tbtech July edition by Launched

tbtech publication £9.99 tbtech.co STORIES INSPIRED BY MODERN LIVING. JULY 2022

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In this issue

tbtech explores the advances in the cloud.

12 EDITORIAL 14

Meet the team We have been working behind-the-scenes to elevate the readers experience.

GAMING IN THE CLOUD

The future of banking in the cloud. 24 Today’s big banks face multiple challenges.

Making the cloud make sense. Where one goes, the rest will surely follow.

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The fashion world in the cloud.

28 36 SUCCESSFUL SALES

OPEN SOURCE CLOUD SOLUTIONS

The cloud in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic made clear the importance of the cloud for businesses across the globe.

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In this issue

The dawn of the multiverse.

With the early hype surrounding the metaverse turning into sustained excitement, it is unsurprising that projections say that it could be worth $800 billion by 2024.

NAVIGATION THE HYBRID MULTICLOUD

The advantages of distributed cloud. THE GREAT WORKPLACE RETURN

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HOW TO GO HEADLESS WITHOUT LOSING IT

Headless means different things to different businesses, so finding the best advice and applying it is not easy.

Balancing the cloud.

Cloudbusting for B2B and B2C. CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

100

Although cloud technology is not a new technology, its continuous progression has made it become the most effective delivery model for information and services using existing technologies.

ELEVATING CONTRACT CENTERS TO THE CLOUD

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Customer service channels have evolved. Now more than ever, instant responses are desired, and somewhat expected by consumers.

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Editorial

The cloud. What is it, and how does it work? The tech industry love to use buzzwords. The problem is that these terms don’t make it clear what they actually mean to consumers. ‘The cloud’ is one of those terms.

When users say their data is in the cloud, or that you can work in the cloud, simply means, it’s stored somewhere — lots of somewheres — and the network of servers find what you need and deliver it. The cloud refers to software and services that run on the Internet, instead of locally on your computer. Most cloud services can be accessed through a web

browser Another benefit of the cloud is that, because the remote servers handle much of the computing and storage, you don’t necessarily need an expensive, high-end machine to store your information.

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The advantage of the cloud is that you can access your information on any device with an internet connection.

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Meet your tbtech team. JOE ALLEN

LUKE CONRAD

PAUL WHITTALL

Joe has vast experience and knowledge accumulated and honed as a New Business Development Manager and Relationship Manager. Responsible for generating new business opportunities, looking after the growth of the company and strategy, sourcing new ventures and managing the company.

Luke is Digital Editor at TBTech and has history working closely with the worlds biggest tech brands to deliver campaigns. Luke is an advocate of tech across business and commercial applications.

Paul stops at nothing to innovate and create value for our customers. His mission is help those we work with to win in their markets. Passionate about delivering customer success and have had the pleasure of supporting many of the world’s leading technology brands for over 15 years.

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We have been working behind-the-scenes to elevate the readers experience.

JESSIE PETHRUS

WILLIAM MOORE

MATT ROBERTS

Driven by storytelling, Jessie’s writer-designer duo allows her to combine the power of synergy across different mediums. She believes a strong marketing strategy begins with understanding the brands mission and audience, together with the market, in order to position yourself as a leading brand, speaking directly to your clients and customers desires.

William’s passion starts and ends with design, timeless aesthetic and creative solutions. Having worked on numerous creative campaigns ranging from car manufacturers, leading tech companies, property investors as well as local artisans, the goal is to create the ultimate brand experience between the client and the consumer.

Matt is Operations Manager at TBTech, he has spent the last 15 years working with multinational IT companies building campaigns, GTM strategies, leading both Sales and Marketing teams to achieve organisational goals. With a love of computer science, history, and psychology he is an advocate for change, operational efficiency and automation. Value across the business for all our customers.

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Making cloud-based market data make sense.

Where one goes, the rest will surely follow. With more senior executives with strong profiles in cloud solutions joining financial institutions in recent years, there has been a shift towards adopting cloud-shared infrastructure as the standard for data delivery exchanges, trading systems and data providers.

This has caused a ripple effect in the market, as those that do not have a cloud presence will ultimately lose their competitive edge and become unviable. However, despite the popularity of the cloud, it is not without its limitations, as a vast number of these companies are struggling to initiate the migration of market data distribution due to a variety of business, monetary and technical reasons. Only by introducing event-driven architecture (EDA) into the equation will financial institutions truly experience the benefits of live data exchanges in the cloud.

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By Mathew Hobbis. Chief Architect FSI, Solace.

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Making cloud-based market data make sense. THE HIGH COST OF CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

One of the main barriers is the significant costs associated with implementing and maintaining cloud technology. Adopting cloudbased infrastructure requires a long-term view from a cost-saving perspective. Maintenance costs must also be considered. Cloud providers meter by data volume, so, given the immense volumes of data messages being exchanged (100 billion messages per day), the costs add up over time. Nonetheless, investing in the cloud is worthwhile, but only if it runs alongside a platform that allows for a real-time market data service in the cloud. THE PROMISE OF CLOUDDELIVERED MARKET DATA

Cloud-delivered market data holds many promises for those willing to make the switch. Its sophisticated capabilities better support servicing smaller clients as cloudbased technology does not require

large and costly infrastructure. Likewise, it can easily offload data to third parties or partner suppliers that can offer managed services at scale, ultimately making it easier to work out solutions to unforeseen challenges. Furthermore, businesses are increasingly adopting cloud solutions for specific use cases such as cryptocurrency trading or outsourcing data for commoditization purposes. THE CHALLENGES WITH CLOUD-DELIVERED MARKET DATA The foundations of the financial industry are built on fast, accurate and resilient market data exchanges and flows. Therefore, when implementing cloud-based solutions it is worth noting some of its delivery challenges. One of the main concerns in market data delivery is latency; the speed at which the data is being transferred. Recent research suggests that using native cloud

services, cloud-delivered data does not deliver in the latency stakes in comparison to noncloud-based solutions. Native cloud services posting latencies with an average of around 30 100ms. This indicates that using the cloud does not overcome the industry’s challenge with latency. Likewise, when reviewing the structure of message delivery in the cloud, what it offers in terms of scale, it lacks in terms of message order. This is because cloud models provide flexible scale by deploying message pathways horizontally. If the user requires more throughput, the service application creates an additional pathway, or partition, and pushes traffic across the multiple paths. While this scaling model provides vast capacity, the model suffers from order problems. As, when an additional pathway is created, the order of the message is no longer guaranteed. Cloud providers have attempted to resolve this by offering an ‘inorder’ delivery option, but this has

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been prohibited to single message pathways and as such, scalability is sacrificed. While cloud-based solutions offer businesses scalability, they fail to meet the industry’s requirements for speed, accuracy and robustness. Consequently, for financial services to maximize the cloud’s utility, it must be used in conjunction with event-driven architecture to enable live data exchanges. USING EDA TO DEPLOY A REAL-TIME MARKET DATA SERVICE IN THE CLOUD Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software design pattern that can decouple applications asynchronously to publish and subscribe to events via an event broker (modern messagingoriented-middleware). It can enhance the key variables in cloud-delivered market data such as robustness, scalability and latency as it ties data together in an ‘on premises’ messaging style.

This prevents data from being compromised by native cloud networks. The deployment of EDA provides a real-time market data service in the cloud that overcomes latency issues as it can sustain latencies of < 1.5ms at the 99.9th percentile within a cloud region with average latencies below 1ms. Implementing EDA into the cloud also enhances the resilience of data transfer as its capacity to offload data to third-party or partner supplies at scale makes it easier to resolve issues that may arise. Therefore, resolving unexpected issues and planning or implementing new initiatives becomes easier with cloud technology. EDA can also support interbroker routing, enabling users to connect brokers together to form a distribution network that supports publishing on one broker and subscribing to another. This then enables messages to flow from the publisher across to the subscriber. This can then support traffic

between regions of a cloud using the event brokers and allows data to move between clouds simply by deploying a PoP in another cloud and forming the interbroker adjacencies. Finally, implementing EDA ensures the accuracy of data exchanges as it overcomes message order disruption while delivering the performance required for market data delivery. EDA can provide better message latencies and preserve message order. The EDA platform can send to multiple subscribers with an equal latency spread, meaning that data flows fairly and in real-time. Overall, real-time data in the cloud is not only possible but necessary. In today’s exchanges, trading systems and data providers real-time market data is vital so that financial services can succeed by staying ahead of the competition and retaining customers.

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What will gaming look like when it goes into the cloud? One of the biggest hurdles in cloud gaming is the reluctance of ‘gamers’ to adopt the system, but developers and tech giants aren’t slowing down their move to the cloud. So, what is cloud gaming? How can we expect the landscape to look in a few years? And most importantly, what are the limitations?

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By James Ponter, Regional Head of Professional Services, Cloudreach

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What will gaming look like when it goes into the cloud? GAMING FOR EVERYONE

At its’ core, cloud gaming is the idea that everybody should have access to games no matter their geographical location or the hardware they possess. Most AAA games aim to push the boundaries of technology delivering more detailed graphics, larger and more immersive worlds, smarter AI, and seamlessly connected multiplayer experiences. That vision has a cost of entry, the price: owning the latest, high-powered hardware. High spec PCs can run games faster, more smoothly, with greater graphical detail. Not every release is well optimised and many games struggle to run on even mid-range PCs. There are even many instances of console releases being poorly optimised or under delivering due to the constraints of the system.

Cloud gaming offers an opportunity to break down this barrier, delivering high quality gaming experiences to lower spec devices. The only thing cloud gaming requires, is a screen and an internet connection… in theory.

For cloud gaming to work, games need to have near zero latency to provide the gamer with as smooth gameplay as possible. This means high quality audio/video streaming with as little interruption as possible and no drops in performance. Any cloud gaming infrastructure also needs to be able to run multiple instances of games without losing any performance. Any service currently offering a cloud gaming experience is likely running their system similar to a remote desktop or video streaming service. The games are executed and run remotely on a service provider’s dedicated hardware. The game is then streamed as video to the player’s device - this could be through an app or via a web browser. So where are the limitations?

WHAT MAKES A CLOUD SO POWERFUL? Modern games are meant to run on GPUs, they’re designed, built and optimised for the latest series of cards, aiming to extract every last bit of power from the card to push for better graphics at a higher frame rate. Here’s where the problems begin to arise. A video on demand service, while being very resource hungry, pales in comparison to the compute power needed to run games. Cloud gaming infrastructure as well as needing the raw power behind it also needs to be closer to the user. Even tech giant Meta admits that their ‘Data Centers alone cannot provide the level of ultra-low latency we require for cloud gaming’. Their solution is to rely on edge computing, putting the cloud gaming infrastructure closer to the users, deploying in larger population centres.

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Meanwhile the most popular GPU Manufacturer, Nvidia, who provide their own cloud gaming service limit not only the length of your gaming session, but the access to their higher end servers depending on the subscription model you subscribe to. Those paying more get access to servers using the latest 30-series Nvidia cards, allowing for higher quality gaming and making the most of lighting features like RTX.

WHAT DOES TH FUTURE LOOK LIKE? You can’t mention cloud gaming without looking at the effort being made by companies like Microsoft who continue to push their cloud offering bundled together with other popular services like Game Pass. For large publishers, the selling point of the cloud is the ability to play “next-gen games” without cumbersome installs and on a multitude of devices. It’s also hard to talk about cloud gaming without mentioning the impact the metaverse will have on its rollout and development. As businesses align their web3 offering and begin to explore the metaverse, many of the problems facing cloud gaming will be replicated in the metaverse. Raw computing power, edge applications, and network infrastructure will all need serious modernisation and upgrading to meet the demands of the metaverse, just as they will with cloud gaming.

Many developers will also see cloud gaming as a way to introduce people to the concept of the metaverse. Using systems in place as a sort of tech demo for what could be achieved. Expect to see serious investment in broadband infrastructure as well as collaboration with mobile network operators to help solve the issues of latency. As developers and users get to grips with cloud gaming, expect to see more publishers adopting cloud gaming as the way forward for their main titles. Added benefits such as reduced downtime and developer overhead will see companies leading the charge for cloud first approach to gaming.

For the users, surging costs in hardware and the relative scarcity of stock will also be a factor in drawing gamers into the cloud adoption. Currently many of the major benefits of cloud gaming are being overlooked due to latency issues. As these are fixed with improved networking expect to see fans pick up cloud gaming as natively as they would load their games consoles or PC.

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The cloud will shape the future of banking.

Today’s big banks face multiple challenges. Consumers expect the same digital convenience from their banks as from the likes of Uber and Amazon. Disruptive technologies have made it easier for new entrants to launch products fast and scale efficiently. New regulation and open banking are fuelling innovative solutions and business models such as banking as a service and embedded finance.

The new players are nimble, with no legacy technology to hold them back. To compete, banks need to break the shackles of incumbent systems. They need to assemble banking services and create new financial solutions rapidly.

They also need to look beyond their capabilities and open up to innovation happening everywhere. Composable services and an open, collaborative approach are crucial to success in this new banking paradigm.

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Prema Varadhan, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Temenos.

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The cloud will shape the future of banking. ECOSYSTEMS AND PLATFORMIZATION

Banks only need to look at some of the most successful B2B technology companies to understand the value of composability. These companies have taken a specific function and created an entire suite of software capabilities, accessed through a single platform. Think Salesforce for CRM, Oracle for ERP, Microsoft 365 for office functions and collaboration, or ServiceNow for workflow management. Once a business is plugged into these platforms, they have everything they need, whether they choose to enable all the modules at once, or gradually over time. And all without the burden of integrating, updating, localizing and innovating, which falls to the platform provider to do.

Compare this to the technologies that continue to dominate big banks. The picture here is of dislocated systems procured from multiple vendors, requiring complex integrations to enable process automation. Moreover, many of these legacy systems run on-premise, meaning banks must take on the cost, management and risks of hardware, networking and security. The cost of rewiring often outweighs the commercial opportunity. All the while, more nimble players attract customers with better services and experiences.

SPEED AND AGILITY A composable banking platform ensures that big banks can fight off the threat to their core business from disruptors. It can also help a bank develop new revenue streams by extending its own portfolio of services and products. That is what Banca Mediolanum Group has achieved with its creation of Flowe, a new digital-only bank designed to attract younger customers. Building a bank from the bottom up would have taken years in the past. Using an open, composable banking platform, the challenger bank went live in just five months, on-boarding 600,000 customers in its first half-year.

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Varo Bank offers a similarly compelling use case, having attracted four million new accounts in the 13 months since obtaining its US bank charter in July 2020. Behind their story is the improved agility from leveraging a cloud banking platform, allowing them to compose solutions quickly, that are built from best of breed capabilities. Their resultant lower operational cost (Varo estimates it serves customers at 25% of the costs of traditional banks) not only improves business margins, but also allows for more competitive solutions to be launched.

CLOUD-NATIVE ARCHITECTURE A composable banking platform should be free to run in any environment, including any public cloud or SaaS. It should also be database agnostic and leverage API architecture. These things don’t only matter for deployment, but also for the developer ecosystem that needs to be built around it. Developers are the lifeblood of a composable platform. Without their involvement in extending modules with rich new features, or building entirely new capabilities on top of core ones, the platform will be starved of the innovation it needs to stay relevant. The platform must also embrace the ability for partners to bring their own solutions, and integrate those easily. So the platform must be cloud-native, to enable containers, microservices and other modern DevOps tools.

There must be a sandbox environment to facilitate experimentation and testing, and a marketplace where developers can commoditize their work. Only through these open principles can a composable banking platform generate the breadth and depth of capabilities that it is designed for; the deployment flexibility to suit current and future needs; and the ease of use that enables fast adoption and then scale.

specific use-cases. Such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), payments, digital mortgages or deposit accounts. Talk of the need for breadth in a composable banking platform may lead some to presume this means large-scale, and complex adoption. The opposite is true. Breadth affords modularity, the chance to start small and deploy individual capabilities and then seamlessly add complementary functions or branch into new areas.

THE FUTURE IS COMPOSABLE For large banks, the adoption of composable banking is likely to be incremental. They cannot simply give up on their incumbent technology but must migrate gradually in order to run down their legacy investments. While challenger banks, fintechs and non-banks eyeing growth through embedded finance will want to scale fast, and adopt specific capabilities that have been pre-composed for

Profits generated through composable banking activity will ultimately dictate urgency. Banks and businesses that move first will be in pole position to analyze the commercial implications, double down, and reap the most benefit.

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Fashion and sustainability are working the cloud. How companies in fashion, gaming and sustainability are working the cloud to find new silver linings.

Leaders across sectors and markets know that in order to digitize quickly and effectively following Covid-19, they need

accelerated their cloud migration over the past 12 months. Ironically, the very speed with which cloud transformation is occurring makes

to accelerate their journey to the cloud. Even pre-pandemic, few activities in modern life were untouched by cloud innovation, from buying groceries to taking out insurance. According to a 2022 Foundry survey, this race to the cloud is accelerating at breakneck speed: 69% of organizations have

it increasingly difficult to grasp comprehensively how the world is changing. But it is having a profound effect on sectors consumers care deeply about, including gaming, fashion and sustainability.

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Jason Gregson, Head of AWS Programs and Operations, DoiT International.

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Fashion and sustainability are working the cloud. GAMING: CLOUD WILL BECOME THE DEFAULT ‘PLATFORM’

Gamers were some of the earliest adopters to the cloud. Players stream almost limitless gaming worlds to a similarly vast number of mobile and computer devices for set monthly fees, without necessarily knowing cloud technologies are making it possible. It eliminates the need for platform barriers such as specialized equipment or large amounts of storage space. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Nvidia, all key players in the cloud gaming space, are still working out how to balance a quality gaming experience unspoiled by network latency with a workable business model. When they get it right, and they will, the cloud could become the default platform for players. Indeed, the cloud gaming market is forecast to reach $ 9.4 billion by 2027, a CAGR of 48.3% from 2022.

The arrival of GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) is acting as a catalyst for this evolution. High gaming resolutions and high-quality system builds require graphic process units (GPUs) because they reduce the load on microprocessors and enhance the quality of all visual content. GPUaaS leverages cloud technology to enable hundreds of graphically intensive games to stream concurrently at high frame rates, reducing latency. FASHION: PREPARING FOR THE METAVERSE WITH A COLLECTION OF CONNECTED PRODUCTS The fashion industry is equally embracing cloud-enabled technologies. Not only with the boost to ecommerce and automation, but also the increasing volume of online and contact-free shopping.

Cloud is creating the opportunity for exciting innovations in this sector, with companies like Eon able use its cloud-based Platformas-a-Service to turn clothing products into intelligent assets — physical objects that are able to sense, record and communicate information about themselves and/or their surroundings. But how do we measure the realtime data the asset generates? Enter its digital twin: a virtual rendering of a physical product that enables brands to obtain data and insights critically required to foster and grow lasting relationships with their customers. Fashion and retail companies are connecting with customers using these intelligent items, and each one has a digital twin to track its lifecycle and value. The Eon Product Cloud IoT (Internet of Things) platform enables this true “connected products economy.”

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Additionally, cloud-based supplychain management solutions will surpass $11 billion by 2023, with cloud computing creating new avenues for collaboration between factories, distributors and companies in the supply chain. Twenty-four hour, real-time access to data and faster, more effective communication between links in the supply chain is suddenly a possibility. The digitization of many industries sparked conversations around the globe of the new virtual reality: the metaverse. And cloud-enabled augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies are making strong inroads in the fashion industry. Customers using the OBSESS platform are able to browse an online rendering of an actual store, recreated down to the music that consumers would hear there. The platform uses a 3D commerce cloud to give users a truly immersive shopping experience.

SUSTAINABILITY: CLOUD GOES BEYOND JUST REDUCING ENERGY CONSUMPTION Regardless of industry, geography or size, businesses face increasing financial and compliance burdens in relation to climate change. Managing increasingly expanding storage demands, powerful computing engines and the need for always-on customer services leads to businesses focusing on reducing their energy consumption. In the UK, businesses are set to achieve net zero by 2050, according to the UK government.

Migrating business infrastructure to the cloud can reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 60 million tons a year, but the cloud has applications for sustainability that extend beyond cutting energy consumption. Farmers often lack proper insights into their soil conditions, so they resort to ad-hoc irrigation and fertilizer application, wasting valuable resources and limiting yield potential — but agricultural companies can use sensors to get data from the soil itself. When sent to a centralized platform running on the cloud, on-premise data centres, which are high in energy consumption, are not required.

ECLIPSING THE COMPETITION Ultimately, the cloud is a hypercharged space for innovation to take place. It is easy for industries to be overwhelmed by the open framework for infinite ways to grow, evolve and build that the cloud represents. By adopting the founding principles, such as use on-demand, elasticity and infinite scalability, the gaming, fashion and sustainability industries are already maximizing myriad routes to evolve and succeed. Making use of the cloud does not guarantee greatness, but, with the right support and applied in the right direction, harnessing the power of the cloud does.

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The benefits of open source cloud solutions.

As businesses came under pressure during the Covid-19 pandemic to remain afloat, many sought new technology solutions to better support the business and help accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. Because of this, cloud adoption skyrocketed - and it is not a temporary trend. Gartner forecasts that businesses will continue to explore cloud options, with investment in public cloud services set to reach $482 billion in 2022, clearly demonstrating the continued value cloud computing has to modern businesses looking towards the future.

Alongside cloud computing, open source is also seeing growth in its use, with 77% of businesses reportedly increasing their use of the technology by 2021. Looking at the use of open source in the cloud specifically, proprietary cloud vendors do offer equivalent solutions, but to varying degrees.

It’s rare for these businesses to fully open their services, meaning their customers don’t benefit from the range of services open source can provide. Open source cloud solutions should be the first choice for businesses looking to advance their own cloud capabilities as they offer clear advantages, such as reduced vendor lock-in and improved security practices.

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By Tytus Kurek. Product Manager. Canonical.

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The benefits of open source cloud solutions. REDUCING VENDOR LOCK-IN

THE BENEFITS OF OPEN SOURCE FOR BUSINESSES

For example, if an organisation overwhelmingly relies on a single vendor or a cloud solution, it can fall victim to vendor lock-in. This puts the company in a potentially difficult position because if a vendor increases its prices or breaks the continuity or quality of its service. Businesses face a difficult decision - if they want to switch, they can only do so by incurring substantial costs or disruption to businesses. Worse, it is especially dangerous for growing businesses because the unique solutions that made sense when they first started out often no longer work as their company grows.

Once implemented, open source cloud solutions have several business advantages. One of the most appealing advantages stems from financial benefits. If organisations adopt an open infrastructure, they don’t have to pay vendor licence fees, which can be a substantial expense that cuts into company overheads. Additionally, compared to proprietary software solutions, the cost of support and maintenance is dramatically lower than equivalent services. Saving on central business costs frees up capital to be repurposed into other areas of the business, such as R&D and business transformation, which can have a positive impact on innovation and productivity.

A clear resolution is to rely on open source, because it can be modified and distributed freely, which means the user cannot be tied down to one distributor. Businesses can simply switch solutions or adapt their current options as they scale up or down, depending on their current focuses and operations.

Another advantage is the rate of innovation, which greatly improves as a company explores cloud solutions. Open source is a hub for innovation because of its reliance on community collaboration and engagement. By sharing their knowledge and experience, communities can produce new resources and opportunities for the cloud and the businesses that rely upon it. This is especially valuable as business demands are becoming increasingly complex. With open source technologies, companies can develop their own solutions rather than trying to alter the one-size-fits-all applications of proprietary vendors. The resulting cloud solution can be far more adaptive, compatible and resilient to modern business needs.

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IMPROVING SECURITY WITH OPEN SOURCE The ongoing shift towards cloud is naturally being accompanied by an increasing concern around cybersecurity. Over the past few years, we have seen larger cloud vendors hit with a number of security issues, so much so that the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority began to increase its supervision of major cloud providers. While open source code is not inherently safer than closed-source software, it can be immediately patched thanks to broad community coverage. For example, open infrastructures offer organisations full transparency, as they can see the bare bones of any cloud service or software and understand the realities of its security. Developers can then have a greater sense of where potential breaches may occur and then build appropriate security measures into the foundations of the cloud. Further, community involvement translates to higher levels of vulnerability

disclosures, which means they can usually be addressed and patched quickly. This means that open source cloud solutions can be both flexible and resilient to increasingly sophisticated and adaptive threats, greatly reducing the concerns developers may have around unknown vulnerabilities. In comparison to proprietary software, open source solutions offer a compelling and competitive alternative. Fundamentally, they provide significant financial savings which can be funnelled into other areas of the business, further encouraging companywide innovation and helping to address complex business challenges. With a reliance on technology and increasing competition in today’s business world, organisations should be looking to equip themselves with the most effective cloud infrastructure available. Increasingly, open source solutions offer the key to a secure and bright future.

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Great content requires successful sales and marketing alignment.

In many organizations, the sales team are on the front-line using content the marketing team has created. But as is often the case, the content isn’t what the sales team necessarily needs, whilst marketing teams remain unaware of this issue.

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By Nikki Dawson, Head of EMEA Marketing at Highspot.

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Great content requires successful sales and marketing alignment. Without this visibility not only do marketers not know if the messages they send out are working effectively, but they also have no control over the marketing content that’s very often heavily edited within other departments.

that add value to each other and their organization. It’s imperative that these two teams are properly aligned and collaborate effectively in order to drive ROI for the business.

So, what’s the answer? AI enhancing human collaboration.

Both teams face barriers to efficient working. When sales fall short of expectations, marketing assumes it was a result of poor execution of an otherwise outstanding rollout strategy. In turn, the sales departments assume that marketers are out of touch with what customers are genuinely thinking and aren’t providing them with the right content.

IT’S ABOUT COLLABORATING, NOT JUST PEACEFULLY COEXISTING

In short, each group frequently undervalues and misunderstands the contributions of the other.

This then creates ‘content chaos’ whereby no one truly knows what version of an asset is being presented to the customer. This ultimately undermines any content or messaging strategy a business is trying to land.

In reality, marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. They offer separate functions within an organization but still need to work in conjunction with each other in order to be successful. As it stands, it’s no longer enough for these departments to simply coexist. Instead, they need to work together, sharing insights

Marketers typically generate collateral and content for sales, and while the sales team closes leads, marketers are left in the dark about what worked and what didn’t. As a result, there’s no way of truly knowing what marketing assets are doing well and where time and budget could be better spent. Just 65% of content developed by marketing is ever

used by sales, most of it wasted because it’s not deemed useful. This lack of cohesion has a negative impact on business performance. We’ve seen both teams stumble (and the organization suffer) because they are out of sync with each other, especially during the research and consulting stages of strategy building. In contrast, there is no doubt that when sales and marketing work well together, businesses see significant improvements in key performance measures. In fact, according to Forrest, companies that align sales and marketing teams achieve 24% faster growth rates and 27% faster profit growth. In order to be most effective, generate more leads and close more deals sales and marketing must have a symbiotic relationship. Sales enablement facilitates this process by delivering the correct content to the right people at the right time and providing invaluable insights to learn from along the way.

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WHY MARKETERS NEED TO HAVE A SEAT AT THE REVENUE TABLE Having a seat at the revenue table and knowing how their content and campaigns contribute to a deal and revenue allows marketers to obtain valuable insight into one of their most powerful channels their go-to-market (GTM) sales team. They can then understand what messages are resonating with audiences and how they can replicate them in order to increase ROI and add value to the time spent creating assets. The critical task required for sales teams to predict leads, pipelines and revenue with confidence should not be handled exclusively by them. Instead, both departments should have a place at the revenue table to be able to discuss ways in which marketing and sales can work together and align their efforts to drive ROI.

This ideal alignment can be easily achieved through sales enablement. These solutions not only give both the sales and marketing teams full visibility over assets and the revenue they drive but also help to bridge the gap between content creation and sales calls SALES ENABLEMENT IS MORE THAN JUST A ‘NICE-TO-HAVE’ SALES TOOL Put simply, sales enablement platforms offer so much more than just a useful sales tool. They are a full solution that helps to connect your sales and marketing teams and technology across the sales cycle to great success for businesses. This can include assisting with content organization, aligning your sales and marketing teams, and even making onboarding new salespeople simple and painless.

SUMMARY: If you’re not employing a sales enablement platform from the get-go, you’re behind the curve. Marketing and sales teams need to work from one source of truth and having the visibility of one another’s team’s success, will allow both to see their impact on ROI and have the ability to replicate this in the future. Overtime, revenue generation will be seen as a collective responsibility thanks to greater access to insights providing businesses and their brands the inside track, they need to unleash their full potential.

June 2022

Engineering firms are under attack. An attack from ransomware - but hybrid cloud storage can help. Ransomware is a particularly insidious form of malware that can have devastating consequences for engineering firms. In fact, AEC firms are particularly attractive targets for ransomware attackers. These firms are also more likely to have employees working remotely, and maintain a shared information environment with a range of outside contractors on job sites.

This scenario creates additional entry points for attackers to exploit. With a distributed workforce, sophisticated cyberattackers are ready to exploit the security cracks exposed by this work model. They know how to gain access to a network; through weakly-secured remote locations

and can move quietly and laterally to gain access to increasingly sensitive projects. As more work moves toward employees and clients in remote locations with their less than robust security controls, traditional security models are much less effective.

June 2022

By Aron Brand, CTO of CTERA.

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June 2022

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Engineering firms are under attack. One example is the case of S.J. Louis Construction, a national contracting company based in Rockville, Minnesota. When one of the regional offices of S.J. Louis was hit with a ransomware attack, the attackers demanded more than $100,000. Fortunately for the company, they had previously deployed a corporate hybrid cloud storage solution. This allowed them to instantly “roll back” to a previous version of their data from the cloud, effectively undoing the ransomware from their system and preventing significant disruptions to their business operations. S.J. Louis had the foresight to modernize its backup and data storage infrastructure . However, what is more common today is a backup and restore approach that is dated, error-prone, tedious in its remediation process, and goes offline frequently. What’s interesting (and unfortunate) is that engineering firms often say that a ransomware attack is what brought to light the weaknesses in their backup plan. These firms are actually caught off guard when ransomware reveals itself and then

find that recovering their vital data, if even possible, is an expensive and time-consuming process. The threat of cybercrime reaching an organization grows more likely with each passing day. We’re constantly playing a game of catch-up - updating and modernizing the solutions and security policies to keep these bad actors at arm’s length for as long as possible. The increasing incidence of attacks puts legacy backup solutions to the test and with global businesses being breached with regularity, we know these solutions are not entirely up to the task. Engineering firms need to rethink their security procedures and solutions and look for hybrid cloud storage - a new class of self-defending, intelligent storage solutions that bring together cloud and on-premises storage. When it comes to ransomware and disaster recovery. A new strategy is needed, one that is based on three major innovations in data storage: Continuous data protection, instant disaster

recovery, and proactive disaster prevention. This is why hybrid cloud storage is superior to traditional backup solutions: CONTINUOUS DATA PROTECTION Traditional backup solutions are typically based on a backup schedule, meaning that there is a fixed point in time when the backup is taken, typically off business hours. This means that recovering from ransom attacks invariably results in lost data. With hybrid cloud storage, however, files are continuously shipped to the cloud. In other words, if you have a file that you’re working on, and you make a change to it, that change is immediately captured and stored. The benefits of having continuous data protection are that it allows you to recover from data loss much more quickly and easily, and it allows you to recover to any point in time. For example, if your data was damaged by ransomware, you can simply revert to a very recent previous version, minimizing the amount of lost work.

June 2022

INSTANT DISASTER RECOVERY

PROACTIVE DISASTER PREVENTION

Hybrid cloud storage provides instant disaster recovery, as the data is stored in the cloud and can be accessed immediately in the event of an attack. With traditional backup solutions, however, the data needs to be restored from the backup, which can take time and may not be possible if the backup itself has been corrupted by the ransomware.

Hybrid cloud storage is also proactive in preventing a disaster, as it can employ AIbased anomaly detection to alert on ransomware attacks and automatically block them in realtime. This contrasts with traditional backup solutions, which can only provide a passive defense against ransomware.

How is this instant recovery of terabytes of data from the cloud even possible? The trick is that hybrid cloud storage systems can perform the recovery process in the background, while users already have full access to the data. Whenever a user accesses an already-recovered portion of the data, it is immediately accessible, and whenever a user accesses an unrecovered portion, the data is recovered from the cloud in real-time. This process can be completely transparent to end users, who will not notice any downtime.

We are at the dawn of a new era of intelligent data protection where storage solutions that meet the needs of engineering firms, as well as other organizations, are able to head off ransomware before it embeds itself in a network. The S.J. Louis case highlights the importance of having a robust and intelligent data storage solution in place in order to protect against ransomware attacks. Traditional backup and restore solutions are simply not adequate in the face of these sophisticated threats.

Continuous data protection, instant disaster recovery, and proactive disaster prevention are key features that engineering firms should look for in a data storage solution. These are storage solutions that proactively protect from ransomware and keep their businesses running in the face of disaster.

DELIVERING EV CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE TO MEET 2030 NEEDS.

Those responsible for the deployment of EV infrastructure need to understand their user’s needs, which should inform long-term roll-outs, and design procurement processes that incentivise charging point providers to deliver quality long-term deployments.

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June 2022

Records – as any sports star will tell you – are there to be broken. Some are broken with great fanfare while others pass with hardly a notice. One of those unnoticed records was broken last year, as over $5 trillion was spent on publicly disclosed mergers and acquisitions (M&As) deals. That is nearly double the UK’s GDP. 2022 is unlikely to reach such heights, however, that does not mean M&As are not still happening.

Since the start of the year, we have already seen AMD acquire Pensando for $1.9 billion, and Prologis announce its acquisition of Duke Reality for $26 billion. Fueling these M&A deals is the fact that every business in every sector needs skills, technology, and more infrastructure. These are challenges that will not be disappearing soon, so you can expect more M&A deals to take place.

June 2022

9.58 By Nick Heudecker, Senior Director of Market Strategy at Cribl.

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Records are there to be broken. NOW THE WORK BEGINS

On paper this sounds like great news for all involved. Shareholders unlock more value, the business gains skills and technology it was previously lacking and new opportunities are created. However, for those working behind the scenes, the story is quite different. The list of tasks that need to be completed is large and growing. Whether it’s HR, sales, customer service, or finance, there are a lot of tasks that need to be completed quickly, and correctly if an M&A is to be a success. One area where stress levels run particular high is with IT and security teams. Consolidating multiple tech stacks and cloud environments together is a task fraught with risk. Make even the smallest mistake and it can quickly lead to outages, lost revenue, and even regulatory fines.

Regulatory compliance is an especially big minefield for enterprises operating in the UK and EU. In the EU, with GDPR in place, losses of personal data can lead to huge fines that quickly evaporate any financial benefits created by an M&A. While the UK’s recent announcement of its Data Reform Bill will create a level of uncertainty until it is finally approved by parliament. In both regions, however, the need to make any data breaches public can have a huge impact on the value and success of an M&A deal, as was famously seen with Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo. The risks then for IT and security teams trying to integrate multiple IT and cloud infrastructures are huge. On top of this, there is the fact that the way infrastructure evolves and develops over time, which rarely makes integration a straightforward process. Often IT teams run parallel environments while they consolidate connections, merge data silos and account for access points.

All these actions create complexity and silos data, which is a major challenge for IT teams that need to carefully knit everything together, and ensure security is maintained throughout. Once an M&A deal is signed, in an instant, the attack surface that IT and security teams need to manage is doubled. Making matters worse is the fact that often there is data stored at the edge. All this data needs to be accessed and discovered if it is to be protected, which is especially important if it holds personal and sensitive information. With data dispersed across multiple storage solutions, getting a full picture of the situation can be incredibly hard.

June 2022

Unfortunately for IT and security teams, the tools that are often used to help manage data and consolidate infrastructure are simply not fit for purpose and up to the task. Providing only limited capabilities, the tools on offer have only a narrow scope for the collection of data that is needed. Often this results in data at the edge being ignored or forgotten as it cannot be easily accessed. With the level and value of M&A deals hitting new heights, the lack of access to the right tooling cannot continue as it risks leaving IT and security teams exposed if the worst does happen.

NEW TOOLS ARE NEEDED This no longer has to be the case. New tools are now emerging that are designed to help with the tasks IT and security teams face during an M&A deal. One such technology is observability pipelines, which make it much easier to manage, process and optimize data in the cloud, on-prem, and at the edge. Being able to discover and process observability data right at its source, these tools, are finally giving IT and security teams the tools, they need to carefully consolidate IT and cloud infrastructures. In fact, observability pipelines can explore logs, metrics, and application data right at its egress point, allowing it to be interrogated close to its source before it is decided how it should be processed, managed, and stored. Reducing the risk of a data breach and resulting fines and reputation damage, fine-grained controls can be used to redact, filter, mask, and even reduce data

volumes. By taking these actions as observability data is in transit, attack surfaces can be eliminated, decreasing the risks associated with an M&A deal. Enhancing their use further, observability pipelines can also be run in the cloud and therefore managed from any browser, anywhere. This gives teams both the tools and flexibility needed to carefully consolidate cloud environments during an M&A. Last year saw records broken for the amount of money spent on M&A deals, however for all this investment to achieve its ROI, enterprises need to ensure their IT and security teams have the tools to manage the consolidation process correctly. With so much at stake, investing in tools such as observability pipelines can be the best decision made for an M&A. Reducing security risks, simplifying tasks, and speeding up the completion of a deal, will increase the success rates of M&As.

June 2022

Now is the moment to write agility into your organisation’s DNA. With an increasingly uncertain future, resilience, adaptability, and flexibility have never been more important to businesses. Morgan Stanley’s co-president suggests we could be facing a paradigm shift in the economy, with the war in Ukraine, inflation, and interest rate increases marking a sharp departure from the post-2008 crash status-quo.

June 2022

By Pip White, Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMEA at Slack.

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Now is the moment to write agility into your organisation’s DNA. Yet it’s not only the economic status-quo that’s shifting. Work itself is fundamentally changing. And whether we enter a recession or not, organisations can come out of this moment stronger. But to do so, as business leaders, we have to nurture agility. Agility means something different for every organisation and every employee, yet there are common elements: a willingness to experiment with new technology, the embracing of flexible approaches to work, and a responsive mindset that can pivot to meet new challenges are all key. Rightly, the vast majority - 69.5% of UK businesses according to The Economist Impact, have recognised the importance of agility and made tangible investments in it. But where should those investments be prioritised next in order to hardcode agility into our DNA? As we emerge from the pandemic era into new challenges (and toward new opportunities) there are two areas we must focus on

driving agility in particular: a new approach to the office, and the processes that power it. REBUILDING THE OFFICE ON AGILE FOUNDATIONS While there’s no crystal ball that will reveal the exact future of the office, one thing is for certain: for agile companies, the prepandemic approach won’t be making a return.

This doesn’t mean every company will abandon the physical environment. However, to enable more agile ways of working we will see organisations rethinking how they put the square footage available to better use - to make the biggest impact for employees. It’s clear that bringing everyone together—requiring long and expensive commutes—simply to have them sit in rows, heads down using their laptops, is a waste of everyone’s resources. Instead, we need to start experimenting with how we use physical space to genuinely foster a more agile approach. That might

mean removing executive offices, reducing desks and instead devoting that space to areas for groups—for example, expansive and open spaces for large allhands meetings, rooms dedicated to interactive brainstorming, space for standing meets or areas for social gatherings. The goal should be to transform the physical workplace so that it adds value to specific activities that benefit from it, rather than simply offering someone another place to sit at a desk for 8 hours. The future physical office will be built around true face-to-face activities, not face-to-screen in a bigger room. AGILITY, ASYNCHRONICITY AND AUTOMATION IN THE DIGITAL HQ Almost every business is currently questioning how they can best use their physical offices. But what of the work that does require us to be at our desk, using our devices? The reality is, for most of us the majority of our work today, both individual and collaborative, needs to take place digitally.

June 2022

For that we can drive agility in other ways, by embracing the potential of the digital HQ—a place that is connected, flexible, and inclusive for everyone to be a part of and contribute to, regardless of their location. The digital HQ is still something organisations are learning to define, and not all digital HQs are equal. Too often, businesses have tried simply moving the physical HQ online. Emails replace conversations and video calls replace meetings. This is the worst of both worlds—agility falls as the natural flow of information is limited, quick conversations turn into 30 minute calls that fill calendars, and employee engagement suffers. Building an agile digital HQ requires a more intentional approach and two elements are key: asynchronicity and automation. Asynchronous working means enabling teams to collaborate without needing to do so ‘live’. It boosts flexibility, helping people to choose how they participate

and contribute their best work. That might mean using short audio or video clips that can be listened to at any point replacing long meetings at set times. Or channel based messaging being used to break down barriers and collaboration silos. Agility is about embracing flexible approaches to work, and asynchronicity is key to that as it frees work from unnecessary time or space constraints. Automation meanwhile can make that work much more pleasant and productive. Low-and-no-code solutions in the digital HQ give everyone a chance to automate tasks and reduce repetitive manual processes. At HSBC, for example, developers embraced the potential of the digital HQ, building a custom bot to bring together GitHub, Jenkins, and Jira Cloud to operate entirely within their channel-based messaging platform. It enables workers to simply share commands with the bot, ultimately helping the team to use a wider range of people and skill sets, without having to train everyone on each

separate platform. The result is a more agile and streamlined way of working. PREPARING FOR AN AGILE FUTURE Work is in a malleable state today. The past few years broke assumptions and have opened up new possible futures. It’s now up to us as businesses, whether new startups or centuries old institutions, to take the initiative and rebuild work around agile approaches that benefit us all. Because whatever challenges lie ahead, by transforming the office, investing in the digital HQ and embracing the benefits of asynchronous and automated work, we will be more than ready to tackle them.

June 2022

The cloud in 2022: the rise of the hybrid model. The COVID-19 pandemic made clear the importance of the cloud for businesses across the globe.

First, we had on-premise, then we added some cloud based applications – and now, as businesses seek to get the best of both worlds, we have hybrid IT. A hybrid model can mean different things to different people, but in general it refers to when a business utilises a mix of on-premise servers with the cloud, whether that be public or private. More specifically, applications are either using both platforms to deliver their workload, or a cloud-based application is connected to an on-premise application for further processing. This means that application support teams need to be able to monitor both platforms and see the effect of the combined hybrid estate. This is where the problems start.

June 2022

By Guy Warren, CEO at ITRS Group.

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The cloud in 2022: the rise of the hybrid model. Hybrid IT is quickly becoming businesses preferred IT infrastructure. In fact, research has shown that 61% of businesses globally have a hybrid cloud model in place. However, managing a hybrid IT estate does not come without its challenges. The complex nature of managing multiple systems means that financial institutions need to have a comprehensive strategy in place to ensure they maximise the benefits of both platforms. CLOUD VERSUS ON PREMISE At its initial conception, the main driver behind firms choosing to adopt a hybrid model was practicality. As they migrated from on-premise servers to the cloud or deployed new applications in the cloud, operating a hybrid model allowed them to manage this transition carefully and gradually – it’s simply not possible to migrate to the cloud overnight. The flexibility of renting in the cloud helped with faster provisioning of new servers, and helped with short term peak loads. However, the cost of cloud is not

always appreciated at the outset. It is often more expensive than the fixed on-premise estate. Nevertheless, operating such a model has offered businesses benefits that can’t be matched by opting for either a fully cloud or on-premise solution. The unparalleled flexibility and scalability of hybrid IT means that it has become more than just a stepping stone.

Due to each platform unique benefits and capabilities, certain applications are better suited to the cloud whilst others are better run on-premise. For example, financial exchanges require low latency networks for trading due to microsecond delays impacting profitability per transaction, meaning it’s better for this type of business-critical infrastructure to be managed on-premise. Whereas the cloud is far more scalable, meaning that if financial institutions are expecting a surge in demand – such as at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a significant increase in users of online banking services

as in-person branches shut down in the face of global lockdowns – firms can easily scale up to meet this service level. Having both systems in place means that businesses can adapt their IT systems to levels never previously experienced. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL The distinct nature and competencies of both platforms means that a one size fits all approach is simply not an option when it comes to managing and monitoring them. Dynamic cloud environments can be a challenge for older tools which don’t like changes to the configuration on a regular or shortterm basis. To combat this, many firms have invested in multiple monitoring tools, each focused on a particular technology and platform. However, this means that each system is operating in silo, leaving IT managers without a complete overview of their IT estate. Not only does this make ongoing

June 2022

system monitoring difficult for IT teams, but their ability to mitigate and plan for outages risks is severely hampered. Outages can have serious implications for a firm’s bottom line, in an exchange for example, even a millisecond outage can result in customers losing millions due to information being outdated. Ensuring operational resilience is therefore paramount, not least due to the financial impact but also as a result of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) bid to crack down on firms for lack of system resilience. The FCA’s operational resilience regulations – CP19/32 – which come into force at the end of March, have significantly raised the stakes when it comes to preventing outages. Whilst the regulator won’t be knocking on the door every time one occurs, firms need to show that they have the right monitoring systems in place to protect consumers. For those firms who have complex hybrid estates, no exception will be made when it comes to not having the right systems in place.

UNIFIED MONITORING To counteract this difficulty, firms need to invest in unified monitoring systems. Having one for storage, one for application performance and one for networks prevents IT teams from being able to fully understand what is happening at a high level at any point in time. A single bird’s eye view will not only help firms understand the capacity of their estates; but should a problem occur, getting to the source of it will be far easier when all operations can be viewed in one place. Few tools can monitor all they necessary elements well, so integration between tools is key. As long as hybrid IT dominates, firms must invest in the right monitoring tools to ensure that they manage them effectively. Constant monitoring and adaption is the only way to ensure alwayson systems remain resilient and consumers are always protected in today’s fast paced financial landscape

June 2022

The dawn of the metaverse.

With the early hype surrounding the metaverse turning into sustained excitement, it is unsurprising that projections say that it could be worth $800 billion by 2024. For marketers, the metaverse will throw up issues that will seem familiar – measurement, brand safety – in an environment that has many new content forms. While speculating exactly what shape the metaverse will take is tough, what is clear is that marketers will need to harness the lessons learnt in web2 to tackle new issues in web3.

June 2022

Tony Marlow is the CMO at Integral Ad Science (IAS).

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The dawn of the metaverse.

The dawn of the metaverse brings with it new content forms for marketers and brands to wrap their heads around. The vision of the metaverse as a fully immersive world accessible by all may be some way off, but AR and VR-enabled experiences are already impressing. In fact, 3D measurement capabilities for ingame advertising may be the first hurdle for marketers, as it seems the more natural stepping stone into a fully immersive experience, and gaming is undoubtedly a big driver for wider metaverse adoption. In essence, enabling the capabilities for current gaming environments will still be relevant in virtual ones down the road.

While user intent now may be tracked by clicks and mouse tracking, the metaverse will be able to take into account a whole range of other signals. For example, a marketer may be able to measure a consumers’ body movement in the metaverse to gauge engagement and interest in a piece of content. But as brands navigate this new ecosystem, they will need to remain diligent. Where consumers go, bad actors usually follow. As the industry saw with the burgeoning of the video content market just over a decade ago, ad fraud is a serious risk, leading to overinflated stats and wasted budget.

To stop these same issues repeating in web3, industrywide quality and measurement standards should be built into the very foundation of the metaverse. It is imperative that we learn the lessons from the previous iteration of the internet and implement measures to make new digital environments safer and more secure for both brands and users from the outset. But ad fraud is not the only problem likely to migrate from web2 to web3. The fast-moving, interactive, hyper-visual new environment of the metaverse will create further safety issues and brands may run the risk of appearing next to inappropriate content. On top of this, consumer concerns over privacy will likely grow leading to ever-tightening privacy legislation.

June 2022

Brand safety and suitability solutions can be the answer to both these problems. This powerful targeting method not only keeps brands safe, but provides a cost efficient way to reach target audiences, by placing advertisements in environments that are deemed both safe and contextually relevant by advanced AI. Ultimately, it’s still early days for a fully fledged digital advertising ecosystem in the metaverse. We’re still at the ‘test and learn’ phase, but it’s important to get a head start. Undoubtedly, if it’s where users go, marketers will follow; and the need for verification and digital media quality will not be far behind.

Making the metaverse a safer place for both brands and users will take more than tech solutions. The advertisers will need to collaborate in order to create standardised guidelines and a shared language in which to talk about brand safety and suitability in this brave new world – much like what GARM is doing now. The metaverse offers endless possibilities for brands. But in order to take full advantage, we must take heed learnings of the past and build a new environment that all are able to enjoy.

June 2022

Migrating to the cloud. Two years prioritzing business’ durability during a pandemic have showcased a remarkable show of operational questions for most businesses – and inspiring chances for some. For the large majority, technology in addition to operational schemes in 2022 look dissimilar to the strategic path defined pre-2020. Whilst numerous organizations understand that change and investment are both behind schedule and essential, questions flourish when it boils down to formulating a post-pandemic IT model, mainly when capital resources are overextended.

In addition, two years is a significant amount of time in technology and organisations now face not only the technical concerns of creaking equipment today, but also on the horizon of SAP ECC going out-of-support in the next 5+ years. What is right now a business, competitive and financial terrain, numerous organizations are unsure how to move forward. Could it be possible to alleviate the technology problems, in the meantime, driving palpable merit? Can an organizations find the balance needed to fix very particular problems together with often pressing operational problems with a strategic outline for migration to SAP S/4HANA?

June 2022

Robert MacDonald, Innovation and Technology Manager, Absoft.

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Migrating to the cloud.

A migration to the cloud can convey monetary as well as operational perks whilst putting together future digital transformation, suggests Robert MacDonald, Innovation and Technology Manager, making certain the correct mix of technical and functional SAP skills and cloud skills is essential to both instant success and strategic direction. CONTINUING THE STATUS QUO For most businesses, the focal point has been on continuing the status quo over the last two years. Technology exchange and investment have been at a minimum– aside from allowing home working where both possible and obligatory. In the main, only businesses with endof-life equipment that constituted a significant organizational possibility have felt pressured to do anything more than keep the lights on. Meanwhile, however, the SAP ECC on-premises technology model has not only become more high risk post-pandemic, with

a reduction on organizational coordination and an operational pressure; subjection to downtime; and less financially enthralling. Businesses are fighting to alter to the new organization difficulties with stubborn reporting and on-premises solutions that cannot be quickly inflated to assist new organization partners. Especially frustratingly, numerous organizations have a multiplexed assortment of products/ integrations and an over-specified framework that is taking up far too much time, money and resources – and shortcomings, to meet crucial business objectives. With the migration to SAP S/4HANA somewhere on the debate over the coming four years, businesses understand change is crucial – according to the annual UK and Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG) member survey, 74% of its affiliated organizations are either using S/4HANA or intending on doing so. S/4HANA is a big migration, nevertheless, one that requires time, resources and a commitment to digital transformation. Yet many organizations have many urgent

company problems that need a fast fix: there is no money to fund a big migration or time to waste. So what are the alternatives? CLOUD BASED COMPUTING It may come as a shock to many organizations to learn just how rapidly many of these issues can be fixed with the correct balance of technical expertise and strategic advice. The priority is to move the existing, on-premises ECC solution into the cloud – a process that can be attained in as little as a few months, with little disruption. Using this approach ensures instant access to an exceptional show of benefits – most notably access to cloud-based solutions that can promptly address these pressing operational difficulties. Cloud-based reporting is a revelation for numerous organizations, for example, mainly those which are still struggling with time-consuming, month-end reporting and Excel spreadsheets. Fast, mobile access to in-depth reporting and analysis will transform decision making.

June 2022

Simple to install applications can solidify the latest business partners – like transport businesses filling the gaps created by the driver shortage – can link directly with the core system, effortlessly updating key information, such as deliveries. SAP SKILLS This capacity to resolve pressing operational difficulties is gripping - but lots of companies fail to provide confidence in the procedure of cloud migration and are, frankly, hamstrung by a lack of strategic, trusted advice. From a pragmatic perspective, there is a well-publicized SAP skills shortage. However, this is not really the largest issue at hand: a fortunate cloud migration needs not only SAP technical expertize, but also functional knowledge in cloud providers – specifically Microsoft Azure, with its pledge to be the best hyperscale cloud provider for SAP customers - and trusted strategic intuition. It is this very same mixture of skill sets that are lost from much of the MSP market.

Any worthy SAP engineer can copy an on-premises system into the cloud - but that is just part of a successful cloud migration. Issues with network connectivity, speed and latency are also solved just as easily. It is the practical side of the operation that is crucial, such as ensuring interfaces – including vital EDI links – are working successfully from day one. Additionally, a truly valuable migration is one that encompasses rationalization, mostly for those organizations that have a substantial SAP deployment, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) and SAP Business Warehouse, running across multiple servers. Using the correct technical, functional and Azure expertise, an MSP can swiftly explore rationalization options. SRM, for example, can be replaced with a far more simple, effective cloudbased app alongside ECC. This not only eradicates a complex area of the SAP deployment but also positions the company’s future plans with SAP’s strategic direction: S/4HANA brings all

the scalability of these various solutions into one product. Making sure an MSP can offer these functional skills in a company with SAP technical skills is essential to a successful cloud migration. FAST, RELIABLE SOLUTION Companies have to strive to find a fast, reliable solution to current operational and technical issues - and, for the large majority, this rules out a migration to S/4HANA sometime soon. Although, a migration to the cloud will generate a solid technical foundation at which point companies can build, step by step. As well as gaining insight to an absorbing array of cloud solutions that can be quickly used to solve organization’s issues, welcoming a ‘cloud mindset’ will ensure a better closeness with companies to S/4HANA, allowing them on the journey, while also delivering instant business benefits. The cloud offers incredible flexibility – use it. That means spinning up test environments at a moment’s notice– for just a week or two. It means scaling up and

down in line with company needs. It means gaining access to high availability and business continuity services, without sustaining big additional costs. And it means future proofing the company today and creating time to plan the strategic migration to S/4HANA when ready.

June 2022

Be resilient during the global financial downturn. According to a 2022 survey, business leaders around the world cited economic conditions and inflationary pressures as a “top risk” when assessing their digital growth opportunities - not only for this year, but as far ahead as 2031. Geopolitical tensions, the Russian war in Ukraine and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic are all contributing factors to a global economic downturn reminiscent of the 2007 financial crisis.

June 2022

By Eberhardt Weber, founder and CEO of Emporix.

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Be resilient during the global financial downturn. Amid rising costs and supply chain challenges, businesses are understandably looking toward digital solutions to increase efficiency and streamline their operations. Far from simply replacing staff, this latest push toward digitalization and automation is more about enhancing and improving processes, giving staff better tools to build on their brand’s reputation and differentiate themselves from competitors. That requires a form of digital agility that some businesses still lack, but that’s likely to change as more and more businesses - particularly those in B2B commerce - implement composable architecture.

So what is composable architecture and how does it work? And why might it be the key to unlocking growth during a period of severe economic turbulence?

THE GROWING NEED FOR AGILITY IN DIGITAL COMMERCE

A global financial downturn is far from good news for businesses, but if the pandemic taught us anything it’s that those able to adapt and evolve stand a far better chance of weathering the storm. Employing digital solutions to take care of key commerce functions isn’t new. Automatic invoicing, recurring orders, stock alerts, product suggestions and tailored pricing are all commonplace in the world of B2C and B2B digital commerce. Twothirds of customers now actually prefer digital self-service over more conventional sales channels, increasing demand for functions such as the ability to customize products on the fly, or make specific delivery requests. But the ability to integrate these functions rapidly, seamlessly and cost-effectively into an already functioning e-commerce system is still lacking for many businesses, and that’s where the risk lies. One study cites an “acceleration gap” between the pace of change

driven by new opportunity and the ability of an organization to capitalize on it. Composable architecture can help businesses to close that gap by making it easier for them to develop, test and deploy new functionality on a much shorter time scale. This has the knock-on effect of making them more resilient and more adaptable in the face of change, whether it’s adding more online functionality in the wake of a global pandemic, or streamlining their operations to cut costs during a financial crisis. Wherever there are challenges in business, there are also opportunities. At the moment, there’s a noticeable gap between the pace at which these opportunities present themselves and the ability of organizations to capitalize on them. We saw this during the pandemic, and we’re seeing it again as a global financial downturn looks increasingly likely. Businesses that are digitally agile and able to quickly adopt new services and functions for their customers tend to be the most resilient - both in terms of maintaining a positive customer experience and also

June 2022

keeping their operations efficient and cost-effective. This flexibility in the face of uncertain conditions is what composable architecture facilitates. Emporix recently commissioned a report in which top-level decision makers from the world of e-commerce were asked about their perspectives on selecting, implementing and expanding their e-commerce operations. Around 90% said they were planning to extend their e-commerce operations in the near future, with the key drivers being reduced costs, scalability and the fear of “missing a train” if their e-commerce operations remain static. These businesses need composable commerce, though they might not yet realize it.

WHAT IS COMPOSABLE ARCHITECTURE? Today’s e-commerce operations require continuous improvement. Traditional commerce platforms, often referred to as monoliths, don’t allow this because they’re static third-party platforms that a business invests in and uses for years at a time. New features can be requested, but businesses are very much at the mercy of their platform of choice, and “re-platforming” can be an expensive and disruptive process. If a business wants to incorporate automatic invoicing or set-up stock alerts for a client, for instance, it can’t unless its current platform allows it.

Composable architecture leaves the monolith behind and allows businesses to embrace continuous improvement. It uses microservices architecture to allow for a modular approach to development, giving businesses the freedom to add in best-of-breed services at a pace that suits them. Software vendors around the world are catering to composable commerce by creating API-oriented tools that can be slotted in and out of various e-commerce operations. If a business wants to add real-time stock alerts, it can find the best real-time stock alert service in the world and incorporate it into its own operations. If it wants to add in better catalog management or recurring billing functionality, it can do so by developing those solutions internally or selecting a ready-made solution that already exists in the market.

Organizations that have adopted composable architecture over traditional monoliths will be outpacing their competition by 80% when it comes to deploying new features and services. Not only will those businesses be ahead of competition, they will also be ideally poised to react to market changes and conditions.

Gartner Information Technology

June 2022

Navigating the hybrid multicloud world using next-gen data management.

There’s data in the data center, data at edge locations used by remote offices, data on mobile devices, and data in the cloud. And when an organization has data in the cloud, it usually doesn’t mean just one cloud.

June 2022

Chris Wiborg, Vice President of Product Marketing, Cohesity.

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The hybrid multicloud world using next-gen data management. It’s highly likely that you have data in SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and other applications, clouds, and systems. Businesses are progressively adopting hybrid multicloud strategies. So, some of your data might live on AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and/or Microsoft Azure. All of the above signals the requirement for a new approach to data management, a nextgen solution -- one that gives the power of choice to an organization to design a data management strategy that best meets its unique business needs. At the same time, the entire process of data management must be simplified. The era of multiple legacy point solutions to handle a company’s data needs cannot meet the needs of a modern enterprise that must manage, protect, and derive business value from its data to compete and succeed.

BE AWARE THAT DISTRIBUTED DATA GENERATES NEW MOBILITY AND SECURITY IMPLICATIONS

When your data lives in many different places, there are several implications. You need to address data logistics – or how to get data from one place to another. In some cases you are moving data to the cloud. But sometimes you may want to repatriate data, which involves moving data back from the cloud. Additionally, you have to rethink your approach to security. When all of your data lived in your data center, you could protect it with a hard perimeter around that data center. But because data is now everywhere, your security model must change and adopt zero trust principles. Now you need to manage data everywhere in a way that is efficient and effective. Your data management approach should start with protecting and backing up your data. This will help you to recover if you have an outage or you are attacked by ransomware, which is growing at an alarming rate.

DON’T ASSUME THAT DATA IN THE CLOUD IS SAFE

You may think that when you put data in the cloud it is automatically protected. But just because your Microsoft 365 implementation is in the cloud, it doesn’t mean Microsoft can bring back your data if things go wrong. Microsoft 365 retains customer content for 30 days at most. Microsoft, Google, and AWS may offer guarantees related to their cloud services’ uptime and availability. But you are responsible for making sure your data is secure and accessible for compliance, legal, and other purposes. This is known as the cloud’s shared responsibility model. Under this model, you are responsible for your data – even if an employee mistakenly or intentionally deletes that data or you fall victim to ransomware or another type of cyberattack.

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But not everybody operating in today’s hybrid multicloud world understands that because SaaS and IaaS are relatively new models, and many IT operations teams and other talent responsible for resiliency aren’t fully aware of the limitations and risks cloud poses when it comes to your data. STEER CLEAR OF CREATING ADDITIONAL SILOES BY TAKING A CENTRALIZED APPROACH Your database provider may tell you that its database provides native online backup. But that is a siloed approach that adds complexity from a broader operations perspective rather than enabling modernization and simplification. The best way to avoid silos is to implement a centralized data management solution that protects and lets you manage your data – in the cloud and on premises – using a single administrative interface.

BE CONSCIOUS THAT AS-ASERVICE DISASTER RECOVERY IS A VIABLE OPTION You may choose to back up all of your cloud, software-as-a-service, and on-premises data using a self-managed backup solution. But now data management companies such as Cohesity also offer additional resiliency via disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) solutions. This means you now have the flexibility to choose between managing everything on your own or letting your DRaaS provider focus on managing the infrastructure, while you focus on the policies that will govern your data – where the value resides. Whether you choose to manage your own infrastructure, consume as-a-service options, or adopt a flexible hybrid approach – as more and more organizations are choosing – make sure that your data management solution addresses all of your needs, wherever your data resides.

By consolidating “one off” solutions and adopting a nextgen data management platform approach you can simplify complexity and lower the costs involved with managing your data. At the same time, this approach will allow you to follow an operational strategy that is best for your business while helping you to avoid data mobility problems, and letting you recover faster when disaster strikes. Now you can better protect your data. And crucially, you can protect your business.

June 2022

The advantages of distributed cloud. Distributed cloud is a mix of on-premise and (multi-) cloud computing in which the control plane for the on-premise part of the system matches that of the cloud(s). In principle, the consistent control plane abstraction makes it possible to develop software that can move between on-premise and clouds with relatively low operational effort.

Distributed cloud means that workloads that can be more costeffectively managed on your own servers can be run that way, and more cloud-friendly workloads can run on a cloud. Both workloads target the same APIs, but there is a degree of flexibility in where workloads will be run. In a sense, you can choose between your own infrastructure and a cloud to suit your current needs.

June 2022

By Jim Webber, at Neo4j.

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The advantages of distributed cloud. When the major cloud providers like Google, Amazon AWS, Microsoft, Alibaba, etc. release some of the code that runs their clouds, it improves the quality of non-cloud data centers too as they run more like the clouds of those hyperscalers. At first glance, this is an own goal. But dig deeper, and this becomes a gateway to giving CIOs the freedom to move systems with relative ease into the cloud. CIOs are aware of this and some will be wary of the lock-in element of this strategy. Cautious CIOs know the next level up from hybrid cloud is distributed cloud where there is the same backplane across multiple providers (as well as their own data centers).

CLOUD-BASED OPERATIONAL ADVANTAGE

It’s clear that cloud providers have clear innovations to offer, but they are not the sole source of useful information technology. Today’s ISVs (independent software vendors) have offerings for your on-premise needs as well as existing in the marketplaces of all the biggest public clouds. This parallel between on premises and cloud offerings means you can choose a solution, such as a new form of database management system, for instance, and have complete freedom to deploy to on-premise or cloudprovisioned hardware. You can also simply consume the existing SaaS version of that software from your chosen cloud. Want to move from on-prem to cloud or back? Simple. Want to move clouds? Again, this is straightforward.

Working with an ISV means you can use the application on a distributed cloud but not be tied into any particular public cloud provider. You can decide between choosing an on-premiseonly solution or a fully managed cloud solution. Consider how, for example, you might find great value in some Amazon service, but for cost or uptime reasons, the organization you work for needs to move to Google. In this situation, an Amazon proprietary solution leaves the CIO exposed, as it is not an option on Google. A distributed cloud-aware independent software vendor solution, however, can run on Google (or any other public cloud) or be hosted in your own data center. In this new distributed cloud world, not being coupled to any cloud provider is a strategic operational advantage.

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DATA LOCATION COMPLIANCE AND BENEFITS Running third-party apps in a distributed cloud also allows the CIO to better manage latency. Picture a core business application partly run by Google in California, 5,000 miles away from your Frankfurt operation. This can be a mission-critical issue if the data is latency-sensitive. Financial traders, for instance, need to make local calls that take an incredibly small fraction of a second to transmit to a server; but if the data has to travel to the US and back, that 10,000-mile round trip takes a surprisingly large number of milliseconds. If I’m running that part of my system on the local on-prem distributed cloud, that same transaction can be completed in sub-milliseconds, which is a huge win. There’s a similar distributed cloud business advantage in the case of addressing regulatory requirements, especially GDPR. You never know where your data resides at any given moment in the public cloud, but if you have your own data center, you know the

data is physically there. One of the benefits of a distributive cloud is that it gives you the ability to host some data in the cloud and some data physically on your servers. The data is still run on the same cloud operating system, but the actual data is physically located in the building next door. When a GDPR inspector comes and wants to know where a customer’s data is held, you can say it’s in this building, on that computer, and in that rack. That’s going to help you and your data compliance officer’s peace of mind. WORKLOADS OF THE FUTURE The move to distributed cloud will give the enterprise cloud user the computing and compliance benefits associated with geographical proximity to data, while accessing the flexibility and cost benefits cloud naturally offers as an IT service approach. It also offers the ideal on-ramp to public clouds. It enables the business to run its data center in such a way that it would be straightforward to

pass across to a public cloud provider when it makes business sense. For large, mature enterprises, distributed cloud offers numerous advantages for the CIO. While there is cost and complexity associated with distributed cloud (especially in these early days), buying into distributed cloud keeps your options open. You can choose where you will run your workloads in the future and importantly what software you will choose to run them on. The cloud providers’ software is often excellent, but it is not all the software you will need, and working with an ISV offers you extra flexibility across a distributed cloud deployment.

June 2022

The great workplace return.

90% of Employees Say Being Back In-Office Is Better Than Expected, Envoy Survey Reports. The way we work, interact, and communicate in the workplace has been flipped on its head since the pandemic. And with the shift comes new workplace habits. Employees are adopting new ways of working, refreshing old skills, and focusing on their well-being. They’re also reassessing how they spend their time in the workplace. Envoy’s latest Return to the Workplace report reveals which old routines people are setting aside in favor of new ones.

June 2022

For more information visit envoy.com.

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The great workplace return. Here are the top ways behaviors and attitudes are shifting.

EMPLOYEES ARE MAKING THE MOST OF OFFICE LIFE—AND IT’S BETTER THAN EXPECTED While many have wrestled with the decision to return, once onsite almost everyone (90%) surveyed says that being back is better than they expected. Even among those required to return, there’s consensus: 91% feel the office experience is better than they thought it would be – and 42% say that it truly exceeded their expectations. According to Envoy’s survey earlier this year, there’s a lot to gain by showing up. People are most excited to meet up with work friends, collaborate in-person, or just get out of the house.

EMPLOYEES ARE CHANGING UP THE OLD 9 TO 5 SCHEDULE. A little over half (52%) of employees have switched up their pre-pandemic commute to the office. Office hours have shifted earlier. Over a third (34%) are coming in earlier than they did before Covid and about a quarter (26%) are taking off earlier. Only 19% are coming in later compared to 24% who are staying later. New hires are staying longer at the office compared to prepandemic. For those that changed jobs during the pandemic (35%), 41% are arriving earlier and 31% are leaving later. In comparison, those returning to the same job are sticking to tried and true routines. 57% arrive and 60% leave the office at their usual pre-pandemic time. Only 30% are arriving earlier and 20% are leaving later.

June 2022

EMPLOYEES ARE RE-LEARNING TOP SKILLS LIKE TIME MANAGEMENT.

EMPLOYEES ARE TAKING CONTROL OF IN-OFFICE WORK DAYS.

86% of those we surveyed are rebooting essential workplace skills that have gone dormant while working from home.

People are feeling more empowered to switch up the routine since the pandemic. Nearly all (93%) are planning their work days as they see fit. Many are blending in downtime in the form of personal breaks or social activity. Or, planning specific tasks for workplace days.

Time management is number one at 40%. Meanwhile, 31% say they’re rusty when it comes to small talk and interacting with others. 29% are practicing in-person presentation skills. Picking out the right work outfit after two years of elastic waistbands also ranks high on the refresh list (29%). After so long communicating via video, 28% are re-learning how to maintain good body posture.

36% of employees say they’re reserving priority meetings and collaborative work for days onsite. Taking more breaks while at the office (31%) and running personal errands (29%) are priorities for nearly a third of employees— especially men. They’re more likely than women to take needed breaks during the workday or run personal errands.

Mental well-being is also top of mind, especially for Gen Z. These younger workers are more inclined than any other generation to take a mental health day. Workers are also making more space in their schedules to socialize at the workplace—more so than before Covid. 34% are hanging out more with coworkers in the office. 27% are making the effort to meet new coworkers, and nearly a quarter (24%) are attending more happy hours or other post-work events.

Folks want to get to know the people they work with. So the intention should be to bring people into the office on a few specific days so they can benefit from working together IRL. There’s a ton of value in being with people and generating ideas in-person. It’s what can inspire and motivate teams – and make that commute worthwhile. We need to be consistent and persistent when talking about this value of hybrid work.”

Larry Gadea, CEO and founder of Envoy

June 2022

How to go headless without losing it. Headless means different things to different businesses, so finding the best advice and applying it is not easy, particularly as there are so many myths around the subject. So let’s start with a definition and talk about the many benefits to avoid turning myths into a bad reality.

Headless is a modern architecture for delivering commerce where the front and back ends have been decoupled, and then APIs are used to connect the storage and logic, the commerce functionality, with all the “heads”

or presentation layers, covering website, social commerce and marketplaces to IoT devices, native apps and in-store kiosks – all the channels customers are interacting with.

June 2022

By Peter Youell, EVP Technology at Astound Commerce.

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How to go headless without losing it. This separation of the front and back end is how to achieve value, giving the flexibility to choose the best-of-breed components a business wants and needs, such

as personalisation functionality and search tools. Businesses also then have the flexibility to update or change these components more easily – without affecting the rest of its stack – as the business adapts and grows. It’s essentially building a suite of tools specifically designed for a specific business. As everything is being served over APIs, all the front ends can draw on and interact with those services in a consistent way, essentially pulling on the same data from the same tools. This adds up to being able to deliver more consistent and more meaningful digital experiences. This approach offers some great benefits as follows, not least that the architecture is less complex so it requires less resources to maintain.

BENEFITS

Ongoing agility enables updates to go live in hours or days—not weeks or months—whilst still

Easier to deliver true and consistent omnichannel experiences by operating across as many channels as you want, be it social, mobile apps, kiosks, IoT,

enabling continuous optimisation and innovation.

etc., all utilising the same powerful data and back-end logic.

Businesses can realise value more quickly than a full replatform Increased front-end performance with sub-second load times, even with increased traffic, leading to improved rankings from search engines and improved customer satisfaction. Solutions can now be scaled individually with no affect to response time, cutting risk. Agility to move and react to the market and to business needs as needed makes scaling easier.

Freedom to build your own UX. Personalise at scale using real-time data, and then optimise using AI and machine learning. Workflows are streamlined so both technical and business teams can work in parallel, with fewer bottlenecks. Marketers are free to create using tools like a headless CMS without relying on developers.

No lengthy replatforming or costly upgrade cycles and each vendor and component can be managed individually. Developers have the flexibility to choose the front-end tools, frameworks, and languages that they have experience in and meet business needs.

June 2022

BUSTING MYTHS It’s important to remember that it’s not all or nothing with headless; you need to pick the right level to suit the business, so let’s bust some of those myths, especially since headless done right is wonderful. Headless done wrong is catastrophic. A big part of ensuring the success of headless is understanding what level of headless is going to suit your business. “It will save loads of money” A well-executed headless strategy can help save costs, but if that is the key success measure and the only goal, then there also may be better-suited options out there. Best not to underestimate the investment headless will require in terms of both cost and effort, nor the operational and ownership aspects of a headless architecture.

“It will be easier and quicker to implement” A headless architecture is more complex than a traditional platform because it requires control of more moving parts and more integrations between all the vendors. In addition, a full headless approach will take time; however, headless does enable a go-live with a small part of the architecture within months, seeing value relatively quickly as a result. “It’s a magic bullet for better performance” Better performance can be delivered with a headless architecture, but going headless alone does not guarantee it will be delivered. It still needs someone with a magnifying glass to go through each layer and make sure there are no bottlenecks. “It’s too hard to manage multiple platforms and tools” Managing more platforms and vendors can be difficult but the degree of difficulty depends on what the team can manage. Teams

that embark on big headless migrations will need a level of digital maturity (or to draw on external resources) in order to not only do the initial migration but keep everything going. “I can run my business as is with headless” Headless is catching a lot of businesses off guard when it comes to not understanding the organizational and mindset shift needed to realize its full potential. Companies will need to adapt their ways of working, processes, and probably teams too. “It doesn’t give business teams the tools they need” Separating the front and back ends has caused some issues for business users, whereby they lost the easy editing tools they were used to and ultimately lost control of the customer experience. However, there are solutions that cater for this.

Each business is different and unique and there is no one-sizefits-all approach or solution. Take the time to outline what you want to achieve, why you think this is the right approach for your business, and what the roadmap will be for getting you there. For more information on headless and the potential benefits businesses can unlock from this approach, download What to expect when going headless.

June 2022

Is the cloud right for my business? The cloud is a revolutionary computing paradigm that has completely transformed the way we do business – not least by generating significant efficiencies across the board for organizations large and small

June 2022

By John Blackburn, Central Networks’ operations director.

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How to go headless without losing it. Taking software and data out of local premises and placing them within a secure global network of remote servers, the cloud operates as a single ecosystem to help

However, while the benefits of using cloud-based services over outdated, in-house IT models are clear – reliability, scalability, efficiency, and security, to name

For most businesses, a pay-asyou-go OpEx plan is the obvious choice, helping to keep financial forecasts stable and predictable, while offering the flexibility to

manage and maintain digital infrastructure. Underpinned by third-party operation, it enables 24/7 access to data whilst eliminating unnecessary expenses and downtime.

just a few – this doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for every company. So, to help inform your decision and formulate the most successful strategy for your organization, here are some of the key things to consider when determining the suitability of cloud computing…

cancel or modify a plan at any given moment, and freeing up internal resources to focus on driving value for your organization.

The chances are, your firm is already tapping into a handful of applications hosted on the cloud – from social media sites and email platforms, to productivity suites offered by industry giants such as Google and Microsoft. And with an endless selection of options to deploy resources – from public, community, and private, through to hybrid models – organizations of varying scopes and sizes can benefit from a complete computing overhaul.

COST While the cloud offers a significant range of cost efficiencies – through the elimination of redundant technology and labor requirements, lower power costs, and reduced carbon footprint – it’s important to evaluate the price of switching infrastructure. Capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) should be key considerations when weighing up your options – as the financial differences will influence the option you choose.

However, if companies prefer to take control of cloud services – including costs and maintenance – and generate long-term revenue by improving production facilities and boosting operational efficiency, a private cloud might be a more suitable option. GROWTH AND DEMAND By design, the cloud model of computing is able to provide deployment on demand. That’s why, if your business is experiencing significant growth and existing infrastructure is rendered insufficient, it can be an excellent solution to implement. Where planning, implementing, and deploying new resources in your office or data center can take many months, the flexibility

June 2022

available in public cloud means it can be easily scaled up or down as required. The same goes when considering demand. If there is a pressing need for more servers and storage space to help tackle a larger workload, a scalable cloud allows you to add nodes swiftly, rather than having to overhaul your entire infrastructure. And, once the demand has reduced, you can easily revert to the previous configuration. SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE With the increasing sophistication of cyber-attacks, maintaining a strong cloud security posture is key if your organization is to house highly sensitive business information and intellectual property online – especially if your industry is highly regulated. Luckily, most private and hybrid infrastructures support compliance, but scrutinizing this area to ensure your company’s needs are met is crucial.

The off-site nature of cloud storage, in which data is hosted in a separate location from your business, automatically reduces some risks – including the removal of USB sticks or forwarding of login details – but there are some other key elements to look out for in your security strategy. These include: Encryption – a way of scrambling data so that only authorized parties can understand and access the information, unless they discover the decryption key. Security - whether using on premise firewalls, virtual cloud firewalls, or full-blown managed SD WAN, you need to have a holistic approach to security across the entire network – especially if that network is contained within a hybrid-cloud environment. Whether using on premise, public, or private cloud, security is a major consideration and needs to be designed thoroughly.

Identity and access management – products which manage user authorization based on who they are and what they do, to help prevent account takeover and insider attacks. COLLABORATION AND FLEXIBILITY Cloud-hosted platforms enable users a greater degree of flexibility, by allowing them to access files anytime, anywhere. It doesn’t matter if your teams are working remotely or in the office, on a laptop or a tablet – as long as each device is connected to the internet, important files can be accessed and updated conveniently. But that’s not all, cloud-based software suites like Office 365 also unlock contemporary ways of working by empowering creative collaboration. With the ability to share documents both internally and externally, co-author in real time, and attend meetings virtually, cloud computing not only creates a shared understanding across your organization, but crucially bolsters the team

dynamic and encourages fresh ideas into fruition. But don’t just innovate for innovations sake – if your teams are successfully collaborating without needing cloud intervention, don’t feel like you have to make a change. While the technology industry has become a burgeoning powerhouse in recent years – offering an ever-increasing myriad of benefits to businesses from SMEs through to corporate enterprises – there can often be a mounting pressure to conform. And while growth often brings an unavoidable need to adapt in some form or another, change can be significantly different from one organization to the next.

June 2022

Balancing cloud ERP security with operations: continuous updates are not a ‘cure-all’.

Cloud adoption rates have certainly increased in recent years as migration of people, systems and data became simpler, costs have decreased and concerns over security eased. Shifting from on-premise to cloud ERP systems has brought a wealth of benefits to businesses, from reduced administrative burdens to lower capital expenditure. But cloud still has CIOs wrestling with questions around system and operational security. CIOs need a way to avoid the risk of version lag, and not fall into the trap of risking operational security through untested update failure.

June 2022

By Chris Clifford, Technical Solution Architect, Columbus UK.

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Balancing cloud ERP security with operations. WEIGHING THE PROS AND CONS OF CLOUD ERP

A well-configured cloud deployment offers significant cost,

efficiency and end-user benefits over more ‘traditional’ on-premise deployments, but no system is fully immune from disruption. The ‘evergreen’ approach of continuous updates provides a reliable, regular stream of security patches, bug fixes and incremental improvements – but its very nature poses challenges to IT departments and is certainly not an ERP cure-all. When compared to the previous long-term, on-premise ERP strategy that can only be described as ‘find a version that works for you then sit on it for as long as possible,’ the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud model has very much established itself as a superior alternative. Gone is the in-house management burden of quick fixes, patchwork integrations and rushed responses to emerging security exploits – an approach that often detracted from other business-critical IT tasks.

By opting for an ERP system hosted in, for example, the Azure cloud, businesses can take advantage of thousands of dedicated staff with 24x7 availability on the vendor

updated, whereby patches are automatically applied on a regular scheduled basis, is a major shift from previous approaches to updates held by many IT

double-edged sword in terms of operational ‘security’. ERP vendors naturally cannot test these updates for every individual business environment – many of

side, with yet more specialist teams focused on ensuring the cybersecurity of their SaaS solutions. The scale is simply incomparable.

departments. Once deployed and customized to be fully functional, many businesses avoid ‘rocking the boat’ with updates or patches – often leading to a significantly outdated version.

which operate highly customized or extensively integrated ERP systems – so there is a low-lying risk of operational disruption to a critical system. If an update does go ahead, the difficulties don’t end there as many businesses lack the time or resources to analyze all the release notes an ERP vendor produces. These notes contain details of the updates and it’s up to the business to take this responsibility in-house to see how a rollout would affect their system in terms of downtime and user disruption.

For a case in point, we recently implemented a cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central solution for charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, with enhanced reporting, remote access and enhanced security all part of the core benefits of a shift to cloud ERP. With a single solution, the charity was able to replace ageing financial software with limited remote availability and minimal data reporting features, introducing an advanced, cloudbased alternative in its place. SKIP THE VERSION LAG – AND SECURITY HOLES – WITH AN ‘EVERGREEN’ APPROACH TO UPDATES The Microsoft ‘evergreen’ approach to keeping ERP systems

The ‘evergreen’ approach takes the update burden out of the business’ hands, ensuring a cloud ERP system such as Dynamics 365 is always kept running on a supported and security-patched version, easing end-of-life concerns. This ensures businesses are not running versions with limited functionalities or known security vulnerabilities. A TESTING CHALLENGE: OUTDATED SYSTEMS OR OPERATIONAL DISRUPTION? While this faster, predictable update cycle tightens systems from a cybersecurity perspective, the highly integrated, customizable nature of today’s cloud ERP systems can also be seen as a

To ensure business continuity and no unexpected threats to day-today operations, having support from a managed service provider along with testing the update of patches on critical processes prior to deployment will be vital – a task that is increasingly being automated to ease the manual burden. Take the case of United Oilseeds, a long-standing Columbus customer which has

June 2022

gone on to become one of the UK’s most successful farmer cooperatives. Due to issues with a previous third-party infrastructure managed service, United Oilseeds reached out to Columbus to unite their application and infrastructure managed services. After an Azure migration project to modernize and futureproof their ERP system, United Oilseeds began to see the benefits of a complete managed services package. The company has been able to eliminate the back-and-forth between separate providers, and the more proactive approach results in less downtime of a single point of contact for their managed services. The newer, more up-to-date infrastructure also enables them to maximize the ROI of their ERP system. SUPPORT THE ALL-IMPORTANT HUMAN ELEMENT – APPLICATION SECURITY IS KEY Unfortunately, the end-user is often the weak link when business-critical systems are compromised. Witness the 2021 major ransomware attack on the Irish public health system, which was triggered by an unsuspecting

user opening a single infected document received via email. The Covid-induced mass shift to remote working – which also made cloud deployments a far more attractive prospect due to their cost-saving abilities and accessibility – has also increased the attack vector for cybercriminals, as many vulnerable personal devices with typically poorer security were connected to corporate networks. End-user training in online safety and cybersecurity best practice has never been so important – and for ERP systems, application security will also have a vital role to play. But by taking a granular approach to security, IT departments can ensure ease of mind should a user account be compromised, without heavily impacting on user access to critical systems and data. Configured correctly, this spans detailed user types with varying privileges, audit trails and additional traceability measures such as automated checks. And with a cloud deployment, a single end-user account or device being infected will not result in catastrophic failure.

Take a malware attack on a manufacturing company with operations running around the clock. A compromised on-premise ERP system linked to the factory floor and other back-end systems will require an entire shut-down to avoid further spread and damage – affecting operations, manufacturing output, and ultimately the bottom line. With a SaaS deployment, whereby a client on a single device is compromised, this will not be the case. CLOUD ERP TACKLES ONE CAUSE FOR CONCERN – BUT TREAD CAREFULLY WITH UPDATES There are clear security risks for the traditional approach of finding an on-premise ERP deployment that works and then touching the infrastructure as little as possible – something that can leave organizations running off highly outdated, vulnerable or unsupported versions. Yet the rush to embrace an ‘evergreen’ approach to updates must also be taken with an understanding of the security implications – cloud

doesn’t solve all the issues and operational security remains the responsibility of the business. IT departments will need to take a broad definition to ‘security’, spanning both protection from external threats and business continuity through sustained critical operations. To ensure long-term cloud ERP success, they must ensure their cloud deployment is correctly configured, security at the application level is fitfor-purpose, and updates are thoroughly tested to ensure maximum compatibility.

June 2022

Cloudbusting for B2B and B2C. I have worked in the IT industry for more than three decades, and have witnessed a huge number of innovations in that time. The exponential growth of cloud technology in recent years has certainly been one of the most dramatic of these. When I started my IT journey in the late 1980s, the term ‘cloud computing’ was most definitely not in common usage. It’s still a relatively new term, although the concept itself dates as far back as the 1960s. The first reported public use of the phrase was by Eric Schmidt, who was then Google’s CEO, at a search engine conference in San Jose, California, in 2006.

June 2022

By Robert Baker, CEO and Founder of GAT Labs.

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Cloudbusting for B2B and B2C.

The global cloud services market is absolutely vital to the world’s economy, with an estimated value of US$ 387.15 billion in 2021. This figure has a projected value

configuration settings can be constantly replicated. Recovery can take place in the background with little or no business disruption. The cloud means collaboration

ensures that a business can keep track of its own performance, improve the level of service it can offer its customers and allow the business to become

of more than US$ 1630 billion by the year 2030. This represents a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 17.32% from 2022 to 2030. In the public cloud market, the majority of revenue will be generated in the United States. According to Statista, this has a projected value of US$201.40bn for 2022.

between co-workers is far more efficient – something that is so important when a major company project deadline is looming on the horizon. The beauty of the cloud is that it is flexible and scalable to any organization, from large global multinationals to local businesses.

more innovative.

The benefits of cloud usage are many and varied. For B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Customer) users alike, it’s a cost-effective way of sharing valuable data. Businesses of any size or revenue stream can easily opt for the cloud without putting pressure on company finances. It’s also a simple option that doesn’t require too much time and effort on the part of an organization’s administration department. For businesses that need to keep running in the event of a problem, the cloud ensures that business continuity is possible. A disaster recovery solution can be built in the cloud where data and

Cloud computing allows us to gain access to cloud-based communication tools such as emails and work calendars, while messaging apps are also built on cloud infrastructure. If you have ever used business management applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), cloud computing has already been incorporated into your management strategy. As well as storage and deployment, cloud computing can be the ideal medium for testing and development. Sustained integration and delivery will make these less expensive, quicker and less arduous. Cloud data sharing

The UK Government’s Business Data Survey 2022, published on June 9th, shows that 83% of businesses that use digital data, use standalone devices to process and store their data. 34% reported use of cloud providers. When I founded GAT Labs in 2015, our products were created to audit and identify data in Google Workspace. Over the next seven years, the company has produced advanced management systems to allow administrators to onboard and offboard users in bulk, copy folder trees and share files. By doing so, these system improvements ensure a better standard of security for customers, while saving companies both money and time. With greater opportunities than ever to work from home or as part of a hybrid working model, the cloud has never been more essential. There isn’t a single customer or business owner in the world who doesn’t want to feel as secure as

June 2022

possible when uploading data to the cloud. The continuing threats posed by hacking and information fraud bear testament to this. The FBI’s Internet Crime Report for 2021 provides data results best described as ‘sobering’. The bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 847,376 complaints from the American public last year – a 7% increase on 2020’s figure. Potential losses for this period exceeded US $6.9 billion, and this figure was US $1.4 billion in 2017. Among the most common complaints received were ransomware, business e-mail compromise (BEC) schemes, and the criminal use of cryptocurrency. Such shocking statistics truly emphasise the vital need for stringent cloud data security for both businesses and customers. The alternative is that billions will continue to be lost from the economy into the hands of cyber criminals. Because the topic is currently receiving less news coverage than previously, it is easy to believe that COVID-19 is no longer a factor when it comes to working practices. But recent (June 2022)

figures from Statista would suggest that the pandemic is still having significant effects. In Great Britain, almost four in ten (38%) of workers reported they had worked from home at some stage in the previous seven-day period. British workers travelling to work in the previous week was at 71%. In April 2020, at the peak of the first COVID-19 wave, almost half of the workforce worked from home, with 31 per cent traveling to work. Additional figures from Statista showed time flexibility (67%) and flexibility to choose a work location (62%) were the two biggest benefits cited to working remotely worldwide. These were followed by time saved due to lack of a commute (59%) and flexibility related to where to live (55%). Such statistics would simply not be possible without cloud technology. Its efficacy would certainly appear to have made a positive impact on worker’s lives, and open a whole new world of possibilities and options when it comes to a worklife-home balance.

As for the future of cloud, I feel the hybrid and multi cloud infrastructure models will be particularly important in the sector. The former blends two or more different types of clouds while the latter blends different clouds of the same type. Increasing security to repel attacks is one major benefit of a multi cloud system which, as discussed above, is currently costing the world economy billions. In 2022, our cloud data just needs to be accessed safely and efficiently. From where, really doesn’t matter.

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Innovating the workplace with effective cloud technology.

Although cloud technology is not a new technology, its continuous progression has made it become the most effective delivery model for information and services using existing technologies. Cloud migration is now an advantageous choice for many businesses due to the flexibility, security, and scalability in comparison to on-premise solutions. However, overcomplicating the cloud is a common trap that many people fall into. The easiest way to gauge the success of cloud technologies in the workplace is when they are running smoothly in the background, so that the majority of employees outside of IT roles aren’t even aware of them.

June 2022

By Rukmini Glanard, EVP Global Sales, Service and Marketing at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

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Innovating the workplace with effective cloud technology. CLOUD COMPUTING THE NEW MUST-HAVE PLATFORM? A workforce should be able to communicate and work securely

and effectively without a second thought. And thanks to an effective cloud computing platform, organisations can be certain that employees will be uninterrupted at all times and from any location, facilitating optimal productivity. Additionally, IT leaders can think and act strategically thanks to the cloud. They are able to offer the knowledge required to pick the best resources for the company, so they don’t have to worry as much about how their personnel will handle on-premise technology. Regardless of their size, businesses can use the cloud to give their employees access to a wide range of tools that will enable them to perform their jobs effectively, whether working from an office or at home, while still providing outstanding customer service. .

WHY CHOOSING THE CORRECT CLOUD-SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGY IS CRUCIAL

PAAS PREVENTING WORKPLACE PROBLEMS

Organisations must embrace

PaaS is a cloud computing service that offers businesses a complete

a few crucial technologies to support the cloud to guarantee that it always operates in a way that fully exploits its benefits. The cloud should be supported in its behind-the-scenes operations by a robust infrastructure comprising servers, storage devices, network and cloud management software, deployment software, and platform virtualisation.

platform to fit all their needs. PaaS’s features include hardware, software, and infrastructure. These make it considerably simpler for IT teams to create, manage, and use apps, than if they were to keep the platform on-premises. Here, the employee experience has evolved to the point where the cloud component is essentially transparent.

For instance, Wi-Fi 6 guarantees the most powerful and dependable connection inside buildings, enabling cloud technology to perform to its best ability. In order to keep enterprise data secure and make the cloud your biggest business enabler, network security is also crucial. Essentially, the guarantee of stored data security in the cloud is an effective way for cybersecurity to safeguard your cloud network. Again, the encryption of cloud data enables behind-the-scenes security provided by the cloud.

IT-dependent businesses require a platform that they can always rely on to run. Problems can arise in many different ways, such as, storage capacity or service interruptions brought on by malfunctions or mistakes in managing an on-premise platform. It is a significant benefit for the organisation to prevent these problems, as they can disrupt the employee experience and raise unwarranted concerns. As a result, employees are freed from having to evaluate or keep track of the different advantages the cloud offers, such as reduced costs, increased simplicity and flexibility.

June 2022

FLEXIBILITY TO INNOVATE The time and money required to build new platforms are two main factors that prevent organisations from innovating. Implementing these services in-house can be fairly labour-intensive, slowing down the company as it works to preserve its competitive advantage and market adaptability. Using the cloud to develop new goods and services liberates your product development teams, allowing them to innovate without worrying about new infrastructure or investment returns. Moreover, with the cloud, launching new services is frequently faster. New configurations can be operational within a few hours, and because the organisation is only paying for the time it spends (rather than the hardware and infrastructure), costs are significantly reduced. The cloud business model represents a significant shift in how services are consumed. With a subscription-based model, the customer can alter their bill to reflect the product’s actual usage

and has the choice to stop at any time. Since there is no capital expenditure on the client’s part, the subscription model offers them genuine value. EVOLVING CORPORATE STRUCTURE It is crucial to have a system that can adapt to common evolutions that are bound to happen in every business. This may involve expanding the offices, launching new sites, or even closing some locations. For instance, combining diverse kinds of data and records for each merger or acquisition takes a lot of work. Information transfer across systems may take months or even years of manual coding with on-premise systems. Although, with systems in the cloud, making the shift has become much easier. The cloud allows for simple data interchange and merging between employees from the two organisations, resulting in a seamless and nearly instantaneous merger or acquisition. The workforce is concerned with how the process will be carried out in any merger

or acquisition. Employees can concentrate on more crucial things now that at least one aspect of the challenge has been solved with the cloud-based IT system integration. The data merger must occur on the cloud and remain as seamless and transparent as possible. This makes it possible for two organisations to unite and seem like a new, cohesive team has been formed. CONTINUITY IN TUMULTUOUS TIMES For the organisation, controlling expenses and workload during market turmoil has always been challenging. The huge benefit of cloud working is how fast and readily activity may be changed and scaled to accommodate changing conditions. This indicates that when market conditions (such as a shift in sales) arise, IT systems can be easily altered. The workforce only needs to be aware that the same services and platforms are still available by keeping cloud IT systems hidden. Scaling issues against resources and costs are simply irrelevant

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today. This creates a considerably smoother ride during difficult times or periods of rapid expansion. This is particularly crucial in the context of catastrophe recovery. Should the worst happen, cloud backup enables organisations to restore their data instantly and guarantees little downtime so operations can continue. The cloud allows for little disturbance of employee experience while remaining hidden, preserving employee confidence even in serious incidents. COLLABORATING THROUGH CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES With the help of the cloud, businesses can create multiregion infrastructure accessible from any location at any time and get beyond geographic restrictions. It makes several international business divisions feel like one cohesive unit working to accomplish common objectives. The fact that this collaboration feels transparent thanks to the cloud is vital; thus, it should be kept that way as much as possible.

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June 2022

Hybrid cloud: the future-proof approach to data.

Today, cloud services are used by most businesses to support their day-to-day operations. Many of these companies, however, will be actively looking for a better way to configure and leverage cloud technology after rushing to migrate workloads during the pandemic. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that hybrid cloud is rapidly gaining in popularity; according to research from global cloud-led software company NetApp, over half (53%) of respondent services are now using hybrid infrastructure. This is only the beginning, as more organizations realize the benefits of a hybrid approach.

June 2022

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By Massimo Bandinelli, Aruba Enterprise Marketing Manager,

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Hybrid cloud: the future-proof approach to data. To put it simply, hybrid cloud refers to any solution that offers public cloud services combined with private storage infrastructure, allowing businesses to run

easily procure additional capacity when sudden unprecedented spikes in demand occur. Meanwhile, more static longterm workloads can be stored

3. COST-EFFECTIVENESS

applications in a combination of different environments. There are also hybrid cloud solutions referred to as multi clouds, which rely on the use of multiple public clouds.

on-premises. Using this method, businesses can keep their cloud infrastructure strong and secure, without running out of capacity or purchasing expensive excess capacity that is rarely used.

are all cutting into IT budgets and putting CIOs under pressure, so it’s no wonder they are jumping at the opportunity to cut costs through turning to hybrid cloud.

So why are IT managers scrambling to adopt hybrid cloud offerings? And is making the change really worth it? Here’s what you need to know.

2. VENDOR LOCK-IN

1. AGILITY With the ability for businesses to select storage – both on-premises and from local cloud providers or hyperscalers – that meets the performance requirements of specific workloads, hybrid cloud is the best of both worlds. This is perhaps the most significant advantage of hybrid cloud. IT teams can plan for any eventuality thanks to the inherent flexibility of the solution. For example, using the public cloud, IT teams can

Every CIO’s nightmare: vendor lock-in. Companies that become dependent on a single public cloud provider may face high exit costs, interruptions to IT operations, and a lack of relevant skills within the company. This can result in them being “stuck” with an inferior vendor, potentially to the detriment of service quality, product availability, and cost. With hybrid cloud, this is no longer a concern. IT teams can develop and refine cloud solutions independently, based on changing needs, whether they occur suddenly, such as during the pandemic, or gradually, over time.

Increasing salaries, escalating demands, disruption of supply chains, and surging energy costs

Hybrid cloud is cost-effective because it allows organizations to take advantage of the speed and scalability of public clouds for unpredictable, short-term workloads. In turn, to handle more long-term workloads, they can use lower-cost on-premises storage solutions, like object storage or tape. 4. DATA SOVEREIGNTY Businesses across the globe are becoming increasingly concerned about data sovereignty - the principle that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the country in which it is processed. Businesses that use public cloud providers particularly hyperscalers - need to take this into account.

June 2022

Let’s consider an EU company that uses a US-based cloud service provider. In this case, the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act governs any data processed by the US cloud service provider. Under this law, US authorities can request that data belonging to the EU business be handed over to them, even if the data is stored outside of the US. Such requests are not uncommon. US law enforcement issued a total of 101 warrants to Microsoft alone, in search of consumer content data stored outside the US in the first six months of 2021. It’s easy to see how this can start to get complicated. The best way to manage this tricky compliance landscape is to use a hybrid, multicloud strategy. In hybrid cloud, personal data can be stored on-premises or with regional cloud service providers based within specific borders. Meanwhile, companies can take advantage of large public cloud providers for other purposes, such as testing, development, data analytics, and more.

5. GROWING INTEREST IN “AS A SERVICE”

A FUTURE PROOF DIGITAL STRATEGY

As “as a service” offerings become more prevalent, we’re seeing a dramatic shift in how the cloud is being used by businesses. A trend we’re seeing more and more is businesses integrating IaaS (cloud infrastructure available as a service), PaaS (software platforms provided via the Internet as a service) and SaaS (software as a cloud service) into a hybrid cloud environment. As a result, businesses don’t have to run their own data centers, and IT leaders are free to customize solutions as they see fit.

Post-pandemic, businesses have begun to prioritize implementing digital solutions that can withstand turbulence and unpredictable market conditions. In other words, it has become extremely important to develop a digital strategy that not only works well for their business but that helps their business to become more agile and adept at pivoting.

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This is why more and more companies are turning to a hybrid cloud approach. Ultimately, in the long run organizations’ frequently evolving needs cannot be met solely with an on-premises storage or a single cloud provider. Today, choosing a hybrid cloud solution that’s tailored to achieve complex performance, cost, and compliance needs has become an essential component of a future proof business for many – and developing a hybrid strategy will remain a primary focus for CIOs in the years to come.

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June 2022

Elevating contact centers to the cloud.

Customer service channels have evolved. Now more than ever, instant responses are desired, and somewhat expected by consumers, igniting a shift in how we do customer service — the decline of the call center and rise of the contact center, bringing its own set of challenges and technological developments. to tech.

June 2022

By Ross Slogrove, UK and Ireland country manager at cloud phone system.

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Elevating contact centers to the cloud. Call centers have traditionally been a first port of call for housing customer service representatives all in one place to handle queries, complaints and sales enquiries.

is considerably more complex and costly than a call center, so managers need to take a considered, strategic approach.

CCaaS solutions streamline all communications channels into one omnichannel platform for a seamless user experience. Customer data can be pulled from

Whether they’re making or receiving calls, call centers have traditionally been a customer service essential. However, as consumer expectations become increasingly digital, an evolution is on the horizon.

This is where Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) comes in — a cloud-based contact center system designed to be seamless, futureproofed and scalable. With CCaaS, contact centers subscribe to a software and pay a monthly fee to be licensed to use it. Then, agents can download the application form any device and get to work.

any source and presented in one platform, preventing erroneous or missing information input. This gives agents the right information at their fingertips to deal with customer enquiries quicky and efficiently.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK Enter contact centers — the futureproofed successor of the call center. A contact center is a hub for managing customer service across several channels, not just phone calls. Agents typically deal with phone, email, live chat and social media to handle queries and complaints from customers. With conversations starting from across several cannels, it’s absolutely crucial for contact centers to have a comprehensive software and business system strategy to ensure all queries are handled in a timely way and ensure agents don’t get burnt out. Supervising a contact center

HAPPY STAFF, HAPPY CUSTOMERS Opting for cloud-based software has so many benefits for contact center agents and customers alike. Contact centers have some of the highest rates of staff turnover out of any industry. According to contact center recruitment specialist Blue Arrow, one in five centers experiences an annual staff turnover of over 30 per cent. So, any technology that can make agents’ jobs less stressful and more enjoyable is crucial to business ops.

It’s possible to integrate different pieces of software together to create one seamless platform. Ringover’s cloud calling platform can be easily integrated into contact center solutions like Intercom, relieving agents of repetitive, time-consuming tasks. All telephone conversations are automatically recorded in Intercom to save agents time they’d otherwise send creating tickets and entering call logs. Thanks to the nature of CCaaS solutions as downloadable applications, they also better suit the future shape of work. Contact centers don’t have to be large office spaces with several agents working together — they

June 2022

can and are increasingly — somewhat remote. Opting for CCaaS enables contact centers to offer agents the option to work remotely. As long at their device is connected to the internet and the application is downloaded, agents can access all of the information on the system from anywhere. ELEVATED EXPERIENCE It’s not just agents that benefit from CCaaS, but customers too. Customers crave choice in the digital age. If they’re contacting a company, they want it to be on their terms, using their preferred communication channel. While contact centers by nature deliver on this expectation, CCaaS software is essential to making the actual conversations productive. CCaaS solutions easily collect and analyze customer data in one space, which gives companies insights into consumer opinion and the drivers of their buying decisions to shape marketing strategy. Uniting all of this from several sources into one platform prevents information from building up in silo across several

incompatible systems, allowing agents can easily access data in one place to deliver a more personalized service that makes customers feel valued. Being cloud based, CCaaS allows users to build automated flows designed to elevate customer service. For example, for calls, smart routing allows contact centers to create their own customer rules to route calls according to their needs, applying data from CRM or other business tools. Whether it’s contact assignment, skillset or location, it’s possible to direct calls to the most suitable agent available handle customer enquiries for enhanced service. While contact centers are a customer service powerhouse, having the correct software in place is crucial to successful operations. On-premise solutions may have once been the superior choice, but opting for cloud-based CCaaS products is key to giving contact centers the enhanced capability, flexibility and scalability to meet customers ever increasing expectations.

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