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It was clear that any incoming government would make changes to the way it delivered services to the public and local business. However, the scale and speed of the changes demanded by the Conservative-Liberal alliance were implemented far quicker than anyone had anticipated.
Reductions in funding meant reductions in staff. The agency suffered as experienced and talented staff left for more secure posts. Management had to deliver existing and contracted projects with minimum staff.
Mitsui & Co Energy Risk Management Ltd, based in the UK in the City of London, is a consolidated subsidiary of Mitsui & Co Ltd. The company undertakes Energy Derivatives dealing, and falls under the jurisdiction of the FSA.
In 2007 the company started looking for an email archiving solution. The company wanted to address challenges in two different areas:
1. Operational
2. Compliance
‘Computing on demand’, ‘reduced overheads’ and applications delivered via the web promise new and efficient delivery of IT services without infrastructure or management cost. Departments are hitting back through virtualising infrastructure. Reducing the number of physical servers has reduced capital and operational costs. However, on its own server virtualisation does not deliver the flexibility that users demand.
The London School of English build a flexible, dynamic infrastructure that has reduced cost and extended the School’s international reach.
Managing three separate campuses in London and Canterbury, the London School of English (LSE) is the oldest accredited language school in the world. A highly successful operation the LSE client list includes Accenture, Nestle and UBS. However, for IT Manager, Iqbal Rehman, success came at a price, ‘running IT infrastructure at three geographically distant sites was a logistical nightmare’ recalls Iqbal, ‘even for routine upgrades, engineers would spend more time on the road than in front of a machine’.
Analysts have been confidently predicting the demise of the IT Department and the rise of outsourced managed services for years. There are many sound business reasons for outsourcing IT maintenance: in house IT support can be costly, underutilised and may not contain all the skills to keep abreast of the latest regulation and technology.
Despite the clear business benefits many organisations retain their own, in house, IT departments. Concerns over control, bad past experiences and seeing the IT Department as a ‘core competence’ can make companies reluctant to change. Continue reading
With markets apparently conspiring to exacerbate the European debt crisis and the CBI warning that UK business confidence is falling, 2012 could be a challenging year. Yet despite market turmoil and fears of a double dip recession, the real economy appears to be holding up well: retail sales have beaten forecasts and growth in the UK is up. This creates a dilemma for senior executives: prepare for growth or plan for recession. One thing is certain; businesses will need to be very flexible in 2012.
With 125 branches worldwide and 3,600 staff, Gallagher Bassett Services is a truly global operation. Since 1962, the company has been helping large organisations self insure and manage their risks. In the United Kingdom, Gallagher Bassett’s 120 clients include many retail, leisure, manufacturing, transport and government accounts. The business in the UK has grown steadily since 1991 and now employs over 264 staff in 8 locations.
Part of Lord Coe’s bid winning argument was that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 would kick start the regeneration of some of the most deprived areas in Europe. It was the Olympic Legacy and the benefit it would bring to London’s East End that convinced the UK Government to get behind the bid, politically and financially. Some of the benefits of the games are immediate and obvious: encouraging greater participation in physical activity and sport (particularly in the poorer boroughs of East London), regeneration and redevelopment of derelict, brown field sites. But perhaps the most important legacy is the most difficult to define and measure: increased economic growth.
We’ve said it before in our VDI Checklist: ‘Server consolidation and virtualisation, if done well, was pretty much invisible to people using your systems: hopefully they perform better and are more reliable, but apart from that nothing much has changed. VDI is different and it will impact everyone. Communication will be key to successful change’.
Appropriate function will be key too. Done well, VDI removes many of the gripes that have been an inescapable part of computing since PCs first entered businesses. Everybody can win: IT can stop running around and get on with supporting the business mission, while the individuals who make up the business get the flexibility, security and simplicity that they’ve always wanted from IT. Done badly, people will pine for the ‘good old days’ of inflexibility and high cost-of-ownership, and may well force a return to them.
Over the 40 years of its existence Odgers Berndtson has grown into the UK’s pre-eminent executive search firm. They specialise in finding the highest calibre people for permanent and interim management appointments in the UK and internationally. Fueled by an expanding portfolio of prestigious blue chip clients the group is increasing its activity in international markets. ‘We take a Martini approach to data’ explains Adam Gibson, IT Director, ‘it has to be available Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere’. With new offices opening in the US and Asia-Pacific, supporting high levels of data availability globally is a challenge that has to be met.
The group has other commercial pressures. Responses to global corporations’ tenders have to comply with exacting Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity requirements. Putting in place local physical machines with associated management and DR to support the new offices would have involved significant capital investment.
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