when idle. VMware virtualization enables consolidation and increases utilisation of the hardware to as much as 85%. Read more on the VMWare website.

Flexibility

Virtualisation of a single server is just the beginning- we can build an entire virtual infrastructure, scaling across hundreds of interconnected physical computers and storage devices. We don’t need to assign servers, storage, or network bandwidth permanently to each application. Instead, our hardware resources are dynamically allocated when and where they’re needed within our private cloud. Our heavy use applications always have the necessary resources without wasting excess hardware that is only used at peak times.

Need more resources? we can expand "the cloud" with just a few simple commands to meet increased demand.

Cloud computing gives our customers the flexibility, availability and scalability they need to thrive.