Coronavirus – Newsletter

With the latest news on the Coronavirus CORVID-19 being that we are moving into the delay phase, we thought it was time we should share with you all, firstly what our company policy is going to be during the outbreak and then the facilities and services Anthian are putting in place to assist all our customers if they decide to work from home.

We have analysed the risk to our business and also need to put plans in place to protect the interests of our customers. We feel that the biggest risk is that both of us could contract the virus at the same time and be forced to self-isolate. This would mean we would be unable to undertake critical callouts. Therefore for the past two weeks and for the duration of this epidemic, we are not doing site visits unless it is critical that we do so. We are also working from home so that we are separated from each other to reduce the chance of one infecting the other.

We do have a third technician who only works remotely, so we need to protect our ability to respond to critical call-outs during this time. Most issues can be resolved by remote support, even if sometimes it would be more efficient to just go to the site. However, please rest assured this does not mean we won’t come out to site if it is necessary for us to do so, and this does not affect our regular maintenance, remote support and assistance services.

We are experiencing an increasing demand for remote working facilities from our customers. For many that are now in modern cloud environments, there isn’t much to do but for some, there are simple, inexpensive (or zero-cost) things we can do to get you up and running and working from home. We can use a monthly subscription service that will allow you to securely access your work PC from home, for example, giving you the same experience as of being in the office.

For the duration of the epidemic, we are offering all customers access to our VoIP phone system’s call conferencing facility, free of charge, for as long as we deem it necessary – even if you don’t use our VoIP system.

For those already on our hosted VoIP telephony platform, we can offer the facility to have an app on your mobile that will act as your telephone extension whilst you are working from home. It’s not quite as easy as using a desktop phone but you can still transfer calls and ring internally as well as make external calls that will appear to the person being called that you are still on your Office number.

Again for those already on our VoIP platform, it may be possible for some to simply take their office phone home and plug it into their home router. An inexpensive power supply would be required as most phones run off the power supplied over the network cabling and that isn’t possible with home routers.

There are also other things we can do like setting up email or remote access on home computers, tablets or phones, setting up VPNs so you can access files on an office-based server or NAS device.

Customers requirements will vary so please do get in contact if you have any requirements not covered above or have any queries about any of the systems mentioned above.

Finally, we think it’s worth sharing what we read on the University of Southampton’s website about Corona Viruses in general. These types of viruses are effectively a limited genome DNA surrounded by a fatty lipid shell. Soap contains detergent compounds that dissolve this fatty layer and the DNA leaks out, which is why hand washing is everybody’s best defence during this epidemic. Also, it’s apparently unlikely that a single virus particle can infect you, it takes many of them either entering your body at once or over time, so it isn’t necessary to block every possible particle, just most of them. Hence why hand washing is so important. We think the Government should explain this as we believe many just think it’s something everybody is saying just to make it feel like we are all doing something useful. High alcohol hand sanitisers also dissolve this fatty shell, but since they are virtually unobtainable at the moment hand washing regularly, remains the best way to prevent any individual getting the Virus and by the whole country doing that, lessening the total number infected at all.

Stay well

Kind regards
Anthony, Frank, Ian and Liz.