As the state of the UK economy improves, many organisations will begin to look to their IT in the quest for a competitive edge. Over the past decade, and prior to the global recession, the investment banking sector looked to “more, faster, better” IT as a way to gain an advantage over the competition. Not any more. We look at how the playing field has changed for large organisations and some of the technologies being used to make the most of what you’ve got. (more…)
Archive for the ‘IT Strategy’ Category
Jan
08
2010
Business continuity: 7 tips to plan for disaster recovery
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
Quite often, business continuity planning is thought to be the domain of very large enterprises, like large financial institutions, who need to continue trading even in the event of major global disaster. But as we mentioned in our article on the impact of snow-related transport issues on businesses, “Small companies, especially ones without dedicated IT staff are the most vulnerable to loss of productivity due to weather-related staff shortages. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, this could translate to an estimated 1.2 billion pounds lost in a day because of the disruption, with one-fifth of the UK workforce unable to make it into work.”
Jan
07
2010
Will your profits slip on the ice?
Tunbridge Wells, 18 December 2009 – Commuters have been hit hard by transport delays caused by snow overnight. Ivan Zidek, director of AWIC Technical Advisory, says, “Large, global corporations have the technology to allow their staff to work from home. It’s the UK small businesses, which are hardest hit by weather-related travel chaos.”
Small companies, especially ones without dedicated IT staff are the most vulnerable to loss of productivity due to weather-related staff shortages. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, this could translate to an estimated 1.2 billion pounds lost in a day because of the disruption, with one-fifth of the UK workforce unable to make it into work. What if that 20% of the workforce were able to login to their computers from home?
“One of our newest clients travels to work from Essex to Kent every day. A week ago, he would have battled to get into the office in all this snow. Now that he has AWIC Desktop, he can stay under the duvet and login to the office from bed,” says Mr. Zidek.
It’s on days like today, when the office is empty due to travel chaos, that cloud computing really comes into it’s own. With subscription-based IT services like AWIC Desktop, small businesses get a complete IT solution, which is held in a secure data centre and accessed via the internet. This means staff can access it from anywhere with an internet connection, giving companies an edge against the competition who’s still stuck on a train.
About AWIC Desktop
AWIC Desktop is a reliable, accessible subscription-based computing service that saves you money. It is one of a suite of products offered by Tunbridge Wells-based AWIC Technical Advisory — dedicated to clear, practical advice on IT for small and medium businesses.
Commuters have been hit hard by transport delays caused by snow overnight. Ivan Zidek, director of AWIC Technical Advisory, says, “Large, global corporations have the technology to allow their staff to work from home. It’s the UK small businesses, which are hardest hit by weather-related travel chaos.”
Dec
03
2009
Introducing the IT Infrastructure Review from AWIC Technical Advisory
AWIC Technical Advisory is pleased to announce our latest service offering.
from AWIC Technical Advisory
Dec
02
2009
Recruiters: keep your valuable data safe
A quality recruiting database
For resourcing companies, a quality database can be the key to helping business really grow, even in these tough economic times. It can mean the edge over the competition, and just one day without that data could mean significant losses for many companies.
Nov
20
2009
How to reduce your IT budget by 67% in 2010
A patchwork quilt
Recently, a client came to us with a simple brief. They were consolidating their offices around the UK, and wanted an IT solution which would tie all their sites together, allow them to access their IT remotely, and keep all their company data backed up, safely, off-site.
Nov
10
2009
The 3 key roles for effective capacity management
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
Good capacity planning is worth the effort
The benefits of an effective capacity management programme are well known to most IT departments. Proper capacity management allows you to:
- Reduce infrastructure costs by sweating your assets
- Meet agreed service levels by avoiding capacity-related outages
- Accurately budget for infrastructure growth by projecting future requirements
- Avoid project delays by having appropriate resources on-hand
And, by now, most IT departments have some form of capacity planning tool implemented which can give them fairly accurate reports on current and past usage.
But what are you doing with those reports? Who attends your capacity planning meetings? And do you have a dedicated capacity planning manager?
(more…)
Oct
26
2009
What if your business lost connection to the internet tonight?
It happens more than you’d think.
Picture this: you’re about to login to your company’s online banking software to make sure those cheques got paid in, and the page won’t load. A few clicks, and then a reboot of your computer….and before long, you’re on the phone to your ISP. Ten days – and several heated phone calls – later, the ISP finally admits that one of their engineers clipped a cable up near the Tesco Express and they’re ever so sorry that you’ve been without internet service all this time.
It may sound far-fetched, but that’s a true story. What would you do if your business was without the internet for 10 days? How could you cope?
Oct
21
2009
Why the entertainment industry should care about PC-over-IP
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
What on earth is PC-over-IP (better known as PCOIP) and why should anyone in the creative industries care about it?
A new technology is now available that allows you to instantly share dailies in full HD, work with remote studios or work from home – while keeping your movies secure.
The technology has been available for a while which allows companies to centralise their desktop IT, removing the computers from under people’s desks and replacing them with an energy efficient, small, quiet box called a “thin client”. A thin client is basically a screen directly connected to the internet.
Oct
18
2009
IT challenges for the film/tv industry: a mobile workforce
by Amanda Dahl, Director at AWIC
The film and television industry has one of the most mobile workforces in the country.
There are around 400 ‘permanent’ (i.e. registered) companies in the UK film industry. This figure varies depending on the number of productions being worked on at any one time. Of the companies existing today, we can say approximately 43% are production, 13% are distribution and the remaining 44% are exhibition companies. (Source: Skillset)
In a survey of workers in the film/tv industry by Skillset, almost all (91%) of the sample were freelance; just under half (48%) of the survey sample had been employed on a fixed-term contract i.e. for a fixed number of hours, days or weeks, over one in five (22%) had an open-ended weekly contract and a further 9% had been employed as dailies. The remaining 9% were permanent employees. (Source: http://publications.skillset.org/index.php?id=9&page=10)
The transient and mobile nature of the work force in film and television means that production companies have challenges when it comes to providing IT for staff that’s only around for a few weeks or months at a time.
