The IT question in a downturn

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The IT question in a downturn!

• Natalie Ayres
• IT for the M Business 08

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To spend or not to spend....
IT spend to decrease by gt50 in the next 12
mths IDC, Forrester, Gartner
IT industry will buck downturn, say Analysts
Companies consider switch to Cloud and SaaS to
derive cost savings
IT procurement too important for IT procurement
dept!
In-house IT costs too much, but senior staff are
in higher demand...
Companies should tighten their belts not drop
their pants! Analyst at Forrester
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Medium Business Unique Connected
Employ gt30 of UK workforce Generate 20 of all
corporate profits Grow at gt8 per annum

• Bigger than small business
• Multiple Branches
• Industry Needs

• But smaller than Enterprises
• Resource Constrained
• Under-served

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M Business Challenges
Raising Finance
Impacting growth prospects
Acquiring new customers Business results
cashflow profit Shareholder value

Growing the bizz
Governance regulation
M business ignored by Govmt Cost of compliancy
Attracting and retaining Skills Working
environment
Your people
Pervasive use of IT
Business process automation Business
intelligence Pace of technology change
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Time of turmoil times of opportunity
Strategies for growth....
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....Our whole business is based on knowledge
and data, so our underlying platform has to be
robust. Before, I had to oversee multiple
suppliers - now I hardly have any involvement or
have to spend any time on IT. On top of this I
gain proactive, value-added advice from
specialists in their field. The Virtual IT
solution has proved easily and quickly scalable,
supporting the rapid growth in our workforce.
Ive been very impressed by the high quality kit
and the swap-out service, whereby failing
equipment is simply replaced within 24 hours.
Having Microsoft exchange sited remotely also
forms part of our risk management strategy in
terms of regulatory compliance.... The Clear
Group Independent Insurance and Wealth
Management Services
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Time of turmoil times of opportunity
Strategies for growth....
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IT past......

• Centralised spend
• Strategy based on infrastructure
• ROI over 3-5 year period
• CAPEX consideration central to any decision
• BI based decisions in hands of IT Manager
• Lengthy deployment cycles
• Reactive decisions

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IT today tomorrow.....

• IT procurement requires multiple masters!
• on-demand computing
• Trust the experts partnering to scale and
  service

• Service to the business
• Re-evaluate business model
• Re-evaluate budgets
• Think OPEX versus CAPEX

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Priorities for IT spend in a downturn

• Hosting SaaS / Cloud Computing
• Business Intelligence
• Security
• Virtualisation
• Storage storage management

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summary

• re-evaluate
• spend to save!
• outride the downturn with smart IT