Blogs

By Tony Singleton OBE - Strategic Advisor at Advice Cloud

By Alex Hilton, CEO Cloud Industry Forum

In the climate of the perpetual technology revolution it is very hard for businesses to make the right technology decisions and one key component of this is the choice of supplier.  

The UK government’s Digital Marketplace offers many SMEs their first chance to supply IT services.   As of July 2017, the total spend through the Digital Marketplace exceeded £2.6 billion.  Of this spend, 45% was through small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).   At the other end, Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of media giant WPP recently talked about the disruptive nature of the digital technology market as being both threat and opportunity.  With modern technology paradigms coming at us from every angle the landscape has become more complex than ever.

By Alex Wilmot, Cloud Services Director, Daisy Group

Much is written about the bottom line cost benefits of cloud adoption, certainly in terms of capex avoidance, or when an organisation is due a tech refresh of ageing, unsupported infrastructure. These are natural decision points to embrace the introduction of hosted or public cloud services, to augment or gradually replace existing systems.

By Richard Sykes, Chair Cloud Industry Forum

By: Sean McAvan, NaviSite

The Cloud Industry Forum recently published its annual whitepaper, 'Cloud: Driving Business Transformation'. It's based on a survey of 250 senior IT and business decision makers in UK enterprises of all sizes, from five employees to public sector organisations and large multinationals. As always, it’s intriguing to see the bigger picture for digital transformation across UK businesses, and how that matches against our experience with customers at Navisite.

By Richard Sykes, Chair, Cloud Industry Forum

Election time! But this is not a Party Political broadsheet. What I argue here is that there is a key underlying issue that needs much clearer articulation to our politicians – and to us, their electorate. This is the issue of productivity (or the relative lack of it!) in the UK economy –and the role that our industry can play in its transformation.

By Rebecca Hennessy 
Director of Market Strategy Experian, Data Quality UK&I

Consumer attitudes towards data management are outpacing business’ readiness to respond. However, 2017 could mark an important step towards more transparent data management processes that meet the changing macroeconomic trends

The rapid adoption and development of technological innovation means that we now live in a world built on data. Providing data as part of an interaction with brands has become so familiar to us – whether it’s to utilise apps to plan a journey like Citymapper, access content or pay  online – our awareness of this data exchange has grown greatly. These exchanges have become ingrained in our behaviours and as a result, data is everywhere. Organisations of all shapes and sizes are in possession of more consumer information than ever before. With this comes greater responsibility and an onus on businesses to have effective processes in place to manage their data.

By Simon Rutt
CIF Programmes Director

Lack of Cloud Skills is certainly a problem for the modern business, but how about related cloud business skills and knowledge?

Finding people with right cloud skills to facilitate digital transformation is not an easy process as a recent report from Microsoft echoes. The report, entitled “Microsoft Cloud Skills Report: Closing the Cloud Skills Chasm”, says 83 per cent of UK’s organisations consider cloud skills ‘important’ or ‘critical’ to digital transformation.

By Emma-Jayne Hunt, 8x8

CIF and 8x8 held an engaging session on ‘Taking advantage of the UKs flexible and remote working boom’ at 8x8’s new UK Head Office on Tuesday 28^th February. Here is a summary of what was discussed.

By David Grimes, CTO at NaviSite

Companies are always looking for new ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs while maintaining excellence in the quality of their products and services. A big part of cloud computing that IT departments and service providers increasingly look to is APIs (Application Programming Interfaces – sets of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications) to enable automation, in turn driving efficiency, consistency and cost-savings. How are businesses doing this, and where are the opportunities for future development?