‘Business as usual’ approach to IT development too slow for modern businesses

Rapidly changing business models are causing businesses to reconsider their approach to IT, as they look to capitalise on the huge opportunity for differentiation through the effective use of technology. However, this is posing real difficulties for IT departments across Europe according to the latest research from managed services provider Claranet. As business leaders across Europe seek to transform their organisations, the incremental ‘business as usual’ approach to IT improvement is increasingly unfit for purpose.

The research, which surveyed 900 IT decision-makers from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Benelux from a range of mid-market organisations, discovered that 46 per cent of European IT decision makers find supporting fast changing business models a key challenge, up from 35 per cent in 2015. In the UK, the number of IT departments struggling to support a rapidly transitioning business is even higher, with 54 per cent of respondents citing it as a problem.

For Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director, the results highlight the growing imperative for IT departments to embrace more dynamic approaches to keep up with changing business needs:

Our research shows that the IT department needs a fundamental rethink of how it approaches innovation and development. Traditionally, IT departments have incrementally upgraded their capabilities, adding new features sequentially. While this pace of development was acceptable in the past, and often the only pace permitted by infrastructure and software development limitations, it is now no longer agile enough to satisfy the needs of modern businesses.

If IT departments are to empower their organisations, and keep pace with the desired rate of change, they need to adopt more progressive approaches to IT management, focusing on practises which will boost their applications, such as public cloud and DevOps. The flexibility and agility brought by public cloud services enable IT departments to spin up new services which scale on demand, without heavy investments in additional infrastructure. DevOps, meanwhile, can increase the frequency of updates, and speed to market, ensuring the application estate can support changing business conditions.”

Robert concluded:

IT services providers have a central role in supporting their customers in handling this level of significant change. Strong partnerships are able to ease the pressure on IT leaders, giving them the tools they need to respond effectively to the needs of their organisations. Companies should look to partner with services providers who promote an application first approach. This means addressing the hosting, management and development needs of individual applications and prioritising the availability, performance and security of applications which will make the most difference to the business.”

To access the full report, visit: www.claranet.co.uk/research

Is the cloud secure?

This is literally the most-asked question in the industry: we asked 900 senior IT decision makers from across Europe to list their top IT challenges and security is their number one IT challenge.

In fact, it’s actually the accessibility of data, rather than its location that has the biggest impact of security.

Business brings a first-to-market continuity solution to Claranet’s EMEA customers

Managed services provider Claranet is working with business continuity expert Data Deposit Box to strengthen its cloud backup and disaster recovery services in EMEA. The solution is aimed at SOHO, SMBs and SMEs and will offer Claranet’s customers greater flexibility, reliability and control over their data backup and data management practices.

The move also marks award-winning Data Deposit Box’s first foray into the European market with a managed services provider. Data Deposit Box expects a positive European reception having recently won Best Storage Presentation at the highly anticipated Dallas ChannelPro SMB Forum event and Best Cloud Solution and Best Storage Solution at the high profile Austin ASCII Events IT Summit in North America.

The cost-efficient solution is simple to use and offers a continuous backup model, enabling the simultaneous backup of multiple customer devices where the software is installed. It combines Data Deposit Box’s innovative portal with customer data that is stored in Claranet’s shared storage environment. Claranet takes the lead in the initial installation, leaving the customer to manage the easy-to-use portal interface. Data can be accessed from any device running the portal software and, in the event of a disaster recovery scenario, retrieved instantly.

Commenting on the solution, Neil Thomas, Claranet’s Product Director, said:

Businesses are increasingly aware of the damaging effects of data loss and our customers are no exception, which is why we are continuing to build out our disaster recovery capabilities. Our contact with Data Deposit Box comes as part of our continued investment in cloud backup and disaster recovery, and follows the acquisition of disaster recovery experts Techgate, enhancing our ability to support our customers’ data and applications.

Data Deposit Box has developed a strong reputation for excellence in North America and we are delighted to introduce this service into the EMEA region. We are able to provide our customers with a secure, in-country hosting solution, with 24×7 support, which helps to protect their businesses from risk.”

Troy Cheeseman, President and Chief Operating Officer at Data Deposit Box concluded:

We are actively looking to build out our presence in EMEA, which makes Claranet, with a strong footprint in six European markets, financial stability and broad customer base, an ideal strategic contact. Our robust and flexible solution perfectly complements Claranet’s existing portfolio, and we look forward to consulting with Claranet and its customers to bring our innovative disaster recovery tools to market.”

MSP ranked 56th most profitable privately owned business in the country

Claranet has secured the 56th position in The Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 2016, having increased its profits at an average annual rate of 72 per cent since 2012. This is the second time that the managed services provider (MSP) has appeared in The Sunday Times’ FastTrack series, having earned the 118th place in The Sunday Times International Track 200 last year.

Published on Sunday (10th April 2016), The Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 league table, now in its 16th year, ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing profits over their latest three years of available accounts. To qualify for consideration businesses must be UK registered, privately-owned and not subsidiaries.

Celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, having been established in 1996 as an ISP, Claranet has evolved into a full-service managed services provider with a presence in six European countries. Having maintained its financial independence since it was founded, the company has been free to pursue international expansion opportunities and been able to remain agile in the face of changing market opportunities.

Charles Nasser, CEO of Claranet, commented:

Financial strength is core to our value proposition as a managed services provider and is critical if we are to secure the trust of our customers. Our ability to adapt to better suit a constantly changing market has enabled the business to improve profitability, securing its financial strength. By balancing fiscal responsibility with technological innovation we have been able to grow the business sustainably over our 20-year history.

Claranet is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the shift from on-premises IT to cloud-based environments. The combination of our strong local presence and international reach means that our business has been consistent in its growth both organically and through acquisition in Western Europe.”

Almost half of European IT leaders say the IT department’s core function is to reduce costs, according to latest research from Claranet

With IT budgets going up in recent years, IT departments’ fixation on cost reduction might be expected to be lower on the agenda than enabling revenue generation for the wider business or innovating to support growth strategies. However, recent research from Claranet shows IT departments across Europe are still fixated on containing costs at the expense of working on new value-add activities.

Independent research, which was conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Claranet and surveyed 900 European IT leaders, has found that cost reduction is significantly more likely to be a focus for IT departments in 2016 than it was a year ago. In spite of budget increases, 46 per cent of respondents highlighted cost reduction as a core function today, compared with just over a third (34 per cent) in 2015.

This focus on costs is likely to come to the detriment of other value-add activities; just 29 per cent of IT leaders view enabling revenue generation for the wider business as a core function, and only a quarter (25 per cent) believe they should be engaged in increasing customer loyalty.

Commenting on the findings, Michel Robert, Claranet’s UK managing director, said:

European IT budgets are growing, which would suggest there’s a recognition within businesses of the importance of IT, however time and resources are still not being spent on more forward-thinking projects that can generate more revenue in the long-term. It is clear from the data that the focus on cost reduction and ‘keeping the lights on’ we witnessed in last year’s report has been maintained and, for many, has actually increased. It goes without saying that costs are important, but it’s critical that IT departments can reposition themselves internally as enablers of business agility and innovation, rather than as cost centres.

Any business looking to digitally transform their processes must have the right partners and suppliers in place to carry out those standard tasks universal to IT departments. By working with a managed service provider, CIOs can effectively outsource this work and spend more time working on strategy and revenue-generating activities. Many talented IT directors have their hands tied with tasks inappropriate to their team’s skillset, so taking on an external partner can solve an HR problem as much as it can solve issues with the IT function’s ability to support of the wider business.”

Claranet, one of Europe’s leading managed services providers, is to become Hamburg-based Gruner + Jahr’s new cloud hosting partner. Gruner + Jahr is one of Europe’s largest printing and publishing houses, managing over 500 online and print media outlets. The company counts well-known German brands publications such as Stern, Brigitte, Geo and 11 Freunde among its portfolio and reaches a global audience of millions of people in more than 20 countries.

Gruner + Jahr is currently undergoing a digital transformation. When it comes to successfully steering the company through the increasingly digital world of tomorrow, the publisher sees agility, the ability to innovate, and improved efficiency as the most important metrics of success. To achieve this, Gruner + Jahr, with support from Claranet, will implement a hybrid IT model consisting of both private and public cloud elements, which will allow them to forego the need to manage their own data centre and add new agility and efficiency to its IT estate. Claranet is an experienced cloud services provider with a European footprint, making the company the perfect partner for Gruner + Jahr and for the distribution of its publications across all platforms and channels.

Such an all-encompassing and thorough transition of an entire IT estate to the cloud is near-unprecedented in Europe. For us, Gruner + Jahr’s strategic digital transformation programme, ‘NEO’, is a clarion call for the whole European market,” comments Charles Nasser, CEO of the Claranet Group. “We are proud that Gruner + Jahr is using Claranet’s cloud services as the foundation for ‘NEO’ and look forward to carrying this challenging project through to successful completion with them. Our expertise, innovative cloud infrastructure and European footprint will all play a role in helping Gruner + Jahr achieve their objectives.

Gruner + Jahr decided to partner with Claranet due to its track record in successfully completing similar large-scale cloud transformation projects and its expertise in Managed Hosting. Another critical factor was Claranet’s ISO-accredited facilities and services, which are fully compliant with German federal regulations and the country’s strict technical and organisational security legislative framework.

We look forward to working with a cloud hosting partner as experienced as Claranet,” explains Pietro Tomasino, IT Director at Gruner + Jahr. “IT is an important factor in the digital transformation of our industry, and the fast-paced technological developments of recent years demand a deep-rooted change in IT across all businesses. Through the implementation of Claranet’s cloud-based infrastructure and platform services we want to take advantage of cloud’s economic benefits, whilst gaining the increased flexibility to develop our core business, as well as new digital opportunities.

With reliable fibre broadband now widely accessible across the UK, cloud-based unified communications (UC) tools are finally able to deliver their promised benefits of mobility and enhanced collaboration for modern businesses. However holding onto legacy telephone systems mean that many businesses are missing out on the opportunity to innovate, according to Claranet.

James Mitchell, Senior Product Manager for Claranet, explained:

Nearly every part of the UK can now access fibre broadband, dramatically improving businesses’ ability to take advantage of higher bandwidth internet connections. The applications involved in the delivery of UC have also dramatically improved and bring significant business benefits because they are hosted in the cloud. Hosted UC as it is now is a very different proposition to early incarnations, which left a sour taste in the mouth of some early adopters.

“Studies suggest 94 per cent of UK businesses are still using a PBX system, rendering the vast majority unable to take advantage of true unified communications and the benefits it entails. Attempting to connect a legacy PBX with a wider modern communications suite just doesn’t work, it results in more limited functionality, a fragmented and complex suite of applications, and requires more licenses, hardware and engineering time.

Moving to a hosted UC solution utilising industry leading applications from Broadsoft and Microsoft enables businesses to benefit from a seamlessly integrated application experience that improves communications inside and outside of the business. It can also support business continuity, integration into CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, as well as providing all the necessary functionality to support mobile working.

“We see many customers which have their workforces spread across several sites; their employees report playing voicemail ‘tag’ for hours just to get basic information exchanged, and slow decision making. Integrated presence, instant messaging and desktop share features can unblock channels of communication and cut down on wasted time and effort. A business that uses UC well can be faster and more responsive than its competitors”.

Our latest research into the challenges for modern IT departments found that 40 per cent find workforce mobility to be a major stumbling block,” James continued. “The agility demanded by remote working, across multiple devices at all times significantly increases the complexity that IT leaders need to manage. However, Claranet’s UC services go a long way to alleviate these headaches. The best providers are able to build UC ‘into the network’, giving the company bandwidth prioritisation and smooth integration.

“There hasn’t been a better time than now for UC tools,” James concluded. “After many years of speculation, the time has come for modern IT departments to move away from outdated PBX infrastructure that is shackling their business and onto a cloud-based UC service. It is viable, sensible, cost-effective and innovative to move your communication platforms out of your buildings and onto the cloud, so businesses can unlock the power of modern collaboration tools” he concluded.