Intelligent Things

Issue 2
INTELLIGENT
THINGS
INNOVATION
THROUGH
OUTSOURCING
Danny Bradbury
Page 30
INTRODUCING
DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
Paul Maher
Page 32
CCS TALKS
TECHNOLOGY
PRODUCTS
Gary Flood
Page 27
What will
future
technology
products
look like?
PAGE 6

OUR INNOVATION
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Welcome
W
ith issue one of our Group Magazine generating
positive feedback from private and public sector
organisations and all corners of the IT supply
chain, I’m pleased to introduce issue two. Our aim with
this magazine is to tackle contemporary issues relevant to
commercial, procurement and IT teams, and this time we’ve
added extra pages of great content from the best IT writers to
help us do it.
We’re particularly pleased to provide an exclusive interview with
Crown Commercial Service commercial director of technology,
Sarah Hurrell, on the new ways government will buy IT (p27).
We also hear from Spend Matters editor, Peter Smith, on the
Digital Marketplace (p28).
Technology is transforming the way we work and exist, creating
one connected and seamless communication experience
which is delivering unprecedented opportunity for all - and this
is a major theme we build on.
We discuss the emerging trend of web and mobile apps being
created by non-technical users (p20, 32), and the next wave of
IT innovation.
Applications need infrastructure, end user facing technology
products and great people to complete the picture, however.
So we’ve dedicated a section (p6) to the intelligent new
products delivering smarter ways of working. We also explore
technology device trends and developments (p11, 12),
the changing landscape of ICT infrastructure (p44) and the
associated security challenges (p34).
When it comes to buying this technology, we appreciate that
many struggle to validate best value on every purchase amid
a highly volatile IT market, where price and stock fluctuate
daily. That’s why we have dedicated sections to the supply
chain (p22) and procurement (p27), exploring strategic issues
and how to secure relevant technology at the best price.
Whatever way you are looking to innovate it is potentially going
to need some form of external support to help you realise your
goals and make that technology work harder for you. With
that in mind, Danny Bradbury investigates innovation through
outsourcing (p30), we also explore integrated mobile strategies
(p15) and examine the increasing opportunities and risks
presented by Bring Your Own Device (p34).
Indeed, the constant pace of rapid technology change is
seeing innovation become the necessary norm - analysts
believe this current period of tech evolution could go on for at
least another decade.
These innovations are seeing us adopt new ways of working,
with quicker, more powerful technology. It is important,
therefore, that businesses are able to replace and refresh
existing tech and drive from the front with the automation of
business processes. The big question is, how do you intend to
seize the moment and innovate in your organisation, what are
your key business and technology priorities? We’re keen to
hear your story.
Peter Robbins
Managing Director, Probrand Group
Peter Robbins
Managing Director, Probrand Group
1 2 3
4 5 6
1. Sir Albert Bore, Birmingham City Council Leader, addresses employees during his visit, 2. Apprentice Mike McQuaid, Lord
Mayor of Birmingham and Peter Robbins, 3. Public sector innovators meet KnowledgeKube at Government ICT 2.0, 4. Peter
Robbins accepts The Queen’s Award from HRH The Duke of Kent, 5. Apprentice Loren Garbett demonstrates the power of
KnowledgeKube, 6. Commercial Director, Chris Griesbach, champions the Government’s Building Britain campaign.

www.probrand.co.uk
Contact us:
0121 605 1000
enquiries@probrand.co.uk
Probrand Group Magazine provides
news, views, analysis and information
on pivotal subjects relevant to IT,
procurement and business leaders
looking to thrive with technology.
Please get in touch and share your
views on any of the subjects tackled
or any you would like to read about.
Products
Supply Chain
Business
Transformation
Security
Driving
Innovation
Infrastructure
Procurement
News
Probrand Group
Contents
Technology research in brief
The future of technology
Device rethink
IT Product trends for 2015
Tech products forecast
Mobile device strategies aren’t
just about phones
Handling BYOD
You’ve been hacked -
what now?
Security reviewed in
numbers and words
End of the line for
Windows Server 2003
Infrastructure reviewed in
numbers and words
The benefits of private
cloud storage
Changing the infrastructure
landscape
To refresh or not to refresh
The business case for
transformation
Is the Government’s ICT reform
agenda paying off?
Getting RAD!
Case Study: Royal
Veterinary College
Did you really get the best
deal possible?
Do sweat the small stuff
Making it easier for government
to buy from SMEs
Assessing the digital
marketplace
Can you really benchmark
with Google?
Innovation through outsourcing
Introducing digital
transformation
05
06
10
11
12
15
34
36
38
40
41
42
44
46
16
18
20
22
24
26
27
28
29
30
32
What we offer48

Probrand Group Magazine 05
News
Technology research in brief
Flexible working could help
UK save £11.5bn
Allowing people in the UK to ‘work anywhere, at any
time’ could cut half a billion hours in wasted travel time,
according to research by Ctirix and Cebr.
The study, which claimed this would lead to cost savings of
£11.5bn, also found that 96% would take up the option to
work flexibly if it was offered. Jacqueline de Rojas, area vice
president for Citrix, said: "Those that choose not to enable
workplace mobility will lose out in the war for talent and
could arguably suffer from lower employee productivity.”
Connected devices to
double this decade
The number of wireless connected devices in use globally
will more than double before the end of the decade, an
ABI Research study has claimed.
The analyst claimed wireless device growth, which will
rise above 40bn by 2020, is being driven by machine to
machine communications. Aapo Markkanen, principal
analyst at ABI Research, said: “The driving force behind
the surge in connections is that usual buzzword suspect,
the Internet of Things (IoT).”
Cloud computing adoption
to double by 2020
The number of small businesses fully adopting cloud
computing will double by 2020, a study by Emergent
Research has claimed.
Steve King of Emergent Research. “In this new
landscape, many people are using the power of the
cloud to re-imagine the idea of small business and
create new, innovative models that work for their
needs.” A separate report by IBM has found that
40% of decision makers believe cloud computing has
already delivered major improvements in organisational
efficiency and provided competitive advantage.
Wi-Fi to be default
connection for all devices
Wi-Fi is increasingly becoming the default means of
connection for both mobile and non-mobile devices,
according to Gartner.
The analyst attributed the shift to tablets and
smartphones, which it said were fast becoming the
go-to device for all communication and content
consumption. It predicts that more than 50% of
users will use these devices first for all online
activity by 2018.
Big Data changing the
competitive landscape
Almost nine in ten large enterprises believe Big Data
analytics will redefine the competitive landscape of their
industry over the next three years.
The study by General Electric found that 73% of
enterprises are currently investing more than a fifth of
their technology budget on Big Data. A separate IDC
study has forecast that the storage element of this market
alone is expected to experience annual compound
growth of 30.5% during the same time period.

Products
06 Probrand Group Magazine
by Danny Bradbury
the future
of technology
The future is coming, but what is it going
to look like? Danny Bradbury spoke to
two market leaders to find out.
F
or most people, the future is
somewhere off in the distance,
shimmering mirage-like, just above
the horizon. For Chris Shaw, it’s already
here, just around the corner, in a deserted
office.
Intel’s director of IT sales and marketing
for EMEA and Asia downplays the 007
gadgetry. He says that Intel employees
don’t get to see new technologies much
ahead of anyone else. But some of the
stories he tells suggest that he gets to visit
what most of us consider the future on a
daily basis.
Here’s an example: Intel has several smart
meeting rooms in offices around the world.
“Any employee can go into the room, swipe
their badge against a screen, and bring up
their calendar of appointments,” he says.
If that employee is talking to someone
else in a virtual meeting, the system will
automatically connect them via video
conference to the appropriate meeting
room or other location.
“We are orchestrating that using a bunch
of technologies,” says Shaw. These include
Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and
software APIs, developed both internally
and with third party vendors.
This is one example of how evolving
technologies will change the future for
tomorrow’s businesses. The future of
technology is perhaps one of the most
exciting places to visit. Both Shaw
and Mark Deakin, partner technology
strategist for small and medium business
at Microsoft, see a lot of potential in
IoT, which includes not just industrial
controllers and household appliances,
but wearables, too.
The Internet
of Things
“If I have near field communications
(NFC) or a Bluetooth tag, then the house
will know that I entered it,” says Deakin.
In the future, he also sees intelligent
systems within buildings that talk to each
other, and even to external services.
How about a building that automatically
turns the heating up when it snows?
This vast array of connected devices,
ranging from wristwatches to cars, will
revolutionise the business and consumer
worlds alike in the next few years, says
Intelligent
things

Intel’s Shaw. In the future, the company
hopes to implement other showcase
technologies, including one where
employees can use meeting rooms that are
booked, but not in use.
“One technology that we’re implementing
with our IoT sensors is smart sensing for
activity and traffic in meeting rooms,” he
explains. If machines detect that a meeting
room has no one in it, it becomes free. It’s
one of the most requested features among
Intel employees.
“We are taking our technology and
history, the great quality and results from
the PC business and reusing the same
technologies and techniques,” he says.
These devices will transform the way that
we interact with everyday objects, experts
suggest. Imagine a car not as a single,
self-contained entity, but as a collection of
services, connected to a universe of others.
“We could create incentives for people
on a long journey,” he says. “Their vehicle
may know that they’re 20 miles away from
a petrol station, and that the level of fuel
they have in their vehicle won’t take them
much past that. You could send them an
event-driven alert that provides an offer for
money-off fuel if you stop at a fuel station in
the next city.”
Super-brains
for everyone
A key part of this is the cloud, says Deakin,
which will provide a back-end processing
platform for this constellation of objects –
and the people that use them.
“Having the computing power to process
things in the background is a significant
development,” he says. “Things like
cloud computing enable the smallest of
organisations to pay for that.”
In time, the combination of cloud
computing and big data analytics will
provide new decision-making capabilities
for even the smallest businesses, Deakin
hopes.
His local pub complains to him that it can’t
easily predict which days are going to be
busy or quiet. This leaves the manager
guessing how many staff to put on that
day, which in turn affects the pub’s ability
to make revenue.
“Cloud computing will be able to take
lots of data that’s publicly available, such
as traffic and weather information, and
combine that with their existing revenue
data,” he predicts. “It may find out that
if it’s May and between 20-25 degrees,
Continued

Products
everyone is going to come out to the pub,
but if there’s traffic on the M4, even though
it’s sunny, those things combined mean
that people won’t.” Chalk one up for the
little guy.
Machines that learn
The next stage in this development will
be machine learning, Deakin suggests. If
the cloud is good at anything, it’s using
elastic computing power to process large
amounts of data in new and innovative
ways. This is happening at a microscopic
level where machines are able to learn
patterns. Google’s machine learning
algorithms, for example, scanned millions
of YouTube videos and learned how to
decide what a cat looked like – all without
human help. That’s a form of artificial
intelligence that we have never seen before.
Things will also move beyond that as
computers begin to draw inferences from
larger, more disparate patterns, such as
travel and meeting data, for example. “We
could use things like image recognition as
people walk in to an establishment, so that
a business could recognise clients that
they saw before,” he says. That publican
wouldn’t even have to ask Bob if he
wanted the usual.
“Machine learning will be able to make
decisions for people,” he says. We are
already seeing this with systems such
as Google Now, and Microsoft’s own
Cortana, which will notify people if traffic is
bad and adjust travel times for upcoming
appointments.
In the future, this kind of machine learning
technology will become more fine-
grained, and able to infer far more than
it does today. Imagine, for example, a
digital assistant that tracks the kind of
information that will probably be needed
in a business meeting, including not only
past interactions with an attendee, but also
information about nearby Asian restaurants,
given their like of Korean food.
This kind of intelligence will also transform
business processes such as customer
service, Deakin says. It could help make
companies better at anticipating customer
needs. He gives an example of being able
to draw data from an online service linked
to a customer’s wearable fitness tracker.
This could lead to some interesting
targeted phone calls, he suggests: “You’ve
been practicing for a marathon, so we’ll
give you an offer on new trainers in four
rather than six months.”
The connected
dangers
It’s clear that this hyperconnected future
is coming, but it also brings its dangers.
Having computers tell other computers
about your daily habits, and then having
companies calling you to sell you things
related to them? It all sounds a little too
1984. The human element seems to be
missing somewhere. That’s why privacy
and identity are going to be so important in
the next few years.
This presents vendors with a challenge,
because there has always been a tug of
war between convenience and security.
“Whatever happens in that space, whatever
we do to put the right levels of controls in
place, it will be perceived as bureaucratic,”
muses Shaw about security, adding that
companies need to take advantage of
modern technologies to make things more
seamless.
That’s the part of this utopian story that
seems to be missing. Quite how we’ll
protect the sovereignty of our data in this
new, hyperconnected world isn’t quite
clear – and it isn’t entirely certain that the
interests of technology companies and
consumers will always be 100% aligned.
Countless newspaper headlines over
the last year and a half make a pretty
convincing case that we haven’t even
started to get privacy and identity right
in the present. As the world advances
towards context awareness, artificial
intelligence, and computers that know
you better than we do ourselves, we’d
better learn quickly.
Danny Bradbury is a freelance
technology journalist
Continued

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Products
by Gary Price
Gary Price urges people to ask whether
the device they are set to buy is really the
best tool for the job.
T
he range of computing devices
we can now choose to work
with appears to be endless. It is
just down to us to decide the best tool
possible.
No longer are we restricted to a desktop or
a laptop, we can use a tablet, a phablet, an
ultrabook, an all-in-one and more. The list
of options is getting bigger all the time.
When making a purchasing decision,
people now need to forget about what
they knew ten years ago and look at what
the vendors are doing today. The question
they should be asking is not ‘how much
computer can I get with my money?’ but
rather ‘what am I trying to achieve and
what is the best tool for that job?’
Certain individuals may be stuck in
their ways and say that they want a 15”
notebook because they have always
used a 15” notebook. A procurement
professional cannot afford to think that way,
however. They have to query whether their
employees actually need that big beast
of a workstation with massive computing
power, or would they be equally well served
by a standard desktop or even a thin
client?
Too often organisations will buy devices
without suitability in mind. For example,
an education institution may buy a set
of computers because the colour of
the lid matches the colour of the school
badge. Businesses also need to be
wary of personal egos and internal one-
upmanship, which sees individuals within
an organisation push for devices that
are far more powerful than what is really
necessary.
Too much power
Buying too much power is a common
theme which results in businesses wasting
huge amounts of money. And it happens
more than you think.
For example, when vendors are trying to
shift stock they may be willing to offer a
healthy discount on certain products. A
buyer could get the resellers to agree to sell
Device
rethink
a bulk order of laptops with i7 processors
at £700 per unit rather than £800.
On paper the savings may look impressive.
It may well be, however, that the majority of
people receiving the laptop would get along
fine with a laptop with an i3 processor
which would have cost £400 per unit. You
could end up with the receptionist, having
enormous amounts of computing power
that will never come close to full utilisation.
With an endless list of possible tools, it is
better for buyers to concentrate on what
the end user is trying to achieve before
choosing the device. It is also worth
thinking about how they will actually use
that device. If the business has a cloud
storage facility, do they need a terabyte
of storage on the computing device?
Probably not.
Through a conversation with a trusted
reseller, engagement with vendor
specialists, or with careful research, buyers
can, however, identify the perfect device
and achieve large savings in the process.
Gary Price is product and category
manager at Probrand

by Oscar Diamond
Oscar Diamond, of leading market
research company GfK, takes a look
at the IT product market to review last
year’s trends and forecast where things
are likely to go next.
P
roduct news in the UK IT market
during 2014 was dominated by
the dramatic fall in tablet sales.
Despite growth across most other sectors
this drop was so severe the retail market
saw its headline figure decline in value
by 3.8%. Although tablets are set to
continue falling during 2015, GfK expects
technology trends such as mobility and
data growth to have an impact in other
areas.
Tablets
It is fair to say that this market is now
saturated, with most people who want
a tablet owning one. Unfortunately
innovation seems to have dried up, with
most brands only able to offer thinner and
faster versions of their existing tablets. As
a result tablet sales dropped by 13.3% in
volume and 21.8% in value during 2014.
Gfk expects this market to decline further
in 2015 but this is unlikely to be more than
20% in volume.
Desktops
The other surprise story of 2014 was a
growth in desktop computer sales in the
consumer market. Ending seven years
of volume decline, this market grew by
21.7% in volume (27.2% in value). This
remarkable turnaround, for a product
many thought would disappear, has
been driven by two factors; demand for
productivity and gaming. GfK expects
this growth in the consumer market to
continue into 2015. On the B2B side,
Tracking IT product
trends into 2015
however, the market was down 9.2% in
value in 2014 and GfK expects this decline
to carry on at a similar pace as the demand
for mobile computing continues.
Mobile computing
The need for mobility saw the value of the
B2B mobile computing market overtake the
desktop computing market for the first time
in 2014. As workers continue to demand
smaller screen sizes and lighter laptops,
with greater focus on mobility rather than
power, GfK expects further growth in this
market - between 1% and 5% during 2015.
The switch to laptops and agile working by
large employers has also resulted in growth
in the docking station market - 41.5% in
value during 2014. This is another trend
we would expect to continue this year.
Networking and
Storage
With organisations handling an ever
increasing amount of data, sales for both
networking and storage grew significantly
in 2014. The B2B networking sector grew
21.4% in value, while the UK B2B storage
market grew by 18.8%. Storage Area
Networks (SAN), in particular, saw strong
growth - 141.5% in value. GfK expects
networking and storage to continue to
grow by a similar value - although the SAN
growth may remain below 100% this time
around.
Demand for lighter more energy efficient
laptops, also helped SSD sales grow by
88.6% in value in 2014. GfK expects this
trend to continue at a growth rate of
50%+ for 2015.
Saturation,
combined with a
lack of innovation
in the tablet market
means the 2014
declines are set
to continue
High end desktop
sales drove growth in 2014,
catalysed by PC gaming
and media editing. GfK expects
desktops to grow again in 2015,
but the growth will slow down significantly
Peripherals (both gaming and
non-gaming) have benefited
from desktop growth to
enter strong growth
themselves
All quoted growth rates are 2014
vs. 2013 GfK panelmarket
B2B Networking
was in strong growth in 2014
and GfK are expecting this to
continue into 2015.
SSD growth
continues to
dominate the
storage markets, and 2015
will be the year where the
B2B SSD market will be worth
more than the HDD market
Despite a strong start to
2014 driven by the end
of Windows XP support,
desktops ended the
year in decline and look
to be facing further
declines in 2015.
An emphasis on lighter, more
portable laptops drove ASP
up in laptops, even though
volume continued to decline
Jan 14 Dec14

Products
2014 was a surprising year for the IT
industry in many ways, but what will it
mean for 2015? Danny Bradbury asked
vendors their thoughts.
F
igures released by market research
company GfK have revealed
some surprising sales results for
technology products during 2014.
One thing that came out of the research
very clearly was that tablets are in decline.
It’s hard to deny a 21.7% fall in tablet value,
and a 13.3% drop in volume. The decline
is happening across the board in both the
business and the consumer sectors.
Tablets will still be significant in the growth
of mobile computing going forward,
however. “I think longer term, through
to 2016-18, the tablet and smartphone
market will probably be a key growth
area overall,” says James Morrish, chief
technologist at HP UK and Ireland. GfK
figures bear his predictions out; in mid-
January the company said that it expected
smartphones to grow 7% overall in 2015.
It’s also worthwhile noting mobile
computing will also include different form
factors very close to the tablet in size,
such as phablets. GfK is predicting a very
healthy 41% growth in 2015 for the
phablet form factor, which sits in between
the smartphone and the tablet at around
5.5-7 inches.
That’s a healthy figure, but Morrish
believes that yet another product
category could become a rising star.
Hybrids
“At the moment, we have a clear
differentiation in performance trade-offs
between tablets and laptops,” he says.
Consumers have had a choice: browse
with a tablet, or get the heavy work done
with a PC.
Hybrid devices, typified by HP’s own
Revolve, combine the best of both worlds.
They have the portability of a tablet with
the horsepower of a conventional laptop
computer. They also feature keyboard
access, making content creation easier.
“That’s been around for a little while, but in
the past we’ve focused on the CPU under
the keyboard deck, because there have
been limitations in how much horsepower
you can get behind the glass,” Morrish
says. “There are fewer compromises
with next-generation chipsets and
architectures.”
Manufacturers can put processors into
a certain sized chassis if it has sufficient
Tech
products
forecast
by Danny Bradbury
forecastthe movers and shakers

Morrish describes this as immersive
technology, citing it as an example of how
desktop technologies will evolve. In the
consumer space at least, GfK envisages a
buoyant 2015.
Regardless of whether the desktop or
notebook gain traction in the enterprise
space over the next few years, HP believes
that Windows’ stronghold in enterprise
will loosen. A survey of IT decision makers
published in mid-January showed that
42% of respondents still viewed Windows
as critical to their business, but this is a
relatively low number given the iron grip
the operating system has traditionally
enjoyed in the corporate space. More
diverse operating system strategies are
more prevalent in organisations with a
comprehensive bring your own device
(BYOD) policy.
With tablets reaching saturation point,
excitement is likely to shift towards
other mobile products, given that there
is a strong pull to mobility hardware
and software among consumers and
businesses alike. Technology always
inspires innovation, and where one product
area stagnates, another will become the
focal point for new feature developments.
It’s nice, however, to see the desktop PC
still holding its own, nearly 35 years after its
introduction. Clearly, there is at least some
life in the old dog yet.
cooling to keep the processor stable, but
there’s also a power consideration. Mobile
devices always balance power efficiency
and performance. But advances here are
enabling companies to get the CPU behind
the glass.
This is something that Microsoft has done
with the Surface Pro 3, a device that
went through a shaky start but which is
looking promising for 2015. In its Q1 2015
earnings report, Microsoft revealed that
it sold $908m of the devices, outpacing
the previous model twofold, as customers
begin to wake up to this new product
category.
Wearables
You may ask, with tablets sales dropping
to more realistic levels, what alternative
areas of product innovation are emerging?
Look to wearables, argues Joseph Bradley,
vice president of the IoE practice for Cisco
Consulting Services.
He does admit, however, that ‘the adoption
of smartwatches among consumers is still
very low’. With Apple’s smartwatch still not
shipping at the time of writing, the market
for such wearables has still barely even
begun to develop.
Some of the current killer apps for
wearables are as companion devices
that can change the way we interact with
everyday services, from transportation
ticketing through to payment systems. Yet
Bradley believes that there are challenges
that will slow the adoption of these
applications.
“Consumers, especially in western Europe,
are concerned about data and transaction
security and privacy, which will further lead
to the slow adoption of smartwatches as
alternative payment methods,” he says.
GfK’s survey last autumn showed that just
over one in four people in the UK were
interested in wearables as a payment
system.
People are still likely to buy smartwatches,
however - just for the sheer sexiness of the
technology. GfK predicts a 637% increase
in smartwatch sales in the UK in 2015.
Desktop PCs
In the traditional computing world, desktop
PC sales results were more complex than
tablets last year. GfK identified a growth
in desktop computer sales, ending seven
years of volume decline – at least in the
consumer market. Yet in the business
market, sales decreased over 9% in value.
“The price/performance ratio is a key
factor,” says Morrish. “You get pretty
unrivalled bang for your buck in terms
of what you get from a desktop vs a
notebook.”
With that in mind, HP is continuing to drive
forward the desktop PC format. One of
its showcase designs, launched in late
2014, was Sprout. This desktop machine
features a 3D camera and projector, which
replaces the keyboard. It enables users to
scan items directly to the machine, and
manipulate text and images virtually on the
projected flat surface.

such as health, construction and retail.
This ecosystem of accessories allows the
same standard core device to be used in
a range of different use cases offering a
great deal of flexibility.
Accessing data
Morrish advises that companies must
have their eyes on the big picture and
that’s big data. He says they must have
the back ends in place to efficiently collect
and process mobile data through CRM,
ERP and other business systems to
create “actionable intelligence”, to ensure
the right data gets to the right person at
the right time.
He adds: “That’s not always easy, and as
far as we’re concerned it’s not just about
throwing everyone the latest tablet and
telling them to get on with it.”
Indeed, many organisations think
they are well down the path towards
mobility enlightenment. In reality, a large
number may well be in mobile chaos,
experimenting with various approaches
and wrestling with inherent BYOD
challenges and security threats.
For a successfully integrated enterprise-
wide mobile strategy, Morrish says
that some organisations may need
outside consultancy help to make sure
they remain on track. He says: “Some
organisations believe they are more
forward on mobile than they
really are, while others aren’t
sure where they are.”
by Antony Savvas
M
obile working is allowing
business leaders to develop
strategies to improve
competitiveness, increase productivity and
efficiency, and get closer to customers.
Companies have looked to use this
technology to support flexible working,
while at the same time satisfying those
employees demanding to use their own
gadgets for work. But mobile usage is
changing.
As well as using mobile devices to email,
share files and communicate with others,
staff now want access to business
applications like ERP (enterprise resource
planning), CRM (customer relationship
management) and data analytics for
business intelligence.
Gartner analyst Nick Jones says the mobile
‘application era’ ushered in by the iPhone
is now being replaced by the ‘service
and social era’. He says: “The service
and social era will build on the application
era, but it will be characterised by cloud
services and streaming media. Applications
will survive, but often as a component of
a more complex end-to-end experience
involving the cloud.”
Gartner is now advising enterprises to
develop a mobile strategy based on
technology-independent management
goals and styles, rather than detailed
device, platform or application policies.
Flexibility
Companies like HP, for instance, are
adamant that any mobile strategy must
be based on flexible gadget choices to
get each specific job done. That includes
anything from smartphones and tablets to
traditional laptops and hybrid platforms –
those devices that work as either a mobile
clamshell PC with a full keyboard or that
can be converted into a tablet by detaching
the screen.
James Morrish,
chief technologist
at HP printing and
personal systems for
UK and Ireland,
says: “If there is
too much focus on only smartphones and
standalone tablets then some benefits
of mobile strategies may well be missed.
In many cases it is better giving users a
greater variety of devices, as it may be
more productive for them to use a laptop
or a hybrid, rather than a tablet or a
smartphone.”
When it comes to successful mobile
strategies, Morrish says it is all about
having the right apps, data and features
on the right devices. This is something HP
itself is focusing on with one of its products
known as the ElitePad.
Windows 8 ElitePad tablets are being
targeted at specific industries by way of
hardware ‘jackets’ being offered with the
machines, to work in industry verticals
Mobile device
strategies aren’t
just about phones
Antony Savvas is a freelance
James Morrish

Business Transformation
by Rob Bamforth
T
here is no point making changes
just for their own sake, but in
challenging markets and uncertain
economic conditions - where competitive
threats can emerge from anywhere and
established markets can disappear almost
overnight - businesses need to be able
to be flexible and prepared. For many,
this will mean embarking on a significant
transformation as they try to become more
agile, efficient and effective.
The most important drivers behind
the need to transform are customer
experience, according to 55% of UK
businesses surveyed for The Future of
Work research report by Raconteur,
followed by 45% saying innovation and
30% technology.
While the second two might seem to
be heading in a different direction to the
first, they are all closely linked. Advances
in technology have brought mass
connectivity, a diversity of means of access
– mobile devices, tablets – and, heading
into the near future, more ways to collect
information through wearable
technologies and the
Internet of Things. These
are transforming the
lives of consumers and
increasing everybody’s
expectations of how they
interact with each other
as individuals as well as
with organisations. Businesses that fail to
transform their operations to meet these
demands from their customers for a better
experience will fail.
It once seemed that size of organisation
and the legacy of a great brand would
insulate businesses from these types of
changes, but access to communications
anywhere and the instantaneous impact
technology has had on social connections
through Facebook, Twitter and other
social media means that none are safe.
Commercial momentum can slow the
effect, but for example in retail, where
loyalty (or apathy) once retained customers,
even mighty supermarkets are showing
obvious signs of stumbling.
What needs to change?
Those surveyed believe that the top
changes to have the biggest impact on
profitability were, by a long way ahead, the
ability to respond more rapidly to market
opportunities, followed by better use and
integration of available technology and
people. With the same research indicating
that marketing, senior management and
IT are the key departments to be leading
the transformation of an organisation, it is
clear that businesses need to be looking
outwards as well as within; transforming
the customer experience and transforming
the working environment to better serve the
various constituents.
Analyst Rob
Bamforth assesses
how organisations
can better
meet customer
expectations
The business
case for
transformation

Smarter communication
Fundamental to this is communications.
Where once there were narrow and well-
defined routes between customer and
organisation, there is now a multiplicity of
modes of communication and customers
want to be able to use whichever is closest
to hand or preferable at every stage. The
purchasing process is no longer a matter
of ‘bricks or clicks’ (high street or online),
but a complex multi-modal set of stages
involving online, mobile access on devices
of widely varying form factors, in-store,
remote pickup and even the telephone (and
the occasional written communication –
particularly when a person is complaining).
It might have started as simply
‘e-commerce’, but other processes from
obtaining support, dealing with utilities,
healthcare or financial institutions have all
followed a similar path.
Despite this, customers expect the entire
process to run smoothly and do not expect
to have to repeat their words or actions, no
matter who or what within the organisation
they have to communicate with.
This means better internal communication
and collaboration between what were
once separate teams or departments.
This is another area where innovation and
technology can be exploited in a similar
way by the organisation as it has been by
its customers. Employee interactions can
be viewed as a shared social experience
oriented around the customer using
multiple methods of communication
rather than relying on the overly formal
lines of communications oriented around
internal structures. Familiar tools – mobile
phones, tablets – can be employed, even
supporting employees to bring their own
devices (BYOD) to encourage and facilitate
sharing and collaboration.
Smarter information
The next element of the transformation is
information. The growth in data storage
seems inexorable, but although a lot of
data is already being stored, it is not always
the right stuff or in the right place. A greater
understanding of what is really going on
in critical business processes would help.
For example, tracking customers as they
go through a purchasing process, where
were they when they were interrupted or
they decide to stop – and can an appealing
intervention be made to enable them to
continue to the closure of a deal? Do
employees have all the information they
need to complete a task?
Some of this information will already be
there, but legacy departmental structures
and agendas may be keeping valuable
knowledge from finding the right person
to take advantage of it. The days of
companies allowing critical data to be
left languishing in Excel spreadsheets
or scattered across diverse file systems
should be long gone, but many
organisations still have separate silos of
data repositories disconnected from
each other.
Smarter action
This is where most of the much-vaunted
value of ‘big data’ will surface. Not simply
in the volumes of new data being collected,
but in the rapidity that information from
multiple sources can be combined,
analysed and turned into smarter action.
Individuals need to have this data quickly
transformed into valuable knowledge so
that they can be responsive to immediate
customer needs as well as longer term
changing market conditions.
The research indicates that marketing,
senior management and IT have an
opportunity to ensure that these smarter
actions are focussed both externally on
the customer experience and internally
on transforming the working environment
by streamlining and automating existing
business processes.
While technology advances may have
catalysed much of this, the imperative for
business change is a straightforward one
based on competitive pressures and affects
people and the processes they have to
work with. Customer awareness, needs
and - critically - their expectations have
changed, and the organisations that fail
to meet them efficiently and effectively
will lose.
Rob Bamforth is Principal Analyst at Quocirca
Quocirca carries out research and analysis on
behalf of IT decision makers across Europe

paying off?
by Gary Flood
Is the Government’s
ICT REFORM AGENDA
With last year’s National Audit Office
report casting doubt on Cabinet Office
claims of public sector IT savings, Gary
Flood examines what progress has
been made.
“
The history of UK government ICT
projects is littered with budget
overruns, delays and functional
failures.”
It’s highly doubtful any citizen familiar
with seemingly endless headlines of big
government ICT failures over the past 20
years would disagree with the statement
above.
That quote, from 2009, is from the man
who, just a few months later, was put in
pole position to start fixing the problem,
Francis Maude. Then a member of the Tory
opposition, he has since been the Minister
for the Cabinet Office, with a clear mandate
to reform the whole way the public sector
buys and uses technology.
There’s no denying the passion and
commitment of Maude and the team he
has assembled around him, nor the length
of the list of initiatives he has brought
in to do so, starting with his famous
‘moratorium’ on any IT project spend over
£100m. On taking office, he sat down with
the big suppliers and told them their gravy
train days were over.
So coming up to five years on, what has
Maude achieved? Yes, we have cross-
government watchdogs like the Major
Projects Authority, a commitment to a
‘cloud first’ procurement process and
the whole G-Cloud/Digital Marketplace
process set up to offer wider choice to
buyers. There has been a lot of talk about
breaking the ‘oligopoly’ of huge firms
running national IT outsourcing contracts,
by bringing in armies of hungry young
tech SMEs to offer cheaper, innovative
alternatives.
We’ve also heard a lot about open
source, agile development, commodity
purchasing, tighter procurement, making
the government a smarter customer –
even bringing back ICT competence as a
requirement for Whitehall mandarins, which
hasn’t been talked about for a generation.
£14bn saved?
But for all the light and heat – is the nation
any better off financially? When Maude’s
talk of ‘£14bn saved’ was put under the
spotlight by the country’s official spending
monitor, the National Audit Office, savings
do seem to have been won but not a lot
of it was out of curbing those IT “budget
overruns” and “failures”. The auditor
actually said most of the headline numbers
were subject to question, as they are based
on unreliable data.
When it comes to the public sector ICT
reform agenda, former government ICT
insider Chris Haynes, and a former tech
leader for big departments such as DWP,
says: “There’s good strategy but so far very
little delivery against it.”
He explains: “For example, the 25 big
exemplar projects of big transactional
systems haven’t been done. A lot of the
claimed ‘wins’, like being able to renew
your car tax online, were already in place;
those big contracts haven’t really been
affected, many have even been extended,”
he warns.
Progress may have been slow but Haynes,
and many other observers, say we should
not give up. He does add, however, that
there should be greater input from those
implementing policy. “We need a better
way of engaging with public sector
CIOs and a less ‘Stalinist’ attitude all
round,” he thinks.
Gary Flood is a freelance technology journalist

by Antony Savvas
The reinvention of an
‘80s trend in a digital era
W
ith technology trends such as cloud, mobile, big data
and social media continuing to transform the way
businesses operate, companies are having to find
ever more innovative digital solutions to keep pace.
Business leaders looking to transform processes are now
required to create new and advanced applications quickly which
has led to the advent of Agile computer programming and “low-
coding” platforms.
The drive to develop software at speed is not new, however. It
actually has its roots in the 1980s - when there was no internet
and little mobile phone coverage. This early coding revolution
was based around rapid application development, or RAD.
In contrast to the “waterfall” software development model, which
demands rigorous specification at the outset of a project, RAD
allowed an iterative process of rapid prototyping and adjustments
in reaction to knowledge gained as the project progressed.
RAD focused on prototypes
and flexible processes
that would allow
the project to
evolve. With
more and more
applications being
required to drive
business and the
digital economy
Getting
forward, this ability to test and trial software as we go has come
back into sharp focus.
Modern Agile software development is similar to RAD, in that
it also emphasises a flexible approach which can respond
to changes in project requirements. The latest application
development platforms are, however, taking this to the next level.
By replacing code writing with configuration of features to create
models, they are allowing non-technical and IT teams to create
and amend applications quickly.
Application development
These platforms are empowering business leaders, customers,
partners and hobbyists - who can all now build web-based
business solutions without programming skills. Cloud-based
deployments can also enable projects to be initiated quickly, with a
minimal burden on internal IT departments.
The use of development platforms also reduce risk by allowing
organisations to test and improve applications early on.
Organisations can then avoid some of the problems which have
blighted software development historically, and led to project
overruns and increased costs. These issues have resulted in many
high profile public sector projects being axed in the past.
Chris Haynes, former director of the eDelivery Unit at the Cabinet
Office, now of Houghfold Associates, says new approaches to
software are helping overcome these problems, however.
Haynes, also a former senior ICT manager at the Department
for Work and Pensions, said: “We need more innovation. The
downsides of failure in the public sector often seem to outweigh
the rewards of potential success. Civil servants with ideas are seen
as mavericks and rarely have the freedom to try them out due to
perceived cost and risk.
RAD

“But new software approaches enable users to rapidly prototype
applications and experiment without writing code, so reducing fear
of costly failure and potentially unlocking innovation.”
Overcoming obstacles
Research amongst senior central and local government IT
executives has found there are several barriers still blocking
digital innovation. These include a lack of resources (77%), high
costs (74%), long timeframes (85%) and unacceptable risk (89%).
These are common issues also experienced by private sector
organisations.
The research undertaken by Mercato Solutions, provider of
application development platform KnowledgeKube, has found,
however, that there is scope for widespread improvement in public
sector processes. A staggering 96% of those surveyed said more
than a quarter of their processes were inefficient.
Peter Robbins, managing director at Mercato Solutions, claims
application development platforms are now removing traditional
obstacles and allowing digital innovation. He said: “Transformation
needs to focus on the ability to re-engineer and optimise existing
and new processes with greater speed and effectiveness, as
well as sharing applications for common problems. CIOs and
innovation leaders are now looking to disruptive platform-based
technologies that challenge the norm of application development
and deployment.”
The popularity of these platforms was recently confirmed by
industry analyst Forrester. It claimed that faster delivery is the
primary benefit of these ‘low-coding’ platforms, adding that firms
can also ‘respond more quickly to customer feedback after initial
software releases’.
Responding quickly
Forrester said: “Hand-coding is too slow to develop and
deliver many of the applications that companies use to win,
serve and retain customers. Some firms are turning to new,
low-code application platforms that accelerate app delivery by
dramatically reducing the amount of hand-coding required.”
Forrester also claims that many development teams are now
questioning the role Java, .NET, and other coding platforms
should play in their customer-facing systems. It added that
some enterprises may currently cope by outsourcing the
challenge, and others may look to packaged applications or
specialised middleware, but it claims none of these alternatives
address the problem head-on.
The analyst maintains that the overarching requirement for
all software development is that it serves the need of the
organisation. “Business leaders trying to move rapidly on new
ideas to boost revenue and improve competitiveness often get
bogged down by rigid and siloed development approaches.”
Forrester adds: “Low-code platforms allow business leaders
to experiment with new product and service ideas by merging
requirements, design, development and deployment into a
single platform.”
When it comes to meeting the digital demands of modern
business, therefore, it’s now about going back to those RAD
ideals of the 1980s and meeting the needs of the business
through the rapid development of software. And the emerging
category of next generation application development
platforms is helping pave the way.
Antony Savvas is a freelance technology journalist

Supply Chain
T
he fluctuating price of products in
the IT market can be testing for
organisations looking to achieve the
best value on every purchase. One body
looking to get to grips with this volatility
was the Royal Veterinary College - one of
the world’s leading veterinary institutions.
The College, which has more than 2,000
students and over 750 staff, requires a
significant amount of new IT equipment
each year. To ensure it was getting
best value, it adopted a strategy that
encouraged all IT purchases to be made
through the College’s combined Library and
Information Services Division (LISD).
The consequence of this policy, however,
was that it placed a heavy strain on the
department’s seven helpdesk technicians.
They had to spend the equivalent of a full
day each week handling these requests –
time that otherwise would have been spent
dealing with technical support issues.
The LISD also struggled to keep track of
price levels for the vast array of products it
Efﬁcient benchmarking saves
Royal Veterinary College
time and money
was asked to order and whether stock was
even available. This was hampering the
College’s mission to identify fair prices on
all purchases.
“The volume of orders coupled with a
rapidly changing IT marketplace meant
it was a tall order achieving best value
on everything,” said Dan Messum, IT
and development manager at the Royal
Veterinary College.
The College addressed this challenge
by deploying the benchmarking tool
KnowledgeBus. With access to daily
trade guide price and stock levels for
more than 150,000 products, from more
than 2,500 manufacturers, the LISD is
now able to negotiate a fair price with
suppliers and avoid paying excessive
margins above the trade price. This has
enabled the College to save thousands of
pounds on individual purchases.
“We were quoted £14,000 for video
conferencing equipment and when we
benchmarked this we revealed the supplier
had put a 10% mark up on the ‘channel’
price. This insight enabled us to quickly
negotiate the price down by £1600,”
said Dan. “Even where we have good
relationships with suppliers, we are now
able to make further savings by using the
information to inform our discussions.”
A key additional benefit for the College
is that it is allowing helpdesk technicians
to spend more time supporting staff and
students, and less time on procurement.
“We now use an administrator without an
IT background to handle purchasing,” said
Dan. “This has released skilled technicians,
who have significantly more time to spend
on tasks such as installing software, fixing
hardware or handling users email and
software support issues.”
He added: “A more efficient benchmarking
process has freed up around four days
per month for our IT helpdesk which is
now better spent on core projects and
pressing technical issues.”
A more efﬁcient
benchmarking
process has freed
up around four
days per month
Case study

KnowledgeBus IT Edition is a product of Mercato Solutions.
© Copyright Mercato Solutions Limited, All Rights Reserved.
www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk
0121 605 2050
*KnowledgeBus IT Edition survey evaluated over 1,000 organisations with perceived supplier relationships of between cost +3-5%.
81% of organisations could
save money buying IT*
Compare. Negotiate. Save.
CIPS accredited KnowledgeBus enables IT buyers to quickly benchmark purchases
against daily trade guide price and stock levels on over 150,000 products from
more than 2,500 manufacturers.
Many still pay up to 673% margin
Sage UK
Dave Banks, Senior IT
Procurement Coordinator
We managed to reduce our IT
spend by approximately 10%.
*Download the full report at:
www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk
Save up to 24% on ICT budgets
and an hour per order
Identify fair price and spot overcharging
Plot key market trends for more
strategic procurement
Measurable benefits from day one:
@KnowledgeBus
[4401/KB-COMPNEGSAVE]

Supply Chain
by Paul Maher
B
uying an ICT product is not like
buying any other item because its
value is in a constant state of flux.
Compare ICT to stationery, for example.
A pencil bought 12 months ago will most
likely be as good as a pencil bought
today, so the value will not change much.
The same is not true of technology.
Better products are landing on the
market every day. Each one is looking to
outperform and devalue its predecessors.
As a consequence all ICT products are
developed with a limited life expectancy
in mind. Vendors will have an expiry date
when they will cease production and aim
to transition users to newer models.
Getting the right price for a product
requires the buyer to understand that
during that life time the value of the
product will be in a constant state of
decline. There are many reasons why this
happens.
“It may be that the manufacturer knows
a new processor is going into their
machines next year so they won’t want old
models filling up warehouses in the supply
chain. If there is an abundance of stock left
over, and the product is in the later stages
of its life cycle, the vendor will slash the
price to ensure the remainder is sold,” said
Gary Price, product and category manager
at Probrand.
A competitor may also bring out a superior
product which will have an impact on the
vendor’s ability to shift stock. The more
successful the competition the more likely
it is that the manufacturer will cut the price
further.
“The vendor may hope to achieve £1000
for a laptop at the point of release, with
the intention that by the end of the lifecycle
they will be achieving £700,” Price added.
“If the competition is strong, however, that
could drop to £500. They may sell them at
cost or even at a loss just to get rid of them
and make some money back.”
Manufacturers do sometimes build short-
life products that are simply designed to
fill a gap in the market. They will produce
Paul Maher takes
a look at the
ICT market and
asks whether it
is possible to get
the best price
with a fixed price
discount.
Did you really
get the best
deal possible?

small quantities with a shelf-life of no
more than three months. If that is the
case, the amount the price drops will
be minimal. With premium hardware
products, however, the life span can
be 12-18 months and that will lead to a
considerable drop.
“It is important that procurement
professionals and IT departments are
aware of how these prices fall as there
is a tendency for buyers to seek a fixed
price during the course of a product
roll-out in the organisation,” Price adds.
Fixed prices
When buyers push for fixed prices and
they do not factor in price drift they could
end up losing out on potential savings.
They may well be able to achieve a 10%
or 20% discount on the starting price
but at the end of the lifecycle a 50%
reduction could be possible.
Furthermore, if asked for a fixed price at
the start of an agreement, resellers will err
on the side of caution. For example, if a
government agency went to tender with
an order of laptops, the resellers would
need to factor in potential risks that
could be encountered during that period.
They will, therefore, ask the buyer to pay
more than they would at a later date.
Al Nagar, head of benchmarking at
KnowledgeBus, said: “We have in
the past seen how a tsunami in Japan
or floods in Thailand can have an
impact on the price of components and
keep prices high for longer than
expected. These natural disasters may
be unlikely but a reseller can’t take that
chance and will have to negate the risk.”
As a result, it may not be possible to
achieve the lowest cost on products
when prices are fixed.
Nagar added: “Organisations often fail
to get the best price and in some cases
they end up paying resellers huge mark-
ups. We’ve seen organisations paying
margins in excess of 600% for certain
products. This sounds scandalous but it
is not unusual.”
Ensuring the
best price
Buyers can avoid this scenario by talking
to resellers and vendors about their plans
for products and gaining an understanding
of their product roadmap. This will help
identify when a product is likely to be at
its cheapest and at its most expensive. If
an organisation is involved in a large roll
out then it should be doing this anyway,
to ensure that there is enough stock in the
market to fulfil the order.
An IT buyer can also use a price
benchmarking tool to spot price trends,
check market levels and predict the best
time to buy.
The other option for buyers is to fix
the margin not the price. A ‘cost plus’
procurement agreement will ensure that
the margin is the same regardless of what
stage the product is at in its life cycle.
Organisations can then use their price
benchmarking tool to police resellers and
ensure that the correct margin is
applied on all purchases.
Paul Maher is a freelance technology journalist

Supply Chain
by Al Nagar
Do Sweat
the Small Stuff
of the purchase. The same effort does
not, however, go into the one-off or low
volume purchases, which may be distress
items or spontaneous buys. It is on these
items where IT and procurement teams are
wasting money. These items can also make
up a larger than expected percentage of
the budget - in some cases it is as high as
25%.
Unsurprisingly, small purchases are not
considered big enough to worry about
in a large organisation, but unscrutinised
purchases are actually where the prices are
inflated most.
Research carried out across 12 private and
public sector verticals, by KnowledgeBus,
revealed organisations are often paying
prices several times higher than the cost to
the reseller. The study discovered that one
organisation in the NHS had paid a margin
673% above the trade price.
Generally speaking, the high margin
products are smaller items like extension
cables, USB flash drives and SD cards,
which fall below the radar of financial
scrutiny. Suppliers recognise that the cost
of assessing the value of low ticket items
often outweighs the time it takes to analyse
and barter the price down. This simple fact
is exposed and exploited.
Clearly, it’s easy to rationalise the time
spent scrutinising large ticket orders - but
for lower priced items, it doesn’t seem to
make good business sense. When those
high margin purchases are spread out
across a year, however, they soon add up
and form a large portion of budget.
The challenge for buyers is to introduce
a process that enables scrutiny of every
purchase and transparency of supplier
relationships. It is clearly too much effort to
go out to tender or vigorously negotiate on
every purchase - this is where supply chain
benchmarking tools provide a simple,
scalable solution.
Al Nagar is head of benchmarking
for KnowledgeBus
One
organisation
in the NHS
paid a margin
of 673%
Al Nagar considers why ‘every little helps’
is more than a slogan when it comes to
achieving sustained budgetary value.
P
rocurement and IT professionals
alike are under pressure to
become more strategic in their
buying habits. But while benchmarking
often underpins large purchases, when it
comes to small items – often bought in an
ad hoc way – organisations are regularly
overpaying and pouring money down the
drain.
When private or public sector organisations
conduct a large purchase, such as a
multi-site desktop refresh supporting 1,000
users, it will undoubtedly be well planned
and scrutinised. This is not just due to the
size of spend but also because it is likely to
form part of an ongoing strategic IT move.
The greater the spend, the greater the
pressure to validate that ‘value for money’
is being achieved. The procurement or IT
team will commonly achieve this through
tenders, negotiations with preferred
suppliers or through benchmarking.
It is easier to rationalise the proportion of
time spent managing this type of critical
purchase, given the sensitivity and scale

Procurement
Gary Flood asks, what has the Government done to
lower the barrier for smaller tech suppliers?
W
hen it took office in May 2010, the new
Coalition announced its aspiration to push
at least one quarter of all spending with
suppliers to SMEs by the next election. We were
told this move would enable government buyers to
access more innovative and cost-effective offers and
provide greater value to the taxpayer.
By 2013, the figures showed that around 20%
(10.5% directly and 9.4% indirectly) of spending was
indeed going to SMEs compared to 6.5% in 2009/10.
Clearly, progress has been made but there’s no
question that the government still wants to provide
even greater access to the central government ICT
market - as well as to the wider public sector which
includes the NHS, Emergency Services, Education
and so on.
As the UK public sector spends a massive £187bn
annually - of which ICT is a significant chunk - many
small and medium businesses welcome this move.
But as many readers probably know only too well,
in reality, procurement rules and red tape can create
huge costs for those bidding for work.
Making it easier for
government to buy
fromby Gary Flood
We are
changing
the way
government
buys
SMEs
Sarah Hurrell, commercial director
of technology at the Crown
Commercial Service (CCS),
claims, however, that a lot has been
done to address this very issue. She said: “We are changing
the way government buys, not just technology but across all
commonly used goods and services, to make it simpler and
easier for us to buy from both SMEs and larger suppliers alike.”
Hurrell points to a number of practical changes CCS has brought
about to improve engagement with SME suppliers. These range
from the Contracts Finder tool, which helps companies track
work they could apply for, to the Digital Marketplace (formerly
the ‘CloudStore’) which acts as an open catalogue where firms
can display their digital wares.
“We are transforming the technology landscape for SMEs - the
G-Cloud agreement is a great example of the Government’s
Digital by Default strategy in action with over 48% of business
going to SMEs, equating to over £200 million, since it was
launched in 2012, “ she says.
And as for the number of ‘commercial vehicles’ (nee frameworks)
available for customers in the technology space – there are a lot
less of them. “Before the election we will be down to about ten,
and they will also be shorter in duration,” she told us.
The new breed of ‘framework’ will be much more functional
making it easier for both buyer and seller to know what is going
on: “Suppliers won’t have to bid multiple times to be eligible to
compete for the same work anymore,” she promises.
Is the plan to drive cost reduction though – to push the austerity
drive? Hurrell says not. “We are absolutely committed to getting
best value for the taxpayer, but built in to all our planning is the
recognition that suppliers deserve to make a reasonable profit,”
she promises. “One of the ways to do this is by ensuring the
public sector starts only buying what it really needs, without
unnecessary bells and whistles.”
Gary Flood is a freelance technology journalist
Sarah Hurrell

Procurement
Peter Smith asks, is the Government’s
digital strategy delivering its
intended goals?
A
s this current UK government
comes to an end, with the
election in May, the coalition will
be promoting their digital strategy as a
success of the last five years. There is
some justification for the claim; whilst
the move to use more agile and rapid
software development methodologies has
not fully succeeded, the formation of the
Government Digital Service, rationalising
government websites, and moving more
services to digital platforms are all genuine
successes.
In procurement terms, the major initiative
has been the G-Cloud Store, now known
as the Digital Marketplace. Introduced in
2011, it enables public sector buyers to
select digital related services and products
from an online catalogue. That sounds
simple enough, but it has included a
number of genuinely innovative aspects
as far as government procurement is
concerned.
From a supplier point of view, one positive
has been that the Marketplace is renewed
regularly, so there have been frequent
opportunities for companies, including
those smaller, innovative firms that
government wants to encourage, to get
listed in the catalogue. That compares with
old style ‘frameworks’, that were generally
renewed only every three years.
The second benefit to suppliers has
been the qualification processes for the
Marketplace. Suppliers simply need
to reach a threshold, meeting basic
requirements in areas such as financial
stability and data security, and are then
accepted into the catalogue. Now, more
than 1,400 firms are listed, which contrasts
with traditional frameworks which contain a
limited number of participating firms.
However, the G-Cloud evangelists have
conveniently ignored some of the issues
around the initiative.
1. The Marketplace is still, at heart, a
framework. That brings all the known
issues around that procurement
mechanism, in particular the fact that
suppliers do not offer their best prices
when there is no certainty of business
– as in this case.
2. There is clear evidence that some
buyers are using the Marketplace
inappropriately. For instance, the
Marketplace lists ‘day-rate’ fees for
advisory services, which is fine for
Peter Smith is Lead Editor of
Spend Matters UK/ Europe
one-off minor requirements, but is the
wrong mechanism for most consulting
or bespoke software development
projects, where fees should be linked
to outputs and deliverables.
3. Whilst EU procurement regulations
may not be front of mind to many,
they do define how frameworks can
be used. For instance, the need to
run ‘mini-competitions’ to select
suppliers from the firms listed on the
framework. Discussions with various
participants on the buy and sell side
suggests this is not always happening
with the Marketplace – too many
buyers are simply choosing the firm
they want. This is reflected in the fact
that only 400 of the 1400 suppliers
have received any business via the
Marketplace.
The risk here is that the Marketplace
is making it quick and easy for budget
holders to buy what they want from their
favourite suppliers, without going through
usual procurement processes.
Recognising the issues around the
Marketplace, as well as its strengths, is
important if the government is to take the
concept forward more successfully.
by Peter Smith
Assessing the
Digital Marketplace

by Rob White
R
esearchers have found that
almost nine in ten of us will now
use a search engine to look up
information on a product prior to making a
purchase. An office manager, for example,
might compare the price of ink cartridges
online before heading out to the stationery
store to purchase them. Google calls this
action the ‘zero moment of truth’.
This ability for the average consumer to do
a quick price check on a search engine or
price comparison site has undoubtedly had
an impact on the prices resellers are able to
charge for products.
From a procurement perspective, however,
a search engine is still a long way from
being a satisfactory benchmarking tool. Not
least because the first price you see on the
screen is unlikely to be the trade price and
may not actually be achievable.
An achievable price?
It is not unusual to conduct a search and
discover a great price on a product, only to
find that is actually out of stock. A company
does not necessarily need to have an item
in stock to include it in a Google listing. It
can actually be in their best interest to list
out of stock items – these can pull buyers
onto the site in search of one item and
when it is not found, encourage them to
continue their search for the next best
alternative.
Comparing apples
with apples?
Using a search engine as a procurement
tool can also be a hindrance when online
resellers don’t offer a complete description
of the vendor’s products online. By
excluding the vendor’s part code, for
example, you may end up comparing the
prices of two very similar products, under
the guise that they are actually the same.
Resellers also bundle products into
packages which include additional service
charges, making it even harder to compare
prices for individual items.
Too good to be true?
Finally, it is an unfortunate fact that some
things are too good to be true. And, to
get the level of trust you desire it may be
necessary to pay a premium.
Can you
really
benchmark
with
Google?
If the price is way below what you would
expect and you don’t trust the online
reseller, you need to start asking questions.
Is it an original product or has it been
reconditioned? Could it be counterfeit? Has
it been shipped in from outside the EU?
If it has come from Asia, for example, you
may not be able to register the warranty
and, if there is a problem, you may have
to send it back to Asia to get it fixed. If the
product does turns out to faulty, you also
need to know the returns policy.
If the reseller doesn’t offer credit and you
pay up-front, what assurance do you have
that the product will even arrive or that the
delivery is not indefinitely delayed as it is
out of stock?
The internet is undoubtedly a great source
of price and product information, but for
true benchmarking, procurement experts
need a supply chain benchmarking tool.
These not only save a huge amount of time
and energy searching online, but they
also deliver trustworthy results that
professionals can rely upon.
Rob White from KnowledgeBus
is a Benchmarking expert

Driving Innovation
Outsourcing needn’t be just about cost
reduction, writes Danny Bradbury.
T
hanks to the cloud, outsourcing is
on the rise – but are we doing it for
the right reasons?
In its 2014 Global Outsourcing and
Insourcing Survey, Accenture found that
69% of respondents were more likely to
outsource work thanks to the evolution
of cloud computing. The maturation
of technologies such as hosted virtual
desktops have also had an impact, with
one in six decision makers pointing to that
as a key enabler for outsourcing.
Technology developments will lead to
many outsourcing contracts that prioritise
cost savings as a key benefit. But experts
believe that outsourcing customers have
more to gain. In particular, some believe
that it is possible to improve processes
substantially by working with the
outsourcing provider on innovations.
These conversations can emerge in
surprising ways, says Charles Duffett, a
CIO advisor to the Canadian Advanced
Technology Alliance (CATA), who has
consulted on many outsourcing contracts.
by Danny Bradbury
Innovation through
Duffett recalls a hospital that had a
contract with an outsourcing company. It
complained that it was spending too much
time and money dealing with patients in the
emergency room. A patient complaining of
chest pain might take hours – at high cost
– to work their way through to a doctor and
be sent for tests, only to find that it was a
reaction to rich food.
“The company that was in charge of the
outsourcing developed a handheld blood
analyser,” he recalls. “The first thing that
they do is jab you with a pin, and stuff it in
the machine. If it says that your blood is
perfect, then the doctor asks what you had
for lunch and gives you a seltzer. You avoid
the lineup, and the hospital saves
$5,000 - $10,000.”
The kinds of conversations leading to
innovations like that require an intimate
relationship between the outsourcing
customer and the client, says Bala
Pandalangat, president and CEO of
the Centre for Outsourcing Reach and
Education (CORE).
“Innovation works in the second wave
or cycle of outsourcing,” he says. “The
Innovation
works in the
second wave
or cycle of
outsourcing
first wave is where you ask ‘did I get my
efficiencies?’. The second situation is when
you see the innovative suggestions coming
through.”
This means that customers must take the
time and effort to focus on relationships
with outsourcing companies, and must
provide space in the contract for those
innovation efforts to develop.
Is it possible to innovate in all kinds
of outsourced business processes?
Pandalangat distinguishes between two
types. ‘Horizontal’ processes like email,
are mature, commodity infrastructural
processes that can be difficult to add
innovative value to. Conversely, vertical
processes (like CRM, say, or supply chain
management) are areas where competent
outsourcers can make a real difference by
innovating, he suggests.
As more technologies hit the mainstream,
Deloitte sees opportunities for further
innovation in outsourcing contracts. Big
data analytics and mobility in particular
carry a lot of potential, it said in its report.
An outsourcer with expertise in this area,
and with domain knowledge in specific
vertical processes, could generate new
insights and facilitate new ways of working.
That could translate into benefits for
outsourcing customers that not only slash
the bottom line, but increase the
profit ceiling, too.
outsourcing

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development teams and when
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on the things we really
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Driving Innovation
With modern application development platforms allowing
companies to deploy bespoke software quickly and easily,
Paul Maher examines how businesses can ensure smooth
implementation within the organisation.
T
he world has become an unforgiving place for digital
laggards.
Customers and employees are demanding new methods
of interaction, and businesses have become impatient for the
business applications which can fulfil these needs. The ubiquitous
adoption of mobile devices among workers and consumers has
also created a need for quick and easy access to these ‘apps’
from anywhere.
Organisations are all too aware that failure to take the digital
initiative, and meet this challenge, could easily see nimble
competitors transform faster and take advantage of market
opportunities more rapidly.
As a result, nearly every department of business now expects
increasingly bespoke digital solutions. Unfortunately, a global
shortage of developers has created an IT skills gap which has
strained internal capabilities.
Organisations are starting to overcome these issues by acquiring
the appropriate applications through the cloud using Software-
as-a-Service (SaaS) or application Platform-as-a-Service (aPaaS)
solutions. These ‘disruptive’ technologies, that challenge the
development norm, are not just addressing the IT skills gap,
they are proving strategic solutions which can have a significant
impact on organisations.
By enabling ‘automation simplicity’, they are allowing pioneering
CIOs to lead the way by introducing more efficient business
processes – helping drive the next wave of innovation delivering
competitive advantage, cost savings and compliance.
Low or no code platforms
The emergence of low code, and no code, application platforms
are also allowing business leaders to cut cost, time and risk - by
creating the solutions themselves, without the need for hand
written code.
With these self-service platforms doing all the heavy lifting,
businesses can create advanced applications that automate an
endless list of time consuming processes. They can, for example,
create software to replace burdensome internal paper-based
systems for such things as expenses, overtime or absences.
They can also integrate with, and extend, back-office systems to
produce personalised customer facing applications like intelligent
calculators and service configurators. As these customer facing
solutions can bridge the gap between ERP, CRM or database
systems, they are often referred to as ‘systems of engagement’.
Further examples of automation, include decision support or pre-
sales apps that enable agents to make better sales decisions and
improve outcomes.
by Paul Maher

meet resistance from IT if the use of an application development
platform is perceived as a threat to their status within an
organisation. But in reality these platforms give IT a prominent
role in enabling business transformation within an organisation.
“Furthermore, dedicated customer App stores can support rapid
distribution of solutions. That means business and IT teams can
gain revenues and return on investment by driving adoption and
roll-out of applications across multiple locations, departments
and geographies. This provides incentive that dissolves some of
the stereotypical barriers many believe can arise.”
Getting internal buy-in
The IT department is not the only potential barrier to an executive
looking to quickly develop a killer application, however.
By automating a business process, business leaders may be
aiming to free up their staff to concentrate on more meaningful
tasks which can move the business forward. If this is not
communicated properly, however, employees could feel that their
jobs are being replaced or trivialised.
As these are the people with the best understanding of the
role being automated, they can play an important role in the
development process. Involving them in the project is, therefore,
essential to overcoming resistance to change, which could be to
the detriment of the project.
Robbins continues: “Businesses should emphasise that by
removing mundane tasks, staff will have more time to focus on
activities that will help the company grow. They will, therefore,
become more valuable to the organisation.
“They should also communicate that when basic processes are
automated people will be able to concentrate on what most
matters to them. A salesperson can, for example, spend more
time on higher value orders that are better qualified, if early stage
enquiries can be handled by an application.”
Ensuring that a workforce is fully engaged and motivated by its
work environment will help drive creativity and innovation within
the organisation. This support will speed up the pace of change,
and ultimately, help the business realise the benefits of efficiency,
productivity and profit sooner.
Paul Maher is a freelance technology journalist
Steve Vallis, business systems
consultant at Mercato Solutions,
said: “On average these sophisticated
applications, developed on platforms like
KnowledgeKube, are being created over
70% quicker and 80% cheaper than when
using traditional bespoke software development approaches.
“With the associated costs and risk reduced, business leaders
are able to quickly test and adjust live projects on-the-fly without
the fear of failure, which supports a self-perpetuating innovation
ethos and enables projects to be realised more efficiently. That
means business objectives are met faster.”
Business executives, who are no longer waiting on hand-written
code to produce their own applications, have been dubbed
‘citizen developers’ by analysts. Their emergence has had the
side-effect of supporting IT, freeing them up to focus on more
strategic tasks.
Ensuring smooth implementation
This does not mean, however, that business leaders should
attempt to bypass the IT department when developing new
applications - far from it. There are still very good reasons why
IT should still be involved in any project of this nature from the
outset.
Firstly, the IT department will still be needed to ensure the smooth
implementation of any new application. If the new application
needs to access legacy systems or Active Directory, for example,
then IT will be pivotal in enabling this. Attempting to access
company data without IT’s assistance would be problematic and
compromise information governance compliance. Therefore,
it is critical to collaborate with IT teams to maximise return
from existing systems, services and data investments without
hindrance.
Secondly, it is generally a good idea to include IT for the
consultancy and oversight they can offer to various departments
in the organisations looking to develop similar applications. If a
company can build three versions of the same application rather
than three separate applications, it will lead to further cost and
time saving.
Peter Robbins, managing director, Mercato Solutions, said:
“Business leaders looking to push forward an application could
Steve Vallis

Security
by Antony Savvas
Handling
BYOD
W
orkers want to use their
own laptops, tablets and
smartphones for work and
many companies are now letting them do
just that to aid flexible working and increase
productivity. But what are the pitfalls and
how can they be overcome?
According to industry analyst
TechMarketView, the bring your own
device (BYOD) movement is seeing a rapid
increase in adoption by both employers
and staff, with 9.5 million UK employees
expected to take advantage by 2016.
And analyst Gartner reckons that 90% of
organisations will support some type of
BYOD by 2017. Indeed, Gartner predicts
that by 2018, there will be twice as many
employee-owned devices used for work
than enterprise-owned devices.
There are, however, data security concerns
as a result of BYOD. With the Information
Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance
clarifying that companies are accountable
for the loss of data by their employees -
irrespective of whether it was on a personal
or work device. And the ICO can fine firms
up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the
Data Protection Act.
Key to a successful BYOD strategy is a
good mobile device management (MDM)
solution and there are plenty in the market
to choose from. Essential features in any
MDM system include allowing corporate
administrators to remotely configure
corporate email and retain control of stored
attachments and mail, where necessary.
MDM
Remote configuration means
administrators being able to set up email
accounts on multiple devices without
individual users having to come into the
office. This system needs to be able to
remotely delete all corporate emails, as
well as the attachments that are stored on
the device, when an employee leaves the
company.
The MDM also has to ensure all devices
adhere to company security policies.
Enforcing corporate password policies and
pushing these out to all devices on the
network should be simple. For example,
admin managers should be able to set
the minimum password length, a time
lapse before the device auto-locks and
a maximum number of failed password
attempts before the smartphone or tablet
wipes its own data, if necessary.
In addition, an MDM should have the
ability to permanently lock a device
remotely and restore devices back to their
factory setting in response to data security
lapses. If the gadget is not connected to
the internet, the system should also be
able to send an SMS to the device to
ensure it locks or wipes itself clean.
When deploying a MDM to securely
manage employee-owned devices,
however, Mark Lomas, IT consultant
at Icomm Technologies, claims it
is best practice to get ‘buy in’ from
staff.
“As you can lock down devices and wipe
corporate data from the device using
MDM, you have to negotiate with your
users. You have to say to them ‘if you
want to use your device for work, there
are conditions’ – it usually goes down
well if you are open about what
you can do with MDM,” he said.

Security
by Danny Bradbury
You’ve been hacked, and your data has
been stolen. Danny Bradbury asks, what
happens next?
O
f all the telephone calls that an
IT director can receive, there is
perhaps one that can chill them
to the bone: the security breach call. An IT
department may have taken all reasonable
steps to ensure that they are not hacked,
and yet wily attackers may still get through.
If they do, then what options are open to
senior managers? How can they deal with
the potential fallout?
One of the biggest problems for hacked
companies is that attack patterns have
shifted. In the old days, hacks were
highly visible. Website defacements were
designed to be publicly damaging, for
example. As criminals have grown more
sophisticated and state-sponsored attacks
have increased, the likely motives and
methods have changed.
Today, advanced persistent threats are
the norm. According to security company
Mandiant, the median number of days for
hackers to remain undetected on a network
is 243 days. That’s a lot of time to pilfer
data.
Malware that doesn’t want to be detected
generally won’t be seen directly. Instead,
says Alexandros Papadopoulos, incident
after
the
response consultant at Dell SecureWorks,
smart companies will keep an eye open for
its effects.
“Commodity attacks will be identified
by your staff. Your IT helpdesk will get
complaints that computers are doing
strange things,” he says. “In financial
malware scenarios, your staff may notice
money missing from their accounts or
strange charges on their credit cards.”
Companies are also advised to look for
signs, such as unusual network traffic
and unusual systems access patterns.
Savvy companies will use experienced
investigators to analyse their logs for signs
of malicious activity, and log analysis tools
like Splunk can help here by providing a
business intelligence-style layer on top of
otherwise unfathomable system logs.
Have a plan
One of the worst things that can happen
to a company that has already been
compromised is to be caught on the
back foot, warns Steve Durbin, managing
director of the Information Security Forum
in the UK.
“The best way to mitigate the effects of
a cyberattack after it has happened is
to have a detailed and well-rehearsed
response plan that you can immediately
kick into action,” he says.
hack

The playbook should have several things
in it, beginning with information about who
to call. “Very few organisations have the
necessary in-house forensics capability to
dig into how an attack happened and to
plan for its future prevention,” Durbin points
out.
Specialists will extend beyond forensic
security analysts and infrastructure
managers into other areas. Legal and
compliance should be involved, as
should media and communications staff.
Technology staff who analyse the data
that has been lost will be able to inform
legal personnel, who can in turn work out
whether the lost data requires customer
notification. Then, communications staff will
have to handle that.
All of these staff should be trained in how
best to deal with the fallout. “Some of the
worst responses have included a lack of
information, denial of the scope of the
problem, and in the worst cases, use of
legal counsel to try and prevent people
talking about the attack,” he warns.
A mature plan will break down into at least
three main parts: containment, mitigation,
and cleanup, says Papadopoulos.
Containment
Containment involves establishing the
boundaries of the attack and ensuring
that it goes no further; a kind of digital
sandbagging to prevent further damage.
This is the first action that the response
team should take after honing in on the
attacker, because it is impossible to
mitigate what cannot be contained.
Containment can be a difficult task,
explains Rolf von Roessing, international
vice president of governance and IT
security non-profit ISACA. Because
attackers spread by stealth, it can be
difficult to see how far they got in their
attack.
“You might possibly enlist the response
teams for the vendors. The typical
candidates are antivirus companies or
ethical hackers. You can bring them in and
ask if they’re finding any patterns that are
interesting in terms of who they are and
what they’re after.”
Cleaning up
After the containment comes the mitigation,
says Mark Allbutt, technical manager at
Icomm Technologies. By this stage,
the technical side of the security response
team should have figured out what let the
attackers in. Completely eradicating the
malware and fixing the compromised user
accounts as a crucial step.
“Was it a misconfigured web server?
Unpatched Windows workstations? Overly
permissive web proxy settings?” he asks.
“Close the doors to new attacks, unless
you want to find yourself in an endless loop
of cleanup-reinfection.”
Close on the heels of mitigation should be
remediation and cleanup. Having carefully
extradited the attackers from corporate
systems and surveyed the extent of the
damage, an organisation must now fix as
much of that damage as possible.
“This involves reinstalling compromised
systems from known, good media and
potentially restoring data from backup,”
says Allbutt. “You do have excellent
backups, don’t you?”
This remediation process also involves
reconfiguring network and server software,
and then monitoring its operation for a
period of time to ensure that everything is
behaving normally.
Learning from
the crisis
To truly close the circle, organisations
should learn as much as possible from the
attack, argues Durbin. This means a post-
mortem, the results of which should be fed
back into a company security policy.
Understanding the weak spots that the
attack exploited is important here, Durbin
argues. “Oftentimes it is the human element
that is the weakest link, so does your
training and awareness address this?” he
asks. “Did a failure to patch your systems
result in a vulnerability?”
Use this intelligence in a business impact
assessment, so that senior managers
can decide on strategic measures to help
prevent further attacks. A risk analysis may
show that it’s worth investing in more staff
security training, for example, or a better
change management process.
No one likes facing adversity, but one true
test of an IT director’s character lies in how
they deal with it. When hackers strike, the
truly savvy IT decision maker will have the
tools and contacts in place to get the
job done.

Security
Security reviewed in
numbers and words:
The increase in massive DDoS
incidents during 2014
- Arbor Networks
100%
The percentage of incidents
the UK cyber response team,
CERT-UK, attributes to malware
20%
Manufacturers that have suffered a loss
of intellectual property (IP) as a result of
cybercrime - Kaspersky
25%
IT professionals who believe targeted
attacks are a primary concern
- McAfee
74%
Small businesses that suffered a security
breach in the past year - UK Government60%
Large organisations that suffered a security
breach in the past year - UK Government81%
The cost of cybercrime to the global economy each year
- Centre for Strategic and International Studies
£342 billion
Security leaders who believe
they are being outgunned in
the ‘cyber war’ - IBM
6 in 10
“The onus is on businesses
to wake up and take
responsibility if they want
to continue to be profitable
and protect their brand
reputations.”
- Maureen Sumner Smith, UK managing
director at British Standards Institution
“The cost of cybercrime can be a barrier for growth and
in the worst cases, can put a firm out of business.”
- Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
“Entry barriers into cybercrime are being lowered, allowing those lacking
technical expertise - including traditional organised crime groups - to
venture into cybercrime by purchasing the skills and tools they lack.”
- Europol
“Cybercriminals will continue to act more like
nation-state cyber espionage actors, focusing
on monitoring systems and gathering high-value
intelligence on individuals, intellectual property,
and operational intelligence.”
- McAfee

Infrastructure
an end, there was a sales kick generated
across the PC industry.
Michael Tweddle, Dell’s executive director
of Windows management, says: “We see
it as a driver leading to broader projects,
as there is a lot of Microsoft technology
that organisations want to move to, but
they need to clean up their underlying
infrastructure to properly do that.”
Companies upgrading have the option
of migrating to either Windows Server
2008 or Windows Server 2012, however,
most are expected to jump straight to the
latest version. Windows Server 2012 is
also offering organisations better links to
cloud services, like Microsoft Azure and
the Office 365 productivity suite. Overall,
when compared to Windows Server 2003,
Windows Server 2012 has improved
storage, networking, virtualisation, access
and security features.
One way or another though, organisations
will have to make a decision soon as to
what is to be done with Windows
Server 2003.
by Antony Savvas
M
icrosoft intends to end support
for Windows Server 2003 this
July, so how should the many
companies still using the platform handle
the situation?
No support means Microsoft will no longer
send patches to fix vulnerabilities and
leave machines still using the operating
system open to attackers. According to
industry analyst Forrester, however, eight
million servers across organisations are still
using Windows Server 2003 - while Dell
estimates the figure could be up to
12 million.
Further research by Spiceworks has found
that 68% of companies in the EMEA
region are running at least one instance
of Windows Server 2003. The IT service
management organisation has drawn these
figures from its community of over 6 million
IT pros worldwide. It found usage is still
widespread across many sectors – 74%
of manufacturers and 73% of government
bodies, to name just a couple.
Mark Lomas, technical consultant at
Icomm Technologies, says the
readiness of companies to cope with the
end of support is mixed: “While some
organisations upgraded last year, some
companies
End of the line for
Windows Server 2003:
problem or
opportunity?
were aiming to upgrade and missed their
deadline, while others made other moves
to protect themselves.”
Apart from the cost of upgrading, another
challenge is supporting the applications
that are currently running on Server 2003.
Windows 2003 is a 32-bit OS, which
means that any applications that need to
be migrated must be checked to see if they
can run in the 64-bit environment of newer
versions of Windows Server.
Lomas likens the end of support for Server
2003 to the end of support for Windows
XP in some ways, but potentially more
damaging. He says: “With Server 2003
the threat is more serious, as a threat to
a server potentially has more impact on
different areas of the business.”
The opportunity
Some organisations are seeing the
necessity of an upgrade as good news,
however, as it is providing an opportunity
to modernise their overall architecture. That
is the view from major IT suppliers like Dell
and Intel.
Indeed, as the industry saw when support
for the Windows XP desktop OS came to

“Through a mixture of cloud services
and in house equipment that is right
for their organisation, a Web-scale
approach can turn IT into a tangible
competitive advantage for smaller
companies in the way it has for
internet giants.”
- Cameron Haight, research vice president at Gartner
IT managers expected to
deliver storage that can
manage huge data growth
- Tarmin
IT professionals which believe
storage will be the main reason for
data centre expansion
- Forrester
Organisations planning data
centre expansion over the next
four years
- Forrester
Infrastructure reviewed
in numbers and words:
European organisations which have deployed a
virtualisation solution - Spiceworks
Businesses that have difficulty managing security
solutions in virtual environments - Kaspersky
Enterprises which will specify Wi-Fi as the
default connection for non-mobile devices by
2018 - Gartner
“Cloud-based storage has been a catalyst for major change in the backup and
recovery arena. It also provides several benefits including scalability, flexibility,
accessibility, monitoring ease, and affordable pricing.”
- Amrita Choudhury, Ovum’s analyst for infrastructure solutions.
“With the increasing
adoption of virtualised
computing infrastructure,
enterprises are finding it
easier to manage their
work. They are able to
run multiple servers on
the same equipment,
which reduces the
demand for additional
servers,”
- Faisal Ghaus, vice
president of TechNavio
92% 56% 66%
79%
41%
40%
2/3
Fraction of
Western European
SMBs using
cloud storage for
disaster recovery
- IDC
Fraction of data
centre computing
carried out in the
cloud by 2025
- Emerson
Annual global cost of enterprise downtime
and data loss incidents - Vanson Bourne
£1.7 trillion

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