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Monday, April 23, 2007
FT.com / Technology - SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
FT.com / Technology - SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: April 18 2007 10:08 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:08
Over the past decade, smaller enterprises have faced a paradox: the price of computer equipment appears to fall each year, yet smaller companies are devoting a growing percentage of their turnover to IT.
An office PC with a decent specification is now widely available for less than $500. Yet Gartner, the industry analyst firm, predicts that small and mid-sized companies in Europe alone will increase their spending on technology by 10 per cent this year – a higher percentage increase than for larger enterprises.
The discrepancy, however, is easily explained. Smaller companies are becoming more dependent on technology, and are using it in more areas of their business. This is especially true both of small companies that want to grow, and of mid-sized businesses that are looking to technology for efficiency gains.
In turn, this is putting pressure on the traditional relationship between small companies and their IT suppliers.
A few years ago, a business would be satisfied if its local computer dealership could supply a few PCs, some printers and perhaps install a network. But commoditisation of much computing hardware, along with SMEs’ increasing reliance on business applications such as CRM and ERP, is changing that relationship.
“SMEs often no longer have a supplier as such for computer hardware, printers or broadband services. They buy the cheapest,” suggests Andy Kyte, a vice-president and fellow at Gartner. “But if companies want to grow, they need to acquire [business] software, and at that point, they need a value-added reseller.”
Finding the right reseller should be a priority for company directors. As Mr Kyte points out, SMEs are often reluctant to change resellers once they have established a relationship, not least because of the time and costs involved in selecting a new supplier.
Selecting the right partner becomes all the more important if that company is also going to customise or adapt an application for the business, because it will be even harder to find a company prepared to work with someone else’s custom code.
It is not an easy task. The IT consultancy and reseller markets have undergone considerable changes since the end of the technology boom, and by no means all changes favour the smaller business that needs to invest in IT.
According to Jim Shepherd, senior vice-president at AMR Research, the number of hardware resellers is falling, particularly in North America. Market conditions favour a smaller number of larger resellers and distributors and software companies are encouraging their resellers to focus on volume sales.
Businesses have, of course, benefited from the lower cost of IT hardware and to some extent, software licences. But the “added value” integration and consulting that SMEs rely on so heavily to make technology work is often squeezed, as the larger resellers go after volume.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mr Shepherd identifies smaller, more localised IT companies whose owners all too often lack the ambition shown by their customers.
“These are ‘lifestyle’ companies: the owners’ motivation is to make enough money to fund their lifestyles but they are not aggressively trying to grow their businesses,” he says. Such resellers are often reluctant to invest in building expertise in particular vertical industries, yet such expertise is what their customers need to expand their own companies. “But SMEs cannot get the efficiencies they need in order to make money, without IT.”
The outlook for small and mid-sized companies is not universally bleak. Mr Shepherd says mid-sized businesses, in particular, stand to benefit from a trend for highly skilled IT specialists at large IT and systems integration groups to form their own, boutique consultancies.
These often focus around a particular vertical industry or enterprise software platform, and will charge rather less than the large international groups but offer a much greater level of expertise than local IT suppliers can offer.
Such consultancies – as well as individual, freelance IT experts – also give SMEs the option of sourcing the commodity parts of their IT systems, such as PCs, directly or through an online outlet at the lowest cost and spending the money saved on integration or customisation expertise.
The moves by software and hardware vendors such as Microsoft, SAP and IBM to support consultancies is also helping SMEs buy services in this way with greater confidence.
“We are making more of our services available for our partners to deliver, whether it is a security solution or a technology such as RFID,” says Rich Michos, vice-president of sales for small and mid-sized business at IBM.
Industry analysts agree that SMEs are more likely to trust their IT consultant or reseller to deliver a new or complex technology if they know their supplier is backed by a large, global vendor.
But this, Mr Michos says, is only one factor to bear in mind when picking an IT partner. It should also look for a company that can call on other resources, including external specialists, to help with projects; for a company that can integrate the technology and one that understands its business. Above all, however, it needs to be a company they can rely on.
“It is important that a technology reseller can be a one-stop shop, if necessary by collaborating with other people,” says Mr Michos. “But above all it is about working with someone you trust.
“Businesses are putting more thought into how they source their IT. They might not be able to afford the bills of the large consultancies, but with the right research they can still find a trusted partner with the skills to support them as their business grows.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: April 18 2007 10:08 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:08
Over the past decade, smaller enterprises have faced a paradox: the price of computer equipment appears to fall each year, yet smaller companies are devoting a growing percentage of their turnover to IT.
An office PC with a decent specification is now widely available for less than $500. Yet Gartner, the industry analyst firm, predicts that small and mid-sized companies in Europe alone will increase their spending on technology by 10 per cent this year – a higher percentage increase than for larger enterprises.
The discrepancy, however, is easily explained. Smaller companies are becoming more dependent on technology, and are using it in more areas of their business. This is especially true both of small companies that want to grow, and of mid-sized businesses that are looking to technology for efficiency gains.
In turn, this is putting pressure on the traditional relationship between small companies and their IT suppliers.
A few years ago, a business would be satisfied if its local computer dealership could supply a few PCs, some printers and perhaps install a network. But commoditisation of much computing hardware, along with SMEs’ increasing reliance on business applications such as CRM and ERP, is changing that relationship.
“SMEs often no longer have a supplier as such for computer hardware, printers or broadband services. They buy the cheapest,” suggests Andy Kyte, a vice-president and fellow at Gartner. “But if companies want to grow, they need to acquire [business] software, and at that point, they need a value-added reseller.”
Finding the right reseller should be a priority for company directors. As Mr Kyte points out, SMEs are often reluctant to change resellers once they have established a relationship, not least because of the time and costs involved in selecting a new supplier.
Selecting the right partner becomes all the more important if that company is also going to customise or adapt an application for the business, because it will be even harder to find a company prepared to work with someone else’s custom code.
It is not an easy task. The IT consultancy and reseller markets have undergone considerable changes since the end of the technology boom, and by no means all changes favour the smaller business that needs to invest in IT.
According to Jim Shepherd, senior vice-president at AMR Research, the number of hardware resellers is falling, particularly in North America. Market conditions favour a smaller number of larger resellers and distributors and software companies are encouraging their resellers to focus on volume sales.
Businesses have, of course, benefited from the lower cost of IT hardware and to some extent, software licences. But the “added value” integration and consulting that SMEs rely on so heavily to make technology work is often squeezed, as the larger resellers go after volume.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mr Shepherd identifies smaller, more localised IT companies whose owners all too often lack the ambition shown by their customers.
“These are ‘lifestyle’ companies: the owners’ motivation is to make enough money to fund their lifestyles but they are not aggressively trying to grow their businesses,” he says. Such resellers are often reluctant to invest in building expertise in particular vertical industries, yet such expertise is what their customers need to expand their own companies. “But SMEs cannot get the efficiencies they need in order to make money, without IT.”
The outlook for small and mid-sized companies is not universally bleak. Mr Shepherd says mid-sized businesses, in particular, stand to benefit from a trend for highly skilled IT specialists at large IT and systems integration groups to form their own, boutique consultancies.
These often focus around a particular vertical industry or enterprise software platform, and will charge rather less than the large international groups but offer a much greater level of expertise than local IT suppliers can offer.
Such consultancies – as well as individual, freelance IT experts – also give SMEs the option of sourcing the commodity parts of their IT systems, such as PCs, directly or through an online outlet at the lowest cost and spending the money saved on integration or customisation expertise.
The moves by software and hardware vendors such as Microsoft, SAP and IBM to support consultancies is also helping SMEs buy services in this way with greater confidence.
“We are making more of our services available for our partners to deliver, whether it is a security solution or a technology such as RFID,” says Rich Michos, vice-president of sales for small and mid-sized business at IBM.
Industry analysts agree that SMEs are more likely to trust their IT consultant or reseller to deliver a new or complex technology if they know their supplier is backed by a large, global vendor.
But this, Mr Michos says, is only one factor to bear in mind when picking an IT partner. It should also look for a company that can call on other resources, including external specialists, to help with projects; for a company that can integrate the technology and one that understands its business. Above all, however, it needs to be a company they can rely on.
“It is important that a technology reseller can be a one-stop shop, if necessary by collaborating with other people,” says Mr Michos. “But above all it is about working with someone you trust.
“Businesses are putting more thought into how they source their IT. They might not be able to afford the bills of the large consultancies, but with the right research they can still find a trusted partner with the skills to support them as their business grows.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
FT.com / Technology - DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
FT.com / Technology - DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
By Alan Cane
Published: April 18 2007 10:10 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:10
It’s the bombs and the Buncefields that make the news, but most threats to a business’s survival are of a more humdrum nature.
The statistic is well known but no less shocking for that: 80 per cent of businesses that suffer a major disruption fail within 18 months, as their customers go elsewhere.
Legislation and regulation, however – Sarbanes Oxley in the US, the Civil Contingencies Act in the UK and so on – are the principal drivers behind a new awareness of the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity that is manifesting itself in an unprecedented wave of interest in the ways and means by which a business can protect itself against the unexpected.
And the unexpected is just that. Nicki Dennis, head of market development for the British Standards Institute, says: “It could be a fire or a flood or a terrorist attack, but most of the things that upset continuity are more mundane – drilling through an outside power cable, for example, or failure of the air conditioning. If you have a plan in place to cope with emergencies, it helps create a degree of calm.”
So what is disaster recovery? What do we mean by business continuity? A useful handbook published by IT Governance* says disaster recovery is the “methodical preparation and execution of all the steps that will be needed speedily to recover from a disaster, usually one caused by technology”. Business continuity is designed to ensure that: “certain business functions continue to operate in spite of disasters striking an organisation”.
Disaster recovery has historically focused on ways to recover from IT failures, but has morphed into business continuity, as the importance of people and an emphasis on speed of recovery has become evident.
“Do we have incidents? Absolutely. Have they affected our business? No,” says Karen Dye who has global responsibility for Sun Microsystems’ crisis management programmes.
She points to the importance for a multinational of observing continuity guidelines in each of the territories in which the group operates, but says the way the group is distributed worldwide is a strength. She points to the most important elements of the Sun plan.
First, that it is championed by a senior executive at headquarters – who reports directly to the chief executive – and by a champion in each of the business units.
Second, the plan is “owned” by the business units that take responsibility for implementing it.
Third, that with limited resources, there is an emphasis on what is most critical to the business.
Peter Power, managing director of London-based Visor Consultants, which specialises in advising companies on contingency planning, likes to describe the dangers as “bombs, bird flu and banana skins” – the latter frequently leading to the loss of a company’s reputation – a situation from which it can be difficult to recover.
Mr Power says that contingency planning has splintered into silos – enterprise risk management, corporate social responsibility, operational risk management, business continuity and data security.
He advocates a holistic approach, that could be labelled “corporate resilience”, which should attract lower insurance premiums. “It can give you competitive advantage” he argues. “Take it out of the box labelled ‘grudge purchase’ and cut your insurance bills.”
Michael Faber, vice-chairman of another recently formed organisation, the Institute of Operational Risk, agrees that business continuity and operational risk are two sides of the same coin. “There has to be greater integration,” he says. “That is the way forward.
“After all, our job is to provide the right information to the board so it can appreciate the true level of risk and take appropriate decisions.
“There is a danger that all these pockets of risk that are not talking to one another or sharing information will present a disjointed view to the board. The different disciplines need to co-ordinate and co-operate more.”
It is an approach that would be welcomed by the rapidly growing business continuity industry. Keith Tilley, who is vice-president, Europe, for SunGard Availability Services, the Philadelphia-based pioneer in disaster recovery centres, says customers are demanding a sharp reduction in the time between the onset of an incident and full data availability. “When we started in 1979, it was 24-48 hours. Now for priority applications, people are asking for 100 per cent availability.
“In the business, we talk about the ‘recovery time objective’ – how quickly does something need to be recovered – and ‘recovery point objective’ – what should it look like on recovery.
“A City trader would not want to lose a single transaction but might be able to survive for 10 to 15 minutes. An airline such as Ryanair needs its online booking system available at all times, otherwise potential customers would simply switch to competitors.”
A point made time and again by business continuity experts is that the development of an effective plan starts with a careful examination of the basics of the business. Edward Wilding, chief technical officer at Data Genetics International notes: “The fundamental question which businesses must keep in sight when preparing their business continuity programme is: ‘Why are we doing this?’.
“There is a world of different between appearing to comply with a given standard and creating and implementing a strategy that both works and is practical. Too many businesses try to adopt best practice or benchmark their procedures against competitors without thinking: ‘Will this work in the event of a catastrophe?’”
And David Porter, senior risk and fraud expert at Detica, emphasises simplicity. “Most business continuity plans are too complex and confusing for people to follow when they are in the heat of a crisis,” he says.
Once you have written your plan – and before consigning it to the shelf – you must carry out a table-top simulation in which all the key actors in the plan are around the table. You’ll be amazed at the number of holes and glitches that come out of this dress rehearsal.”
* Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity by Thejendra BS, IT Governance Publishing 2007. www.itgovernance.co.uk
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
By Alan Cane
Published: April 18 2007 10:10 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:10
It’s the bombs and the Buncefields that make the news, but most threats to a business’s survival are of a more humdrum nature.
The statistic is well known but no less shocking for that: 80 per cent of businesses that suffer a major disruption fail within 18 months, as their customers go elsewhere.
Legislation and regulation, however – Sarbanes Oxley in the US, the Civil Contingencies Act in the UK and so on – are the principal drivers behind a new awareness of the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity that is manifesting itself in an unprecedented wave of interest in the ways and means by which a business can protect itself against the unexpected.
And the unexpected is just that. Nicki Dennis, head of market development for the British Standards Institute, says: “It could be a fire or a flood or a terrorist attack, but most of the things that upset continuity are more mundane – drilling through an outside power cable, for example, or failure of the air conditioning. If you have a plan in place to cope with emergencies, it helps create a degree of calm.”
So what is disaster recovery? What do we mean by business continuity? A useful handbook published by IT Governance* says disaster recovery is the “methodical preparation and execution of all the steps that will be needed speedily to recover from a disaster, usually one caused by technology”. Business continuity is designed to ensure that: “certain business functions continue to operate in spite of disasters striking an organisation”.
Disaster recovery has historically focused on ways to recover from IT failures, but has morphed into business continuity, as the importance of people and an emphasis on speed of recovery has become evident.
“Do we have incidents? Absolutely. Have they affected our business? No,” says Karen Dye who has global responsibility for Sun Microsystems’ crisis management programmes.
She points to the importance for a multinational of observing continuity guidelines in each of the territories in which the group operates, but says the way the group is distributed worldwide is a strength. She points to the most important elements of the Sun plan.
First, that it is championed by a senior executive at headquarters – who reports directly to the chief executive – and by a champion in each of the business units.
Second, the plan is “owned” by the business units that take responsibility for implementing it.
Third, that with limited resources, there is an emphasis on what is most critical to the business.
Peter Power, managing director of London-based Visor Consultants, which specialises in advising companies on contingency planning, likes to describe the dangers as “bombs, bird flu and banana skins” – the latter frequently leading to the loss of a company’s reputation – a situation from which it can be difficult to recover.
Mr Power says that contingency planning has splintered into silos – enterprise risk management, corporate social responsibility, operational risk management, business continuity and data security.
He advocates a holistic approach, that could be labelled “corporate resilience”, which should attract lower insurance premiums. “It can give you competitive advantage” he argues. “Take it out of the box labelled ‘grudge purchase’ and cut your insurance bills.”
Michael Faber, vice-chairman of another recently formed organisation, the Institute of Operational Risk, agrees that business continuity and operational risk are two sides of the same coin. “There has to be greater integration,” he says. “That is the way forward.
“After all, our job is to provide the right information to the board so it can appreciate the true level of risk and take appropriate decisions.
“There is a danger that all these pockets of risk that are not talking to one another or sharing information will present a disjointed view to the board. The different disciplines need to co-ordinate and co-operate more.”
It is an approach that would be welcomed by the rapidly growing business continuity industry. Keith Tilley, who is vice-president, Europe, for SunGard Availability Services, the Philadelphia-based pioneer in disaster recovery centres, says customers are demanding a sharp reduction in the time between the onset of an incident and full data availability. “When we started in 1979, it was 24-48 hours. Now for priority applications, people are asking for 100 per cent availability.
“In the business, we talk about the ‘recovery time objective’ – how quickly does something need to be recovered – and ‘recovery point objective’ – what should it look like on recovery.
“A City trader would not want to lose a single transaction but might be able to survive for 10 to 15 minutes. An airline such as Ryanair needs its online booking system available at all times, otherwise potential customers would simply switch to competitors.”
A point made time and again by business continuity experts is that the development of an effective plan starts with a careful examination of the basics of the business. Edward Wilding, chief technical officer at Data Genetics International notes: “The fundamental question which businesses must keep in sight when preparing their business continuity programme is: ‘Why are we doing this?’.
“There is a world of different between appearing to comply with a given standard and creating and implementing a strategy that both works and is practical. Too many businesses try to adopt best practice or benchmark their procedures against competitors without thinking: ‘Will this work in the event of a catastrophe?’”
And David Porter, senior risk and fraud expert at Detica, emphasises simplicity. “Most business continuity plans are too complex and confusing for people to follow when they are in the heat of a crisis,” he says.
Once you have written your plan – and before consigning it to the shelf – you must carry out a table-top simulation in which all the key actors in the plan are around the table. You’ll be amazed at the number of holes and glitches that come out of this dress rehearsal.”
* Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity by Thejendra BS, IT Governance Publishing 2007. www.itgovernance.co.uk
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Automatisering Gids, Cisco verbreedt aanbod voor MKB
Automatisering Gids, Cisco verbreedt aanbod voor MKB
Het vlaggenschip in de nieuwe reeks is de Unified Communications 500 Serie, die is bedoeld voor bedrijven met 8 tot 48 gebruikers. Alle vormen van communicatie zijn via één gebruikersinterface toegankelijk, waarbij de keuze van apparatuur (pc, laptop, PDA) vrij is. Het platform werkt met Unified IP-telefoons van Cisco zelf, inclusief de 'softphone' IP Communicator.
Tot de overige onderdelen van het systeem behoort de Catalyst Express 520, een switch die zijn stroomvoorziening via het netwerk krijgt (Power over Ethernet). Ook de Cisco Mobility Expres Solution, inclusief een draadloos basisstation, is in het MKB-systeem opgenomen. Verder zijn diverse beheer- en monitoring-tools ontwikkeld. Een compleet systeem inclusief één IP-telefoontoestel gaat in de VS circa 700 dollar per werkplek kosten. De producten komen in juni op de markt.
Daarnaast heeft Cisco een nieuw certificatieprogramma voor partners in het MKB opgezet. SMB Select Certification moet partners die zich specifiek op kleine en middelgrote bedrijven richten de juiste instrumenten aanreiken. Onderdeel van SMB Select Certification is onder meer een speciaal trainingsprogramma waarmee medewerkers zich in technisch en verkoopopzicht kunnen bekwamen. (Geert Kelfkens)
Zie ook:
Cisco wil het MKB veroveren met communicatieoplossingen - Automatisering Gids, nr. 40 2005
Het vlaggenschip in de nieuwe reeks is de Unified Communications 500 Serie, die is bedoeld voor bedrijven met 8 tot 48 gebruikers. Alle vormen van communicatie zijn via één gebruikersinterface toegankelijk, waarbij de keuze van apparatuur (pc, laptop, PDA) vrij is. Het platform werkt met Unified IP-telefoons van Cisco zelf, inclusief de 'softphone' IP Communicator.
Tot de overige onderdelen van het systeem behoort de Catalyst Express 520, een switch die zijn stroomvoorziening via het netwerk krijgt (Power over Ethernet). Ook de Cisco Mobility Expres Solution, inclusief een draadloos basisstation, is in het MKB-systeem opgenomen. Verder zijn diverse beheer- en monitoring-tools ontwikkeld. Een compleet systeem inclusief één IP-telefoontoestel gaat in de VS circa 700 dollar per werkplek kosten. De producten komen in juni op de markt.
Daarnaast heeft Cisco een nieuw certificatieprogramma voor partners in het MKB opgezet. SMB Select Certification moet partners die zich specifiek op kleine en middelgrote bedrijven richten de juiste instrumenten aanreiken. Onderdeel van SMB Select Certification is onder meer een speciaal trainingsprogramma waarmee medewerkers zich in technisch en verkoopopzicht kunnen bekwamen. (Geert Kelfkens)
Zie ook:
Cisco wil het MKB veroveren met communicatieoplossingen - Automatisering Gids, nr. 40 2005
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About Me
- Albert van Grondelle
- Lelystad, Flevoland, Netherlands
- Informatieprofessional gespecialiseerd in het organiseren van content, kennis en samenwerking(collaboration) in de onderneming.