There have been a number of trends this year that will shape business opportunities into 2021 and beyond.
Amongst them is the move away from people being crammed into public transport. Another is the desire for people to spend more time outdoors.
And then there's the increasing move towards climate change reduction which will likely be a major theme in the coming year.
GARTNER are renowned for their informed predictions about the strategic trends we are likely to see in IT and tech. They’ve been at it again, releasing their views on what might happen in 2021 and beyond.
Unsurprisingly, they are suggesting that we are going to see trends influenced by Covid, including the acceleration of some we’re already seeing. Some of these touch on DNA storage, factory and farm automation, and freelance customer service.
INVESTING in skills is going to be one of the most important things we do to support an economic recovery in Northern Ireland.
We know that there were already significant skills gaps before we ever heard of Covid-19. The tech sector – along with other industries – has long had a challenge with not having enough skilled people available to meet the need.
DIVISIVE topics are never far away it seems (anyone from Northern Ireland will tell you that). And in recent times, we ‘ve had Brexit, face masks and the issue of working from home to add to the list.
You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not going to focus on Brexit, nor the historical local stuff. But I think the issue of working from home deserves a bit of exploring.
N challenging times, it is important that we all look for inspiration. And this has perhaps never been as important as it has been in recent months.
One person I’ve often looked to for inspiration is Mark Pollock.
For those who don’t know Mark, he became an adventure athlete in 1998 competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps including being the first blind person to race to the South Pole.
Usually I write in this column about tech sector issues. But this month I'm going to talk about climate change.
Perhaps more accurately, I'm going to focus on climate change, but inevitably, given that climate change is a matter which touches on just about every aspect of our lives, and so is technology, tech will also come into it.
And I recognise that it's perhaps not that unexpected any more for a business person to talk about climate change in the era of ‘responsible capitalism'. Indeed, during my entire time with Novosco, we've tried to be a purpose-led organisation. We maybe didn't articulate it that way in the past, but it has always been part of our DNA.
AMIDST the many harrowing things happening during the pandemic, there have been some inspiring stories. The dedication of health and other frontline workers and the public's appreciation of their commitment has been uplifting to say the least.
And despite the dire situation facing the economy, we've seen companies and businesspeople rise to the challenge too. The story of the production line that has been operating in Mid Ulster District Council's Meadowbank Sports Arena through an initiative by Bloc Blinds to create protective visors for health workers has been well covered in the media, but is very much worth reiterating.
You can't solve all problems with technology. But could tech hold the answer to the coronavirus lockdown and provide us with something of an ‘exit strategy'?
At the very least, tech has a real role to play in this; something that was acknowledged by the European Commission last week.
It has recommended steps and measures to develop a common EU approach for the use of mobile applications and mobile data in response to the coronavirus pandemic. They note that digital technologies, mobile applications and mobility data have enormous potential to help understand how the virus spreads and to respond effectively. They say that digital tools can play a very important role in the gradual lifting of containment measures, when the time is right, if they are well coordinated.
Driving IT Service Automation through ServiceNow
ServiceNow is pretty well established as the world’s leading IT ServiceDesk platform and a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM. However, like any enterprise IT management toolset, it requires a considered investment in terms of design input and resources to fully leverage the benefits. In this blog I’ll walk through a few common use cases to provide a better insight into how it can transform our ways of working – in this case for IT operations.
These are unprecedented and certainly very difficult times for people and businesses, but these are not completely uncharted times. Many businesses have already had a focus on their employees’ working agility and a long-term vision for collaboration and productivity in disaster scenarios, such as the current office closures faced by many.
When we think of Disaster Recovery (DR), or enacting Business Continuity Plans (BCP), we generally think of building fires, technical failures or electrical outages, but a pandemic shares many challenges with the more orthodox BCP scenarios and therefore many existing DR/BCP solutions fit well with recent events.
With COVID-19 causing all sorts of companies to reconfigure how they work, working from home is the new going into the office. For the next few weeks and months we need to adapt - and adapt we shall!
We've been regularly surveying our team to make sure they're okay, that they have what they need, and to try to keep things as normal as is possible given the circumstances. Additionally, we asked them for tips, from their own experiences, on how to best work from home. What tools or systems, practices and tips that they use, would they recommend to others. With that in mind, here's what our colleagues suggested.
Week two at home and it’s now time for Government and International Organisations to get organised and plan some sort of response. I spend a lot of my professional time discussing IT Strategy and, in particular, Cloud Computing with customers. Pros-Cons-Costs-Benefits. There generally isn’t a lot of denial that Cloud is the very definite direction of travel for the IT industry. At this point cloud adoption is mainstream and the worldwide public cloud services market is forecast to grow 17% in 2020 to total $266.4 billion, up from $227.8 billion in 2019, according to Gartner, Inc.
In 2018 ServiceNow was voted the world's most innovative company by Forbes, ahead of Tesla and Workday, with company revenues growing to more than $2.6 billion in 2018. The company is already established as the market leader in IT Service Desk and Service Management software and is making strong inroads into the HR and Customer Service Management segments with it's Now platform. But it is the digital platform's capability around rapid custom application development and modernisation of legacy applications which perhaps holds the greatest potential for growth.
