The line between business processes and consumer communications technology is blurring.

On the one hand, you have hard-to-control shadow cloud communications spreading through your business. On the other, unified, enterprise-grade communications are becoming increasingly sophisticated and popular.

New UK-based infrastructure supports Healthcode’s business-critical data processing services

Online application software provider for the private healthcare industry, Healthcode, has implemented a resilient, scalable and secure hosting platform from Claranet. The managed services provider’s enhanced solution ensures Healthcode’s customer data is protected to the highest standards and includes disaster recovery capabilities.

Healthcode’s core business is electronic billing, and the company is the official medical bill clearing-house for the private healthcare sector in the UK. Its services and applications are critical to the functioning of private hospitals, insurers, consultants and practices, who entrust them with extremely confidential, personal and commercially sensitive data. To meet its commitment to service delivery and data protection, Healthcode turned to Claranet to design and implement a robust and resilient managed hosting solution.

Peter Connor, Managing Director at Healthcode explained: “A huge volume of data goes through our systems – on average, we process and clear 18,000 bills from providers to insurers every day, a number we expect to increase rapidly. We also process over 600,000 clinical records annually for private hospitals so they can meet their new obligation to report information for quality and outcomes statistics. Given the critical nature of our work, our customers expect us to be operational at all times to support their businesses and to meet the highest security standards.

“As we handle such high volumes of personally identifiable information, we operate our systems to ISO27001 standards. We wanted Claranet to supply us with a dedicated private infrastructure which met the stringent compliance criteria.

Based on our five year relationship with Claranet, we had every confidence they could provide clear, actionable advice and guidance as we enhanced our data hosting services. Our new platform is more resilient and robust against data breaches with an in-built disaster recovery system so we can offer a truly secure service to the private health sector. Data sovereignty is a key issue in the sector we operate in, and as Claranet operates only in-country data centres, they are able to offer the assurances on data location we – and by extension, our customers – need. We’ve been completely satisfied with our partnership with Claranet and are really pleased with how their services consistently safeguard the delivery of our applications.”

Healthcode’s strengthened managed hosting platform from Claranet enables the company to meet security challenges head on, featuring enterprise grade disaster recovery and data protection measures with 24/7 support from the managed services provider. In addition, Healthcode take a number of other key services from Claranet including internet connectivity, Web Acceleration and DoS Protection, Hosted Desktop and email services. Being flexible and scalable, it is now much easier for Healthcode to provide services which are effective and tailored for each customer.

Michel Robert, UK Managing Director for Claranet concluded: “With any hosting platform we supply and manage for a client, we recognise their ability to serve their customers relies upon the strength of the infrastructure we provide. We take this responsibility very seriously, especially in regard to the security of our customers’ data. We look forward to continuing our great relationship with Healthcode as its business maintains its growth in the healthcare sector.”

Linux systems management specialist takes home Stronger Together Award for collaboration with Softcat and Tier 2 Consulting

LinuxIT, part of the Claranet Group, has been awarded the Stronger Together Award at this year’s Red Hat EMEA Partner Awards, alongside Softcat and Tier 2 Consulting. Working under the project name ‘The Three Musketeers’, the three organisations won the award based on the strength of their joint collaboration and the value that they collectively add to the Red Hat partner ecosystem.

Now in their seventh year, the Red Hat EMEA Partner Awards recognise the achievements of Red Hat’s partners over the past year and their ongoing commitment to collaborating with the company.

Receiving the Stronger Together Award at a ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany, earlier this month, LinuxIT, Softcat and Tier 2 were commended for their complementary skill sets across sales and infrastructure, and for their middleware knowhow. Over the past year, the three organisations have worked together on projects such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Mobile Application Platform for customers.

Commenting on the award win, Simon Mitchell, CEO at LinuxIT, said: “We have a long-standing and successful relationship with Red Hat, having been named the first Red Hat Premier Partner in the UK and won the Platform Partner of the Year award at the 2013 ceremony. Collaboration sits at the heart of what the Open Source community is all about, so we are delighted to have won this year’s Stronger Together Award alongside two of our strategic partners, Softcat and Tier 2.

“Over the past few years we have cultivated strong and fruitful collaborations with Softcat and Tier 2, based on Red Hat technologies, and it has been by working together that we have been able to achieve amazing things for our customers,” Mitchell continued.

“Red Hat’s belief in nurturing strong partnerships inspired the Stronger Together Award. Over the last 10 months, the three winners, LinuxIT, Softcat and Tier 2, have created a solid business venture and collaborated on projects for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat mobile, bringing added value to Open Source and the whole Red Hat Partner Eco-System,” Jayne Handley, Head of Partner and Alliances, UK & Ireland, Red Hat.

Michel Robert, Managing Director of Claranet UK added: “LinuxIT were acquired by Claranet in July 2015 in order to broaden our managed services portfolio with industry leading Linux-based consultative services. This recognition of LinuxIT’s innovative work validates Claranet’s mission to help our customers do amazing things. Already our customers are benefiting from the addition of LinuxIT’s services to our well established, award-winning managed services portfolio.”

Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

Digital innovation is transforming how customers and businesses connect.

Fully 77% of corporate executives think that the internet and consumer application companies are setting a new benchmark for customer experiences. [1]

And so much of your business depends on the reliability of that digital interaction: e-commerce platforms, payment systems, your website, your mobile app…

The cloud facilitates speed, focus and efficiency whilst allowing greater collaboration and flexibility between teams.

These ultimately work together to bring one major advantage to business: accelerated innovation.

In the context of this fast-paced innovation, the skills, qualifications and attitudes you need to survive and thrive in the industry are changing quickly and radically.

The biggest uptake will be from larger mid-market enterprises as they seek to gain a competitive advantage

While the flat structure of DevOps has traditionally favoured the agility of small organisations, which are able to introduce new work cultures and reorganise roles, larger organisations are swiftly starting to take the lead, research from Claranet suggests. According to the managed services provider, the trend goes against conventional wisdom that larger mid-market firms lack the agility to on-board the approach and the change reflects the increased importance of the speed that companies release products to the market.

The research, which surveyed 900 IT decision-makers from across the UK and Europe from a range of organisations, found that DevOps adoption is set to grow significantly over the next two years. Today, around a quarter (26 per cent) of European mid-market businesses (100-2000) have taken a DevOps approach, though a further 42 per cent have plans to implement one in the next two years.

This growth will predominantly come from larger mid-market organisations as they look to take advantage of new development methods to counter the agility of smaller players; within the next two years, 64 per cent of businesses with more than 500 employees expect to have implemented DevOps, compared with just 45 per cent of those with fewer.

Neil Thomas, Product Director at Claranet explained: “With larger companies now leading the DevOps charge, the differentiation it previously brought to smaller organisations could drop significantly. Sizeable companies are firmly demonstrating the collaboration skills necessary for this way of working, including agile decision-making processes and the flexibility to incorporate new ideas quickly. Our research has shown that a dramatic shift is happening within the IT sector, with conventional wisdom about the lack of agility in large organisations being thrown out in favour of a new paradigm.”

Neil went on to say that companies looking to adopt this approach over the next two years need to make sure their organisations are fully prepared in terms of culture, technology, and partners for this new lean development approach to work.

“Larger organisations are finding implementation requires both a complete cultural shift, as well as the introduction of new IT tooling. Strong partnerships can be critical here. Working with a partner that has experience in various applications and strong DevOps expertise enables organisations to deliver on their DevOps promises” Neil concluded.

Partnerships are key to establishing business certainty and insulating against skills shortages

Recent research from Claranet has found that while IT leaders from across Europe report skills shortages as a challenge, they do so to differing degrees, and over the next five years, this divergence is set to increase. For the managed services provider (MSP), the results point to an uncertainty over the future of IT skills across Europe which can only be addressed by establishing trusted partnerships with third party suppliers.

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, found that concerns about skills shortages across Europe are rife and are likely to worsen. Today, 21 per cent of European businesses cite skills shortages as one of their biggest IT challenges, and this is expected to increase to 25 per cent by 2020.

The UK, however, bucks this trend; 26 per cent of UK businesses are currently concerned about skills, though this is set to decline to 16 per cent in five years’ time. One possible explanation for this is the UK’s anticipated increase in the use of third party providers to support internal IT teams; third parties will manage 22 per cent of the average UK IT estate by 2020, up from 15 per cent today.

Commenting on the research, Andy Wilton, Claranet’s Group CIO, said: “It’s clear that the labour market is in flux and, in truth, it’s difficult to know with certainty what skills will be needed in five years’ time or where those skilled professionals will be – particularly as free movement in the European labour market continues to take hold and IT skills become more specialised.”

“For a long time businesses, particularly those in the mid-market, have tried to be masters of everything, and manage everything internally. But that kind of approach doesn’t make sense any more – nor is it possible as certain skills shortages start to bite. The key for European businesses wishing to move away from deepening uncertainty over skills is to develop beneficial partnerships, which will help to insulate against any skills shortages and allow them to up-skill staff to directly add value to their businesses,” Andy continued.

“Through our work as an MSP in the UK and Europe, we’ve helped our clients manage their IT, allowing them to add better value to their businesses rather then struggle with technical issues. Strong use and implementation of MSPs is key to reducing the uncertainty around the skills crisis. Ultimately, this will increase the confidence of mid-sized businesses through shouldering their IT skills risk, allowing for better focus on business growth in the modern world,” he concluded.

Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for human rights. Its work is based on careful research by volunteers, and on the human rights standards agreed by the international community.

Real-time access to information and online updates is crucial for Amnesty’s worldwide operations.

Imagine how large your IT department would have to be to fulfil every one of your business’s IT demands: internal systems, websites, availability, development, disaster recovery and business continuity, etc.

It would outstrip every other department!

There would be budget and headcount chaos.

And what’s more, it would take the focus of your business away from what it actually does and, instead, towards just managing the supporting technology.

Not a good trade.

Charities possess a lot of sensitive data, often relating to the vulnerable individuals and groups they support or the payment details of their donors. And they face numerous challenges around safeguarding this data in a secure and compliant fashion.