Welcome to the Newsletter for Quarter 2 2016!

Since our last newsletter 17Ways has been an absolute hive of activity. Our technology sales continue to be strong, and we've been increasingly busy with our consulting services. We signed a number of new technology partnerships, and amongst all that we still found the time to move to bigger and brighter premises.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and please email or call us if you think we could help you or simply to say hello!

New Premises!

While our premises in Phillip St had served us well, it was time to move into something larger and more centrally located. We can now be found on Level 6, 70 Pitt St, Sydney.

While the move was only one or two blocks, being in the heart of the CBD makes it a little easier for our clients find us as well as being more convenient for all.

We now have access to more meeting rooms with better facilities. The main boardroom is equipped with a video conferencing system, which helps us engage with our customers much more easily, especially those located interstate and overseas.

Most important of all though, is that we are still just a few minutes walk from our favourite coffee shop. This was one of the stipulations John made when we decided to look for a new office. Anything to keep John happy!

If you happen to be in the area at any time please drop by and say hello, you're more then welcome!

Q2/Q3 Turnover passes $1m

Technology sales and consulting services have continued to grow throughout Q2, along with our customer base. Revenue is up significantly when compared to the corresponding quarter last year, although this is to be expected given we were in start-up mode.

We're working hard to establish our reputation as a business that is passionate about delivering the best possible outcomes for our customers. We can see that coming together given the amount of repeat business we've had since creating 17Ways.

We have also had considerable success with our Virtual CIO service. This is a service we offer to organisations that don't necessarily need a full-time CIO. Based on the concept that most organisations find accounting and legal services with specialist organisations, we have found that a similar need exists for highly skilled "C" level IT people. Whether it's helping to set a strategy, planning and executing a restructure, or driving efficiencies within Service Operations, this is an area that 17Ways can help with. In breaking news! - look out for a feature article on our Virtual CIO Service on page 36 in the Australian Financial Review, Friday 26th August! Or click on the following link to read the article now AFR-17Ways.pdf

NSW Government and GovDC

17Ways has been an accredited NSW Government ICT Services provider for high risk contracts or contracts valued over $150,000 since August 2015. Since that time we have worked on a number of consulting engagements, more recently was our work with a major NSW Government Department to migrate a number of EOL applications to the latest operating system and product versions. Thrown into the mix was the requirement to complete the work within a 6 week window, with a hard deadline of June 30th.

This involved working with Unisys, the managed services provider, and the government agency itself to ensure the deliverables could be achieved. We're pleased to say the work was delivered ahead of schedule and under budget, which resulted in a real saving of both time and money to the agency.

This represents a win for not just the agency or 17Ways but to all of us, given we are all tax payers!

We are also working on a number of exciting GovDC initiatives, one being a managed SAS solution which will help government agencies aggregate data and provide uniform reporting across a number of important areas. More on this in our next newsletter!

Telstra Partnership

In our last newsletter we mentioned that we are an accredited Telstra partner. This means we can sell all of Telstra's services found in their catalogue. This includes such products and services as Office365, Azure, Symantec Cloud Services and so on. We are now pleased to announce that we have upgraded our partnership agreement to include professional services.

The expertise of 17Ways can now be brought into your organisation for those specialised engagements, but transacted through Telstra. This may be of benefit to existing Telstra customers that have a Telstra tech fund, as this fund could be used to pay for the engagement.

Technology Partners

Since our last update in Q1, 17Ways has continued to strengthen its range of product and service offerings through technology partnerships. We are pleased to welcome onboard the following partner organisations:

How many organisations truly have an understanding of their software licensing entitlements, or their licensing obligations?

This can be a very difficult area to manage, as many of the software tools in this field have historically fallen short. One solution that we have been really impressed with is that from Snow Software. In a nutshell, Snow Software allows you to optimize software license usage, and therefore reduce costs, by providing insight and control of software consumption. This can be done across all corporate devices and all platforms. And no, you don't need to install agents across all your devices. Snow is able to recognise more than 387,000 applications straight out of the box. It can run on-premise or is available as a hosted SAM service.

At 17Ways we are often asked can we supply certain brands of hardware. HP servers are especially popular, which was one of the main drivers behind joining forces with HP to be able to supply not only servers but the full range of HP infrastructure.

As our motto states : we are "Technology suppliers without the overheads." We're more than happy to supply any equipment that helps solve problems for our customers and to turn around these sorts of requests as quickly as possible, as they are almost always urgent.

We are also happy to quote on any other equipment requirements you may have, even if it's simply to 'keep your incumbent supplier honest'. We're yet to be beaten on a price. Put us to the test today!

Dell is one of the popular compute options available with the SimpliVity line of hyper-converged systems (see our SimpliVity Partner page for more information). We have been a SimpliVity partner since early 2015, and since this time the compute platform options for SimpliVity have expanded to include several other vendors.

By partnering directly with Dell, we are able to offer an expanded range of compute options for SimpliVity as well as supply the full range of Dell product where needed. If you're an existing Dell customer, or are looking for Dell product at a competitive price, you know where to look!

While 17Ways may only be relatively new, Tim and John have worked with Cisco since the late '90s. Given the popularity of Cisco networking and computing products and our relationship with VCE, it made sense to partner directly.

We have been supplying Cisco compute and network products to our Vblock customers since late 2015, so we are very familiar with their product range. Couple that to our experience working at one of the world's leading investment banks, makes our partnership with Cisco an unbeatable combination!

Veeam was one of those products that you keep bumping in to. Often we would find Veeam in use at a customer site or a requirement in a tender document. Partnering therefore made sense. Veeam make products that support VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Veeam are probably best known for their backup and recovery solutions, however they also provide many other capabilities around data replication, de-dupe and compression, and fast application-item recovery for Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory.

Veeam can also provide transaction and table-level recovery of SQL databases and Oracle Databases - and a lot more besides. No matter what your VMware or Hyper-V challenges may be, there is bound to be an answer within the Veeam product suite.

Veritas has been a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for backup and recovery software since 1999. Veritas also holds the #1 position for market share. We needed a partner that is well positioned to help our clients with their ever changing data protection requirements, more so now as we're seeing all sorts of complexities and challenges with the use of public and hybrid clouds.

Veritas covers all the major platform and storage providers, and offers a range of out-of-the-box capabilities such as de-duplication and compression. Veritas can provide protection and recovery options from a laptop through to core enterprise systems. Veritas can provide the software, an appliance, or even an entire turn-key solution where needed. No matter the requirement, Veritas will have a solution to meet your needs.

With the vast amounts of data being stored these days it can be very difficult to manage - particularly the sort of data that's sensitive and needs elevated levels of protection. This is one of the many areas where Varonis can help. Varonis can show you where sensitive data lives, where it’s overexposed, who is accessing it, and how to lock it down. It can help prevent data breaches, and makes permissions management and auditing a very simple process. From a complete data governance framework including data retention policies, search and discovery, data replication and protection, as well as a comprehensive analytics capability, Varonis will have a solution to meet your needs.

Our relationship with EMC goes back to our role as a customer in the late 1990's. We've worked with EMC through a number of storage and connectivity iterations since that time (who out there remembers differential scsi connections!?). Our experience with VCE Vblock and our partnership with VCE made it a simple choice to include EMC as a direct technology partner. We're happy to quote on the full range of EMC product!

Oracle has one of the most comprehensive portfolios of products and solutions of any technology vendor. It's doubtful that any organisation, anywhere in the world, would not have some Oracle elements as part of their technology platform. Java anyone?

To that end being able to supply Oracle products and Services was something we needed to add to our portfolio, and we're pleased to announce that this is now the case.

Pounding the Pavement

Andrew, our Client Services Manager has been knocking on many of your doors for us. Like all businesses, we're always out there looking for opportunities, and how we may be able to work with more of you. We're keen to understand the challenges you might be facing, and if there is something we can do to help deal with those, both tactically and strategically.

Do please let him know how we might help. Drop him a line at 1300 17Ways or Click Here to send an email.

He’s always ready for a chat over a coffee! Again, no obligation.

The Road Ahead

We've had a really busy start to the year but that hasn't stopped us thinking about the future. We have several major tenders in play at the moment, which is something we're excited about as it will mean bringing on more staff and growing the business further. We're also continuing to connect with colleagues past and present, and offering our services where they are needed. This is part of our plan to establish our reputation as a trusted advisor. These are easy words to say, but to us, becoming a trusted advisor involves many things: listening to the client, understanding what the client wants, and then following through by delivering the best possible outcomes for the client at the best possible price. It's our goal to continue to drive this forward.

As we have said all along, if we can help you and your company, or even if it’s simply just to say hello, drop us a note or please give us a call.

Best Regards,

Tim and John