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…)
Posts Tagged ‘budgeting’
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
07
2009
IT that grows with you
Small businesses and startups know that capital is hard to come buy, which is why many companies just get by with IT that doesn’t really meet their needs. Traditionally, to get all the big company functionality you’d like (such as Microsoft Exchange with Blackberry, high availability or regular backups), companies have had to invest a significant amount of working capital into server hardware. The AWIC Desktop service changes all that. With no hardware costs and no expensive software licenses to purchase, small businesses can use the service from Day 1, and have a fully-functioning Enterprise IT infrastructure. And because it’s so easy to add new users, the service can grow with your company, for when you move into that 1,000-employee Central London HQ that we all know you’ll be in soon.
Download the AWIC Desktop factsheet
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.
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…)
