“The IT business isn’t all about the technology anymore - it’s about the user experience. Support departments need to realise that the industry has not as a whole responded well to the disruptive technologies that have changed the way we work, and that adopting a fresh perspective focused on the end point rather than the technological journey is going to be crucial over the coming months and years,” said Sherratt.

“It should serve as a wake-up call that 30% of The UK’s corporate IT spend is now controlled from outside the traditional IT department. The industry needs to come to terms with this, look at popular clouds like music and social networking and recognise the need to mimic that success.”

Delegates to the conference were presented with learnings from SCC’s experience of evolving services to meet with the demands of Consumerisation and the cloud. Europe’s largest independent technology solutions provider has invested heavily in the data centre facilities and expertise required to develop and deliver services that can be consumed on a cost per seat basis.

In order to adapt to the evolving environment, organisations must address several key challenges, starting with a strategic review of critical infrastructure designed to identify the killer apps that would best connect staff with the business’ processes. Teams need to identify which employees need to do their job faster, better and cheaper, and to look at how they collaborate at work and align it with the way people communicate in their time off.

Delegates were also urged to reconsider the complexity of their approach to IT solutions and adopt a cloud-inspired mind-set that is simpler, more intuitive and uncomplicated. The speakers told them that innovation must lie at the heart of what they do, and that while maintaining a radical approach was important, they must also consider how to set their data free while still retaining control.

As an increasing body of businesses begin to embrace such an approach, many are likely to consider termination of existing major change projects in line with a rapidly shifting marketplace. SCC believes that on the cloud era in-house initiatives make less sense, and predicts that using existing solutions and outsourced partnerships is likely to become a focus of activity over the next few years.

Sherratt added: “We need to stop agonising about how we’re going to make legacy software run on an iPad and start a different kind of conversation between IT departments and business, to focus on data sovereignty and forget about operating systems, embracing a client-centric perspective and a more flexible approach to the end point.

“IT departments have to move now on these things because user opinion is already ahead of you. If you can’t deliver the services they’re going to demand soon, then pretty quickly you’re going to hear people within the business asking why not.”

As a contributor to the industry discussions that formed the basis of the G-Cloud proposal, Europe’s largest technology solutions provider has been working on its own bid for a place on a framework designed to allow public sector organisations to purchase cloud based services on demand. The first round of applications closed on the 19th December 2011, yet while the final results will not be announced until early 2012, the company believes the new framework could help to put an end to the age of overpriced and under-performing government IT projects.

“Rightly or wrongly, public sector IT procurement has been characterised by projects that go over budget, miss their deadlines and fail to provide the functionality they were commissioned to deliver. G-Cloud is a concerted effort to bring an end to that situation and, like many across the industry, we’re delighted to be enabling the kind of technology initiatives that will help the government deliver services faster, better and cheaper,” said SCC’s Director of Public Sector Business Tracy Westall.

“With hundreds of companies ranging from multinational corporations to SMEs competing to offer services via a framework should enable organisations to make purchasing decisions quickly and easily.”

More than 500 companies have expressed interest in offering competing services on G-Cloud, with the final selection process expected to begin in spring 2012. Use of the service by public organisations and departments will be mandatory, with likely purchases ranging from Enterprise-scale systems provision contracts to standard Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings such as email, electronic documents and records management.

SCC notes that whereas traditionally, many public organisations have been bound into long term IT contracts by punitive penalties for seeking to end even failed projects, the new framework should put an end to such situations. Services will be offered on contracts as short as 30 days, enabling public sector organisations to buy into services when they need them and step away when they don’t.

In line with its support of the new system SCC has bid for its own place on the framework, offering a variety of optimised cloud solutions from its custom built UK data centre. The company has also continued its track record of partnering with SME players within the sector, providing the technical capacity and credibility that underpins a number of smaller provider’s offerings from a facility awarded the Green Grid Award for Sustainability 2011 at the Data Centres in Europe Awards.

SCC’s Chief Technical Officer Rhys Sharp added: “In many ways G-Cloud signals a levelling of the playing field, enabling public sector organisations to respond to a dynamic working environment as quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively as their counterparts in the private sector have always been able to. As a company we’re delighted that the government has launched us on a journey that should deliver far greater value in return for the UK’s stretched technology budget.

“From an economic perspective, the new framework is great news. It will enable hundreds of British businesses to offer their services to a customer base that has until now been out of reach, providing genuine potential for growth and striking a particularly positive note for the future.”

Sharp will be presenting at Cloud Expo Europe 2012 on the 25th January 2012 at the National Hall, Olympia in London. The seminar ‘Optimise Cloud’ – A better way to deliver IT services commences at 10.55am on Wednesday 25th January and SCC will be on stand 569.

A plethora of global manufacturers have predicted disk shortages over the next six months. As a result, SCC reports that prices are rising, supply is falling and companies are stuck buying more storage in the midst of the crisis because they can’t afford to run out of space.

In addition to providing Storage Assessments in order to save clients space, SCC also reports intensifying interest in virtual storage solutions, thin provisioning technologies, de-duplication and solid state technologies . In an uncertain climate facilities such as SCC’s custom built data centre can offer stable, secure and infinitely scalable storage at a fraction of the price required to create in-house resources, and as a result the company is seeing renewed interest in virtualisation.

Wright added: “In a global economy, nobody is immune. As the news about Thailand broke businesses around Europe began to realise that even climactic events on the other side of the world can have a very real and immediate impact upon their operations, and that accelerating awareness is not only making them take issues like disaster recovery much more seriously, but is also driving a comprehensive rethink of their entire approach to data storage.”

“In the age of cloud computing, many companies’ continued insistence on maintaining expensive in-house storage clusters makes less and less sense. At the very least, they need to be urgently considering their potential routes to reducing reliance on such facilities and pegging back spiralling demand for storage resources.”

Come and hear our keynote speakers Rhys Sharp, SCC CTO and Ian Sherratt, SCC’s Director of Corporate Business Strategy:

Wednesday 25th January 2012
Keynote Theatre, 10.55am
‘Optimise Cloud’ – A better way to deliver IT services
Rhys Sharp, SCC Chief Technology Officer

Thursday 26th January 2012
Keynote Theatre, 14.20pm
“Consumerisation and the Cloud”
Ian Sherratt, Director of Corporate Business Strategy

The SCC team look forward to welcoming you at stand 569 at Cloud Expo Europe 2012.

Register for your FREE tickets now at http://www.cloudexpoeurope.com/  

Who should visit?

IT Professionals from enterprise, public sector and small businesses making both cloud investment and strategy decisions and developing and executing specific cloud projects.

•  CIOs /COOs/ CTOs/IT Directors
•  IT Management
•  IT Architects
•  Line of business managers and directors
•  Security Professionals
•  Data Centre Managers

Business and Technology leaders, CTOs, channel and partner managers, along with, business development, analysts and infrastructure teams from cloud service providers, telecommunications, ISPs, ISVs and the IT channel and industry serving the cloud community will all be present. 

The show takes place at Olympia National Hall, Hammersmith Road, London, W14 8UX on Wednesday 25th January – Thursday 26th January between 10am-5pm.

With the public sector workers' strike on Wednesday November 30th tipped to cause delays of up to 12-hours at Heathrow, Britain's business community is bracing itself for the start of months of travel difficulties. Operating in an environment where a prolonged period of severe winter weather similar to the storms of 2010 remains a strong possibility and amidst predictions that the summer Olympics will lead to widespread transport disruption, many are being forced to consider safer, more reliable and cost-effective alternatives.

“In an era where we are in many ways defined by our mobility, businesses must give due consideration to how they will cope when movement is suddenly restricted. Every year vast sums are lost to the economy when the trains and airports grind to a halt, and with multiple potential issues flagged up for the months ahead, it's hardly surprising that we're seeing a sharp upturn in interest around video conferencing solutions,” said Ian Scott, SCC Director of Audio Visual.

Focusing on the range of hosted video conferencing options within its custom data centre, SCC is currently working to help a range of clients keep their businesses moving even when the traffic isn’t or flights are delayed. Delivering a range of services designed to facilitate internal and external communications and provide communication tools for home-workers or tele-commuting, the company believes that recent developments have underlined video conferencing's viability.

While values such as increased workforce collaboration, reduced travel costs, a decreased carbon footprint and improved efficiency have always driven the practice's adoption, SCC believes that the technology has now matured to provide a real, high definition experience.

Barriers to entry such as bandwidth availability, budgetary restraints, IT resource issues and gaining the necessary in-house skills meanwhile, have been negated by the advent of hosted video conferencing solutions. Such systems remove the need for up-front capital expenditure, providing 24-hour access and ample security without placing further demands on companies' IT departments.

With dedicated concierge services now rendering the use of video conferencing facilities far more user-friendly, the introduction of proper standards has also put an end to the problems many businesses previously encountered while attempting to communicate over disparate platforms. Modern hosted solutions can be integrated with conferencing systems such as Microsoft OCS, Lync, IBM Sametime and Cisco WebEx and have become platform agnostic, allowing users to connect to systems powered by Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize and a range of desktop clients.

Scott added: “The face of video conferencing has changed enormously over the past decade as the industry has worked to make it faster, cheaper and better. As we enter a period in which interrupted business trips and transport delays are widely predicted to become even more commonplace, it's small wonder that smart companies are rediscovering the technology as they move to keep their operations rolling.”
 

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of mobile capabilities across the spectrum of mobile suppliers. Much of the limelight has been grabbed by the iPhone 4S and iOS 5, which has put more power in the hand of the user and more features in the software, but this development has not been restricted to Apple, and the competition are on the rampage too.

Microsoft have delivered Mango, the latest incarnation of the Mobile platform, and one that is aimed at Enterprise. It moves away from being an “app launcher” by delivering the information you need in real time through their Active Tile technology. We have also had a peek at the future from Microsoft with Windows 8, showing us that Microsoft will converge the User Interface giving a consistent view be it desktop, phone, tablet or console!

Over at Google there have been software releases and hardware purchases. The release of Gingerbread for Phone and Honeycomb for tablet plus the announcement of Ice Cream Sandwich, has provided a step forward in user experience and functionality whilst the purchase of Motorola by Google saw a significant shift in intent from the software giant leaving the market questioning the strategic direction they were talking.

So what impact can we expect from the ARM announcement of the Cortex-A7 chip design? Well, there are two main advances this chip brings. First: it is cheap to manufacture and as such will further reduce the cost of devices built around it, accelerating the proliferation of smartphone devices. Secondly (and more importantly) it employs a technology that ARM call big.LITTLE which means there is a low speed and low power consumption CPU on the chip, the new processor can be combined with bigger ARM Cores - thus enabling the device to use the small CPU when less power is needed and switch to the larger core(s) when more power is required. Crucially, this allows the device to significantly extend its battery life as the new A7 consumes less power.

An example of this would be when a phone is sat in your pocket with the screen off it is still processing background data , but that processing requirement is very small and can thus use the A7. When you take the phone out to use it the handset can then switch to the larger and more powerful cores, ensuring that not only is your experience fast, but that battery life can also be significantly extended.

Cheaper devices and longer battery life are both very important when we look towards the release of Windows 8, as this operating system will be available for the ARM processor. A cheap device and long battery will re-define the Laptop, and we are already seeing Ultra Books from most vendors - slim machines with full processors keyboards and screens that boot incredibly quickly - and these machines will shrink again and have incredible battery life.

This rate of change makes for an exciting time. If we go back in time to when AMD entered the CPU market to compete with Intel we saw the latter make significant strides forwards in development, and I think we are likely to see the same again when ARM enter the PC market. If we play this story out in a slightly different direction the impact could be profound. Imagine using ARM processors in servers, for example, the impact upon power consumption would redefine how we could build data centres and with Windows 8 running on ARM that may not be so far away, HP recently announced their intention to build servers based upon the ARM processor.

For some time now we have seen the pace of development of mobile and consumer devices far outstrip those developments in the business arena, something I have referred to as the perception chasm, the gap between the technology we use in our personal lives and the technology we use at work. Right now that gap is growing, as consumers we are far more savvy and have greater demands on the technology we own, and those demands are driven by the mass of content and applications now available to us, both of which are developing at pace. As a result, desktop strategies for corporates must now focus more on application delivery and data security and less on the device.
 

Wright added: “As part of our on-going strategy to provide clients with whatever solution they need, whenever they need it, SCC is always looking for new technologies that assist our clients in delivering more efficient IT solutions, in a more cost effective manner and with short concept to delivery times. Xsigo ticks all of these boxes, and when this is combined with their flexibility and willingness to drive the market, it leads to a potent solution for the customer.

Michelle Humphreys, Business Development Director of Xsigo EMEA, commented: “SCC offers our mutual customers access to a highly experienced sales and technical staff who can help architect end-to-end solutions optimised for IT initiatives such as cloud, virtualisation, VDI and database. We look forward to working with the company to rapidly meet our customers’ most challenging needs."
 

At a session organised by networking giants Cisco - Building a Data Centre ready for Cloud - Sharp briefed attendees on SCC's decade long strategy of investment in its custom built hosting facilities, a policy he believes has paved the way for a major cultural change in the way businesses think of and use technology. Citing a robust 21st Century infrastructure built on improved storage, ubiquitous connectivity and network resilience, he told the Earls Court audience that ten years of perpetual evolution have delivered a modern data centre capable of supporting a completely different approach to corporate computing.

"Together with the financial imperatives brought by the economic slow down, the emergence of the modern data centre has created a perfect storm where businesses are not only capable of effecting major changes in their use of IT, but also have a powerful motivation to do so as quickly as is practicable. The fact that companies across the country are under pressure to deliver their processes faster, better and more cheaply than ever before may not be new, but at least now we have the technology we need to really do something about it," said Sharp.

"In less than a decade we've seen a series of rapid developments that have taken us from the point where a data centre was just a server room in the corner of an office to the point where it has become a highly complex, state-of-the-art instillation in its own right. Now, as users begin switching from the distributed computing environment to a centralised approach, I believe we are poised to witness ten years of even more rapid development as enterprises move quickly towards adopting a Technology as a Service model."

SCC's IP Expo session demonstrated to participants how building a new Data Centre today requires a fresh approach and a new way of thinking, as the pace of change in the technology sector accelerates we see a new generation of virtualisation capabilities arrive that deliver greater convergence and higher levels of optimisation. Sharp showed how bringing these technologies together has helped the company build an award winning efficient data centre and cloud platform that is ready for the demands of 21st century cloud computing.

Launched in 2010, SCC's latest custom built data centre was awarded the Green Grid Award for Sustainability 2011 at the Data Centres in Europe Awards earlier this year. Located in its UK technology campus, the company's Dual Data Centre sites are at the heart of the UK transport network, allowing easy access for engineers. The location also avoids any problems associated with the extensive pressure being put on London’s power grid, both from ongoing growth and from the expected demands of the forthcoming Olympic Games, the threat of power shortages and the possibility of brownouts or rolling blackouts, which has recently raised concerns in the data centre industry.

Rhys Sharp was speaking at the IP EXPO at Earls Court, London. Visit SCC at Stand A8 within the Cisco village to see how our Data Centre services can provide you affordable, immediate and risk free access to the smartest business enabling technologies and solutions tailored to your needs.

SCC is one of only eight UK companies to achieve the coveted certification, which means access to an expanded range of HP products that it can deliver service on as an accredited service partner. Confirming its service capabilities to mitigate customers’ risks when designing, implementing and running HP solutions; this accreditation firmly underlines SCC’s status as one of HP’s most valuable European partners.

“Achieving Expert status is no easy task. HP sets very stringent standards in both technical ability and sales performance and is testament to the dedication and skills our team puts into making technologies work for our customers,” said Paula Jordan, SCC’s Operations Director.

“Our enhanced status means we will work closely with HP to offer our customers even better sales, service and delivery.”

Andy Wright, SCC’s Director for Vendor Alliances added: “Accreditation has been a long process, but it underlines our commitment to providing our customers with access to the very best available technologies. The significant investment and long-term commitment we have put into ServiceOne has not only secured this coveted accreditation, but enhanced our continually improving range of services, not to mention further raising our profile in HP”.

About HP ServiceOne
HP ServiceOne enables partners to expand their technology services portfolio and the choice of co-branding services with HP. Partners can also leverage HP’s metrics and rewards to further incentivise revenue opportunities and reduce risk. Achieving Expert accreditation carries a number of benefits including expanding the HP products that partners can deliver service on as an accredited partner. This in turn allows accredited partners to work closely with HP to provide clients with a full range of services throughout the product life-cycle.

About SCC
SCC is Europe’s largest independent technology solutions provider around the infrastructure, and is part of Specialist Computer Holdings (SCH) plc. The Group has regional operations in five different countries, employs over 7,000 professional staff and has delivered sustained, profitable growth for some 36 years, with annual turnover exceeding £2.48 billion. Long term partnerships with the world’s leading solutions providers combine with SCC’s services capabilities to create a rapid return on an investment in IT. It has an enviable track record of successfully helping European-based companies and Government organisations better manage their technology infrastructure, remove cost and create business advantage.
 

With the use of personal devices in the workplace constantly increasing, our main focus will be on helping you to embrace this phenomenon and allow your organisation to remain operationally competitive.

Our forums will cover the target architecture - optimised, managed, flexible and virtualised - that will deliver business applications 24/7 on any device securely, as well as practical steps and useful tools. All of which will help you to incorporate an effective "bring your own device to work" strategy into your business, which minimises its risks and maximises its benefits.

Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis. We will contact you shortly to confirm your registration.

For more information please call: 0845 351 1157 or email: Profitfromw7@scc.com

Venue - Hampden Park, Glasgow on Tuesday 22nd November  

Agenda

09:00    Registration & tea / coffee
09:30    Introduction - Piers Covill - SCC
09:45    Consumerisation of corporate IT - Ian Sherratt - SCC
10:15    Key elements of a target infrastructure - Mike Brannigan - SCC
11:00    Break
11:30    Practical steps... - Rhys Sharp - SCC
12:15    Guest Speaker - Paul Dickenson - BBC Athletics & Olympics Commentator
12:45    Next Steps - Piers Covill - SCC
13:00    Lunch and networking

Places are limited and are on a first come first served basis.

To register please
call: 0845 351 1157
or email: Profitfromw7@scc.com  
 

Visit our stand
Visit SCC at Stand A8 within the Cisco village at the IP Expo 2011 in Earls Court 2 London on the 19th and 20th October to see how our Data Centre services can provide you affordable, immediate and risk free access to the smartest business enabling technologies and solutions tailored to your needs.

Visit our Seminar

• Location - Cisco Theatre at Earls Court 2 London 
• Date and Time - 11.50am, Wednesday 19th October
• Speaker - Rhys Sharp, SCC CTO 
• Topic - Building a Data Centre ready for Cloud
  Discussing the challenges faced by SCC when building their new Data Centre and how key vendors such as Cisco helped SCC to create their cloud platform.

Meet an Olympian
Meet Olympic silver medalist and World Championship gold medalist Roger Black, who will outline the role of technology from an athlete’s perspective and will be available for signatures on the main Cisco stand within the village.

Hope to see you soon!
The SCC team looks forward to welcoming you at Stand A8 at IP EXPO 2011. We look forward to seeing you there.

Register Free Now at:

http://www.ipexpo.co.uk/Exhibitors/SCC

Why should you use VMware vCenter Operations?

• Improve organisational processes
• Eliminate manual effort
• Proactively manage virtual infrastructure performance
• Ensure operational and regulatory compliance
• Optimise resource utilisation

We know that IT management processes must change as your infrastructure becomes more flexible, because traditional tools and processes do not provide the automation and control required in virtualised environments.

As a VMware Premier Partner we have access to the most competitive pricing and highest levels of support from VMware, as well as working in conjunction with other vendors to bring technology solutions across the whole IT infrastructure; enabling us to help your business to reduce costs by increasing efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness.

Do you want to know more?
Why not join our webinar on Thursday 29th September at 10.30, click here to register online or contact us on 0845 351 1157 or email moreinfo@scc.com
 

When selecting the best fit technology for your IT estate, it’s important to…

• Look at how those technologies complement each other
• If they provide the most user friendly and efficient experience, saving your organisation time, effort and money.
   

One such complementary partnership is NetApp and VMware.

Together the technologies eliminate key storage and data protection challenges associated with server virtualisation, so that data centres can be transformed into a pool of server, network and storage resources. You can manage, monitor and provision storage in your vSphere environments directly through vCenter using NetApp plugins.

Using NetApp with your vSphere environment delivers...

1. Instantaneous backup and recovery
2. Automation of the most labour intensive data management tasks, including DR
3. The ability to provision storage as fast as VMs
4. Data de-duplication across primary, backup, DR and archival storage.

Do you want to know more?

Why not join our webinar on Thursday 28th July at 10.30, click here to register online or contact us on 0845 351 1157 or email moreinfo@scc.com

After the initial hype stirred up by many of the vendors capable of delivering true VDI solutions we have seen a gradual resist in the market place usually brought about as a result of VDI Proof of Concepts either failing entirely or not delivering fully on the expectations of IT or the users.
 

Why does this happen?

There are many reasons VDI does not always deliver but I need to point out now that this is not because it is a bad solution, it has its place in the world of the desktop we just have to work out where it is best suited.

In order to deliver a successful solution their key activity is to move away from cost saving and desktop simplification and to look deeply in to other problems or aspirations the organisation has, and also how the users are consuming the applications they use on a daily basis, cost saving is a long term benefit that will only be truly realised when the next Operating System upgrade occurs. There is also a new dynamic now starting to play a role in the decision making process and that is the one of consumerisation or the ability for the users to bring their own desktop or personal computer devices, in this scenario VDI definitely can play a role but again caution must be observed as it is now about a multitude of devices rather than a classic Microsoft based PC. The explosion of the Tablet stemming from the iPad has meant that the device delivering applications to a user may be a touch screen device and for those of us that have tried it, using a finger to access some applications just does not work.

After working out that VDI is valid we then have to design, build, deploy and manage our solution – simples. Not quite, whilst centralisation should deliver simplification achieving centralisation at scale generates a host of new challenges and that is complicated by the fact that the OS delivered by VDI will not follow the same Gold Image route of the one delivered to the traditional desktop. New thinking is needed to get the most of the solution and new technologies are needed to deliver the thinking. In addition we must not lose sight of users and their experience as this is key to the success of the project, so the protocol type, and network design are critical factors in the architectural design. Another area of architecture that may have a big influence on the design and business case for the project is that of storage and relates to both the amount of storage required and how performant it is. In a PC today hard disks are very large, very fast and very cheap, and the access ratio is 1:1, that is not the case for storage designed to operate in a data centre. Yes, SANs are very fast but that may not be enough when you concentrate large numbers of users together that are used to a 1:1 relationship with storage. Spending time understanding the challenges in this area will aid success for the project.

Another significant area that can impact the business case for VDI is Software Licensing, whilst on the face of centralisation and control should ultimately aid the management of software licenses the numbers, types, and mechanisms by which software vendors support the use of VDI are variable and close attention must be paid to how licenses are procured and deployed in order to achieve a compliant solution.

So why deploy VDI?

Most of our customers start with cost reduction which quickly changes from being the primary deliverable to a secondary one. The primary reason now revolves around flexibility and agility which in their own right can deliver cost savings but are much harder to quantify. Organisations are now seeing the benefit of delivering flexible IT solutions that allow users to work from different locations such as the coffee shop or home or to use different devices such as tablets or Macs. VDI is an enabler for these scenarios, securing the applications and data in the data centre so that information never really exists on the device means that greater flexibility is available, users are happier and the business gets greater levels of productivity from their users. Getting VDI right now for significant numbers of users will deliver huge cost savings when it comes to upgrading the operating system at a later date, there are luminaries in our industry that would suggest Windows 7 is the last major upgrade for many corporates but actually for those that have deployed VDI they will continue to upgrade, however it will not be the major upheaval it is today, it will be more akin to a big patch or service pack.

I have talked a lot about the desktop operating system but actually that is not really the point when it comes to business and the productivity of users, we often get so wrapped up in deploying, securing and managing the OS that we forget that the productivity of the user is determined by the delivery of applications and the capability of those applications. So what would the IT landscape look like if we channeled the same effort in to just application delivery as opposed to OS plus Applications? Whilst many will argue that without the OS the App cannot exist, what if it could? Is that the direction for the future? We have solutions available to us today that allow the delivery of applications only regardless of what "system" or device sits underneath and this model is likely to evolve with time making the OS less relevant, it will gradually become more about a portal or a user workspace with some components delivered by the corporate systems and some consumed by the user from the cloud and some solutions consumed by a corporate from the cloud and delivered to the user, this moves the technical challenge dynamic from one of delivery to one of the integration and management of identity and information to that end the software industry has some way to go to allow that seamless and secure integration and delivery.