Zipporah to take part in The Great Cardiff Bay Santa and Elf Dash!

With Christmas fast approaching many companies are preparing for the challenges that can be faced at this time of the year.Whether it is looking to get the last changes in before the Christmas change freeze, preparing for increased volumes of traffic, or simply ensuring there is sufficient cover of staff over the festive period. At Zipporah we are preparing for an additional challenge... The Great Cardiff Bay Santa and Elf Dash! An event organised by Welsh Hearts where participants get dressed up in Santa or Elf costumes in the freezing winter weather and complete 5 kilometres around the Cardiff Bay area. Welsh Hearts is a welsh charity whose mission is centred on the prevention and management of heart disease for people in Wales, and to fund cardiovascular medical research.

Having just completed my first marathon in Amsterdam at the end of October, an amazing experience although possibly the hardest thing I have ever done, I'm looking forward to a slightly shorter, though never the less demanding, distance. One of the most important questions when faced with a challenge such as this is: do I wear a Santa outfit and stay warm in this cold weather OR wear an elf outfit, be cold but more aerodynamic? When your coming in level peggings to the last kilometres these decisions can be the deciding factor.

There has even been some fighting talk, which has resulted in a competition between a number of us to see who can complete the race in the fastest time. Fellow developer Imran is feeling pretty confident he can pip me to the post, with the shorter distance not being my typical race distance. Having bigged myself up as a keen club runner the pressure is on for me to deliver. If all else fails, I've got a bag full of race excuses which I can look to churn out. Excuse number 1: I've just come off working nights for the last two weeks and I'm still tired. Excuse number 2: It was the Zipporah Christmas party on Friday.

On a more serious note, we will be having 'Coffee and Cake' days on Friday 29th Nov and Friday 6th Dec in our Cardiff Office to help raise some funds towards the challenge. As well as each member of the team looking to families and friends for their donations.

Any donations would be greatly appreciated, or if your in the Cardiff area on 8th December then head on down to the Bay and watch what could turn out to be a tight contest!

Or if your feeling adventurous you can enter at http://welshhearts.org/santa/.

Nick Masefield 

Web Developer

Zipporah solutions now available through G-Cloud IV.

Zipporah is proud to announce that our solutions have been made available as a part of G-Cloud IV framework. This important milestone was achieved following the extended evaluation process with the outcome announced in the beginning of November.

G-Cloud IV was launched on the 29th October 2013, and is the latest iteration of the Government’s procurement framework that aims to simplify the way in which the UK public sector procures digital services. There are now over 1183 suppliers offering their services to public sector buyers through the marketplace listing called CloudStore, and 84% of these are SMEs. In all, G-Cloud now features more than 13,000 services, which are available in four categories: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); Platform as a Service (PaaS); Software as a Service (SaaS); and Specialist Cloud Services.

The launch of G-Cloud IV opens doors for many public sector bodies to buy cloud-based infrastructure, platform, software and specialist digital services quickly in a transparent and effective process. For SMEs in particularly, G-Cloud presents greater opportunity to interact with the public sector clients. So far, almost 60% of the Government's total £53.5m expenditure has gone to SMEs. The ICT suppliers market is dominated by international firms which often present costly solutions. Introduction of G-Cloud IV is important to the success of many small companies, and it shows government commitment to support local economies.

For us at Zipporah it was important milestone to expand our offering through CloudStore, making the acquisition of our systems more accessible and cost effective. The cost of procurement often outweighs the cost of the solution itself, thus becoming an approved supplier at the G-Cloud eliminates the barrier for many of our prospect clients.

Visit CloudStore to see our listing or contact our sales team directly at sales@zipporah.co.uk if you are interested in finding out more about our offering.

Anna Mazur

Marketing Executive 

New report sheds light on the state of digital services in local government.

“Local Digital Today” is the latest survey of 200 senior local authority and supplier executives and decision makers on the state of digital services in local government. The report commissioned by the Department for Communities & Local Government, researched, written and published by UKAuthority, highlights the belief that digital technologies will play a vital role in helping councils to deliver better services to their citizens for less cost to the public.

According to research, the local councils which have delivered digital savings have reduced their spending by an average of £1 million. In the light of these findings, minister Brandon Lewis urged all local authorities to take advantage. He said: ”It is heartening that 6 in 10 councils are already reporting savings from their digital endeavours. However it is equally troubling that 40% of councils are yet to drive efficiencies from this opportunity and I would urge these councils to reach out, learn from the best, and accelerate their digital programmes.

So what holds councils back in adopting digital services? ‘Legacy systems and ICT infrastructure’ (72.7%) and ‘Lack of development funds’ (59.4%) are quoted as barriers to progress digital programmes. Other barriers included ‘Culturally uncomfortable for the organisation’ (50.6%) and ‘Unwillingness to change/non-cooperation of colleagues’ (49.7%). Legacy systems topping the list is surprising and it shows the scale of technology infrastructure and investment over the years that must be integrated with new digital processes and service delivery.

The report concludes, that there is no denying that digital services are viewed as an enabler with 80% respondent believing technologies will make organisations more cost effective. However there  are social, cultural and technological hurdles that are preventing councils to accelerate channel shift. Strong leadership and need to develop solid business cases as well as sharing best practice and experience of developing local digital services is crucial for the change to take place. 

Anna Mazur

Marketing Executive 

Cross-browser compatibility: keeping up to date with the latest trends.

As one of the newer members of the Zipporah development team, when reflecting on some of the experiences I have had since joining the company, and considering what my very first blog would be, I began to think of any potential issues I have faced working within the web development industry as a whole. One that instantly sprang to mind, which is something that I am sure is a bug bare for all web developers out there, is cross browser compatibility. It's that moment when you've finally cracked that Javascript or finally got the layout of the page looking right. Yet when you open it in another browser, or you click that compatibility view button, it all falls a part in front of your eyes.

This issue is most evident when developing web pages that are public facing, which for us here at Zipporah, is the vast majority of solutions we develop. Whilst you can state to a client when developing an internal website which browsers you will support, when developing a web page aimed toward the public, you have to accept the fact that many different browsers may be used, and more than this, many different versions of a single browser (Internet Explorer 7,8,9,10 I'm looking at you) may be used. Each different version can have its own quirks ("features") which need to be factored in when carrying out development and testing, keeping us developers on our toes by requiring smart development by making the code efficient whilst managing these different quirks. It can also increase the volume of testing required, to ensure that us developers have captured these issues.

Of course there needs to be a limit on how far this browser support will go, even when developing public facing web sites, it will inevitably still result in a larger umbrella of support being required.

For the most part, cross-browser compatibility seems to be a trend that has become more of a focus for the major browsers out there. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in recent years have begun to adopt a rapid release approach to upgrading their browsers. These releases can occur within several weeks of each other and are carried out automatically, helping to quickly quash any bugs found and also prevent users from clinging on to older versions. As the remaining old browsers, such as IE 6, begin to fade out we should start to see less of these issues occurring. However, the ever increasing usage of tablet PC's and smartphones can introduce issues of their own and we as web developers, as ever must endeavour to keep up with these trends in cutting-edge technology in order to survive. See Jonathan's blog on Mobile Development for more on how Zipporah is keeping up with these trends.

Nick Masefield

Web Developer