Interesting visualisation on the change in dominance of web browsers over the last 28 years (yes, it really has been that long!)

Fascinating to see that there have been multiple organisations enjoying market dominance.  Notably, Microsoft enjoyed significant market share (just shy of 93% at its peak) for many years.  Which begs the question of how can an organisation with such considerable resources at its disposal and dominance be so badly disrupted at its peak?

Perhaps Microsoft decided that the web browser was no longer strategically important.  I doubt that, with more and more apps and services being delivered over the internet the browser’s importance and use will only grow.  Instead, someone else came along and simply did it better, faster, and cheaper: the hallmarks of a disruptor.

OSG Cloud is a relatively new entrant to the market.  With our first 12 months of operations and trading now under our belt, we’ve onboarded 50 new customers, revenues in excess of £1M+ (the lion’s share of this once went to Microsoft’s Azure!), and achieved a 100% success rate with every customer that put the platform to the test through trial workloads, now committing fully to OSG.

How?

Being Better, Faster, and More Affordable.

Better: We’ve invested in the best technologies and partnered with the best vendors available enabling us to stand over all elements of the service; not just the underpinning infrastructure, but all the way up the service delivery and management stack.  All backed by robust SLAs and KPIs for application availability, security, management and governance.

Faster: Application and IT performance is key to improving the end users’ experience, business efficiencies and results.   OSG Cloud is designed exclusively for Enterprise IT workloads, focused on one class of service that guarantees to outperform any On-premise, Public, or Private Cloud infrastructure.

More Affordable: On average, our service is 15% more cost effective when compared spec-for-spec against the big Hyperscalers and we can prove it.  More importantly, we also offer complete budget certainly with predictable and transparent pricing.  No more ‘bill shock’ or being penalised for trying to improve your users experience, applications and business performance.

If you’re currently, or considering, running your enterprise IT on cloud infrastructure, then please give us a shout.  We can help you understand the true cost of Public Cloud, as well architect the most appropriate cloud solution and IT operating model.

As an integral part of the Outsource Group we are delighted to announce that we have won the best Medium Sized Business in NI at the recent Belfast Telegraph Business awards. It has been a busy year at the Outsource Group with the appointment of our new Chairman Mr Patrick McAliskey, the addition of Ansec, NI’s leading IT Security consultancy practice and the exceptional success of our market leading OSG Cloud. Our growth plans continue at pace and we have some more exciting plans in the works to ensure Outsource are acknowledged as the number 1 IT Security and managed services group in the market.

We are delighted to announce that ANSEC IA is to become part of the Outsource Group, creating a powerhouse in security-focused IT managed services.

IT security and managed services provider Outsource Group and IT security consultancy ANSEC IA will join forces – with ANSEC IA becoming part of the Outsource Group.

The combined group has “aggressive growth plans” for the future, including employing a workforce of more than 100 people by the end of this year.

Terry Moore, CEO of Outsource Group, said: “One of the areas in which we are seeing demand grow most quickly and where we see the biggest growth opportunity is in cybersecurity.

“Our merger with ANSEC IA and the exceptional security skills and expertise they bring will allow us to accelerate that growth and offer a truly market-leading cyber-security suite of services and solutions.

“I have no doubt that the combined experience and skills of both companies will deliver the leading powerhouse and go-to group for security-focused managed services.

“Over the last 15 years we have exclusively focused on improving the security posture of businesses and public sector departments in NI, Ireland, GB and internationally,” Leitch said.

“Working with Outsource, it became clear to us very quickly that they also understand why information security needs to be the backbone of all things IT. They understand that security is about more than just IT or a range of products; it should be at the core of every organisation and inherent to every business process.

“We believe that ANSEC IA both complements and adds huge value to the OS group and will help take the OS Group to the next level in terms of offering world-class, enterprise-level, security-focused services to a wider range of customers across the UK and Ireland.”

. #business #innovation #cloud

Not many businesses have the luxury of dedicated inhouse cloud specialists to configure, manage and monitor their public cloud environments, to allow them to extract maximum performance and cost efficiencies from their current cloud provider.

Our service is designed to not only deliver market beating performance, but to provide a high standard of manged services to those businesses that do not have the time, resources, or funds to make the levels of commitment required to fully exploit cloud technologies.

We take ownership and responsibility for migrating, monitoring and managing your applications in the cloud. To date, every business that has trialled a free workload has made a business decision to partner with us and embrace a cloud operating model.  If requirements dictate specific types of cloud services, tools, reach etc, we can leverage tier 1 public cloud infrastructures and services, integrating seamlessly to deliver a truly hybrid cloud solution; allowing business to cherry pick the best bits of all the available options.

We remove price uncertainty and offer guaranteed fixed pricing, enabling businesses to understand, plan and control budgets better.

Why not get in touch to see how we can help your business?
#business #cloud

By now, most of us will have digested Microsoft’s recent licensing / price changes.  As difficult as they can be to swallow, the fact remains that there really is limited choice, other than to simply choke it down.

Of course, it does trigger the need to review your license base and ensure you are licensing your users, devices, and services in the most cost-effective way.  Unfortunately, the outcome is always the same, and the vendor related spend keeps going up.

As a cloud service provider, we’re often stuck in the middle and typically end up being the bearer of bad news when vendors unilaterally decide to impose these charges.

However, we fully understand the bad taste that this can leave.  So instead of punishing customer loyalty, we want to reward it by not passing price increases through to our existing customers.  The rate card you have today for your cloud services, will always be your rate card.  So anytime a vendor pushes out an increase to its license costs, we will absorb those costs; essentially passing that on as a de facto discount or reward for your loyalty.

If your cloud bills are considerably more today than what you had originally planned and budgeted for, then get in touch.  We can help get your cloud costs under control and provide a guaranteed fixed price, whilst delivering better performance, for your cloud server estate.

OSG Cloud is pleased to announce that it will be exhibiting at the 6^th Annual Digital Transformation Summit

Thursday 28^th October 2021, 0830 – 1630

Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh (and on their Virtual Platform)

The Summit

Organisations are changing, the rapid pace of the digital world has necessitated a fundamental shift in mindset. Digital has disintermediated markets; disrupted organisational structures, created new risks and new revenue streams and fundamentally altered the way businesses engage with their customer.

The most influential companies of our age share a common ability to understand two things effectively: people and technology. In these turbulent times, success is increasingly defined by the ability to respond to the fast-changing landscape and exceed the expectations of the people we serve.

​DT 2021 will contextualise the key technology trends and industry disruption amidst a backdrop of significant socio-economic upheaval. The event will also consider the role of IT and Digital leaders in driving positive transformation, exploring how we can help support operations, drive innovation, overcome challenges, and deliver tangible business benefits.

Core themes:

• Landscape: Uncertainty, Recovery, Sustainability, Remote Teams
• Process: Strategy, Structure, Optimisation, Agile, DevOps
• Design: Customer Centricity, UX, Functionality, Simplification
• Technology: Remote Tools, Data Analytics, AI, ML, RPA, Cloud
• People: Culture, Collaboration, Leadership, Diversity, Empowerment

In-Person Ticket : https://www.digifutures.co.uk/register

Virtual Ticket: https://www.digifutures.co.uk/register-virtual

OSG Cloud welcomes new team member with vast experience in line with expansion and growth plans for the UK.  

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Paul Devlin as Commercial Development Manager in line with strategic growth plans of OSG Cloud.

Paul joins OSG Cloud from Verizon Business where he was responsible for the development of new business accounts. With a career spanning some 25 years in the IT, telecoms and media industries Paul brings with him a deep and broad knowledge of the UK market for IT services. Originally from Northern Ireland Paul has lived and worked in the South East of England throughout his career.

Terry Moore Outsource CEO commented: “I’m delighted to welcome Paul to the OSG Cloud team. With his market knowledge and years of experience I have every confidence that OSG Cloud will go from strength to strength. I’m looking forward to welcoming customers to the platform from across the UK and beyond in the near future”.

Paul Devlin added: “I’m delighted to be joining OSG Cloud at this important time in their evolution. The demand from customers for Cloud services continues to grow and I have no doubt that the OSG Cloud proposition will quickly become an attractive solution for the needs of many businesses. With the outstanding service levels on offer customers can be confident that their applications are in good hands”.

Our diverse team is growing, and we have room for you!

If you want to thrive in an environment where you will be treated fairly, encouraged to be brave and are willing to be stretched then keep reading.

We are actively seeking new people to join our growing Cloud team, and have the following open positions:

• Cloud Commercial Development Managers
• Lead / Demand Generators

Skills and experience are vital for all our career opportunities, but we value who you are as a person more. We often talk about the Outsource DNA which involves, trust integrity, bravery, creativity and a “can do”, positive attitude.

The following personal qualities are essential for current available opportunities:

• Drive & ambition for sales/business development.
• Curiosity and developed research capability.
• High energy and a solid work ethic.
• Excellent communication skills – written & verbal.
• Confidence and capability to engage with executives at all levels.
• Excellent organisation and time management capability.
• Passionate about technology and how it can make your life better.

Choosing to work as part of the team at Outsource is more than just a good career choice, it is a decision that will make your life better.

Check out our group careers page to find out more about the range of benefits you can expect and how you can apply.  Or get in touch with our Sales Director to set up a virtual coffee and have a chat!

With an initial £1.5m phase one investment Outsource Solutions Group has announced the launch of OSG Cloud, the next generation of Enterprise Cloud services.

OSG Cloud has been specifically established to address the common issues that businesses face with poor performing public cloud implementations, and ever increasing and uncontrollable costs.

We design, manage, maintain, operate, and support large scale compute and storage infrastructures and resources with the objective of providing the single best cloud platform and performance to our customers.

Our globally recognized top tier infrastructure and solution has been built for customers, partners, and users to consume in any way, size, configuration, or specification they need, when and where they need it.

From a technological perspective OSG Cloud has been delivered in partnership with the World’s leading Cloud infrastructure and solution partners. Built on Dell Technologies hyper converged infrastructure VxRail, and underpinned with VMware’s Cloud software and management tools, and Veeam for complete recoverability, this is simply best in class. Together we have created a cloud offering with unparalleled collective technical experience and best practices delivered from purpose built Tier3+ data center facilities, all certified to ISO 27001 standard for information security.

OSG Cloud provides industry leading performance and service levels and whilst not another generic cloud reseller business, we can leverage other public cloud offerings such as Azure, AWS, Google as complementary services to deliver bespoke customer solutions, where it makes sense based on a customer’s individual circumstances.  OSG Cloud will always take an agnostic and unbiased approach, (your business strategy first, cloud support second), so that we can remain focused on delivering the best possible technical solution for our customers.

At its most basic level OSG Cloud delivers enterprise grade managed cloud infrastructure, with absolute guarantees and SLAs around performance, security, and availability.  With an infinite amount of scale, business continuity and disaster recovery inherently built in. Our solution offers the same exacting standards for availability, performance, and security that is expected of infrastructures running hospitals and emergency services, at competitive prices.

OSG Cloud is unapologetic about its standards and will never compromise on:

• Performance, security, and availability
• Understanding customer requirements and delivering fit for purpose solutions
• Technical support and customer service
• Our relationships with our customers and technology and delivery partners

We adopt an equally flexible approach to commercial and billing models, ensuring that it is always easy to engage and work with us.  As an example, but not limited to:

• Capex or Opex
• Pay as you grow
• Fixed pricing and budget certainty
• Consumption based
• Monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually, or full-term contract

OSG Cloud is the final stop on your journey. 

We are so confident that the platform will outperform whatever provider you currently use we are offering customers a money back guarantee – run a workload trial with OSG Cloud and if we don’t deliver you don’t pay.

Get in touch with us here to find out more about how you can begin your journey with OSG Cloud.

OSG Cloud is the proud sponsor of the Belfast Telegraph 2021 Business ‘Innovation’ Award; the category that recognises and celebrates companies which have demonstrated creative thinking and developed innovative products, solutions and services during a global crisis

Companies which focus on and invest in innovation within their industry, are always better placed to positively react to local or global events. In addition to insulating a business from the worst impact of negative events, innovative businesses are best placed to discover and develop new business opportunities and generate new competitive advantages.

For over twenty years the Outsource Group has progressed its own continuous improvement philosophy, collaborating with industry leading technology companies, to ensure that both local and international companies have access to the widest range of proven and innovative technology solutions & services which enables them to compete on a global scale.

OSG Cloud was born out of our belief that ‘the cloud’ needed a new more innovative approach to allow businesses to fully exploit the full benefits of new cloud technologies. To deliver on our approach we have partnered with the world’ leading cloud specialists (DellEMC, VMware, Veeam) and jointly designed and delivered the best performing Cloud offering and services available in the market.

OSG Cloud has been built using some of the worlds leading cloud technologies. Built on DellEMC’s hyper converged infrastructure VxRail, underpinned with VMware’s Cloud software and management tools, and using Veeam for complete recoverability, this is simply best in class, resulting in unparalleled workload performance levels and a customer experience.

We are so confident in our leading solution that we are the only cloud business which will GUARANTEE Performance, Security and Delivery Levels.

We also understand that some customers, in specific individual circumstances, may wish to retain elements of their existing cloud based services on a generic public cloud. OSG Cloud infrastructure is such that we can readily incorporate and work alongside other public cloud offerings such as Azure, AWS, Google as complementary services to deliver bespoke customer solutions.

We will work with customers to help design, support and manage their digital transformation journeys by removing barriers and complexities of cloud enablement and delivering a highly scalable, flexible and performant enterprise cloud platform for businesses across the UK and Ireland. Allowing business leaders to focus on growing their business and supporting their staff and customers.

The expert team at Outsource Group empower businesses to solve tomorrow’s problems today. They utilise the power of technology to “Make Life Better” for enterprises of all sizes, across all sectors. By providing an exceptionally high standard of managed IT and security services. They take care of customers technology needs, fully de-risking their IT, so they can focus on what is really important, their people, business and customers.

OSG Cloud gives you Performance Where You Need It. 

We are so confident that the platform will outperform whatever provider you currently use we are offering customers a money back guarantee – run a workload trial with OSG Cloud and if we don’t deliver you don’t pay.