Contents. Research. Why now is the time to replace legacy tape- based backup with Cloud Backup

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1 The publication of the AITUK, the association for Accountancy IT Directors December 2015 In this issue Why now is the time to replace legacy tape-based backup with Cloud Backup Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK

2 Welcome Even more so than previous years, 2015 has been a very successful for AIT. The group has continued to grow in terms of individuals attending meetings and networking with their peers as well as the total number of firms we have as members. We are continually receiving membership enquiries and hope to see more of the top 60 firms join over the next 12 months. The fifth annual conference was a huge success, we built the agenda around the best bits of previous years so hope you found the balance between presentations, discussions and networking was right. As informed, the 2016 conference will take place in the exclusive Warren Weir conference complex within the 5 star Luton Hoo Hotel. It is expected to attract over 100 industry professionals and once again provide everyone with the opportunity to update each other around current topics and expected future trends. Aside from the annual conference, the 2015 technical meetings attracted many suppliers which meant the group benefited from a variety of updates. The 2016 calendar of events is listed in this edition of PortrAIT, get the dates in your diary now! Looking to the next 12 months, I hope 2016 is just as successful. As always suggestions are welcome on how to build upon what 2015 has achieved, as a group we are continually reviewing ways in which we can increase the benefits for both our accountancy firm and supplier members. Finally, I d like to thank you once again for the support you ve given AIT UK over the last 12 months and I sincerely hope you have a joyful Christmas and New Year. Contents 3 6 Why now is the time to replace legacy tape- based backup with Cloud Backup Thomson Reuters Launches Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK Research 8 AITUK Conference DocsCorp announces contentcrawler integration with NetDocuments PortrAIT is published by PSITUK Ltd. You may print or forward PortrAIT to other parties providing it is not changed or amended in any way. All content remains copyright of the publisher and/or authors. No content may be reproduced in any other form without the express permission of the publisher. The views expressed in PortrAIT are not necessarily those of the publishers. The publishers accept no responsibility for the accuracy of the information within this publication, but will endeavour to publish corrections if information is subsequently found to be inaccurate. If you are concerned about the accuracy of an article please contact the publishers (details below). PSUKIT Ltd is registered as a company in England and Wales, registered number Contact for all enquiries: info@aituk.co.uk Tel: #AIT_UK

3 Why now is the time to replace legacy tape-based backup with Cloud Backup Versatility While most CIO s and IT Directors have a vision of what they would like their infrastructure to look like in 12 months, 24 months and 36 months time; in reality the world of technology is moving faster than ever and that vision is constantly changing; continuing to protect data regardless of where it s stored and what it s stored on is a real challenge which is only going to get worse. A traditional on-premise solution is fundamentally flawed when looking to protect data in a changing environment. Key things to consider when designing a versatile backup solution are: Magnetic media is extremely susceptible to corruption and exposure Cloud platforms don t enable you to install software on the host machine, this rules out all agent-less backup technologies Some technologies don t support physical and virtual environments Will you have a requirement to protect data on endpoints? If your backup administrator left your firm, how user-friendly is the software you currently use? How quickly could you get someone up to speed? A cloud backup provider is always accountable to it s customers and need to develop their solutions to meet the changing landscape, this is because their customers pay monthly rather than upfront. If you re unhappy with the service, it doesn t support the applications, OS s or platforms you move your environment to, you cancel and move to an alternative provider or bring it in-house; the key to any growing cloud service provider is high customer retention so the support you receive is incomparable with the traditional backup software vendors. Reliability Magnetic media is extremely susceptible to corruption and exposure which is why organisations use disk for primary storage most systems that rely on magnetic media are designed to detect these corrupted areas, mark them as bad, so are not used in future. Backup tapes are not as sophisticated and aren t able to detect corruption, so the data is saved to the magnetic media and then exposure, a fingerprint, getting too close to a magnetized area, or any of several other things occur and the data on the tape becomes unusable, the worst part is no one ever knows about it. Automation means cloud backup runs on a schedule set by users, there is no human intervention required to initiate and off-site a backup regardless of whether there is any IT personnel onsite. Our customers can rest easy knowing that a cloud service is protecting your data as per the schedule set. Continuity Tape Backups are taken once a day assuming that the tape process worked and are taken offsite by a member of staff or third party. These procedures cost organisations money in management time and media removal contracts, whilst also adding risk to a procedure with the regime relying on people to move, administer and store tapes. 3 Cloud backup enables organisations to send multiple recovery points per day to our data centres on an hourly basis (or more frequent if the business requires). In the event of a disaster, data can be restored from the most recent backup, significantly reducing the financial and operational impact associated with data loss, reducing the Recovery Point Objective. Recovery Time Objective can also be significantly reduced with a cloud backup solution. Market-leading deduplication, speed and compression means multiple image-based backups can be taken per day. In the event of a disaster, data can be restored either from the cloud

4 or another site and thus enabling the business to regain operational capacity within minutes. Scalability It s nigh on impossible to anticipate data growth in businesses to try and provision appropriate backup capacity. This can result in an initial capital expenditure that becomes quickly outdated and new investment is required before a return has been seen on the initial investment. There is no minimum commitment with Cloud Backup; Providers who want to build long standing relationships, rather than achieve quick revenue wins, will encourage their customers to migrate data to the cloud on a gradual basis so customers can sweat assets and leverage existing investments. A step-by-step approach will be dictated by the volume and nature of data, be that business critical, through to archive data. This results in a scale up of services, meeting operational requirements and a building of trust with the new supplier. Cloud backup easily scales with your data change, allowing you to keep the same regime in place whether your data increases with business growth; or decreases as you host applications and/ or tier your backups with no CAPEX investment required. Management time Tape Backups are notorious for being difficult to track, administer and manage. Often they are run by someone with limited technical knowledge. The only way to test the integrity of the backups is to restore every tape after every backup however this is time-consuming and almost never done by organisations. Cloud Backup allows you to manage by exception. Backups are automatic; data is compressed, encrypted and securely transferred over the internet. Your backups are continuously mirrored to our secondary data centre for resilience and peace of mind and restores can be processed at any time to the same or alternate location. Each backup session is recorded and daily reports are ed automatically. If a backup is missed or fails you will know about it. Security account access control. Each backup client is installed with its own encryption key, chosen and known only by the customer, which is stored in an encrypted format on the client and is never sent to the backup server. All data is encrypted with AES 128bit encryption prior to transmission (AES 256-bit are 448 Blowfish is also available). The data cannot be read without the encryption key and is not visible to a third party other than in its encrypted format. Even though the data encryption guarantees the security of the data, standard SSL security is used for network security. Both the client software and the Management Console are protected with a username and password. More information: Redstor Limited King s Rd, Reading RG1 3DD Tel: Web: Three security layers exist to protect data: data encryption, network security and Supply goods or services to professional services firms? The AIT provides a variety of opportunities for suppliers of IT related goods and services to reach the large accounting firms. To find out how the AIT can work with you please contact info@aituk.co.uk #AIT_UK 4

5 Your practice, made perfect We support medium and large accountancy firms. We fit seamlessly with your own internal teams, allowing you to allocate more of your valuable internal resource to development and improvement projects. We provide on-site and off-site support. We provide national coverage from our three UK offices. We are focused on accountants so our support teams are already familiar with the applications you use for practice management, accounts and audit, tax, CRM and DMS. Our engineers have great empathy with the needs of accountants and appreciate the demands of client and statutory deadlines. We are available during normal office hours, out-of-hours and over weekends allowing you to extend or burst your own support capability. We get feedback on every ticket from the end-user so that we can monitor satisfaction levels which feeds into our monthly performance reporting to our clients. We believe in continuous improvement - we work with you on root cause analysis to identify and resolve problematic areas. We have an advanced helpdesk system complete with end-user portal and knowledgebase. We have a holistic view of successful IT. We help you align systems, people and processes in harmony. We have a range of associated resources to provide end-user training and documentation, software development and integration, project management and strategic improvement. We ve been in business for fifteen years providing a range of IT services to accountants just like you. Please contact Jeremy Hyman to discuss your needs and see how we can help you. Jeremy Hyman jeremy.hyman@jsmt.co.uk JSMT, The Bottling Room at The Old Winery, Lamberhurst Vineyard, Lamberhurst, Kent, TN3 8ER 80% of our clients are accountants 4000 users we support 20% of Top 50 firms use our services

6 Thomson Reuters Launches Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK Trusted expert guidance now available through quick and easy online tax guidance packs Research Thomson Reuters, the world s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, has announced the launch of Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK an online solution aimed at making compliance research much simpler. Built specifically for the UK market, the new packs combine the compliance capabilities of Digita tax software with the online tax research of Thomson Reuters Checkpoint to completely streamline the tax compliance process. Covering UK tax laws and regulations including personal tax, corporate tax and trust tax, the packs have been created to ensure accountancy practices remain compliant with, and on top of, the latest changes, and to help them complete their compliance processes faster than ever before. In a recent Digita survey of UK accountants, many respondents expressed concern over their current tax research options. Some stated there was simply no time to read the vast amounts of information distributed daily, whilst others said it was difficult to trust open website forums as sometimes the advice was incorrect. Andrew Flanagan, managing director, Digita, explains. These Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint have been created to address modern tax practitioners needs. They give accountants quick and easy access to clear and concise analyses of tax issues, tax laws and news content from one trusted resource. Everything is in one place and can be found much more efficiently than spending hours trawling the web for information. The packs ensure nothing is missed and regular updates and enhancements make sure accountants are kept in the know for important legislative updates and industry news. One firm already benefiting is K & N Accounting LTD in Swindon. Mr Khumbulani Nkala, an accountant with the practice, said: The Digita Tax Guidance Pack provides a quick and easy way for me to look up tax regulations and has helped our firm really speed up the process of completing client tax returns. Four separate packs, which can be purchased independently of the Digita tax suite, are available: Corporate Tax, Personal Tax, Trust Tax, plus a complete pack covering all three areas of research. The licence includes training on how to use the product. The packs have been tailored to the individual needs of practices so they only pay for what they actually want to use. added Flanagan. As tax season approaches, we believe the packs will be a valuable addition to any practice s tax solution, ensuring a much quicker and easier compliance process and filing of returns to HMRC. About Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the world s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world s most trusted news organisation. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges. For more information, go to www. thomsonreuters.com More information: To find out more about Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK and to book a demo, visit: 6

7 CaseWare Accouting Software Audit - Financial Reporting - Tax - Cloud Solutions Create a winning practice and increase recovery rates using the latest audit, accounting and cloud technology. Flexibility The combination of tailorable audit files and fully automated financial statements makes CaseWare the most flexible tool available to accountants anywhere in the world. Agility Synchronisation Whether you re online or offline, at a client site or at the airport, SmartSync lets you collaborate with confidence. Team members can now work on and review local copies of a client file in real-time, with all data synced automatically in the background. Automated changes to reflect varied accounting standards, dashboards, tailored work programmes, dynamic risk reports, and comprehensive review and sign off; CaseWare can adapt to even the most challenging audit and accounting tasks. CaseWare Collaborate and Review on the Go modules provide real-time access to all engagement activity. Post changes, add new information, communicate with clients and review files wherever you are, via desktop, laptop or mobile devices. Discover more with a FREE Demo Apply online: contact@caseware.co.uk

8 AITUK Conference 24th 25th September 2015 Beaumont Estate Hotel, Windsor. The fifth successful AIT UK conference was held at Beaumont Estate Hotel on 24th 25th September. It was a great success which saw many representatives from our member accountancy firms, suppliers and industry partners enjoy two days of information sharing, learning, networking and socialising. Day 1 of the conference saw many sponsors and the very energetic TV personality Spencer Kelly present to the group. The afternoon panel discussion and Q&A session were well received, with many members commenting on their clear relevance. The Bighand nearest to the pin championship took place in the hotel grounds and was enjoyed by many with a beer in hand, followed by the TCSL drinks reception and dinner served in the hotels converted Chapel. Day 2 welcomed further sponsor presentations, there were also various discussion groups which received excellent feedback and will definitely be appearing on the 2016 agenda. To round off the two days Wolters Kluwer completed an interactive session which provided an interesting insight to the groups thoughts and predictions for Next year the conference will take place in the exclusive Warren Weir conference complex within the 5 star Luton Hoo Hotel and remain as a balance between technical discussions, presentations and networking. Huge thanks goes to this years conference sponsors, who not only offer financial benefit but also structure to the agenda; 8

9 DocsCorp announces contentcrawler integration with NetDocuments New contentcrawler integration with NetDocuments ensures documents are fully searchable, accessible and optimized for downloading and ing DocsCorp, a global leader in integrated document workflow solutions and technologies, announced today that contentcrawler, its integrated analysis, processing and reporting framework, now integrates with NetDocuments, a cloudbased document and management system. Administrators will now be able to automate OCR and/or Compression services across all NetDocuments cabinets to convert image-based documents into text-searchable PDFs and to reduce the file size of large documents for faster downloading and ing. Commenting on the integration, Travis Reed, Technology Partnership Program Director at NetDocuments, said: DocsCorp s leading technology combined with NetDocuments core document and management service, extends the DMS functionality and enhances the usability, productivity, and information governance, creating a more comprehensive and integrated solution. Dean Sappey, DocsCorp President and co-founder, also commented: We are delighted to announce our first true cloud integration. NetDocuments customers will now be able to take advantage of our automated processing capability to ensure that every document in every cabinet is 100% searchable and therefore accessible from any device. The next 12 months will see more exciting announcements from DocsCorp as contentcrawler moves further into the cloud to provide our NetDocuments customers with more options. Managing documents in the cloud contentcrawler connects to NetDocuments datacenters in the United States, Europe and Australia. Once authenticated, IT administrators can access their document cabinets. contentcrawler assesses and analyzes documents stored in NetDocuments cabinets based on search criteria as well as OCR and compression thresholds configured by the IT Administrator. The documents are then processed based on the service (OCR or Compression) and saved back into the NetDocuments cabinet as a New Version or as a Replace Original document. This is an automated backend process that can run 24/7 with no interaction from or impact on users. contentcrawler services can be run in either one of two modes, or both simultaneously. Active monitoring mode looks at newly-profiled documents, while Backlog mode processes legacy documents. Multiple services, multiple cabinets IT Administrators are able to combine the OCR and Compression modules into a single service. Image documents will be converted to text-searchable PDFs to ensure the highest image quality. The Compression module then reduces document file size through compression and downsampling. In addition, contentcrawler can run multiple services across multiple cabinets at the same time to speed up document 9 processing. It also takes advantage of multi-threading and supports up to 32 CPU cores. About DocsCorp DocsCorp provides document professionals who use enterprise content management systems with integrated, easy-to-use software and services that extend document processing, review, manipulation and publishing workflows inside and outside their environment to drive business efficiency and to increase the value of their existing technology investment. DocsCorp operates in all countries around the world with customers located throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia/Pacific. More than 3,500 organizations rely on DocsCorp software every day. About NetDocuments Founded in 1999, and with offices in the US, UK, and Australia, NetDocuments is the leader in cloud-based document and management. With hundreds of thousands of users across 140 countries, organizations enjoy the power and simplicity of built-in disaster recovery, matter centricity, enterprise search, mobility, records management, collaboration, and compliance for documents and . More information: Kim Dunn Kim.dunn@docscorp.com

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