For last few years, the adaptation rate of cloud infrastructure and services has increased exceptionally. Starting from a small business to a leading enterprise, everyone is keen on cloud adaptation, It seems that the future of software development companies and IT services is in cloud computing. The efficiency and versatility of cloud service models are the reasons behind this global adaptation.

To climb the stair of success with cloud services, firstly, one needs to understand different cloud service models, their mode of functionality and benefits. Otherwise, it is hard to choose the most appropriate model for the business. A wrong choice can lead a business to waste of money as well as time.

There are mainly three cloud service models: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Each of the service models has its own set of benefits that could match with different needs of various businesses.

Different Cloud Models and their benefits:

1. Software as a Service (SaaS):

This cloud service model offers quick access to cloud-based web applications. Here all the software and hardware are provided and maintained by the vender; so no need to download or install or configure anything. You can access all the subscribed or free applications through a web browser.

Key benefits:

Ready to use – In SaaS cloud services the applications are already installed and configured. All you have to do is just sign up for the service to get access to powerful computing resources. Therefore, the developers don’t have to spend time in installation or configuration.

Affordable – SaaS services are cost-efficient as there’s no need to pay for the whole IT infrastructure. You can pay only for the service at the scale you need. If there is a need of extra functionality, you can easily upgrade your subscription.

Automatic update – Like installation and configuration of applications, the software update is also done by the cloud service vendor. If there are any bugs or technical troubles, the vendor fixes them without bothering you.

High Accessibility – Being distributed over internet, Cloud-based SaaS services can be accessed from any computer. One just needs to sign in to access a wide range of application through internet-enabled devices and locations.

Disadvantages:

No users’ control over the hardware allotted to you and only the vendor can manage the parameters of software you are using.

Why Opt:

SaaS can be suitable for various business scenarios; this is beneficial for new organizations that require developing an e-commerce platform fast and within limited budget. SaaS solutions can meet their requirement of software or expertise to solve server issues. It is also appropriate for small-scale businesses that don’t have the necessary budget and resources to deploy on-premise hardware or suitable for projects that are focused on simple and cost-effective collaboration. Software development companies often use SaaS service when multiple applications are needed but not used on a regular basis.

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS refers to cloud platforms that provide runtime environment to the users for developing, testing, and managing applications. With this service model, the servers, networking, and storage are usually administered by the platform provider or company while developers can manage the applications. Being subscription-based, PaaS also gives you flexible pricing options depending on your business requirements.

Key Benefits:

Reduces Development Time – PaaS significantly minimize development time as the vendor takes care of the server-side components of the computing infrastructure. So the development team can concentrate in delivering projects with top speed and quality.

Support Multiple Programming Language Support – PaaS offers support for multiple programming languages. This feature helps the software development companies to build applications for different projects on the same platform.

Enhance Collaboration – PaaS improves collaboration capability for remote and distributed teams. Better collaboration helps to integrate your team dispersed across various locations.

Disadvantage:

As PaaS is built on virtualized technology, you will have less control over data processing. Another disadvantage is PaaS solutions are less flexible than IaaS.

Why Opt:

PaaS can be a good choice for companies whose project involves multiple developers and vendors. With this cloud service, you can easily create customized applications. With the PaaS model, you basically lease all the essential computing and networking resources to simplify the development process and minimizes development costs.

3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS offers a virtual provision of computing resources over the cloud. IaaS works as a virtual data center that provides basic computing infrastructure like servers, storage, and networking resources along with maintenance and support. Developers can get computing resources of their requirements without installing any hardware on their premises.

Key Benefits:

Cost-saving – With IaaS, there are no expenses on hardware infrastructure. The vendors provide and maintain the complete hardware infrastructure including servers, storage, and networking resources.

Perfect scalability – Though all cloud-based solutions are scalable, IaaS also offers additional resources in case of higher demand. Similarly, if the demand is low, the apps can also be scaled down.

Most Reliable and secure – With IaaS, the safety of your data is the responsibility of the service provider. Here the hardware infrastructure is usually kept in specially designed data centers, and the service provider ensures the security of your data.

Disadvantage:

IaaS is comparatively expensive than SaaS or PaaS as here the client basically leases the hardware infrastructure.

Why Opt:

IaaS is the most flexible cloud model that offers the best option when it comes to IT hardware infrastructure. IaaS is the ideal option for businesses that focuses on website or application hosting. It is also a good choice for building virtual data centers for large-scale enterprises that need an effective, scalable, and safe server environment. IaaS is the most cost-effective way of analyzing huge amounts of data that require incredible computing power.

What fits your business: SaaS or PaaS or IaaS

All three cloud services models come with their unique features, benefits, and functionalities and it is crucial for companies to comprehend the essential feature and chose the right one according to the business goal. Considering the particular business requirement, the enterprises have to pick the apt cloud model that can deliver the results that you are looking for. Apparently, SaaS solutions are suitable for businesses that need cloud-based software like CRM, email, collaboration tools, and productivity tools. When a company requires a platform to develop and test their software and applications, PaaS the opt one for them. IaaS is the perfect option when a company needs a complete virtual computing platform with powerful resources. You can also consult with the cloud management companies to choose the apt Cloud service model of your business.

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With the digital workplace initiatives, the companies require workplace mobility at every level. Whether it is a Multinational IT support organization or a telemarketing business or real-time information sharing, every business process can have some degree of conveniences with workforce mobility. This business strategy is about empowering the employees to work from anywhere, at any time, and from any device for quick services and prompt actions. This business strategy aims to upturn workplace productivity, employee satisfaction which in turn, helps businesses’ to achieve better aftermath.

To thrive best in the modern market, the businesses can take help of companies offering mobility managed service to enhance efficiency and productivity across a range of business segments —from individual person to teams, departments, management, and leaders. Workplace mobility helps is improving collaboration and communication promotes flexible operations, reduce instances of workforce churning, helps in cost management, which eventually promotes business growth, and achieve long-term goals.

How can workplace mobility affect the operation of the business?

Workforce mobility augments the process of digital transformation in enterprises. The biggest advantage of workforce mobility is employee empowerment, flexible work routines, and better communication to achieve more.

With workplace mobility, the employees don’t require traveling long hours or waste time on the road and can work flexibly from anywhere, anytime, even form the comfort of their home. This strategy not only implies higher productivity but ensures happier employees as they can choose their work routines flexibly without having to spend long hours sitting behind their desks. The bunch of benefits associated with workplace mobility is as follows that brings workforce efficiency.

1. Workplace mobility boosts employee satisfaction

Now everyone loves to spend time on their mobile devices and they are hooked on their smartphones throughout the day for both productive and entertainment purposes. When an enterprise adopts the mobile approach through business apps, it empowers employees to work more efficiently. The enterprise mobile apps have the potential to engage the modern workforce than conventional technologies. When the employees get the opportunity to complete their professional tasks with the help of a mobile app, they feel more comfortable as that allows them to work from anywhere. This flexible working strategy enhances their overall satisfaction levels as they don’t have to invest a large portion of a day working behind the desk on software or portals.

There are IT consulting companies in India that can help to empower organizations to achieve business objectives through workplace mobility, related security measures, and so on. These managed services assist the enterprises with different IT services including email or file sharing and identity management, data security, backup, etc. to upgrade current structures to more efficient and secure systems.

2. Mobility promises seamless connectivity and collaboration

An organization with an enterprise mobile app facility gives its employees a chance to stay connected round-the-clock and accomplish a work according to their convenient time within the defined timeframe of a project. Mobility solutions also allow the employees, teams, and management to be connected and be on the same page in real-time which promotes inter-departmental collaboration. This kind of real-time collaboration improves resource utilization and reflects positively impacts the entire business process value chain.

Along with business improvement, mobility also supplements the process of continuous learning and development due to real-time analytics and connectivity with the colleagues and team.

3. Mobility improves intra-organizational communications

Mobility can also improve employee-management connect and allows a better understanding of business perspectives. The management can effectively communicate their vision with their employees. The apps can also be used to collect company-wide feedback or streamline inter-department communications on a particular topic. All these processes have a positive impact on the overall efficiency and productivity.

4. Mobility promotes schedule flexibilities

A latest research on the effect of workplace mobility demonstrates that about 83% of companies feel that flexible work policy enhances workplace productivity. In fact, many of the organizations have achieved better success with the mobile workforce; they believe workplace flexibility can be a catalyst in promoting efficiencies. With the help of a mobility-driven working procedure, employees can work from anywhere in real-time.

This kind of working flexibility not only helps the employees to meet every need of the business but gives them room to take care of personal commitments. They can schedule their job according to real-time requirements without being stuck with the problem of compulsory office attendance. So the employees can have a better work-life balance.

Strategies to adopt Mobility Approach in enterprises

Like any other change, all employees might not willing to move towards the mobile-driven approach. If an organization really wants to set-up the mobility strategy at the workplace, they need to follow some failsafe strategies. To adopt mobility approach in the workplace, there are some steps:

1. Easy migration to mobile apps:

Invest in developing useful mobile apps that are easy to use, equipped to resolve employees’ work-related issues, and can offer fast access to core business processes. It is better to promote mobility inside a company through a proactive approach.

The organizations can take help of the reliable mobile app development companies that can serve as their mobility partner. There are reputed mobile app development companies that can help in the smooth transformation of a company into a mobile organization.

2. Data security and backup:

Before full-on migration to mobility strategy, the enterprises need to take care of the security concerns as most of the employees fear the security issues that come with mobility. Whether it is about establishing a virtual private network (VPN), or using cloud-based services, everything needs to be in place for a safe adoption of mobility in workplace.

The latest trend of BYOD culture among the employees also eases this transition. The organizations need to take necessary security steps to ensure seamless on-boarding for staffers who are more comfortable working on their own smartphones. The organizations can take help of the managed IT services for smooth migration to mobility.

3. Awareness among employees:

It is an important step to educate the whole workforce about the benefits they will get with mobility adoption. The employees need to be convinced with the facilities of flexible work schedule options, work from home opportunities, and other perks that they can enjoy with the new business strategy. A good work-life balance is easily manageable with workplace mobility.

With the willing acceptance of mobility can be beneficial for many organizations; the organizations are keen on mobility wave, can take help of IT infrastructure services.

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During COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdown or staying at home are the options to stop the spreading of the disease and stay safe, then remote working is one of the key step to maintain business continuity. More employees are working from home than ever before throughout the word to resume a safe and touchless work culture. Companies are also encouraging their employees to work from home considering the multiple benefits that can keep the employees safe from getting infected and also keep the business going on. Some of the benefits of remote workforces during pandemic are:

1. Improves employees’ well-being: During COVID-19 Crisis, the most important benefit of work from home facilities is the ‘safety of the employees’. With remote working facility, the employees can easily avoid any kind of infection, especially during this viral outbreak when everyone is encouraged to keep distance.

2. Location Independence: Remote working facilities allow employees to work from different parts of the world and different high-tech communication tools and software allows them to collaborate with their team. In current situation, this type of working arrangement is most likely to cope with travel and quarantine restrictions.

Another considerable benefit of working from home is having access to a broader range of job opportunities; there is no limit by geographic location. This can be especially helpful for employees and job seekers living in rural communities and small towns who have to travel a long distance to reach to the office location.

3. Increased Productivity and Performance: This is widely accredited that remote workers are more productive than those who work strictly in the office. During COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, employees are feeling especially incentivized and being even more productive. After all, this remote working facility is the only option now to manage their schedule and work in a familiar environment to keep the business moving.

4. Cost-saving: The remote working facility is a cost-efficient practice as it can reduce the office expenditure. For medium and small enterprises, cost saving is essential to cope with budget crunch during this crisis.

Basics to set up work from home culture

Though the pandemic has been the catalyst for remote work for many enterprises and their employees around the world, but it is not so easy to set up work from home culture for them with no previous experience of the same. To establish a productive and secure remote working environment, the enterprises can take help of IT infrastructure consulting services. There are some basic steps to set up remote working environment.

Help employees to adopt a remote culture:

Initially the employees need help to process of collaboration and proper communication to work from remote locations. Without proper collaboration, the remote working might faces multiple difficulties. There are IT consulting companies in India who can help the employees to understand the basics of remote working culture, safety measures, and secure connectivity, and collaboration.

Incorporate cloud solutions:

Providing every employee secure access to their work across all devices irrespective of their locations is critical in setting the stage for remote workers to be able to work efficiently. At the same time data security, back up, and recovery is also crucial. Whether it’s a matter of facilitating remote team communication, managing remote employees training, or simply getting work done, cloud solutions are very much appropriate. It can change the way people used to work in pre-pandemic condition is a better and easy way. The cloud solutions are very simple, it can be as easy as document and sheets intended for collaborative work or as sophisticated as work management tools that maintain smooth workflow across multiple teams.

Cloud service providers in India can help to achieve an atmosphere where one can keep tasks and projects progressing from any device, so an organization can empower its workforce to get the job done in a way that fits the way people work and live their lives today.

Incorporate supporting technologies:

To set up a home office, the employees need computer or laptop or other devices with stable internet connectivity, phone with conferencing facility, access to internal networks, and so on. All these are important tools for virtual collaboration between team members, communication across multiple team members working from different locations, data transferring, etc. The enterprises need to make sure that all of the employees are furnished with these basic requirements to work from home or a public location. With a remote working environment, it is very important to stay in touch with employees through different messaging services, emails, phones, and video conferences.

Using a secure connection:

To avoid data theft, malware attack, data manipulation, and so on the remote workers should have a secured Wi-Fi network along with a trusted virtual private network (VPN). The VPN serves as a buffer between the Wi-Fi connection and the user devices to offer a secure remote access facility to the employees in different parts of the world. Any transmitted data from users’ devices to server is then encrypted to protect it from tampering and interception. The enterprises can take help of managed IT services to establish a secure connection.

Clearly define roles and responsibilities:

When teams need to collaborate remotely, it is a very important step for every project to have a classified and well-defined ownership, roles and responsibilities for every team member and timeline to visualize processes from start to end. This kind of visibility is good for all team members, especially the employees who are working from different locations. Clear work distribution and visibility of work progress help them to avoid unnecessary duplication, promote a stronger collaborative atmosphere, and team relationship.

A well-defined ‘work from home’ policy containing instructions for an employee’s daily work schedule, company’s overtime policy, description of a dedicated workspace, instructions for protection of proprietary company information, etc. is also essential.

Trusting your employees:

Another important criterion to achieve success with a remote workforce is that employers need to have trust in their employees to get their jobs done when they are not working onsite.

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Like most businesses, you may also have at least a few workloads running in the cloud. Having a few applications on cloud may not necessarily indicate that you need to migrate completely to cloud. It is true that cloud migration makes your business systems more scalable, reliable and highly available. However, these are not just the only criteria that or considerations that will decide if cloud migration is for you.

A lot of factors need to be taken into consideration if this is your first cloud migration. You would need a deep cost-benefit analysis of various cloud service models and then evaluate the best strategy for your business. In this article, we would give a birdseye view of the major elements that need to be taken care of while undergoing the cloud migration.

Potential key benefits of migrating to cloud

Here are some general scenarios and the potential benefits of cloud migration.

1. Scalability

There comes a time when the traffic to your website increases tremendously. This could be because of a sustained marketing effort, word of mouth, press releases, success story getting published in high impact journals, etc. When the traffic increases suddenly and your infrastructure is not yet ready to handle that kind of traffic, there are chances of downtime. There are chances that you cannot scale resources on the fly. In such scenarios, moving to the cloud is a good choice.

2. Cost reduction

Instead of spending money on latest hardware, software or complex enterprise licensing, renewal and support fees, you should be able to cut down both capital and operating costs by using the resources of a cloud service provider.

The above representation by Gartner. The Gartner research on the impact of cost on cloud migration states that “ The research states that “cloud services can initially be more expensive than running on-premises data centers. [However, it also proves that] cloud services can become cost-effective over time if organizations learn to use and operate them more efficiently.” Gartner says that “The statement is backed by an example of workload migration for 2,500 virtual machines from an on-premises data center to Amazon Web Services EC2. The example TCO (shown in the figure above) shows an initial uptake in cloud costs and a steady decline as soon as organizations learn how to apply cost optimization best practices (as described in this other framework). The chart also shows how on-premises costs may have a long tail as organizations take time to actually shut down their data centers.”

3. Reduction of infrastructure overhead

If you are a software developer or a managed service provider, you would have come across situations where the client wants faster development and deployment and reducing the infrastructure overhead costs at the same time. Cloud migration would be an optimal solution in such cases

4. Geographic expansion of the business

If you want to expand to new geographies, setting up IT infrastructure at each location cannot just be expensive but time consuming as well. Additionally, you would need to hire staff at each location, buy the required hardware and software, etc. In some cases, you would need to have the knowhow of the regional compliance norms as well. This may not just be the case when you yourself want the geographical expansion of your company. At times, if you are a service provider, your client may want to expand to other geographies and ask you to manage this transition. In such a scenario, moving to the cloud might ease things to a great extent.

5. Streamlined Data Storage

n the current business scenario, there is an absolute overload of data. Structured and unstructured data are being bombarded through social media, IoT devices, enterprise applications such as ERPs, CRMs, web forms, etc. Depending upon your business, you may be required to store and present data for several years. This amounts to an ever increasing burden on your storage space. Cloud storage allows you to store data on the cloud through a cloud storage provider that manages and operates data storage as a service. The data is delivered to the end user on demand with just-in-time capacity and costs. This completely eliminates the need for companies to buy and manage their own data storage infrastructure.

The statistics below by T4 clearly shows the growing popularity of cloud storage:

As per T4 Labs Inc, “ The Cloud Storage Market is forecast to see continued strong growth in the forthcoming years as cloud adoption increases, and more enterprises embrace cloud-based and cloud computing services. The growth is primarily driven by increasing digitization of businesses and the exponential increase in data. Organizations are employing more mobile technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Machine Learning. This leads to large amounts of data generation. The data needs to be stored in servers with low-cost and high accessibility. Cloud Storage Services are rising as a cost-effective and flexible alternative to purchasing and managing a data storage infrastructure on-premises. Due to this, the demand in the Cloud Storage Market and Cloud Computing in general, is likely to surge considerably in the forthcoming years.”

6. Building a widely distributed development team

Finding better than average software developers remains a perpetual challenge for development companies. So, it is always important to tap talented developers that are geographically apart. Post Covid 19, this phenomenon of remote working has become even more indispensable. By moving application development to cloud and building a distributed development team, companies can reap the following benefits:

• Greater access to global talent pools
• Ability to form highly specialized teams for each project
• 24/7 project coverage with global schedules and global delivery models
• Flexibility to add contractors to scale up project coverage
• Diversity and inclusion leading to multicultural perspectives
• Cost savings on talent
• Cost saving on overhead expenses, such as office space

7. Disaster Recovery

Everything goes fine until a disaster hits the business. Therefore having a disaster recovery and business continuity plan is a must for every business irrespective of their industry. Having a remote disaster recovery location and a complete data center is not possible for small or even medium sized businesses. Neither does it make sense when cloud can be used as a solution. Cloud disaster recovery systems can be implemented very quickly. All large cloud providers have their own disaster recovery locations. So you’re always safe when your mission-critical applications are on cloud.

8. Software and hardware upgrade

Businesses do not want to run their critical customer facing applications, or even the internal applications, to run on outdated platforms. To offer the best customer experience as well as employee experience, periodic software and hardware upgrades are important. If you are with a reputed cloud provider, you do not need to worry about this. Once you have moved to the platform, all such upgrades will be taken care of and your business will always be running on the best technologies. Even if you want to upgrade your own hosted app, patches and upgrades can be much easily performed across all servers at different locations.

9. Capital Expenditure to Operational expense

Most cloud models are subscription-based. This automatically eliminates the need to pay huge amounts of money upfront. Moreover, there are no capital expenditures required to build an IT infrastructure. This means that the entire capital expenditure shifts to the operational per month or annual subscription models. Moreover, pay as you go or pay as you grow models help you to optimize your cost throughout the business cycle. You can reduce or increase subscriptions as per the business needs and put all subscription-based expenses to the operational expense category. This is a great way for startups to reduce their expenses and exposure to the risk of building over capacity.

People HR has explained this phenomenon with a very simple representation on their blog post entitled “SaaS VS On-Premise HR Systems: Pros, Cons & Hidden Costs”.

As per People, An Access Company, “ With an on-premise solution, your setup costs are almost always going to be a lot bigger. For that reason alone, if you don’t want to make a significant investment, you’re better off with an SaaS solution – you simply pay a subscription fee each month/quarter/year (depending on your provider), rather than ‘buying’ the software outright. However, that monthly subscription fee is almost always going to cost you more than paying the on-going licence fees for the software you have bought – so in that respect, an on-premise solution works out more cost-effective in the longer term. This isn’t where it ends, though – on-premise solutions come with a huge load of hidden costs that don’t show up on paper, and unless you have a very efficient way of handling them, you will normally end up paying significantly more with an on-premise solution than if you choose a hosted SaaS solution.”

We see that there are several benefits of migrating to a cloud platform. But as there are great and not that great sides of everything, there are some not so great sides of cloud migration as well. Let’s take a look at what are some of the potential risks of cloud migration.

Potential key risks of migrating to cloud

Here are some general drawbacks associated with cloud migrations.

1. Sensitive data and Compliance

As cloud offers clear advantages in terms of productivity, efficiency and cost savings, companies have embraced, and use, the cloud extensively. This has led to a complicated security dilemma between productivity, efficiency and cost versus protecting a company’s sensitive data. As part of their normal workflow, employees store sensitive corporate data in cloud apps. While doing so , they are completely unaware of the security or compliance risk this may create for their respective organizations.

SkyHigh Networks, A McAfee company, analyzed customer usage data from over 21 million users to identify the scale of sensitive data that’s stored in the cloud. One of the many insights from this analysis was that “16.2% of all the files uploaded to file-sharing services contain highly sensitive, and oftentimes, regulated data such as:

• Personally identifiable information or PII (e.g. Social Security numbers, phone numbers, home addresses, etc.)
• Protected health information or PHI (e.g. patient diagnoses, medical treatments, etc.)
• Payment data (e.g. credit card numbers, debit card numbers, bank accounts, etc.)
• Confidential data (e.g. financial records, business plans, top secret documents, source code, trading algorithms, etc.)”

2. Added latency

In order to secure data, many companies want internal users to connect with the company’s data center through conventional MLP networks rather than directly accessing the cloud. This involves latency and delays. A lot of companies are able to address this issue by moving to more sophisticated Software defined WAN (SD-WAN). But for many companies that still have traditional networking infrastructure, moving apps that need quick access to real-time data may prove rather challenging.

3. Cloud platform or vendor lock-in

The vendor lock-in problem with many cloud providers is the situation where you become dependent (i.e. locked-in) on a single cloud provider and cannot easily move in the future. If, however, you have to move to a different vendor, you would have to fork out substantial money. You may also have legal constraints depending upon the agreement you signed with the cloud provider. In essence, you are forced to continue using a cloud-based product or service regardless of the quality, just because switching away is not a viable option.

Conclusion

The potential key benefits of migrating to cloud are cost reduction, scalability, reduction in infrastructure overhead, streamlined data storage, possibility of building widely distributed development teams, quicker DR and BCP capabilities, etc. One of the major advantages of moving to the cloud is that by doing so companies can completely eliminate the large amount of capital expenditure in setting up the technology infrastructure. At the same time, there are some major drawbacks of cloud platforms. These disadvantages or drawbacks are related to the security of sensitive data, latency in the conventional networking infrastructure and vendor lock-in issues. Although there are some major drawbacks of using cloud platforms, the benefits certainly outnumber the disadvantages. If chosen carefully, a good cloud platform can completely transform your business by increasing productivity and efficiency; and by substantially decreasing the cost of operation.

The post The Key Challenges and Benefits of On Premise to Cloud Migration appeared first on Sygitech.

Saving Money With With Open Source Software For Small Business

Running a small business has a ton to do with overseeing resources efficiently and enhancing productivity at every possible opportunity. Open-source software can help.

Free Solutions To Costly Problems

Numerous small businesses depend on file servers, mail servers, shared calendars, and backup systems. While there are consistently commercial alternatives accessible, they are regularly at a serious premium versus actualizing an open-source solution.

Operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD offer a few points of interest to Windows or Mac OS. As a matter of first importance, they’re totally free. That implies you easily save hundreds, if not thousands of licensing costs for the operating system alone.

Top – 5 Benefits Of Open Source Software For Businesses

There are various reasons open-source software works. Yet one of the principal reasons is the community of individuals. For instance, Drupal has in excess of 100,000 individuals around the globe effectively contributing to the software. Open-source programming is crowd-sourced. it is code written and maintained by volunteers and community individuals. It is accessible and open to any individual who might want to copy, use, edit, and contribute for any reason. Subsequently, open-source software has its advantages — cost, flexibility, freedom, security, and community.

Security

The more individuals taking a gander at and testing a piece of code, the almost certain that a bug will be noticed, fixed, and fixed rapidly.

In the realm of closed sourced proprietary software, nobody outside of the organization understands what bugs are available. When a bug is found, it can frequently take weeks or months for companies to release a patch.

While open-source software may have increasingly “found bugs” than closed sourced options, those bugs are normally found before they can cause serious harm and quickly fixed.

The proprietary software risks another bug discovery after a major release and it can take much longer for a fix to be applied.

Flexibility

At the point when you become tied up with proprietary software, you are “secured” to whatever arrangement that software brings to the table. Open-source software is flexible. You can take it, use it, and change it to meet your specific needs.

The organizations that make proprietary software need to keep you locked in as well. Microsoft Windows and Office are prime examples. They are purposefully limited to work within the Microsoft ecosystem and intended to limit integration with 3rd party applications.

With open-source, your business is liberated from the software vendor’s vision, prerequisites, dictates, prices, needs, schedules, and what you do with the software you are paying for.

Community

Open-source software is built by a community of educated and passionate groups and people. They care about the importance of freedom and need their software to be usable and approachable. You’ll discover documentation, email lists, forums, wikis, newsgroups, or even live chats for each well known open source project.

Quality

Open-source software is bound to give what the end-user needs on the grounds that the individuals making it are regularly the end-users themselves. With open-source, it is anything but a matter of what the vendors believe that their customers need. Clients and developers contribute to the software they care about and they make it something that they would need to utilize—and they do it well. Truth be told, numerous businesses pick open source solutions for their technical superiority.

Cost

It’s free. All things considered, most of it is free.

This explanation alone ought to be sufficient for businesses to adopt open-source software that you get all the benefits at zero cost. Proprietary software (particularly business facing) can cost a fortune upfront or can drain you out over a yearly subscription.

Various Options of Open Source Applications Available to SMBs

Open-source applications replace expensive apps for home and business users, which now and again can liberate you from the weight of month to month subscription fees.

Around 5-7 years prior, most commercial software arrived in a box and required a flat fee for procurement. Nowadays, with the coming of cloud and software as a service, most applications require a normal monthly or yearly subscription.

These subscriptions cause it to appear as though the software has gotten increasingly affordable. All things considered, a couple of dollars a month doesn’t appear to be a ton. In any case, when you include those rehashing charges, users regularly pay more under the new subscription plans than they did under the old flat-fee arrangements. On the off chance that you utilize various applications, those charges can rapidly add up. What’s more, it very well may be especially difficult to justify the expense for a piece of software that you just use every so often.

Open-source software offers an alternative to paying those high fees. What’s more, most of the time, the open-source options are in the same class as or superior to similar commercial, proprietary solutions as we read in one of the above paragraphs.

The rundown beneath shows a number of open-source software options for home users, SMBs, and large enterprises. These applications can replace commercial products that can often lead to significant cost burdens. Regardless of whether buyers decide to purchase support or other services for their open-source software, open-source alternatives are commonly substantially more moderate than the similar proprietary solutions.

Accounting

• Frontaccounting
• Gnucash
• Turbocash

Business Intelligence

• Jaspersoft
• Knime
• Pentaho
• Spagobi

Business Process Management

• Processmaker

Computer-aided Design (Cad)

• Brl-cad
• Freecad

Customer Relationship Management

• Civicrm
• Concoursesuite
• Opencrx
• Splendidcrm
• Sugarcrm Community Edition
• Vtiger

Database

• Mysql
• Postgresql
• MongoDB
• Cassandra
• Kexi
• Firebird

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

• Apache Ofbiz
• Compiere
• Dolibarr Erp/Crm
• Erp5
• Idempiere
• Odoo
• Openbravo
• Sql-ledger
• Weberp
• Xtuple Postbooks

Firewall And Unified Threat Management

• Iptables
• Endian Firewall Community
• Unravel

Office Productivity

• Openoffice
• Libreoffice
• Calligra
• Neooffice

Operating Systems

• CentOS
• Ubuntu
• Debian
• Fedora/Red Hat
• Linux Mint
• Manjaro
• Opensuse/Suse
• Zorin

PDF Tools

Pdfcreator

Project Management

• OpenProject
• MyCollab
• Ganttproject
• Openxprocess
• Taiga

Web Development And Design

• Amaya
• Aptana
• Bluefish
• Bluegriffon
• Kompozer
• Openbd
• Seamonkey

The above isn’t at all an extensive rundown. These are probably the most well-known and significant classes for business applications. Although there are many categories of open source applications and every category has a number of options. However, one thing is certain. On the off chance that you are a small business, you can run essentially your whole business on top of these open source applications. You may need to buy support for a couple of them yet even the support cost would be a lot lesser than the TCO of any subscription-based application. Luckily, we are contrasting these open source applications with a subscription-based licensing model. If we compared them in the age of all on-premise applications, this comparison would have appeared absolutely mind-blowing.

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As the Corona pandemic takes in its mercy every across the globe, organizations are facing two core challenges: saving the lives of their people and at the same time tirelessly facilitating the transition to virtual business models. As Covid-19 shows no significant sign of slowing down anytime soon, companies must take immediate actions to reduce disruption of workforce caused by remote workforce, almost complete lock down in some countries, and the ineffectiveness of a remote work setup. However, as there is always a silver lining, companies should consider this crisis as an opportunity to address some of the vulnerabilities in their prevailing business models, and create a resilient enterprise capable of not just withstanding such crisis but also capable of bouncing back in the event of such situations – enabled by an IT framework that is robust as well as responsive.

Achieving Scalability In Remote Workforce

Corona pandemic has revealed many vulnerabilities that the traditional IT enterprise setup have been exposed to, which have been comfortably overlooked so far. Many small to mid-sized organizations had to completely bring their operations to standstill as they didn’t have the plan to deal with a disaster of this magnitude. Many other organizations realized that they were not equipped to guarantee complete productivity with the setup that they had built over several years. Such organizations are now exploring ways to improve their crisis-led situation as soon as possible.

Setting up a completely virtual model and scaling it enterprise-wide to ensure business continuity, is a challenging task. It’s even more challenging when the disruption has already taken place, as in the case of Covid-19, and there is much less time to transition. Having said that, achieving such goals with optimum business results is possible by deploying right practices and timely implementation. There are several examples of how, by adopting best practices, organizations were able to:

• Optimize operations through IT
• Mitigate security risks associated with digital workspace
• Maintain optimal workforce productivity
• Ensure seamless communication across the virtual teams

Irrespective of the industry being served or physical location of the company, Managed IT service providers specializing in remote infrastructure management can help organizations set up their virtual teams and ensure optimal agility, mobility and collaboration at scale.

Ensuring data security and employee safety

Great managed hosting providers that have the expertise in managing IT infrastructure remotely have proved to be immensely valuable at the time of this pandemic when companies are suddenly deciding to go on virtual models of working for several months or may be several years. With years of experience in supporting clients with complex IT infrastructures and with deep expertise in business continuity planning, such service providers have been instrumental in keeping businesses afloat– ensuring data security and employee safety at the same time. If carefully selected, successful Managed Services Providers (MSPs) can be fully relied upon for managing mission-critical applications and systems for customers and employees across the globe. Their role becomes even more critical at the time of crisis when organizations need the expertise and they do not have much time to reflect. In a nutshell, a managed IT service provider can help organizations with data security in one of the following ways:

• Ensuring that an organization’s secure data doesn’t land in the wrong hands
• Maintaining relevant data with the appropriate employees, allowing the organization to control who can access which files
• Bridging security gaps across applications, networks, and end-point devices

Managing Mobility & Mobile Device Management

Managed IT service providers help provide the required access the employees of an organization need while keeping the data secure. From hosted email on any device to mobile device management that ensures data security, MSPs ensure that organizations adhere to the necessary security guidelines that allow organizations to offer flexible work programs.

Customer Service Management

As Corona is here to stay, organizations would need to adjust their strategies accordingly. Companies that have not yet evaluated or used VoIP must need to deploy a hosted VoIP. As there are too many vendors offering VoIP plans, it gets confusing at times to select the vendors. In such a scenario, a managed service provider can help you select the right vendor depending on the organization’s need. MSPs can also help implement and manage the VoIP system, onboarding and off-boarding users, password management, payment, etc. VoIP is more than just a phone system. Hosted VoIP is a complete customer service system that can be integrated with various applications such as prospect database, CRM, Marketing automation tools, etc. Outsourcing VoIP infrastructure, in addition to other IT services, allows companies to focus on their core activities and let the MSP take care of some of the following tasks to ensure a smooth customer service management:

• Assigning dial-in codes to put clients in touch with on-call teams
• Ensuring that the voicemail is delivered anywhere that is convenient, from support staff cellphone to the laptop or from one phone to the other
• Maintaining consistency across multiple geographic locations of the virtual team members This can be done by assigning extensions to a single number that reaches team members wherever they choose to have their calls delivered
• Managing calls and voicemails maintaining data security
• Integrating CRM with the VoIP system
• Maintaining call logs for remote training and compliance purposes

Ongoing IT Support

Managed IT service providers can assist remotely to help fix day to day issues of the virtual teams that are related to PC, Mac, or mobile devices, troubleshoot network or server issues, install and upgrade software, reset passwords or authorize data access. And, because problems can arise at any time as remote teams work across various time zones, MSP support personnel are just a phone call or a live chat away.

In all, good MSPs, just through their on-going support, help a great deal in helping organizations achieve some of the core IT and business objectives – such as increasing efficiency through collaboration, productivity by deploying tools, and agility by simplifying processes. They also help cut down on IT costs by converting a lot of fixed resource costs into operating costs.

Good Managed Service Providers Are To Witness A Boom In The Post Covid-19 World

As per a study conducted by Business Today, “55 per cent of organisations turn to service providers for their ability to help ‘reduce security risks’ with value-added service they offer”.

The report entitled “ Managed service providers to see boom in post-coronavirus world”, further states the following (quoted verbatim):

• 45% of organisations globally say they will outsource more over the next 18 months
• Cloud infrastructure outsourced to service providers is set to increase in 18 months to 77%
• Ability to drive outcomes related to cost, performance and agility crucial for MSP clients

Managed IT services providers are likely to see a ton of work coming their way as nearly half of global organisations are looking to outsource more IT services to managed service providers over the next one and a half year (at least). As per another report by NTT (commissioned by IDG), “nearly 61 per cent of the 1,250 respondents from various sectors, who came from a cross-section of IT and business leadership positions across 29 countries in USA, Europe, MEA, APAC and Australia, were outsourcing over 25 per cent of their existing IT work. Nearly 45 percent of these global organisations are now looking to outsource more”.

As per the executive vice president, Managed Services Go-to-market at NTT, Damian Skendrovic, organizations want more than a “supplier.” They are looking beyond suppliers to find partnerships that help them not only adapt new ways of working during the crisis, but also help them bounce back quickly when the businesses get back on the track post Covid-19.

Proliferation of End Point Devices And Accelerated Digitization Will Need Managed Service Providers to Pitch In

Due to long-term pandemic, most organizations have completely adopted remote working as the new normal. However, this has also exposed organizations to a range of risks or IT-related threats. This has led the majority of organisations globally to turn to managed service providers to help ‘reduce security risks’. For many organisations their “forced or accelerated” digital journey has fundamentally changed. They are focusing more around security deployment, configuration and management. Due to work-from-home models or remote work models, there has been a sudden proliferation of end point devices. Hence, the traditional perimeter security model is now being challenged. The extremely rapidly growing digital footprint across the global, across industries and across departments needs to be highly secured and needs to be protected from malicious activities targeting the remote worker. As more organisations react to this situation positively and consider this as an opportunity to prioritise and accelerate digital transformation, the good service providers would need to pitch in more deeply and act as a partner. As per various studies, currently nearly 70 percent of work related to cloud infrastructure technologies and 50 percent of work around IT security are currently being outsourced. This figure is likely to increase to close to 80 percent and 65 per cent respectively over the next 1.5 years.

Post-Pandemic IT Strategy Planning And The Increased Role of Managed Service Providers

Mankind has witnessed these moments in history earlier as well, where almost everything changes for good seemingly overnight. During Corona, with many of us being “locked-down” for two months or more, it might not seem as overnight. However, the speed at which changes are taking place across industries is rather a bit too rapid. IT organizations have been forced to make decisions that will have a certain and long-term impact on the future of their organizations. These decisions have been taken within extreme time and resource constraints, in many cases without a lot of information or guidelines to be able to make the best choices. This is where a trustworthy managed services partner can be of immense value. Such managed service providers understand your organization’s goals, challenges, and strategies required to meet the goals by overcoming the challenges. As pandemic of this scale and magnitude is new to everyone, specialist MSPs can be a great partner in designing and executing a post-pandemic IT strategy for organizations.

Here is how Managed Service Providers can help in designing and executing a post-pandemic IT strategy for organizations:

IT Budgeting

The major challenge for businesses today is sustaining themselves in the face of an imminent recession. As revenue dwindles, cost needs to be managed effectively. Harsh cost cutting measures need to be taken across strategic business units – including IT – going forward. And while there are bound to be strong reactions against trimming of IT budgets, most organizations would have to address inevitable challenges such as a relatively longer-term support of a virtual workforce, which is an obvious threat landscape. Consequently, there is going to be a strong need for comprehensive, multi-layered security to protect the data being exchanged to and from relatively less secure devices. Now is the time to start planning. The longer an organization procrastinates to start building a virtual enterprise, the stronger would be the chances of them to bog down under the burden of reduced revenue, increased cost of transition and greater security risks. If the organization is not prepared for this change, or if they’re taking longer to act on, they must look for specialized Managed IT providers to support them manage this change at scale and at the pace that the situation demands.

Bridging Gaps in IT Policies, IT Infrastructure, And IT Solutions

In the days weeks of Covid-19 spread, governments across the globe ordered non-essential businesses to shut their shops temporarily or embrace remote work models. Most organizations quickly shifted to a remote workforce. The necessary tools were cobbled together to ensure business continuity. Sooner than later, most small and even mid-sized organizations discovered their security initiatives weren’t as thorough as they should have been. This was not just the case with small and medium businesses. Some large corporations, too, discovered gaps in existing policies, infrastructure, and IT assets that had rendered them ineffective to be able to deliver services to their clients.

Organizations need to deep dive and analyze the gaps and invest in more comprehensive infrastructure and technology, business continuity planning, and remote workforce support. All this needs to be done when there is not much time. If not addressed, the companies may face compliance issues, and even lose their long term customers. Taking measures haphazardly may make things go worse. Hence it is always advisable, and less expensive, to utilize the services of reputable managed service providers and let them handle gaps in policies and infrastructure to ward off any compliance or security issues.

Leveraging Investment in Technology to Achieve Operational Effectiveness And Cost Optimization

There is a direct and positive correlation between technology investment and stability during economic downturns. Technology investment has long been deemed as a strategic cost-saving measure because technology allows business to streamline operations, quickly and easily, facilitating virtual models, ensuring cost-competitiveness and agility. And outsourcing IT can help organizations save even more as the cost of hiring full-time talent to identify gaps, strategize and implement technology is far more than the cost of hiring an MSP for a relatively short period of time.

To sum up, the quality managed services providers can help organizations determine the technologies it needs to make sure that technology investment aligns with business goals and help in achieving the following:

• Building resilience in the time of crisis
• Ensuring business continuity
• Supporting remote workers/virtual teams
• Implementing robust security mechanisms for less secure devices and networks
• Strengthening overall technology infrastructure across stacks
• Improving resource allocation and utilization
• Reducing risk

Conclusion

Companies plan to utilise the expertise of managed service providers over the next 18 months and form deeper relationships. Security remains a core concern for organisations due to a sudden explosion of relatively less secure endpoints in remote environments. The pandemic has opened up a gold-mine for cyber-criminals as endpoint devices and networks are less secure now as they were when things were not completely virtual or remote. Ensuring employees remain connected securely, productively and efficiently is top of the leadership agenda. This has fuelled the need of good managed IT service providers across the globe.

Whether organizations want to outsource most or all of their IT infrastructure management, or they simply want to optimize the systems already in place, MSPs provide personalized IT expertise that saves money and provides the manpower that ensures organization’s infrastructure is always an asset – never a liability – not just at the time of a pandemic but otherwise as well.

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As business leaders today, you need to demonstrate both vulnerability and transparency. This comes with humility and truthfulness. although the present scenario is changing, there are many leaders in the present era who are reluctant to let your guard down, their feelings and admit that they do not have the answers to all the questions. Rapid changes are accelerating so quickly that it is impossible for one individual at the top to have all the answers. Business leaders need to trust the people around them for answers to difficult problems, support, and knowledge. With COVID-19, all the vulnerabilities have outbroken. The only way to thrive and survive in today’s workforce is to have all the hands-on Deck. Old misconceptions, merits, and beliefs die hard. One of those myriads is that vulnerability is a sign of weak leaders. It was said that a leader who showed vulnerability will lose the respect of office employees and colleagues.Today, nothing could be further away from the truth as now it has been observed that leaders who can be vulnerable are healthy and create more effective workplaces. It has been seen and observed that vulnerability is the best measure for openness. Whether it’s a personal or professional level, vulnerabilities have held out everyone in the best possible manner. Showing oneself to others and being vulnerable is a sign of self-confidence and courage in the leader. This doesn’t mean that you are spelling out some emotions or spilling out all the beans. Successful leaders know when the place and time are right to show their authentic and real selves to the audience.Here are a few reasons why vulnerability is an attribute for the leaders-

Decreases Tension and Stress at Work

Have you ever worked in a place with an elephant in the room and nobody had a conversation about it? Tiptoeing around the secrets and avoiding them at work can be very depressive. If everyone sees that the leaders are able to bring up and popular areas for discussion, they will feel a sense of freedom and less stress about having a conversation. So, if you bring forward all your vulnerabilities as business leaders, you’re definitely going to encourage your employees.

The flow of Ideas, Creativity, and Innovation

If you acknowledge that leaders don’t have the answers to all the questions it will give them a freedom to have their input and feedback as per the ideas considered. By admitting the mistakes, managers can give their expert professionals more room to contribute their ideas and feedback to the organization. The leaders who accept their mistakes and forgive themselves are the examples of creative leaders. Because this is something which leads to more ideas coming for at all the levels. It results in a dynamic and competitive organization. This is why vulnerability is very essential for business leaders.

Better Communication Flow

A business leader is the one who says what is acceptable and what is not acceptable to talk about in an organization. If you are able to stay open-minded and share information authentically & honestly, a business leader will send a strong message that it is not only acceptable but very valued throughout the organization. Team members will feel that it is OK to open up and share things with each other. This will keep the flow of communication level positive and all the communication channels will flow smoothly. One of the greatest ideas to start a meeting and get started with a brief taken around the tables with every individual because this will give an insight into where and how each of the individuals coping in their real-world and understanding the environment. Empathy is something that leads to healthy communication flow.

Problems Identified Earlier

Most of the time people are afraid to bring problems and bad news to their leaders as they are scared that information will not be received well. They’re scared that the information will not be well received. The employees who see their leaders being vulnerable and admitting mistakes are the ones who are more likely to come forward as they feel less likely to feel the retribution of the bearer of bad news.

Better Teamwork and Cooperation

The organizations with a loop and closed leaders lends people to look for ways to impress the leaders. There is a great occurrence of events like backstabbing and not sharing the information among the staff because of the authoritative positions. These are the leaders who are constantly trying to determine and guess what goes above them. They, therefore, spend their time and energy trying to figure out what and how to get the approval of the ones who wore the superior position and when getting a promotion. This is something which could be spent more productively if you all work together as a team for the betterment of the organization.

Creates an Amazing Workplace

An organization or workplace which is full of secrets is not a very fun place to work. Always being cautious or having a caring attitude is not good when it comes to sharing. This will dampen down the spirit of the employees. A business leader who is vulnerable and open and authentically raises the mood of the work environment is the one who helps in creating a healthy and vibrant atmosphere that everyone is looking forward to it.

Emotional Connections & Turnover

In most of the research points being emotionally connected to an organization is one of the deciding factors on whether or not people will stay in the organization. Honest, open, and authentic leadership is more likely to help employees feel a connection at an emotional level and stay in the organization. They are the employees who are less likely to jump whether it is for the money or for the other benefits for staff.
To briefly conclude, vulnerable business leaders lead a better crowd rather than the ones who hide everything from their team members.

Need expert advise? our IT Consultancy can help you

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IT strategy is also known as a digital strategy which is the application of all the digital technologies that form a new differentiating business capability with the help of business models. In the near future, all the business strategies will be converted into digital strategies.

Evolving the Definition of Business Strategy

Digital strategies aim to focus on using technology for the improvising the nature of business performance. Whether it is creating new products or realigning the current processes, it specifically focuses on the direction of the organization that it takes for the new competitive projects. All in all,  it must be well in touch with technology along with the text that it will use to achieve the changes. In the present era, technology has integrated with the businesses to become something which is more than software or hardware. As digital technology becomes more innovative and indicates that the organizations are moving there in the journey of digital transformation. Soon, digital strategies will be business strategies. For now, the term focuses only on the efforts that have been made by digital initiatives. It is very crucial to remember that digital strategy is a thing and another process. It eventually leads to the creation of road maps and blueprints. you can easily keep on changing the particular tactics that you have decided to pursue, there would be a clear commitment to understanding as soon as you understand the concept.

The Best IT Strategy Is Business Strategy

One of the major questions that you need to ask yourself is why do smart IT leaders adapt business strategies to become priceless for the organizations? Over the past few years, the alignment between information technology and business has become increasingly intense to the success of the organization. This is something that has given a shift to the information technology leaders and accepted the partners for the business. At least in some of the cases, it has. There are too many business leaders who still overlook it as nothing more than an internal service provider. It is now time for us to change this perception because information technology has been proven very essential to the success of the business organization. This will start only with recognition which is relevant.

IT, as usual, is no longer an option

As a matter of fact, it must be understood that it is no longer an option button necessity for every business organization. There are many IT departments starting after builders with the expanded focus. However, now it’s time to accelerate the business with whatever is possible. It’s time to redefine the markets and industries. In this technology-driven environment. It is like an anchor that is slowing down the ability to respond to an adapter for an organization. This is something which was believed earlier. However with the strategies that are emerging rapidly, the speed of such emergence and all the projections that are uncertain is diminishing.

Business strategy is king

Most of the businesses still think that it is not something that can quickly adapt to their commitments. Whether it is service contracts, infrastructure commitments, platform upgrades aur anything else, the legacy of it thinking is not something which can help in all such cases. Under these situations, business strategy is termed as a king. Organizations have come to a point that all the strategic plans are being this drafted by the pace of digital transformation. This is an idea by the business leaders who continuously monitor the external operating environment by identifying the opportunities in threads that may affect their business. However, it is very important for IT business leaders to succeed in this type of environment and how we can do it.

Execution to Intelligence

For quite some time, it has been an executive function. From the largest program to the tiniest desk ticket, everything was scared around software hardware and network infrastructure. However, this model became obsolete every month and from execution focus to the intelligent focus to stay reliable and relevant for everyone. It means that IT leaders are definitely experts who have come up with so many innovative ideas about emerging technologies. IT leaders are the ones who have understood the disruptive and emerging opportunities that have been ignored by the business leaders. Therefore, it is necessary for business leaders to accept this guidance and make the rise decisions by focusing on the sources, money, and work.

Steps for syncing strategies

The cracks of the latest IT strategy are complicated and integrated with the normal strategy to the point that it becomes the content of the business strategy. It has a bonafide seat at the business table. If you really want to line all the work as per the common objectives, you need to take 4 steps given below – 

• Understanding the business environment and the organization which operates in it
• Contribution to the development of long-term values, vision and strategy
• Embracing the diverse technology-driven models
• Ensuring that all the models are business focused

Conclusion

It’s time for information technology leaders to claim their place at the business strategic table. However, they cannot do it alone. They need some guidance from the business leaders who can recognize the importance of IT support. Because there are integrated strategies that cannot be developed without support and leadership. So, the leaders have an amazing opportunity to evolve from the role of service providers to be a trusted advisor and on their part of making the entire business successful. However, to do so they must change how they think and perceive themselves and technology. The ones who succeed will become the driving force for the organization will be famous and successful. But the ones who are not willing to change and consider themselves as sidelined will become obsolete.

Need expert advise? our IT Consultancy can help you

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As a matter of fact, a combined effort by the IT professionals and business leaders can not only help the companies to save money but will also prepare them for the return of growth. Since the economic downturn, many organisations are looking for every opportunity to cut costs. It is an important part of total spending with around 5% or more in some industries. This is because of the direct contributions to profits and revenue. The revenue is often very difficult to assess for the IT business. Today, everyone is ready to squeeze their budget for cost-effectiveness. However, finding substantial savings is not that easy. Most of the businesses have already spent years in reducing costs in procurement, operations and outside services. Among the other services, they have consolidated help desk and data centres, virtualize servers instead of buying the new ones. They have rationalised the procurement processes, outsourced services and postponed upgrades to lessen the expensive offshore costs.

The Complexities of IT Market

The IT architecture of an organisation is a formal description of its business operations. From the processes to functions, business databases, applications which support them and the equipment and services which run the applications are all included in the IT architecture. If you talk about the idea of structure in detail, there are six layers in it. In the major cases, organisations codify it in a blue book which details the workings of the six layers along with their roles and responsibilities, processes for managing the whole system. The document is something which also provides a road map and rules to guide the additions and upgrades.

Not just users, Google too!

Like users, Google too loves the website that works with bolstering speed. Because it understands that the page load time is the key for the better user experience and hence, they rank websites higher that have a faster load time compared to the rest. So, if your page load time is slow, then Google and your competitors will be bypassing you soon. Research has further confirmed that mobile users do not wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load or content to appear. Here are some interesting stats:

Mapping the IT architecture

Most organisations have an IT architecture but only a few know how to control it. Instead, it is something which grows organically and the outcome is often proliferating, duplicating its systems and inconsistent data along with makeshift integration. To make the matters worse, at most large organisations even with the divisions, many IT professionals and initiatives are driven by the short term business wants and needs as compared to any long-term blueprint.This operational reality is evident for the software applications and the business processes it supports. The search type of software is basically designed and deployed to suit the needs of one business unit division, with relatively little regard for the impact of it on the whole organization for the overall IT architecture.

Integrated Architectural Approach to Reduce Costs and Complexity

Today the major economic crisis has invented a unique opportunity to make order of magnitude reductions in the IT layers and costs and upgrading the professional IT architecture. What is needed is a precisely defined IT blueprint with white guidelines from the organization for the efficient and appropriate systems, processes and applications.

With the help of this development, organizations will be able to create a standardized and consistent infrastructure to minimize the unnecessary complexity costs and duplication in the system. This is why the chief executive officers must communicate with the cross company team of its leaders and business units for an architectural review and transformation. There’s a faced joined approach
which focuses on the layers of cost reduction levers and it also helps in revealing and realizing substantial savings as far as the norms and guidelines are concerned for the IT initiatives. In fact, many organizations who take up the student can also create more flexible and efficient IT architecture which will help the staff in thriving greater heights.

Moreover, to create an efficient IT architecture, the chief executive officers and business leaders must evaluate the business processes and requirements that underlie the existing architecture and then further explore other efficient alternatives without even a high degree of collaboration. The right starting point of initiative is the high level business where the IT task force provides cross organizational governance along with accountability.

The main objective of the team is to review the existing architecture and create an important baseline for the new transformation in order to define the process engineering that systems and projects comply with as per the desired architecture. This is helpful in identifying short term long term and midcap opportunities for cost savings and improvements. If you really want to minimise disruption and maximize all the benefits, there’s a three-phase approach which begins with easier changes and then works gradually towards the substantial once.

Three Phased Approach

Three faced approach is basically initiated for the IT transformation and minimizing costs and disruption to the business. It includes the following phases

Phase 1 Immediate Cleanup

In this foremost phase, the team of professionals need to identify a few rapid wins via cost reductions which will help in building up momentum for larger initiatives. There are three levers who are the most important at this point

• Rationalize software licenses
• Get rid of the non compliant projects
• Decommission never used applications

Phase 2 Reduction in Complexity

The second phase focuses on making the whole IT architecture less intricate. All you need to do is reverse the ad-hoc expansion of the applications, customized systems and processes for enforcing a complete reference to the desired architecture. For this, organisations can use the number of levers during this phase such as

• Enforcing out-of-the-box solutions
• Encouraging reuse of resources
• Consolidating data basis and developing an integrated data model
• Standardization of technology
• Production in interface complexity
• Consolidating the systems to do similar things

Phase 3 Business Innovation

In most of the times, organisations consider completely reinventing or transforming themselves. In this case, it plays a major role in implementing big changes. The third most ambitious space of architectural transformation is about making board changes in the organisation. The company’s must look beyond the downturn and must consider changing their IT infrastructure in more radical ways to drive support and strategic innovation towards the fundamentally new areas of growth. Under this, twp levers are relevant

• Assessment of alternate operational models
• Shaping the future for cost effectiveness

With a clear mandate from the top management, business leaders and IT professionals on the core business objectives, you can easily cut down the cost and gain a reformed architecture. With the three phases given above, IT is exerting more control over the critical functions like human resources, finance and sales.

Need expert advise? our IT Consultancy can help you

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Cost Saving Opportunities Neglected By Businesses

Running an organization is not cheap, there are always overheads and outgoing which seem to secretly save for the revenue of the business. Still, there are many businesses that neglect the following simple money-saving opportunities. Here are some of the opportunities that you need to utilize to save your money and time

Cut down on Meetings

You all might have been in a meeting which was meant to last for around 30 minutes but you come out of the conference hall after 2 hours. You look at your notes and realize that apart from the doodles and the odd bullet points, there’s nothing productive that you have achieved. Every organisation is guilty of booking in the meetings which were unnecessary. However, in some of the circumstances, a face to face discussion is one of the best ways to work through a problem or generate creative ideas. Cut down on the meetings and this will definitely boost the productivity of the employees. Set an agenda and try to identify the desired outcomes before the scheduled meetings with their employees. Keep everything focused and only take in those people who are required at the conference. This way you are going to save time, money, and for sure coffee cups!

Utilization of Online Tools

Online tools are a fantastic invention and yet there are many business organizations that still underutilize the capability of online tools. In this global economy, your organization may be working with partners and suppliers all over the world with different office locations. So, instead of spending a fortune on the airfares, train tickets for expensive phone calls, why don’t you use Skype? All you require is an internet connection and there you go with all the important conferences. You can easily host online meetings over Skype calls or video conferencing. This will definitely save up your time and boost the productivity of the team.

Power of Social Media

Social media has been one of the most important innovations in the recent era. It is something that connects people, brands, and businesses in a way that you have never seen before. Now the world has opened up and organizations can interact with customers in real. Instead of spending thousands of pounds and billions of dollars on billboards and banners that do not even target specific markets, you can advertise your business with social strata. Social media is something that allows businesses to capitalize on customer experiences. By communicating with the consumers, responding to complaints, answering queries, reciprocating shares, and likes, a beautiful relationship is built between the business and the clients. there are many paid aspects of social media and you can use them without wasting any time. It is one of the simplest measures that you can follow to cut down the cost of business.

Green Environment

With carbon tax is getting higher all the time it is the best interest of every business to accommodate green measures. The green measures are available in variety of forms, from timers to LED light bulbs, imposing print elements to solar panels, there are wide variety of options to suit every budget and business. It is a cost saving option for the businesses and will also help you make more money as it will boost your productivity. By investing in the initial outlay, the reduction in the energy bills is going to be for the long run. It’s a long time investment.

Comparison Websites

A trustworthy comparison website is the best friend of every business. While there are some of the third party intermediaries who gave a bad reputation from the cowboys of the industry, this should not harm your business from working at a better alternative. There are many comparison websites that pride themselves on their commitment to clean up the industry. Third parties are very important for the business. This is because they work on the behalf to save your money. Due to the customer base and size, the comparison websites are in a far better position to negotiate affordable deals on your behalf. This does not only save your money but also your time and efforts. FB brings together business leaders and IT professionals, we can easily create new ways to make the business grow and reduce costs. This will lead to greater flexibility, quicker time to market and more efficient business processes with cost-effective techniques. For all the organizations that see the present troubles as a chance of not only controlling the costs but also to reposition themselves, this is one of the best cost-effective techniques for them. It’s time to restructure the IT architecture as this will be one of the most valuable moves for the organization.

All the tips are definitely going to help you run the business more in an affordable and effective manner. It’s time for you to find out how much the business can save with the cost reduction techniques.

Need expert advise? our IT Consultancy can help you

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