And cloud-based working has changed the very definition of work. Work used to be a place. Now it’s something that we do, something which can happen anywhere.

Businesses used to be physical things with the staff, offices, local IT equipment such as servers and usually production or handling of physical goods. These days, the only thing a business needs to make money is one or more people and a device that can connect to the internet.Looked at in this way, what we think of as a ‘a business’ is just a small network of people and devices. Everything else is optional.

Physical workspaces and digital workspaces

This notion of ‘the business as a network’ does not downplay the importance of the physical workspace. Offices are still vital, as is face-to-face work. Meetings, in proportion and managed effectively, are a great way to solve complex problems as a team. But your network is just as important as your workspace.

The physical workspace is usually a business’ second-largest outlay after staff. And with good reason. Workspaces have a massive impact on culture and productivity. A great workspace can make our working lives better in almost every way. And for the same reasons, a terrible workspace can make us unhappy.

Decision-makers are comfortable investing in their workspace and see the value in doing so. However, investment in the network – the digital workspace – is sometimes harder to secure. Despite the fact that network performance is more integral to productivity than the physical workspace itself and far easier to get right.

That’s a bold claim, so let me explain.If an office floods and has to close down, people can still work. They can work from home, they can work from cafes, they can work from other offices. They do this via the network. But if the network is down, everything stops.

The Royal Mail story

I recently came across a fascinating story that illustrates this point.

In January 2023, Royal Mail was hit by a cyberattack, bringing shipment of parcels and letters through its post office branches to a standstill and forcing them to resort to manual processes.

The company was forced to return to a pre-internet way of working because of their network performance. And the only people who knew how to handle paperwork were retirees. 

Think this couldn’t happen to your organisation? The first month of 2023 saw 33 publicly disclosed ransomware attacks, the highest number of attacks ever recorded for a January, indicating that this trend is set to continue.

Network performance is business performance

A single employee will complete hundreds of small tasks over the internet every day. If that employee completes 100 small tasks using cloud applications every day, then a team of eight might complete 800. And a business made up of ten such teams might complete 8,000.

If the internet connection is fast and able to support all those users, this is not an issue. But if the internet slows by two seconds per task, those two seconds multiplied by the total number of tasks and users becomes a serious time-cost over the course of a year.

When the network performance slows down, even a little bit, the business slows down.

The same goes for other common issues such as network stability and security. If the network goes offline, the business goes offline. If the network is insecure, the business is insecure, because the network houses business-critical data. As we’ve seen with Amazon’s €746 million  GDPR fine, data breaches can have massive repercussions.

There are human factors to consider as well. Unreliable internet connections are frustrating, for all sorts of reasons. Conference or video calls that are hard to hear or keep abruptly ending. Slow download speeds of large files. Cloud services that can’t do what they’re supposed to because the internet connection is too unstable.

Wondrous when it works, infuriating when it doesn’t

The internet is increasingly seen as the ‘fourth utility’, as commonplace and easy-to-access as traditional utilities such as clean water and electricity. If either of these things were unavailable, steps would be taken to fix that.

This frustration is amplified ten-fold once clients or customers are introduced. Important conference calls or presentations that are derailed by a poor connection leave a lasting impression. In high stakes situations, we need to be able to rely on our infrastructure. When that infrastructure lets us down, it mars the customer and employee experience.

Future-proof your network performance to future-proof your business

As we connect more devices to the IoT – 127 new devices are connected every second – the internet will become inseparable from the physical workspace. Devices will share information directly with one another and huge volumes of data will be collected and analysed to help decision-makers make smarter workplace decisions.

The benefits in terms of productivity and cost-saving have already been discussed at length, here and elsewhere. But there are challenges to consider too. Connecting devices or entire workspaces to the internet leaves them exposed to the negative consequences of network failure and cyberattacks. IT leaders who want to avoid these things need to invest in their network, as it’s only going to become more central to your business and your growth.

It is exactly these sorts of issues which were identified when Ricoh undertook an IT audit on behalf of the Trafford Housing Trust. The audit identified issues relating to business sustainability, information security, operational efficiency and governance. By establishing a Microsoft cloud-based technology platform, Ricoh created a network environment that could enable the addition of innovative digital services to improve governance, increase efficiency, facilitate mobility and improve the customer experience.

Click here to learn more. 

Understanding your current Digital Maturity level is an essential step when optimising your network performance and capabilities. We’ve created a useful tool to assess your organisation’s maturity, and provide you with tailored, actionable solutions to enhance your strengths and bolster your areas for improvement. You can start by completing our indicator here.

The post When your network stops working, your people stop working appeared first on Insights - Empowering Digital Workplaces.

Business leaders are under increased pressure to expand and enhance IT infrastructures. But with challenging sustainability regulations and rising energy costs, it’s essential to find a carbon efficient and cost-efficient approach. Our Sales Director for IT Infrastructure, Jeremy Isaacs, shares some confronting truths and specialist guidance.

Fuelled by data, digital technology is the engine of the modern world. We perceive it as clean. Smart. Progressive. But despite these benefits, it’s created a carbon footprint all its own.

As our reliance on technology grows, with more devices and bigger networks, businesses are guzzling high volumes of data and processing power. They rack up energy costs and carbon emissions.

This creates two unprecedented challenges, both concerned with cost…

1. How can I reduce the environmental cost of digital technology?

2. How can I reduce the actual cost of digital technology?

Luckily, both questions can be answered using similar methods. Let’s unpack the challenges and explore the potential ways forward.

Challenge #1: Building a carbon efficient infrastructure

The need to mitigate environmental costs occurs in addition to existing demands placed on IT infrastructure. These are performance, capacity, resiliency, agility, security, manageability, intelligence, and automation.

New sustainability, compliance, and regulation rules mean most businesses must develop a conscious awareness of carbon emissions and start working towards a better future.

There is also a prerequisite in many sectors for companies to commit to NetZero goals to build supply chain relationships. For instance, in September 2021, the UK Cabinet Office announced that all companies bidding for government contracts over £5 million need to commit to being carbon neutral by 2050 and be able to show their current carbon footprint.[1]

It may not be immediately apparent why this relates to IT Infrastructure. The ‘going paperless’ message and movement towards digital infrastructure has understandably been touted and consumed as the carbon-efficient and eco-savvy way to go. But did you know that for non-industrial organisations, data centres produce 25% of scope 2 carbon emissions?[2] These organisations are also huge consumers of energy, whether they operate in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid environment.

Attempting to bypass environmental obligations by outsourcing to a cloud provider does not solve the issue. In fact, it is tantamount to greenwashing.

While better awareness of environmental impact is positive, it raises complexity for IT leaders tasked with setting targets for NetZero.

Challenge #2: Building a cost-efficient infrastructure

Amid rising energy prices, solving challenges of cost-efficiency is paramount to business success, longevity, and competitiveness.

Energy costs are hitting everyone, and businesses are no exception. Operating costs are rising, and businesses are collapsing at the highest rate since the financial crisis.

Putting the lens on IT, it is estimated that the annual energy bill for the data centre in a mid-sized company in the UK will increase over the next 5 years to approximately 1 million pounds due to rising energy prices. Running data centres and IT infrastructures inefficiently makes these costs prohibitive for many.

Finding the right solutions

I have included some techniques myself and my team use to help organisations find solutions; applied in the right way, they can help solve the carbon and the cost challenge.

Why do IT infrastructures become inefficient?

Many businesses, both enterprise and mid-market, have expensive systems, whether these exist on-premises, in the cloud, or comprise a hybrid infrastructure of the two.

These systems were often designed as a long-term investment – but nobody can predict the future.

Because of this, infrastructure frequently misaligns with the reactive nature of businesses. They might need to enter new markets, launch new products, respond to industry developments, and grow – often on a condensed timescale – using their existing resources. What can result is a “bolting on” of new features or services as and when they’re required. This usually happens when businesses attempt to support new ways of working and business models quickly.

The importance of proactivity over reactivity

Throughout the pandemic, transformation projects were put on hold. Many reactionary decisions were made to support new ways of working and integrate new business models. One example of this is the need for more remote working. Consequently, infrastructure increases in complexity and becomes difficult to manage, highly inefficient, and often expensive to serve. What’s needed is for IT Directors to proactively look at building an agile, intelligent infrastructure model.

Due to this current, reactionary “needs must” method of working, companies have complex and overprovisioned estates, which are energy and carbon inefficient. They also fall short on the other basic requirements of performance, capacity, resiliency, agility, security, manageability, intelligence, and automation.

Many businesses also run on-premises data centres stacked with functionality that isn’t necessary, all of which have a running cost attached.

Building a strategy for IT infrastructure

To solve this, businesses need to understand their infrastructure and explore how to optimise their existing resources. They can do this by utilising spare capacity on-premises and by turning off unnecessary cloud resources. These actions decrease both carbon generation and cost.

Practically, this means investigating which workloads, data and applications are running on-premises and in the cloud and migrating them back to the optimal place in terms of speed, performance, and cost.

The cloud might seem the obvious choice, but this process does not always mean moving everything to the cloud. It’s typically about building multiple clouds, including on-premises and cloud hyperscalers.

With choice comes complexity. Businesses need guidance in order to design a sustainable, cost-efficient, and agile infrastructure that will evolve to meet the challenging, dynamic environments in which their businesses operate while simultaneously and seamlessly integrating all elements into a single harmonious, easy-to-manage ecosystem. This is where Ricoh can help.

We’re also working with many of our customers to transition their on-premises set-up to an as-a-service model so that they can consume as and when needed rather than overprovision capacity. This new approach can also be more carbon efficient and help reduce power consumption.

Our four-step approach to IT infrastructure consultation

1. Assess

Using a bespoke process, we will investigate your infrastructure and what you have configured in your cloud and on-premises estate. We can also offer carbon and power assessments identifying areas for improved efficiency. This will help you understand your carbon output and better comply with regulations and requests for data. We will also compile a hardware and software license review covering version, end-of-life and future support dates, plus other licensing and subscription contracts.

Understanding your existing infrastructure and its energy impact point is an imperative catalyst for your progression.

2. Optimise

Whether on-premises or in the cloud, we’ll orchestrate and reconfigure assets you already have. We’ll model future requirements and understand opportunities to move workloads, reduce power and carbon, increase capacity, and improve performance.

3. Transform

Once you understand your starting point and have optimised your estate, Ricoh can explain and highlight the benefits of transformation. We demonstrate a return on investment in as little as 12 months by measuring carbon and power benefits. Ricoh navigates the plethora of options available to meet specific objectives, delivering and continuing to measure achievable outcomes.

4. Repurpose

We can provide a sustainable after-life for your infrastructure, repurposing as a priority before we consider recycling using environmentally friendly processes. Repurposing offers greater financial returns and delivers measurable benefits to carbon reduction.

Talk to us about your Cloud & IT infrastructure strategy

2023 will be a learning curve for businesses, with deepening economic challenges and ever-evolving compliance requirements. The demand for more flexible working methods and digital-first customer experience will also increase. Yet change presents an opportunity to establish a competitive advantage. Those who can extrapolate the opportunity from what appears to be a difficult trading environment will outperform the market.

As a trusted Cloud & Infrastructure partner, Ricoh can work with you to help you define the right approach between on-premises, private cloud, and public cloud. We can also help you identify any networking and security implications that need to be considered.

Our commitment to ESG has been a part of our DNA since our founding, and sustainability is embedded in everything we do. Learn more in our handy guide:

Click to read ESG Ricoh UK

Speak to one of our experts today. Contact our team to find out more.

References:

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/companies-bidding-for-major-government-contracts-face-green-rules

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-trust-financial-management-good-practice-guides/streamlined-energy-and-carbon-reporting

[2] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/research/sustainability-is-no-longer-a-nice-to-have-goal-for-the-data-center-industry

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In this article, we’ll unpack eight hidden IT challenges caused by hybrid working, the symptoms you need to look out for and the possible solutions. These are the most common issues our team has noticed in the market, and they apply to organisations of all sectors and sizes. 

Some are quick wins, and others require a strategy, but by doing the work now, you will reap the full benefits of hybrid working and enhance your organisation’s overall digital maturity, putting you in a stronger position for the future.

The 8 hidden IT challenges caused by hybrid working:

1. Overwhelmed, slow-moving IT infrastructure 

Hybrid workers expect a seamless experience between the office and remote locations. They need consistent access to applications, information and programmes from anywhere to do their work efficiently. But with outdated infrastructure, they might find it takes too long to connect to servers or that they’re unable to access essential files at times of high traffic. 

If this sounds familiar, the culprit could be an overreliance on outdated, on-premises systems. It might be time to explore what a cloud strategy could look like for your organisation. The most successful cloud initiatives blend public and private cloud solutions and on-premises systems. This is known as hybrid cloud infrastructure.

2. Inflexible connectivity with remote devices

To support hybrid working, many organisations have invested in fleets of laptops and tablets, sometimes in addition to desktop computers in offices or completely replacing traditional setups.

Any change in device strategy adds complexity to networking and is one of the key challenges associated with hybrid working. If not appropriately managed, this can cause loss of network availability, downtime and poor performance, leading to significant disruption for employees and customers.

3. Insufficient bandwidth for video conferencing

Studies show that 80% of office workers use video conferencing technology frequently at work. Culturally, your employees expect to be able to make and receive calls at any time instantly. And increasingly, customers are also expecting interactive communication or demonstrations using video. 

To support this behaviour change, you must ensure you have the bandwidth to enable video calls anytime and anywhere. By not improving connectivity, you risk employee engagement, collaboration and customer experience. 

4. Failed data security and accessibility

Historical data storage policies, such as always saving on a specific drive or backing up once a week, can cause problems when hybrid working is in place because the rules haven’t been updated to reflect where and how people are working now.

This challenge of hybrid working can lead to a scenario where data is sitting on disparate devices in the network, unprotected and vulnerable for days on end. Not only is this a security risk, but it’s also likely to be in breach of regulations. Also, having data stored in different places makes it challenging for employees to access data when needed.

5. Increasingly expensive running costs

If your IT infrastructure and networking are constantly letting you down, it will cost money. Downtime is expensive, and approving more investment to fix an outdated system is throwing money down the drain.

But it’s the hidden costs of failing infrastructure that is important to highlight, like the cost of poor employee morale caused by a patchy hybrid work experience or the cost of harming customer trust by not improving external touchpoints. 

6. Huge carbon footprint

If your IT infrastructure is failing hybrid workers, it’s simple to assume that your overall approach isn’t optimised. While optimisation will undoubtedly improve the hybrid working experience, it will also significantly impact your organisation’s overall carbon footprint, helping you reach ESG goals at every level of the business.

Data centre optimisation allows you to reduce power consumption and improve the overall performance of your servers. If you don’t own your data centres or use cloud solutions, you should look for solutions that optimise instances as much as possible to solve the challenge of hybrid working. 

7. Outdated disaster recovery policies

For hybrid working, you need a fit-for-purpose disaster recovery policy to maximise uptime when the worst happens. And it’s likely that with some of your staff working remotely, these issues will happen more frequently.

A good policy will give you the security, risk management and recovery plans you need, so you can get back up and running as soon as possible. 

8. Reactive cloud initiatives

We’re finding that organisations unable to adapt to the IT demands of hybrid working have a sporadic IT infrastructure.

To capture the full value of the cloud, you need to adopt a strategic approach. Cloud-first might be the trend you’ve heard of, but it might not be the best route for your business. Cost, security, and compliance will impact where you can store your data. Build a strategy, find a partner, and then start your project. 

Overcome the challenges of hybrid working with Ricoh Cloud & Infrastructure Services 

As a strategic Cloud & Infrastructure partner, Ricoh will work with you to optimise existing infrastructure assets, networking, and connectivity to ensure hybrid working is positive for your people and organisation in the long term. If you invest now, your return will be an empowered workforce, engaged in a positive working environment. And a high-quality employee experience to help you retain and recruit the best talent. 

Speak to one of our experts today. We can discuss what it means to modernise your IT infrastructure to enable hybrid working, develop digital maturity and prioritise sustainability. 

Further articles on Hybrid Working you might find interesting;

‘How to build a modern IT infrastructure strategy’

Contact our team today.

The post 8 hidden IT challenges caused by hybrid working (and how to solve them) appeared first on Insights - Empowering Digital Workplaces.

Your IT infrastructure is the foundation of your business, covering your datacentres, communication networks, IT security and applications. It holds your digital capabilities, your ability to innovate and your overall business strategy. 

The value of getting it right is simple: if your infrastructure cannot cope with high volumes of customers or regularly harms the productivity of your people, you could be losing money. It also has the potential to damage business growth and your competitive edge. 

Cloud-first might be the trend you’ve heard of, but it might not be the best route for your business. Cost, security, and compliance will impact where you can store your data. In fact, the IDC forecasts that by the end of 2022, over 90% of enterprises worldwide will be relying on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs¹. 

With the help of a strategic partner, you need to examine every aspect of your infrastructure and ascertain the best approach on a case by case basis. 

Here are 4 key considerations for business leaders who want to modernise their IT infrastructure. By keeping these in mind, you can create an infrastructure strategy that meets your current needs and accommodates business growth and transformation well into the future. 

1. Engage your key stakeholders

IT infrastructure is not just a problem for IT to solve. It is a challenge for your entire organisation. Most cloud initiatives fail due to poor communication and misunderstood goals; it is important to have a clear strategy with complete alignment up, down and across your entire organisation. 

Getting the right people in the room to begin the conversation will ensure any outcome meets the 360° needs of the business. The common stakeholders will be the people in your business who want to run processes better, faster and more efficiently. And the decision-makers with the budgeting and buying power. 

2. Determine business drivers

Your key drivers will be unique to your organisation. They could be competition and market challenges, shifting customer dynamics or business growth plans. While it’s important to understand how you will use new technology today, it is critical to take the future into account and build a plan that anticipates growth or new business models. 

We’re seeing many organisations who want to rethink their infrastructure to accelerate hybrid working and make operational process improvements. More internal drivers could be a lack of cost control and data visibility or concerns over data privacy. 

Once you have prioritised your list of drivers, you need to map them against your global business objectives to make sure you’re aligned with your ambitions. Input at this stage from a strategic partner will give you the insights to assist your decision making.

3. Assess current system

To understand what you need to fix, you need to understand what’s potentially broken. Collecting end-user accounts is important, listen out for users who are experiencing downtime and systems running badly or slowly. Gather feedback on how easy it is for your people to remote work, access important files or carry out critical workflows.

Explore how stakeholders would like to run processes more efficiently, or make better use of data through reporting and forecasting. These conversations will reveal where your system and service are lacking. Talk to your customers and analyse sentiment. It is important to note if you’re losing sales due to malfunctioning user features or fractured communication. A strategic partner can help with this important feedback process. 

Your IT leader should also be able to share any data on cyber breaches and data loss, that will demonstrate where urgent attention is needed. Whether breaches happen due to misconfiguration, poor setup, end-users adding non-approved apps or sharing data with third parties, having infrastructure that can alert and restrict delivers resilience, peace of mind and security.

4. Define what success would look like

Defining how you will measure success can help you focus your efforts and ensure KPIs are integral to your strategy. KPIs shouldn’t be an afterthought once a project has been completed. Aim to measure KPIs in line with your business objectives like sales growth, revenue and productivity. Numbers like website visits and projects completed can be vanity metrics.

Ricoh Cloud & Infrastructure Services 

As a strategic Cloud & Infrastructure partner, Ricoh can work with you to help you define the right approach between on-premises, private cloud and public cloud. We can also help you identify any networking implications that need to be considered. We work closely with your team to understand your business and IT strategy, your existing infrastructure and your operational goals. 

Working end-to-end, we discover, implement, manage and advance your entire IT infrastructure, enabling a global experience with local delivery. Meaning you can access extensive technical expertise without having to hire additional internal resources, providing total cover to meet your needs today and in the future. Discover more about our solutions.

If you’re serious about growth and digital transformation speak to one of our experts today about modernising your infrastructure. Contact our team to find out more.

1. https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/top-10-hybrid-cloud-trends-in-2021

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