Ultrabooks – Intel introduced the concept of Ultrabooks – laptops with slim designs, soild state drives and longer battery life in May 2011. Since then a number of Ultrabooks have come out by Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba. But there is forecast to be real growth in machines to compete with the MacBook Air following the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas this month with between 30 and 50 Ultrabooks being launched.

OLED – Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays which promise more vivid colours, faster response times and smaller device footprints are set to break into the television market. LG are set to release a new 55-inch display , 0.16 depth, weighing 16.5 pounds which promises a response time of less than 0.0001 miliseconds (the average LCD response time is between 5 and 2 miliseconds).

Quad Core Phones – 2012 is forecast to witness the release of ultra fast smartphones that carry a quad core processor like Nvidia Tegra 3 and Qualcomms Snapdragon S4. The first quad core smartphones are expected to make an appearance in the first quarter of 2012.

4K Display Resolution – During 2012 it is forecast that we will see displays with a type of display resolution that has four times the pixel density of 1080p HDTVs, the current gold standard for mass market high-definition displays. Both LG and Toshiba are working on products in this area.

Ice Cream Sandwich – No I haven’t gone mad (yet). Tablets have been a big topic at trade shows in recent times  when device manufactures raced to release products to compete with the Apple iPad. Google released the Android Operating System to run on many of these competing products and during 2012 they are set to release its latest flavour (forgive the pun) Ice Cream Sandwich and to gain more penetration in the market.

Thanks

Richard

Hosted Sage solutions are not a new concept. For years companies have outsourced their Sage solutions to data farms just like SAP users.

However, due to technology advances and licensing models introduced and developed over the last 24 months, hosted Sage solutions are becoming a much more viable solution.

Ancar B Technologies has been working with major UK Sage Partners in deploying Hosted Sage Solutions for several years in physical environments. However, due to developments in virtualization technology, we also offer solutions within a Private Cloud.

Cost Reductions

Microsoft in recent years released a licensing model that allows companies to “Rent” Microsoft licenses based upon monthly usage which allows for low cost deployment of hosted services and has created the increase in deployment of such services.

Unfortunately, Sage still operates a policy where the software has to be owned by the user outright for its deployment.

So, with the cost savings with Virtualization and the Microsoft License Agreements, the initial Capital Expenditure is reduced to the costs associated directly with the procurement of the Sage software.

Sage 50 to Sage 1000

Don’t forget Sage 200 and Sage Line 500 either! They can all be hosted remotely. Sage 50 can be deployed in a single virtual server config using Server 2008 and Remote Apps to offer extremely cost effective solutions. These are hosted within Ancar B’s “Customer Cloud”.

Larger deployments of Sage are hosted within Private Clouds dedicated for each customer, offering high data security and availability.

Hosted Sage ERP, CRM and ACT!

The benefits don’t just end with the Account ranges. With all the applications now turning into Web Services, the Sage ERP, CRM and ACT! solutions can also be deployed in a virtual or cloud environment.

Read more about Ancar B Technologies Hosted Sage Solutions.

Backwards compatibility prevented many companies from deploying Windows XP upon it’s release in 2002 as the NT Kernel changes meant that many applications were no longer compatible with the mainstream Operating Systems at the time.

By utilizing Virtualisation, Microsoft are have pretty much guaranteed that a correctly spec’d Windows 7 PC will still run your “Legacy” applications from Windows XP.

The Windows 7 “XP Mode” runs a Windows XP Virtual Machine on your Windows 7 desktop using Microsoft’s Virtual PC technology. When up and running, you can install your legacy applications inside your Windows XP knowing they will work. Once installed on your XP VM, you will find them conveniently located in your Windows 7 start menu and able to be run on your usual desktop.

I must also warn, that NOT ALL applications will be able to be run from your Windows 7 start menu, but they can still be operated from within your Windows XP Mode VM.

So, what’s required to be able to run the Windows XP Mode?

Hardware wise you need at least 2GB or RAM in your computer, and a Processor that supports Chip-Level Virtualisation. Does your CPU support Virtualisation? Use “Securable” to find out.

Additionally you will need to install the Windows XP Mode updates for your Windows 7 PC from Microsoft. There is a link for that here. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

So, with a little forward planning and testing, deploying Windows 7 across your organisation need not be the headache usually associated with OS Upgrades. I would also suggest speaking with your IT Support company/department to ensure your network will accept Windows 7 clients before pushing to test it.

Please Note:- The XP Virtual Machine WILL require security to prevent the same threats as your desktop PC. i.e. Antivirus.

So we thought it was about time we started blogging to share our opinions and views of the industry. We have a group of people willing to talk to anyone that will listen and these members of the Ancar B team are going to put time into the blog in order to make it a success. Among these people will be Andrew Barnes (Managing Director), Rob Jennings (Services team manager), John Rider (Help Desk team manager) and myself Martin Riley, a technical consultant.

We’re hoping that you’ll appreciate our posts and that they will be of use to you. On our blog we’ll be mentioning company news, but we’ll be driving the blog as a discussion point for industry news as well as a little bit of a technical reference for customers. I can’t guarantee that some of us won’t get carried away and have the occasional debate about football. After all, some of our staff can get rather chatty when it comes to sport!