Intelligent Things | Probrand Magazine by Probrand

Issue 2

INTELLIGENT

THINGS What will future technology products look like? PAGE 6

INNOVATION THROUGH OUTSOURCING

INTRODUCING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Danny Bradbury Page 30

Paul Maher Page 32

CCS TALKS TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS Gary Flood Page 27

OUR INNOVATION OUR COMMITMENT OUR INTEGRITY

THE VALUE IN EVERYTHING WE DO.

YOUR TECHNOLOGY PARTNER Probrand Group consists of three award-winning businesses specialising in IT Products, IT Services and Software. Whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking to save time and money buying IT products, get more from your IT with services or transform the way you work with innovative applications, we have a specialist dedicated to meeting your needs. Let us help you thrive with relevant technology.

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@Probrand Outstanding Integrator of the Year

Reg No. 16

Welcome Peter Robbins Managing Director, Probrand Group

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).

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.

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

Peter Robbins Managing Director, Probrand Group

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.

Contents News 05

Technology research in brief

Products

Driving Innovation 30

Innovation through outsourcing

Introducing digital

The future of technology

Device rethink

IT Product trends for 2015

Security

Tech products forecast

Handling BYOD

Mobile device strategies aren’t

You’ve been hacked -

transformation

what now?

just about phones

Business Transformation 16 18

numbers and words

Infrastructure

transformation

40 41 42

Changing the infrastructure landscape

Did you really get the best

deal possible?

Probrand Group

Do sweat the small stuff

Procurement 27

The benefits of private cloud storage

Veterinary College 24

Infrastructure reviewed in numbers and words

Getting RAD!

Case Study: Royal

End of the line for Windows Server 2003

Is the Government’s ICT reform

Supply Chain 22

Security reviewed in

The business case for

agenda paying off? 20

To refresh or not to refresh

48 What we offer

Making it easier for government to buy from SMEs

28 29

Assessing the digital marketplace

Can you really benchmark

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with Google?

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.

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News

Technology research in brief Flexible working could help UK save £11.5bn

Cloud computing adoption to double by 2020

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 number of small businesses fully adopting cloud computing will double by 2020, a study by Emergent Research has claimed.

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.”

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.

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).”

Wi-Fi to be default connection for all devices

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.

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.

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Products

Intelligent things the future

of technology

by Danny Bradbury

The future is coming, but what is it going to look like? Danny Bradbury spoke to two market leaders to find out.

Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and software APIs, developed both internally and with third party vendors.

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.

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.

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

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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

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.

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.

These devices will transform the way that we interact with everyday objects, experts His local pub complains to him that it can’t suggest. Imagine a car not as a single, easily predict which days are going to be self-contained entity, but as a collection of busy or quiet. This leaves the manager services, connected to a universe of others. guessing how many staff to put on that “We could create incentives for people day, which in turn affects the pub’s ability on a long journey,” he says. “Their vehicle to make revenue. may know that they’re 20 miles away from “Cloud computing will be able to take a petrol station, and that the level of fuel lots of data that’s publicly available, such they have in their vehicle won’t take them as traffic and weather information, and much past that. You could send them an combine that with their existing revenue event-driven alert that provides an offer for data,” he predicts. “It may find out that money-off fuel if you stop at a fuel station in if it’s May and between 20-25 degrees, the next city.”

Continued

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Products

Continued

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

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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 finegrained, 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

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Products

Device rethink 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.

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

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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 oneupmanship, 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.

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.

For example, when vendors are trying to shift stock they may be willing to offer a healthy discount on certain products. A Gary Price is product and category buyer could get the resellers to agree to sell manager at Probrand

Tracking IT product trends into 2015 by Oscar Diamond

Oscar Diamond, of leading market research company GfK, takes a look at the IT product market to review last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trends and forecast where things are likely to go next.

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,

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.

All quoted growth rates are 2014 vs. 2013 GfK panelmarket 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 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. Jan 14 An emphasis on lighter, more portable laptops drove ASP up in laptops, even though volume continued to decline

Dec14

Saturation, combined with a lack of innovation in the tablet market means the 2014 declines are set to continue

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

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Products

Tech products forecast the movers and shakers by Danny Bradbury

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.

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 healthy 41% growth in 2015 for the business and the consumer sectors. phablet form factor, which sits in between Tablets will still be significant in the growth the smartphone and the tablet at around of mobile computing going forward, 5.5-7 inches. however. “I think longer term, through That’s a healthy figure, but Morrish to 2016-18, the tablet and smartphone believes that yet another product market will probably be a key growth category could become a rising star. area overall,” says James Morrish, chief technologist at HP UK and Ireland. GfK figures bear his predictions out; in midJanuary the company said that it expected “At the moment, we have a clear smartphones to grow 7% overall in 2015. differentiation in performance trade-offs

Hybrids

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

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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

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.

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.

Danny Bradbury is a freelance technology journalist

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Mobile device strategies aren’t just about phones Flexibility by Antony Savvas

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.

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, James Morrish 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

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 enterprisewide 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.” Antony Savvas is a freelance technology journalist

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Business Transformation

The business case for

transformation T by Rob Bamforth

Analyst Rob Bamforth assesses how organisations can better meet customer expectations

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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 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; mobile devices, tablets â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 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 everybodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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.

Smarter communication Fundamental to this is communications. Where once there were narrow and welldefined 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

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Business Transformation

Is the Government’s

ICT REFORM AGENDA paying off?

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.”

by Gary Flood

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 crossgovernment 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.

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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

Business Transformation

Getting RAD The reinvention of an ‘80s trend in a digital era

by Antony Savvas

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 “lowcoding” 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

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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.

“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

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Supply Chain

Efﬁcient benchmarking saves Royal Veterinary College time and money Case study

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

A more efﬁcient benchmarking process has freed up around four days per month

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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.”

www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk

@KnowledgeBus

0121 605 2050

81% of organisations could save money buying IT* Many still pay up to 673% margin

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. Measurable benefits from day one: 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

We managed to reduce our IT spend by approximately 10%. Sage UK Dave Banks, Senior IT Procurement Coordinator

*Download the full report at: www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk

*KnowledgeBus IT Edition survey evaluated over 1,000 organisations with perceived supplier relationships of between cost +3-5%. [4401/KB-COMPNEGSAVE]

Supply Chain

Did you really get the best deal possible? by Paul Maher

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.

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

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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 shortlife products that are simply designed to fill a gap in the market. They will produce

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 markups. 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

Probrand Group Magazine

Supply Chain

by Al Nagar

One organisation in the NHS paid a margin of 673%

Do Sweat the Small Stuff Al Nagar considers why ‘every little helps’ is more than a slogan when it comes to achieving sustained budgetary value.

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

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

Probrand Group Magazine

Procurement

by Gary Flood

Making it easier for government to buy from

SMEs

Gary Flood asks, what has the Government done to lower the barrier for smaller tech suppliers?

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.

We are changing the way government buys

Sarah Hurrell, commercial director of technology at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), Sarah Hurrell 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

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Procurement

Assessing the

Digital Marketplace by Peter Smith

Peter Smith asks, is the Government’s digital strategy delivering its intended goals?

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. 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

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. Peter Smith is Lead Editor of Spend Matters UK/ Europe

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Can you really benchmark with Google? by Rob White

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.

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.

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?

Comparing apples with apples?

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.

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 From a procurement perspective, however, example, you may end up comparing the a search engine is still a long way from prices of two very similar products, under being a satisfactory benchmarking tool. Not the guise that they are actually the same. least because the first price you see on the Resellers also bundle products into screen is unlikely to be the trade price and packages which include additional service may not actually be achievable. charges, making it even harder to compare prices for individual items.

An achievable price?

Too good to be true?

It is not unusual to conduct a search and discover a great price on a product, only to Finally, it is an unfortunate fact that some find that is actually out of stock. A company things are too good to be true. And, to does not necessarily need to have an item get the level of trust you desire it may be in stock to include it in a Google listing. It necessary to pay a premium.

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

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Driving Innovation

Innovation through

outsourcing

Innovation works in the second wave or cycle of outsourcing

by Danny Bradbury

Outsourcing needn’t be just about cost reduction, writes Danny Bradbury.

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.

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.

first wave is where you ask ‘did I get my efficiencies?’. The second situation is when you see the innovative suggestions coming through.”

“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.”

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.

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

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.

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. Danny Bradbury is a freelance technology journalist

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Driving Innovation

by Paul Maher

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.

he world has become an unforgiving place for digital laggards.

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.

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.

Low or no code platforms

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.

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’.

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 Softwareas-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, 32

they are proving strategic solutions which can have a significant impact on organisations.

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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.

Further examples of automation, include decision support or presales apps that enable agents to make better sales decisions and improve outcomes.

Steve Vallis, business systems consultant at Mercato Solutions, said: “On average these sophisticated applications, developed on platforms like KnowledgeKube, are being created over Steve Vallis 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.

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.

Ensuring smooth implementation

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

“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

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Security

Handling BYOD by Antony Savvas

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.

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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. Antony Savvas is a freelance technology journalist

Security

after the

hack

by Danny Bradbury

You’ve been hacked, and your data has been stolen. Danny Bradbury asks, what happens next?

response consultant at Dell SecureWorks, smart companies will keep an eye open for its effects.

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?

“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.”

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Cleaning up

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 postmortem, the results of which should be fed back into a company security policy.

After the containment comes the mitigation, Understanding the weak spots that the says Mark Allbutt, technical manager at attack exploited is important here, Durbin Icomm Technologies. By this stage, argues. “Oftentimes it is the human element the technical side of the security response that is the weakest link, so does your team should have figured out what let the training and awareness address this?” he attackers in. Completely eradicating the asks. “Did a failure to patch your systems malware and fixing the compromised user result in a vulnerability?” 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

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. Danny Bradbury is a freelance technology journalist

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Security

Security reviewed in numbers and words:

100%

74%

25%

The increase in massive DDoS incidents during 2014 - Arbor Networks

IT professionals who believe targeted attacks are a primary concern - McAfee

The percentage of incidents the UK cyber response team, CERT-UK, attributes to malware

“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

“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

£342 billion

6 in 10 Security leaders who believe they are being outgunned in the ‘cyber war’ - IBM

The cost of cybercrime to the global economy each year - Centre for Strategic and International Studies

“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

“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 38

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81%

Large organisations that suffered a security breach in the past year - UK Government

60%

Small businesses that suffered a security breach in the past year - UK Government

20%

Manufacturers that have suffered a loss of intellectual property (IP) as a result of cybercrime - Kaspersky

Infrastructure

End of the line for Windows Server 2003: problem or opportunity? by Antony Savvas

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

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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

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.

Antony Savvas is a freelance technology journalist

Infrastructure reviewed in numbers and words:

92%

Organisations planning data centre expansion over the next four years - Forrester

66%

56%

IT professionals which believe storage will be the main reason for data centre expansion - Forrester

IT managers expected to deliver storage that can manage huge data growth - Tarmin

“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.

“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

£1.7 trillion

Annual global cost of enterprise downtime and data loss incidents - Vanson Bourne

79% 40% 41%

European organisations which have deployed a virtualisation solution - Spiceworks

Enterprises which will specify Wi-Fi as the default connection for non-mobile devices by 2018 - Gartner

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

“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

Businesses that have difficulty managing security solutions in virtual environments - Kaspersky Probrand Group Magazine

Infrastructure

The beneﬁts of private cloud storage by Mark Lomas

rivate cloud storage can offer many of the benefits of the public cloud on-premise, writes Mark Lomas.

Public cloud storage services have been a useful resource for small businesses. Services like Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Citrix ShareFile provide reliable, functional resources for large and small businesses alike. Public, off-site services aren’t the only option for companies wanting flexible storage services, though. For various reasons, including flexibility, security, and regulatory compliance, companies may often decide to create their own private cloud storage infrastructures. These can offer many of the same characteristics as public cloud storage, while still residing on the company’s own premises. These bring the confidence of having storage on-site, while retaining some of the characteristics of cloud-based services. Private cloud storage provides a layer of abstraction from the inner mechanics of the storage system. Users can simply save and go without worrying about where their information is held. This layer of abstraction is crucial for a key component of the cloud storage story: multi-tenanting.

Area Network: the orchestration layer. This software layer controls the storage dynamically, and provides another key feature of any private cloud storage deployment: elasticity.

department can simply slice off the storage that they need without thinking about economising, then it could lead to resource hogging and cost over-runs, even with private cloud storage.

Dynamic provision

Not necessarily. One of the promises of cloud computing in general is solid, detailed reporting. In a well-deployed private storage system, IT administrators can source storage usage metrics for individual users or departments. This kind of reporting enables them to treat business departments like internal customers, and potentially cap heavy resource users by setting limits.

The dynamic provision and reallocation of resources is one of the basic tenets of cloud computing, and the same applies to cloud storage. These systems are able to adjust the amount of storage that they allocate to specific users and groups, based on what’s needed. They can reallocate storage that suddenly becomes free, meaning that everyone gets the storage they need.

With these kinds of flexible services available, private cloud storage may make perfect sense for companies who value This automated storage management efficiency and who want that little bit of makes the most efficient use of the extra control over their storage underlying physical resource. It avoids leaving drives largely empty simply because infrastructures. they are ‘owned’ by a business department that isn’t using their full capacity. Mark Lomas, IT Consultant with

Storage provisioning is an important part of that story. Historically, a business department may have had to go through an arduous and time-consuming process when it wanted more storage.

Many users can access a private cloudbased storage system as though it were their own, because it keeps users from seeing each other’s data.

With private cloud storage, departments can get access to the storage that they need from a virtual pool, often simply via a web interface, and often without draining the IT department’s administrative resources.

This is all made possible by something that you won’t find in a traditional Storage

Doesn’t that leave IT administrators with a potential problem? After all, if every

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Infrastructure

Changing the infrastructure landscape by Mark Lomas

As convergence and Infrastructure-as-aService promises to revolutionise the IT department, Mark Lomas discusses the benefits and potential trade-offs.

atacentres across the world are shrinking. Not literally, but figuratively. Thanks to convergence, parts of the IT infrastructure that were previously handled discretely by different pieces of hardware are being brought together into one closely integrated package. This activity, known as convergence, is an especially hot area of discussion at the moment, because it offers significant benefits. But what is it, and how does it work? When we look at an IT stack, it has a number of complex layers with application servers, databases and programming frameworks at the top. At the bottom, you have infrastructure resources, such as storage and networking.

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Many of the larger IT vendors want to recast these physical infrastructure components in software. The idea is to include these fundamental functions in a pool of logical resources that can be allocated to workloads more easily. In traditional networking environments, IT teams that run out of resources have to go out and provision a whole new hardware system. Then, they may not use all of it; this can be expensive and inefficient. In a converged infrastructure environment, an IT team that runs out of resources can just reallocate resources within the virtual pool or add an extra computing module, depending on the vendorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s architecture.

A logical progression When you think about it, this is a logical progression. CPU virtualisation started years ago, and took the IT community by storm. It enabled IT administrators to use their computing resources more

effectively by running multiple instances of an operating system on the same CPU, increasing the usage. It also brought other benefits such as better management of virtualised operating systems. Now, they want to offer the same kinds of benefits for infrastructure further down the stack. This has created the new world of software-defined datacentres (SDDC), in which individual appliances contain not just a virtualised computing infrastructure, but the storage and the networking too. Vendors are also asking what additional tertiary services they can configure in those boxes. Virtualisation vendors like VMware are seizing the initiative, partnering with the major vendors. The result: products like the EVO:Rail - a rack-mounted appliance with storage, computing, networking and advanced management capabilities in one box. Companies are already squeezing more into hyper-converged boxes. Consider capabilities like backup and disaster

recovery in the storage realm, and WAN optimisation in networking. These are becoming commodities too. The infrastructure is being eaten by software. Converged and hyper converged infrastructures are still relatively new technology concepts. Anyone embracing it today would be an early adopter. As with any new development, there are reasons for people to be cautious. While a converged infrastructure appliance can be a useful way of giving yourself a big block of resources, there may be trade-offs.

Beneﬁts and trade offs First, the benefits. Any IT team moving to a virtualised infrastructure inside an appliance is effectively creating a private cloud in a box. With the right management layer, an IT team can offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in a converged package. The private cloud model can offer cost benefits and a more reliable

infrastructure - as the management layer can shunt workload between different hardware modules in the event of failure. Furthermore, it can make provisioning computing resources to the business far easier.

level of flexibility? How much will a quick and easy deployment compromise their tactical and strategic IT capabilities?

Secondly, the trade-offs. By converging infrastructure into an appliance, IT teams are putting a layer of distance between the management and the infrastructure. IT administrators must consider how they will retain control of their critical infrastructure resources at a granular level, given that the appliance is the interface to their new infrastructure.

stoppers. They are simply issues to consider when moving from one paradigm to another in the IT industry; and this is indeed a paradigm shift. As more of the datacentre moves towards software, the IT department’s toolset will need to change. The way that it plans its internal infrastructure will evolve – and so will its relationship with its users.

Then, there are the managerial challenges. IT teams must think about how they control the users of that infrastructure. IaaS can It can also shorten deployment times. result in some problems unless user access There are plenty of areas where turnkey is controlled. Virtual machine sprawl and solutions will be perfect for an IT team. Plug overprovisioning of resources like storage them in, turn them on, and they’ll provide are just two potential issues. infrastructure services in 20 minutes. None of these challenges are show

IT teams must ask themselves, what happens if they need more storage but don’t want to buy computing power? Will the converged appliance give them that

Mark Lomas, IT Consultant with Icomm Technologies

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Infrastructure

by Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury asks, how can IT managers know the best time to refresh their equipment?

he IT industry never stands still, and neither can an organisation’s IT infrastructure. Companies must eventually refresh their systems, but that can be difficult to schedule. So when should IT managers upgrade their IT infrastructure? One clear answer is not immediately after a new release, according to Mark Lomas, technical consultant at Icomm Technologies. He warns: “We never advise anyone to upgrade straight away. In our experience it’s always best to let other people take a look at the bugs first before jumping on the bandwagon.” Clive Longbottom, founder of analyst firm Quocirca, argues ‘business impact’ is the ultimate deciding factor in whether to refresh an infrastructure or not. “Is the business being constrained in its market through the poor support from its IT platform? If so, then a change has to be made,” he says. As part of this calculation, IT directors must take a variety of things into account. These span both the technical and the financial. Organisations need to explore licence costs for old and new software,

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To refresh or not to refresh? maintenance fees for old hardware, and the administrative costs of managing it.

Prioritising When prioritising what to address first, server-side refreshes may bring more immediate benefits for many than desktop overhauls.

“If they are controlling the age of their estate, when they reach their optimum life they will refresh those devices,” said Morrish. “That way, there will be no devices in their estate over their cut-off point.”

Strategic decisions

Infrastructure refreshes will inevitably cost “New server architectures are attractive due money, but this is often a good point to explore architectural changes that could to better equipment densities and lower reduce cost while improving productivity. power requirements; converged systems Perhaps a move to virtual desktop require less cobbling together and less integration and thin clients could reduce management,” says Longbottom. the requirement for expensive ‘fat client’ But eventually, desktop upgrades must devices, for example. come along too. When this happens, smart “Thin client computing can provide not IT managers will look at the overall cost of only a means of maintaining existing PCs a device rather than focusing on a single as access devices, but it also centralises issue such as software features, says information, making governance, risk James Morrish, HP UK and Ireland’s chief management and compliance so much technologist. easier for the business,” Longbottom “It’s about how much it costs to manage concludes. and maintain the device, where there may Such architectural shifts may save money in be a reliability dimension,” he suggests. one part of the infrastructure, but they often “If the device is going to be unreliable or incur more refresh costs in another. VDI too costly to maintain, then it’s a justifiable will typically entail server and networking expense to take it out of service.” upgrades, for example. In the complex Morrish expects to see laptop upgrades world of IT infrastructure management, every three to four years, and desktop there’s always a trade-off somewhere. upgrades every four to five years. Those upgrades are often rolling replacements in which groups of devices are replaced Danny Bradbury is a freelance over time. technology journalist

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What we offer The IT Index 50

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Strategic procurement

Benchmarking and procurement hub

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Icomm Technologies Managed IT Services 58

Cloud backup

Cloud disaster recovery

Cloud anti-virus

Managed firewall

Managed remote access

Proactive IT Support 63

Software and hardware support

Fully managed support

IT Solutions 64

Server and desktop virtualisation

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Remote access and security

Mercato Solutions 69

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0121 605 1000 enquiries@probrand.co.uk Over the next few pages Probrand Group showcases the depth and breadth of products and services it offers. If you would like to explore anything further, please get in touch.

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Company Overviews Probrand Group – Your technology partner. Probrand Group is a leading end-to-end provider of technology through three multi-award winning businesses specialising in IT products, IT services and software. Established professional brands dedicated to helping customers thrive with relevant and innovative technology. With over 20 years of heritage, Probrand Group has a global outlook and now serves an extensive customer base of over 3,500 private and public sector organisations as a Crown Commercial Service framework supplier. The business prides itself on investing in great people, putting value into relationships with its own innovation, commitment and integrity. Since 1992, Probrand has grown from a small Value Added Reseller to a multi-award winning group. Three years of growth spawned specialist IT services business, Icomm Technologies, in 2000, the launch of online marketplace The IT Index in 2002 and innovative software business, Mercato Solutions in 2005. All three have sustained growth and been acknowledged with numerous awards and listings. The pinnacle of which includes a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Innovation.

The IT Index – IT Products. Save time and money buying IT. The IT Index is Europe’s largest specialist B2B marketplace online, offering an award-winning personalised experience and a best practice approach that quickly gets IT buyers to the best priced top branded products from almost every category. It helps buyers save time and money through CIPS accredited procurement excellence. The IT Index also offers managed services to support customer aspirations for more strategic procurement, including IT purchase benchmarking for transparent buying and trusted advisory support for large scale solutions and technology refresh projects.

Icomm Technologies – IT Services. Get more from your IT. Icomm Technologies provides managed IT services, pro-active IT support and IT solutions, offering decades of award-winning technical service excellence to large organisations and SMEs alike. The business retains a technical edge and is proud to employ a workforce of over 60% technical professionals, operating out of Birmingham and Manchester. A ‘best-of-breed’ mindset helps customers get more from their IT.

Mercato Solutions – Software. Transform the way you work. Mercato Solutions is one of EMEAs fastest growing and most innovative enterprise application providers. The business helps a global client base transform business processes with bespoke and branded software platforms and applications that drive smarter working. An award-winning portfolio consists of delivering Private Marketplaces world-wide, KnowledgeKube for automating business processes fast and KnowledgeBus for automated IT benchmarking.

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Easy and accurate purchasing. Unique self-service tools narrow choice to complex needs exactly and efficiently Free login for personalised catalogues, special bids and promotions direct from manufacturers Direct purchasing. No re-direct to 3rd party websites Greater management visibility to help stamp out off-policy rogue purchasing

“It has saved over 15% of our consumables budget, enabling the organisation to stretch its IT budget. Savings made on individual products range from 3 – 6% and as an example we reduced our £120,000 bill for inkjet, toner and fax cartridges by 20%.”

Coffee Republic. “The IT Index has saved us in the region of 30% on our IT budget. We can now get more from our budget.” Bradford Grammar School. “Efficient ‘one-stop-shop’ procurement process coupled with customer service excellence, both cashable and noncashable savings have been yielded.” Ashfield District Council.

Online Marketplace Value Added Services For Business

Best priced products. Shortest possible time. Powerful guided experiences

Drive collaboration

Value added advisors and tools to present relevant products at the right price fast, supporting your decision making. Better match needs to relevant choice more accurately and efficiently.

Multiple logins per account. Share product catalogues across organisations. Reduce duplication of effort.

Personal order pad

Rapid integration End-to-end P2P operational excellence. Simple connection to ERP and line-of-business systems. Streamline order processing, catalogue management and payment.

Save time by maintaining a list of regular purchase items updated hourly with price and stock.

Dynamic personalised cataloguing Gets you closer to suppliers who communicate only relevant, lowest priced personalised deals direct in real-time. Get the best deals most relevant to your sector and segment.

Rapid advanced search

Value Added Services Strategic procurement

Quick predictive search by product parameters; brand, category, type, code, specification.

An account managed service providing the advice and guidance you need to buy the right ICT at the right price.

Prices compared across the market hourly. Products ranked by best price and availability. Eliminates time consuming supplier ring rounds and manual comparison. Drives mini-competition.

Single procurement dashboard Purchasing done direct. View, manage, investigate and plan with tailored information.

Framework approved Automatically see special bids. Order online at pre-agreed discounted pricing. Get the best deals most relevant to your segment. Digital by default.

Price transparency Sustained fixed margin agreed up front across all products.

Management tools Control a role-driven environment offering ethical purchasing of products at validated best value. Track, analyse, plan & forecast budgets. Improve spend visibility and reduce rogue purchasing.

Â&#x201E; Dedicated account management with back office support from product and category specialists Â&#x201E; Direct introduction to leading manufacturer partnerships for large projects and maximum value Â&#x201E; Field team and end user engagement for large and complex projects

Benchmarking and Procurement Hub Want to understand the margins of all your suppliers and secure long term best value? Talk to us about a full in-depth benchmarking and spend analysis service to validate the margins you pay for ICT. Then, buy via our Procurement Hub that delivers a transparent cost plus agreement.

Catalogue management and integration Service to manage and integrate your personalised IT catalogue into your ERP. Streamline your procurement workflow by selecting and buying products within your ERP, using daily updated price and stock data.

Talk to us 0800 26 26 29

www.theitindex.co.uk

0800 26 26 29 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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Automated comparison

Strategic Procurement Get the support you need to buy the right ICT at the right price Save time and money with dedicated account management backed by best practice eprocurement technology and installation services

ICT buying made easier Specifying the right technology for the job can be a challenge with so many options and brands. So can navigating a highly volatile three-tiered market where regular technology trends, price and stock changes impact whether you achieve sustained value. Perhaps you operate in the public sector and struggle to see preferential pricing. Maybe you’re looking for long term value from future proofed technology that delivers low Total Cost of Ownership? Or you’re being hounded by aggressive suppliers touting one-off, old or irrelevant warehouse stock? A professional account manager provides a strategic approach to more timely procurement. Access deep product guidance and enormous buying power to consistently save you time and money buying relevant IT.

Be more strategic and save Accredited Best Practice, Best Value Market leading product portfolio. Impartial advice on over 150,000+ products from 2,500+ manufacturers. Save time. A simple and seamless experience from product advice to delivery. Save money. Longer term strategic partnership delivers sustained value. Best practice. CIPS accredited procurement excellence fights for the best deals for you. Best value. Queen’s Award winning software shortcuts and validates price and stock within the supply chain.

Value Added Services For Business

More than just price. Genuinely adding value.

Understanding your business for more strategic long term savings

A dedicated resource

Ve n d o r a g n o s t i c , impartial support and guidance

Access vendor and pre-sales support on projects, tech refresh and solutions

Understanding and advice on specific ICT needs and future plans

Strategic IT procurement advice

Key to successful IT deployment Budget and management reporting

Market insight Preferential pricing and support

Warranty and asset management

Stock holding for your business critical IT kit To t a l v i s i b i l i t y o f t h e IT supply chain

Bespoke catalogue set-up and maintenance

Visibility of preferential pricing and strategic discounts from vendors

Queen’s Award winning e-procurement software

Over 750,000 product lines daily compared

Hourly updates on over 150,000 ‘live’ products from 2,500 manufacturers

Let us manage and deliver your IT

Contract management

Hardware, services, support and solutions

Product knowledge

Yo u r t r u s t e d a d v i s o r on the best brands in the business

Tr a i n e d b y v e n d o r product specialists

Product roadmaps and New Product Developments

Understanding of the latest technologies features and benefits

www.theitindex.co.uk

0800 26 26 29 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

4401/ITXSTRATEGICPROCUREMENT/HR

Deep understanding of the modern IT estate

Benchmarking & Procurement Hub Validate the margins you pay on ICT Buy via a transparent cost plus agreement

Getting the deals you think you are? In the highly volatile IT market where price and stock fluctuate daily, time pressured IT buyers struggle to benchmark, validate and police what actually represents best value. When you think you have a trade price to benchmark against chances are it is already out of date. Equally, you don’t have time to police all IT supplier relationships and the varying margins they charge across product portfolios, you just want to maximise budgets on all IT purchases without the hassle of trying to benchmark. This managed service benchmarks IT purchases using CIPS accredited technology and IT supply chain data. It validates the margins you are paying for IT. Then, use the fully auditable Procurement Hub to buy at a guaranteed fixed and open margin. Dedicated account management ensures you are buying the right product for the job.

save time save money Lock-in open and transparent IT procurement for sustained value More informed purchasing decisions. IT margins validated against trade guide price. Police all IT suppliers with a simple spend analysis. Long term savings. Eradicate daily need for manual comparison and negotiation. Get the deals you expect, every time. Save money with open book pricing. Negotiate a guaranteed margin for all purchases up front. Be more strategic. Leverage market insight, buy the right product at the right time.

Value Added Services For Business

More informed purchasing Stock holding for your business critical IT kit

Leverage market insight

Emerging technology advice

Account Management

Guidance

Managed by you or a dedicated team

Budget and management reporting

Use established Mercato Solutions software

Warranty and asset management

Va l i d a t e o n e - o f f c h e c k s o r entire catalogues

Compare against 150,000 ‘live’ products from 2,500 manufacturers

Benchmarking

Visibility

Access over a terabyte of historical ICT data

Conduct in-depth spend analysis on historical purchases Plot buying trends and market movements

Agree open and fixed margin on all ICT

Procurement Hub

Transaction

Flexible contract terms

Option to integrate into your ERP system

Automated RFQs shorten buying cycle

www.theitindex.co.uk

0800 26 26 29 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Proven to save significant time and money amongst private and public sector organisations with an annual IT budget over £100,000. Also good for related organisations looking to form buying groups to maximise the purchasing power of collaborative procurement.

4401/ITXBENCHMARKING&PROCUREMENT/HR

Who will this suit? Fully auditable

Catalogue management & integration Drive efficiency into the procurement process Unlock true ERP value with daily updated IT price and stock data

Unlock transactional value from static internal systems Buying IT demands current stock and pricing data, yet ERP systems rarely deliver such information, so how can buyers achieve best value consistently? Equally, time strapped IT buyers are challenged with procurement administration. Unconnected line-of-business software packages and processes are used to fulfil the end-to-end procurement workflow across multiple suppliers. This equals duplication of effort, manual comparison, double keying and frustrating inefficiency for the busy procurer. Put simply, admin time that could be better spent elsewhere. Introducing a value added managed service that defines, integrates and publishes your personalised IT Index catalogue directly into your ERP system. Get daily compared IT data that delivers best price and current stock levels. Then select and purchase using your internal processes.

integrate &

save

Streamline procurement Increase productivity Save time and money. Reduce procurement admin and buy using current price and stock data. Be more agile. Quicken end-to-end transactional workflow. Respond to IT price and stock movements fast. Best practice. Queen’s Award winning software automates price comparison and stock availability. Maximise budgets. Get daily updated pricing exclusive to you.

Value Added Services For Business

Integrating best price and stock into your ERP. IT supply chain data feeds

Daily price & stock updates

+750 750,000 product lines

Integrate your additional supplier feeds

X250 daily price & stock compared 150,000+ â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;liveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; products updated

2,500+ manufacturers

Catalogue management

best

price & stock

Multiple data lines Multiple catalogues Product info & pricing Current stock Exclusive discounts Schedule data updates Choose file format for publishing

Fully configured for you

Published via Web service

Why not publish catalogues from other categories and suppliers back into your IT index profile? Use our award winning comparison and eprocurement technology to deliver value into your broader purchasing portfolio.

XML

CSV

WORD

Any Format

E R P, w e b s i t e s , i n t r a n e t , f i n a n c e s y s t e m s

www.theitindex.co.uk

0800 26 26 29 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

4401/ITXCATALOGUEMANAGEMENT/HR

Talk to us.

Cloud Backup

Managed IT services

Protect your organisation for less with fully automated data backups. Scaleable and fit for your needs

Cloud based managed service • • • •

Fully automated protection for your business from 75p per GB Consultancy, backup and restore support included 24x7 access to your data Unlimited and scalable data storage facility

Strong data security measures • • • • • • •

Highest level of information governance ISO:27001 Strong authentication at every log-in point All files 256-bit encrypted from source. Customer defined encryption key. All data transmitted via 256-bit AES encryption Storage in our own secure hosting facilities on high end dedicated servers Data integrity maintained via autonomic healing and validation Email reports sent to verify every backup

•

• •

State-of-the-art enterprise level software from Asigra Monthly payment terms

Single users to multiple sites and remote locations Store data, operating systems, exchange databases, mailboxes, SQL data, applications Local, national or international data access from one simple internet interface Flexible scheduling to match your organisation

Quick and easy recovery • •

Simply retrieve last data snap-shot via secure internet connection Data recovery in the same format as you stored it

Total compliance and assurance • •

Data stored in two data centres on UK soil and jurisdiction As used by global organisations

Compressed data. Compressed Cost. 75p per GB •

Enterprise level quality without the cost •

• •

Data encrypted and compressed to reduce actual storage space used Cost saving passed on to the customer Only pay for the exact storage you need, not an empty vault

Tape/Disk Backup

Icomm Cloud Backup

Costly to install & maintain

Easy to install, fully automated

Complicated to operate

Intuitive, easy to use interface

Vulnerable & unsecure

Data stored off site, replicated & encrypted

Error prone & unreliable (Gartner estimates 15% fail)

100% reliable automated process. Errors flagged and resolved.

All data, every day

Backup only new or changed data

Difficult and time consuming to restore

Data instantly available via web client

Expensive limited capacity tapes

Totally scalable. Only pay for the storage you need

Cloud based backup and recovery from 35p per GB. Talk to us about protecting your server structure as well.

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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Tape/Disk Backup vs Cloud Backup

Cloud Disaster Recovery Too many businesses are not prepared to deal with disasters • • • •

8 out of 10 have no disaster recovery plan 1 in 5 businesses suffer disruption each year Most suffer the consequence 93% go bankrupt within a year of disaster

The quicker you are back to business, the greater the chances of survival. Get proactive with a cloud based Icomm managed service •

Snapshot of your server structure and operating systems taken • Files stored in the cloud • Cost-effective and quick-to-deploy • In the event of disaster, business continuesto have access to its core systems as employee’s remote access into your replica server environment in the cloud

Managed IT services

One cost effective solution • • • •

High end DR solution without the high end cost A managed Icomm service for peace of mind Cloud flexibility offers scalable service and monthly cost Annual DR Recovery test procedure, demonstrating to you it works

Protecting your server structure • • • • • •

Complete ‘imaging’ allows for rapid recovery An environment to recover to – giving you virtual ‘spare’ hardware Remote access to enable users to work from home, office or any internet enabled device Back to business in hours not weeks (24x7 for additional cost) A “Lite” version offers minimum protection at lower cost Full cloud provision offers total protection

Full service

Be safe and secure in the cloud • •

Lite service

Backup to storage vault in Birmingham ISO 27001 information governance excellence to protect your data

New Infrastructure

snapshot taken

hosted on VM platform

RESTORED

How it works Included in Lite service 1. 2.

Snapshot of live server structure and OS taken Image stored on NAS box on-premise for Business Continuity in the event of hardware failure

3. 4. 5. 6.

Image stored on Icomm’s virtual servers Disaster occurs Latest image restored to secure cloud based private environment Customer provides latest data backup to Icomm which is then loaded onto Icomm servers Business users access systems via remote internet access to Icomm for duration of disaster Icomm provides data backup from live system to customer to enable system to revert back to local live operation

7. 8.

User at home

Disaster Recovery should not be an option, it should be a necessity!

... from only £99 per month – cost can no longer be an excuse.

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Ask us about Cloud Backup to protect your data as well.

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Cloud Antivirus

Managed IT services

Eradicate security threats automatically Cloud based managed service • • •

24/7 remote monitoring to ensure security risks and threats are quickly eradicated Automatic alerting and job booking means engineers fix issues rapidly Security and patch reports emailed to you weekly

Installation Included

Full Support Included

Protection

Product Upgrades Included

Increase Return On Investment • • • • •

Be up to date and stay ahead of threats Better manage and monitor remote user antivirus Gain automated protection from viruses, trojans and spyware with sophisticated scan engine Central management system delivers best practice implementation Enjoy full reporting of risks and threats resolved

Quicken computer processes • • • • •

Lightweight scanning engine optimises computer speed Daily out-of-hours virus scans remove traditional slow down, improving user productivity Free up to 21% of server resource by removing antivirus management burden Drive automatic computer shutdowns after scans Unlock employee productivity with greater machine and server availability

Up to Date

Remote Users

Implementation

Reporting

Saves time and money • • •

Fixed predictable cost so no more financial surprises Flexible payment terms enable switch to manageable operational expenditure Reduce management costs

All Inclusive Pricing

Machines Covered

Price per Machine p.a.

1-9

£79.99

10 - 19

£64.99

20 - 29

£49.99

30 - 39

£44.99

40 - 49

£39.99

50 - 100

£35.99

100+

POA

Automated Antivirus protection from £35.99 per year.

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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Includes installation, support and upgrade costs.

Managed Firewall

Managed IT services

A market leading way of securing your network. Govern web traffic and application usage.

• • • •

Gateway Security

Fully managed approach Standard solution installed by Icomm and tailored to your needs Centralised, secure environment for end users to focus on business Protection at the perimeter of your infrastructure

Let Icomm improve web service delivery • • • •

Manage internal abuse of internet access Protect against security threats Prevent employees accessing inappropriate sites and social networks Improve service to users with a market leading solution

Drive out cost • • •

Drive down capex and manage operational costs Release time for your IT staff to focus on bigger issues Reduce down time associated with viruses, spam and malware

Managed Firewall at a glance A solution that gives application visibility and control; bandwidth management; and the highest throughput of any firewall with all services enabled. An approach that makes sense on the bottom line: •

•

Application control and visibility – Identify the applications that are utilising your bandwidth: Skype, Facebook and BitTorrent for example – see what was previously secret Web filtering – Log and control unwanted applications and setup filtering policies against specific user profiles. Prioritise role-based access to systems or environments Wireless access management – Control, maintain and optimise wireless access in your environment. Automatically manage share of bandwidth fairly amongst users and improve user WiFi experience SSL VPN and remote access (optional) – improve security with two stage ‘tokenless’ authentication and a secure tunnel for remote access if you require it

Ask us about Wireless LANs and remote access to unlock more connected business.

256bit SSL

Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Intrusion Prevention, and Application Intelligence and Control Service delivers intelligent, realtime network security protection against sophisticated application layer and contentbased attacks, including viruses, spyware, worms, and more. Configurable tools prevent data leakage and enable visualisation of network traffic. Bandwidth management and control Bandwidth resources prioritised to critical inbound and outbound network traffic and application usage to improve network performance. Guaranteed minimum bandwidth for priority traffic based on access rules created in the Firewall. Granular Control Application Intelligence and Control provides granular control and real-time visualisation of applications to guarantee bandwidth prioritisation, prevent data leakage, and deliver more precise control over network traffic. Optional 24/7 support Onsite hardware repair and replacement and 8+5 support included Minor change requests taking less than one hour included Optional 247 service or round-the-clock telephone and web based support Content Filtering Content Filtering Service blocks multiple categories of objectionable Web content and provides the ideal combination of control and flexibility to ensure the highest levels of productivity and protection. Reporting Access highly customisable, easy-to-read reports. Graphical illustration of network activity like bandwidth utilisation and observed threats. Automatic configuration backups Configuration updates and backup managed Icomm automatically

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Protect your business without thinking about it!

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Managed Remote Access

Managed IT services

Unlock remote working without the capital expenditure. A managed service with monthly payments One centrally-managed client site installed gateway that controls remote network access • •

Improve productivity for a low monthly cost • •

Best of breed remote access technology SSL VPN delivers user-friendly, secure remote access tunnel Service includes install, support, monitoring and reporting portal access All for a monthly fee with no capital expenditure

• •

Fast ROI by increasing user productivity Sustainable long term budget savings from remote access reduced cost of ownership Validation of users with increased security Improve business continuity options by enabling remote working

Users gain remote access quickly and securely Enable your business with minimal effort and cost!

Standard solution tailored to your individual needs Centralised, secure environment to help end users focus on business Stop hackers and secure your data High availability and easy-to-use

• • •

2. 3.

Simply click an ‘Aventail’ icon and log-in to your SSL VPN web page. Users input everyday network password and log-in details for remote access. (Optional) Secure token based authentication to enhance security.

1. Login

SSL VPN

****

Your everyday login details Your PC

Fully Managed SSL VPN – your secure tunnel

Monitoring

Dell SonicWall Aventail SSL VPN. A dedicated and hardened security appliance that supports access from most end point devices, including PCs, windows devices and smart phones. A simple, cost effective way to give mobile workers a complete ‘in-office’ desktop experience. • •

Future proof – The most future-proofed remote access controller on the market Secure – ‘Traffic’ fully encrypted between end user’s web browser and the SSL VPN appliance

Ongoing assessment of performance Includes backup of configuration Support Ongoing telephone and web based support, during office hours Option to extend to 24x7 Automatic upgrades to firmware when needed as new threats arise Reporting portal

Managed deployment

Enables customers to view staff usage and traffic

Hardware quickly installed amongst your existing network infrastructure Timed for least business disruption

Switch capex to opex No capital costs, only monthly opex costs, with minimum 36 month commitment

Ask us about improving your wireless network and next generation firewalls to protect you and your bandwidth?

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Linked Resources

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•

The right proactive IT support for you

Proactive IT support

Get expert help from Icomm to support your IT estate. Choose the right service for you. Software and Hardware support

Comparison Matrix

You have a list of IT equipment you want supported Annual or monthly payment

Each approach provides varying levels of proactive support price matched to your needs based on Service Level Agreements and objectives.

Benefits

•

Software and Hardware Support

Fixed overhead for the year If you have an issue just book a call Make as many calls as you want Multiple service level agreements to fit different budgets Annual or monthly payment plans

Features • • • • • •

Cost covers support for all software and hardware Also known as a break-fix contract Can include parts and labour for repair under agreement Can cover peripheral hardware i.e. switches, firewalls etc. Has SLAs – 2, 4, 8 hour next day and 24 hour Upgradeable to Managed Service at any time

Fully managed support Outsource your IT support or go a step further and outsource all IT management to Icomm. Benefits • • • • • • • • • •

Total proactivity; spots and fixes issues without you even noticing Less Hassle Less Downtime Increased Staff Productivity Fixes, cuts and controls costs Automates security and compliance Reduces Total Cost of Ownership Extends IT lifecycle by up to 50% Transparency and flexibility of contract On going contract review to match support to your changing business needs

Features • • • • • • •

Goes way beyond Hardware and Software support. Proprietary Software installed for 24/7 365 monitoring. Enables prediction and fix before fail Backup monitoring Power, patch, asset management AntiVirus checks Seamless Remote Management Management reports

Fully Managed Support

Low initial cost Fixed & Predictable Cost Guaranteed Response 8 hour Guaranteed Response 4 hour Guaranteed Response 2 hour Flexible On & Off-Site Support Technical Advisory Service Dedicated Account Management Value for Money Unlimited Support Optional 24/7 Cover Loan Equipment Favourable Payment Terms Asset Tagging & Management 24/7 365 Monitoring Back-up Monitoring Preventive Maintenance 6 Weekly Optimisation SMART Defrag Automated Patch Management Reduced Total Cost of Ownership Improved Return on Investment Exchange Monitoring Monthly Management Reports Bandwidth Usage Tracking Licence Compliance Tracking System Audits Seamless Remote Management Audited Remote Control Power Management Optimisation Application Deployment Back-up & Disaster Recovery Upgrade for Life Membership Program Over 100 Years best Practices Experience User Screen Monitoring

What People Say About Icomm “The fully managed support service has paid for itself many times over.” Andrew Jones, S Jones Containers

“We decide how and where our money is spent and have seen real savings already on previous contracts.” Paul Pearce, Sea Products International Ltd

Talk to us about a range of IT services, including Cloud backup, network and wireless LAN services.

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• • • •

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Virtualisation – servers and desktops

IT solutions

Do more with less. Save time and money with a more agile IT infrastructure. Optimise and future proof IT infrastructure • • • •

Turn one physical machine into many virtual machines Host multiple Operating Systems and applications on one machine Develop and test systems and applications without impacting production environment Flexible and scaleable to your needs

Reduce operational and capital expenditure • • • • •

Consolidate physical server, storage or desktop estate Eliminate need to purchase more physical machines in future Better utilise existing computer resources Cut demands on power, cooling and space Release management time to focus on key tasks

Unlock improvements to back-up and Disaster Recovery • • •

Dynamically distribute work load across several virtual servers to improve performance Multiple virtual machines equal high redundancy and multiple fail-over points Virtualisation of servers is ideally supported by a centralised Storage Area Network to further improve resilience whilst reducing ongoing costs and administration

Improve experience and delivery of end user services • • •

Better utilise resources to be more robust and deliver applications and files faster Maximise throughput, quicken response times More efficient provision of services, more efficient work force

Get expert help from Icomm to virtualise your server and desktop estate Server virtualisation – turn one into many

End-to-end projects tailored to your needs • • • • • • •

Consultancy Detailed capacity and performance review to assess where improvements can be made to your technology estate Procurement Installation Migration of data and applications Training and hand-over of management to in-house teams Fully pro-active support to ensure smooth operation ongoing

Desktop virtualisation Empower your staff through desktop virtualisation. Run multiple desktop operating systems on a single server and improve operational efficiency of flexible computing resources, manpower and capabilities.

Talk to us about improving your storage as well. We also offer a fully managed IT support service.

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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Save money and space by investing in one server that replicates multiple platforms. Today’s computing environments are becoming increasingly complex, demanding greater resources to operate and maintain. Moving resources to virtual platforms allows IT departments to consolidate and better utilise existing flexible computer resources and delivery better end user services whilst optimising staff time.

Storage Area Networks

IT solutions

Centralise storage for quick pay back and long term savings Let Icomm implement a NetApp SAN to enhance your enterprise storage. Your growing pains • • • • • • • • • •

Spiralling operational overheads Lack of resource to manage IT estate and data growth Increased demand on limited data centre space Organisational risk due to poor fail-over or backup processes Little available time to keep up with technology change Limits on data accessibility Protect capacity and investment with efficiency tools Reduce size of all types of data; primary, secondary, file and block Maximise storage capacity with unified tools; I/O caching, volume cloning, deduplication, compression etc Protected capacity equals better performance and protected investment

Quick and smart backup

• •

Take high-speed, low impact snapshot images of your data Effortlessly manage frequent snapshots, replication policies and movement to tape in one console Reduce backups by up to 98%

Implement a more efficient solution From a traditional approach DAS/NAS/SAN Silos Servers

Protect business with improved recovery and continuity • • • •

Apps

•

Storage

To a best practice virtualised approach

End-to-end projects tailored to your needs • • • • •

Network

Easily configure multi site-to-site data replication for added fail-over Boot virtual machines from the SAN for quick and easy replacement of faulty host servers Facilitate quicker recovery time objectives and improved business continuity Reduce down-time by up to 50%

Consultancy Procurement Installation Migration of data and applications Training and hand-over of management to in-house teams Pro-active support for smooth operation ongoing

Virtualisation Servers Apps Network Storage

Talk to us for guidance on and delivery of an integrated virtualised server and storage environment.

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•

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Network infrastructure and Wireless LAN

IT solutions

Wireless that works! Unlock business agility, reduce cost and complexity Market leading technology. More reliable and better coverage.

Get rid of standard WLAN issues Unstable connections Dropped packets Pixelated video Choppy voice Poor coverage and capacity Erratic performance

Dynamic Beamforming Adapts Access Point signal steering for the most reliable Wi-Fi.

More reliable and connected business • • • • •

Smart Mesh networking

A high-end solution without the cost and complexity Release management to focus on more value add activities Robust, secure, scalable Fits within any existing network architecture Quick to deploy

Smarter wireless Site survey, installation and configuration by Icomm of a Ruckus WLAN provides a smarter solution with better range and reliability. Wide coverage Enable 400+ clients per Access Points, so fewer Access Points cover a wider area, reducing capital and operational costs. Cost effective Robust wireless LAN at a fraction of the cost of conventional alternatives. All the functionality of a highend system with fewer access points for lower CAPEX and easier management for lower OPEX. Fast install Configuration and deployment in half the time of conventional solutions. Easy to install, configure and expand. Automatic client-side administration and advanced security. Secure, scalable, and simple-to-use platform A smarter wireless LAN that self-optimises and is super simple to manage. Provision guests in a snap, deliver up to four times coverage and throughput. Dual band functionality enables multiple device types. No costly cabling Simply plug access points into a power source and connect without any requirement for Ethernet cabling.

Eliminate costly task of pulling Ethernet cable wherever you want access points.

Dynamic user security The latest link layer encryption and authentication mechanisms but delivered simply. From 802.1x support to Dynamic Pre-Shared Keys.

Adaptive RF signal routing and interference avoidance WLAN-wide optimum signal path selection and automatic interference avoidance. Automatic Radio Frequency coordination adapts to the constantlychanging Wi-Fi environment.

Cutting Edge Access Points High-performance dual-band (meshed or wired) that deliver high-performance at range to new 802.11n and legacy 802.11a/b/g clients.

Network infrastructure high performance and resilient Icomm has decades of expertise in planning, building and upgrading every aspect of wired and wireless network infrastructure from industry standard cabling – the backbone of your connectivity, to configuration of network hardware & software and high availability switching that delivers services to end users. Enterprise level partnerships with high performance providers ensures the very best advice and solutions.

Ask us about remote access and firewalls to leverage and protect your wireless network.

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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• • • • • •

Firewalls

IT solutions

Protect against the most sophisticated web threats Adopt a next generation Firewall • • • •

Cybercriminals are using the web to access corporate networks Sophos has identified that 85% of malware comes from the web Over 30,000 websites are infected every single day Cybercriminals leverage soft security targets; social networks, smartphones, tablets and BYOD environments

A firewall older than two years offers limited protection • •

Lacks interrogation of application usage and traffic payload Cannot identify and manage good traffic from bad

Reduce costs and risk of down time from security threats • • • •

Protect at the perimeter, not within your infrastructure Manage internal abuse of internet access Prevent employees accessing inappropriate sites and social networks Improve web service delivery and user productivity

Welcome to next generation firewalls A solution that gives application visibility and control; bandwidth management; and the highest throughput of any firewall with all services enabled. •

Advanced threat protection – Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of the entire packet payload for intrusion prevention, malware detection, gateway antivirus, traffic analytics, application control and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) decryption. Deliver granular traffic inspection to allow intelligent enforcement of security policies.

•

Performance without sacrifice – Network traffic inspected with little impact on throughput and application performance. Enable DPI without buffering or packet reassembly.

•

Productivity through application visibility and web filtering – Analyse, control and prioritise real-time bandwidth and application usage. Identify applications consuming bandwidth: Skype, Facebook and BitTorrent for example. Log and control unwanted applications. Setup filtering policies against specific user profiles. Prioritise role-based access to systems or environments.

Features Gateway Security 256bit SSL

Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Intrusion Prevention, and Application Intelligence and Control Service delivers intelligent, realtime network security protection against sophisticated application layer and contentbased attacks, including viruses, spyware, worms, and more. Configurable tools prevent data leakage and enable visualisation of network traffic. Comprehensive Anti-Spam Comprehensive Anti-Spam Service blocks spam phishing and virus-laden emails at the gateway. With one click, the service immediately starts blocking junk email and saving valuable network bandwidth. Granular Control Application Intelligence provides granular control and real-time visualisation of applications to guarantee bandwidth prioritisation, prevent data leakage, and deliver more precise control over network traffic. Content Filtering Content Filtering Service blocks multiple categories of objectionable Web content and provides the ideal combination of control and flexibility to ensure the highest levels of productivity and protection. Reporting Access highly customisable, easy-to-read reports. Graphical illustration of network activity like bandwidth utilisation and observed threats.

Looking for a managed firewall approach instead? Talk to us.

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Web services expose businesses to greater attack

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

Remote Access and Security

IT solutions

Work anywhere, anytime, efficiently and securely.

• • • •

Combining best of breed remote access and a choice of authentication technology SSL VPN delivers user-friendly secure remote access tunnel Physical token and web-based two factor authentication for everyone Tokenless two factor authentication for larger organisations

• • • •

Fast ROI by unlocking and increasing remote access productivity Sustainable long term budget savings from reduced cost of ownership High availability and easy-to-use Total validation of users with increased security Improved business continuity by enabling workforce to operate remotely

Users gain remote access quickly and securely 1. 2.

Dell SonicWall Aventail SSL VPN. A dedicated and hardened security appliance that covers the most end point devices, including windows and smart phones. A simple, cost effective way to give mobile workers a complete ‘in-office’ experience. • • •

Improve productivity and reduce overheads •

SSL VPN – your secure tunnel

Simply click a remote access icon and log-in to the SSL VPN web page, supplying everyday standard network log-in details. Users then input their authenticated user code generated through two different channels for truly strong authentication and security.

User authentication tailored to you – two options 1. Token-less authentication for larger organisations Swivel Secure token-less multi-factor authentication offers the reassurance of strong security without the cost and management of physical tokens. As approved by UK Government’s national technical authority for Information Assurance, CESG. • • •

Why not ask us about wireless networking and next generation firewalls to protect you and your bandwidth?

Future proof – The most future-proofed remote access controller on the market Easy deployment – No need for pre-installation of specialist client side software Secure – ‘Traffic’ fully encrypted between end user’s web browser and the SSL VPN appliance

Less cost – On average 73% cheaper than the cost of buying, implementing, managing and maintaining a token based system Easy management – save time with instant add and remove of end users across any web enabled devices Scalability – Single Swivel server can provide authentication for all remote services, VPNs, Websites, cloud and web applications

2. Tokens and web based authentication for every organisation Cost effective, flexible and scaleable hardware tokens and web-based two factor authentication from the world’s biggest provider, Vasco. As used to meet tight tolerances of financial institutions and online banking. • • •

Scalability – Physical tokens to fit all shapes, sizes, environments and budgets One Time Passwords – generated at, not before, point of user request for absolute security Flexibility – Option of cloud-based managed service for single sign-in to multiple web-based applications using dynamic passwords – webmail, salesforce, Office 365, Google Apps

0121 248 7931 www.icomm.co.uk

Icomm Technologies Limited, 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP.

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One centrally-managed gateway to control remote access to network resources

PRIVATE MARKETPLACES

Global marketplace processes made easy for manufacturers and distributors Implement compelling experiences via an online private marketplace Combine the award-winning and innovative bespoke technical skills of Mercato Solutions with its ground-breaking development platform, KnowledgeKube. Automate complex supply chain and pre-sales processes and make them available on the internet to your customers, internally and to your suppliers. Transformation through agile development Mercato Solutions specialises in data management, Business Intelligence and the development of high performance productivity, line-ofbusiness and collaborative applications. A winning approach that helps organisations work smarter. Capture – automate – transform online IT development capability and understanding of large-scale supply chain challenges, create game-changing private market place solutions. Use our digital platform, KnowledgeKube, to form part of your private market place solution. It enables rapid creation of business applications through its streamlined modular system. Bring system development closer to, and more under the control of, the business. Leverage our specialist knowledge of the rapidly changing IT supply chain from manufacturers, vendors and resellers to after sales service. Transferrable knowledge, proven to solve customer trading challenges.

The business case Achieve cost savings greater than implementation costs comfortably within the first year by reducing headcount in customer facing roles and enabling staff to be moved into more value adding customer activities. •

Shorten and strengthen supply chain interaction and communication to capture and drive emerging markets and expand growth capabilities for up-selling into local markets

•

Unlock deep Business Intelligence with a 360 degree view of business inside and outside of the supply chain

•

Strengthen brand experience across your supply chain

•

Reduce operational costs and generate valuable business data that can be distributed back into your eco-system

•

Radically shorten sales cycles and enable users throughout the supply chain to work smarter and with higher satisfaction

0121 605 2050

www.mercatosolutions.uk

Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

PRIVATE MARKETPLACES

Deep experience of the challenges you face International solutions - Enabling a standard solution that can be localised by customers to meet specific language, country and/or regional requirements. Global roll-outs - Managing and on-boarding customers, making solutions attractive to continuously drive usage, eclipsing manual support services previously provided to customers.

Dynamic web content - Presenting user, customer, role and context specific web content for products, pricing and promotions. Advanced search - Built to facilitate smart searching across multiple data sources. Productivity solutions - Configuring and delivering dynamic smart questionnaires, complex rule-based configurators and guided experiences that only offer selections that are compatible, will work well together and, if appropriate, are available. System integration - Real-time connection with ERP and CRM systems, by enabling dynamic updating with your Oracle and SAP product catalogues. Deal registration and pricing solutions - Encompassing automation of highly complex business and rule-driven authorisation processes. Total flexibility - Open and alive to change, often with no IT interventions.

A Mercato solution provides more functionality, less risk, time savings of 80% and cost reductions of 75% over traditional methods.

Deployment and support options •

Customer hosted, outsourced provider hosted, Mercato hosted solutions

•

Customer or Mercato maintained and supported

•

Highly experienced catalogue management capability, providing round-the-clock services and lower cost options for more manual tasks

Why Mercato? World-wide credentials. •

Implemented global solutions for some of the world’s largest vendors

•

One of EMEA’s fastest growing and award-winning software businesses

•

UK Government nominated ‘Made By Britain’ World-beating manufacturer

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Technology accreditations; The Institute of Chartered Accountants, CIPS

•

ISO 27001 Information Governance

•

20 years of IT supply chain domain experience on hand as a Probrand Group Company

•

Best-in-class competencies in; agile development of high performance software applications; large scale data management across a spectrum of differing formats, quality and sources; supply chain knowledge and process skills to boost real-life end user productivity

0121 605 2050

www.mercatosolutions.uk

Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

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Seamless integration - Multiple data feeds, from multiple sources, in multiple formats with a variety of update frequencies. We manage over 50 concurrent data feeds for customers. Helping everyone work from more accurate and reliable data, directly delivering faster, more accurate, higher net margin sales. Connecting many touch points of your indirect worldwide supply chain.

BUSINESS PROCESSES HOLDING YOU BACK? KnowledgeKube

Automate business processes fast. Create applications at reduced cost and risk. Drive efficiency. Transform productivity.

Create business applications and portals fast. KnowledgeKube is the go-to platform for rapid creation of applications and portals that automate business processes. Drive efficiency and transform productivity on a global scale. Without the time, cost and inherent risk of writing code, take control and rapidly innovate. A flexible platform environment and user friendly tools enable extensive configuration of data, forms, expressions, workflow and documents. Automate intelligence. Integrate data to and from anywhere. Connect and extend systems like SAP, Oracle and Salesforce as part of any process. Better processes deliver lower costs, increased revenues, inspired employees and ecstatic customers. Do difficult things quickly for unprecedented ROI.

Automate processes fast and transform the way you work.

Implement a solution that benefits business and IT management, IT developers and project managers alike. Tackle business pains with new applications and portals, covering almost every business process area you can imagine, including:

Pre-sales Get closer to customers and qualify needs better. From simple customer surveys and product configurators to fully interactive advisory experiences.

Trading Trade more profitably with stakeholders. Sell more, faster. Transactional vertical market portals that unlock growth.

Common Processes Unlock daily productivity and efficiency. Expenses claims, holiday requests, administration processes, procurement authorisation and more...

Specialist processes Complex tasks made simple. Business or role specific processes transformed.

Unprecedented ROI.

Low TCO. Results in days. • Create advanced applications quicker and at less cost • Introduce business efficiency and improve productivity fast • Unlock global scale with options for elastic Cloud deployment that meets demand instantly • Support scarce IT resources. Let the business innovate and deliver • Maximise existing systems and data. Connect and extend more efficiently • Design once, run everywhere. Desktop and mobile

Go create. Have it your way! A solution that supports business and IT teams.

Create

You Create

SaaS Store

We create and deploy your advanced applications

Private Cloud apps are created using our dedicated no-code implementation team. Actively participate in rapid application development and get business process apps quicker and at less cost. Automate new and re-engineer existing processes one app at a time.

You create and build your internal digital capability

Access the enterprise platform as an aPaaS solution coupled with training and support. Empower non-programmers and IT to unlock and scale your in-house digital capability. Without writing code, enable internal resources to quickly create, manage, deploy and distribute unlimited business process apps.

Ready to deploy apps

Buy from a library of ready-to-use business process apps proven to innovate specific sector and role based processes. With minimal configuration, customise to your business outcomes.

Expressions Accurate decisions, faster. Automate behaviour Build and add advanced mathematical rules that automate decision making and intelligence directly into your applications. Deliver personalisation, accuracy and consistency into business processes for better business outcomes.

Data Extract value and join the intelligent economy Collate, rationalise, add and extract value from your existing data repositories. Easily connect, extend and add value to existing systems and data sources. Integrate data in and out, to and from anywhere via an intuitive user interface.

Workflow Agile for faster outcomes Make relevant things happen faster. Configure multi-channel outputs with absolute flexibility - emails, calendar updates, data processing and more. Design first class workflows to collaborate and manage complex enterprise interactions.

Forms Simple. Flexible. Controlled Where life begins. A sophisticated and flexible builder enables advanced forms to be created and continuously improved. Introduce data capture fields for free text, drop downs, multiple selections and even machine learning. Easily introduce mandatory and optional decision making, field validation, look up lists and help text narrative.

Documentation Raise expectations Branded and personalised role driven documents rendered in multiple formats, a given. Whatever the requirements, generate high quality documents that support entire data gathering and output needs, however complex. Incorporate form and expression data plus external information. Render out through standard office applications. Distribute anywhere.

Global scale and results. “In less than a week we had built an application and secured £90,000 of cloud services quotes in minutes not hours of manual technical pre-sales effort.”

“Very quickly we automated a custom learning experience and Skills Award Scheme. We have 80% more students now doing the skills award as a direct result.”

Gareth Carr. Icomm Technologies

Richard Riley. Small Heath School

“Remarkable. A KnowledgeKube team of two built a working pre-sales portal from scratch within 2 working days. Bespoke development would have taken months.” Global Insurer

“We are able to market, manage and offer well-articulated insurance cover quicker, more accurately and with minimal cost.”

“KnowledgeKube is set to help Capita Insurance services and Cobalt become a market-changer by driving risk out of workflow processes around complex products.” John Holm. Capita

“KnowledgeKube enabled us to deliver guided pre-sales experiences to over 150 countries in 27 languages to a user base of over 25,000 companies.”

Reports and Business Intelligence Actionable insight delivered fast Drive real-time reporting on your process performance and status. Customise a drag and drop dashboard out-of-the-box for BI reporting on any element of your process and outcomes. Continuously improve processes and applications based on insights you glean. Globalisation Deliver outside home markets Support multiple cultures and markets in different languages. Models, expressions and document generation come fully globalised with built in localisation tools. Extensibility The freedom to innovate further Maximise existing investment in systems, libraries and custom code vital to on-going operations. Create question plugins, expression functions and custom workflow actions using Microsoft C#, VB.NET or even managed C++ with a high performance extensibility model.

“We have released thousands of sales man hours globally with KnowledgeKube pre-sales applications. These are more feature rich and were created 77% quicker and 87% cheaper than the alternative development resource. More consistent outputs and better processes have transformed customer experience.” Blue chip tech giant

“KnowledgeKube has delivered a veterinary trading portal targeting 6,000 vets, faster and cheaper than bespoke development.” Global Pharma Corp

Global hardware vendor

Trevor Roberts. Godiva

KnowledgeKube is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

@knowledgekube

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgekube.co.uk

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How?

Get closer to customers. Qualify and respond to needs better. From simple surveys and configurators to fully guided interactive buying experiences.

Transform pre-sales and advisory services. KnowledgeKube.

Automate business processes fast. Create applications at reduced cost and risk. Drive efficiency. Transform productivity.

Pre-sales and qualification of needs are difficult, expensive and often manual processes, particularly where detailed sales or product knowledge are required or highly configurable products and services are being offered. Transform your manual processes into interactive digital applications that enhance customer experience and reduce reliance on specialist sales expertise.

Unprecedented ROI. Low TCO. Instant results. • Deliver control, accuracy and efficiency into pre-sales estimates and processes, improving sales conversions with more consistent customer centric approaches • Remove manual intervention and lower the cost of winning new business. Improve net profitability by infusing efficiency into your processes • Maximise sales and marketing ROI by improving long and complex sales processes. Better qualify leads and increase conversions • Respond to market needs quickly to gain competitive advantage • Unlock your business’ potential by sharing pre-sales knowledge through on-line experiences and generate more revenue at lower cost

KnowledgeKube is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

PRE-SALES

KnowledgeKube is the go-to platform for rapid creation of applications that automate business processes. It has been deployed by many leading businesses to deliver an unmatched pre-sales solution. Product and service configurators Implement simple to use configurators for ‘off the shelf’ products, or more complex ‘configure to order’ products and services, such as build, order and manufacture of custom HGV’s or bespoke IT hardware systems. Administer complex rules-based guided experiences, offering only customer relevant selections, compatibility and stock availability. Calculators ROI and TCO calculations in customer proposals are a powerful sales tool, but they are often difficult and time consuming to deliver. Create simple to highly complex calculators. Provide customers with value added information. Trigger workflow to automatically generate custom outputs along with fully personalised and branded documentation. Telemarketing and sales decision support Script a sales team to cross-sell a relevant service or product with conviction. Empower them with deep levels of knowledge. More accurately qualify and match stakeholder needs and configure workflow to automatically generate outputs to nurture ongoing contact. Capture opportunities and better qualify leads. Adjust ‘live’ questions and configure intuitive guidance to sharpen yield. Customer service Better manage and accurately script contact centre advice provision with powerful and intelligent decision support tools. Prompt users to capture information quickly and respond appropriately. Unlock efficiency and scale. Empower consistent diagnosis, troubleshooting and resolution such as clinical decision support or new starter training. Surveys and market research Whether fact finding globally, profiling contacts locally or conducting needs analysis, improve contact engagement quality. Auto-collate responses, process and publish research quicker. Reduce survey build, publish and distribution times. Create powerful smart questionnaires that provide instant feedback to users and deliver rich outputs – PDFs, standard Microsoft Office or SharePoint formats.

“KnowledgeKube enabled us to deliver guided presales experiences to over 150 countries in 27 languages to a user base of over 25,000 companies.” Global Hardware Vendor

“We have built an on-line IT support contract configurator to enable inexperienced sales resources to deliver highly complex quotes more quickly, and sometimes more accurately, than experienced sales people. We’ve increased new business and reduced cost of sale dramatically.” Ian Callens. Icomm

“We have released thousands of sales man hours globally with KnowledgeKube presales applications. These are more feature rich and were created 77% quicker and 87% cheaper than the alternative development resource. More consistent outputs and better processes have transformed customer experience.” Blue chip tech giant.

“We’re able to respond rapidly to keep premiums attractive, driving automatic renewals. “

@knowledgekube

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Barrie Roberts. Godiva Insurance.

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgekube.co.uk

Trade more profitably with stakeholders. Sell more, faster. Transactional vertical market portals that unlock growth.

Transform the way you trade KnowledgeKube.

Automate business processes fast. Create applications at reduced cost and risk. Drive efficiency. Transform productivity.

Many businesses share the modern day problem of scaling marketing and business development without having huge investment budgets, a large salesforce or with the capability to train and up-skill staff. Whether you operate in a large scale, frequently changing market like IT or insurance, or are looking to unlock new sales fast in niche verticals like dentistry or veterinary practice, we can quickly build a bespoke trading portal. Self-manage ongoing changes and configuration, unlock new sales, maximise business flexibility and increase your profit margins.

Transform profits • Rapid ROI. Reduce time and cost of taking products and services to market. Shorten the sales cycle. Sell more, faster and without the costs of scale. • Gain competitive advantage. Quickly test new products and adjust attributes ‘live’. From insurance ratings to broker, intermediary and /or customer discounts. Accurately meet customer needs and beat the competition by responding to market dynamics fast. • Improve customer experience and loyalty. Needs more accurately met through a highly efficient own-branded experience from portal to personalised documentation. A superior end user and customer journey. • Broaden sales reach and grow revenues. Empower non-technical employees to up-sell complex products and services. Enable a receptionist to quickly build and transact an accurate customer dental plan or enable a vet to configure a complex well-being pet plan and amend an exclusive discount in a ‘live’ face to face consultation. • Sales with scale. Internet based portals enable access for multiple internal or external users across sales and franchise networks or direct to customers. Elastic cloud deployment instantly scales to meet demand globally if needed.

KnowledgeKube is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

TRADING

KnowledgeKube is the go-to platform for rapid creation of applications that automate business processes. We build trading portals quickly, all supported by a rich set of back office features, before handing control back over to your business users to modify, test and implement key trading processes online. Real-time product and service configuration by the business Effortlessly build and manage a catalogue of offers. Introduce keywords, expression results, rich text and images, hide and show single questions or question groups. Add validation, look-ups, help text and endorsements or dynamically calculate discounts, commissions, renewals and more. Powerful question and rating engine Questions refine customer needs, calculations and analytics validate and streamline the process and journey. Only offer what is relevant to the user or customer. Give your users options Give users and customers multiple, side-by-side product or service options such as comparative insurance quotes or highlight gold, silver and bronze alternatives based on a service plan. Branded experience Advanced content management tools enable full customisation of all branding, look and feel. Personalised documentation and communications Automate content rich, branded and personalised outputs for emails and documents. Author and render certificates, contracts, reports and more into multiple formats including PDF and Word for distribution, print and download. Role based access and functionality Control user access to relevant actions and content from admin to sales, to enable items such as differential pricing calculated by role. Preview everything Easily test and pilot fully featured user and customer experiences prior to promoting into live environments.

“KnowledgeKube is set to help Capita Insurance Services and Cobalt become a marketchanger by driving risk out of workflow processes of complex products.” John Holm. Capita

“Finally, vets are able to build their own plans and pricing structures ‘live’ to be more competitive and efficient in meeting complex customer needs, so increasing direct debit recurring business. Added value for veterinary practices and added value for us.” US pet well-being plan provider

“Patients have different care needs and allowances to cater for variable price services. Users now select the social care they need within their prescribed per head budget. We’ve connected multiple providers to multiple buyers based on budget authorisation. It is delivering a better service and saving money.” Social Care provider

@knowledgekube

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Seamless integration Connect, extend and optionally write back to data sources, services and systems. Close the sales loop, connect with CRM, finance and payment systems.

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgekube.co.uk

Unlock daily productivity and efficiency gains.

From expenses claims to holiday requests to more complex processes.

Streamline and automate your common business processes Automate business processes fast.

Common or everyday business processes are often the least efficient element of any working day. These are often repetitive manual processes or disjointed legacy applications. Automating and improving them unlocks time and cost savings, allowing businesses to focus resource elsewhere.

Create applications at reduced cost and risk.

However, prototyping and delivering solutions to these problems has traditionally cost more than continuing to complete the process manually, until now…

KnowledgeKube.

Drive efficiency. Transform productivity.

KnowledgeKube has broken the mould as a platform that enables business users to develop their own business applications that simplify common tasks at radically reduced cost. Simple, flexible, efficient.

Transform daily • Ever increasing ROI. The more you automate and improve, the greater the ROI. • Tailored to you. Automate processes how you work. KnowledgeKube is flexible, so applications can be tailored by you, by your own people or by our implementation team. • Quick delivery quick ROI. Deployed from the cloud for instant use. Streamlined configuration, changes made easily and in a controlled environment, so timeline and costs are compressed. • Absolute scalability. KnowledgeKube has already proven its scalability with applications that are in use world-wide in over 150 countries in 27 languages handling over $1bn of transactions per month. • Rapid and simple integration. Easily integrate with your existing data, services and systems to leverage your investments.

KnowledgeKube is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

COMMON PROCESSES

KnowledgeKube is the go-to platform for rapid creation of applications that automate business processes. The KnowledgeKube application portfolio is growing daily as more business uses are identified and more business applications are created. Every business area can benefit from automation of common and daily business processes, including Management, Health & Safety, IT, HR, Finance, Compliance and Sales & Marketing. Example common areas that can be transformed with KnowledgeKube Management processes

Flexible work tracking

Employee induction

Document management

Absence monitoring

Expense tracking

Performance management

Health & Safety management

Probationary reviews

Compliance procedures

Overtime reporting

Recruitment process management

Awards schemes and training programmes

Fraud detection

“By automating some of our common manual business processes we delivered considerable time savings for our advisors within a short development time frame and within days of implementation.” Central Government service provider

“We developed a working prototype with two Implementation consultants on site for two days, with no other work involved – a process that would previously have taken months. Remarkable. IT Director Global Insurer

@knowledgekube

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgekube.co.uk

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Need more? Develop your own business applications with the KnowledgeKube platform or get our implementation team to modify existing or create new applications for you.

Specialist tasks made simple. Organisation or role specific processes transformed.

Transform and differentiate with new ways of working KnowledgeKube.

Automate business processes fast. Create applications at reduced cost and risk. Drive efficiency. Transform productivity.

Business leaders often look to do things differently from their peers; identifying weakness in processes and implementing new ways of working whilst continuously improving and refining. Are you looking to differentiate your organisation or perhaps innovate processes specific to you, your sector or role? KnowledgeKube’s flexibility enables rapid configuration of customised line-ofbusiness applications to your exacting needs, automating manual yet specialised processes. Connect and extend existing systems, services and data sources too. If you are looking to automate and better control your procurement process, implement a high performance in-store advisory service, or improve a variety of other specialist processes, KnowledgeKube delivers quickly.

Streamline your business processes and increase productivity. • Unprecedented ROI. Low TCO. Instant results • Streamline and improve processes for better business outcomes, save time, save money • Be more productive and release time to focus on more strategic tasks • Maximise existing systems, services and data. Connect and extend with minimum risk and expense • Let the business innovate and deliver. Empower your IT department with a streamlined development platform; enable control and governance to be retained whilst relieving everyday development pressures.

KnowledgeKube is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

SPECIALIST PROCESSES

KnowledgeKube is the go-to platform for rapid creation of applications that automate business processes. It enables even the most complex and specialised processes to be automated and extended. Empower your users - Quickly and consistently deliver an interactive process that equips and guides users based on their role in the enterprise and the information they provide. Automate intelligence and decision making - Be more process focussed. Remove manual intervention by adding logic to your end user journeys. Progressively present only those elements that are relevant to the role or task at hand. Any business or role can feel the benefit - From niche single role-based processes through to the most complex global organisations, understanding and intelligence can be delivered faster and with better quality assurance. Integrate everywhere - Connect, extend or supplement enterprise level ERP and CRM systems such as SAP, Oracle and Salesforce. Integrate with systems and infrastructure provisioned in the cloud including BizTalk Services or custom applications within Microsoft Azure data centres.

@knowledgekube

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Enterprise procurement requisitioning and auction application. Single system joining disparate data, locations, processes, suppliers, customers and approvers. Product catalogue updated daily to enable online ordering from only approved supplier base. Integration with customers Active Directory and ERP systems. Purchasing and IT improved internal SLAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s by 20% and reduced admin costs of purchase orders by 70%.

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgekube.co.uk

@KnowledgeBus

www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk

0121 605 2050

81% of organisations could save money buying IT* Many still pay up to 673% margin

*Download the full report at: www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk

KnowledgeBus is a product of Mercato Solutions Limited. 45-55 Camden Street, Birmingham, B1 3BP

We managed to reduce our IT spend by approximately 10%. Sage UK Dave Banks, Senior IT Procurement Coordinator

Rapid Benchmarking KnowledgeBus IT Edition facilitates rapid benchmarking activity so you can negotiate and validate better deals with suppliers fast. It advises you of daily updated specification, trade guide price and stock levels on products held within the UK IT supply chain. It will help you save time and money.

Import lists Upload one-off checks or catalogues for automated population with buy-price, margin and stock.

Framework pricing Cross check buy-prices with your subscribed frameworks and channel pricing to validate point of best value. Auto alerts Set automatic notification of price/stock/End Of Line movements for your products to stay ahead of suppliers.

Spend Analysis Set periodic automated spend analyses on existing lists or interrogate new lists to police overcharging.

Request For Quotations Automated RFQs to shorten the purchase process.

Exchange rates & raw materials Access and chart stats to assess market patterns for more strategic purchasing.

Management single view Quickly unlock more from your budget with an intuitive tile based dashboard that delivers deep levels of information in a ‘single view’.

Total Integration Join-up your benchmarking workflow with third party solutions from ERP to cloud apps and Microsoft Office.

Procurement Hub Optional facility. Add a buy button. Validate prices then purchase at guaranteed fixed margins.

Big Data Drive informed procurement decisions with access to a terabyte of daily updated ICT market Business Intelligence, covering 150,000+ ‘live’ products from 2,500+ manufacturers across every category. Analyse an archive of data on over 600,000 products.

Collaboration Reduce duplication of effort by sharing outputs, alerts, product lists and related benchmark information across departments or a network of offices.

Benchmark on the go Conduct mobile procurement activity on tablets, iPads and smartphones.

Benchmarking Services Optional service. Let us deliver your spend analysis. Then use our deep IT supply chain insight to coach purchasers on best practice and how to achieve best value.

*KnowledgeBus IT Edition survey evaluated over 1,000 organisations with perceived supplier relationships of between cost +3-5%.

0121 605 2050

www.knowledgebus-it.co.uk 4279/P82-KBMAGDPS2/20150130

Your technology partner www.probrand.co.uk 0121 605 1000

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