Earlier this week we welcomed a number of people at the Tower of London for our final London’s Calling technology briefing of 2015. With a varied number of topics being addressed by our guest speakers and Intercity themselves, the overall theme for the event was ‘Bridging the IT strategy gap’.
The current state of enterprise IT
Shaun Collins, CEO of CCS Insight provided a high level view of the current state of enterprise IT, specifically the continued emphasis of mobility and cloud services as key priorities. Shaun talked about how technology is now being purchased within organisations, with key statistics such as 81% of employees have purchased an app for use within the enterprise without consulting the IT team. This type of consumer-like behaviour is beginning to render existing IT policies redundant, and often years of design and implementation of well thought out, IT-led initiatives are being evaded.
Perhaps most importantly for IT professionals, CCS Insight predict that nearly 70% of IT purchasing will be made outside of the IT team. Now it’s even more important than ever for IT decision makers, policy setters and strategy owners to identify and build solid trust-based relationships with the right service providers who can help them make sense of a very complex and cluttered technology market.
Do you know what you don’t know?
Maria Grant, Product Director at Intercity Technology, walked the audience through some of the crucial research and evidence we uncovered and published in our white paper, Do you know what you don’t know: Bridging the gap between IT strategy & IT users, that really helped to reinforce Shaun’s insight.
The white paper is designed to help IT teams get a better understanding of the ways a modern work force want to use technology to better improve their working lives. It then advises how you can build a business case for better user involvement to design and roll out IT strategies that tangibly improve business productivity and performance. Her closing promise that Intercity Technology can help their clients ‘bridge the gap to give a day back’ is certainly a challenge we are looking forward to exploring with you.
Touch Telephony ® - a technology demonstration
Intercity CTO Andrew Davis revealed that he had 58 personal devices all connected in some way to the Internet. This highlighted just how much connectivity is changing our lives across everything we do, and therefore it is paramount that businesses invest in the right tools and technology that exploit this new way of life and are cater for the connected employee.
Multi-device, touch technology, user interface design, cloud communications, WebRTC are just a few of the key technology considerations that all IT teams are facing, which were highlighted as being at the core of the Touch Telephony platform. Unique functionality such as seamlessly moving a call to a different device without participants even knowing showed just how useful and powerful a modern communications platform can be.
Digital transformation through mobile technology
Intercity’s long term network partner O2’s Scott Adamson brought to life not just how vital the right infrastructure is to a business, but more importantly how proactive IT teams are in starting to use that infrastructure to drive real strategic change in a business. Now really is the time for IT teams to step up their game and become a department of change and innovation, not just an operational asset that is reactive in nature.
Securing and managing your mobile data
Our final speaker at the event was Suzan Sakarya from our mobile security and data management partners Wandera. Their presentation of just how easy it is to carry out a malicious attack was not only thought provoking but verging on terrifying, especially for those of us in the room whose names appeared on the screen when they demonstrating how easy it is to carry out a ‘man in the middle attack’ via rogue Wi-Fi hotspots.
A clear priority for all organisations looking to make the most of the connected world is to ensure the security is in place and the Wandera solution is uniquely positioned to be one of the most important tools in your arsenal. We barely scratched the surface of what Wandera can offer so we invite you to join our webinar on 19th November - Beyond MDM - the next step to secure & manage your mobile data
Final thoughts
- The opportunity for the IT team to become a true strategic asset is now more prevalent than ever. You have access to the tools and the partners, plus the expertise is available to move your team beyond being simply an operational aspect of your organisation
- Maximising the connectivity of your business across all channels and mediums should be a priority if you want to drive digital transformation, but not at the compromise of security
- Cloud and mobile services will continue to integrate at a rapid pace. Make sure you are working with the right partners and the right technology to ensure your business is always ahead of your competitors in the digital transformation race
If you'd like to find out how we can help with your business challenges, please contact us.
