London, UK, July 18, 2011 -- gmaGMA Consulting is a leader in advanced Microsoft SharePoint 2010 solutions. Now GMA has developed an effective and flexible yet low cost way to enable an organisation’s staff to find the information they need in the event of a crisis situation.

“Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning is a high priority activity for many organisations. And whilst they may have arrangements in place that provide a backup location and IT equipment there is an issue that is often not addressed. When a crisis occurs how do staff members quickly and easily find the information they need?” said Ben Grey, a Director at GMA Consulting.

“Imagine you get to the office in the morning and the whole area is cordoned off because of a terrorist incident,” continued Grey. “There’s information you’ll be needing including ‘How can I find out what the latest situation is?’; ‘Who do I need to contact and what are their contact details?’; ‘Where is the DR centre and how do I get there?’; What procedures have to be followed once I get to the DR centre?’”

GMA has developed an effective and flexible yet low cost solution, consisting of a pre-configured SharePoint 2010 site hosted on the Windows Azure cloud platform, which enables staff to find the information they need in the event of a crisis situation.

As it’s a cloud-based solution the portal can be accessed 24/7 over the Internet even if the organisation’s core systems are down. And the use of SharePoint makes it easy for non-IT staff to upload documents and manage contact lists both as part of standard Business Continuity planning and in the event of a crisis situation.

The costs of the solution can be kept very low as the minimum requirements are:

• SharePoint Foundation 2010 (free download)
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition (free download)
• Windows Azure small compute instance with 50gb of storage - approx GBP 60-70 (EUR 68-79 / USD 95-111) per month.

Grey finished by saying “Cloud computing is a major trend in IT and we are delighted that we are at the cutting edge of exploiting this new technology. We believe that our SharePoint Azure Business Continuity Portal will provide our customers with the functionality needed in a DR situation although of course we hope they never find themselves in a real crisis.”

Organisations interested in learning more can visit http://www.gmaconsulting.com/solutions/business-continuity-portal.

Alternatively they can contact GMA Consulting on +44 (0)20 7960 2880 or via http://www.gmaconsulting.com/contact-us.

About GMA Consulting
GMA Consulting is a London-based IT consultancy specialising in the design, development and implementation of solutions using Microsoft technologies. Our goal is to help our clients run their operations more effectively and efficiently through the implementation of collaborative-working functionality utilising Microsoft-based technologies centred around the SharePoint platform.

About Windows Azure
The Windows Azure platform provides developers with the functionality to build and manage complete and compelling cloud-based applications which are hosted in geographically distributed Microsoft data centres. Azure provides customers with significant benefits in administration, availability and scalability.

For more information please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure.

For the Windows Azure Pricing Calculator visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator.

About Microsoft SharePoint
SharePoint is the Business Collaboration Platform for the Enterprise and the Web. SharePoint enables organisations to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features. It facilitates business collaboration in the broadest sense and helps collegues, partners, and customers to work together in new and effective ways. SharePoint's integrated suite of capabilities includes:

• Workflow
• Business intelligence
• Collaboration
• Portals
• Enterprise search
• Content management

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Source: GMA Consulting