Fifosys has acquired Octavia Information Systems to create one of the largest IT Outsourcing businesses servicing the SME market.

The merger creates a company with revenues in excess of £4m and 50 highly qualified IT support professionals with skills encompassing Microsoft, Citrix, Asigra, VMWare, Juniper, Cisco, BlackBerry, Vodafone and more.

Fifosys, along with Octavia, will continue to provide our trademark high standards of consultancy, IT support, network infrastructure, cloud computing, data backup and recovery and mobile services. With an increased knowledge base and skill set, our clients will benefit greatly from this deal whilst still receiving the same high levels of service they have come to expect from the respective companies. By combining the passion, creativity, and expertise of two leading-edge service providers, we will continue to drive innovations that help SMEs across the UK.

Mitesh Patel, the Managing Director and Owner of Fifosys said “This is a key part of our growth strategy. We have acquired a highly skilled technical team and a growing customer base to whom we can offer Cloud Computing solutions and services to complement Octavia’s existing service offerings. It provides us with greater critical mass to exploit new technologies and helps to strengthen our management team. It is such a great way to start 2011.”

Giles Sirett, Chief Executive of Octavia commented “I am really pleased with the merger and truly believe it will provide positive benefits to all of our customers and to my team. Fifosys has invested heavily in infrastructure and services to offer Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing and the Fifosys Online Back-up service. I am really looking forward to introducing these new capabilities to Octavia customers. I see it as a very positive step for us all.”

For more information on Fifosys see www.fifosys.com

About Fifosys

Based in London, Fifosys is a vendor-independent provider of technology infrastructure development and outsourced managed services, supporting key clients across sectors including financial and professional services, medical industries, the media and property development and management.

Fifosys specialises in providing SMEs and mid-market companies with the highest-quality, professional IT support and outsourcing services. With a best practice approach based on
recognised, transferable methodologies including ITIL and Prince 2, Fifosys has built a reputation as a trusted partner with a track record of success predicated on expert domain and business knowledge and customer service. IT support is not just about the technology, it’s about the people who deliver it. Fifosys aim, from Director to Technician, to ensure that IT makes your business more efficient and more effective.

Fifosys is ISO9001 registered, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Asigra Hybrid Partner, Google Enterprise Partner, Dell Partner, part of the Citrix Partner Network, Zen Internet Platinum Partner, Juniper Service Specialist and a McAfee Security Alliance Certified Partner.

To interview Mitesh Patel or for any more information about Fifosys, please contact Lauren Bell on 020 7644 2610 or email l.bell@fifosys.com www.fifosys.com

Mayor Boris Johnson plans to allow mobile phone calls on the tube by 2012, but one London IT company already has the facility for its staff and customers to make calls from deep inside Underground stations.

On 1st November, TFL launched the trial of WiFi on certain parts of the underground. Many people see this as the first step towards eventual full mobile coverage. However, this trial is for WiFi access only at this stage, with many people assuming that Tfl want to judge the travelling public’s reaction to the use of mobile devices on the tube before they allow people to start making calls.

Leading London IT company Octavia IT Services has already identified, through the use of VoIP technology, that it is relatively straightforward for its staff and customers to make and receive telephone calls whilst deep in tube stations.

Their Chief Executive, Giles Sirett explained, “The innovative telephone systems that we provide to businesses are based on VoIP technology. This means that it is possible to make and receive calls over WiFi connections as well as the standard 3G or GSM network. We help many of our customers exploit this to reduce the cost of calls to their mobile workforce. In essence, wherever there is a WiFi signal, their staff can make or receive calls.”

Call from Bakerloo Line

Sirett continues, “Today one of my staff called me to tell me he was running late for a meeting. When I asked him where he was, he said Charring Cross Station….on the Bakerloo line platform. He was calling from his mobile, connecting through the tube WiFi. I’m now excited to see the extent of TFL’s coverage on the tube: I’m hoping, pretty soon, that I’ll be able to reach my staff anywhere on the underground.”

Leading London IT services company Octavia today revealed that they had been using the new TfL Barclays cycle hire service to ensure their support staff can get to customers more quickly.

CEO Giles Sirett said, “We are passionate about cycling at Octavia and believe that this new scheme is win-win situation. It helps us to keep fit, cut costs and improve customer service while reducing carbon emissions and road traffic.”

He continued, “We carry out around 100 business journeys a week across London and like everybody were frustrated with the amount of time we wasted in travelling across the Capital. As most of our journeys are under 30 minutes long the cycle scheme is proving to be a very inexpensive and fast way of getting to our customers.”

Although the directors at Octavia are all keen cyclists, this was a decision taken primarily by the company’s staff, as Giles explained. “We have a docking station located right outside our office and our employees had been talking about it for some time. We polled the staff to see if they would be interested in using this service instead of public transport and over half said they would. We are now aiming to complete between 40-50% of our London journeys by cycle by the end of this year.”

As an IT services company, Octavia’s customers are dependent on them to keep their critical IT Systems operational. So when something does go wrong it is vital that Octavia’s  engineers can quickly get to the customer’s site to get them back up and running, preventing costly downtime. “For the City and West End we can now virtually guarantee that we will have someone onsite within 30 minutes using the cycle hire scheme,” said Giles. “Before, how long it took us to get there was dependent on the vagaries of public transport and congested roads. Now these factors don’t matter as a bike is not affected by them.”

As well as ensuring that their engineers can be on a customer’s site quickly, the scheme will also help save Octavia money. “We estimate that we will be saving between 20% and 25% on our travel costs annually as a result of our staff using the scheme,” concluded Giles. “I am really pleased with the results and I would urge other businesses that have to make frequent trips within London to consider the scheme as well. What I find appealing is that as a company that works with the latest technology, we are using one over 100 years old to improve our response times. It just goes to show that the latest thing isn’t always necessarily the best!”

Octavia Information Systems, the Managed IT Support Provider, is moving to a new London headquarters building to allow for growth. The new building, in Union St, SE1 will also provide the company with more direct access to it’s central London client base.

Giles Sirett, Chief Executive of Octavia commented “Although  our Managed Services platforms now allow us to fully manage customers infrastructures remotely, we do regularly attend our clients site to provide onsite IT Support. London headquarters  will allow us to access the majority of our customers  sites much faster than our previous headquarters at Butlers Wharf.”

The building was previously the headquarters of OFSTED, the government Education inspectorate.

Giles Sirett, CEO of Octavia Information Systems outlines some simple ways of avoiding high volumes of spam.

Everybody knows that email spam has become a major problem to both individuals and businesses alike. It has been estimated that up to 90% of ALL internet traffic comes from spam. The exponential rise in the use of illicit direct email marketing has been driven by the simple fact that (however much we all hate it) spam remains an effective, low cost, form of advertising for many businesses, particularly those advertising the “underworld” of online services such as porn, gambling and medication.

The following is a list of simple rules to follow if you wish to avoid vast amounts of spam:

1. Remember that a spam filter is a painkiller NOT a cure
The use of a properly configured spam filter is one of the most effective ways of reducing the amount of spam you receive but it will only ever reduce the amount of spam you receive and not completely eradicate it. The reason for this is simple: there is a constant “dual” between the spammers and the anti-spam software manufacturers. The spammers are coming up with more and more ingenious ways of making their spam look like genuine emails. A good spam filter (such as PureMessage from Sophos) will typically remove c. 95% of spam – that’s pretty good. However, if your account is attracting 200 spam messages a day, that’s still 10 spam messages that you’ll have to deal with.

2. Avoiding the robots
The spammers generate lists of email addresses from a number of sources, but the most commonly used technique is to use “robots” to search websites and other sources for email addresses. You should therefore NEVER publish your email address directly on your company website. Either use a Contact form on your website or show the email address as an image instead of text – robots can’t read images but humans can! Also avoid entering your email address in blogs or bulletin boards.

Another source commonly used by the robots is the domain registration databases. If you have to register an internet domain name, consider using an alternative account when completing the contact information.

3. Check that privacy statement
There is a sub-set of spam that I call “soft spam”. This type of spam is generally legal (under UK legislation) and originates from companies or groups that you have done business with and given your permission for them to send you messages.

Under UK law, companies must have a privacy statement when you enter personal details. Check this carefully – if they don’t give you the ability to opt out of their (or “related companies”) direct marketing, buy your product elsewhere. You must also ask yourself if you trust the website to honour their privacy statement.

4. Don’t reply to spam, download images or click links
A lot of spam is sent speculatively: the spammers just send messages out to thousands of different, random names at a company. They don’t know whether those addresses exist, they’re just trying their luck.

If you reply to a spam message, choose to download images (in HTML messages) or click any links in the message it is quite likely that you’ve just let the spammer know that your account really does exist. I guarantee you’ll then get much higher volumes of spam.
If you get a spam email – delete it!

5. Making others follow these rules.
If you are responsible for the IT policy of your organisation, it is essential that your IT Usage Policy states that your users should follow the advice outlined above.

6. And when it all gets too much
At Octavia, we often work with companies where the volume of spam on certain accounts has become unbearable. We recently took a call from a user reporting “Sophos PureMessage can’t be working because I’m getting 250 spam messages a day”. After a quick bit of analysis, we saw that her account was actually receiving c.6000 spam messages a day – in other words Sophos was removing nearly 96% of all the spam she received.

In these situations, a brief discussion with the users concerned usually reveals that they haven’t been adhering to the advice that I’ve outlined above. Google often shows their email address listed on numerous websites, blogs and bulletin boards. Anti virus protection by this stage is simply “papering over the cracks”. A simple remedy in these situations is to create a new mailbox for the user and use Out Of Office rules to let their existing contacts know their new address.

Phillips de Pury and Company is a dynamic forward thinking company and a major world player in the contemporary art, photography and jewellery auction market place.  Now occupying 3 sites in the capital, London is Phillips’ largest operation outside of the US.

Octavia have acted as Phillips’ UK IT partner for the past 3 years and helped them grow from 6 to 60 users in the UK through the provision of IT support for back office, auctions and events, IT project delivery and strategic advice on ICT.

Phillips de Pury have now signed a Managed IT Support Service Agreement to replace the Flexisupport Agreement that was previously in place.

The Managed IT Support Service Agreement will ensure constant onsite engineering presence in the UK backed up by Helpdesk support and proactive management.  Octavia will also support remote European and worldwide sites including Geneva, Berlin, Paris, Dubai and Beijing.

Charlie Horne MD of Phillips de Pury & Company says “I am excited that we have cemented our partnership with Octavia.  This should give us a platform to maximise our IT which is vital in allowing us to achieve our goals and objectives.”

Octavia’s Chief Operations Officer Nick Berry added “I am delighted that Phillips de Pury UK have opted to upgrade to our Managed Service offering.  It will enable us to move away from a break fix service and deliver a better IT experience to their UK users.”

Octavia Information Systems, a leading London-based IT Solutions company today announced a strategic alliance with Double-Take^® Software.

Double-Take^® Software (NASDAQ: DBTK) is a leading provider of affordable software for recoverability, including continuous data replication, application availability and system state protection.

Double-Take^® Software products enable customers to protect and recover business-critical data and applications in both physical and virtual environments.

Giles Sirett, Octavia’s Technical Director commented “Double-Take^® software plays an important role in the Disaster Recovery solutions we offer to our clients, allowing them to benefit from affordable data protection, ensure minimal data loss and implement disaster recovery, high availability and centralised backup solutions.”