In this issue…
Digita Tax Guidance
Packs with
Checkpoint UK
Why now is the time to replace
legacy tape-based backup with
Cloud Backup
The publication of the AITUK, the association for
Accountancy IT Directors December 2015
www.aituk.co.uk
Contents
#AIT_UK
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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.
3
Why now is the time
to replace legacy tape-
based backup with
Cloud Backup
Research
6
Thomson Reuters
Launches Digita
Tax Guidance Packs
with Checkpoint UK
8
AITUK Conference 2015
9
DocsCorp announces
contentCrawler
integration with
NetDocuments
2Why
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:
• 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
Magnetic media is
extremely susceptible to
corruption and exposure…
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.
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
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
01582 872597
www.aituk.co.uk
#AIT_UK
More information:
Redstor Limited - 99-105 King’s Rd, Reading RG1 3DD
Tel: 0118 951 5200 Web: www.redstor.com 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 emailed automatically. If a backup is missed or fails you will know about it.
Security
Three security layers exist to protect data: data encryption, network security and
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 128-bit 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.
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
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We are available during normal office hours, out-of-hours
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We get feedback on every ticket from the end-user so
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We have an advanced helpdesk system complete with
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JSMT, The Bottling Room at The Old Winery, Lamberhurst Vineyard, Lamberhurst, Kent, TN3 8ER www.jsmt.co.uk
Thomson Reuters Launches Digita Tax
Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK
Trusted expert guidance now available through quick and easy online tax guidance packs
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.”
More information:
To find out more about Digita Tax Guidance Packs with Checkpoint UK and to book a demo, visit: https://www.digita.com/pro/software/tax-guidance-packs/
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
Research
Synchronisation
Whether you’re online or offline, at a client
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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.
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.
Flexibility
The combination of tailorable audit files and
fully automated financial statements makes
CaseWare the most flexible tool available to
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Agility
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Apply online: www.caseware.co.uk/demo [email protected] | 01622 355 20024th – 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 2016. 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;
AITUK Conference
DocsCorp announces contentCrawler
integration with NetDocuments
New contentCrawler integration with NetDocuments ensures documents are fully searchable,
accessible and optimized for downloading and emailing
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 cloud-based document and email 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 emailing.
Commenting on the integration, Travis Reed, Technology Partnership Program Director at NetDocuments, said: “DocsCorp’s leading technology combined with NetDocuments’ core document and email 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.”
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 email 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 email.
More information: Kim Dunn [email protected] www.docscorp.com
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
processing. It also takes advantage of multi-threading and supports up to 32 CPU cores.
VOICE, DATA, MOBILE
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TO EMPOWER YOUR BUSINESS
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Unlike other asset burdened network
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