It was certainly refreshing to hear that ‘all bets are now off’ and the climate is being created to accelerate growth and innovation, as there is no doubt that this is long overdue. However it did leave me wondering just how many organisations will be readily equipped to swiftly take up the mantle of IT-enabled change and transformation. For many, ‘thinking big’ in IT has not been the order of the day for some time, as the panacea of NPfIT was expected to deliver at scale and as a result, many Trusts have not undertaken the strategic investments required in IT infrastructures in favour of stop-gap, point solutions to fix particular needs. Indeed, in many NHS organisations, IT is too often perceived as a cost centre, with numerous financially driven initiatives aiming to extract the highest possible saving from the service, whilst hoping the lights will stay on. For real IT-enabled transformation to be seen in action, this needs to change – and fast.

Of course, no one really knows what the future holds, but there are definitely some givens – most notably that the requirement for mobile access to information will continue to increase, that the plethora of devices needing to be connected to our networks will continue to grow as the ‘internet of things’ grows ever larger, and that staff, patients and the public will continue to expect to ‘bring their own’. Similarly, we are all well aware by now about the ‘pandemic’ of long-term condition management brought about by an ever-ageing society; the need to move towards wider use of self-management, home-based care and remote consultations and in particular, the need for supporting technology solutions such as telemedicine, telecare and telemonitoring. And we know that the list of expectations for condition-related information and knowledge is growing ever longer too. Patients now expect their journeys through the healthcare system to feel fully inclusive as the dynamic between patient and care provider changes to a more collaborative process where care is provided with patients, and where care providers are partners in a shared journey.

But none of this change can happen successfully without the right building blocks being in place to support it. Although the economics of supply and demand will ensure that the IT industry develops marketable products to meet the industry-perceived healthcare IT needs of the future, all of the required technology and process innovations are fundamentally reliant on a comprehensive, architectural underpinning infrastructure, the lack of which will really challenge the ability of many organisations to keep pace. To help address this growing need, organisations need to quickly understand how to leverage what they already have, maximise the benefits of system and infrastructure interoperability, and then invest wisely in the strategic component parts that can enable them to deliver a fit for purpose, intelligent platform on which to innovate, scale and succeed. The very considerable danger here is the creation of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. We already read regularly enough about postcode lotteries in healthcare provision and inequity of access to drug treatments, but the potential for inequity in the ability for organisations to deliver safe, innovative and effective care supported by the latest technology is substantially higher.

In the closing comments of one of the plenary sessions at HC2012, one of the speakers made the point that the only way to get clinicians to adopt, adapt and innovate was to make healthcare IT ‘really exciting’ in the way that Apple did for the iPhone and iPad – making it something that clinicians, patients and the public REALLY want, and can get excited about. Whilst that is certainly true – without the right core, intelligent infrastructure in place in the first place, I fear their excitement may be very short lived…

There seems to be quite a lot of discussion this week about how and why Whitehall plan to make a significant number of their staff work from home during the summer Olympics. (see one such article here).

I’ve spoken before about remote working, including the impact that the 2012 games will have on staff travel and productivity and how you can easily and quickly overcome it, but I still get the firm impression that people hear or acknowledge the words yet still do little about it.

Like it or not we are slowly and inexorably changing in the way that we work around our office space.  The Olympics is just one of many many reasons why adapting now will make organisations more effective in the future.

Do I think that Whitehall staff being absent from their workplace during the games will affect how efficient the are?  Yes I do.  But not because the technology isn’t available to address this, and not because the government may have failed to make it fully available.  The primary problem I think there will be a step change in productivity is most likely to be because of Layer 8 – the user.

Trials or not, users have to have time to adapt to new ways of operating.  Staff roles are not created equally, and therefore technology does not always fully resolve specific tasks.  This invariably – in the short term at least - brings delays whilst people adjust to the new way of communicating and transacting.  In time, many of these delays and challenges will be mitigated as individuals develop more fluid ways of collaborating in their new environment, but not all of them.

There are of course, and always will be some things you have to do in person, as a group or at a specific location.  So remote working should be more about doing efficiently & correctly what you can do wherever you are, but also making sure you still have good access to the resources and locations you traditionally use when you need them.  Put simply, the best remote working policy is one of balance between the workplace and somewhere else.  Unfortunately, there are no set rules one what that specifically is – it’s something we learn and cultivate as we transform our work styles over time.

Whether you agree or disagree with the Government’s approach to staying functional over the coming months is a matter of opinion, but like it or not, the world around us is changing, and just like the Bring Your Own Device wave that is sweeping across organisations is changing how IT delivers, secures and manages data and resources, so too will we see a similar paradigm shift in how the location will dictate and direct our working processes.

People make business happen, not places.  You are the office.  You just don’t realise it yet.

Believe it or not, there was a time a few years back when I was, how shall I put this… borderline obese.  There I’ve said it, it’s out there, so publish and be damned!

But enough about me, I wanted to share with you something I read this week in the press, and its inevitable relation to the business community.  The story I refer to is titled ”Fat tax’ for overweight fliers welcomed by majority of men’, and can be found here.  As an ex-fatty, this really did make me chuckle, as it epitomises the extreme lengths we will now go (not least the good ol’ airlines) to save money & be carbon friendly at the same time.  And to make matters worse, even though obesity is at its highest level ever in the UK, most people surveyed think it’s rather a good idea!

But why does this concern businesses I hear you ask?  Good question.  My first thoughts when I read this was to think of all those poor holiday makers having to publicly stand on a pair of airport scales (go on, picture it) like their luggage, waiting to find out if the night before’s curry-o-thon was just one poppadum too far.  But my second thought was far more practical…

In these days of corporate cost-efficiencies and savings, imagine how such a sensitive matter will impact business travel.  What’s a boss to do?  Implement slimming classes in the workplace?  Deduct the cost difference from the overweight person’s pay at the end of the month?  Only employ skinny people that need to fly to do their jobs? – the options are almost endless.  Yep, I can see a future where people are shaving off all their hair, and wearing extra light clothing just to get through the check-in unscathed and with their humility intact…

There is of course a far simpler way to go about this; don’t travel unless you really really have to.  In today’s modern world of unified communications, collaboration and cool gadgetry, surely some significant arguments can be championed (amongst those already well established ones) for our bigger-boned brethren out there to use technology rather than face the public shaming of a ‘fat tax’.  Voice, video and web collaboration are steadily finding their way to most people’s desktops, let alone the boardrooms.  You’d be amazed just how much business travel actually costs an organisation every year when you combine all of the the travel, hoteling, dining and peoples time costs together.  Go on, work it out?  I dare you.

Well, that’s a weight off my mind…

Personally, I have been working with Cisco for a number of years and you are really starting to see how their vision of 5 or 10 years ago is coming together – the network being the core enabler in helping the enterprise solve the business problems of today and in the future.

It was a definite improvement on messaging and strategy than in previous years, and well worth the investment of time.  While there is still a lot of work to be done, which Cisco acknowledge, one thing that Cisco clearly understands is how all the various market trends & transitions currently taking place will influence and shape what the enterprise will look like in the future.  The big underlying themes which will have a huge impact on us all over the next five years are not surprisingly; video, BYOD and Cloud.

BYOD is the one that really excites me more than any others.  The ability to allow anyone in your business, regardless of where they are or what device they are working on (corporate or otherwise), to access the network and communicate with anyone else using any form of communication.   What Cisco managed to articulate at this conference is their vision to provide secure voice and video functionality across those same devices regardless of brand.This has to be big game changer, doesn’t it?  Where I think Cisco have this spot on is that you cannot achieve this vision without embedded network intelligence that is able to make dynamic decisions and ensure traffic gets delivered to where the user expects seamlessly.  In my opinion BYOD has to be a top priority item for every CIO in this year’s IT strategy.  Imagine the productivity and efficiency gains that can be provided to the business and CEO…  It does however require a carefully considered approach before moving down the road to implementing….

It is on this point that I want to focus, as I believe that by having a ‘considered approach’ which is in Block’s DNA, and in wanting to empathise and solve the problems that each of our customer’s face is the key reason I believe we picked up such a prestigious global award – alongside multi-billion $ fellow award winners like IBM, AT&T, the list goes on…

It is not all about booking large deals though, and it’s great that Cisco recognise that companies like Block really bring something different to the party – the ability to innovate and solve real business problems with vendors such as Cisco and other eco partner technologies.

Our work was singled out with one of the world’s leading children’s hospitals for a business-changing video and collaboration solution that incorporated in-theatre video, remote diagnostics and telemedicine.  It was the approach that we took to achieve the result that I believe differentiates Block and our people from those of our competitors.  As part of this process, our lead video consultant scrubbed up and observed live theatre procedures to ensure we understood exactly what problems the hospital where trying to solve.  Sound familiar? Mmm…..

This is why I was so proud to receive the award.  You cannot achieve a result that is truly business transformational without a great team that is prepared to go that extra mile to deliver.  Congratulations to everyone involved.

What this means for all of us is that roughly 90% of all the UK’s petrol stations could be forced to close during these industrial action periods.  Interestingly, the 7900 petrol stations which could be affected, are supplied by only 7 companies.

So once again, the disruptive time bomb is ticking, and it is yet another reason to remind us all that organisations and businesses can still remain reasonably (if not wholly) operative and effective with a well planned Unified Communications & Systems Access strategy, where remote and home-working can ensure that staff have good and productive access to colleagues and business resources whenever they need them.

I’ve mentioned often the many reasons why people can’t get in to work, of which nationwide strikes are high on the agenda.  Yet it still amazes me why so many companies still hesitate at doing something significant about the problems created by the inability to remain productive because you cannot get in to the workplace.

Ironically, there is also talk about the potential of these strikes being stretched out to disrupt the Olympics, which of course is another major event that is set to significantly interrupt the way we normally conduct our day to day business.  If only one disruption could cancel out another disruption… but sadly here, two wrongs don’t make a right.  Instead, I will draw your attention back to an infographic I posted a while ago reminding you all of the many reasons why it is vital in today’s work environment that we have a good and strong communications and productivity strategy.

 It may not be all doom and gloom though.  It is rumoured that the Government has already set in motion steps to mobilise the Army in order to take care of some of the most urgent fuel delivery problems – essentially a major benefit to a general strike (see what I did there…).

If you haven’t done it already, you should take some time and work out roughly what it costs your business to have a member of staff absent for a day.  Then multiply this by the number of days you’ve likely lost over the past year (use the above infographic as a reminder of the types of events that occur), and then multiply it by the number of staff you have.  Although not entirely scientific, it will give you a pretty good idea of the cost that absense brings to your organisation.  If you really want to do it thoroughly, you might also want to consider the number of people and services that are delayed or affected because of this absenteeism and factor that cost in too.  My guess is that you’ll have underestimated the real cost to your organisation enormously, and also that the cost of a credible UC & Collaboration solution will more than justify it’s existance once you’ve done the numbers.

Whatever happens, it’s never too late to plan an effective collaboration and data access strategy for your business.  This year, more than most, will have its plethora of diverting events to stop us from getting to work.

The backup environment is typically one of these aspects and quite often we find that many customers focus on the primary storage and compute concerns, rather than the entire data centre architecture as an ‘integrated and fit for purpose’ solution.

 When this shift starts to happen with traditional (tape) backup, more often than not, we find that a customer’s backup solution was coping,  but as the environment grows, the traditional model quickly starts experiencing issues. Situations range from failed or very slow backups – resulting in poor SLA’s and risk of data loss – to excessive resource utilisation, which adds to infrastructure and environmental costs.

 This of course is just from moving to virtual from physical, add to that ‘year on year’ data growth and the common requirement to improve SLA’s and reduce operational costs, and the problem magnifies rapidly.  Very often when attempts are made to align tape solutions with business SLA’s for disaster recovery, they fall significantly short of what is expected and demanded – and this is all assuming that the data on tape can be successfully restored!

 We have clearly seen a shift in this approach over the past year, and tape as a medium for maintaining an effective backup strategy is no longer being considered the first or logical choice, and it’s being pushed further down the stack where it’s a great solution for long term archiving, but very poor for short term backup and recovery.

 Just as a primary storage solution is now commonly taking a tiered approach, so too is backup.  Disk-to-disk and disk-to-disk-to-tape when compared to traditional models has clearly reached a point where it’s not only commercially justifiable, but for most customers, it’s the only way they can meet and satisfy business requirements.

File this one under ‘the bleeding obvious’ section, but it’s interesting to read that after various surveys, hotel prices throughout the Olympic months (that’s July and August) have basically doubled – read it here.

Putting this in context, this means that the room you presently book today for your overnight stop at around £100, will now cost you £200 per night.  Now before we all head off in to the streets clutching our pitchforks mumbling words like ‘usuary’ and ‘its a down right liberty that!’, we should also consider something else:  ‘Do we really need to be at that meeting at stupid o’clock the following morning?’.

The answer I honestly suspect for many of us is probably no.  Why?  I think there are two key reasons for this statement: 

Firstly, knowing what is happening, I can’t believe that a bit of sensible diary management and planning-ahead couldn’t resolve the need to be in London during this period, and certainly not at a more convenient time for all to minimise their travel issues.

Secondly, it should really go without saying, that in these enlightened days where video and unified communications are ubiquitous, we cannot find a better way to have that meeting than suffering the Olympic hoards in trains, taxis, coffee shops and hotels.

So what is the compelling reason people aren’t going to plump for suggestion two?  From my own experience, many businesses have most of the UC and collaboration tools already, but they are often badly deployed or utilised across the business..  But why?  And this is a huge bag of worms that we open here.

To cut through all of the messaging though, my own experience tells me that almost the singularly most important reason that collaboration is poorly optimised, isn’t because it doesn’t work, or because there’s not enough bandwidth, and similar arguments (all of which have some degree of merit), it’s simply down to human nature. For whatever reason, when it comes to corporate devices and services, a large majority of staff just don’t want to learn exactly how to use it in the best and most productive way.

Call this resistance to change, a fear of another complex learning curve or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that a huge proportion of workforces are disabled from truly benefiting from collaboration, because they perceive it as a barrier of some sort.  But should communications that are unified deliver the exact opposite?

For those of us who have been using UC in anger for many years, we all know so well that it’s how, what and when you use it that makes all the difference.  Not every interaction is via video or web conference, that’s something you have to determine.  So if you look at UC through a pair of fresh glasses, consider these following points:

1.  What type of interaction do you really need to have?  Is it something that can be resolved through an email or IM?  If not, can it be completed with a call or conference call if there’s more than one person involved?  Failing that, can you hold a conference that involves sharing data online, or do you feel that the communication demands a visual dimension as well using face-to-face video with one or more people? 

2.   Who actually needs to be involved in the communication?  Yes, we’re back to people selection again.  This time though, we should carefully consider who actually needs to be involved, rather than who you’d like or think needs to be on it.

3.   How long does the meeting really need to take?  A stupid question on the surface, but you’d be surprised how many people spend between 2-6 hours travelling to attend a 2 hour or less meeting.  Go on, you can admit it, you know it’s true, and happened to you…

4.   Can I achieve the same outcome by holding my meeting in another way?  This one pretty much answers itself.  In the majority of situations, most meetings don’t have to be face-to-face.  We hold them that way for many reasons, though top of that choice list are examples like ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ or ‘well that seemed to be the most popular (pick your own descriptor here) suggestion’.  There’s always another way.  What if your life depended on the meeting, but it was impossible to get there?  Yep, we can all find other ways…

It’s true, some meetings you have to be at in person, but for most of them, you don’t.  Just think how much time and money you could save if you just eliminated 50% of your travelling to meetings. 

This summer is going to be both a wonderful and painful time for many of us.  Whilst I hope we’re all there urging our teams and sportsmen on to greater glory, I also hope we will do the sensible thing and work more intelligently during the games so as to minimise the stress, delays and expense of dealing with the human tidal wave that’s coming with them.

To those that are happy to pay £200+ for a £100 room I say it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.  For the rest of you, do yourself, your organisation and your nerves a favour and work smarter this summer. 

Well, that’s one hurdle less…

Without doubt, Apple’s current success ‘high’ is a phenomenon.  But is its success also its biggest growth barrier?

Let’s consider just three things:

1.  Apple’s tablet products cannibalising their own desk and laptop market in extending the post-pc era

2.  Apple’s iPhone evolution and refresh cycles

3.  Apple’s iPad evolution and refresh cycles

Without question, Apple like its laptop and desktop competitors is seeing sales erosion in their figures as more and more consumers opt for a tablet over that of a replacement PC.  Although this is not necessarily a terrible thing for Apple, it is still an issue as to how they continue to pursue growing shipments in their PC products.

Everyone lusts after an iPhone – well almost everyone.  When I stepped on the tube the other day, except for one Blackberry, everyone was toting an iDevice of some description.  And as significant as each new iPhone is, I find myself like countless others passing on the option to get the next update to my own phone, and instead looking out two a second year wait when I feel I’ll have got a good run for my immediate money, and our friends at Cupertino will have made more justifiable change-out reasons for me to upgrade. 

There are of course fanboys who will buy every new version and trade up or sell-on their older one through the usual secondhand markets.  But for many like myself, the 4s just wasn’t enough of a compelling argument to ditch my iPhone 4.  Tell you what though, I reckon the iPhone 5 will be pretty awesome, and I fully plan to go grab that one.  See what I did there?  Yep, leapfrog.  And this should be news to no one, not least Apple.  And this basically means that there is an army of Apple lovers out there that are starting to trend towards buying every other release, or put another way, something like 25-30% of Apple’s customer base.  Now that’s an interesting problem to have.  Just ask RIM or Samsung…

And it’s the same story with the iPad too.  I for one am passing on the opportunity to impoverish myself again on a new iPad this week, and instead will somehow manage to struggle through the coming year with last year’s poster boy.  Oh the horror of it all!  No, not really, but you get my point.  As wonderful as a better processor and higher resolution will be, it’s not something that I believe will change my inner geek’s thinking.  I, like many others, will wait a little longer for something more to come out of the Magic Mountain in Cupertino.

To sum up, whilst it may be true that Android & Windows are more popular than IOS & OSX, it is clear that Apple is still head and shoulders above its nearest brand rivals.  So much so, that its very success is shaping consumer demand and behaviour to the point that one of its biggest issues now seems to be how to get consumers to rotate their purchases more regularly.

Things, as they say will one day change, but not for a while yet.  Now get back in that queue, the new iPad (3) goes on sale in just 4 days..

Ask yourself this:  When was the last time someone asked you to help them integrate their Galaxy S (or Tab),  Cius, Asus Eeepad, HP something or Playbook on to the corporate network?  Can’t remember?  Of course you can’t.  Everyone wants to get their favourite ‘Granny Smith’ on there instead.  This week’s New iPad announcement only goes to emphasise this even more.

I do love reading the press on the ever evolving enterprise technology market.  Especially all this talk about how android, windows and other dinosaur OS’s and devices will soon leave Apple in the slow lane.  Sure in time, I expect Apple’s star to dim slightly, but right now and certainly for the foreseeable future, I defy you to manufacture the credible evidence to show anything other than a Malus Domestica business explosion.

So far this year, two big tech events have come and gone, and there will be many more to come.  In January we had the CES expo, and only the other week we had the Mobile World Congress 2012 event.  And the spectre at each feast, was the one that wasn’t there.  You guessed it, Apple.  With their customary approach to annual events, there shadow loomed large by their typical absence.  Clearly, there are camps that say ‘so what?, they’ll not be missed’.  But that’s just fighting talk.  When a single company controls some 70%+ of the tablet market, or dominates the mobile market with just 3 models (yep, count ‘em), then it is extremely important what they think and do.

Right now, Apple is the Usain Bolt of the tech world, effortlessly outpacing its nearest rivals.  Even more impressive is how they’ve managed to shake out the enterprise market without actually doing much in it.  Or as Steve might have said ‘it’s a hobby of ours’. 

Hobby or not, Apple have an incredible opportunity to direct where the enterprise tech future goes over the next few years.  What’s more, that position is also causing other issues too.  Almost without exception, no other tablet or ultra book manufacturer can get a look in with corporate IT departments.  Equally and significantly, this is also being echoed by the proletariat who are voting with their feet when it comes to BYOD product selection.  Applications are of course another fundamental area that Cupertino have influenced.  Seems that nobody wants to use slow and clunky software and systems anymore – who knew!

Yes, I accept that Windows, Blackberry etc etc are well established in the enterprise and aren’t going to be thrown out with the bath water immediately, but that doesn’t mean that slow IT refresh cycles or cost restrictions will subvert the individual from trying their damnedest to resolve that problem with their own hard-earned products of choice.  But don’t take my word for it, come out from under that stairwell you call an office and go and ask your staff what they really want in order to be more productive, happy and y’know, everything… It’s ok, I can wait.

Will this trend change?  Undoubtedly, but not for a while.  So feel free to harp on about how good and open Android is, or how powerful Microsoft will be again once WinMo and Windows 8 are released.  But right here, right now, the word is Apple, and it ain’t going nowhere else but up.  Chances are your boss also agrees.

Now where did I leave my work issue Psion organiser…

It is true that over the years some have failed or in some cases not even taken off, but most of the time the projects are a storming success with huge benefits for all involved (especially for patients).

If the public sector were to stop trying to innovate and enhance their IT solutions, then the UK would quickly fall behind the rest of the world. It is thanks to these solutions and the people behind the implementations that we have one of the most efficient and effective public sectors in the world. Yes there are things which could be done differently and projects which should have been pushed through or handled in a different way – but when it comes down to it our healthcare system is developing at a rapid pace as are our local councils and other emergency services.

We have been lucky enough at Block to work with several NHS organisations, including Great Ormond Street. Through our work with Real Time Location Systems we have been able to track up to 2,500 assets and full organisation-wide network assessment, redesign and delivery they have seen vast improvements in clinical processes and safety.