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A focus on growthHow cloud is encouraging change

Business innovation Adding value and meeting requirements

Protect yourselfStaying secure in the cloud

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Understand the benefits: Find out what role cloud can play in your business

CLOUD COMPUTING

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

ENABLING NEW WAYS OF WORKING

No. 5 / Sept. ’12

2 · SEPTEMBER 2012 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

Cloud answers business needs

Ian Osborne, Director of Cloud at Intellect UK explains why the cloud is not hype, it is empowering businesses to consume IT services on demand so they can focus on growth.

I was asked recently what the difference was between the per-ceived success of cloud comput-ing in business and the adop-tion of other highly touted tech-nologies. What were the defining characteristics that have made cloud attractive to business?

My answer was that cloud computing is all about business. The attractiveness of a model in which services are purchased on demand to meet business re-quirements is self evident. The requirement to procure staff, equipment, software, space and power to install, has acted as a brake on business innovation for much of the rise of IT in service.

The cloud computing model has swept this aside for perhaps 80 per cent of IT services, allow-ing the industry specialists to provide commodity services and allow a business to focus on its

own added value. Cloud comput-ing is now seen as a key opportu-nity in every business whether in the private or public sector.

The provision of standard ser-vices, such as infrastructure, email, storage, document man-agement, collaboration, custom-er relationship management and

more, are now available at com-modity cost.

Bright futureWhat’s next? The provision of standard business services,

such as ERP, HR, online marketing, fi nance and administration, will allow business owners to focus their precious skills and resources on key areas unique to their busi-ness. This supplement will provide insight into much of what has been done, what is being done and the concerns that are raised by pro-spective users.

The forthcoming Intellect Cloud Computing Conference will pro-vide the opportunity to learn direct-ly from the innovators in business, government and the supply side of the industry. Be assured cloud com-puting is here to stay: the IT servic-es to free your business capacity for growth are available on demand!

Ian OsborneDirector of Cloud, Intellect UK

‘Companies need to look at what the cloud providers are offering in the areas that are right for them’

Richard Webb,Senior Manager IT Advisory, Ernst & Young

PAGE 8

CLOUD COMPUTING5TH EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2012

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■ Understand your business needs and you can be secure in the cloud without compromising flexibility, says James Carnie, Head of Solutions Architecture at Adapt.

From a security perspective, cloud has the potential to make businesses very nervous.

But, in a way, that’s under-standable. These are relative-ly early days for cloud comput-ing and, for companies that are used to holding data on-site or at specific external data centre lo-cations, it remains an unknown quantity.

“Cloud is about moving from an environment where staff can touch and feel their own IT infra-structure to logical infrastruc-ture which doesn’t really exist in the physical world,” says James Carnie, Head of Solutions Archi-tecture at Adapt, a managed IT infrastructure provider, deliver-ing cloud, infrastructure man-agement, data centre and net-work services. “Cloud is a dif-ferent way of delivering which requires a leap of faith in some ways because it is by definition intangible.”

Naturally enough, compa-nies want to know how safe this new delivery mechanism is. So much so that security concerns do seem to be a barrier to cloud take-up. For example, a 2012 LinkedIn survey revealed that 54 per cent of IT decision makers cite data security as the key in-hibitor to cloud adoption.

QuestionsAs far as Carnie is concerned, a company’s cloud security wor-ries are fundamentally no dif-ferent from their physical infra-structure security worries. Both can be largely resolved by follow-ing best practice and creating a sensible management strategy

that takes into account the na-ture of the data to be secured, ap-plicable technology solutions, people, processes and locations.

“A business might want to multi-source its cloud provi-sion,” he says. “That means clas-sifying its data to put non-confi-dential, public domain informa-tion with a cloud provider who might not have the ability to of-fer, for example, a full audit trail; and more sensitive, confidential data with a smaller provider who

can offer a certain set of strong security controls.”

Any company looking at migrat-ing to the cloud should ask some searching questions to make sure the provider has the right approach to data management. “You need to fully audit potential suppliers,” says Carnie. “Find out what pro-cesses they follow, what technol-ogy they use and where they deliv-er their service from. For example, you might not be happy that a cloud provider’s data centre is based in particular overseas locations.

“Also, look at it from a people point of view: are the provider’s staff security vetted or referenced checked? And are they experi-enced and hold the right accred-itations? If the provider is based

in a multi-tenanted environment, what technology and processes are used to lock-down the data to prevent leakage? Does the provid-er follow a recognised standard in-formation security management system? Does it use one or more data centres that can cater for loss of power? These kind of questions can help companies make a well-informed choice.”

FlexibilityFlexibility is one of the cloud’s key selling points, says Carnie, so don’t let security concerns constrain your company.

“Businesses that regularly work with highly sensitive data in indus-tries like the public sector, health-care and fi nance might want to build their own private cloud envi-ronment,” he says. “But that means the company loses the fl exibility to burst outside of its own constrained hardware investment — and when it reaches capacity it has to buy ad-ditional hardware in order to sup-port extra data. In the public cloud, however, a business can order more utility on demand, scaling up and down as required.”

Ultimately, a company should look carefully at its own require-ments. “It’s about studying your business and understanding ex-actly what it needs from its IT in-frastructure,” says Carnie. “And remember that effective securi-ty management requires a holis-tic approach. Enter into an agree-ment with a cloud provider with your eyes open; you can outsource your services, but you can never outsource security governance and risk management.”

Security and fl exibility in the cloud

TONY GREENWAY

[email protected]

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There is a certain irony about the cloud. While it has been driven for-ward by SMEs, it has not been until large enterprises have started to ‘dip their toes’ with the new technology that it has started to mature.

SMEs have been attracted to the ability to cut cost and build fl exible IT systems which they simply turn on and off without the need to build and maintain themselves. These advan-tages led to a lot of excitement which may have accounted for clients ac-cepting a level of service which may not have always fully matched con-ventional, albeit more expensive, op-tions deployed by large corporations.

Hence, to attract these major cor-porations, cloud providers have had to ‘up their game’, according to Steve

Watmough, Head of KPMG’s UK CIO Advisory team.

“It took a while because nobody wanted to be fi rst among the big cor-porates but now we’re seeing a lot are now at least putting some of their IT function in the cloud,” he says.

“Typically it may be a particular app or one division, rather than the entire corporation, but it has had a big im-pact. While SMEs may have been able to accept the level of service on off er, corporations want a corporate level of service and so they’ve made sure that providers have had to off er it.”

Better serviceNot only have cloud providers been off ering a higher level of service but also the providers of enterprise soft-ware and IT services, such as Ora-cle, Microsoft and SAP, have similar-ly embraced the cloud. Watmough points out that this means the bar has been raised both in terms of available services and quality.

“Security has always been a huge

issue with the cloud, for good rea-son,” he says.

“Now, though, there are some very good, secure services being off ered to the most demanding corporate level. They can be more expensive but then the cloud can allow use of shared resources so cost is split with oth-er companies, so long as each party fi nds that arrangement acceptable.”

For the time being, Watmough sug-gests it looks like companies of all sizes will continue to mix all three levels of infrastructure. This will see them host some applications them-selves internally while consuming others over the cloud as well as shar-ing capacity with other companies in third party hosting centres. This lat-ter route allows the high cost to be shared so companies can have a level of protection they may not have been able to aff ord individually.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

Previous concerns over security, performance and compliance are being dealt with by cloud providers who are ‘upping’ their game to appeal to enterprises.

CLOUD PROVIDERS RAISE THEIR GAME

Steve WatmoughHead of UK CIO Ad-visory team, KPMG

NEWS


CLOUD SECURITYThe issue of security is being dealt with by cloud suppliers to ensure the level of protection is as high as possiblePHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

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It is not just small and large com-panies which can benefi t from the cloud, the CBI has spent the last year pointing out through its Future Champions campaign. The much overlooked category of me-dium sized business could partic-ularly gain from the partnerships and collaboration off ered by the latest IT advancements.

Growth and innovationWhile the business body is not limiting its advice to purely ad-vocating cloud adoption, Senior Policy Advisor, Hayley Conboy,

reveals that partnerships and working with third parties are vital for growth and innovation.

“The management structure of these companies is often circular and revolves around one person in the middle who’s trying to run everything,” she says.

Collaboration tools“It means companies can often overlook the benefit of partner-ing with companies and rely-ing on expert advice. One part of this could well be using the cloud to receive the latest IT services from a provider and one of those services could well be collabora-tion tools which allow new part-nerships to be formed.”

The CBI has been working on a campaign to target medium sized companies (£10m to £500m an-nual turnover) because although they only represent 1 per cent of UK businesses in number, they employ 16 per cent of the coun-try’s workforce and account for 22 per cent of its GDP.

Hayley Conboy,Senior Policy Advisor, CBI

BENEFITS

Medium sized businesses drive collaboration

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

Cloud services could help companies partner and innovate, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) believes.


Enterprises look for niche reassurance

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWDCloud providers need to adapt to provide a niche service to individual companies depending on their business and security needsPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Cloud adoption, in most cases, lies in the hands of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who have the oner-ous task of being custodians of a company’s data.

With economic pressure high, CIOs are caught in the difficult po-sition of having to stay within fro-zen budgets to keep company data safe at the same time as protect-ing against a rise in cybercrime, meeting regulatory demands and empowering mobile working.

Hence, while they may some-times have been accused by evan-gelists of being slow to commit to

the cloud, Mark Chillingworth the editor of CIO.co.uk believes the summary is unfair.

“CIOs are very open to the cloud as a way to gain flexibility, control cost and enable a workforce to be more mobile and have better face to face contact with customers,” he says.

“You only need to look at the success of something like Sales-Force.com to realise that. It’s just that they look at the cloud in a more realistic way, without the hype, as one option rather than the only option. They will look at different apps within differ-ent parts of the business and de-cide if they really need to own it or if they could get a better service from a cloud provider.”

Specialist roleSecurity is, of course, still a con-cern, as are service level agree-ments and regulatory require-ments. For this reason, Chilling-worth believes that specialist op-erators will continue to develop sector-specific cloud offerings which are designed to reassure

CIOs with specific requirements that their needs are being met.

“What we’re clearly already see-ing is that security and regula-tory concerns are a big issue and at the same time companies’ re-quirements can be very specific depending on the nature of their business,” he says.

“So, I think we’re going to con-tinue to see cloud operators be-coming niche specialists in areas such as healthcare, manufactur-ing, logistics, or whatever it is, so they have the tools available that companies need, but crucially they have the right level of security and treat customer data in the way companies need it to be treated.”

For this to happen, cloud pro-viders will need to continue to build data warehouses within the EU because, while many of today’s largest operators are based in the USA or China, companies are ei-ther required or prefer to keep their data closer to home.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

Mark ChillingworthEditor, CIO.co.uk

NEWS

■ To get companies on to the cloud, it’s the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who need to be persuaded through quality services rather than hype.

■ How would you sum up what virtualisation is and what it offers companies?

!Virtualisation is a software-based technique that hides

the underlying physical IT re-sources that users are consuming away from them. These resources may be at the level of an entire computer operating system, a spe-cific application, a network, or a se-curity environment.

It underpins all cloud comput-ing services by reducing capital costs, increasing energy efficiency and requiring less hardware while increasing the number of servers an administrator can manage.

■ How does it reduce hardware costs and boost energy efficiency?

!Virtualisation reduces hard-ware costs in several ways.

Most importantly, it ends the un-der-utilisation (perhaps only 15-20 per cent of the CPU capacity) inherent with dedicated client/server architectures. This in turn leads to a reduced physical foot-print, which offers the opportu-nity to consolidate data centres.

■ How has virtualisation revolutionised storage and data centres?

!Virtualisation encourages the standardisation and sim-

plification of IT operations man-agement, which speeds up the tra-ditionally labour-intensive pro-cess of providing new IT services and also permits the rapid ‘flexing’ up-and-down of the capacity re-quirements of existing services.

Virtualisation is encouraging new ‘industry in a box’ services to specific vertical markets. Major ef-ficiencies are achieved because the data centre is regulated on behalf of all of the community partici-pants. This also makes it much eas-ier and cheaper for participating companies subsequently to collab-orate more effectively across their industry supply chain, because they are physically co-located.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Stephen Simpson, UK Cloud Lead, Logica, part of CGI


Organisations of all sizes are looking to the cloud to provide modernised, effi cient platforms which boost effi -ciency and maximise budget.

The diffi cult part can come in as-sembling the various components required to piece together an effi -cient computing platform and so some vendors are producing so-called ‘platform in a box’ solutions. Rather than supply a single com-ponent, the idea is that several ele-ments supplied in a proven architec-ture can save companies time and budget and, it is hoped, ensure those improvements achieve longevity.

Cost savingsIn fact, when research company IDC looked into time and fi nancial

savings achieved by customers of VCE, it found that data centre costs were reduced by 68 per cent per hun-dred users and the time for staff to develop, test and roll out a platform was reduced by 75 per cent.

The company was formed as a joint venture between network busi-ness Cisco Systems and storage pro-vider, EMC, with additional invest-ments from virtualisation provider, VMware and chip developer, Intel. Through testing how the partners’ components work best together, VCE’s CTO, Trey Layton, claims end-users of its VBlock platform receive a service that is proven to work well and is easily updated.

“It’s a little like a motor manu-facturer,” he says. “There are many parts in a car but a car maker puts

them together in a way that they have tried and tested many times to know what works best.

“We know the architecture that works well and we also know what will work well in the future because we can preconfi gure our systems to work with technology we know is around the corner. It means we can avoid the bottlenecks that can ap-pear as diff erent parts of a platform are updated. These can typically ap-pear in the compute, storage or net-works part of the architecture and slow systems down.”

The platform in a box approach has the advantage of the same organisa-tion learning from what works well with diff erent types of end-user en-terprises. This means models can be build around similar types of users so systems can be pre-confi gured to best suit the likely usage requirements.

Building on a solid platform

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

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The cloud is no different from any other element of IT; if you do not have a strategy which en-capsulates your requirements and how they can be met, then you cannot have a clear vision of where cloud fits in.

This is the central point which Richard Webb, Senior Manager IT Advisory at Ernst & Young, be-lieves can be slightly overlooked when companies are caught up by the dazzle of hype surround-ing cloud.

“I’m a firm believer in the cloud, if I were starting a busi-ness tomorrow I’d put just about everything in the cloud because it’s a no brainer,” he says.

“However, the vast majority of companies aren’t starting up, they

already have systems which need to be integrated with anything they put in the cloud and so it’s a much more complicated situation.”

To get to the bottom of what the cloud may have to offer, Webb always advises clients that they must first take a long hard look at their IT resources to see what they already have and then com-pare this with what they need. By knowing this, companies can de-cide where the cloud might have a role to play.

Full evaluationEven then, though, Webb cau-tions that the cloud is not a ‘one size fits all’ answer to every cor-porate need but rather a resource, like any other, which needs to be

fully evaluated both for what it can do and how it can be integrat-ed into existing systems.

“Companies need to look at what the cloud providers are of-fering in the areas that are right for them,” he says.

“The crucial thing is, though, they need to know what their risk profile is and then decide what this will allow them to pass on to a third party cloud provider. Inte-gration is key; anything a busi-ness does in the cloud has to work with what they already have, just as if they were building it them-selves in their own date centre.”

A factor some companies may be unaware of is that, although cloud providers talk about flexi-bility, there is usually a little less

scope for scaling up and down operations at speed than a client may realise.

“Cloud providers are usual-ly large businesses who need to be reassured over revenues and so they have a tendency to build in minimum time scales to any contract which affects a user’s ability to scale up or down in ca-pacity,” he says.

This means that just as with any IT arrangement, compa-nies must scrutinise contracts and ensure they are happy with the terms offered, suggesting amendments where necessary, before signing.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

NEWS

The cloud is in the middle of chang-ing the way IT services are both consumed and commissioned, al-most beyond recognition.

In the past, businesses would work around the software and applications that were on offer and, when needed, instruct de-velopers to go off and build the relevant tools. The trouble with the process, which is still a part of IT today, is it can take a long time and progresses at a slower stage than businesses evolve. It has led to a clash in time scales which the cloud is now start-ing to improve, according to An-drew Greenway, Global Director of Cloud at Accenture.

“The age old dilemma has been that you brief your IT team on what

you need, they go off to an ivory tow-er and come back a year later and the market’s moved on,” he says.

“Now IT’s becoming far more about the business. Instead of everything being focused on the software or apps that are be-ing developed, businesses are now concentrating on outlin-ing the business need. They’re not necessarily stipulating how it should be done, they just want to use a cloud service which pro-vides it.”

Engagement driveSo far, the biggest uptake of cloud services, Greenway sees, is not in the central parts of how a busi-ness runs itself, such as finan-cial planning. Instead, he believes

the cloud is enabling new ways of working to be supported through third party applications which have not been traditionally of-fered by internal IT teams because they are relatively new areas.

“So far, we’re seeing cloud used not so much for systems of re-cord but more for systems of en-gagement,” he says.

“There are now so many more ways in which a company can en-gage with its staff, clients, suppliers and stakeholders. We’re seeing the cloud as powering this new way of working, particularly around com-munication and collaboration, as well as some parts of HR.”

The more traditional tools which are central to a company’s business, such as its customer

data and financial resources, will take longer to begin migration to the cloud for very sound reasons. Not only do companies have con-cerns over security and regulation but, as Greenway points out, they have already made significant in-vestments in existing systems. In a time of austerity there is no driv-ing force to change systems run-ning on hardware that has several years of operational life left.

There is also a concern that if valuable information is put into different cloud services it might be hard to make sure the busi-ness always has view of all its lat-est data in one place.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

Richard Webb,Senior Manager IT Advisory, Ernst & Young

Strategy key to cloud adoption ■ To decide how to best use the cloud, companies need to have an IT strategy

which should help highlight where new technologies can play their part.

‘INTEGRATION IS KEY’

Cloud aligns IT speed to market growth

■ The cloud is speeding up IT provisioning with its earliest impact in tools that support new ways of staff, partners and customers communicating and collaborating.

MEETING BUSINESS NEEDS

Andrew Greenway,Global Director of Cloud, Accenture


■ David Bailey, Director, Cyber Security, BAE Systems Detica explains: For many organisations, the cloud represents a compelling opportunity in terms of enabling smarter, faster and more collaborative working.

The ability to access and edit key information and applications through the cloud — from any-where in the world — can be a game changer for any company that re-lies upon a mobile workforce or op-erates across a large number of lo-cations and territories.

However, reliance on the cloud brings heightened security con-cerns. For starters, enabling people

to work remotely means access-ing the cloud from devices out-side of the corporate security pe-rimeter and potentially outside of corporate IT control. The cloud has to be treated as part of a com-pany’s overall information es-tate and the same balanced view of cyber risk still needs to be ap-plied. For example, should sensi-tive data or intellectual proper-ty be encrypted if it is stored in the cloud, or even kept on a more

secure system entirely?Furthermore, as security threats

increase and evolve, many organi-sations are finding themselves ex-posed as their contracts with their cloud providers may not make it clear where responsibility for se-curity resides and what happens when breaches occur.

For most large companies —who place an enormous value on their intellectual property — sen-sitive information could cost a firm many millions of pounds in lost revenues were it to fall into the hands of competitors. Firms need to consider where this data is being held, who has access to it and how it is transferred over the network, as well as the extent to which they retain visibility over

the data — for example, are they still able to monitor and respond to threats?

However, with appropriate se-curity in place, the cloud can also provide access to capability that previously has been out of reach to many companies due to the cost and complexity of on-prem-ise software deployments, for ex-ample big data analytics and so-phisticated security capabilities can be accessed through cloud service providers and offer op-portunities for collaboration and community which were previ-ously inaccessible with purely on-premise solutions.

Security threats leaving organisations exposed

DAVID BAILEY

[email protected]

NEWS

SECURITY ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE.

The Cloud offers new opportunities for dynamic companies looking for a more effective operating model and new services which were previously out of reach.

BAE Systems Detica wants to offer you an opportunity to find out how you compare to other organisations in adopting this new model. Do you view the Cloud as an opportunity? If so, what qualities of a Cloud service provider are most important to your organisation? How will you choose one?

To contribute, and to receive a copy of the results of our Cloud as an Enabler research, participate in our survey here:

www.baesystemsdetica.com/services/cyber-security/cloudenabler

David Bailey,Director, Cyber Security, BAE Systems Detica


Starting up a business can be the perfect time to embrace the cloud because, without a commitment to an existing IT infrastructure, a start-up has a clean slate from which to plan for growth.

Additionally, a successful young company needs to have an IT part-ner that can be agile and provide scale so the company’s IT require-ments can increase or decrease fl exibly to match demand. Speed to market is also a critical issue with cloud providers typically be-ing able to roll out a service far quicker than an internal IT de-partment can specify and order a list of hardware requirements which will then need to be set up and maintained.

Certainly Keith Misson, Opera-tions Director at Aviva-owned in-surance comparison site, Quote-MeHappy.com, reveals its quick launch and fast growth during its fi rst year have been greatly helped by the agility of its cloud provider.

“The systems we launched with in August 2011 were com-missioned, built and operational within just four months which is incredibly fast compared to some providers who have a lead-in time of 20 weeks just to order a server,” he confi des.

“As a young entrepreneurial com-pany we knew all along the cloud would be our best option because it just doesn’t make sense for us to do everything ourselves when it can be outsourced to a cloud provider for a faster, more robust, cost-eff ec-tive and fl exible solution.

“We have everything in the cloud, from email to disaster recov-ery and development and testing to policy documents. The one ex-ception is a single server we have which is a back-up to our back-up in the cloud. Everything else is hosted and maintained by NTT.”

Overcoming challengesOperating in the fi nancial servic-es sector brings several challenges which may have held back cloud adoption in the past but, Misson reveals, services have matured to meet the varying levels of client requirements.

“As a fi nancial services company regulated by the FSA we’re obvious-ly led in what we do by regulations

and compliance,” he says.“That doesn’t mean we can’t use

the cloud, just we need to know where our cloud is, so you may argue it’s not cloud in its pur-est form because our data is scat-tered around the world. Instead we know it’s hosted in Paris and Frankfurt so, crucially, it’s within the safe harbour of the EU. For any regulated company with a culture dedicated to compliance, that’s absolutely vital.”

Ultimately, QuoteMeHappy’s decision to become a cloud-based operation lay in the twin benefi ts that somebody else has, what Mis-son calls, the ‘headache’ of running and maintaining its IT operations and growth can be accommodated by sharing capacity across its re-mote servers or through commis-sioning extra capacity.

■ QuoteMeHappy.com runs almost entirely through the cloud to achieve the most cost-effective route to scalable, compliant and robust IT.

SEAN HARGRAVE

[email protected]

SHOWCASE

Protection in the cloud

A WEIGHT OFF YOUR HANDSIT solutions can be outsourced to a cloud provider for a faster, more robust, cost-effective and flexible solutionPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Keith Mission,Operations Director, QuoteMeHappy.com

INSPIRATIONTechnology driving growth: planning for the futureThe current recession has hit many sectors hard. But one feature of recent years has been rapid and accelerating technological innovation. Has our world ever changed so fast?

In part, this is because compa-nies see changing technology as a route to cutting costs. They are determined to extract eve-ry ounce of value in each part of their business; there is a deter-mined drive to realise effi cien-cies and economies.

Many fi rms — particularly in retail — are also responding to changing customer demands and expectations.

But technology also has the potential to generate growth and inspire sustainable invest-ment. So it is important to focus business brains not just on the short-term challenge, but also on planning for the future and seeking new and competitive advantages in the market place.

Bringing it all togetherOne inhibitor to investment in IT can be an attachment to exist-ing systems and infrastructure and, indeed, to established ways of working for staff and manage-ment. Equally, uncertainty about what is available and how it works can lead to procrastination when decisive action is needed.

The move towards cloud com-puting is a case in point. Huge prizes are available, whether in capacity, flexibility or efficien-cy, including environmental sustainability. Equally, there are risks that need to be man-aged — data security and priva-cy chief amongst them.

And there are always human issues to be considered. Any significant IT innovation re-quires that the hearts as well as the minds of the people using it are engaged.

ALAN LEAMAN

CEO, Management Consultancies

Association (MCA)


Technology has transformed our personal and working lives in so many important ways. Yet some companies forget that their IT es-tate drives the ‘human experience’ of their business.

The technology is supposed to work for them, after all.

But get the wrong technology, or one that hinders staff productivity, and your business will pay for it.

Dave Page is Co-founder and CEO of Actual Experience, a unique IT analytics firm which spun out from Queen Mary, University of London three-and-a-half years

ago. Its blue chip company client list is already long and impressive because it has developed a way to measure how a company’s tech-nology performs — and, crucially, what that means in real terms for staff productivity.

“CIOs and Financial Direc-tors know that their IT estate is all about staff productivity,” says Page. “But, if it underperforms, there can be a negative economic

effect on their business which far outweighs the cost of the IT in the first place.”

QuantifyAfter all, it’s meaningless to get information about how quickly your company’s IT estate is per-forming if you can’t translate that into actual staff experience.

“But we’ve found a way to turn that technical data into ‘human

experience’,” says Page. “We can measure the human experience of any application such that if we then talked to anyone using it, their re-sponse would agree with our scores.” Page believes Actual Experience is the only company in the world which has the capability to do this.

It’s very important to quantify how cloud applications — private, public or hybrid — are working for users, says Page. “The key question, though — and one which compa-nies struggle with — is ‘what part of our vast array of technology is causing Office A a lack of produc-tivity?’ We can zoom in and pin-point exactly what the problem is and where it is: an application, a server, a router, a service, etc.

“One of our customers said: ‘The IT performance problem we have is like dark matter. We know it’s there, but we can’t see it.’ Well, we can shine a light on it.

“And, of course, once the prob-lem is found, productivity can be improved.”

■ www.actual-experience.com

Unique analytics gets more out of your IT estate

LOSING PRODUCTIVITY? It’s useless to get information about how quickly your company’s estate is performing if you can’t translate it into actual staff experience PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

TONY GREENWAY

[email protected]

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

■ It’s no use optimising the cost of your IT estate if it’s not working for your company in terms of staff productivity, says Dave Page, Co-Founder and CEO of analytics firm Actual Experience.

Dave PageCo-founder and CEO, Actual Experience

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