"IDC predicts that, by 2020, 30% of G2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10% of revenue to fuel their digital strategies," said Shawn Fitzgerald, research director, Worldwide Digital Transformation Strategies. "This shift toward capital funding is an important one as business executives come to recognize digital transformation as a long-term investment. This commitment to funding DX will continue to drive spending well into the next decade."

Four industries will be responsible for nearly half of the $1.25 trillion in worldwide DX spending in 2019: discrete manufacturing ($220 billion), process manufacturing ($135 billion), transportation ($116 billion), and retail ($98 billion). For the discrete and process manufacturing industries, the top DX spending priority is smart manufacturing. IDC expects the two industries to invest more than $167 billion in smart manufacturing next year along with significant investments in digital innovation ($46 billion) and digital supply chain optimization ($29 billion). In the transportation industry, the leading strategic priority is digital supply chain optimization, which translates to nearly $65 billion in spending for freight management and intelligent scheduling. Meanwhile, the top priority for the retail industry is omni-channel commerce, which will drive investments of more than $27 billion in omni-channel commerce platforms, augmented virtual experience, in-store contextualized marketing, and next-generation payments. 

“End-user organizations adopt RPA technology as a quick and easy fix to automate manual tasks,” said Cathy Tornbohm, vice president at Gartner. “Some employees will continue to execute mundane tasks that require them to cut, paste and change data manually. But when RPA tools perform those activities, the error-margin shrinks and data quality increases.”

The biggest adopters of RPA has include banks, insurance companies, utilities and telecommunications companies. “Typically, these organizations struggle to knit together the different elements of their accounting and HR systems, and are turning to RPA solutions to automate an existing manual task or process, or automate the functionality of legacy systems,” said Ms. Tornbohm.

RPA tools mimic the “manual” path a human worker would take to complete a task, using a combination of user interface interaction describer technologies. The market provides a broad range of solutions with tools either operating on individual desktops or enterprise servers.

Gartner estimates that 60 percent of organizations with a revenue of more than $1 billion will have deployed RPA tools by the end of the year. By the end of 2022, 85 percent of large and very large organizations will have deployed some form of RPA. “The growth in adoption will be driven by average RPA prices decreasing by approximately 10 percent to 15 percent by 2019, but also because organizations expect to achieve better business outcomes with the technology, such as reduced costs, increased accuracy and improved compliance,” added Ms. Tornbohm.

However, RPA is not a one-size-fits-all technology and there are cases where alternative automation solutions achieve better results. RPA solutions perform best when an organization needs structured data to automate existing tasks or processes, add automated functionality to legacy systems and link to external systems that can’t be connected through other IT options.

RPA Is on Its Way to Mainstream

RPA tools currently reside at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2018, as organizations look for ways to cut costs, link legacy applications and achieve a high ROI. However, the potential to achieve a strong ROI fully depends on whether RPA fits the individual organization’s needs. “In the near-term future, we expect to see an expanding set of RPA vendors as well as a growing interest from software vendors, which include software testing vendors and business process management vendors that are looking to gain revenue from this set of functionality, said Ms. Tornbohm.”

In addition, another market movement is emerging — the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) functionalities into the product suite. This is happening because RPA providers add or integrate machine learning and AI technology to deliver more types of automation.

Evaluate First Before Any RPA Deployment Project

In order to make an RPA project a success, leaders must first evaluate the possible use cases for RPA in their organization and also focus on revenue-generating activities. “Do not just focus on RPA to reduce labor costs,” Ms. Tornbohm said. “Set clear expectations of what the tools can do and how your organization can use them to support digital transformation as part of an automation strategy.”

The next step is to identify quick wins for RPA. These can be tasks that require people to solely move data between systems or involve structured, digitalized data processed by predefined rules. While those are the use cases where RPA delivers a high ROI, it is important to consider alternative existing tools and services, which already provide a significant proportion of the required functionalities at a suitable price point. Those alternatives can be used in parallel with RPA, or as a hybrid solution. When choosing a vendor, also ask for future AI-based options.

“2018 is not a good year for IT spending in EMEA,” said John Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. The 5.8 percent growth witnessed in 2018 includes a 4 percent currency tailwind driven by the Euro’s increase in value against the U.S. Dollar.”

IT spending in EMEA has been stuck and will remain stuck until the unknowns surrounding Brexit are resolved,” Mr. Lovelock added. Until then, the slow growth of the overall EMEA market is masking the divergent growth rates across the segments in the region (see Table 1).

Table 1. EMEA IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (November 2018)

Spending on devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) in EMEA is set to decline in 2019. Consumer PC spending declined 9.1 percent in 2018 and demand for business Windows 10 PCs will pass its peak in 2019, with business PCs’ unit growth at 1 percent. Similarly, mobile phones’ unit growth, especially in Western Europe, will start to decline from a 4.7 percent growth in 2018 to -1.1 percent in 2019 as replacements cycles peak and then fall in 2019.

After achieving growth in 2018, spending on data center systems is set to be flat or decline in 2019 and beyond. The brief uptick in spending caused by a bump in upgrade spending and early replacements as a precaution against CPU security issues has abated.

The largest single market — communications services — has become commoditized and is set to show flat growth in 2019. The enterprise software market continues to have a positive effect on the overall spending growth in EMEA. This is largely due to the increasing availability and acceptance of cloud software.

In 2019, Gartner expects cloud, security and the move to digital business to bolster growth in EMEA. End-user spending on public cloud services in EMEA will grow 15 percent in 2019 to total $38.5 billion. In terms of security, with the GDPR in place, penalties for data violations could be as high as 4 percent of revenue.

“The enforcement of GDPR has moved security to a board-level priority. Organizations that are not protecting their customers’ privacy are not protecting their brand,” said Mr. Lovelock. “Global spending on IT security will surpass $133 billion in 2019 and in EMEA it will reach $40 billion in 2019, up 7.8 percent from 2018.”

Brexit Is Slowing Down IT Spending Growth in EMEA

With an expected 2 percent growth in IT spending in 2019, this ranks EMEA as the third slowest growing region for IT spending, ahead of Eurasia (+0.5 percent) and Latin America (+1.7 percent). Brexit is having a dampening effect on IT spending across the region. IT spending in the U.K. is set to total $204 billion in 2019, a 1.9 percent decline from 2018. “The U.K. is not expected to exhibit growth above 2 percent until 2020, which is having a downward effect on the EMEA IT spending average throughout the forecast period,” said Mr. Lovelock.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are leading the overall IT spending growth rate in EMEA in 2019, with each country set to achieve a 5.3 and 4.2 percent increase in IT spending, respectively. Both countries are investing in building a robust IT sector and making the journey to digital business. Israel’s growth is fueled by software spending and the increased use of software as a service. Saudi Arabia’s growth is driven by spend on IT services, including cloud computing and storage.

From July 2017 through June 2018, Secureworks Counter Threat Unit® (CTU®) researchers analysed incident response outcomes and conducted original research to gain insight into threat activity and behaviour across 4,400 companies.

Among their findings was evidence that a small subset of professional criminal actors is responsible for the bulk of cybercrime-related damage, employing tools and techniques as sophisticated, targeted and insidious as most nation-state actors. These sophisticated and capable criminal gangs operate largely outside of the dark web, although they may leverage low-level criminal tools occasionally when it serves their purposes.

At the same time, there has been no lull in the overall volume of threats, and low-level cybercriminal activity remains a robust market economy, often taking place in view of security researchers and law enforcement on the dark web. While relatively simple in their approach, these activities can still deal widespread damage.

“Cybercrime is a lucrative industry, and it’s not surprising it’s become the arm of powerful, organised groups,” says Don Smith, Senior Director, Cyber Intelligence Cell, Secureworks Counter Threat Unit. “To understand the complete picture of the cybercriminal world, we developed insights based on a combination of dark web monitoring and client brand surveillance with automated technical tracking of cybercriminal toolsets.”

Key Findings

Among the CTU researchers’ key findings were the following:

The boundary between nation-state and cybercriminal actors continues to blur.

• Nation-state actors are increasingly using tools and techniques employed by cybercriminals, and vice versa. In August 2018, CTU researchers determined the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was likely responsible for a Gandcrab ransomware campaign against the South Korean population and infrastructure, as part of a broader pattern of attacks. GandCrab is developed and sold ‘as-a-service’ and is more commonly associated with financially motivated criminal actors.

• In March 2018, a threat actor likely associated with the Iranian government used access that had previously been leveraged for espionage to deploy a cryptocurrency miner across the environment. CTU researchers have also observed other government-backed espionage groups deploying cryptocurrency miners within compromised networks.

• The assumption that nation-state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are dimensionally different from advanced cybercrime threats is fundamentally flawed.

Ransomware continues to be a serious threat.

• There has been no significant decrease in the volume of ransomware, banking malware, point-of-sale (POS) memory scrapers or other threats available for purchase on underground forums.

• The threat actors who developed SamsamCrypt and BitPaymer, the two most impactful ransomware threats observed by CTU researchers during the reporting period, have retained them for their exclusive and targeted use, showing the distinct threat these sophisticated cybercriminal groups pose.

• The developers of Gandcrab -- a new piece of ransomware identified by CTU researchers in January and offered for sale on Russian-language underground forums – have been observed offering a partner program in which the developers received 30–40 percent of any resulting revenue from successful attacks.

• There is no clear evidence that ransomware has been displaced by other capabilities such as cryptocurrency mining, and targeted ransomware attacks continue to be a worrying trend.

• The growth of traditional file-encrypting ransomware did slow, but CTU researchers nevertheless observed no less than 257 new and distinct ransomware families during the reporting period.

• Some of the more popular new ransomware-as-a-service families release regular updates and feature new additions.

Sophisticated criminal gangs are earning millions of dollars of revenue through stolen payment card data.

• Sophisticated criminal gangs have combined advanced social engineering (expertise in deception and manipulation) and network intrusion techniques with point-of-sale (POS) malware to generate millions of dollars of revenue through stolen payment card data.

• The price of credit card details on underground forums incentivises criminals to target POS terminals, where credit card details can be extracted from the memory of the running device using specialist malware.

• Cybercriminals are also clever about monetising card data even after the theft has been discovered, and credit card dump sites such as JokerStash have come under scrutiny as a possible way for sophisticated criminals to do just that.

The dark web is not the darkest depth of the cybercriminal world.

• Sophisticated, organised criminal groups are quietly dealing most of cybercrime’s damage each year, and they avoid the dark web where possible to evade detection by law enforcement and threat researchers.

• These more sophisticated criminals may use simple and readily available tools in some cases, but their highly organised approach and evolving capabilities represent a significant threat.

“The observations of CTU researchers over the last 12 months show that the threat from cybercrime is adaptive and constantly evolving,” the report concludes. “To stay ahead of it, it is imperative that organisations develop a holistic understanding of the landscape and how it relates to them, and tailor their security controls to address both opportunistic and more highly targeted cybercriminal threats.”

This growth reflects a relatively sanguine economic outlook during the first half of this year with accelerated digital transformation and, in some pockets, new digital services offsetting the cannibalization of traditional services.

During 1H18, it was a mixed picture for tier-one global outsourcers/integrators (companies with full service offerings and more than $10 billion in services revenue) headquartered in developed countries: most remained flat or declined slightly (organic growth in constant currency). But this was partially offset by stronger performances by two large global vendors, who returned to double-digit growth in the teens.

While most Indian services providers still outpace their U.S. and European counterparts, their growth (organic, in constant currency) scaled back slightly from a year ago, continuing their 2H17 deceleration. Growth paths continued to widen between vendors: while most large Indian vendors continued to grow at rates in the low single digits to high teens, it was offset by a few vendors' sharp slowdown. This is partially attributed to restructuring leadership teams and divesting business units to improve margins. It should also be noted that foreign exchange fluctuations in 2018 have complicated the constant currency calculations somewhat.

Looking at the different services markets, project-oriented revenues grew by 5.2% in 1H18 to $191 billion, followed by 3.6% growth for managed services and 2.7% for support services. The above-the-market growth in project-oriented markets was mostly led by business consulting and application development markets with growth rates of 7.5% and 6.5%, respectively. Most major management consulting firms still posted strong earnings in 2018, although growth rates cooled slightly: business consultants still extract more value in digital transformation. But the market movement belies enterprise buyers going from "thinking digital" to "doing digital." For example, the heavy lifting of digital is ultimately reflected in application projects, and the application development market showed faster growth in 2018 than both 1H17 and 2H17. As services vendors are making agile and cloud the central themes in their app businesses, it has helped them to shorten sales cycles and ramp up new app work.

In outsourcing, revenues grew 3.6% to $238 million in 1H18. Application-related managed services revenues (hosted and on-premise application management) outpaced infrastructure and business process outsourcing. Organizations rely largely on outsourcers to supply new app skills at scale. Large outsourcing contracts also served as the best vehicle to standardize and modernize existing application assets. Therefore, IDC expects application-related managed services markets to continue outgrowing other outsourcing markets in the coming years.

On the infrastructure side, while hosting infrastructure services revenue accelerated to 7.2% growth in 1H18, mostly due to cloud adoption, IT Outsourcing (ITO) – still almost twice as large a market and mostly big buyers and vendors – declined by 1.5%, largely chipped away by cloud cannibalization across all regions.

On a geographic basis, the United States, the largest services market, grew by 4.3%, slightly higher than the market rate, while Western Europe, the second largest market, grew only by 2.6%. In the United States, overall economic conditions and corporate spending remained robust. The effect of the trade war will also not be felt until the end of this year or in 2019; therefore, it had no negative impact on services spending in 1H18. In Western Europe, most major vendors are showing some softness in the region: US/European headquartered multinationals' recovery in Western Europe weakened in 2018. The newcomers' (namely Indian services providers) expansion into Europe also cooled slightly, with vendors posting mixed results in the region depending on their customer industry mix there. IDC expects Western European services revenues to be stable but structurally weaker than North America. IDC forecasts the region to grow below 3% annually in the coming years.

In emerging markets, Latin America, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ), and Central & Eastern Europe led in growth. In Latin America, most major economies are turning the corner despite problems in Argentina and Venezuela. While big political/policy risks still exist, namely newly elected presidents in Mexico and Brazil, realistically, their effects will not be felt until 2019. Additionally, only a handful of regulatory issues will affect services outsourcers directly (i.e. tax and government procurement). On the other hand, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. have resolved their NAFTA issues and Brazil has wrapped up its scandals. Therefore, IDC is expecting healthier IT spending in the region, especially with a strong deal pipeline in the public sector.

In APeJ, the second largest IT services market, Australia saw its growth scaled back slightly to 3.8% in 1H18, from 4.3% in 1H17. The largest market, China, trimmed its growth rate to just 7.2%, down from the 8% to 9% during the last two or three years, due to slower GDP growth, curbing debts, and pulling back on infrastructure spending, among other factors. Given its ongoing trade war with the U.S. and currency depreciation, we expect China's market growth will continue to flag, although gradually, in the coming years, which inevitably will have a spillover effect on Australia.

So far in 2018, the weaker growth in China and Australia was partially offset by faster growth from other emerging markets in APeJ (i.e. India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.). We expect this trend to continue: governments will continue to fund large digital initiatives and a better investment outlook will also drive IT spending (geopolitical and economic tension between China and the U.S. and its allies may help other emerging markets in the region attract foreign investments).

"Steady growth in the services market is being driven by continued demand for digital solutions across the regions," said Lisa Nagamine, research manager with IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Services Tracker. "But during 2018, as well as most of 2017, it is really the Americas and cloud-related services that are having the largest impact on revenue worldwide."

"For IT services, 2018 has so far been more stabilizing than it seems," said Xiao-Fei Zhang, program director, Global Services Markets and Trends. "Corporate America has been able to shake off geopolitical risks and trade tensions and continue to invest in new tools to reduce cost and add new capabilities." 

A study from DigiCert reveals that enterprises have begun sustaining significant monetary losses stemming from the lack of good practices as they move forward with incorporating the Internet of Things (IoT) into their business models. In fact, among companies surveyed that are struggling the most with IoT security, 25 percent reported IoT security-related losses of nearly £257,333 in the last two years.

These findings come amid a ramping up of IoT focus within the typical organisation. Seventy-one percent of respondents indicated that IoT is extremely important to them currently, while 91 percent said they anticipate IoT to be extremely important to their respective organisations within two years.

The survey was conducted by ReRez Research in September 2018, with 700 enterprise organisations in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan from across critical infrastructure industries.

Top concerns

Security and privacy topped the list of concerns for IoT projects, with 82 percent of respondents stating they were somewhat to extremely concerned about security challenges.

“Enterprises today fully grasp the reality that the Internet of Things is upon us and will continue to revolutionise the way we live, work and recreate,” said Mike Nelson, vice president of IoT Security at DigiCert. “Securing IoT devices is still a top priority that many enterprises are struggling to manage; however, integrating security at the beginning, and all the way through IoT implementations, is vital to mitigating rising attacks, which can be expected to continue. Due diligence when it comes to authentication, encryption and integrity of IoT devices and systems can help enterprises reliably and safely embrace IoT.”

Top vs. bottom performers

To give visibility to the specific challenges enterprises are encountering with IoT implementations, respondents were asked a series of questions using a wide variance of terminology. Using standard survey methodology, respondents’ answers were then scored and divided into three tiers:

• Top-tier: Enterprises experiencing fewer problems and demonstrating a degree of mastery mitigating specific aspects of IoT security.
• Middle-tier: Enterprises scoring in the middle range in terms of their IoT security results.
• Bottom-tier: Enterprises experiencing more problems that were much more likely to report difficulties mastering IoT security.

IoT security missteps

Respondents were asked about IoT-related security incidents their organisations experienced within the past two years. The difference between the top- and bottom-tiers was unmistakable. Companies struggling the most with IoT implementation are much more likely to get hit with IoT-related security incidents. Every single bottom-tier enterprise experienced an IoT-related security incident in that time span, versus just 23 percent of the top-tier. The bottom-tier was also more likely to report problems in these specific areas:

• More than 12 times as likely to have experienced IoT-based Denial of Service attacks
• More than 12 times as likely to have experienced Unauthorised Access to IoT Devices
• Nearly 16 times as likely to have experienced IoT-based Data Breaches
• 6 times as likely to have experienced IoT-based Malware or Ransomware attacks

These security incidents were not trivial. Among companies surveyed that are struggling the most with IoT security, 25 percent reported IoT security-related losses of nearly £257,333 in the last two years.

The top five areas for costs incurred within the past two years were:

• Monetary damages
• Lost productivity
• Legal/compliance penalties
• Lost reputation
• Stock price

Meanwhile, although the top-tier enterprises experienced some security missteps, an overwhelming majority reported no costs associated with those missteps. Top-tier enterprises attributed their security successes to these practices:

• Encrypting sensitive data
• Ensuring integrity of data in transit
• Scaling security measures
• Securing over-the-air updates
• Securing software-based encryption key storage

“When it comes to accelerating implementations of IoT, it’s vital for companies to strike a balance between gaining efficiencies and maintaining security and privacy,” Nelson said. “This study shows that enterprises that are implementing security best practices have less exposure to the risks and resulting damages from attacks on connected devices. Meanwhile, it appears these IoT security best practices, such as authentication and identity, encryption and integrity, are on the rise and companies are beginning to realise what’s at stake.”

Recommendations

The survey points to five best practices to help companies pursuing IoT realise the same success as the top-tier performing enterprises:

1.Review risk: Perform penetration testing to assess the risk of connected devices. Evaluate the risk and build a priority list for addressing primary security concerns, such as authentication and encryption. A strong risk assessment will help assure you do not leave any gaps in your connected security landscape.

2.Encrypt everything: As you evaluate use cases for your connected devices, make sure that all data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Make end-to-end encryption a product requirement to ensure this key security feature is implemented in all of your IoT projects.

3.Authenticate always: Review all of the connections being made to your device, including devices and users, to ensure authentication schemes only allow trusted connections to your IoT device. Using digital certificates helps to provide seamless authentication with binded identities that are tied to cryptographic protocols.

4.Instill integrity: Account for the basics of device and data integrity to include secure boot every time the device starts up, secure over the air updates, and the use of code signing to ensure the integrity of any code being run on the device.

5.Strategise for scale: Make sure that you have a scalable security framework and architecture ready to support your IoT deployments. Plan accordingly and work with third parties that have the scale and focus to help you reach your goals so that you can focus on your company’s core competency. 

With the first instances of 5G services rolling out in the fourth quarter of 2018, 2019 is set to be a seminal year in the mobile industry. 5G handsets will begin to hit the market and end-users will be able to experience 5G technology firsthand.

From an infrastructure standpoint, the mobile industry continues to trial innovative solutions that leverage new spectrum, network virtualization, and machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) to create new value from existing network services. While these and other enhancements will play a critical role, 5G NR represents a key milestone in the next mobile generation, enabling faster speeds and enhanced capacity at lower cost per bit. Even as select cities begin to experience 5G NR today, the full breadth of 5G's potential will take several years to arrive, which will require additional standards work and trials, particularly related to a 5G NG core.

In addition to 5G NR and 5G NG core, procurement patterns indicate communications service providers (SPs) will need to invest in adjacent domains, including backhaul and NFVI, to support the continued push to cloud-native, software-led architectures.

Combined, IDC expects the total 5G and 5G-related network infrastructure market (5G RAN, 5G NG core, NFVI, routing and optical backhaul) to grow from approximately $528 million in 2018 to $26 billion in 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 118%. IDC expects 5G RAN to be the largest market sub-segment through the forecast period, in line with prior mobile generations.

"Early 5G adopters are laying the groundwork for long-term success by investing in 5G RAN, NFVI, optical underlays, and next-generation routers and switches. Many are also in the process of experimenting with the 5G NG core. The long-term benefit of making these investments now will be when the standards-compliant SA 5G core is combined with a fully virtualized, cloud-ready RAN in the early 2020s. This development will enable many communications SPs to expand their value proposition and offer customized services across a diverse set of enterprise verticals through the use of network slicing," says Patrick Filkins, senior research analyst, IoT and Mobile Network Infrastructure. 

Organizations have high expectations for digital transformation, but new research from SnapLogic has uncovered that 40% of enterprises are either behind schedule with their digital transformation projects or haven’t started them yet.

Delayed projects aren’t the only factor keeping ITDMs up at night. The new research, conducted by Vanson Bourne, also revealed that 69% have had to reevaluate their digital transformation strategy entirely, and as a result, 59% would do it differently if given another chance. In fact, only 13% of ITDMs are completely confident they are on course to achieving their digital transformation goals.

When asked why they are struggling with digital transformation, 58% admitted that there is confusion amongst the organization around what they’re trying to achieve with digital transformation – an alarming result.

Digital Transformation Snags

Internal politics (34%), a lack of centralized ownership (22%), and a lack of senior management buy-in (17%) were identified as common roadblocks to digital transformation. In addition, 55% of ITDMs noted that a reliance on legacy technologies and/or a lack of the right technologies within their organization was holding them back, while 33% were stalled by a lack of the right skilled talent, and 31% reported that data silos were causing problems.

Additionally, 20% of organizations didn’t test or pilot their digital transformation projects before deploying them company-wide, and shockingly, 21% of ITDMs continued to roll out a company-wide digital transformation despite unsuccessful pilot programs in one part of the business.

Gaurav Dhillon, CEO at SnapLogic, commented on the findings: “Despite all the noise around digital transformation in recent years, it’s clear from our research that there’s still much work to be done to help organizations be successful. While some companies may take solace in knowing they are not the only ones struggling, for those of us in the technology industry this is a stark wake up call that we must do a better job advising, partnering with, and supporting customers in their digital transformation journey if we are to ever see the reality of a digital-first economy.”

Delivering on the Promise

Make no mistake: The promise of digital transformation is huge. For those about to undertake an enterprise-wide digital transformation, ITDMs expect to see the following results upon completion, on average: increased revenue of 13%, increased market share of 13%, reduced operating costs of 14%, increased business speed and agility of 16%, improved customer satisfaction of 18%, and reduced product development time of 15%.

But businesses are never going to achieve these gains unless they’re able to overcome key hurdles and turn the corner. For those who’ve completed a digital transformation, successful or otherwise, ITDMs identified the three most critical steps to success as investing in the right technologies and tools, involving all departments in strategy development, and investing in staff training.

The promise of new technologies in particular is seen as having a significant impact on digital transformation success. Case in point: 68% consider artificial intelligence and machine learning as vital to accelerating their digital transformation projects.

Dhillon concluded: “Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight, and there’s no silver bullet for success. To succeed with digital transformation, organizations must first take the time to get the right strategy and plans in place, appoint senior-level leadership and ensure the whole of the organization is on-board and understands their respective roles, and embrace smart technology. In particular, enterprises must identify where they can put new AI or machine learning technologies to work; if done right, this will be a powerful accelerant to their digital transformation success.”

According to the study, 85 percent of organisations are embracing bring your own device (BYOD). Interestingly, many organisations are even allowing contractors, partners, customers, and suppliers to access corporate data on their personal devices. Amidst this BYOD frenzy, over half of the survey’s respondents believe that the volume of threats to mobile devices has increased over the past twelve months.

“While most companies believe mobile devices are being targeted more than ever, our findings indicate that many still lack the basic tools needed to secure data in BYOD environments,” said Rich Campagna, CMO of Bitglass. “Enterprises should feel empowered to take advantage of BYOD’s myriad benefits, but must employ comprehensive, real-time security if they want to do so safely and successfully.”

Key Findings

• Organisations are embracing BYOD, making it available to employees (76 percent), contractors (27 percent), partners (25 percent), customers (22 percent), and suppliers (19 percent).
• 51 percent of respondents believe the number of threats targeting mobile devices has increased in the past year. Unfortunately, only 30 percent of firms are confident that they are properly defending against malware on personal and mobile devices.
• 30 percent of enterprises cite company security concerns as the leading inhibitor to BYOD adoption; specifically, they are worried about data leakage (61 percent), unauthorized data access (53 percent), and the inability to control uploads and downloads (53 percent).
• One in five organisations lacks visibility into basic, native mobile apps (like email) on personal devices.
• Only 56 percent of companies can employ key functionality like remote wipe for removing sensitive data from endpoints.

“The IoT will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decade, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies,” said Nick Jones, research vice president at Gartner. “CIOs who master innovative IoT trends have the opportunity to lead digital innovation in their business.”

In addition, CIOs should ensure they have the necessary skills and partners to support key emerging IoT trends and technologies, as, by 2023, the average CIO will be responsible for more than three times as many endpoints as this year.

Gartner has shortlisted the 10 most strategic IoT technologies and trends that will enable new revenue streams and business models, as well as new experiences and relationships:

Trend No. 1: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Gartner forecasts that 14.2 billion connected things will be in use in 2019, and that the total will reach 25 billion by 2021, producing immense volume of data. “Data is the fuel that powers the IoT and the organization’s ability to derive meaning from it will define their long term success,” said Mr. Jones. “AI will be applied to a wide range of IoT information, including video, still images, speech, network traffic activity and sensor data.”

The technology landscape for AI is complex and will remain so through 2023, with many IT vendors investing heavily in AI, variants of AI coexisting, and new AI-based tolls and services emerging. Despite this complexity, it will be possible to achieve good results with AI in a wide range of IoT situations. As a result, CIOs must build an organization with the tools and skills to exploit AI in their IoT strategy.

Trend No. 2: Social, Legal and Ethical IoT

As the IoT matures and becomes more widely deployed, a wide range of social, legal and ethical issues will grow in importance. These include ownership of data and the deductions made from it; algorithmic bias; privacy; and compliance with regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation.

“Successful deployment of an IoT solution demands that it’s not just technically effective but also socially acceptable,” said Mr. Jones. “CIOs must, therefore, educate themselves and their staff in this area, and consider forming groups, such as ethics councils, to review corporate strategy. CIOs should also consider having key algorithms and AI systems reviewed by external consultancies to identify potential bias.”

Trend No. 3: Infonomics and Data Broking

Last year’s Gartner survey of IoT projects showed 35 percent of respondents were selling or planning to sell data collected by their products and services. The theory of infonomics takes this monetization of data further by seeing it as a strategic business asset to be recorded in the company accounts. By 2023, the buying and selling of IoT data will become an essential part of many IoT systems. CIOs must educate their organizations on the risks and opportunities related to data broking in order to set the IT policies required in this area and to advise other parts of the organization.

Trend No. 4: The Shift from Intelligent Edge to Intelligent Mesh

The shift from centralized and cloud to edge architectures is well under way in the IoT space. However, this is not the end point because the neat set of layers associated with edge architecture will evolve to a more unstructured architecture comprising of a wide range of “things” and services connected in a dynamic mesh. These mesh architectures will enable more flexible, intelligent and responsive IoT systems — although often at the cost of additional complexities. CIOs must prepare for mesh architectures’ impact on IT infrastructure, skills and sourcing.

Trend No. 5: IoT Governance

As the IoT continues to expand, the need for a governance framework that ensures appropriate behavior in the creation, storage, use and deletion of information related to IoT projects will become increasingly important. Governance ranges from simple technical tasks such as device audits and firmware updates to more complex issues such as the control of devices and the usage of the information they generate. CIOs must take on the role of educating their organizations on governance issues and in some cases invest in staff and technologies to tackle governance.

Trend No. 6: Sensor Innovation

The sensor market will evolve continuously through 2023. New sensors will enable a wider range of situations and events to be detected, current sensors will fall in price to become more affordable or will be packaged in new ways to support new applications, and new algorithms will emerge to deduce more information from current sensor technologies. CIOs should ensure their teams are monitoring sensor innovations to identify those that might assist new opportunities and business innovation.

Trend No. 7: Trusted Hardware and Operating System

Gartner surveys invariably show that security is the most significant area of technical concern for organizations deploying IoT systems. This is because organizations often don’t have control over the source and nature of the software and hardware being utilised in IoT initiatives. “However, by 2023, we expect to see the deployment of hardware and software combinations that together create more trustworthy and secure IoT systems,” said Mr. Jones. “We advise CIOs to collaborate with chief information security officers to ensure the right staff are involved in reviewing any decisions that involve purchasing IoT devices and embedded operating systems.”

Trend 8: Novel IoT User Experiences

The IoT user experience (UX) covers a wide range of technologies and design techniques. It will be driven by four factors: new sensors, new algorithms, new experience architectures and context, and socially aware experiences. With an increasing number of interactions occurring with things that don’t have screens and keyboards, organizations’ UX designers will be required to use new technologies and adopt new perspectives if they want to create a superior UX that reduces friction, locks in users, and encourages usage and retention.

Trend No. 9: Silicon Chip Innovation

“Currently, most IoT endpoint devices use conventional processor chips, with low-power ARM architectures being particularly popular. However, traditional instruction sets and memory architectures aren’t well-suited to all the tasks that endpoints need to perform,” said Mr. Jones. “For example, the performance of deep neural networks (DNNs) is often limited by memory bandwidth, rather than processing power.”

By 2023, it’s expected that new special-purpose chips will reduce the power consumption required to run a DNN, enabling new edge architectures and embedded DNN functions in low-power IoT endpoints. This will support new capabilities such as data analytics integrated with sensors, and speech recognition included in low cost battery-powered devices. CIOs are advised to take note of this trend as silicon chips enabling functions such as embedded AI will in turn enable organizations to create highly innovative products and services.

Trend No. 10: New Wireless Networking Technologies for IoT

IoT networking involves balancing a set of competing requirements, such as endpoint cost, power consumption, bandwidth, latency, connection density, operating cost, quality of service, and range. No single networking technology optimizes all of these and new IoT networking technologies will provide CIOs with additional choice and flexibility. In particular they should explore 5G, the forthcoming generation of low earth orbit satellites, and backscatter networks.

The human touch and AI

CIOs need to prepare workers for a future in which people do more creative and impactful work because they no longer have to perform many routine and repetitive tasks, according to Gartner, Inc. People and machines are entering a new era of learning in which artificial intelligence (AI) augments ordinary intelligence and helps people realize their full potential.

“Pairing AI with a human creates a new decision-making model in which AI offers new facts and options, but the head remains human, as does the heart,” said Svetlana Sicular, research vice president at Gartner. “Let people identify the most suitable answers among the different ones that AI offers, and use the time freed by AI to create new things.”

Survey Finds AI Eliminates Fewer Jobs Than Expected — and Can Create Them

AI will change the workforce, but its impact will not be detrimental to all workers. According to a Gartner survey conducted in the first quarter of 2018 among 4,019 consumers in the U.K. and U.S., 77 percent of employees whose employers have yet to launch an AI initiative expect AI to eliminate jobs. But the same survey found that only 16 percent of employees whose employers have actually adopted AI technologies saw job reductions, and 26 percent of respondents reported job increases after adopting AI.

People will learn how to do less routine work. They will be trained in new tasks, while old tasks that have become routine will be done by machines. “The human is the strongest element in AI,” explained Ms. Sicular. “Newborns need an adult human to survive. AI is no different. The strongest component of AI is the human touch. AI serves human purposes and is developed by people.”

There are, for example, cases in which consulting an AI system has saved money, time and distress. Not consulting an AI system may actually become unethical in the future — in the field of medicine, for example. “The future lies not in a battle between people and machines, but in a synthesis of their capabilities, of humans and AI working together,” said Helen Poitevin, research senior director at Gartner.

People and Machines: A New Era of Learning

Although AI will give employees the time to do more, organizations will need to train and retrain their employees in anticipation of AI investments.

“We are entering an era of continuous learning,” said Ms. Sicular. “People will have to learn how to live with AI-enabled machines. When machines take away routine tasks, people will have the time to do more new tasks, so they will need to constantly learn.” People will also need to learn how to train AI systems to be useful, clear and trustworthy, in order to work alongside them cooperatively.

“It’s about trust and engagement. People need to trust machines — this is the ultimate condition of AI adoption and success,” said Ms. Sicular.

Choose Your AI Teacher Well

CIOs are likely to be the leader or instigator of AI initiatives in their organization. While machine learning focuses on creating new algorithms and improving the accuracy of “learners”, the machine teaching discipline focuses on the efficacy of “teachers.”

The role of teacher is to transfer knowledge to the learning machine, so that it can generate a useful model that can approximate a concept. Machine learning models and AI applications derive intelligence from the available data in ways that people direct them to do. “These technologies learn from teachers, so it is essential to choose your teachers well,” said Ms. Sicular. “While some may think AI is hard for people, we can also ask ourselves ‘Are people easy for AI?’”

“As a CIO, you will shape the future of work by how you invest in technology and people,” said Ms. Poitevin. “Today, the majority of the CIOs we speak to find themselves amid a proliferation of “bots” (physical robots and software virtual assistants). Adoption of bots in the workplace is rising as workers become increasingly comfortable working with machines and grow more supportive of them.”

CIOs believe bots will be integral to our daily lives, wherever we would ‘rather have a bot do it. “By 2020, AI technologies will pervade almost every new software product and service,” said Ms. Poitevin. “Well-designed robots and virtual assistants will be embraced and seen as helping employees focus on their best work by relieving them of a mountain of mundane work.”

As the top digital transformation (DX) market research firm in the world, International Data Corporation (IDC) today unveiled IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation 2019 Predictions. In this year's DX predictions, IDC has identified two DX groups based on specific trends and attributes. Leaders in transformation (the digitally determined) are those organizations that have aligned the necessary elements of people, process, and technology for success. In contrast, laggards (the digitally distressed) have not developed the enterprise strategy necessary to align the organization effectively for transformation to date. IDC's market leading analytical understanding and insights are the result of extensive market research and survey data from over 3,000 companies worldwide.

IDC analysts Bob Parker and Shawn Fitzgerald recently discussed the ten industry predictions that will impact digital transformation efforts of CIOs and IT professionals over the next one to five years and offered guidance for managing the implications these predictions harbor for their IT investment priorities and implementation strategies.

The predictions from the IDC FutureScape for Worldwide Digital Transformation are:

• Prediction 1: By 2020, at least 55% of organizations will be digitally determined, transforming markets and reimagining the future through new business models and digitally enabled products and services.
• Prediction 2: By 2022, the CDO title will be in decline, as digital will have become fully embedded, but more than 60% of CEOs will have spent part of their careers leading digital initiatives.
• Prediction 3: The paramount importance of customer advocacy will result in 60% of B2C brands embracing net promoter score as their leading success metric by the end of 2020.
• Prediction 4: By 2020, 80% of enterprises will create data management and monetization capabilities, thus enhancing enterprise functions, strengthening competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue.
• Prediction 5: By 2020, 30% of G2000 companies will have implemented advanced digital twins of their operational processes, which will enable flatter organizations and one-third fewer knowledge workers.
• Prediction 6: By 2023, 35% of workers will start working with bots or other forms of AI, requiring company leaders to redesign operational processes, performance metrics, and recruitment strategies.
• Prediction 7: By 2020, 30% of G2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10% of revenue to fuel their digital strategies.
• Prediction 8: By 2021, prominent in-industry value chains, enabled by blockchains, will have extended their digital platforms to their entire omni-experience ecosystems, thus reducing transaction costs by 35%.
• Prediction 9: By 2021, about 30% of manufacturers and retailers globally will have built digital trust through blockchain services that enable collaborative supply chains and allow consumers to access product histories.
• Prediction 10: By 2023, 95% of entities will have incorporated new digital KPI sets — focusing on product/service innovation rates, data capitalization, and employee experience — to navigate the digital economy.

"With direct digital transformation (DX) investment spending of $5.5 trillion over the years 2018 to 2021, this topic continues to be a central area of business leadership thinking," said Shawn Fitzgerald, research director, Worldwide Digital Transformation Strategies. "IDC's 2019 DX predictions represent our perspective on the major transformation trends we expect to see over the next five years. With almost 800 business use cases spanning 16 industries and eight functional areas, our DX spending guides illustrate where industry is both prioritizing digital investments and where we expect to see the largest growth in 3rd Platform and innovation accelerator technologies." 

The DCA - 2019

Having listened to our members and data centre community over the past 12 months our plans for 2019 are to continue to build on our identified areas of focus, provide independent advice and guidance to data centre owners, deliver more opportunities for members to engage, collaborate and gain value from their trade association.

Insight

The workshops planned for 2019 will continue to educate the sector on the latest best practices and to provide updates on new developments. DCA events provide great networking and collaboration opportunities.  Our social media channels and monthly publications continue to deliver and expand, providing ‘thought leadership’ and knowledge sharing content opportunities for our members – again all designed to assist data centre owners and operators.

Influence

Providing members with independent representation remains a key deliverable for The DCA in 2019. The DCA will continue to provide members with both a voice and a seat at the table at National, EU and International levels, ensuring key issues are flagged and that the sectors voice is heard. Keeping one step ahead of policies is vital when it comes to steering the strategic direction for businesses. The DCA will continue to work closely with the EU and lobbying groups much as Policy Connect, via APPG’s to ensure that members concerns are heard.

Validation

An increased reliance on digital services in both our business and daily lives brings increased scrutiny. The word regulation seems to be cropping up in conversations more and more, I am an advocate of scrutiny however I still prefer self-regulation to imposed regulation.

The DCA will continue to encourage its members to lead by example through the endorsement and adoption of best practices, the EU Code of Conduct and independent validation through approved certification bodies.

The DCA will continue to support active members who are involved in Certification and Special Interest Groups (SIGs). These working group are run for and by DCA members under Chatham House Rules. Intrinsically linked to many of these SIGs, The DCA will continue to support EN/EU and ISO and Standards committees to ensure new and existing best practices, codes and standards remain both fit for purpose, accessible and affordable. Newly formed SIGs include a Workforce Development Group, Liquid Cooling Alliance, Open Compute Project (OCP) Working Group and Life Cycle Group.

Sustainability

The challenge of how to keep up with demand remains a daunting prospect for many businesses. Jobs need to be filled right across the sector especially when it comes to practical engineers, technicians, installers and operational/maintenance staff. Data Centres themselves may not employ a large workforce but the suppliers who support the sector do and the shortfall in available candidates to fill these roles is growing fast. The DCA recognise that to fill this gap we need to engage and attract a new generation of workforce at a much earlier stage in the educational cycle. In 2019 we will ramp up the work we are doing with STEM Learning to promote the DC Sector as a career of choice. Our aim is to recruit and support STEM Ambassadors from right across our membership to help in this effort.

In Summary, there is a great deal to look forward to in 2019 and as the year unfolds the Data Centre Trade Association will continue to be here to support you.

For more information and to contact The DCA (Data Centre Alliance) Trade Association

Website:  www.dca-global.org
Email:       info@dca-global.org
Tel:           +44 (0)845 873 4587

Computing at the edge is blurring the boundaries of the traditional data centre. The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) means more data processing is being done on an ever-increasing range of smart devices in non-traditional locations such as manufacturing floors, warehouses and outdoors. As the network spreads, such critical factors as power management, cooling and physical security are taking on expanded roles – and even greater importance – in network operations. As we look to 2019 and beyond, we forecast a more a holistic approach to data centre operations, in which infrastructure, hardware and software are addressed as a unified system.

In Europe, we are seeing fast adoption and rapid growth of IoT across markets. Keeping pace with the increasing demands of edge and digital building initiatives next year will require support and protection of critical equipment, regardless of where it is located. Like the proverbial chain that is only as strong as its weakest link, any limitations in network design or performance will result in unacceptable quality of service. Playing a key role in maintaining network operations will be advanced rack and cable management solutions that can sustain the rigors of today’s technology demands.

Intelligent Power May Get More Traction

While rack densities continue to rise in Europe, they are still low compared with some other markets. An average data centre deploys 2-4 kilowatts (kW) per rack (in some isolated cases we see that being pushed to 10-15 kW). For that reason, a large portion of power deployments are conditioned by basic metered power distribution units (PDU). There has been a slow adoption of the new generation of intelligent PDU (monitored/switched), with price being the main stumbling block to greater market entry.

This situation should continue to evolve in 2019, because higher-density computing will require ever-more complex power distribution, monitoring and reporting. And even if rack densities do not increase significantly, compute power is increasing. As chip manufacturers add cores to processors (CPUs), Moore’s law will drive continued increases in computing per watt. Further, the size of the CPU package continues to increase, so the heat flux due to the CPU is decreasing. Basically, servers are more power efficient and support higher utilisation.

So rack densities will probably not climb significantly, but the amount of compute power (utilisation) per rack will. Further into the future, we will have to keep an eye on developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Typically, the PCI cards required to drive AI run at 100-percent power when models are being trained. When AI takes off, we expect extremely large and sustained loads on the data centre that will increase the average workload.

The latest examples of products that can help reduce the complexity of delivering power to equipment includes three-phase PDUs equipped with power monitoring that stretches across the enterprise. Also accessible through an IP connection, they enable an IT team to monitor anything from anywhere—all the way down to the device level. For all these reasons, we expect to see a growing interest in intelligent PDUs in 2019 as customers prepare for the next technology upgrades.

Growing Focus on Airflow Management

As equipment densities continue to increase, airflow management will become an even more vital practice for optimising energy efficiency and maintaining enterprise uptime. Partial containment is still widely deployed, but methods exist to maximise thermal efficiencies (free cooling) by following best thermal management practices. Within the rack, for example, good airflow management requires the use of snap-in filler panels to block open rack-mount spaces as well as air dams to block airflow around the sides and top of equipment. Additionally, passive cooling solutions and vertical exhaust ducts (chimney) help isolate hot exhaust air from cooled air, reducing cooling demands at rack and room levels. With the added benefit of lower energy costs for the end user, we can expect to see greater deployment of this approach to providing equipment cooling performance throughout the data centre.

For this to happen, solution vendors need to provide more education to users on thermal management practices in 2019. The No. 1 thermal management question that vendors hear is “Can I manage higher density without added cooling capacity?” This indicates that many do not yet grasp the benefits of passive cooling in reducing energy consumption and lowering construction and operational costs. There is a common perception that, for high-density environments, it is safer to deploy active cooling devices such as in-row cooling. The majority of data centres continue to oversupply cold air in order to overcome inefficiencies.

We know that customers would like to support higher rack densities within acceptable operational temperatures. At these higher rack densities, however, adding more air conditioning to the room isn’t an effective option. Solutions like Passive Cooling® from Chatsworth Products provide ideal airflow to cool each rack even if the room design limits the amount of airflow volume. They meet the needs of these applications within the architectural limitations of the facility, completely segregating hot and cold air, and can be applied at the cabinet or aisle level, providing increased equipment cooling performance in all elements of the data centre mechanical plant.

Protecting Data and Privacy is a Growing Concern

Finally, security will remain a major area of focus in 2019, as data breaches have become a growing concern among data centre managers, CIOs and end users. The main concern appears to be linked to security from a physical and cyber standpoint. We see a considerable number of enquiries related to electronic access control with two layers of authentication (mostly biometric) and monitoring devices to better control and manage all the devices deployed in the data centre.

In terms of market growth in 2019, we anticipate some positive movement in a number of areas, including cloud applications, colocation, enterprise data centres, and more development at the edge of the network. Cloud and colocation data centres should see the fastest growth and expansion, as large corporate users seek ways to reduce costs related to their IT network deployments and management.

The recent SVC Awards dinner was a great opportunity to recognise success within the IT industry, with a special focus on both storage networking and the Cloud. A drinks reception, kindly sponsored by Touchdown Public Relations, was followed by an excellent three-course dinner, before celebrated comedian, Zoe Lyons (currently on her Entry Level Human tour) entertained the 200+ guests with some excellently-researched IT jokes, alongside a torrent of observational humour that was the perfect foil for the awards presentations which followed. Here we feature the awards winners.

Full details of winning entries can be found on the SVC Awards website: www.svcawards.com

The DCS Awards categories provide a comprehensive range of options for organisations involved in the IT industry to participate, so you are encouraged to get your nominations made as soon as possible for the categories where you think you have achieved something outstanding or where you have a product that stands out from the rest, to be in with a chance to win one of the coveted crystal trophies.

The editorial staff at Angel Business Communications will validate entries and announce the final short list to be forwarded for voting by the readership of the Digitalisation World stable of publications during April. The winners will be announced at a gala evening on 16^th May at London’s Grange St Paul’s Hotel.

The 2019 DCS Awards feature 26 categories across four groups. The Project Awards categories are open to end use implementations and services that have been available before 31^st December 2018.  The Innovation Awards categories are open to products and solutions that have been available and shipping in EMEA between 1st January and 31st December 2018. The Company nominees must have been present in the EMEA market prior to 1^st June 2018.  Individuals must have been employed in the EMEA region prior to 31^st December 2018. 

Nomination is free of charge and all entries can submit up to four supporting documents to enhance the submission.  The deadline for entries is : 1^st March 2019.

Please visit : www.dcsawards.com  for rules and entry criteria for each of the following categories:

DCS PROJECT AWARDS

Data Centre Energy Efficiency Project of the Year

New Design/Build Data Centre Project of the Year

Data Centre Consolidation/Upgrade/Refresh Project of the Year

Cloud Project of the Year

Managed Services Project of the Year

GDPR compliance Project of the Year

DCS INNOVATION AWARDS

Data Centre Facilities Innovation Awards

Data Centre Power Innovation of the Year

Data Centre PDU Innovation of the Year

Data Centre Cooling Innovation of the Year

Data Centre Intelligent Automation and Management Innovation of the Year

Data Centre Safety, Security & Fire Suppression Innovation of the Year

Data Centre Physical Connectivity Innovation of the Year

Data Centre ICT Innovation Awards

Data Centre ICT Storage Product of the Year

Data Centre ICT Security Product of the Year

Data Centre ICT Management Product of the Year

Data Centre ICT Networking Product of the Year

Data Centre ICT Automation Innovation of the Year

Open Source Innovation of the Year

Data Centre Managed Services Innovation of the Year

DCS Company Awards

Data Centre Hosting/co-location Supplier of the Year

Data Centre Cloud Vendor of the Year

Data Centre Facilities Vendor of the Year

Data Centre ICT Systems Vendor of the Year

Excellence in Data Centre Services Award

DCS Individual Awards

Data Centre Manager of the Year

Data Centre Engineer of the Year

Nomination Deadline : 1^st March 2019

www.dcsawards.com    

Yet, if anything the pressures are rising for customers; just as in a rising market, many stay profitable enough not to have to think about changing infrastructure, while IT mistakes and wrong decisions matter less, a year of great change may eventually find out those poor deals and false savings. Hence the hesitant IT customer confidence, especially in areas which have less history behind them such as AI and IoT. The thinking is that it is better to hold on to existing technologies which are at least better understood through use.

At the same time, however, the pressure from senior management and those with a strategic view is asking IT to do more with less; squeezed resources will not deliver change, and IT departments themselves may have become more siloed in the last year.

Working with scarce resources should be something that the managed services providers well understand; their industry is all about scale and efficient delivery; they should be able to talk to senior management in customers about the inherent effectiveness of their IT model and how this can be shared with the customer and the customer’s customer.

Yet the promise of technological delivery of riches has not always lived up to the expectations, and research has shown that a half-hearted or lightweight approach to innovation does not yield such good results. The recent Capgemini Research Institute’s “Upskilling your people for the age of the machine” study found that automation has not improved productivity because it has not been a part of the full digital transformation of business processes.

Companies do need to do their homework in terms of change management, in many cases. The need to adopt technology that links to and supports the implementation of a strategy should be a no-brainer. But this is not about new technology, it’s about the basics of change management and communication from leaders, which have been discussed for decades.

The managed services industry may need to encourage new thinking along these lines even more in 2019. It should be pushing at an open door: Equinix research shows that almost three quarters (71%) of organisations are likely to move more of their business functions to the cloud in coming years, they may still need answers that address their security fears, however. And they need help managing that change process in their businesses.

It will be those managed services companies with expertise in particular vertical markets or with a particularly strong customer relationship who do best in this. They are able to talk in meaningful ways about real solutions and engage with realistic customer expectations. They will also hopefully not be afraid to say when a transformation is not going far enough and what real gains could be made by further moves.

For this to work properly they need a clear understanding of the nature of change management in customer organisations, coupled with the required changes in working practices that deliver a safe and secure environment.

The agenda for the 2019 European Managed Services and Hosting Summit, in Amsterdam on 23 May, aims to reflect these new pressures and build the skills of the managed services industry in addressing the wider issues of engagement with customers at a strategic level. Experts from all parts of the industry, plus thought leaders with ideas from other businesses and organisations will share experiences and help identify the trends in a rapidly-changing market.  

1.    Does Hermes have an overall digitalisation and/or business transformation strategy?

Yes, our transformation strategy is continually evolving. As a business we never stand still and there is lots to do. Much in the same way that we are required to constantly grow our fleet of vehicles, and expand the capacity of our distribution hubs, we must also take advantage of new and exciting innovations to meet demands of the increasingly tech-savvy consumer. In many ways the development of new technology acts as a catalyst for change, dictates our priorities and alters how we label ourselves – are we still regarded as a parcel delivery firm or a technology solutions business? I think the latter.

2.    If so, what are the main objectives? 

To support the growth of the UK operation and to satisfy increased retailer and customer demand for richer products, delivery information in real time and a wider range of services and solutions for both retailers and consumers.  

3.    And what are the company's main objectives around modernising IT usage?

Historically, Hermes lacked an over-arching IT strategy to support the growth of the UK operation. This year, we launched our Hermes Technology Transformation programme aimed at re-platforming the UK business on a scalable, real-time infrastructure. Our tech investment was designed to improve our services by migrating IT systems to strategic hosting platforms. The transformation provided an opportunity for us to rationalise the technology and reduce our footprint in the data centre. Using alternative cloud hosting providers to the data centre was our preferred option.

4.    In more detail, please can you tell us any plans you might have around AI and intelligent automation in general?

This is definitely an important part of our roadmap but it’s about using it in the right places, rather than just getting excited about technology. As an industry we are extremely good at delivering parcels despite the low margins, but where things get complicated is when things go wrong. Good customer service is a strong USP for us and automation can help with the simple stuff. For example, we are trialling a ‘self-service’ approach where the first six questions of any query can be automated. This can save us three minutes per query whilst saving cost and it’s also a much faster service.

We were also the first parcel company in the UK to fully integrate our end-to-end tracking solution with Amazon’s Echo smart speakers. Consumers can use voice commands via Alexa-enabled devices, such as Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, to hear updates on where their parcel is. This unique functionality is part of our ongoing commitment to providing retailers with an increasingly innovative portfolio of services and solutions, plus enhancing the overall delivery experience for the UK’s growing number of online shoppers. Other features that will be delivered soon include a ParcelShop finder, which determines the location of the nearest Hermes ParcelShop; the ability to set a designated safe place or choose to have your parcel delivered to a neighbour when not at home; and an enhanced returns process. Consumers asking Hermes to return their order via the Alexa Skill will be emailed a QR code and PIN that allows them to print a returns label at their nearest ParcelShop.

The integration was engineered at our Innovation Lab in the centre of Leeds, which is specifically tasked with developing a range of progressive products that we hope will change the delivery landscape.

Exploring new and exciting tech is an important part of our remit and as digital assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa have been developed to drive increased convenience, our research tells us that there will be a future shift away from screen interactions in favour of conversational interface technology.

5.    And how does Hermes view (and use) the Cloud and/or managed services?

Last year, we successfully re-platformed and tuned those under-performing elements of the IT infrastructure and migrated from the traditionally architected data centre to a new data centre in the cloud via AWS (Amazon Web Services). All infrastructure was transformed into a Cloud hosting platform. We also automated scaling of production workloads to ensure appropriate resources are provisioned to suit the demand. We introduced consistent workflows for our IT Service to manage incidents, requests, problems and changes and introduced IT Service KPIs, Service Level Agreements and a self-service knowledgebase.

This has resulted in a stable cloud infrastructure hosting platform to support existing and new UK IT solutions during times of intense activity, such as Black Friday, as well as a cost effective outsourced IT hosting framework and managed service. We have also introduced a self-service portal for employees to view and log incidents which also enables Service Management to efficiently manage and measure problems. This increases response and closure times through the devolution of control to the cloud.

6.    Presumably, mobile IT is a major focus for Hermes?

Yes, our customer service strategy is omni-channel because it’s really all about convenience for the end customer. We now have a Hermes mobile app that provides real time parcel tracking and SMS messaging, plus the option to divert your parcel to another address or a safe place. Customers can also choose to save delivery preferences, receive enhanced notifications and view safe place photos.

7.   Autonomous vehicles and drones - how do you view these in terms of their potential into the future?

We have been part of a testing programme for the use of self-driving delivery robots in London, in partnership with Starship Technologies. It follows on from a project which has seen Hermes Germany and Starship Technologies test parcel delivery by robot in the Ottensen, Volksdorf and Grindel suburbs of Hamburg. We used the testing period in the UK to better understand how the robots could enhance our ability to offer an increased range of on-demand solutions in future. We believe that self-driving robots could offer Hermes greater scheduling and tracking capabilities, and that they’re a viable alternative to drones, which are obviously difficult to deploy in built-up areas due to strict aviation laws, as well as their ability to only carry small and light packages.

1)     How big an issue is the constant adding/changing configurations of hardware devices in data centre racks in terms of overall data centre management?

Typical lifespan for IT equipment is 3-5 years, where the power infrastructure is much longer.  Since the power requirements of the next cycle of IT equipment is unknown, it makes it difficult to properly plan the power systems.

2)     Presumably, with the increasing demand for flexible, scalable and dynamic IT workloads, this problem is only going to become worse over time?

There appears to be no shortage of innovation in the hardware and software of the compute, storage and network gear coming on the market.  This will exacerbate the challenge of providing the right power systems to run the equipment.

3)     And a constantly changing IT infrastructure demands similar flexibility from the data centre facilities – not least the PDUs?

The dynamic evolution of IT equipment certainly drives the need for a flexible power infrastructure from end to end, and certainly at the last link in the chain, the rack PDU. 

4)     Up until now, how has the data centre manager been able to best cope with the matching of IT and power/PDU requirements – just buying more PDUs?!

We see our customers taking multiple approaches to adapt the PDU to the changing landscape in the rack.  They often just add additional PDU’s over time, but this requires more feeds or drops from the upstream power panel and increases the number of PDU SKU’s that they have to manage.  Another approach is to over provision the PDU with the hope that it will always stay ahead of the equipment, but this requires a larger initial capital outlay and a larger PDU which occupies valuable space in the rack.

5)     And allowing for C13 and C19 outlets and C14 and C20 plus variations is an expensive headache?

Predicting the mix of C13 and C19 outlets that will be required in future rack configurations is an ongoing challenge for the DC manager.   A common approach is to buy a PDU with a large number C19’s, and use adapter cords to ‘step down’ from the C19 to a C13.   The downside of this approach is that the adapter cords are heavy gauge, expensive, difficult to route, and can block airflow.   Often those cords are banned from use by internal or local agency policies.

6)     Server Technology has launched the HDOT Cx – how does this help to address the problems previously discussed?

HDOT Cx is a C13 and C19 in one combination outlet.  No adapters are required to connect a C14 or C20 cord.  This allows the DC manager to have confidence that the PDU will have the right mix of outlets available as the equipment changes.   The manager can keep one SKU in stock that will function across the compute, storage and network racks, as well as provide unmatched versatility in the lab environment.

7)     Put simply, why has no one thought of doing this before now?!

Good question!  Our customers have been asking for it as long as I have been in the industry, which is going on 12 years.  Although simple in concept, employing a robust design that meets all US and International safety certifications was not a trivial undertaking.

8)     Advantages of this new PDU development include lengthening the PDU lifespan?

From a standpoint of obsolescence due to not having the correct mix of outlet types, the Cx definitely increases the lifespan of the PDU.

9)     And reducing the number of PDU SKUs required?

Reducing the number of PDU SKU’s is one of the top requests we get.   It reduces the amount of spares that need to be kept in stock, the training required by internal personnel, and simplifies re-ordering.

10)  And being able to support any hardware configuration – giving peace of mind?

Certainly knowing you’ve got a flexible PDU in your stock takes away a major concern.

11)  And how has the market received the HDOT Cx to date – what has been the reaction?

The response has been overwhelmingly positive.  It’s really an obvious advantage to have a combination outlet.  Significant improvements that are mechanical in nature don’t come along too often.  The Cx outlet represents one of those large strides.

12)  Can you give us a little bit of background as to the culture within Server Technology that seems to foster regular PDU innovations?

Server Technology was founded by an Electrical Engineer, and has historically fostered an engineering emphasis.  We have an aggressive patent filing stance, and encourage and reward innovation throughout the organization.

13)  And do you think that PDUs are sufficiently valued within the data centre environment, or still somewhat neglected in favour of other priorities?

There are both camps in the industry and everything in between.  Many data centers simply want power in power out, where others have made the PDU a central access point for capacity planning, environmental monitoring, and security.

14)  What else can we expect from Server Technology over the next year or so in terms of PDU and/or wider data centre innovations?

Additional products will be released next year with HDOT Cx outlets.   We also have a number of significant innovations in the works.   Stay tuned!

This “need for speed” runs counter to traditional approaches to ITSM that emphasise risk mitigation and control over speed and agility. However, you can strike the right balance between going faster and maintaining control.

1)    Apply Agile & Lean Practices to ITIL

Look at ITIL as a set of guidelines, not hard rules. Integrate agile and lean principles into your approach and apply those aspects of ITIL that best serve your enterprise. For example, get your team thinking not in terms of process, but in terms of outcomes and ensure your KPIs emphasise these outcomes. Similarly, minimise work in progress such as open tickets, change and service requests, and so on. If queue volume is too great, it’s time to identify root causes and adjust processes accordingly. To aid this you can begin with out-of-the-box (OOTB) ITIL processes to speed implementations or seek a “low-code” ITSM platform that enables you to easily customise these processes to suit your unique needs.

Agility needn’t be overwhelming - start simple with a short list of the most impactful ITIL processes to optimise and standardise. Then rinse and repeat, taking on just a couple processes at a time.

2)    Automate Routine, Simple Tasks and Processes

Develop an automation roadmap, but use discretion. Cherry pick simple, but frequently used processes first, learn from your mistakes, and get more sophisticated as you go. Remember that automation will not fix a process that’s broken to begin with; ensure your processes are bulletproof before you automate them. Enlist the help of your service desk staff to seek out manual, routine tasks that take up a lot of time and can be automated with minimal effort.

By establishing performance metrics, you can ensure automations are, in fact, saving time and improving outcomes. Remember to make use of your ITSM solution’s pre-built automations and ensure your ITSM platform enables service desk staff to quickly create and configure custom automations. Similarly take advantage of OOTB integrations with endpoints like Active Directory for a password reset, or AWS or Azure for a cloud VM to save time and use RESTful APIs to extend and integrate workflows beyond the service desk.

3)     Implement a Low-Code ITSM Platform

If your current ITSM platform requires a team of developers to support basic requirements, it may be time to look for an alternative. Your service management solution should be built on a low-code platform that enables service desk administrators to quickly configure portals, dashboards, forms, workflows, and tasks as well as quickly add new features, extend capabilities, and integrate with third-party products. Minimal training is required for service desk admins to be effective with a low-code service management solution. Also, make sure to engage with your vendor’s extended user community to learn and share best practices.

It's important to estimate the costs required, both time and money for development resources to administer, configure, customise, and perform ongoing maintenance on your current ITSM tool. Where configuration is needed, leverage a low-code service management platform that provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and generates configuration metadata separate from the code base. Alongside, tap into the vendor’s library of pre-built integrations and extensions as well as RESTful APIs to enable rapid integration with other products.

4)    Establish a Self-Service Portal Employees Want to Use

Give your employees the self-sufficiency they want by taking a “shift left” approach to the service desk. Establish a best-in-class self-service portal that enables users to quickly resolve their own problems and check the status of tickets and service requests. UX experts either from within or outside your organisation can optimise the user experience and ensure the portal is as user-friendly as possible. Alongside, provide plenty of end user training. It’s also important to continue to offer email, phone, chat, walk-up, and desk-side service. As portal utilisation increases, reliance on these channels should naturally diminish.

This can be complemented by a comprehensive knowledge base with intelligent search and curated knowledge. Take it a step further by allowing users to comment, vote on the usefulness of entries, and suggest new ones. You can also offer a peer-to-peer discussion board which service desk personnel can moderate and contribute to. Finally, it’s important to establish meaningful KPIs such as reduction in call volume, ticket volume, and customer satisfaction to measure the effectiveness of the portal and identify areas for improvement.

5)    Extend ITSM practices and systems beyond IT

In situations where line-of-business (LOB) processes are immature, leverage your ITSM platform, along with its companion HR Case Management, Facilities, or Security solutions. Centralising IT and non-IT request handling and workflow automation on a single platform enables a better user experience by presenting services in a common portal and facilitates improved service delivery on the back end by creating a single system of record.

Approach and collaborate with stakeholders in other departments to identify processes and tasks that can be automated with your ITSM platform. Form a multidisciplinary task force to collaborate on complex LOB workflows, especially those spanning multiple departments. Again, start with simple non-IT requests and workflows to prove the viability of utilising ITSM systems and principles outside of IT and establish KPIs within each department to measure efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery.

Break free and gain speed and agility

IT teams are being slowed down by rigid processes, a lack of automation, and tools that are difficult to customise and extend. You must break free from what’s no longer working to gain the speed and agility needed to lead your business through its digital transformation journey. Perhaps the single most important thing you can do to accelerate service delivery is to ensure your service management platform is propelling you forward—not holding you back. When you’re supported by a lightweight, flexible service management platform, you’re more efficient, more agile, and able to go faster than you’ve ever gone before

Analytics, AI and Machine Learning continue to make extensive inroads into data-oriented industries presenting significant opportunities for Enterprises and research organisations. However, the potential for AI to improve business performance and competitiveness demands a different approach to managing the data lifecycle.

Companies who are planning to fully embrace these innovative technologies in the future, should consider how data which is at the heart of their competitive differentiation will require extensive scaling. While current workloads may easily fit into in-node storage, companies that are not considering what happens when Deep Learning is ready to be applied to larger data sets will be left behind.

Here’s five key areas to strongly consider when creating and developing an AI data platform that ensures better answers, faster time to value, and capability for rapid scaling.

Saturate Your AI Platform

Given the heavy investment[1] from organisations into GPU based computer systems, the data platform must be capable of keeping Machine Learning systems saturated across throughput, IOPS, and latency to eliminate the risk of this resource being underutilised.

Saturation level I/O means cutting out application wait times. As far as the storage system is concerned, this requires different, appropriate responses depending upon the application behavior: GPU-enabled in-memory databases will have lower start-up times when quickly populated from the data warehousing area. GPU-accelerated analytics demand large thread counts, each with low-latency access to small pieces of data. Image-based deep learning for classification, object detection and segmentation benefit from high streaming bandwidth, random access, and fast memory mapped calls. In a similar vein, recurrent networks for text/speech analysis also benefit from high performance random small file access.

Build Massive Ingest Capability

Ingest for storage systems means write performance and coping with large concurrent streams from distributed sources at huge scale. Successful AI implementations extract more value from data, but also can gather increasingly more data in reflection of their success. Systems should deliver balanced I/O, performing writes just as fast as reads, along with advanced parallel data placement and protection. Data sources developed to augment and improve acquisition can be satisfied at any level, while concurrently serving Machine Learning compute platforms.

Flexible and Fast Access to Data

Flexibility for AI means addressing data maneuverability. As AI-enabled data centres move from initial prototyping and testing towards production and scale, a flexible data platform should provide the means to independently scale in multiple areas: performance, capacity, ingest capability, lash-HDD ratio and responsiveness for data scientists. Such flexibility also implies expansion of a namespace without disruption, eliminating data copies and complexity during growth phases. Flexibility for organisations entering AI also suggests good performance regardless of the choice of data formats.

Scale Simply and Economically

Scalability is measurable in terms of not only performance, but also manageability and economics.  A successful AI implementation can start with a few terabytes of data and ramp to petabytes. While flash should always be the media for live AI training data, it can become economically unfeasible to hold hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data all on flash. Alternate hybrid models can suffer limitations around data management and data movement. Loosely coupled architectures that combine all-flash arrays with separate HDD-based data lakes present complicated environments for managing hot data efficiently.

Integration and data movement techniques are key here. Start small with a flash deployment and then choose your scaling strategy according to demand; either scaling with flash only, or combining with deeply integrated HDD pools, ensuring data movement transparently and natively at scale.

Understanding the Whole Environment

Since delivering performance to the application is what matters, not just how fast the storage can push out data, integration and support services must span the whole environment, delivering faster results. This underscores the importance of partnering with a provider that really understands every aspect of the environment—from containers, networks, and applications all the way to file systems and flash. Expert platform tuning to your workflow and growth direction is paramount to removing barriers in your path to value from AI, and enabling the extraction of more insights from data.

The new AI data centre must be optimised to extract maximum value from data; that is, ingesting, storing, and transforming data and then feeding that data through hyper-intensive analytics workflows. This requires a data platform that isn’t constrained by protocol or file system limitations, or a solution that ends up being excessively costly at scale. Any AI data platform provider chosen to help accelerate analytics and Machine Learning must have deep domain expertise in dealing with data sets and I/O that well exceed the capabilities of standard solutions, and have the tools readily at hand to create tightly integrated solutions at scale.

[1] https://www.top500.org/news/chinese-company-has-become-the-worlds-most-valuable-ai-startup/

Expert advice: invest in tech now for a smoother 2019

As the start of another year rolls around again, IT teams in companies of every size are busy looking for the latest trends that 2019 will bring that will ultimately influence their buying decisions. All of this will be geared towards supplying their customers with the latest products and services. But as each tries to get ahead of the competition, it is vital to establish what the key technologies are going to be for the coming year, and the priorities that business leaders should focus on. With this in mind, nine industry experts provide their opinions on what they predict the biggest developments will be in 2019.

“As we further integrate and take advantage of machine learning and AI, however, we’ll realise that improving value requires predictive analytics. Predictive analytics allow simulations of the delivery pipeline based on parameters and options available so you don’t have to thrash the organisation to find the path to improvement. You’ll be able to improve virtually, learn lessons through simulations and, when ready, implement new releases that you can be convinced will work.”

“Further eliminating the manual, repetitive elements within the development process will be even more of a priority in 2019. As the speed of business continues to increase, organisations must shorten the time it takes to unlock the value of data. Automation does just that, and additionally enables companies to redeploy valuable developer resources away from routine data infrastructure management processes and onto value-add tasks, such as delivering new solutions and services that will better guide the business.”

“It’s time that businesses thought about applying security to their business practices as IT security tools are not infallible against human behaviour. Malicious individuals are abusing the fact that junior staff implicitly trust their seniors and that they fear for their jobs if they do not act quickly as instructed. You must put in place processes and beliefs that when unordinary requests come through they should be questioned."

It is apparent that there are many technology trends that we expect to see in the next year with challenges from cybersecurity, to maintaining customer satisfaction, becoming bigger and more widespread than we’ve seen before. But if companies make the right investments early in the New Year, they will have the best solutions and support in place to tackle whatever 2019 throws at them.

IP House is a specialist supplier of high-performance colocation data centre services. Located at the edge of London’s financial district and situated next to the Docklands, it is an independent and privately owned company, founded in 2016, whose main facility was previously owned by a telecommunications provider.

Since its foundation, IP House has refurbished the facility as a Cloud and carrier-neutral data centre with superfast Internet speeds ranging from 10Gb/sec to 100Gb/sec, making it the perfect high-performance solution for customers dependent on connectivity to business-critical applications.

Challenge

As a colocation provider, whose target customers are in the finance, gaming and managed-services industries, IP House has to adhere to the highest standards of uptime, security and resiliency. It has designed and built the communications, power and cooling infrastructure at its London facility to provide a competitive and customer-focused colocation service.

“Uptime, security and service availability are our main priorities,” explained Vinny Vaghani, Operations & Commercial Manager, IP House. “With today’s businesses dependent on instant connectivity to critical applications hosted in the facility and a demand for technology that’s always available, our clients cannot tolerate any downtime or disruption.”

To offer high-end services while remaining price-competitive, the company follows a “pay as you grow” deployment strategy, scaling up to add infrastructure to satisfy customer demand. The 15,000 sq ft facility has two technical Data Suites, the first of which is now operational, with plans for the second suite to be brought online in the future. 

Solution approach

Understanding IP Houses need for a scalable, resilient and secure data centre solution, APC’s Elite Partner Comtec Power worked with the company to deliver a retrofit and upgrade project at their London facility.

Working with Comtec enabled IP House to design and build the data centre to meet the requirements for Tier III classification. “Their insight and experience played a critical part in the company’s decision making,” said Vinny Vaghani, “ensuring that our future clients would continue to benefit from the most innovative technology solutions available in the market.”

“Comtec's expertise in design and build were unparalleled and invaluable.” he continued. “Their familiarity with data centre technology and proactive approach to customer support during the initial stages were one of the key reasons they were selected to work with us.”

“As the newest colocation market entrant we wanted to acquire and leverage both the experience and expertise of the partners supplying our critical infrastructure. We’ve always had a great relationship and single point of contact via Ian Gregg, Data Centre Specialist at Comtec Power.” Vinny continued. “This meant that at every stage of the project we were able to communicate our requirements with someone who understood our objectives from the customers perspective. That level of service was outstanding and is something they continue to provide us to this day.”

The data centre contains industry-leading infrastructure solutions including Schneider Electric’s Symmetra UPS, deployed in an N+1 configuration with 4x 500kVA to deliver rapidly scalable and resilient power options. In addition, IP House selected Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT, DMaaS platform for 24/7 advanced monitoring, management and data-driven insights.

“From the design stages through to the deployment of the first pod, our focus has always been built around three core principles.” said Vinny Vaghani. “The first was to partner with industry-leading vendors, which ensures we deploy the most reliable and innovative technology solutions. The second was to gain accreditations that would reflect our commitments to uptime, security and resiliency. The third was to develop a reputation for customer service excellence.”

The company has deployed industry-leading hardware and software products from Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ for Data Centers architecture, which is comprised of three levels; connected products, edge control software, and cloud-based apps/analytics/services.

IP House’s infrastructure deployment strategy is based around modular growth, utilising components of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ for Data Centers Architecture to scale up and add capacity as customer requirements demand it.

Suite A is comprised of 192 racks, all of which are Schneider Electric’s 48U NetShelter SX enclosures. These are larger than the standard industry size and allow the company to offer higher power densities and more scalability or space for IT equipment to customers. High-density racks maximise the use of available space in the data centre and also facilitate the use of containment solutions for efficient cooling operations, both of which result in energy efficiency and ultimately, reduced operating costs.

“Our market research revealed that demand among our target customers was for higher rack densities,” said Vinny Vaghani,. “IP House can provide peak power densities of 6kW/rack without making any modifications to our core infrastructure. We can maintain an average power density of 4kW per rack and by making changes to the local circuit breakers we can offer even higher power densities of up to 14kW/rack.”

When planning to upgrade the existing data centre, one of IP House’s main priorities was to prepare the facility for scalable, modular growth. “We needed a resilient power distribution system that would give us the flexibility to add capacity to Suite A and Suite B in two phases,” Vaghani continued. “As part of the retrofit, we deployed two Schneider Electric Symmetra PX UPS systems, which provide us with the perfect mix of modularity and scalability, while protecting our customers from downtime.”

Symmetra PX allows backup power to be added in smaller increments of 25kW, up to the maximum 2MW capacity that is envisaged for Data Suite A. Once operational Suite B will have its own independent plant room with a separate utility feed and an additional 320 racks, bringing the total to 512.

The power distribution system in Data Suite A also comprises Connected Products including transformers, rack PDU’s (power distribution units) and switchgear. The PDUs were chosen in part because they provide intelligent monitoring, outlet switching, tool-free mounting and has the ability to integrate with NetBotz sensors.

“The original facility had only a single power distribution system,” continued Vinny Vaghani. “As part of the retrofit, we deployed a truly diverse power feed via the addition of a secondary switchgear that mirrors the first. The new switchgear was supplied by Schneider Electric and installed with the expert partnership and guidance of its Elite Partner Comtec Power.”

Edge Control ensures advanced management

Another key aspect of the facility is Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare for Data Centers™, Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, which enables the infrastructure equipment to be monitored and managed from a “single pane of glass”, while providing seamless integration with the company’s building-management software.

IP House makes use of several Schneider Electric software modules and include Data Center Expert, which monitors alarm notifications and manages the physical infrastructure, reporting on availability, temperature, humidity and airflow to provide instant notification of any faults.

In addition, the company uses the StruxureWare for Data Centers, Data Center Operations Colocation Module to map the facilities physical infrastructure, plan future capacity, manage the network and map airflows to ensure sufficient cooling. Other benefits include the ability to model effects of changes in cooling equipment to the data centre environment and anticipate its potential impact on customers.

The final component of IP Houses software solution is Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT; the Industry’s first vendor-neutral Datacentre Management as a Service (DMaaS) architecture, purpose-built for the hybrid IT and data centre environments. It provides global visibility from anywhere, at any time on any device and delivers data-driven insights into critical IT assets, which helps customers mitigate risk and reduce downtime.

Results

Thanks to its deployment of industry-leading power and UPS (uninterruptible power supply) systems, high-density racks and DCIM (data centre infrastructure management) software from Schneider Electric, IP House’s new data centre is a highly resilient facility that meets the requirements of a Tier III data centre, as defined by the Uptime Institute. It is therefore ideally equipped to meet the high-availability service demands of the company’s key customers.

“When choosing the software platform we went through a thorough selection process”, said Vinny Vaghani. “We particularly liked the vendor neutrality aspect that Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT system offers. We can integrate it with any equipment that communicates over standard TCP/IP protocols and manage the entire data centre using the same solution. Previously, the monitoring systems were completely separated, integrating them all into one platform gives us enhanced reporting and the ability to make data-driven decisions.”

In addition, the EcoStruxure IT Mobile Insights Application allows updates to be sent to mobile devices at remote locations, allowing the facility to monitored 24/7 by both staff and field by service engineers. Comtec Power remains linked to the IP House facility via the application and has the ability to monitor the same alerts in real-time, providing expert support in the face of downtime or an unplanned event.

IP House maintains that the reputation of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture, coupled with the control and management features of the EcoStruxure IT platform provides a vital advantage when addressing the high-availability market that is its principal target.

“Our customers are always interested to know how we’re using Big Data analytics and advanced software to control and monitor the environment”, said Vinny Vaghani. “They know that our infrastructure is not only of the highest quality, but is proactively monitored and response is immediate in the event of an unplanned alert. None of which would be possible without utilising Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for Data Centers architecture. It’s been an important factor in our decision making and one that we believe will benefit both our customers and business, long-term.” 

Recently we’ve seen a new evolution within this revolution – speed. Now, customers not only have access to more information than ever before, they’re also able to access it much faster.

And that’s only making consumer impatience grow. Impatience is an innate human trait, but retailers often don’t understand just how unwilling consumers are to wait for service. Combine that with growing expectations for the quality of customer experiences, and it’s time many retailers re-evaluated the technology they’re using to deliver these experiences.

Balancing risk and reward

It’s difficult to know exactly what the next ‘big thing’ in consumer expectations will be – and that means retailers need a solution stack that’s flexible enough to adapt to the changing customer experience landscape quickly, without requiring big-bang technology changes.

Taking on new technology always involves an element of risk. But in a diversifying commerce environment where new entrants are specialising in the niches that larger retailers often struggle to fill, the risk of losing out to your competition is bigger.

Luckily, the leading commerce platform and solution vendors are investing heavily in best-in-class capabilities to be able to offer a core set of commerce experience features.

Making the most of mobile

Without a doubt, mobile has had one of the most significant impacts on the ways consumers shop in recent years. The buying journey is changing, with customers doing more research online before they make purchases, whether they buy instore or stay online.

Mobile has given your customers the ability to look up product information, opening times, price comparisons and more near-instantaneously – so optimising your site for mobile is a must to ensure they’re getting high-speed access via your infrastructure.

As mobile devices add new capabilities with every new generation, there’s a growing number of device-native features you can take advantage of to connect with your customers. Rather than simply making an app that replicates the functionality of your website – as many retailers have – consider how you can improve the customer experience by using things like push notifications, location data and the device’s built-in camera.

A great example of this is Asos’ visual search tool, Style Match, that recently became available to all Asos customers. This tool uses artificial intelligence to allow customers to take a picture or upload an image and then and use the image to search through the site’s product lines to find similar suggestions. With 80% of Asos’ UK traffic coming from mobile devices, this is a great way to ensure customers are able to get to the items they want on a mobile device. It is all about that keyword: “discovery”.

The power of voice

It’s not just visual search that’s expanding – voice search is also increasing in popularity and sophistication as more and more consumers bring virtual assistants into their homes and workplaces.

However, the convenience for consumers brings a new challenge for retailers: how do you drive brand awareness without relying on the traditional banners, pop-ups and links of visual search? What do you need to do to get your products in front of people?

Part of the answer lies in upgrading the way your customers communicate with you through these assistants. Most voice-controlled apps currently rely on users saying pre-programmed trigger phrases – but to make the most of the voice search opportunity, we’ll need to see a shift toward AI-enabled apps that have natural language processing capabilities built in to help the process become more conversational.

With that in place, there’s more opportunity for a back-and-forth between your customers and your app, where the virtual assistant can intelligently identify and verbally share targeted offers with your customer base.

How you manage your data is as important as the data itself

Fundamentally, all of this is enabled by data – huge amounts of it. But often businesses simply have more data than they know what to do with, which means they’re not seeing the true value.

With a data management platform (DMP), you can not only consolidate your customer data from across the business into a single place, but bring in extra supplemental information from third-party sources. This gives you the power to analyse and produce reports about your customers’ behaviour for patterns to inform your segmentation – and use data about their attributes and preferences to help create highly targeted campaigns. One fashion retailer we worked with achieved an ROI of 469% thanks to hyper-focused targeting and audience analysis.

Consumers – particularly younger generations – are increasingly willing to part with their data in return for more personalised experiences. But as privacy concerns grow, too, and with regulations such as GDPR keeping how companies use customer data in check, you’ll need to be absolutely transparent with your customers about what information you’re using, how you’re using it, and who it’ll be shared with.

And even more importantly, you need to deliver on your promise. If you’re collecting customer data in exchange for more targeted, personalised experiences, your customers need to feel like they’re getting what they’re ‘paying’ for with their information. With a DMP, you can use third-party data and services to give them dynamic, programmatic advertisements that are based on their interests and behaviours.

Get the basics right first

To make all this happen, most retailers will need to make significant strategic choices about their IT infrastructure and the technology they use to deliver their customer experiences.

Though it’s understandable to feel pressure to implement the latest ‘big thing’ in customer experience, especially if your competitor has it, the most important thing is to be future-looking in how you choose the technologies – and the providers and vendors – you work with. Consumer expectations change constantly, so it’s vital you choose infrastructure that’s flexible, scalable, and can introduce new capabilities alongside your existing technology – with no need to rip and replace.

Your priorities should be managing and analysing your data effectively, identifying where new technologies can boost experience, and testing the business areas where automation and AI can give you a competitive edge. After that, you can continue to build your strategy towards boosting revenue, guaranteeing customer loyalty, and delivering new, innovative products and services.

By Cloudera, the platform for machine learning and data analytics, optimised for the cloud.

One of the main topics for discussion was building cloud native applications. Of course, I had known that a build-your-own approach here was becoming popular, but I hadn’t appreciated the level at which it had permeated the entire development ecosystem.

Many of the developers I spoke to had a couple of things in common; they all came from organisations that owned huge volumes of data and they all needed to create a process involving both analytical and transactional workloads with that data using a variety of different technologies.

These analytical workflows were varied in nature. Many were finding that being able to run SQL, for example, wasn’t enough to solve the functional and non-functional requirements of queries in an adequate manner.

Consequently, a number of developers were building their own cloud native data management platform. What I found interesting was the number of different organisations feeling the need to do this given there is such a wide variety of cloud native – and also on premise platforms - out there that are well-known and are in the SQL and NoSQL space. Yet, they can find nothing on the market to suit their needs.

I find this remarkable because they may see it as the most cost-effective option to begin with, but, it is likely to turn out a much less economic option in the long-term. What these developers are building is very specific to a particular problem - and as far as addressing their challenge it is likely to be an initial success. However, there is considerable risk inherent in this approach.

All will be well if those developers building the solution remain with their organisation. However, if they decide to leave – and let’s face it the competition for developers couldn’t be stronger – then their existing employer either has to offer them more money, or face a knowledge vacuum surrounding the platform, possibly having to bring in expensive consultants to the rescue.

The other issue is a matter of functionality. Once the organisation wants to do something extra with the platform they will need to set up a data pipeline and replicate it in another data store, reconstructing it along the way. Before they know where they are, they have the same data replicated in four or five different structures. Suddenly, what started out as a cost-effective platform developed for a particular purpose has become both expensive and complex.

Interestingly, this was one of the reasons several developers told me they are not going cloud native. This ramping up of cost and complexity is not easy to manage. Besides, if you consider Amazon S3, AWS or any of the other low-cost cloud platforms, they are not fast mechanisms. It might take 20 seconds to do a read and there is no performance guarantee. If a business is data-intensive then it does beg the question as to whether cloud native is the right route.

This is especially the case if an organisation needs specific hosting requirements. For example, a healthcare company may need to be connected to N3 or HS3N. If so, the costs will rise dramatically as the data can’t be accommodated in large-scale AWS racks but must be kept apart.

Of course, there is a plus side, especially if a developer makes use of all available services offered by the cloud provider. This can significantly reduce the time to build and deploy a solution – and ensures it is highly scalable. However, this does tie the organisation to a particular cloud provider as, if a solution is built, for example, in AWS, it can’t be moved. Then as transactional values increase, data volumes grow and complexity intensifies, the costs can increase again quite dramatically.

Traditionally in the database market we used to talk about ‘asset compliance’. In the cloud world, because of the way the infrastructure works, providers are unable to offer this as we used to know it. Instead the big providers have redefined the concept so they can comply. While in some cases this may not be important, it can bring a whole host of issues to the fore when building apps that are critically dependent on the consistency and quality of data such as real-time clinical applications.

Yet despite all these drawbacks, developers are still building cloud native applications because they can’t find what they want on the market. This bodes well for solutions such as InterSystems’ IRIS Data Platform which, with its flexible architecture can meet varied transactional and analytical workloads and interrogate data in a number of different modes, not just in SQL or object or document-based.

What could also make IRIS so valuable in these cases is its interoperability; in particular, its ability to integrate data and applications into seamless, real-time business processes. It can also cut through the complexity, collapsing the tech stack and managing multiple open source components, all in a highly cost-effective manner.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the number of developers at Devoxx building their own cloud native applications. After all, they are rather a self-selecting band, given the nature of the event.

However, the most exciting aspect here is not that that such a technically inquisitive and inventive group are doing it themselves, more that they are being forced to do so despite the shortcomings of cloud native because of a gap in the market. Which all means current new market developments are certainly moving in the right direction.

What are the benefits of AI?

Think of AI as a way to throw a bunch of data at a wall and have the algorithms make sense of the data. The technology will uncover underlying patterns that are often unrecognised by the human eye. In machine learning, there is the concept of supervised and unsupervised models. In supervised models, the algorithms find patterns (and develop predictive models) using both input data and output data.

In supervised learning, the machine already knows the output of the algorithm before it starts working on it. The algorithm is taught through a training data set that guides the machine, and the machine works out the steps from input to output. With unsupervised learning, the system does not have any concrete data sets, and the outcomes are also mostly unknown. This technique is useful when you’re not quite sure what to look for.

Modern identity verification solutions use a combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning to develop and refine models to perform three important functions: data extraction, fraud detection, and risk scoring. To expedite the learning curve and better train the ML models, leading identity verification companies are supplementing its ML with human review—making the algorithms smarter and faster and improving verification accuracy and their ability to spot fake IDs.

Speed is one of the key benefits that comes with AI. AI removes the strain of repetitive tasks for humans, reducing the time it takes to recognise an ID document, verify that an ID document is genuine and spot deviations that may signal fraud. The better the algorithms, the faster the verification process and the simpler the user experience.

This in turn prevents customer frustration and helps businesses reduce their abandonment rates and increase new account conversions. Jumio’s AI models have already reduced the average customer transaction time by 7 percent in 2018 alone.

Another benefit of AI is accuracy, and particularly with repeat tasks. When AI has a lot of data to leverage, it can create better models that have significantly higher predictive power. For example, in facial recognition, AI can implicitly learn and predict the normal distance between someone’s eyes. But the link between data volume and AI success rates cannot be expressed enough.

As Google's Research Director Peter Norvig succinctly puts it, when explaining why Google’s AI is so strong, "We don’t have better algorithms than anyone else. We just have more data.” At Jumio, we have the industry’s largest dataset of more than 130 million identity verifications, which gives the company a significant competitive advantage and head start in terms of developing, training and refining its AI/ML models. As with Google, building up so much data takes time—and the AI model continues to gain strength everyday as hundreds of thousands of verifications are continuously added to the ML engine.

Making ID verification accuracy even stronger: AI plus humans

How do you expand upon the strengths of artificial intelligence? Augmented intelligence—the combination of AI and human review—remains the most powerful model available.

Humans can look at one or two situations and generalise, without needing the millions of terabytes of data that is required of AI. Fraudsters constantly change their approach, so it’s important to be able to adapt quickly. Once human review identifies a new technique from fraudsters, new algorithms can be developed to ensure this is automatically picked up by the machines in the future.

Despite what many experts’ grand assumptions of AI would have us believe, there are many cases where humans are still smarter and can spot nuances that machines just can’t see. For example, AI cannot detect if there is a font mismatch unless it is explicitly trained to look for that use case. Humans who are highly trained in ID verification develop a “sixth sense” that often tells them that a certain ID card is “fishy,” hence triggering a deeper exploration. Once the root cause analysis is complete, this new fraud mechanism can be taught to AI algorithms, which then do an amazing job of looking for a similar pattern on an ongoing basis.

The role of regulation

When it comes to GDPR, the human interaction is vital. GDPR mandates additional considerations when the outcome of that verification results in an “automatic refusal of an online credit application or e-recruiting practices.” Fully automated verification solutions that fail to give the data subject the right “to obtain human intervention on the part of the (data) controller, to express his or her point of view and to contest the decision” are not allowed under GDPR, according to GDPR Article 22(3).

In short, businesses have to be able to tell the person why they were denied or rejected. Machines struggle to clearly explain this and provide deeper rationale for the verification decision, which is where expert human review comes in.  

The future of AI and humans

It’s not a case of AI versus humans, but of the two working together in perfect harmony. AI and machine learning need data (and lots of it) to develop and refine algorithms. The more data, the better the predictability of the algorithms, and who is best placed to feed them this data and ensure ongoing learning from the machines? Humans.

In time, we could reach a point where humans can simultaneously learn from machines. With this symbiosis of intelligence eventually flowing between humans and machines, there’s no doubt that AI and humans are smarter together. 

There’s nothing more frustrating to an employee than setting out to work on an important project, only to find that a crucial business application isn’t responding the way it should. Even worse is calling the IT help desk for assistance, and discovering that the issue is widespread and all IT can do is create a ticket, and transfer it to another team to solve.

Beyond individual frustration, overwhelmed IT staff can have a significantly negative impact on the wider business. When IT issues drag out over the course of days or weeks, employee productivity and overall morale drops while the cost of doing business and revenue loss both increase. In fact, the average employee spends a whopping 22 minutes a day dealing with IT-related issues.

With so many strategic goals competing for the CIO’s attention, maintaining IT stability shouldn’t be competing for the top slot. Below are three tips to help CIOs and IT leaders improve user productivity and ease the burden on the help desk while maintaining focus on the larger company-wide strategic goals.

Focus on user experience rather than on incident tickets

Organisations that can proactively keep tabs on their enterprise environments and the efforts of IT, and can receive regular employee feedback about those efforts, are likely to maintain successful IT departments – while preserving (or even increasing) employee productivity by cutting down the number of issues they deal with.

Using automated platforms, the IT department can monitor the IT ecosystem, identifying issues and allowing IT staff to fix them proactively. For example, they can detect whether employees are using a workaround app because it’s not working correctly. IT can then reach out to users and let them know that they’re working on a solution that will make employees’ work more effective. This is the type of great IT support that organisations can expect when IT uses automated platforms that leverage real-time end-user data to better understand the problems employees are facing.

To illustrate, a recent study conducted by Digital Enterprise Journal found that 41 per cent of organisations taking a proactive approach to IT – by empowering both employees and IT staff to be more collaborative – improved success rates in preventing performance issues before employees were ever affected. The study also found that these enterprises are enjoying greater IT success when they shift to monitoring IT services from the end-user perspective with proper business context, and 58 per cent of the survey’s respondents noted that monitoring IT performance from the user perspective is a top strategic goal for their IT transformation.

Use AI to extract vast amounts of insight from small PC devices

Strategic-thinking CIOs and their IT departments are choosing to use advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to comprehensively monitor and assess the user experience of devices and applications across the enterprise in real-time.

Leveraging the power of advanced algorithms, organisations can take a more advanced approach to IT by using end-user performance data to identify IT-related problems automatically and generate associated IT tickets. In addition, the right AI-based tools can remediate minor issues as they pop up without any human intervention at all, freeing IT staff to tend to only the most pressing concerns, or better yet – to focus on more strategic and value-add assignments.

This allows IT staff to stay ahead of different hiccough with devices and applications across the organisation by giving them the context needed to make the best decisions possible and remediate issues quickly (sometimes automatically) and with ease.

Remove end users as a critical step in the IT support process

There’s no doubt that system failures will continue to occur as technology becomes ever-more complex and people and industries becoming more reliant on it to perform almost every function of everyday life. But by making use of automation and the right data, IT is able to be more proactive, becoming vastly more efficient. The result is an IT department that can get ahead of issues and work – and employees that aren’t inconvenienced when IT-related problems arise.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can sift through data and find issues faster than a human could ever hope to, which is why successful organisations are choosing to add AI into the mix to bolster the abilities of their IT staff and take the end-user out of the process. By letting the algorithms do what they’re best at, businesses can reduce the overall number of IT support tickets, eliminate employee frustration related to IT disruptions and most importantly, ensure employees across every department have devices and applications consistently available so they can do their jobs effectively.

When IT departments are empowered to be champions of the employee experience and given the tools to succeed, amazing things can happen within the organisation. Greater employee productivity leads to reduced operational IT spending because teams are able to focus on the most pressing concerns, as opposed to being bogged down with support tickets and placing employee issues in a queue to be dealt with later.

Automation, though still relatively new for business applications, has the power to bolster the abilities of IT staff across the world if the right dynamic is implemented. With the power of AI at the fingertips of IT departments, they’ll elevate their service levels to new heights and, more importantly, encounter fewer frustrated end users and less enterprise-wide impact – and help organisations win back their productivity. 

Human workers have become far more effective, creative and emotionally intelligent. Machine learning will improve human decision-making and the rising use of remote access technology will enable humans to influence faraway people and events by being ‘present’ in multiple devices and locations.

The increasing use of these technologies to analyse, identify and respond to changing trends in real-time will make human workers digitally omnipresent across departments, businesses, factories and devices. The ability to have foresight on processes will consequently change many roles from reactive and routine-based to analytical and strategic. While machines take over routine tasks, humans will be able to focus more on having a bird’s-eye-view on whole processes.

Here are five ways that the human workforce will be transformed by emerging technologies in the next decade:

1. Workers will be digitally omnipresent

Technologies such as the ability to ‘remote in’ to a wide array of devices – from smartboards to industrial robots – will break down traditional silos of expertise and allow organisations to share live data and insights across locations. Workers will be able to work remotely more effectively and be in multiple places at once.

Remote access technology has already allowed customer service agents to remotely access and fix smart TVs, and even enable technicians to remotely re-calibrate medical imaging equipment on cruise ships or connect into satellite control stations. 

Now the technology is being extended beyond technical support to other functions, from virtual training to cross-departmental oversight and collaboration. Companies could increasingly deploy remote access technology to allow one department to ‘remote in’ to interactive white boards or Augmented Reality headsets in other departments and collaborate on multinational, cross-departmental projects. Legal teams can remotely access staff devices in any location to oversee and enforce compliance. In future, business customers will even be able to access remote, overseas machines to conduct virtual training on real equipment in training labs.  

The rise of ubiquitous remote access technology will mean every department, from legal to HR to accounts, will be able to more easily teach and learn from other departments, turning organisations into more tight-knit, cohesive units. This is set to unite organisations, bringing together business units, departments and divisions in a way never previously possible. 

2. Organisations will be more transparent and workers multi-functional

Staff will also be able to fulfil more cross-sector, strategic roles. This will be facilitated by technology that will enable employees to ‘remote in’ to a wide range of other departments, divisions and devices and ‘be where they are not’. 

The expansion of IoT to encompass much of the modern workplace – from the factory floor to the office – will see the deployment of remote access technology as a tool for everything from remote industrial maintenance to cross-departmental ‘virtual training’. Remote access will give managers the ability to ‘remote control’ a vast industrial IoT assembly line, giving industrial managers the power to influence and oversee entire end-to-end supply chains in real-time. This will be combined with Artificial Intelligence systems that will autonomously monitor production processes and aid predictive maintenance, enabling workers, such as engineers and technicians, to make smarter and more strategic technical interventions.

Organisations will become more transparent when people and data from every department and division are instantly available in other places. If HR or legal staff can ‘remote in’ to business travellers’ devices to monitor expenses claims for compliance, it could make corporate hospitality more transparent and even reduce potential problems like bribery.

3. IT staff will become tech strategists

Remote access technology will transform the position of IT manager from a purely technical role to one with responsibility for bringing together people and data from all departments in pursuit of wider business objectives. Data will power the digital economy and the most important people in companies will be those that understand how to extract commercial value from data to fuel business processes. This will elevate IT managers from pure ‘techies’ into ‘technology strategists’ responsible for the sharing of information across departments to drive innovation.

In the future, engineering and creative departments could be brought together by enabling engineers to ‘remote in’ to AR headsets or AR displays to add technical input to creative sketches.

IT managers will also be responsible for organising and storing the company’s data in a way that makes it commercially valuable and useable to train the machine-learning algorithms that fuel future business processes. This has the potential to transform the role of IT manager into a board-level one. 

4. Customer service agents will be transformed by AI and remote access

Other human roles will dramatically expand, too. For example, developments in AI and remote access are set to transform the human customer service agent into a more wide-ranging and effective role. Customer service agents will have much greater responsibility and influence as remote access technology allows them to enter any connected object, from objects in homes to hospitals, without physically being there. Future call centres will be composed of multi-skilled teams required to perform complex and multi-faceted tasks in each industry sector.

Customer support agents or technicians might be required to remote in to and fix a smart traffic light, combat a live cyber-attack on a train, or fix IoT equipment on an Industry 4.0 factory floor. Customer service agents will increasingly be educators, salespeople, and consultants, required to ‘remote in’ to customers’ homes or businesses and provide training and maintenance or up-sell new products.

Future customer service agents will have the opportunity to expand their skill-sets as they work with a range of technologies and machine-learning systems to augment key customer service tasks, such as fixing technical problems. They may even extract useable insights from data that an AI can use, by using an app to conduct automated sentiment analysis of customer queries.

A ‘virtual’ customer service agent and a human call-centre worker will in future work together to solve more problems at greater speed. For example, a machine-learning system could identify real-time patterns in customer service requests, such as more people reporting cyber-attacks in a certain location, enabling human technical support staff to more effectively target their resources. This will create more efficient and effective customer service agents with greater insight and foresight.

5. Finance and legal teams will have more power

Similarly, finance and legal managers will have the opportunity to be far be more strategic, influential and make their outputs effective. Finance managers will be able to ‘remote in’ to a PC in accounts retrievable and legal teams will similarly be able to access a PC in another department to assist with compliance issues in real-time. Machine-learning algorithms will be able to monitor data to identify patterns (such as people seeking certain types of legal support after a recent legal change) that will enable them to predict and prevent potential problems.

With greater power, they will have more responsibility for policing compliance with everything from data-privacy laws to new financial regulations.

The outcome will be that they will have increasingly cross-sector roles and responsibilities and greater power and influence. Just as IoT has merged previously separate sectors such as the aerospace and software industries, it will now merge previously separate business departments and divisions. Traditional silos will be dissolved, and knowledge will spread further and faster than ever before. The ability for humans to be digitally omnipresent across all connected devices will give everyone from company lawyers to finance managers greater power and influence, and foster closer cross-departmental collaboration and learning.

It isn’t news that DevOps and IT security teams often struggle to align their departments and maintain a coherent balance between keeping a business secure and developing new applications to maintain customer interest.  While security processes are a necessity, they can be deemed by DevOps teams to be manual and cumbersome, blocking the agility that makes them so effective in bringing their solutions to market. IT teams conversely feel their counterparts are prepared to sacrifice security in the name of innovation and revenue.

Even if both teams do respect the other’s intentions, any conflict could lead to delays in both of their processes. For example, an IT team may need to make crucial updates to the network security and warn different teams they may experience some downtime during this crucial implementation. However, DevOps have typically been given more leeway in how they operate as they are so important in today’s software-driven world, and may ask for the update to be delayed so they can complete tasks or meet deadlines, leaving the IT team waiting and losing time rescheduling their own work.

This has unfortunately led to a myth that DevOps teams choose to ignore security. In reality, developers are keen to know that their apps and the environment they work in are secure – but at the same time, they don’t want security to get in the way of them quickly delivering valuable new products and software features.

So, is there a way for DevOps teams – one of the most important resources in many modern businesses – to embrace security without impacting agility? Can the integration of DevOps and security be done in a way that alleviates tensions and promotes collaboration – while actually improving both security and agility in the process?

Yes. The secret is automation.

Reconciliation through automation

As C-suite executives are now more likely to focus on security, due to the obvious financial and reputational consequences of a breach, DevOps teams should define how they protect and secure their multiple projects and production environments. Automating security as part of the CI/CD process allows DevOps teams to easily follow company security policies because they will be embedded into the automation pipeline.

This process can remain running with little concern, effectively minimising stress about security. This still automates policy changes and activities so that there is a significantly reduced chance of error. Although the automation solution remains hidden, it can still be utilised at any point to view data on the vulnerabilities, compliance requirements, security policies and network connectivity, via its continuous scanning abilities.

Additionally, DevOps teams are already familiar with automated tools in their daily operations and communications – and they are likely to be accepting of switching to a security solution that integrates with their existing processes.

Automation is the key to creating reliable, effective and connected “DevSecOps” teams, as it makes the secure option the easy option. It combines DevOps’ existing use of automated tools to achieve their ultimate goal of continuous, on-time and on-budget deployments with security’s focus of reducing human error and maintaining continuous visibility into potential vulnerabilities.

Encouraging adoption

A guiding principle of DevOps is collaboration, which is often equated with the idea of shared responsibility. To successfully embed security into the DevOps process, security teams and developers must work together and establish shared responsibility. But how?

Some organisations may assign a security representative in each development team. This person acts as a pivotal link between the two teams – improving communication and building a balanced process that considers everyone’s mutual interests. A continuous flow of knowledge sharing among both teams ensures a level of maturity that allows a business to secure applications and services with an automated solution.

Security teams can begin to define “guardrail policies” that allow development teams to deploy continuously, with the caveat of having to obey security and compliance policies. This is critical for both teams. This new way of working means developers will be able to test their security posture at every step in the CI/CD pipeline and correct things when necessary, and security teams can comprehensively ensure security and compliance throughout the development process.

Embracing collaboration

Any belief that there is common discord between DevOps and IT security teams is unfounded. While it cannot be denied that both teams affect each other, this is not due to conflict – it’s due to business needs. If the two teams work together, they can both achieve their goals and be part of a secure, innovative and profitable organisation. The first step is to accept collaboration is a necessity and by embracing security instead of being concerned by it, DevOps teams can stay in control of how their needs work around IT teams’ processes. Then, an automated security solution can be deployed to improve the efficiency and outcomes of both departments – and, in turn, the entire organisation. It’s time for DevOps to embrace DevSecOps. 

As organisations embark on digital transformation projects, it is clear that the technology landscape is constantly evolving. The pillars upon which business IT systems were built 30 years ago are rapidly fading and organisations are now pushing for IT to change. Technology has shifted from an IT issue to a business issue as the boardroom looks at ways to improve efficiency and save costs. IT teams need to embrace the journey of digital transformation to ensure objectives are met quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.

IT teams are therefore under more pressure than ever to provide a modern infrastructure setup and applications that can help businesses remain competitive. But digital transformation is complex, and pressure on IT isn’t just being applied by one department. Pressure is coming from all business units, finance and legal, and all network and security infrastructure owners. Each of these areas has individual requirements for tackling transformation and trying to cater to each group’s needs at the same time is almost impossible. IT teams have to pick their battles wisely to avoid hitting an impasse on the transformation journey.

Changing demands

IT teams have always been under pressure to deliver, but the technology environment has changed significantly from even a decade ago. Back in 2008, cloud computing was in its relative infancy—AWS had only been relaunched in its current format two years earlier—and many organisations relied on traditional technology and software procurement cycles, which included roadmaps that looked three to five years ahead. IT teams were expected to adopt the technology that could support the business’ wider progression plans for the entirety of that timeframe, and there was often little tolerance for failure. Whether it’s advancements such as the Internet of Things (IoT) or the increased use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or collaborative tools, companies in today’s IT world cannot afford not to prioritise their battles and plan efficiently.

Today, however, the rigid roadmap approach is obsolete. Technology is evolving rapidly, some could say even every day, and businesses that only look to change after multiyear planning periods will forever be playing catch-up with competitors making use of disruptive capabilities. Whether it’s advancements in data centre consolidation, the IoT, greater use of SaaS and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings, collaborative tools, or any of the countless others, companies can’t afford to switch off from evolution at any point.

The changing ways of working are having an influence too. More individuals are working from home or other locations outside the office; employees want access to more intuitive business applications rather than clunky software, and the C-suite wants to make better use of big data and IoT to make processes more streamlined and cost-effective. This all adds up to a lot of requirements to be juggled by IT, which will want to be seen as a facilitator of digital transformation rather than a restrictive bottleneck.

Taking a step back and seeing the bigger picture

However, IT can’t simply become a team of “yes” people. For every capability that technology can unlock, it raises questions around business performance, change and process management, and, of course, security. How can the ever-increasing number of users embracing new cloud technologies and applications be protected? How can sensitive data be locked down to avoid exposure? What’s needed to ensure compliance with GDPR and other data laws? How can an enterprise gain complete visibility into data flows and cyber threats — both internally and across the wider threat landscape? Will the current internet setup be sufficient for the expanding geography of users and applications? These are a few examples of the complexity involved in adapting to the current transformation trend.

Attempting to satisfy all requirements at the same time is too complex, and IT teams risk losing sight of the bigger picture. They should therefore take a huge step back and come at things from a different angle. Instead of thinking about technology that can satisfy one or two requirements, they need to find tools that ideally fulfil multiple purposes at once. Not only will this provide a more cost-effective alternative, but it provides time and resources for IT to then focus on other issues.

Enterprise-wide transformative technology has come a long way and can now help businesses overcome a lot of issues at once — all with what can be a relatively small investment of time and resources. However, enterprises have to plan their transformation strategy with the bigger picture in mind—it is not only about moving applications to the cloud. Organisations have to consider the consequences such a move will have on the entire network and security infrastructure. With an increasing number of employees working from branch offices or on the road, and accessing their data in the cloud remotely, latency can become an issue with the traditional hub-and-spoke network setup. These days, employees expect hassle-free connectivity to enterprise networks and data. However, in traditional network setups, traffic is routed back to the corporate data centre for security scans, which hampers performance. The same situation can arise when it comes to enabling remote access VPN for mobile users.

In other words, taking one step towards digital transformation without taking the bigger picture into account can be counterproductive, opening up new battles that result in unhappy users contending with a sub-standard experience.

Prior to moving applications to the cloud, companies should consider how this step would affect network traffic patterns and then plan accordingly, taking local internet access into consideration. Similarly, software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) can help to solve one battleground, but not without security requirements at branch offices being given due consideration.

Ultimately, IT teams that attempt to handle individual issues and requirements as they arise will soon become overwhelmed. With numerous tools and solutions available, it can be tempting for businesses to start adopting new technology on a case-by-case basis, yet this often results in bloated networks, overlapping technology, and costly and unnecessary licences. The speed to deploy and improve performance with the cloud, SaaS, and business applications must be put at the forefront, but how and when to deploy must be chosen carefully. Digital transformation and pressure on IT teams within businesses is an ongoing and tricky minefield to navigate. Therefore, it is important for IT teams take a step back and choose their battles more wisely, they are better positioned to use their expertise to suggest and adopt the technology that will empower the entire organisation to thrive. 

Can you talks us through some of the company’s key milestones to date?

• 20+ Years Experience as a Managed Service Provider
• 1,449+ IT Certifications held by team members
• Tens of thousands of Cloud and Virtual Machines under management
• 7 World-Class Data Centers
• Winner of Multiple VMware Cloud Provider Awards and 15 Years as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
• 24/7/365 Support and Comprehensive SLAs
• Awarded the ISO 27001 Information Security Management Certification

Please can you provide a high level view of NaviSite’s technology portfolio?

Navisite, LLC, a part of Spectrum Enterprise, is a leading international provider of enterprise-class, cloud-enabled hosting, managed applications and services. Navisite provides a full suite of reliable and scalable managed services, including Application, Cloud Desktop, Cloud Infrastructure and Hosting services for organizations looking to outsource IT infrastructures to help lower their capital and operational costs. Enterprise clients depend on Navisite for customized solutions, delivered through an international footprint of state-of-the-art data centres.

In more detail, please can you talks us through the NaviSite portfolio, starting with IaaS?

Migrating to the cloud faster and with better results while freeing-up internal IT resources is at the heart of IaaS and Navisite. Proven experts will oversee your complete migration to our VMware-based clouds or Microsoft Azure and ensure the platform is optimized to meet your business use cases. Navisite’s cloud migration methodology takes advantage of an array of tools and best practices to ensure a successful migration with minimized risk.

And then there are Application Services?

Secure, resilient operation of enterprise applications is crucial to modern business. Maintaining the integrity of ERP applications and communications resources can be challenging and time-consuming, often restricting IT personnel from focusing on other projects with larger business implications. Navisite offers application services designed to help simplify, streamline and secure enterprise applications across the organization and for an array of distinct business functions.

And Desktop-as-a-Service?

Navisite’s Managed DaaS securely delivers virtual desktops across the enterprise, with an eye on delivering a truly client-centric solution, letting you choose the levels of service that best suit your business needs.

Our latest iteration builds off of VMware’s powerful new Horizon 8.0 platform and combines that with industry-leading NVIDIA GPUs, to offer our clients a range of partially to fully-managed VDI, through to full Desktop-in-the-Cloud experience, by marrying Horizon 8.0 with Office 365 and Windows 10.

Navisite DaaS continues to offer enhanced, extended capabilities to support accelerated graphics workstations and sensitive data services, ensuring your employees can get access to the desktop environment they need, no matter where they work.

And hosting?

Navisite is a premiere managed hosting provider, offering fully managed IT infrastructure and applications in highly secure traditional or cloud-enabled environments. Enterprise-class infrastructures require expert managed-hosting services that let your IT personnel focus on end-users and spend less time on upgrading, configuring and managing hardware, middleware and applications.

Navisite offers a rich portfolio of enterprise managed hosting solutions designed to optimize mission critical IT infrastructure performance and provide flexibility to meet current business needs and future demand. Our world-class hosting support enables rapid resource provisioning with additional hardware, middleware, or application support to meet your IT requirements.

In terms of solutions, your offer disaster recovery in the Cloud?

Regular data backups are not enough to keep you up and running when a failure, cyberattack, natural disaster or human error strikes. An advanced replication, recovery and resumption solution such as Navisite Managed Disaster Recovery Cloud can keep your business up when things go down.

And you offer help moving legacy apps to the Cloud?

Yes – we offer a full professional service including  Cloud Assessment and Managed Migration – again we have boiler-plate for this.

And Oracle solutions are another major focus?

Yes – we have been supporting Oracle solutions for over 15 years and we are currently a “XXX” partner.

As well as protecting the mobile workforce?

Yes – we have managed solutions that will secure endpoint devices, secure access to an organisations data and applications for mobile users and our managed DaaS and Citrix solutions deliver secure desktops to thin client and mobile devices.

 Looking at industry trends more generally, how do you see the edge making an impact over time?

Not one for us – really an IoT question.

And then there’s the intelligent automation piece?

We’ve begun to make significant investments in AI Operations, using AI to deliver predictive, automated support services for our clients. The other area we see significant use of AI is in the security arena, where automated threat detection and response are really the only practical solutions to the developing threat landscape.

And any thoughts on the likely impact of 5G?

It will obviously facilitate better mobile access to applications and data;  faster connectivity potentially means you can move more of the processing into the cloud or other centrally hosted systems and reduce the “thickness” of endpoint devices. Potentially this means an increase in the need for secure, cloud-hosted systems; but also increases the complexity and security concerns.

Any other trends we should look out for?

Server-less computing and the use of containers will be bigger topics next year, with more practical use cases and wider adoption.  We are also already seeing that the initial wave of migrations to cloud, based around movement of in-house servers or VM’s to IaaS, is being replaced by adoption of more advanced services like PaaS.

Finally, what can we expect from NaviSite in 2019?

We will continue to invest in our partnership with Microsoft – building out more manged capabilities on their Azure platform to help our customers migrate to this and help them take best advantage of the advanced functions on Azure that grow in number all the time. Protecting the availability and integrity of data is also a key focus for us in 2019  as we work to strengthen our DRaaS, BC/DR and backup offerings with partners like Commvault, VMware and Zerto. We will also continue our investments in security / compliance tools and process – as we seek to abstract the complexity of securing data across multi-cloud environments. Lastly we see the increasing skills gap as the biggest barrier to transformation for our clients, so our ongoing investment in  our people in terms of training and process are key to realising all of our ambitions for 2019 and beyond.

Please can you give us a brief background on the company?

EACS has been providing IT services in the UK for over 20 years, starting with supplying hardware and software to local businesses and developing into a strategic IT partner to organisations across the UK. In 2017 the business was acquired by the Streamwire Group and has gone from strength to strength with a number of key Managed Services deals supporting successful projects around the Microsoft Cloud and other solutions with partners such as NetApp, Citrix, Sophos and Mimecast.

And what have been the key milestones to date?

As EACS has been in existence for over 20 years there have been many milestones.  But in the last 18 months they have been:

1. Management buy in in May 2017
2. Breaking £20m revenue for the first time in March 2018
3. Acquisition of Sentronex in July 2018
4. Opened new office in London November 2018

Please can you provide a high level view of EACS’s technology portfolio?

EACS prefers to focus on a number of key partners in order to ensure we continue to be renowned for our deep technical excellence. In the datacentre these are primarily NetApp, HPE, Dell – particularly VMware - Microsoft, Veeam & Nutanix. We have particular strength in the Microsoft Cloud and other key partners include Sophos, Mimecast and Citrix.

And how do you believe that EACS distinguishes itself from its competitors?

We pride ourselves from being very consultative in our approach and this is borne out through our long-term relationships with customers, some in excess of 20 years. We also have an extremely deep technical capability – in excess of 75% of our headcount are technical staff, be it our Service Desk, Professional Services or Solutions team.

In more detail, please can you talk us through the EACS portfolio highlights, starting with the hardware and software offering?

EACS provides hardware and software supply for strategic and business requirements dependent on client requirements.  EACS has a team of product specialists who can work with clients to assist them and ensure they gain value throughout the supply chain.  As part of this facility, EACS has its own logistic and configuration centre to support its customers and to deliver projects effectively.

And there’s a special focus on the financial sector?

EACS has a number of long-term relationships with Financial Services companies, which we recently strengthened with our acquisition of Sentronex. The Financial Services sector is one that has a mature attitude to risk and is generally able to quantify the financial impact of downtime, and so we have had great success in supporting these organisations with our Workplace Recovery and Backup/DR solutions allied to our high-touch on site Managed Services capability.

Looking at industry trends more generally, how do you see the cloud market developing over time?

Many of our customers are adopting a SaaS-first approach for key applications, from HR to Expenses systems and everything in-between. While this trend continues in SMEs, our more Enterprise customers are reviewing the uptime that can be achieved with a Cloud solution versus the control they can exhibit on-premises. To nobody’s real surprise, a hybrid model is emerging with BAU functions outsourced to the cloud and Tier 1 applications delivered from the datacentre. Over time, portability of workloads will be key – the ability to right-size an infrastructure on-premises to most cost effectively deliver an application, while being able to burst to the public cloud as business cycles dictate. Organisations such as Nutanix, and VMware with their AWS partnership, are well positioned to take advantage of this trend.

And how do you see the edge making an impact over the next few years?

The Intelligent Edge is already here and is only going to grow in relevance. Smart Cities, Connected Cars etc. are already causing enormous quantities of data to be generated and current technology is cost prohibitive in terms of sending that data to an environment powerful enough to crunch the data. This data needs to be cleansed at the edge, with only the crown jewels correlated back at base for analysis and business insight. If I were starting my IT career now, I’d be getting into the field of IoT security – so many connected devices, but in many cases in a race to market that doesn’t cater for the security-first mentality we are used to in the Enterprise.

And then there’s the intelligent automation piece?

Automation is already permeating our IT experience – we have been using autocomplete in search engines for years but don’t think of this as automation. We have seen a significant uptick in our customer base in the use of Robotic Process Automation in recent months; as the technology becomes infused with cognitive capabilities it is really starting to strike a chord with business leaders from a value-add perspective, rather than just a pure ROI discussion. In many cases automation is still seen as a threat; from a vendor perspective those who can humanise AI and make ensure its consumers do not perceive it as a danger will be the most successful, while organisations who are able to see the value in automating the mundane and focussing on that which requires the human touch will gain competitive advantage.

And any thoughts on the likely impact of 5G?

5G is an interesting one – on the one hand, I would like to see efforts focussed on a minimum viable connectivity standard across the country. With our Head Office being in Cambridgeshire we deal with many businesses around East Anglia for whom public cloud is a non-starter due to challenges around connectivity.

On the other hand, 5G has a huge role to play in the Smart City, dealing with the huge quantities of data generated and able to transmit back to base at something close to LAN speeds. If the promises of significantly lower latency are realised it becomes a viable technology backbone for the application of augmented reality in the field. At Microsoft Inspire this year I saw a demonstration of the use of HoloLens, with a junior field engineer directed by a senior colleague on which components to replace in some failed industrial hardware over a mobile Skype session. This is a pipe dream today in some areas of the UK; perhaps 5G can make this a reality.

And what about mobility and/or big data – how do you see these developing on their own and connected with some of the technologies already covered?

Mobility will continue to be a dominant trend. More and more organisations are allowing flexible or outcome-based working – including EACS! – where job roles permit and the rise of SaaS applications makes this simpler to facilitate. The flip side of this is it obviously brings security challenges along with it – every time I catch I train I can see somebody on the public wifi accessing sensitive data in full view of anybody who can see their screens. As the proportion of the workforce who have grown up with a smartphone in hand continues to increase, mobility will become a talent attraction - and indeed retention – mechanism. Vendors focussed on SaaS application security will have a lot of success over the next couple of years, particularly as breaches continue to be front-page news.

Big Data is already at the heart of our experiences with the Enterprise – from supermarket loyalty cards to the traffic alerts on your satnav – and I think this will continue, with Analytics infused with AI. The frameworks created for management of big data by the hyperscalers will continue to make the technologies more accessible to the SME and Midmarket and there is already a burgeoning valued-added partner ecosystem springing up around making these tools work for smaller organisations.

Any other trends we should look out for?

2019 is hard to predict; with the spectre of Brexit looming it’s tough to say what the impact will be other than when uncertainty looms IT spending typically focusses on keeping the lights on rather than adding value. To this end I expect to see an increase in interest in refurbished end user hardware, which we have already seen real interest in from a “green” perspective in 2018. More broadly, any vendor who can really crack the multi-cloud portability message will be in a strong position and as cybercrime continues to hit the headlines I’m sure we will see some innovation here, with 2019 perhaps being the year sandboxing and isolation technologies for web browsing becoming mainstream.

Finally, what can we expect from EACS in 2019?

1. Continued growth, through new business and acquisitions
2. Steady growth of our managed services
3. Further focus on high quality services and automation