Automation is the next level of digitization
So far, it's safe to say that the predominant trend in 21st-century business has been digitalization. Every industry, organization and individual has been touched by it one way or another.
As we head towards 2020, we are moving to the next level of digitalization. Now, what has already been digitalized will increasingly be automated -- whether it's the way we work, trade or connect with each other. Automation is becoming increasingly prevalent as computers gain in processing speed and power, and as the amount of data available for computation continues to grow exponentially. At the start of the Internet age, very few things were connected and available for analysis. But with the rise of the Internet of Things and the implantation of computers into all walks of life, from driving to warehousing, more and more facets of our world can now be mapped from within dedicated software.
Three signs your product's development is broken
Picture yourself as the head of a product development division at a Fortune 500 company. You and your team are tackling a new project that fits hand in glove with corporate’s new strategic vision.
Unfortunately, your team’s deadlines and goals -- as well as the product’s features -- are all determined by the visionaries. You lack any meaningful control over the process, and the team’s only motivation comes from meeting arbitrary progress points passed down from above.
How the UK is positioning itself as a technology hub
The UK is cementing itself as a hub for technology and as a clear leader in Europe when it comes to digital tech investment, digital skills and collaboration within ecosystems. This is set to continue as the latest Tech Nation Report revealed that digital tech investment is increasing -- reaching £6.8 billion, 50 percent higher than any other European country. This rising of the UK’s tech credentials is now vital for business growth, connectivity and efficiency; and the the benefits aren’t exclusively being seen in London.
Technology allows businesses to transcend geographical boundaries and we’ve experienced this for ourselves. We founded the company in Wales, but can do business anywhere in the world. Tech Nation found that the digital tech sector has added nearly £400m to the Welsh economy and we at Delio are proud to be a part of that driving force. This impressive growth rate shows that perceptions about starting a tech business outside of London and specifically in Wales is changing.
Brexit could make it hard to attract and keep IT talent in the UK
Since the process to exit the EU was triggered by Theresa May on March 29, 2017, concerns have been expressed by various sectors about their ability to retain talent and recruit talented workers from the EU. Interest groups and industry bodies are lobbying to raise their concerns.
At the moment, workers from the EU (when we refer to EU workers in this article it includes the EEA countries Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein and Switzerland) are not subject to immigration control and do not need a work visa to work in the UK. The tech sector in the UK is reliant on a diverse workforce. According to techUK, 18 percent of the sector’s three million workers are foreign born, with one third coming from EU countries. Employers in this sector need to recruit the brightest and the best in this competitive market. If they are not able to do this they will lose out to competitors at home and abroad. Smaller tech companies will suffer the most as they will struggle with the costs and time involved in applying for visas and this could put them at a disadvantage.
Migrating data to safe havens to protect customers' privacy
The events of the past month have pushed data privacy firmly to the top of not just the technology industry agenda, but also the political agenda.
In the UK, the government has been in conflict with the technology industry ever since David Cameron’s ludicrous call for a "ban" on encryption. However, in the last month the Prime Minister and Home Secretary have doubled down on this objective, demanding back door access to social media services such as WhatsApp -- despite widespread doubts as to whether the policy is even practicable.
US extreme vetting rules for tourists could put business data at risk
New legislation being considered by the Trump administration suggests that UK citizens traveling to the United States would have to hand over personal information such as passwords to their social media accounts and access to the contacts in their mobile phone or risk being denied entry to the country.
This comes just weeks after another travel-based regulation that banned certain electronic devices from some countries in North Africa and the Middle East bound for either the US or UK. At the same time, the upcoming GDPR is putting huge pressure on organizations to secure their data. How do these new travel regulations impact organizations trying to secure their sensitive data?
Toshiba is in serious trouble
Toshiba has filed its delayed financial results, warning that its survival is at stake.
The tech and construction company has reported a loss of $4.8bn (£3.84bn) for the period between April and December. However, these results have not been confirmed by the company’s auditors.
Marketers underestimate GDPR's ramifications
Awareness of the GDPR has gone up, but B2B marketers are still falling behind and underestimating the impact of the new regulation, according to a new report by the DMA.
More than a quarter of businesses (28 percent) still feel unprepared, which is just a two percent decrease, compared to earlier numbers. The number of marketers that have a "good" awareness about GDPR has risen 13 percent, to 66 percent in total, the report claims. B2B marketers, however, are at the both ends of the spectrum.
Public clouds not for core apps? Businesses challenging this preconception
With its greater performance, reliability, and scalability, it is little surprise that we’re seeing a boom in the deployment of public cloud services. According to a recent survey by Gartner, companies consider public cloud to be both the most disruptive and most impactful issue facing them in 2017. In fact, IDC predicts that the worldwide public cloud services spending forecast will double to more than $141 billion by 2019.
For most organizations, this first venture into public cloud has been in deploying new applications to engage with their customers (systems of engagement). Now, having successfully used public cloud platforms for these new applications, a growing number of application development and delivery leaders want to bring the same benefits of fast delivery, high security, and cost flexibility to core business applications.
How to convince IT decision makers to embrace DevOps
Years ago, comedian Steve Martin joked about the best trick to play on a three year-old kid: "Whenever you’re around him," he said, "talk wrong." On his first day at school, the kid will raise his hand and say, "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?"
Pitching a project for implementing DevOps at your company can make you feel a lot like that kid. To you, the ask is crystal clear. To your executives, it’s mumbo jumbo. Why? Because if you’re like lots of technical folks, you’re using technical terms to make your case. However, "technical" is not the language that your management team speaks when discussing new processes and tools. When you’re asking to "mambo dogface," they’re thinking about things like, "How many people do I need to implement this?" or "How many people will need to be trained?" and "How long will it take them to become proficient?"
Reducing downtime is a huge financial opportunity
In creating a world that doesn’t break down, a huge $20B opportunity is on the table for the process industry to address. Astute manufacturers should focus on reducing unplanned downtime and increasing asset utilization, as both processes represent the biggest opportunities for financial improvement in production operations.
Albert Einstein could well be alluding to smart manufacturing when he said: "If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes."
The real cost of on-premises backups
The adoption of cloud IT services by small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) is increasing at an exponential rate. But despite the robust adoption rates and proven track record of cloud technology, many organizations of all sizes, including SMBs, are still relying on on-premises backup methods. By doing so they may very well be draining themselves of valuable resources, including financial resources.
This article discusses the specific ways in which these organizations that continue to rely on on-premises instead of cloud backups are costing themselves money. It discusses benefits of adopting the cloud backup model, and addresses common concerns and misconceptions IT and business professionals often mention as reasons for staying with on-premises backups instead of adopting the cloud.
UK national weather service has new mainframes that can perform 23,000 trillion calculations a second
Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, has a new IT solution, thanks to a partnership between the service, IBM and Computacenter. It will allow the Met Office to process greater volumes of weather data faster.
Currently, the service collects and safeguards around 200 million weather observations every day. The new environment includes two new mainframes with 44 cores, and 200 terabytes of attached storage.
How millions of Android devices could be at risk of total takeover
Originally developed as a digital camera platform, Android has definitely come a long way. It just surpassed Windows to become the most popular operating system for Internet usage in the global digital realm.
This has been established through a report by StatCounter, which states that the global OS Internet usage market share of Android (37.93 percent) is 0.2 percentage points ahead of Windows (37.91 percent). You can check out the global operating system market share map, here. This is a huge win for Android, which accounted for a mere 2.4 percent of the worldwide Internet usage almost five years ago. Interestingly, Microsoft had been leading this market since 1980.
Debunking the three major ransomware myths
On March 14, the UK National Crime Agency and National Cyber Security Center sounded the alarm about the growing cyber threat. One of their conclusions was that ransomware represents a significant, and growing, threat to UK business. Combine this with the fact that the last 12 months has seen cyber attacks on an unprecedented scale, and you’ve got a melting pot of cyber activity right now.
These warnings come as no surprise. Ransomware use has exploded over the past year or so, particularly in the UK, simply because it is an easy way for cyber criminals to make significant amounts of money. Ransomware works, simply because many firms are forced to pay the ransom because they don’t have the defense systems in place to avoid doing so.
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