As we enter the last couple of weeks of December and face freezes, core network freezes that is, for those buying or selling networks, it gives us a chance to reflect on the passing year and the key events within IT that punctuated 2015.
And so in no particular order, here are the events that spring to mind:
The launch of Windows 10
You have to admire the way Microsoft have engineered their mobility propositions and appealed to the IT Director with their Windows stack from desktop to server, with the bundled in telephony and collaboration. I speak to a sizeable number of organisations that are considering ‘going the whole hog’ and adopting Office365, Skype for Business and Azure for the sake of ease and simplicity. I’m interested to hear feedback from anyone who has fully on-boarded with Microsoft in this way.
Web security gets pushed up the agenda
The Talk Talk Business CEO will be glad for the Christmas break and some relaxation time, assuming she’s now mitigated the risk of another hack. I anticipate that next year, DDoS, rogue behaviour spotting and database protection, etc. will become essential approaches in countering the ever more sophisticated web attacks witnessed during 2015.
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
MDM helps to split corporate data from personal when a BYOD policy is implemented. Also, conflict between IT and employees over handset preferences is reduced. However, some companies are now scrapping BYOD in favour of splitting bills with ever more sophisticated bill analysis software aiding the trend.
The Software Defined Datacentre (SDDC)
Where private and public, virtualised environments, plus on-premise and co-located physical servers, can be integrated is now becoming really interesting to the bigger organisation that has a legacy of disparate hosting environments that hitherto have worked in isolation.
Last but not least - connectivity, connectivity, connectivity
This year has seen SSE become a force in the local access Ethernet market, giving customers more choice outside the big three of, BT, Virgin and TTB. Also, with the greater proliferation of cloud based services and devices accessing the internet, we have users and management alike demanding greater bandwidth from their internet and private IP connectivity. More than that, Class of Service (CoS) has become a more common acronym within networking spheres. Coupled with extra bandwidth, this technique used to assign priorities to IP packets, really assists with getting our VoIP calls delivered successfully.
What does 2016 hold?
At this time of year predictions about what technologies are going to impact our social and working lives in 2016. My prediction is quite simple; many organisations will still need IT service providers to help them deliver great service based on existing and emerging technologies to their employees and customers.
In the meantime, have a wonderful festive break.
