American Express – that will do nicely sir…

Tis the season to be scouring the shops in desperation for that Christmas Present that shows you truly care, one that shows how well you know and love that special person and most importantly the one that only you can think of or find – the one that doesn’t exist.

IT Maintenance – The insurance you never knew you had

IT Maintenance is like an insurance. When insuring your car, house or valuables, you don’t necessarily go for the cheapest option, you opt for value.

Let’s take a comparable example, home insurance.

What is your organisation’s top cloud priority?

The team here at ONI have been discussing what the top priorities are for companies when it comes to cloud, so we’ve come up with a few ideas and would like to get your expert opinion. Join in the poll today!

Place Your Bets

I was recently invited to one of our service providers ‘evening of topical debate and dinner’ events in London. Curiously the most interesting thing I learnt was that most of our cloud-bed-fellows views the marketplace in much the same way we do, same financial hurdles, same technical problems, and we all appear to be coming to the same conclusions. One of the presenters made a very interesting statement, and one I shared.

Social Media, Video Streaming and Washing Machines

A senior manager recently asked me “why should I introduce these so-called game changing technologies to my business? They’re just another way of doing what we’ve
always done rather well.”

To his surprise I agreed, but then I asked him when his PA last used a typewriter and the penny dropped. His customers want to buy goods and services, receive marketing material and technical support as before, but in a radically different way. If you can’t service your customers’ needs in the way they want you to, you’ll lose them to the competition – rapidly.

Backing up the Cloud

A few years ago I was watching my 3 year old son sitting on a plastic ride-on car casually destroying the numerous accessories attached to its shell. On the front of the car there was a telephone dial and a plastic handset attached by a piece of string. Throughout his games, it occurred to me that he had absolutely no idea that this contraption was a telephone and he should dial numbers to make calls. I tried to show him how to use it but to no avail, the best we could achieve was holding the handset to his face and speaking to Granny but the string impeded him walking around the room, so it was dropped and ignored almost instantly. He definitely understood the concept of a phone since only a few seconds later he was holding a plastic brick to his face and telling an imaginary Granny that Daddy was messing with his car. A telephone conversation that necessitated walking around the playroom and tapping keys on imaginary laptops.

Meeting the expectations of a changing workforce

My attention turns to a new generation of young people entering the economy today. Sometimes known as Generation Y, these are the people that the housing sector must attract and engage with as they enter the employment market as potential staff and the housing market as potential tenants.