WHAT’S HOT expo
Conference hits the mark
Delegates, sponsors and hosts alike voted the first Outsourcing Hosting and Co-Location (OHC) conference a great success, featuring a healthy turn-out of delegates from across the spectrum of users, suppliers and advisors. The event itself was co-located with the long-standing SNIA Europe Datacenter Technologies Academy at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel in central London giving sponsors additional exposure to delegates attending that event but the OHC conference sessions were focussed on more of the business issues rather than the IT technology solutions within the data centre itself.
Chaired by John Chapman, Editorial Director at IT Europa, co- owners of the event along with Angel Business Communications, the conference was opened by Gabriel Harris, Director of the Data Centres group at leading commercial real-estate specialists CBRE Ltd. Gabriel’s session was entitled ‘The Colocation Space Acquisition Process’, which examined the steps and issues surrounding the search, selection and acquisition of co-lo space. Following Gabriel onto the rostrum to look at the Selection and Management of Co- location Providers was Barry Lewington CITP, Principal Consultant and Head of the EMEA Data Centre Services Practice at PTS Consulting who shared his experiences and advice with the delegates on how the market is progressing in this area.
After a short break Duncan Clubb, Data Centre Practice Director at CS Technology examined Migration Strategies and Economic Considerations for organisations looking to migrate or move fully to an outsourced of co-located IT environment and then Robert Tozer, Managing Director of Operational Intelligence Ltd gave a very interesting set of perspectives on ‘Data Centres, The Human Factor’ . The morning session was concluded by a presentation by Gold sponsors Meeza on the 1st ‘Platinum LEED Certified’ and environmentally designed data centre in MENA region, which examined the challenges and solutions to developing state of the art data centre facilities in the middle east.
The afternoon sessions were kicked off by conference chairman John Chapman who examined the Delivery of Outsourcing and Managed Services with a particular emphasis on the integration channel’s own migration to delivering these services to their clients. John was then joined by a panel made up of the speakers at the event along with Emily Jones, Senior Associate at legal firm Osborne Clarke and sponsors Capita.
The day was concluded with a short session hosted by Steve Hone and Simon Campbell-Whyte of the Data Centre Alliance (www.
datacentrealliance.org) on their goals, objectives, programs and membership benefits.
The Migration towards Managed Services
We caught up with John Chapman, chairman of the Managed Services Convention held on the 22nd May at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel London to get his views on how the market is migrating towards a new business model driven by the advent of ‘the cloud’ and a general move towards outsourced and/or managed services.
“Looking at a recent pan European study a third of IT spend is going on some form of managed service in the next 18 months. Budgets are not increasing, but somehow companies are finding managed services investment in their funding, which means the traditional sales channels are under pressure.
What do customers want? They want reduced costs, agility and transformation. That is what managed services can deliver. And it will mean change in the channel. The biggest cost in many organisations is dealing with the complexity of their systems with many suppliers and services. There is a lot of internal hardware and lots of people are giving them different information about how well it all works.
Even the small companies are faced with relatively complex IT and communications systems. In fact it is easier for SMB and mid-size businesses to move towards new models. The larger enterprises are looking at modernisation through applications rather than looking at moving their big applications, they are looking at doing new things that they had not been able to think about before.
When it comes to the question of agility, managed services allow customers to look at their go-to-market models. For example, look at a retailer looking at moving to the web, all their internal processes are designed to work one way and managed services allows them to change their processes more quickly and simply.
When we look at the way companies change their business model many have the wrong model for the future and they need to use technology to effect change. Going into new markets can only be done with technology. For example, transformation of the business model means changing the customer relationship. We are going beyond CRM systems, customer relationships mean developing social links. New world businesses are about customer feedback and changing relationships.
The channel reaction to all this change is varied; many have tried to change their approach. They have branded as solution VARs, service providers, managed service provider, integrators. And the terms have proliferated and may confuse end-users. While the terms define what the partner does, they do not define what they do for the customer. But business gets this, at all sizes, and it is taking huge chunks out of their IT budgets. It is a threat to traditional channels that can’t keep up.
June 2012 I
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