Welcome to the Spring JPY newsletter. For more information on any news item, click on the appropriate link, call us on 0208-390-8487 (overseas callers replace initial 0 with 0044) or visit our main website for other contact details.

In this issue...

• HELIOS UB+ Released
• HELIOS: What's it all about?
• What's so great about WebShare?
• Blackpool College beefs up its backup with PresSTORE
• Business email - it's not yours, and it's not private
• Survey Prize iPod Touch winner
• New Support Renewal terms

HELIOS UB+ Released

December 2007 saw the latest "UB+" release of the HELIOS suite. The many new features of UB+ are covered in depth on the HELIOS website. However, here is a taster...

The new SQL Desktop Database provides incredibly fast "find-file" from any Mac, Windows or remote web-client. Journaling allows volumes to be rebuilt in a fraction of the time they would be on any other server. ToolServer provides a new flexible framework for creating server-based workflows from 3rd party tools including PDF Flattening allowing highly sophisticated design workflows with output on any PostScript device.

Advanced colour management now provides support for device-links, black point compensation, preservation of primary colors, and ICC version 4 profiles. Image Handling supports PDF as universal image file format. Remote workflows under UB+ now give easy, flexible and highly secure remote access to a file server with HELIOS WebShare UB+ with support for custom-branding, multiple page document previews, remote proofing including separation preview, very fast search, and on-the-fly zipstream downloads. This is a major redesign of WebShare UB (see What's so great about WebShare?)

If you have an old version of HELIOS and want to upgrade to the latest version, UB+, then until the end of January 2008 you can get a 30% discount on the upgrade price - no matter which version of HELIOS you are running.

HELIOS: What's it all about?

HELIOS introduced their first product, EtherShare, in 1989. At the time, EtherShare was unique. Now, there are many products that do what EtherShare did then, but HELIOS has always remained ahead of the game. How? For those of you that don't know what HELIOS does, here is a whirlwind tour.

HELIOS is a suite of software products that runs on a server - serving networks of Macintosh and PC workstations both on the LAN and the Web. It provides file-sharing, printer-sharing and task-sharing so that a user can sit at any workstation in the local network or on the Internet and do the same jobs, no matter where they are. Nowadays, there are many products that can provide sub-sets of HELIOS functionality, but none that come even close to providing it all. HELIOS creates a truly homogenous environment for Macintosh, Windows and Web users. In addition, HELIOS is targeted at the publishing industry, so it has a host of features that general-purpose servers do not offer. For example, HELIOS will automatically colour-manage printers. Searching for a file on a HELIOS server takes a fraction of the time it would on other servers.

Under HELIOS, if a file is opened on a Macintosh, it can be simultaneously shared to a Windows PC or by a Web user without any concern about data corruption or filenaming. HELIOS can do this because it controls the file access Macintoshes and Windows PCs and Web users. Other products work in isolation and must prohibit shared access. HELIOS will even integrate into many existing authorisation schemes such as LDAP and Active Directory, so users won't need to remember new logins.

Publishers worldwide are regularly evaluating server software technologies for performance, reliability and value for money. HELIOS is constantly being measured, and consistently being found to be the best. We have many customers that have been running HELIOS for over 15 years.

So, if you have Macintosh users, Windows users and/or Web users, before you decide to serve them with whatever comes with the hardware, talk to us about HELIOS and see for yourself how much difference it can make.

You can view HELIOS product presentations by clicking this link.

What's so great about WebShare?

For people in any type of professional business that need to deliver files - images, text, videos, documents, sound clips, whatever - there are many different ways those files can be delivered. FTP, email attachments and courier, to name but three.

The main disadvantage with most methods is that they involve taking a copy of a working file. As soon as a file is copied, the potential exists to end up with several versions.

The ideal scenario is to allow your clients and remote users to share your files just like your clients were part of your local network. When a file is ready for collection, simply tell parties where they can find it and allow them to take it when they are ready. If an alteration is made to the file, it is automatically updated. No need to re-despatch it. Similarly, users can deposit their files too.

Of course, nobody in their right mind would open up their local file server to users on the Internet - the security risk is just too great. But this is exactly what HELIOS WebShare lets you do. It effectively allows you to share parts of you fileserver storage with other users on the Internet, but in such a way that it's impossible for them to access anything else.

WebShare's ability to allow users to share your live files is unique. It makes file-sharing over the Internet incredibly easy, very fast and extremely secure.

If you'd like to know more about how WebShare can ease your file transfer worries, speak to Kevan Hamman on 0208-390-8487 or mail him. .

Blackpool College beefs up its backup with PresSTORE

Blackpool 6th Form College has one of the largest educational networks running OS X in the UK. Peter Shuttleworth, one of the college's IT support engineers recently overhauled it's data backup system using Archiware PresSTORE.

The previous system was based on EMC's "Retrospect", but support issues meant that a new solution was needed. Backups were failing, and full backups could only be achieved over a weekend. Also the addition of a few PCs to the network meant a better cross-platform solution was needed.

Archiware PresSTORE was chosen both on price and usability. It was installed on an Apple Xserve, and was set up to backup 30 Mac and PC servers.

The results are impressive, with speedy backups, simple data retrieval and synthetic full backups that negate the need to interrupt server activities. A full backup of a shade under 900GB that once required a weekend, now can be completed in 4-5 hours.

Peter Shuttleworth gave a real life example.

"This afternoon we had three students that had lost files. In total there was 6 gigabytes of data that needed to be retrieved, but with the new system it was done in an hour. The old system would have taken overnight, and may not even have been worth doing for a single document."

Incremental backups are done each day and at the end of the week a full backup is performed. A "synthetic backup" can be taken at any time and it doesn't impact the network at all.

You can read more about PresSTORE and the "Blackpool 6th" setup here.

Business email - it's not yours, and it's not private

JPY has completed another fascinating survey, this time focusing on business email privacy and collaboration with colleagues. Results show that almost half of the employees surveyed are ill informed regarding the privacy of their email.

As many as 45 percent of users are ignorant of their managers' rights to access their email, while 60 percent have email on the business system they would be uncomfortable with other people reading.

The common view of email is that it is a private form of communication. Research shows that almost half the people surveyed were unaware that business email is not private. A great many of those were adamant that the company had no right to access their email.

The truth is, businesses are responsible for any email on the business email system. This means they not only are required to have access to all business email, they are legally responsible for anything sent through it.

JPY continues to try to legitimise and streamline email collaboration, while preserving privacy of personal emails. It's product, Mail Robot X 9MRX™) provides tools for sharing knowledge in business email, while ignoring personal messages.

MRX™ holds an archive of all business email that is searchable by all employees. So when a customer has a query, everybody in the company can check the thread of communication regardless of who has corresponded with them previously. Furthermore, personal email is ignored by the system, so privacy is preserved for non-business email.

You can learn more about MRX™ here.

Survey Prize iPod Touch winner

We are pleased to announce that the lucky winner of an iPod "touch" was Karl Romaniak, IT Manager at Oxfordshire Repro House Blenheim Colour.

Karl was delighted to have won the iPod "touch" and commented:

"Email security is increasingly becoming important to us and a secure mail archive is paramount. Also, sharing address books and collaboration between departments is useful. This prompted my original interest in participating in JPY's email survey, but seeing the results, I can see how relevant MRX™ is set to become."

New Support Renewal terms

Customers who maintain support contracts on products purchased from JPY will already be aware of the benefits. Not only is it cheaper to keep a product in support than to purchase updates or upgrades, it gives immediate access to all new features and fixes with an escalation process to resolve customer problems.

Hitherto, we have issued support renewal reminders to customers 3 months before support renewal is due. It has then been up to the customer to renew support if required. However, all of JPY's main suppliers have adopted a system of automatic support renewal contracts. Under this scheme, support is renewed automatically unless the licencee explicitly cancels support at least 6 weeks before renewal. We will be introducing this to our customers with effect from 1st February 2008.

In practice, the date by which you must cancel support will be the same as you had previously to order support, so it should not have any business impact on customers.

We shall be sending all existing customers a letter acknowledging these changed terms.

JPY Newsletter

Spring 2008