Meanwhile, there have been concerns around a skills shortage in IT. Rusty King, CTO of the European division of managed services company Thrive, said this has made companies eager to retain their existing IT staff.
King said this desire to retain staff is also linked to the ongoing cost-of-living and energy pricing crisis.
“Match this up with home or hybrid working practices in place from the pandemic and the introduction of a younger workforce with different desires and collaboration practices, we will see far more ingenious flexible working patterns and locations,” King said.
King added that this could lead to more professional services-as-a-service opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs), in order to provide “some stability in case of IT team losses”.
Thrive Operations, a private equity-backed IT managed services and consulting provider, is in
active conversations with four targets as it focuses on new domestic and international
geographies, said CEO Rob Stephenson.
Another priority should be understanding to whom the CISO reports: the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, or even the legal department. “[This] tells you a little bit about what they expect you to do,” says Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive.
Today marks the end of the road for 2 old friends at Microsoft, Windows Vista and Exchange 2007. Both have reached end of support with Microsoft and you should be off of them long before now.
For those of you that may be unaware, Microsoft defines “end of support” as: End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. This is the time to make sure you have the latest available update or service pack installed. Without Microsoft support, you will no longer receive security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal your personal information. For more information go to Microsoft Support Lifecycle.
During a difficult economy, virtualization and cloud hosting represents a viable solution for cutting costs while increasing company productivity and IT services. Many companies are considering the use of virtualization and cloud hosted Services as a means for reducing IT costs through hardware consolidation.
But what happens to compliance standards and service level agreements that must be maintained if you decide to use virtualization and cloud hosted Services? (more…)
In the current economic downturn where IT budgets are declining and the demand for IT resources is increasing, the expectations for many companies are you must accomplish more with less. As a result, many businesses and enterprises are working to find ways to cut costs without compromising productivity while remaining competitive. With all of these pressures and responsibilities how do you ensure ongoing growth while meeting compliance requirements and your service level agreements?
The answer to this dilemma is the incorporation of new technologies into your IT infrastructure. Although this may sound like you are increasing IT capital expenditures you are actually cutting costs while increasing productivity in response to the ever changing market. Here are some thoughts on how to reduce costs while still maintaining the competitive advantage. (more…)
Regulatory compliance can take on different definitions according to the industry in which you are applying the policies. Since compliance means incorporating standards that conform to specific requirements, regulatory compliance is the regulations a company must follow to meet specific requirements.
When you apply regulatory compliance to IT, the regulations apply to two different aspects of company operations which include the internal requirements for IT and compliance standards that are set forth by external entities. Both types of regulatory compliance affect IT company operations and can potentially restrict (more…)
There is an old adage in business success that says, “You cannot manage what you fail to measure.” This is a valid point when it comes to focusing on a set of metrics that provide the best solutions in IT service delivery. The type of metrics which are used will depend upon the needs of the enterprise. However there are key metrics which should be used across the board regardless of business objectives.
In a business world where it is necessary to implement multiple servers for a variety of different functions, it is very easy for a data center to become overwhelmed with server technology. When you deploy a server for each business function such as email, customer relationship management, asset management, ERP and more, it increases costs in terms of management and maintenance. It also leaves processing capabilities under-utilized with the server space that is leftover.
So, what are some of the benefits of switching to virtualization
Cloud computing is a term used to define products and services delivered through the internet. Since its introduction this IT phenomenon has been growing and evolving towards the right way. Cloud computing has been defined by a leading technology researchers as “a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided as a service using internet technologies to multiple external customers”. Also known as hosted services, the cloud computing services offering virtualized and web services, along with some other new technologies have turned managed IT systems upside down, (more…)