Dynamic Edge on cloud nine

As one of the Scotland’s leading exponents of cloud computing which it sees as giving desktop PC and mobile computing users access to their software and data securely via the internet, reducing the need for expensive hardware and software, Dynamic Edge was awarded eight of the contracts in the last three months.

Director Rob Hamilton, (right) founding director at Dynamic Edge Solutions, (not a cloud on the horizon!) has recently seen a surge in interest for Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS), launched worldwide by Microsoft in May last year, and was the first company in Scotland to be certified by Microsoft to deliver its online services solution.

The total value of the 10 contracts to the Aberdeen company is around £150,000. Aberdeen-based Norson Power, a leading provider of hydraulic engineering solutions to the oil and gas industry, Westhill-based Albapharm, a leading support network for pharmacies across the UK, and Create Financial Solutions, established Aberdeen financial advisors part of  Newcastle base Think Positive) are three of the firms Dynamic Edge Solutions has “put in the cloud” along with seven other businesses.

Hamilton expects more North-east companies to move to the scalable web-based, pay-as-you-go, on-demand delivery of IT services in the next 12 months. The company, which also delivers traditional IT support services, is confident of recording £400,000 in turnover by the end of the year and has set a turnover target of £700,000 for 2011.

Hamilton, who set up Dynamic Edge Solutions at the beginning of last year, said the recent growth was down to company directors looking to reduce costs and improve efficiency by using cloud computing, known as Software as a Service(SaaS) .

A former business development manager at an established Aberdeen-based IT concern, Hamilton said: “The market is beginning to understand how this development in IT can reduce costs by as much as 40%. The Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) really is the next generation of IT services and the biggest step change in the industry for 25 years.

“We’re delighted to agree contracts with 10 forward-thinking North-east companies. The internet-based model delivers a range of benefits for these businesses from reducing the amount of money spent on servers, ongoing IT support and upgrade projects. There is also greater flexibility with regard to remote access with the ability to log on and access company data wherever you are in the world" (Except perhaps for Barra!)

“BPOS has been particularly well received by financial directors as the future costs of IT can be worked out to the penny rather than estimated. The change from capital expenditure to operational expenditure, due to fixed monthly costs per user, has made us attractive in the marketplace.

“IT managers have also been positive as the cloud computing model means someone else takes care of the headache of installing and owning equipment and keeping applications up to date. This frees up IT executives to concentrate on core business such as strategy, planning and improving processes.

“From a functional point of view, latest figures reveal there is a 99.9% uptime for cloud computing, which obviously compares favourably with a traditional IT set-up. A small business with 10 staff could be set up in the cloud within two days.

“Just like electricity a company can use as much or as little computing power as it requires. This scalability as companies take on more or let go of staff is one of the main reasons we expect further growth for Dynamic Edge Solutions in 2010. Expensive software licences or redundant servers can now be a thing of the past as companies only use what they require,” he says.

Dynamic Edge Solutions in Aberdeen’s West End, currently has a team of 5 and looking to increase that figure in the first half of this year to 7 by securing further contracts.