Star Announces launch of ‘Dev2Live’ Services for SIs and ISVs

Star provides on-demand business services to support software development projects from build and test to ‘go live’

LONDON, 15 March 2010 – Star, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services to UK businesses, has announced the launch of a specialist Dev2Live service. This is a complete range of services aimed at developers and giving them access to the managed infrastructure and collaboration tools needed to support software development projects, from build and testing to the ‘live’ environment.

Star’s Dev2Live service is a solution to the resource and cost challenges of managing multiple providers and in-house hardware for every development project. Project leaders can now focus on a project’s success with the support of an extensive range of on-demand, pay-as-you-go services managed within a private cloud environment, all from one trusted partner.

Dev2Live services are built up from components that make up the Star cloud computing platform, and include a dedicated virtualisation cluster, that gives developers a single scalable platform on which to build, test and deploy software with the ability to deploy additional machines in minutes.  To ease collaboration, Star Business Email provides the resources to co-ordinate team activities and improves productivity without the need for in-house servers. Dev2Live services can be deployed within a Star managed network infrastructure, simplifying the secure delivery of applications and data to people wherever they are located.

As part of the launch of the service, Star is offering the ‘QuickStartDV’ Pack which includes a 7-day free trial of the virtualisation platform with a 30 day ‘money back’ guarantee, 5 free users of Star Business Email and Microsoft Team Foundation Server.

James Griffin, Head of Hosting Strategy at Star comments: “Whether they’re working for large corporates or smaller agencies, developers face a host of challenges in taking projects from test phase to live environments. Pressures on time scales, resources and project management combine to create a number of issues which can create barriers to successful project completion.”

He continues:  “Star’s Dev2Live services are designed to provide a complete package, which can help to overcome these obstacles with the tools and infrastructure specifically designed for the needs of developers. Star is an established provider of resilient, secure and tailored services all of which is backed up by a dedicated UK technical support team.”

Dev2Live customer Harvey Flather, CEO at Intelligent ID, recalls his earlier attempt to do everything in-house: “We recognised early on that we had to find a better way to deliver our services than trying to do everything ourselves. We didn’t want the cost and distraction that creating our own delivery platform would mean and the negative impact this would have on our business. I think it had the potential to hold back the development work on our solutions as well as our financial growth if we did not get this right. Making the right decision meant finding a partner with the infrastructure already in place that would help us to deliver our services quickly and cost effectively.”

Download the free developer whitepaper, “Remove the road blocks to project success” from: www.star.co.uk/developer

About Star

Star provides on-demand computing and communication services to UK businesses. Utilising an advanced cloud computing platform, the company has redefined how business people use and pay for the technology that supports them. Star’s On-demand Business Services™ are easy to use and pay for and are available any time and from anywhere, removing unnecessary costs for hardware, software and ongoing maintenance.

Since 1995, when Star was founded, the company has been an Internet technology innovator and pioneered the system for cloud based spam and virus scanning for business email that became MessageLabs. In the last 14 years Star has established itself as a leading IT and communications service provider of the highest pedigree looking after 3,500 UK business customers and their 500,000 users.

Star has UK based data centres that sit within a network and communications capability that forms the basis of the Star Platform, from which a wide range of computing and communication services are delivered to customers. Star has over 230 employees working from offices throughout the UK, providing the highest levels of customer service and support. Star’s technology roadmap will deliver on-demand, cloud computing services to UK businesses who want immediate access to the latest enterprise technologies. For more information please go to: www.star.co.uk

Media Contacts:

Kirsten Scott/Maria Muller

éclat Marketing

Tel: 01276 486000

Email: star@eclat.co.uk

The success of Web 2.0 consumer web sites teaches us many lessons about how we can improve internal IT and business to consumer online applications. Social technologies have made it progressively easier and easier for people to find each other, share information and collaborate, and we have seen how a singular focus on supporting individual needs can crete powerful network effects when aggregated at scale.

However, these and other lessons have not yet penetrated the world of corporate IT in most companies today, which means expensive, centralised and highly bureaucratic models of co-ordination and collaboration are the norm.

The recession is a perfect time to change this, and to seek leaner, flatter business processes and structures that act as enablers rather than dampeners of innovation and initiative. We simply cannot afford the high-cost models of internal co-ordination that have persisted for so long.

The key to this change is recognising that, in most cases, people power is the best way to get things done, and the role of technology is to augment human cognition and decision making, rather than try to replicate or replace it. People over process. This is why so many employees in companies have reached out to find each other using consumer online social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn in preference to their own internal systems, which do not provide easy ways to network with colleagues to get the job done. Similarly, we have seen people go outside the firewall to initiate wikis for collaboration, or blogs for sense making, or perhaps consumer RSS management tools for information management. Each of these capabilities should be available within a modern corporate IT setting.

We can now take advantage of a range of enterprise-ready social tools, including blogs, wikis, social networking tools, information management tools and so on, and these are generally a great deal cheaper and more effective than older generations of internal IT systems. As people have become accustomed to the simple user experience of Google’s tools or Facebook in their non-work lives, they are increasingly asking why the experience of internal IT in their companies must be so poor, so frustrating and such a time sink. The fact is, it doesn’t need to be that way. It can be smarter, simpler and more delightful to use, and the transition to lightweight social tools can achieve much of what internal IT has promised, but so far failed to deliver.

Lee Bryant is the Director of headshift www.headshift.com

To find out more about the next Enterprise Social Media event taking place on 15th March 2010 at Olympia, London, visit http://www.enterprisesocialmedia.net/

Time to let your staff use social media at work?

It’s a license for staff to waste time.   There’s no control about what they say.   What happens if a customer makes contact with them direct?

Today’s arguments against allowing your staff to use social media at work?  Actually they were pretty much the arguments used by companies to restrict email use in the mid 1990s.

That’s worth bearing in mind as the social media in the office debate rages.

Today it’s received wisdom that email is an essential business tool, and so it will be with social media before too long.

Especially with metrics firm Nielsen showing that communication via social networks overtook communication via email.   And from personal experience, I can now think of several instances of clients messaging me direct on Twitter as opposed to pinging me an email.

However just like with 90s email, the first stage of workplace social media acceptability is to publish dos and don’ts guidelines about what’s allowed.   Even though a survey by Monster showed that 90% of workers are afraid of using Twitter for fear of getting in trouble, a number of firms have done just that.

As with all internal guidelines this ranges from the simple to the ones filled with corporate speak.

For example, Opera, the makers of the Internet browser of the same name, published a series of eight easy to understand rules: Share your thoughts, be active, “we’re not your mama”, don’t give away the farm, check your sources, our friends are your friends, for the squeamish post a disclaimer and use your common sense.

Australian telecoms giant Telstra publicly released guidelines revolving around the ‘three Rs’ – responsibility, respect and representation.   And at the far end of the scale, Canadian broadcaster CBC published criteria that they backtracked on after it caused a fuss, saying that personal blogs couldn’t be used to espouse a partisan political opinion.

The bottom line is though social media isn’t going to go away, it’s part and parcel of today’s Internet environment and it’s what graduates in particular who join your organisations see as second nature.

As with so much of social media, you can either set out the parameters of your involvement now.   Or stick your head in the sand and wait until it comes to you, when you are forced to react to it.

Follow Dirk Singer, Director and Digital Planner at brand communications agency Cow, on Twitter at twitter.com/dirkthecow or visit his blog at http://www.thisisherd.com

The next Enterprise Social Media event takes place on 15th March 2010 at Olympia in London.

To be in for a chance to attend the “Must attend” Cloud Computing event of the year FREE, simply take part in our Re-Tweet competition!

It’s Really Easy to Enter

All you need to do is put your social media skills to the test and re-tweet our competition tweet on your twitter. Just make sure your tweet contains our Twitter name (@cloud_comp_news so we can track you as a contestant) and link to this blog post

Tweet – “I am tweeting to win a free pass @cloud_comp_news, http://bit.ly/8qBTYm”

That’s all you have to do!

Winner Announcement

The winner will be selected by random on the 22nd January 2010 at 12.00 GMT. We will announce the winner via Twitter the same day (so we highly suggest you follow us and will contact the winner through DM. The winner will win a two day pass to the Cloud Computing Congress & Enterprise Social Media event taking place on the 15^th & 16^th March at Olympia Conference Centre, London.

Please Note: The winner will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Rules of Competition

In order to participate, you must have a Twitter account, and have accepted the Terms of Service of Twitter. Members from every part of the world can enter the competition. In order to participate, you must send a valid Twitter message. A valid Twitter message, or tweet, contains our Twitter name (@cloud_comp_news so we can track you as a contestant), and a link to this contest page (of which http://bit.ly/8qBTYm is a short version)

For more information about our events please visit: www.socialmediaseries.net www.socialtvseries.com www.cloudcomputingseries.com

Six Degrees is launching a new group of events – the Cloud Computing Series. The first Cloud Computing Congress Europe is taking place on 16th March 2010 at Olympia Conference Centre, London.

The series of events will look at how Cloud Computing is revolutionising information technology in the European, North American, and Asian market. Topics discussed include the latest state of Cloud Computing in the respective markets, its benefits and technical challenges, the impact on the IT function, and how the applications can be build, controlled and managed in a cloud-based environment.

The Cloud Computing Congress Europe will run alongside Enterprise Social Media & the Social Media World Forum, a leading Social Media event that brings together all industry facets.

The Cloud Computing Congress & Enterprise Social Media in London will feature industry leading speakers, including:

•    Martin Bellamy, Director, Office of the Government CIO & SIRO, Cabinet Office
•    Dion Hinchliffe, Editor in Chief, Social Computing Magazine &  Web 2.0 Journal
•    Dominic Burch, Head of Corporate Comms and New Media, ASDA
•    Paul James, CIO, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, MOD
•    Sonia Carter, Senior Manager Online Communications, AXA
•    David Wilde, CIO, Westminster City Council
•    Kenneth Verlage, CIO, DHL Express
•    Eachan Fletcher, CIO, Sporting Index
•    Simon Revell, Associate Director, Collaboration and Web Technologies, Pfizer
•    Evangelos Kotsovinos, Vice President, Morgan Stanley
•    Kostas Tsatsaris, CTO and Director, Strategy and Architecture, HM Revenue and Customs
•    Henri Reinbolt, CIO, Greenwich Council

You can join the Linkedin group on the event web site  to network with other attendees, or follow the latest event activity on the Cloud Computing Congress Twitter account.
The Cloud Computing Series is closely connected to the Enterprise Series, which looks at the next generation workspace, how new application stores can be harnessed within a web 2.0 environment, and how internal business communities can be built.

Book your space today to take advantage of our 25% discount until the 22nd December!