SureSkills TechPro 2017 Prediction
With such high levels of uncertainty in the business environment, what one piece of advice would we give Irish IT organisations in navigating the next 12 months?
By Kevin Reid, Chief Technical Officer, SureSkills
Now that the ‘as a service’ model for IT has become mainstream, my advice for the year ahead is to be smarter about cloud procurement in order to maximise the benefit it brings to your business.
Many organisations still consume cloud services like traditional technology stacks, buying more than they actually need. Unlike the IT of old, the cloud’s rental model means you can adjust your service spend from month to month. The key is to make your provider work for you and your business. Most cloud platforms have granular metrics about application usage, so you can see patterns and take action accordingly through adjustments, training or enablement to maximise usage of the technology.
I know of one customer that recently saved around 40 per cent in annual costs for its Office 365 licence alone by doing this. In our experience, once you start looking at one cloud service like office automation in a more granular way, you apply the same thinking to other services like Salesforce for CRM or Slack for collaboration.
IT professionals can invest these savings in new capabilities for the business, such as a BI project that delivers actionable information for faster, more accurate decision making.
Another aspect to the ‘as a service’ model is that infrastructure is more distributed than ever, and no longer under the direct control of an in-house IT team. This makes cyber security a critical consideration, so a related piece of advice for 2017 is to understand where your data is and what controls your provider applies, so you can guarantee the integrity, sovereignty and privacy of that data, aligned with your organisation’s policies – not your provider’s.
What are your business considerations for 2017? If any of the above resonates within your organisation and you'd like to hear more, contact one of our Learning Consultants today using the button below.
