by DavidSpratt | Apr 23, 2012 | ICT
Cloud services have emerged as a genuine threat to established hardware and software providers as well as to the livelihoods of the many thousands of IT professionals who have made their living selling and supporting these products over the last twenty or more years.
This threat makes ICT investment decisions by businesses particularly challenging as we are encouraged by one group to stick with the tried and true and by another to throw away the old and bring in the new.
This three part series assesses the importance of cloud services to business by looking at whether a particular service reduces costs and/or improves businesses performance when compared to the existing way of doing things.
Part One of this series addressed Infrastructure as a Service – where traditional ICT services such as storage and processing power are provided.
Part Two addresses Software as a Service – where organisations access software tools via the internet.
Software as a Service represents the single biggest game changer in business IT since the personal computer made mainframes and mini computers a part of history. (more…)
by DavidSpratt | Feb 27, 2012 | ICT
Cloud services have emerged as a genuine threat to established hardware and software providers as well as to the many thousands of IT professionals who have made their living selling and supporting these products over the last twenty or more years.
This threat makes ICT investment decisions by businesses particularly challenging as we are encouraged by one group to stick with the tried and true and by another to throw away the old and bring in the new.
How can the average business customer judge the importance of a new technology or the continued relevance of existing technology choices to their business?
While the answer to this question can often be complex, at its heart is a simple challenge “What is the purpose of this technology?”
This three part series assesses the importance of cloud services to business by looking at whether a particular service reduces costs and/or improves businesses performance when compared to the existing way of doing things.
Part One of this series addresses Infrastructure as a Service – where traditional ICT services such as storage and processing power are provided.
Parts Two and Three will address:
Platform as a Service – where organisations can purchase the toolkit necessary to build and operate their own software
Software as a Service – where organisations can access software such as email or office productivity tools. (more…)
by RichardGardiner | Feb 20, 2012 | Energy, Waste
At a time when every sector in New Zealand is feeling the pinch, 102 schools across New Zealand have found a way of making their money go further.
Part of the solution for a large number of primary, intermediate and high school business managers has been to bring in specialist services to negotiate their power, gas and waste services contracts to make sure that their schools are not paying over the odds.
According to school business managers, bringing in third parties makes sense on a number of levels. Having to deal with a wide range of different tasks is one of the challenges managers face on a daily basis, this makes it impossible to be an expert across the board. Buying in expertise and handing over the more specialist jobs seems to be a logical step.
Business Manager at Pakuranga College, Graeme Brown is an advocate of this approach. “Over the 11 years that I’ve been in this job, I’ve come to realise that it makes sense to leave utilities contract negotiation to the experts. I don’t even think about our contracts now, TUMG notify us when they are due for renewal – it’s great to have something taken off my list of priorities.”
The opportunity to join forces with other schools and go out to market in bulk tenders is another plus point for bringing in a specialist. Richard Gardiner at Total Utilities Management Group (TUMG) has been putting together power, gas and waste services bulk tenders for ten years and sees them bringing real advantage to his clients.
“When we put out a bulk Request for Proposal to suppliers, the bigger the piece of business, the sharper the pricing tends to be.”
But Mr Gardiner is quick to stress that it’s not all about the price. (more…)
