Solution Provider IDs Eight Technologies that Should Be on
Every CIO’s IT Wish List
Farmington Hills, MI, December 20,
2011 – The end of the year traditionally marks a time of
planning for CIOs and other technology professionals who are
waiting for the New Year before investing their IT budgets in
upgrades and acquisitions. Planning takes an even more
important role when those budgets are tight, so Logicalis, an
international provider of integrated information and communications
technology (ICT) solutions and services (http://www.us.logicalis.com/),
has put together a “2012 IT Wish List” based on what its customers’
IT pros are saying is going to be most important when 2012 gets
underway.
“You can sum it up in one word: RAMP –
reliability, accessibility, mobility and productivity,” says Vince
DeLuca, Logicalis’ COO. “The technologies exist now to meet
the demands of corporate users in each of these four critical areas
and it’s going to be incumbent upon CIOs and their staffs to offer
data to employees and customers in the way they want to access
it. That’s the task for 2012 and anyone wearing an IT hat
will need to plan ahead, use their budgets wisely, and deliver on
the promise that today’s technology has to offer.”
Eight Technologies for CIOs’ 2012
IT Wish Lists
(1)
Reality Checks – The cloud will only be successful
if the applications and services users rely upon are responsive and
always available. Once applications are moved to the cloud, smart
CIOs will employ Virtual User or Synthetic Transaction Monitoring
to give them a real-world indicator of the application’s usefulness
to the business, answering key questions like: Is the application
available? Are my end users satisfied? How does the application
handle peak workloads? Where in the process is my application
exceeding a threshold? Where are my users experiencing performance
degradation? And how can I accelerate problem identification and
resolution?
(2)
A New Kind of Measuring Stick – In 2012,
businesses will need to deliver services to customers faster than
ever before to stay competitive. Having a way to measure the
“health” of that service and deliver against defined SLAs means one
less thing to worry about. The process-focused change and
configuration management of IT systems with the business in mind
rather than the technology is not a new concept, but there are now
solutions on the market like ServiceNow, a SaaS-based offering,
that make that measurement easier and more affordable to
deploy.
(3)
Accessible Apps – Fast, easy access to needed
applications will be an expectation in 2012. But application
deployments and upgrades can be both timely and expensive as can
the additional infrastructure needed to support them. That’s
why cloud
solutions, positioned six to 12 months ahead of a technology
refresh period, should be on every CIO’s wish list for 2012. Rather
than invest in new hardware and software to satisfy the need for a
single, yet widespread application, a company can instead look to a
cloud provider and trade the capital investment for a monthly
operational cost spread over the next three to five years.
(4)
Back It Up – Having a single unified location for
storing data is going to become increasingly important as data
growth rates continue to expand. As a result, IT pros looking
for new business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) solutions
will want to consider BC/DR as a service and plan for it in their
IT budgets. Moving BC/DR to the cloud means IT pros can keep
data in sync across multiple locations, offering the same end-user
experience across the country or the world. Data can be
streamed instead of shipped, and the solution can be implemented as
an add-in to their existing backup strategy instead of a rip and
replace solution.
(5)
Mobility is a Must-Have – Now that employees have
tasted technology-on-the-run, they are finding the ability to work
using mobile devices on the go makes them more productive. The
problem is, no single platform or form factor will prevail in the
coming year, so IT pros must be prepared to support an array of
B2B, B2C or B2E (Business to Employee) mobile computing platforms
and devices across their customer and employee bases in the coming
year.
(6)
Tablets as Time-Savers: Employees need constant
access to their in-house data, and tablets (iPad or Android) may
well be the best option for on-the-go access. The problem is,
they’re limited by the applications they support. But, combining
these devices with Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure (VDI) technology means employees can use the
device they’re comfortable with while IT securely and continuously
provides access to corporate applications and data. In 2012, a
VDI/tablet combination will offer the speed and usability employees
want, replacing the netbooks of yesterday and avoiding the need to
encrypt the device itself since no company data has to be stored on
it.
(7)
Sharper Sharing: By integrating communication
tools and technologies like Microsoft SharePoint, Lync and Exchange
or Cisco VOIP, the IT pro can literally change the way the
company’s employees do business. Businesses may already have some
of these tools in place, so 2012 is the perfect time to re-examine
what’s there, how it’s working, and what can be done to improve
communication efficiency and effectiveness to give the business a
competitive edge.
(8)
Talk About Talking – Air travel is becoming
increasingly more stressful and costly, and even road travel can be
difficult and time-consuming in metropolitan areas. But with
inexpensive bandwidth and a growing array of unified communications
tools available, efficiency and productivity can be gained from
holding meetings and conferences via solutions such as Cisco
TelePresence. For cost-conscious businesses, video
conferencing will be a smart alternative to face-to-face meetings
in 2012.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration, data center,
and cloud computing and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs nearly 2,500 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
over $1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South
America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of
the leading IT and Communications solution integrators,
specializing in the areas of advanced technologies and
services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues of approximately $5 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/.