Don't jump ship too soon

MAY 2010

A fundamental shift in how IT is used to deliver business outcomes means service providers must move away from simply being ‘suppliers’ or risk falling by the wayside, according to one service provider.

West End’s CorpNet managing director Agim Isai, says the future for the industry will be more about partners and project managers for clients as they ‘mature’ and work towards outsourcing their technology needs with cloud computing services.

“There is a level of maturity needed for businesses to make the shift towards the adoption of cloud services. Businesses need to have a clear understanding of their service level requirements or have service catalogues in place to ensure solutions are fit for purpose,” says Isai.

“Typically, our industry has been in a transactional supplier type role, but the differentiation now is that businesses need partnerships with their IT service providers. We generally don’t like the word ‘consultants’ – a role of thought leadership is a more accurate term.

“That’s where I see the future of the industry going, in taking them along that journey and providing the best platforms and services to suit the various levels of progress.”

The outsourcing craze may be in full-swing, but Isai says serious risk lies within moving to cloud computing services too soon and areas of security and appropriate service levels must be considered.

“Studies suggest that 50 per cent of companies will be utilising some type of cloud service within the next few years. Moving into the cloud is easy but moving out of those services is much more difficult,” he says.

Perhaps less anticipated by the IT industry is the shift towards HR related services, caused by the major changes in employee workplace environments.

“End user computing strategies will be more relevant than ever, with the average desk-worker spending up to eight hours per day on their computer, disrupting that space by changing the technology can cause productivity issues and anxiety for the user,” says Isai.

“There is an interesting paradigm at the moment with the huge technology shift and different generations in the workplace having differing perceptions on how the technology should be used.

“Traditionally, desktop platforms have been architected to reduce the cost of operational management of the environment rather than enable the user to be productive. We are engaging with HR in businesses to develop the end user experience.”