October 2006 Newsletter

Welcome to the first issue of the Salford newsletter. The objective of the newsletter is to keep you up to date of the latest developments at Salford Software and provide you with what we hope you will feel is useful information.

This Newsletter launch is happening at an exciting time for Salford, like many of you, we have just experienced our financial year end. A year that saw Salford software's most successful ever. Revenues hit £4.6 million for the first time, backed up by a strong team of 40 employees. The effect on this to Novell was noted by Chris Papayianni, the MD of Novell UK, he stated

"Licensing and maintenance levels indicate that the Novell academic footprint has never been stronger. Novell has a strong relationship with Salford Software and we are looking forward to many more years of success."

In addition to the Novell business, we have also been consolidating our talent base on other technology platforms, most notably SUN and Microsoft. Salford now takes a true leadership position in terms of Identity Management Solutions and we expect further rapid growth in this area.

We are currently publishing some of our case studies around the strategic identity engagements we have implemented and supported. However it is important that our goal remains to improve all aspects of what we do. With this in mind, we will shortly be organising a technical support survey. In the meantime your feedback is always welcome.

Please provide feedback on the format and content of this newsletter, it is important to us that it provides you with relevant information.

Here's to another successful year.

James Doggart
Managing Director

There are three sections to the Newsletter:

Sales Department − this includes events − Mark McManus, Sales Manager
The Professional Services Team − Michael Barrow, Professional Services Manager
Technical Support − Rob Shepley, Support Manager

Sales Department

Exciting things are happening at Salford Sales, we now have 12 people in the team, which includes the creation of a new development team. Identity Management remains a key focus across all our sites and we now have over 25 strategic Identity management engagements either completed or well in hand. All of these sites are realising major benefits in having a strategic Identity focus.

We are engaging with JISC in promoting and offering solutions for joining the UK Access Management Federation. We are offering all our sites a free 'Joining the Federation' Workshop that will address what the Federation is, the steps to joining and the potential it offers. Please call us to register your interest.

Vendor relationships

Our two main areas of focus are identity and infrastructure in heterogeneous environments. As such we have developed strategic relationships with other vendors besides Novell. We are now a Microsoft Gold Partner and have already delivered identity solutions in a Microsoft environment. In addition we are also a SUN identity Specialist and are currently engaged in several SUN Identity solutions.

Events Calendar

Salford Software are holding and attending several key events over the next quarter, if you are able to attend any, please do not hesitate to contact us

October

Annual Directors Roundtable Meeting 2006 in Edinburgh
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql1

Salford are also attending LinuxWorld Expo 2006. This event brings together the largest gathering of Open Source professionals in the UK including users, developers, buyers and suppliers. Salford Software will be on the Novell Stand. Please Visit us on Stand C3
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql2

November

We will be attending the UCISA − CISG Conference located at Dunblane Hydro Scotland
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql3

Business Development Team

In August 2006, Salford Software announced several changes to the structure of their organisation. Within the sales division a new team has been created called the Business Development Team (BDT). The team is made up of Steve Dobson BDT team manager, Matt Brunton BDT southern account manager, Martin Creevy BDT northern account manager and Jason Ewbank BDT internal sales support.

The Business Development Team has been created for two strategic reasons, the first is to enhance Salford Software's relationship within the further education market and the second is to develop business in new vertical markets for Salford Software.

Further Education Market

Salford Software has 60 direct accounts within the FE market and over 80 other accounts that are managed by various resellers who use Salford Software's Technical Support division for second line support and an escalation route to Novell.

In the past year, we have also experienced the college market move towards Identity and single sign on solutions, which is part of the academic landscape model, developed by Salford Software. These technologies have provided colleges with a big technology leap and delivered enormous business benefits.

Also started last year was our Premium Support contract for FE which provides enhanced Novell support and Microsoft support. Please contact us if you require further information on this 0161 906 2230.

New Vertical Markets

Utilising our success and strength in Identity management solutions the Business Development Team will be exploring new markets with this technology. If you are interested in knowing more about identity management or wish to speak to a member of the team please call 0161 906 2230.

Mark McManus
Sales Manager

Steve Dobson
Business Development Manager

The Professional Services Team

The Professional Services team is ten strong; seven Consultants are dedicated to delivering Identity Management solutions the rest are busy deploying email, infrastructure, and desktop management solutions.

Successfully Delivering Identity Management

Since 2003 the Professional services team have implemented or are in the process of successfully implementing Identity Management solutions in twenty six organisations.

The experience we have gained delivering these projects has given us a unique insight into the challenges that large distributed organisations face when trying to implement an Identity solution. Starting a project of this complexity and magnitude can be daunting and this is often the reason why organisations delay implementing Identity Management.

We have developed a methodology that has enabled organisations to not just start but successfully complete Identity Management Projects. The following five tips will help to ensure that an Identity Management project is successful.

• Employ a phased approach avoid the big bang.
• Look for quick wins.
• Establish a solid Identity Infrastructure in phase 1.
• Identify the authoritative sources.
• Sell the project internally to key stakeholders.

New Developments

Professional Services have added a new product called Sentinel to their deployment skill set.

Sentinel from Novell integrates and monitors information and events from across an organization's networked infrastructure, including data from identity and access management products and third−party systems and devices such as firewalls, routers, anti−virus, asset discovery/inventory, configuration management, intrusion detection systems, mainframes, network devices, vulnerability scanners, load balancers and others. By incorporating information from across the entire network, customers can benefit from a comprehensive, real−time view of activities associated with systems, devices and people, enabling them to respond to threats more effectively and document the effectiveness of their IT controls.
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql4

Identity and Access Management Links

This month we have two useful links to help understand Identity and Access Management.

This useful site gives definitions of Identity Management and Access Management terms:
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql5

This link gives Microsoft view on the Meta Directory:
http://www.salfordsoftware.co.uk/ql6

Michael Barrow
Professional Services Manager

Technical Support

Hi, I'm Rob Shepley. You may remember me from such incidents as "NetWare 6.5 SP5 abended my server" or "GroupWise melted". I've been managing the Technical Support team ever since Paul Lees 'moved upstairs' just over two years ago, and it's been a busy couple of years.

The Technical Support team have begun to offer a Premium Support Service for FE, which compliments SDSS service, we have strengthened our Microsoft Support offering and regained our Microsoft Gold Partners status, whilst the company as a whole has continued to grow it's Professional Services division and Novell have continued to broaden their product range, not least by the purchase of SuSE. Expansion like this doesn't come easily, and we've dealt with over 4800 incidents during this period, so you'll be glad to know that we've also expanded the team to meet these new demands.

Rob Shepley
Technical Services Manager