Cambium Partnership

Haptic Networks are proud to announce our official status as Cambium Connected Partners.

With their background as Motorola Wireless, WiFi powerhouse Cambium emerged in 2011 and since then has developed an impressive grasp of the global WiFi market. Cambium has a strong presence in both public and private networks, their equipment is currently used in small, medium and enterprise commercial deployments as well as education.

Cambium currently comprise 700 staff, connecting people, places and things in over 170 countries and across 6 continents...that's a pretty impressive start. Haptic Networks have an extensive pedigree of deploying solid and reliable WiFi solutions across EMEA for over 15 years.

The team here at Haptic Networks are incredibly impressed with the capabilities of Cambium equipment. Cambium provides reliable, consistent, connectivity for high user densities. The fully integrated single pane management of the Cambium Switch portfolio makes Cambium an incredibly compelling proposition for IT professionals looking to maximise their ROI, whilst minimising their management overhead.  

As an official Cambium reseller, Haptic Networks can assist with any enquiry you may have around the solution. We typically offer advisory calls, demo equipment as well as introductions to the team at Cambium to help you understand more about the benefits of the solution. Click here to contact us for more information.

CN ConnectedPartner logo Education 3

Haptic Networks Google Learning Festivals are "much better than school"

Google learning festival
Google learning festival

by Darrell Raynard, Cloud Services Specialist

If you don't know what a Google Learning Festival is, it's an education programme created to help end-users understand the power of Chromebooks in the classrooms and see the impact on the real users of the technology - the learners.

After seeing teachers and leadership staff coming to other IT channel events and being talked 'at' all day, with no context or application being delivered to them, we identified the gap in getting the message and value across to the learners and BANG! - the Haptic Networks Google Learning Festivals were born.

youtube lnk
Click here for YouTube interview

Friday, 8 November 2019:

" It's not often I'm excited to be out my front door in the freezing cold at 5:30 am, but today was another one of our Google Learning Festivals at the awesome Google reference school Aylesbury High School. So with my other half's travel mug “borrowed” and not nearly enough coffee in it I was merrily on my way.

09:00: After wrestling with the slightly frustrating marketing stand, and getting a superb amount of support from Caroline and the team at Aylesbury High School, the kids and their teachers started to file in. Everyone collected there own Wonde magic badge and sat at one of the 4 colour coded desks in front of a Lenovo 300e Chromebook for them to use for the tasks at hand.

learners
Click here for the YouTube Video

We told everyone to login using the Wonde badge by holding it up to the camera and in the words of one of the kids, “Boom I'm in, that was easy!”. After a brief play around with Google experiments, our Google guides, Hardeep and Joe from Tablet Academy UK, got everyone started on the tasks:

All of the tasks and resources were distributed to students using Google Classroom, with instructions in Google sites. Learners were allowed to work at their own pace and explore the tools independently and with their peers.

I'm always in awe of the feedback and soundbites we get from teachers and learners who come to these events, you can see for yourself from the video testimonials included in this blog why we love doing them.

teachers
Click here to view the Youtube video

In summary, today we hosted 50 learners from Years 6 - 8 and there wasn't a moment in the day where they were disengaged or looked to be at a loss with the technology.

The Haptic Networks Google Learning Festivals are always well-received, senior leaders and learners alike are inspired and excited about the possibilities available to them, and I have a fulfilling day at the office. "

Till next time,

Darrell Raynard

Cloud Services Specialist

Interested in hosting a Google Learning Festival with us?

Please click below to register your interest

First UK Partner to achieve Ruckus Ready Cloud Specialist Certification

Haptic Networks: First UK Partner to achieve Ruckus Ready Cloud Specialist Certification

Ruck cloud specialist

Today we received confirmation that Haptic Networks are the first UK Partner to achieve Ruckus Ready Cloud Specialist Certification. As Elite partners of Ruckus for over a decade, Haptic Networks have invested heavily in training and certification for our team.

To be the first UK Partner to achieve Ruckus Ready Cloud Specialist Certification in the UK is a huge achievement and one we’re incredibly proud of. In order to obtain this status our in house technical and sales teams have been busy passing the following qualified courses:

2 x ICX Implementers

2 x ICX Wired SE Pre-Sales

2 x WiSE Certified Engineers

2 x Cloudpath Certified Engineers

2 x Ruckus Cloud WiFi Certified

In addition to this we have also completed the following courses and now offer our customers access to consultants with the following certifications:

1 x CWS (Certified Wi-Fi Specialist)

1 x CWT (Certified Wi-Fi Technician)

2 x CWNA (Certified Wi-Fi Network Administrator)

As we head into 2019 we’re excited to continue our work as Ruckus Elite partners as well as our projects in WiFi and Networking in general.

Here’s more about the work we do 

Haptic become CrowdStrike Partners

Haptic are ecstatic to announce an official partnership with CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike have been announced as being the highest in execution & furthest in vision, in the visionaries quadrant of 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. 12 of the 20 Fortune Largest Global Companies have deployed CrowdStrike and they have a vast amount of positive industry recognition.

The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform is pioneering cloud-delivered endpoint protection. It both delivers and unifies IT Hygiene, next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), managed threat hunting, and threat intelligence — all delivered via a single lightweight agent. Using its purpose-built cloud-native architecture, the Falcon platform collects and analyses over 1 trillion endpoint events per week from millions of sensors deployed across 176 countries.

CrowdStrike® Falcon Insight™ eliminates silent failure by providing the highest level of real-time monitoring capabilities that span across detection, response and forensics. This ensures nothing is missed, leaving attackers with no place to hide. Falcon Insight provides organizations with state-of-the-art endpoint detection and response (EDR), following an approach recommended by top analyst firms such as Gartner.

What If You Could Find Answers To Important But Hard Questions? What endpoints - physical, virtual and EC2 instances - are on my network? Where are administrator credentials being used in my network? What applications are my users running? Which ones are mine and which ones are "rogue"?

Falcon Discover can help to deliver this visibility without having a performance impact on the end device.

We are excited to work with such a prestigious company, further strengthening our security capabilities and offerings to end users.

Haptic Networks launch TrueNAS website

Of all the technology we work with, we've been more excited about TrueNAS than a large number of alternatives. We've partnered with iXsystems for over 2 years and are huge advocates for both FreeNAS and TrueNAS platforms.

TrueNAS has been instrumental in many of our storage solutions for the past few years. Today we've launched our latest technology micro site dedicated solely to TrueNAS.

For over twenty years, iXsystems has been the go-to company for storage and servers driven by Open Source, and they're also the developers of FreeNAS®. With unique convergence of hardware, software, and storage expertise, we bring you the award-winning TrueNAS flash-turbocharged enterprise-grade open storage platform, offering reliability and performance at a value unheard of in storage.

TrueNAS unifies storage access, grows to nearly 10PB in a rack, is available in hybrid and all-flash configurations, has features that let you move away from the cloud saving over 70% over AWS, and uses the ZFS file system to guarantee data stays pristine and safe.

If you would like to know more about TrueNAS or FreeNAS just ask, we have product demonstrations, in house storage and networking consultants as well as demonstration equipment for you to trial the solution.

read more about this incredible solution by clicking here

Google Chrome 'Not Secure' Warning

Is your website secured? It may be time to check......

The upcoming Google Chrome update due for release in July will begin to display a warning that non HTTPS sites (unsecured HTTP sites without a valid SSL certificate) are 'not secure'

(notice our nifty green padlock in the URL bar, if your website is lacking one of these it may be time to take action!)

In the wake of all things GDPR, companies are now acutely aware of the need for added security. The updates to Chrome demonstrate Google's campaign for a more secure web experience.

Haptic are here to help you should you need assistance, here's our checklist below to ensure your site is secured:

  1. Add a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate for all live domains
  2. Select to "Secure all URLs" on your primary domain to enforce HTTPS on your full website

You can read more about chromebooks at our dedicated chrome microsite 

If you'd like some guidance or advice please click this link and use this form to contact us and we'll be happy to help

WiFi4EU - 120m Euro budget Public Sector WiFi scheme

The European Commission recently announced its WiFi4EU  scheme to promote free WiFi connectivity for open areas, parks, libraries, museums and many other public buildings and spaces across Europe.

As a trusted expert in the deployment of Public area/Public access WiFi solutions Haptic Networks are also an approved partner of the scheme. Public Sector bodies and Local Authorities can use the funding to develop and promote their own digital services through a dedicated app. The WiFi4EU - Public Sector WiFi scheme to harness 120m Euro budget is now open. All selected municipalities will receive a 15,000 Euro voucher, this will cover the installation costs of the WiFi equipment in their chosen centres.

For more information on this incentive, feel free to contact us here or alternatively see more about WiFi4EU on our partner Ruckus Wireless' page by clicking here.

New G Suite Services

G Suite is a monster. Currently taking the world by storm, utilising lower cost hardware (in the form of Chromebooks and Chromeboxes) G Suite is improving productivity, reducing repetitive workloads and improving student outcomes at hundreds of thousands of learning establishments. Our journey with all things G Suite began way back in 2015, since then Haptic Networks have been pioneers in how Education and businesses learn to adopt the applications, providing specialised consultancy and support to users adopting the technology.

Today we're proud to unveil our newest range of G Suite Services :

Origin , Launch, Migrate

Designed to assist with different user cases, here's a quick overview.

Origin

Optimised for schools working with a limited budget, Origin acts as a starting point for any G Suite journey. The base package is offered at £895, for a full breakdown of the service and what it includes take a look at the dedicated page here.

Launch

Our Launch service covers all of the vital areas required for a successful G Suite adoption project. It takes a modular approach to helping any site that wants to adopt G Suite and requires our expert advice. More details on the service can be found here.

Migrate

Designed to tackle one of the more problematic elements of switching an email system from Microsoft Office or Office 365. Migrate is a project offering that takes the hassle, risk and headache out of planning and executing a successful migration. Breakdown of the service in more detail here.

We're currently using these services to offer support and consultancy to Schools, Colleges and businesses around the world, we'd be happy to hear more about your current plans or projects involving G Suite. Say hi using this quick form

New security and intelligent features added to Gmail

New security and intelligent features added to Gmail

Google recently announced major updates to assist the paying businesses (over 4 million and counting) that use G Suite work smarter, safer and more efficiently.

Included in the all new, new-look Gmail:

In order to address Business Email Compromise (BEC) threats in which fraudsters impersonate an executive to obtain payments or information. Gmail introduced new phishing protections which help block 99.9 percent of BEC attempts by warning users.

Gmail - Confidential Mode:

With confidential mode, it's possible to protect sensitive content within your emails by adding expiry dates or revoking messages that have been previously sent. Requiring additional authentication via text message to view an email is another possibility to protect data even if the recipient's account has been hijacked whilst the message is active

Good news for business, good news for personal Gmail users too. You can opt-in to this new experience too (go to: settings, in the top right and select 'Try the new Gmail")

If you need help getting started with the new Gmail or any other G Suite application, feel free to contact us here