Fordway Blog

Housing Technology: GCH heads for the cloud with Fordway

[fa icon="calendar'] May 26, 2021 12:30:31 PM / by Debbie Smith posted in Cloud, IT Transformation, Cloud migration, Strategy


Fordway has completed the implementation of a managed cloud service for Gloucester City Homes’ legacy IT applications, resulting in greater flexibility and scalability combined with reduced costs.

Published in Housing Technology, May 2021

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Should you be moving to SD-WAN?

[fa icon="calendar'] Apr 23, 2021 9:00:00 AM / by Charles Dada posted in Fordway Managed Services, Cloud, Technology, Networking, Connectivity

 

One of the questions we’re frequently asked by clients considering their WAN architecture is whether to use SD-WAN (Software-Defined WAN) rather than MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)? The answer is: “it depends”.  

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How housing associations can benefit from cloud and secure their legacy applications.

[fa icon="calendar'] Nov 24, 2020 3:45:54 PM / by Mark Behar posted in Cloud, Cloud migration

Like most organisations within the public sector, housing associations (HAs) are moving towards a “cloud first” strategy as a way to better engage their tenants via digital services, whilst driving productivity and keeping costs down. Cloud also gives them the flexibility to adapt quickly – which is vital in this sector, where government changes to how housing benefit is paid, for example, require a rapid response from the IT department.

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Successful Migration to Azure

[fa icon="calendar'] May 13, 2019 3:09:12 PM / by Caroline Houlden posted in Insider, Cloud, enterprise cloud, IT Transformation, Cloud migration, Azure

Azure can bring the benefits of productivity, agility and decreased costs to your organisation, but like many things, realising the dream relies upon the preparation before you take the leap. Learn how to rehost and refactor for the cloud.

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How cloud is evolving to support AI

[fa icon="calendar'] Nov 15, 2018 11:07:34 AM / by Richard Blanford posted in Insider, Cloud, New Technology



Today’s move on cloud is the next logical step in the waves of centralisation and decentralisation that characterise IT. One moment we think the best place for intelligence in the network is at the edge, then technology changes and it moves to the centre. When client-server came along, terminals became PCs and the mainframe morphed into the database server.

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Some popular cloud myths deconstructed

[fa icon="calendar'] Aug 30, 2018 5:30:23 PM / by Caroline Houlden posted in Cloud, enterprise cloud, tactical

There are a number of myths which have sprung up around cloud which need to be addressed.

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Making sure cloud doesn’t become the new outsourcing

[fa icon="calendar'] Apr 19, 2018 5:04:12 PM / by Richard Blanford posted in managed cloud, Cloud, cloud intermediation, tactical

Remember the rush into outsourcing – rather cynically (but often justifiably) referred to as ‘your mess for less'?

One of the key reasons outsourcing failed to deliver what it promised was that, in most cases, the outsourcing company simply took on an organisation’s existing infrastructure, without first making sure that it was fit for purpose.
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Saving money on Microsoft Azure using Reserved Instances

[fa icon="calendar'] Jan 31, 2018 9:00:58 AM / by Richard Green posted in Cloud, cloud intermediation, Cloud Shock, Azure



One of the reasons more and more organisations are adopting cloud services of one flavour or another is that the costs can come out of operational expenditure in nice little monthly packages instead of giant wedges of capital expenditure. Cloud also has the benefit of scale, enabling us to obtain better protected and more reliable services faster than we can often build them on-premise for the equivalent cost. However, that doesn’t mean we need to pay the recommended retail price.

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They may be boring, but good processes are the key to getting cloud right

[fa icon="calendar'] Aug 30, 2017 3:51:31 PM / by Caroline Houlden posted in Cloud, cloud intermediation, IT Transformation, Strategy

Congratulations for reading beyond the title! No-one finds business processes very exciting (except perhaps ITIL experts such as our own Neville Armstrong) but they’re key to business success and getting your in-house processes aligned with those of your chosen cloud provider is a vital aspect of moving applications to public cloud.

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Managing multiple cloud providers from a single pane of glass

[fa icon="calendar'] Aug 16, 2017 10:42:57 AM / by Caroline Houlden posted in Fordway Managed Services, Cloud, cloud intermediation, Cloud Shock, Cloud Monitoring

Most organisations moving services to cloud over the next few years will find themselves managing a hybrid solution - a mix of in-house, third party and public  cloud services. This means they’ll need to find an integrated way to manage their cloud portfolio, because every supplier will claim ‘it’s not my fault” when a problem arises, and they could waste a good deal of time tracking down the culprit.

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