Inside the Huddle

This month, Huddle was a proud sponsor of UKGovcamp 2012. An unconference without a pre-defined agenda, UKGovcamp brings people together to talk, listen and think about how digital is changing the way UK government works. For the first time, this year's event was a two-day spectacular in central London and Pauline Yau, Huddle's Head of Public Sector, joined 250 civil servants and other stakeholders with an interest in using technology to make public services better. With discussions around open data, what the G-Cloud will mean for the adoption of cloud services in government and cross-government collaboration, it will be interesting to see some of the innovative ideas and conversations gain momentum over the next few months.

Read more about Pauline's review and see pictures from the event.

Driven by government initiatives, such as Choice Based Lettings, Cheltenham Borough Council often has to work closely with five other district councils in Gloucestershire and neighbouring West Oxfordshire District Council. However, with a number of concurrent partnership projects, collaborating with geographically dispersed colleagues was becoming a challenge. To ensure that everyone has access to the information they need from wherever they are, Cheltenham Borough Council turned to Huddle.

Read more about Cheltenham Borough Council.

This month, Huddle launched its new Unlimited Enterprise offering. It enables organisations to collaborate with people across their entire business ecosystem, consisting of internal teams as well as customers, partners, contractors and suppliers, for free. With the package, an unlimited number of lite users can now be added to workspaces at no additional cost to view or download files and comment on documents, files, whiteboards and discussions.

Read more about Huddle's Unlimited Enterprise offering.

Integrated energy company Centrica has hundreds of projects taking place at any one time across multiple timezones. To help it implement these ventures successfully, Centrica also works with a variety of third parties. Depending on the projects, teams across the US, UK and Europe often have to work together and each assignment requires constant communication to ensure everyone is kept up-to-date and work is completed on time. Providing feedback on documents via email caused confusion about the status of activities and made auditing overly complex. Centrica was also faced with the issue of sharing large files. As the only collaboration platform that was able to offer the security measures Centrica required, the company turned to Huddle.

Read more about Centrica.

To prove just how serious Huddle is about providing people with a viable alternative to SharePoint, the team took the fight to Microsoft's front door. At the SharePoint Conference in October, Microsoft found itself faced with a 130-piece marching band, Huddle-branded cheerleaders and American footballers. Resulting in press coverage and increased brand awareness, the stunt enabled the Huddle team to highlight the fact that expensive legacy ICT systems, such as SharePoint, no longer meet end users' or IT departments' requirements – and have some fun with it!

Read more about Ashleigh Casner's top tips for successful guerrilla marketing.

Register for the event and find out more.

Whether on smartphones or tablets, business leaders now demand access to corporate email and documents 24/7. When they get access, they see the potential that comes with it: increased productivity and flexibility, improved efficiency and perhaps a reduction in required office space as people start to work remotely. When this occurs, senior execs start asking why there isn't a company-wide mobile strategy in place and this is where the trouble can begin for IT teams.

Recent research from Dell KACE showed that of 750 IT professionals surveyed, almost nine in ten said that their staff were using their own devices for anything ranging from email right through to CRM and ERP. Concerns about network security breaches, IP theft and loss of data mean that a strategy for addressing BYOD is imperative.

Read more about Andy McLoughlin's tips on managing the consumerization of IT.

Almost half of SharePoint users disregard the security measures within SharePoint, copying sensitive or confidential documents to insecure hard drives, USB Keys or emailing them to a third party. According to a study sponsored by Cryptozone, although 92 per cent of respondents understood that taking data out of SharePoint made it less secure, almost a third (30 per cent) were willing to take the risk if it enabled them to get their job done.

Employees just want to do their jobs and due to the complexity of SharePoint and difficulty collaborating with people outside of the firewall, people resort to abusing the security measures. Huddle makes collaboration and content management seamless. You can securely share information with people inside and outside of your organization.

Faced with the challenge of collaborating on scientific documents with colleagues across the globe and working more effectively with other UK government departments, partners and stakeholders, the Met Office turned to Huddle. It wasn't long before Huddle had replaced SharePoint for project management, task management and file sharing. Huddle enables the Met Office to support mobile working so that staff can securely edit and comment on documents on the move. Files can also be accessed securely on and off site to facilitate training. The Met Office is the UK's National Weather Service.

Read more about why The Met Office moved to Huddle.

According to James Clapper, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, cloud computing is set to play a vital role when it comes to integrating computer and information systems to share more data securely. Presenting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Clapper stated that cloud computing has "huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration." However, with the shift to the cloud will come the need for security and privacy.

Many national and local government organizations are already benefiting from cloud computing and Huddle is already used by 75 per cent of central UK government departments. Last year, Huddle also unveiled Huddle IL3, which provides government customers with access to private data stores for more highly classified data.

A study commissioned by Cisco and carried out by Redshift Research has found that staff bringing their own devices into the workplace is proving a big drain on IT departments in Europe and North America. Almost half (48 per cent) of the 1,500 IT managers surveyed said their business would never authorize the use of employees' personal devices in the workplace, but 57 per cent believed devices were being used regardless.

The way in which we now work has changed dramatically over the last decade. The workforce no longer needs to be stuck in one location or connected to one enterprise server. By relinquishing a little control and planning a BYOD strategy, IT departments have the opportunity to usher in a new era of productivity, flexibility and collaboration. Give Huddle's mobile apps a go and collaborate on the move.