We call upon many years of experience in the development of highly innovative approaches which leverage the every latest advances in the Microsoft technologies incorporating, in many cases, our “Packaged services frameworks” which enable us to dramatically cut implementation time and costs.
IMGROUP also have unique knowledge and capabilities to deploy the above technologies via the Cloud and our expertise in integration across both of these environments has helped organisations to achieve the benefits of both on premise and cloud based approaches brought together to provide optimum business performance and cost advantages.
IMGROUP cover all Microsoft Online Services including Office 365 (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and Office applications), CRM Online and Windows Azure. We provide consulting, development, integration and migration services and support to help at all stages with your move to the cloud, so you save time and money as well as freeing up valued resources.
Our Application Migration service offers project based cloud consultancy for IT departments. We use Microsoft Azure to help you move your existing applications into the cloud, extending their reach and helping you engage new markets whilst driving down cost.
Our Hybrid approach gives you the best of both worlds enabling you to consolidate migrate or extend legacy applications where appropriate to the cloud whilst maintaining connectivity to your on-premise applications where needed.
Contact information
Address
IMGROUP
Harmsworth House
13 - 15 Bouverie Street
London
EC4Y 8DP
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7842 7800
Email: info@im-onlineservices.com
Website: www.imgroup-online.com/ and www.imgroup.com
Press Releases
IMGROUP awarded Microsoft Cloud Accelerate Partner status
Press release - cloud accelerate partner August 2011.pdf 618.83 kB
The Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work for in 2011
Press Release.pdf 489.64 kB
Case Studies
Windows Azure helps clients cut costs case study
Azure Blends Cloud and On-Premises Solutions to Transform Client Businesses and Cut IT CostsIMGROUP has won the Worldwide Microsoft Partner of the Year award in business intelligence (BI) and data management four times, showing our aptitude for delivering innovative solutions.
Recent customer studies in a range of industry sectors illustrated a strong desire to take advantage of cloud computing, to cut IT costs, reduce support and maintenance overheads and find innovative ways to expand by using the latest in IT practice.
Our survey revealed the biggest barrier to cloud computing adoption is a hesitance to mass-replace existing on-premises solutions in one go, as customers have already made significant technology investments and want to make the most of them.
IMGROUP has developed an innovative reference architecture that uses the Windows Azure platform to connect customers’ existing on-premises solutions to cloud-based services and applications, using Windows Azure to help customers directly reduce both their IT capital costs and application support costs.
About IMGROUP
IMGROUP focuses on helping customers optimise business performance through enterprise information management and business intelligence (BI) solutions.
They are particularly recognised as a thought-leader in information management.
Based in the UK, the company has a global presence through offices in the United States and India. They provide a broad range of services, from business and technology consulting to project management and technology support.
Delivering Cloud Value
Even with its well-established practices, technical expertise, and history of success and accolades, IMGROUP always tries to innovate new ways to meet ever-evolving business and technology needs, to continue delivering business value.
In 2009, IMGROUP set out to deliver online data and application management solutions, both to address customer’s concerns about growing infrastructure costs and to ensure a strong position in the growing cloud computing market.
“It was our clear vision to take our integration framework, and all of the data management capabilities we offer, and make it all available online in the cloud.” Jeremy Neal, Head of Online Services
IMGROUP set up their Online Services division to offer a whole range of cloud solutions and services to their customers.
The result has been that the company has not only continued its thought-leadership position in the data management market, and remained a company that its customers trust, but it also established acknowledged expertise in enterprise level cloud solutions.
Windows Azure Platform
IMGROUP uses Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform technology as a new and effective way to deliver cloud based IT systems, services and applications.
The Windows Azure Platform is designed to be combined with your current applications to create new opportunities to improve business processes and to reach and interact with customers and business partners via the Internet.
Azure Flexibility
The flexibility of the Windows Azure platform can be used to enhance existing applications with ‘cloud’ capabilities over the Web, or even to make entirely new applications available online.
Windows Azure simplifies the maintenance and operation of business applications by providing on-demand server capacity and storage, so you can host, scale and manage all of your web services and connected applications through one central platform.
Why Choose Azure?
Azure is designed to make an immediate difference to the way your organisation operates, collaborates and communicates.
Azure Solution Benefits
- Maximise your existing IT investment and use Azure to help cut IT costs
- Reduce the cost and development time to create new cloud applications
- Scalable computing and storage capacity to meet peaks in demand
- On-demand scalability with the Azure ‘pay-as-you-grow’ costing model
- Joint on-premises and cloud applications with secure user sign-on
- System task automation to eliminate management hardware requirements
Other Cloud Solutions
IMGROUP evaluated a number of cloud services providers, including Google App Engine, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and the Windows Azure platform from Microsoft. After careful consideration, IMGROUP chose Windows Azure as the technology centerpiece of its new practice, as it offers the most complete platform.
“When customers want to avoid redeveloping their applications when migrating to the cloud, they want cloud services that complement rather than replace their existing on-premises applications and infrastructure,” said Neal.
“The Windows Azure platform is the clear winner. The approach to cloud services that Microsoft takes is the most comprehensive, pragmatic approach for enterprise customers,” said Neal.
Cloud on your terms
Quite rightly, IMGROUP customers have viewed with a healthy scepticism the broad-sweeping claims from some cloud services providers that ‘everything will be cloud-based in the near future’.
While acknowledging customer desires for cloud-computing solutions, IMGROUP understood customers wanted cloud-based solutions on their own precise terms.
IMGROUP recognised that most customers wanted to use new cloud technology to find ways to increase revenue, but did not want to invest in the high cost of extra infrastructure to achieve this goal. In addition, they wanted to get away from extensive and expensive IT system maintenance and support commitments, due to all the headaches that go with maintaining and upgrading server based on-premises applications.
Customers did not necessarily want to decommission existing infrastructures and move everything out to the cloud. IMGROUP recognised that when customers moved to the cloud, they want the potential for choice of public cloud and private cloud. With the former, Azure offers a secure, reliable, public cloud offering that is enterprise ready and has a ‘pay-as-you-go’ service cost model. With private cloud, IMGROUP is able to provide a range of cloud cost models for bespoke solution for customer’s own specific requirements.
Neal explains, “Customers have already made significant investments with their existing IT infrastructures and do not necessarily want to replace it all in the cloud. What our customers want is a complementary approach to the cloud that makes sense for their own business, as they do not want to have to redevelop all of their code. They want cloud-based solutions to work alongside their existing systems and to be supported using in-house skills.”
The ‘Best of Both Worlds’
IMGROUP recognised that developing a cloud practice that could deliver the scale of benefits that their customers required would need extensive internal investment.
So convinced was IMGROUP of Azure’s capabilities and the long-term future of cloud that a new Online Services division was created with a unique blend of both cloud and on-premises experts.
IMGROUP started by using its existing intellectual property and methodologies to develop a reference architecture to customers connect and integrate on-premises solutions with cloud-based ones.
The company calls this a ‘Best of Both Worlds’ approach, and has supported this initiative with a new website, seminar programme and a range of publications and white papers that help their customers appreciate and capitalise on its benefits.
The new Online Services practice has proved an instant success and the team has grown rapidly, driven by customer demand.
Scaling Up Insurance
By connecting on-premises and cloud solutions, IMGROUP meets rapidly rising customer demand for hybrid solutions that allow customers to complement rather than wholly replace their existing infrastructure.
IMGROUP used their ‘Best of Both Worlds’ reference architecture for one of its first online services projects, which was for one of Europe’s largest insurance companies.
The company has a complex and diverse range of products and has to support real-time insurance quotes that it maps to specific customers. They also have fast-changing quote scenarios that required significant computing resources.
They wanted to grow rapidly, and needed to scale up their infrastructure to maintain high service levels. However, scaling up the physical infrastructure would require that the company invested significant capital resources to add more servers, a situation that would continue in the future. At the same time, it already had a sizeable on-premises server farm for mission-critical applications that it did not want to abandon. Working with IMGROUP the company delivered a cost-effective, scalable approach based on the Azure platform to manage its growing business.
IMGROUP developed an e-commerce platform that aggregates vital business data from the company’s existing, on-premises sources, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SQL Server 2008 R2, and stores it in Windows Azure.
IMGROUP also developed a Microsoft Silverlight user interface so that insurance company staff can easily access the aggregated data and generate accurate, real-time insurance quotes for customers based on their diverse product portfolio.
“The unique proposition we can offer customers with Azure is that they can get the best of both worlds, on-premises and cloud, as part of their operational expenditure budget,” explains Neal.
For instance, the insurance company would have required 60 new servers to expand its infrastructure to meet the needs of its growing operations. Instead, the company took advantage of cloud services and freed up the capital that it would have spent on server hardware. “That customer expects to reduce its IT capital expenditures by more than 40 percent each year, while at the same time growing its core business by more than 20 percent each year,” says Neal. “This is a performance they could not otherwise achieve without bringing together a hybrid solution through the Windows Azure platform.”
Customer Benefits
By using the Windows Azure platform to orchestrate its “Best of Both Worlds” approach, IMGROUP helps customers capitalise on the opportunities cloud-based computing offers, whilst also delivering valuable solutions to clients still committed to their on-premises IT investments.
IMGROUP has embraced cloud-based computing and the Azure platform as a critical component of its continued success, increasing its own efficiency, cutting costs to customers and enabling their clients to prove a project’s return on investment (ROI) in weeks, rather than months.
Improving Business Continuity
“By using the Windows Azure platform to solve our customer’s challenges with cloud solutions that work on their terms, we are able to transform their businesses without the traditional on-premises development costs and support headaches,” says Neal.
“Let’s be honest, we can also serve a broader range of customers by offering bespoke variations on our cloud reference architecture that cut big IT project costs at a stroke, something that’s great for us and great for our customers.” Garry Miller, Business Development Director, IMGROUP
Reducing IT Capital Costs
By using the Windows Azure platform for the basis of its reference architecture, IMGROUP can easily connect customers’ on-premises infrastructure and applications with cloud-based solutions. This lets customers complement, rather than replace, existing solutions. By taking advantage of cloud-based computing models, customers also get the scalability they need, without the associated costs of procuring new server hardware.
Inspiring Continual Innovation
With its Online Services business, IMGROUP already sees a shift in its business model, forging better, longer-term relationships with customers as a natural extension of developing enterprise cloud solutions.
The cloud-based solutions that IMGROUP has developed, approximately 40 to date, have already attracted the attention of prominent enterprise customers through their seminar events around the UK and their one-to-one consulting workshops.
“The Windows Azure platform is truly a platform for innovation,” explained Miller.
“It offers a set of tools and a framework from which to build an unimaginable number of solutions for our customers. We have a huge range of cloud offerings that we are already proud of, but will continue to innovate as customers demand, and we feel we’ve only just scratched the surface of what is possible.”
Delivering BI in the Cloud
In addition to using the Windows Azure platform as part of a reference architecture for connecting on-premises and cloud-based solutions, IMGROUP also brought to life its vision of delivering robust business intelligence (BI) solutions online - what the company has termed ’BI in the Sky’.
The company has developed a cloud-based user interface that serves as a wrapper for their wide range of BI applications.
IMGROUP can also migrate third-party BI applications to the Windows Azure platform, combined with using its reference architecture to connect the BI applications to customers’ on-premises infrastructure.
Mobile staff can then access valuable business data and key performance indicators (KPIs) from any Web enabled device, no matter where they are (see left).
Project Delivery Efficiency
“There is tremendous market pressure to keep project delivery costs down,” says Miller. “By using the Windows Azure platform, combined with our own intellectual property, we can do more with fewer consultant resources and pass those savings on to our customers. We estimate that we can reduce consulting services charges to customers by approximately 25 percent, while still achieving the same revenue streams. “
IMGROUP continues to compound the value that it offers to customers by using its own intellectual property, combined with the Windows Azure platform, to drive down its costs for completing projects.
IMGROUP can quickly prove the ROI for customers by using its reference architecture to create prototype hybrid BI solutions, something that many IT departments struggle to do.
“We see internal IT departments struggle for months to complete projects that try to integrate on-premises and cloud-based solutions, because they don’t have the time, the skills, or the budget,” said Miller.
The company is also able to take advantage of existing developer resources to help develop solutions in a familiar development environment with Windows Azure, something that customers also appreciate when the final project is handed over to their own development and support teams.
In addition, features in the Azure platform, such as Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus, make it possible to expert developers to build cloud-based solutions that connect to and interoperate with existing solutions and network infrastructures, without traditional time-consuming manual coding.
“By using the Windows Azure platform, our reference architecture and proven methodologies, we can deliver a first-phase cloud prototype that our customers can immediately see the value from, in weeks rather than months,” says Neal.
“We feel so strongly about the opportunity ahead that we made the decision to fully align with Microsoft’s vision of cloud computing,” Neal added.
“The Windows Azure platform is the key differentiator for us. It is the critical pivot point for our online services, and what we think our clients will ultimately want. For our customers it comes down simply to project cost, flexibility and the removal of IT infrastructure hassles. Windows Azure is truly the only enterprise-ready cloud platform.” Jeremy Neal, Head of Online Services, IMGROUP
Business Transformation
IMGROUP has discovered that many of their customers have IT infrastructures that have evolved rather than having been created with a cohesive infrastructure in mind. This is hardly surprising, given the changing needs of almost all of their client’s businesses and the rapid upheavals in market conditions over the last ten years
This means that many customers currently have a vast array of bespoke legacy systems, databases, servers, PCs, networks and software distributed throughout their organisation. They found that CEOs and CTOs wanted to try to regain control over their infrastructure, but that the biggest challenge was that any kind of change meant a large upfront capital cost and a great deal of time, planning and resources from overstretched IT development teams.
Improving IT Efficiency
In another example, a Global 500 company that provides non-perishable products to major grocery store chains experienced shrinking profits in a turbulent economy.
Faced with the challenge of maintaining shareholder value in a market that was stagnant at best, the company realised that transforming their IT and improving efficiency was necessary to maintain overall business profitability.
It was particularly concerned that the IT department was spending significant time helping with consumer devices that were traditionally unsupported, such as smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. However, it also recognised that field employees, such as sales personnel, had come to rely on those mobile devices to maintain productivity and service levels.
In response to the growing customer need to regain control over their infrastructure, costs, and with customers’ interest piqued about cloud computing, IMGROUP created a unique approach designed to complement their existing infrastructure.
IMGROUP has also used its ‘BI in the Sky’ and ‘Best of Both Worlds’ approach to help the company deliver a web-based business intelligence application to employees in the field. Now, from any consumer mobile device, such as a Windows Phone 7 or Apple iPad, the customers’ sales staff can check their progress against business KPIs and synchronise their customer’s orders to on-premises databases.
In the future, IMGROUP also plans to help the company integrate the cloud-based BI application with an on-premises SAP solution, illustrating the development flexibility that IMGROUP can deliver using the Windows Azure platform.
Windows Azure helps clients cut costs case study.pdf 505.18 kB
Whitepapers
The New World of Work
IMGROUP’s views and offerings for Cloud ComputingCloud Computing – a watershed in new technology development
‘The New World of Work’ is a phrase that represents the watershed in the many new and effective ways that employees receive information and use IT systems in the modern business. It reflects the fundamental changes that have taken place in the new technologies that support business aims in recent years, technology designed to help return UK organisations back to profitable growth.
Technology has also been forced to change, adapt and innovate rapidly to meet the needs of extensive social and economic change. For example, businesses struggle to manage the balance between information access and information overload for staff, and the credit crunch remains as a fundamental challenge to all organisations.
As the devices we use to access and send information rapidly evolve, the way that we use technology also inevitably changes. With the advent of new small, portable and web-enabled mobile devices, users can access information quickly and easily, directly over the Internet. Most of us are also now used to constantly accessing the Web on the move, using devices that are ‘always on’ i.e. connected to the Internet all of the time.
The consumer in the non-business world is used to seeing every Web process or information request in terms of ‘apps’, with the assumption that if there is a need for any type of information or lifestyle solution then there will be an ‘app’ out there to respond to this need. This capability to be able to get the information we desire from the Web, as and when we need it, means that we will become less tolerant of systems and applications in the business world that are not fully Web-enabled.
The old distinctions between our personal and professional lives are disappearing as people in the UK increasingly work in the evenings and weekends. Combined with these new technology introductions there has been a merging of the way we manage our work and private lives. The exponential growth in sales and popularity of mobile devices has blurred the boundaries of our work and social lives and, in many cases, forced them to coexist side-by-side. Most people have come to accept that ‘always on’ means we are now perpetually multi-tasking across what were previously distinct parts of our lives. This also means we feel less guilty about maintaining some of our personal interests and social networks whilst at work, and businesses need to recognise this fact.
Another challenge faced is the constant debate about whether to promote or even ban outright the use of some or all social networks, on the basis that they could be an eternal distraction for employees. This is despite the fact that their effective use can result in multiple good quality new business leads.
The applications we rely on for our work and our private lives sit
side-by-side on the devices we use, and interoperability and ease of use are paramount. From a business perspective this means that users get increasingly frustrated about being dictated to about the platforms, applications and workflow that they use inside work, when they can so easily access exactly what they need out of work. The reality is that most applications that we use as consumers are better, more compelling and more productive than those we are provided with in the workplace.
Organisations are increasingly finding they have requests from their staff for more readily available information, combined with a demand that the information that is delivered is visually attractive, that business ‘apps’ are intuitive and easy to use and the way that they get information is quick and easy with a minimal number of ‘steps’ to get through to exactly what they need.
As new technology improves the way we ‘play’, we are bound to expect IT to increase its speed of development and solutions to meet the challenge of getting even more out of business IT. The bottom line is that there is now no better time to introduce new technology into business. However, user expectations are high and organisations will need to recognise and respond to this effectively.
Cloud computing – the future of technology
There is no doubt consumer applications have innovated more rapidly than business software in recent years. In consequence many people have the impression that they are often more productive in managing and organising their private lives than their professional lives. Part of this challenge has been that traditional business IT investment has involved a hefty spend on software, hardware and infrastructure to support what are often bespoke applications for each business or organisation.
There is no doubt that Cloud computing signifies a major game-changing technology, and its perception as ‘hype’ is only because few organisations have yet to fully adapt to the cloud’s potential. In the next two years the cloud will radically change the way we think about, access and interact with almost every conceivable type of information, data, process and application.
The software industry is also investing heavily as proof that cloud technology represents the future of IT, building cloud datacentres and rapidly creating appealing, fast and effective cloud applications.
Cloud computing creates a new, better relationship between users and IT departments, where applications are fit for purpose and always available, and the need for constant upgrade and support is removed almost at a stroke. New cloud standards in information management, communication and collaboration have also been developed, to create a backbone for better, faster decision making.
Cloud computing really does break with the traditional way of implementing IT solutions, creating a bright new future where technology investments are more appropriate, faster to implement and far more affordable. Cloud computing is set to deliver far better results for organisation of all sizes in less time – what IMGROUP calls ‘IT at the speed of business’.
The cloud for business users
The pace of change in business is accelerating and no more so than within the area of business technology. Users increasingly demand that the critical business applications and information that aid communication and help them make fast, effective decisions are available whenever, wherever and however they want them. This demand is what we call 'Martini' access or the IT you want - any time, any place, anywhere.
As most of the devices people carry are now able to connect to the Internet, many employees are already living and managing their lives in an online or ‘cloud’ world. A move into cloud applications and services in the business world will therefore not be a major leap for most people, but this will affect a wide range of aspects of future business application development. The key factor is that in order to be acceptable, useful and successful with a modern business user, business applications must offer the same standards as consumer applications - in effect they must be 'consumer-grade'.
A need for speed to market and launch scalability for all organisations is also fuelling a drive towards the cloud. Business managers want a place to experiment and try out new ideas, without having to rely on IT teams to build huge arrays of servers and software to enable them. This demand requires less formal relationships with internal IT teams and a loosening of the restrictions on how business users utilise technology, plus the ability to integrate successful solutions back into the business fast.
Cloud technology reverses the traditional model of IT development into a ‘try first, justify second, and scale third’ methodology. This is an almost ideal development model for all organisations that need a fast IT solution response to rapidly changing customer, competitor and market conditions.
Many organisations have already begun to trial their cloud computing ideas. New business start-ups can inevitably see the attraction of a potential technology solution that requires minimal initial outlay. Small businesses are also taking advantage of the cloud, creating an online presence for their customers, improving collaboration amongst their mobile staff and ensuring everyone has access to all the core business information users need to make effective decisions, over the web.
For larger enterprises the benefits of the cloud can be realised more deeply, enabling project teams to collaborate on new ideas quickly and easily online, and helping to integrate complex and expensive technology systems with trading partners quickly and at low cost, via the Internet.
There are also opportunities to introduce new technology from the consumer world into business, like the potential to gain new business leads through the most successful social networking platforms like Twitter and Linkedin.
Where many of these social networks were previously predominantly non-business networking tools, many organisations are also seeing the business benefits of having a presence on YouTube, Flickr and Facebook.
Cloud technology for the CTO and IT teams
The web is the global market place and the last five years have seen the increased significance of IT systems in the digital economy. Cloud computing represents the true face of affordable innovation - the new benchmark that provides a conduit to the business-critical requirements of low cost, controllability and flexibility that almost every modern organisation is demanding.
However, the new financial and business reality for many working within IT departments is that IT as a cost centre is increasingly disappearing. Many IT managers have had their technology budgets reduced, at the same time as more requirements to provide technology support for new revenue streams and increased demands on what they are expected to deliver from a smaller ‘pot’.
It’s not just budgets that are affected. Many IT teams have been scaled down, and those left are pressured into increased demands for efficiency and to deliver IT that provides a framework for innovative thinking.
When faced with the dilemma of how to provide a technology framework to harness good ideas, but with less money and fewer people, cloud computing again offers a benchmark for affordable innovation.
With IT departments charged with focusing on ensuring technology stability and predictability for users, developing new technology requirements traditionally requires several months lead time for each application required and an internal financial justification within the organisation.
From an IT team perspective cloud computing is a panacea that can deliver the requirements of business users, but without the normal internal justifications and infrastructure setup required with traditional IT. More importantly, if the new application demanded by business users is particularly successful, cloud solutions offer instant scalability just when it’s needed. The other major benefit is that it’s possible for business users to drive trial and innovation of new applications without the need for the direct involvement of IT departments.
Often the easiest way to start with cloud computing is to nominate one or two obvious business areas or applications for a move into the cloud. In this manner key departments such as IT will be able to learn about its security, processes, speed of access and expected service levels.
Based on your first cloud application trials you can also then set a realistic plan for further cloud developments with the confidence that they meet both business and user needs effectively.
Cloud computing addresses the challenge of how to do more with less. The cloud can drive a low cost, pragmatic transition from an all on-premise legacy architecture to a blended infrastructure with cloud and on-premise systems working together, a solution offering the best of both worlds.
The Cloud and finance departments
The primary challenge for finance departments is how to protect and drive shareholder value and grow profit in uncertain times. The secondary requirement is to find ways of driving out cost without impacting the responsiveness of the business, and the third task is to reduce Capex.
Finance departments are often charged by their organisations to provide an objective review of the balance sheet, to review what defines the core business, take a critical view of what the business needs to own, and what can effectively be outsourced in order to reduce overall business costs.
The question CFOs are asked almost daily is, “How can we drive out cost and reduce our spending without affecting quality and client service delivery?” In effect, how can we do more with less?
From a finance perspective, the amount spent historically on technology represents a large proportion of business spend and investment. Depending on the industry sector, this varies between one percent and seven percent of turnover, with an average of around three percent. With cuts in every areas of business, and 80% of IT spend usually going on maintaining and upgrading existing systems, cloud technology offers the ability to both reduce IT maintenance costs and redeploy IT budget into new IT solutions.
With cloud computing there is therefore no longer any need to have to invest large sums to get the benefit of the latest technology. One business that embraces cloud solutions entirely has been able to increase their launch speed for new IT solutions and reduce their entire technology budget to just under one percent of turnover.
And, as most cloud solutions operate using a ‘pay-as-you-go’ cost model, this enables you to move technology costs directly out of Capex and straight into longer term and lower cost Opex, giving you the flexibility to reinvest valuable Capex in other more important areas of your organisation.
The issue of technology flexibility is also well served by cloud computing, as organisations can scale up their user and processing requirements fast due to the readily available processing power available in the large-scale datacentres that underpin a cloud computing infrastructure. In addition, as these cloud computing infrastructures are provided by large well-funded international organisations, the associated risks to introducing a new technology are dramatically reduced, making it easier to respond to the requirement for due diligence and scrutiny on IT investment decisions.
Cloud computing offers a way to help improve the productivity of current staff and reduce overall technology costs, rather than reducing staff numbers and the risk of lost skills. You can still have an ideal mix of business-critical systems that you want to manage inhouse, with cloud versions of less important systems that absorb a disproportionate amount of cost and management support time.
The Cloud for senior executives and board members
The biggest challenge most organisations face is that the effort required to compete more effectively and return good levels of shareholder value has increased dramatically over the last few years, and continues to be an ongoing issue.
Even if the business is considered to be sound and in good shape, the underlying processes that drive the business are sure to come under highly granular scrutiny, in the interest of eking out every last squeeze of improved employee efficiency and cross-business cost reduction.
For board-level executives the question will inevitably arise ‘should we try doing something different?’ With all that has taken place in recent years, previously tried and tested business models are being questioned, prospective new alliances considered and new acquisitions eyed-up as competitors struggle. This is where technology can help.
The key goal for most businesses is to get products and services to market faster, whilst limiting all of the resources required to launch new products and services effectively to their target audience. Just as important is that when product or service launch succeeds, organisation’s want to repeat their success rapidly with larger or even global target audiences. This means that to scale success rapidly the infrastructure and technology needs to be available for this goal almost immediately.
With all the opportunities and challenges facing business, board members want to know whether assets are being utilised and optimised to the full. In technology terms, this means an assessment of the software, applications, skills, partnerships, resources and practices that the business relies on, and whether these are aligned to support the business as it meets these challenges head on.
Despite this many senior board members still have traditional view of what technology can offer, and it is important they recognise the radical changes that cloud computing offers to help employees collaborate better, generate new revenue and improve business process management and integration.
Volatile times promote evolutionary and revolutionary thinking. Even organisations who have traditionally held what they regard as sensitive information internally on their own servers, are now seeing that with cloud computing they can gain the same speed of access to critical business information, without the outlay and the need for ongoing technical support and upgrades.
For senior managers, the cloud really does represent a major change in the way that new business ideas and revenue streams can be brought to market quickly, comprehensively and cost-effectively.
In fact, whilst cloud computing may previously have been regarded as simply ideal cheap computing just for smaller businesses, larger organisations are embracing it as a radical new way to improve the speed of innovation, cut costs, improve internal efficiencies and get new ideas to market faster.
What can we expect from The New World of Work?
Cloud computing provides broad options for resourcing business technology requirements, creating ‘consumer-grade’ web based business solutions that treat users as consumers and customers and that work in similar ways to the web solutions they are already used to and enjoy in their social lives.
The New World of Work has immediate benefits for all parts of organisations of almost any size. The sheer speed and budget benefits of cloud computing outweigh most business risks. The next few years represent the greatest opportunity in a generation – what we call IT at the speed of business.
In fact, in a recent survey of senior UK managers by IDC, the range of areas in which the cloud was cited as having obvious benefits was startling and wide ranging:
Cloud computing helps business users collaborate on new ideas and communicate better, enables IT teams to get more from less, aids board members to consistently deliver shareholder value and helps finance departments to reduce business costs and spend limited budgets more wisely.
With cloud technology, CTOs can focus on business needs and spend less time on user support and system maintenance and upgrades. Cloud computing also offers a welcome and productive vehicle for organisational change, helping you more closely integrate business and IT team goals together.
The cloud also promotes radical and growing improvement in the usability of business applications, with an opportunity for improved staff productivity and application integration and interoperability.
How can I trial Cloud Computing and benefit from the New World of Work?
When undertaking a first foray into cloud computing it is important to talk to an expert. IMGROUP will help you set expectations and guidelines for business users and review the most suitable cloud computing infrastructure and technology, including the most suitable applications, bandwidth, user requirements and online integration needs.
To find out more about cloud computing or to get your first project under way talk to the IMGROUP Online Services team. Alternatively, why not come along to one of our regular seminar or webinars.
- Call Jeremy Neal now on +44 (0)20 7842 7800
- See www.imgroup-online.com for more details
IMGROUP White Paper - new world of work 24.11.10.pdf 649.24 kB
Products
Lync Online
Microsoft Lync provides your organisation with next-generation communications capabilities including instant messaging (IM), presence, and PC audio and video conferencing and screen sharing.Lync enables you to reduce costs by converging your communication methods and improves productivity through the recognised ease of use and staff familiarity with Microsoft Office
Launched in 2011 as part of the Office 365 product range, Microsoft Lync is available in an on-premises server version and an online version, helping to integrate messaging, conferencing and voice functionality into Exchange and SharePoint. Microsoft Lync Online is a cloud communications service that connects staff, clients and partners in new ways, anytime, from anywhere.
The IM Online Services team helps you provide intuitive communications across presence, instant messaging, audio and video calling and a rich online meeting experience including PC audio, video and web conferencing. Lync transforms interactions with your authorised users into a collaborative, engaging and more effective experience.
- Connect with others through contact photos, activity feed and interactive contact card in Office
- Conduct online presentations including audio, video, screen sharing and a virtual whiteboard
- View presence status and then click-to-talk directly from Outlook, SharePoint or Office
- Move easily from instant messaging into interactive ad-hoc online meetings
- Invite contacts to join online meetings fast via their PC or a web based client
- Connect with customers and partners through instant messaging, audio and video
- Reply to an email with an instant message or an audio call for fast issue resolution
- Instant message capability with Windows Live contacts directly through Lync
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Provides the powerful customer management capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - all hosted securely online and up and running quickly and easily without any upfront costs. Find and maintain all your contact information and maintain customer relationships. Quickly centralise client information and streamline your business processesMicrosoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online is one of the growing portfolio of Microsoft Online Services. The customer management capabilities within CRM 2011 enable you to manage customer dialogue and contact effectively, maintaining a high quality customer relationship and helping customer support staff be more efficient.
Dynamics CRM 2011 Online provides advanced customer relationship management (CRM), offering intuitive and easy user adoption, easy deployment and a rapid return on investment. When combined with other on-premises and IM Bespoke Services, CRM 2011 Online helps you deliver a unique blend of services to successfully maintain customer relationships.
- Capture and access any information about your customers and supplier contact details and records online.
- Plan, launch and track all of your sales lead opportunities and marketing campaigns online
- Point and click customisation, mobile device support and offline data synchronisation
- 5GB of storage with 200 custom entities, 200 custom workflows
microsoft_crm_2011_online_overview.pdf 664.35 kB
Microsoft Exchange Online
Provides your organisation with the powerful messaging capabilities of Exchange - all hosted securely online and up and running quickly and easily without any upfront costs. With Spam filtering and antivirus scanning, Exchange Online provides online email facilities with shared calendars, tasks and contacts, accessed via a PC or compatible Windows, iPhone, Nokia or Android smartphoneWithout access to email, calendars and contacts, business comes to a standstill. With IM Online Services and Office 365 you have peace of mind knowing experts are managing your IT and your messaging services are available when you need them.
Part of Office 365, Exchange Online provides staff with access to e-mail, calendar and contacts from virtually anywhere, at any time, on PCs, laptops and mobile devices. Exchange Online can be rapidly deployed and expanded at any time based on the number of staff you have at any time. Exchange Online has built-in protection from malware and spam, and is designed to be securely administered using a powerful and easy to use admin console accessed over the web.
- Default 25GB mailbox for each user
- E-mail, shared calendar, shared tasks, and contacts
- Spam filtering and antivirus capabilities via Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange
- Support for Microsoft Office Outlook®, Outlook Anywhere, and Outlook Web Access
- Supports Windows Mobile® 6 and 7 devices and Exchange ActiveSync® 12 devices e.g. Nokia, iPhone, Android
- Enterprise versions of Office 365 offer local software install facility and full online / offline sync
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365 is the future of IT, delivering cloud productivity to organisations of all sizes and combining familiar Office desktop suite with existing Microsoft Online Services products.Office 365 provides online versions of Microsoft's next generation communications and collaboration services, helping you to save time, money and free up valued resources for critical business activities.
Launched in June, Office 365 includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Office Web Apps or the latest version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop suite. With a combination of services that are easy to administer and simple to use, backed by a Microsoft SLA, the IM Online Services team help you deliver Office 365's exceptional functionality, robust security and reliability and migrate existing Office content to the Cloud.
Office 365 provides instant online access to e-mail, documents, contacts, and calendars on PCs, notebooks and smartphones, combined with simple and secure collaboration with colleagues and business partners.
Office 365 has been designed to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and other commonly used Microsoft programs that your staff and partners regularly use.
- Business-class features including IT-level phone support and a 99.9% uptime SLA financially-backed by Microsoft
- Data protection through robust security and privacy controls and standards, georedundancy and disaster recovery
- Comprehensive solutions including desktop productivity applications, portals, extranets and external Websites
- Instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, Web conferencing, e-mail, voice mail and unified messaging
Pay-as-you-go pricing options which provide predictability and flexibility for all or part of an organisation
Microsoft Office 365.pdf 760.23 kB
SharePoint Online
Provides your organisation with the powerful collaboration capabilities of SharePoint - all hosted securely online and up and running quickly and easily without any upfront costs. Part of Office 365, SharePoint Online offers a central location for staff to collaborate efficiently with colleagues and partners, search for and find resources and manage content and business process workflow.The suite of online productivity tools in SharePoint enables your workers to communicate and collaborate effectively, whilst enabling your IT staff to focus on more critical tasks and priorities.
With IM Online Services and Office 365 you can give your organisation the powerful productivity capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint.
SharePoint Online provides your staff, authorised partners and suppliers with fast, easy to use collaboration facilities so they can share documents, contacts, calendars and tasks in a single location, over the Web. Provides rapid access to document libraries, wikis and blogs, shared workspaces, process workflows and intranet portals.
Based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server, SharePoint Online delivers rich collaboration capabilities that enable team members to collaborate flexibly and efficiently, find the latest version of organisational resources quickly, search your intranet site and manage online content and business process workflow.
- Portal, collaboration, content management, site search and forms capability
- Single location to share documents, contacts, calendars and tasks
- Offline access to documents on the service from Outlook
- Roll-up views of calendars and tasks across multiple lists and sites
- Blog site templates that support article posting, reader comments and RSS feed generation
- Enterprise versions of Office 365 offer local software install facility and full online / offline sync
Windows Azure
With the advent of portable web-enabled devices that are 'always on', most workers can now access information quickly and easily, directly over the Internet. The IM Online Services team delivers Windows Azure based cloud solutions that help you deliver fast, low-cost cloud solutions and to optimise a combined cloud and on-premises infrastructureThe IM Online Services team delivers cloud solutions to make 'the best of both worlds' when looking at Cloud and server solutions. We help you convert existing applications for use in the cloud and to develop pure cloud services that help improve your efficiency and staff utilisation and cut IT costs at a stroke. Our 'Connected Cloud' service helps modern organisations deliver profitable growth fast and at low cost, with end-to-end services from consulting through to data management, migration, hosting and support. We use Windows Azure to deliver cloud based IT applications and services that make an immediate difference to the way your organisation operates, collaborates and communicates.
Windows Azure's flexible platform can be used to build new applications to run over the Web, or to enhance existing applications by moving them online. Windows Azure simplifies the maintenance and operation of business applications by providing on-demand server capacity and storage so you can host, scale and manage all your web services and connected applications through one central platform.
- Reduces the cost and development time for replacing old legacy systems or creating brand new applications
- Scalable computing and storage capacity, enabling your organisation to meet peaks in demand effectively
- Our Azure solutions offer on-demand scalability combined with cost effective pay-as-you-grow pricing
- Extend existing on-premises applications into the cloud and ensure secure end-user interaction
- Complete system management task automation, eliminating the need for monitoring hardware
Windows Azure Overview 2011.pub 1.97 MB
