Introduction
Before ‘cloud’ even became a thing, businesses only had an on-premise solution. However, with times changing and technology having come a long way since then, most companies have adopted a cloud-first approach as a must-have, rather than a ‘nice to have’. We’d like to introduce you to Microsoft Azure.
In a 2017 survey where nearly 200 IT managers took part, it was revealed that 79% were committed to cloud projects like Microsoft Azure Services or Azure Cloud Services. In addition, 58% among the participants using a cloud-based system like Azure said that it delivered real business value.
A 2018 study revealed that Microsoft Azure Services offer up to 93% better energy efficiency and capable of generating up to 98% less carbon emissions, compared to traditional or on-premises servers. Now, we’re not downplaying on-premises servers by any means – they do have their uses, although drawbacks like lack of scalability, solutions too expensive to implement, inherent security risks, and staffing requirements have made it a less-than-popular choice today among businesses of all scales.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service used to build, test, deploy and manage applications and services through Microsoft’s in-house data centres. Azure cloud services contain over 200 products and services which can help businesses solve emerging challenges by handpicking the tools and frameworks which best fit their needs.
How is Microsoft Azure different from on-premise? 3 common distinctions
There are a number of key differences worth noting between Azure and on-premise servers. These include but are not limited to:
Deployment
In on-premise servers, resources are deployed in-house using a company’s physical IT infrastructure equipment, where the company maintains the services and related processes.
With Azure cloud services, resources are hosted on Microsoft’s dedicated servers, with companies accessing as much of the resources as they need at any point in time, while not having to worry about having ownership rights to equipment, hardware or software.
Cost
With an on-premise solution, enterprises are responsible for bearing the cost of the servers (e.g. upgrading equipment, warranty renewals etc.), and power consumption. With a cloud service, enterprises pay only for the resources they consume, and they bear none of the maintenance and/or upkeep costs.
Security
With physical servers, there are ‘real world’ security risks to deal with such as fire, damage, destruction, water damage, natural disasters, theft, etc. If not that, then physical wear and tear also poses a risk of data loss.
Azure cloud services, however, are far less vulnerable to the above risks as Microsoft has proactive measures in place to provide best-in-class defences for their physical server environments. Furthermore, Azure Active Directory ensures that only the designated or authorised individuals have access to highly sensitive information.
Key reasons why Microsoft Azure is better than on-premise
Azure migration is a major business decision, no matter what your industry or scale, and it certainly can’t be taken lightly. With that said, it is still a vastly better solution, and in many cases, superior to on-premise:
Azure is scalable
Microsoft Azure services let you dynamically scale apps according to your ever-changing demands. This kind of flexibility is not available in on-premise solutions without significant investment in upgrading the equipment, however Azure can quickly scale to meet your business needs at any point in time.
Cheaper than on-premise
In nearly every use case, Azure beats on-premise in terms of cost and by a significant margin too. Azure cloud services require no investment in infrastructure, servers/hardware, new machines, replacement of ageing servers, etc. The flexible expenditure model that comes with Azure means you can pay more to get more, you pay as per your needs, and you save a lot on space, energy and cooling costs.
You simply pay for what you use, nothing more.
More secure than on-premise
Businesses believe that by having on-premise servers and hardware, they have better security; unfortunately, this is more of a myth than reality. Azure’s Active Directory, for example, is a cloud-based, multi-tenant directory with a dedicated identity management service – giving employees single sign-on access to multiple apps in the cloud like Office 365, SharePoint and more.
Additionally, the identity management service within Microsoft Azure services offer a number of security-boosting features such as app usage monitoring, multi-factor authentication, device registration, and more, to provide an unparalleled level of security.
Better for remote working
Azure offers a superior remote working solution through Azure Virtual Desktop, a cloud-based app with integrated security and compliance features, providing a completely virtual desktop infrastructure and interface to a company’s end users. Authorised personnel can sign in from any device anywhere in the world, which means companies have a highly flexible and scalable option at their fingertips to help significantly reduce operational and capital costs.
Emerge Digital: A Certified Microsoft Partner to help you with Azure Migration
Emerge Digital is proud to be a Certified Microsoft Partner and a “cloud first” IT Managed Services Provider (MSP), specialising in bespoke Azure and cloud migration services.
We recently helped one of our clients, Thompson Taraz, with Azure migration – helping them save costs, gain tighter legal compliance and hassle-free remote working ability:
“The cloud migration project has helped transform our business. Keeping our customer’s data secure is a top priority for us, and with our new Microsoft-powered cloud infrastructure, this has never been easier to manage. Plus, these new foundations have made a whole host of innovative solutions possible, enabling us to grow our business by staying ahead of the technology curve.” – Martin Heffernan, Chief Executive Offer, Thompson Taraz
The time to embrace the power of Microsoft Azure Services is now. Get the desired business outcomes, be more competitive, cut costs significantly, and much more. Let’s get acquainted for a free initial consultation.
Introduction
One of the main challenges business owners face as they offer a more flexible working model is how to maintain productivity, while supporting a strong work/life balance.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), before the disruption of the COVID pandemic, only around 12.4% of the UK workforce spent time working from home. That number grew to nearly 50% in 2020 as businesses enabled everyone they could to work remotely.
That figure may grow now that more employers realise that in many cases their business and their employees can function perfectly well regardless of where they are in the world.
Chris Shanks, Head of Technology of Emerge Digital highlights ways business leaders can maintain the productivity of a workforce, while catering for their need to enjoy a good work-life balance.
This year, rightly so, we have focused on people’s physical and mental health and what they needed in order to work from home successfully. But we mustn’t lose sight of what a business needs to remain competitive. Remote or flexible working challenges long-held beliefs about when and how employees perform well, but it takes strategic planning and the right technology to scale in a way that drives performance while maintaining employee culture and wellbeing.
1. Focus on outputs not processes
Working from home, people have learned how to balance their work and family commitments in ways that are easiest and most productive for them. Without the office commute, some start and finish early, while others prefer the regime of office hours. But if the work is good and the teams are happy, that’s the most important thing. So, instead of micro-managing how an employee gets his or her work done, focus on its quality, whether deadlines are being met and if they still contribute fully to the collective business aims. Help remote workers by scheduling collaboration at mutually agreeable times and use technology wherever possible. Providing flexibility empowers teams and builds trust.
2. Encourage collaboration
Working away from colleagues can feel isolating, so encourage project work that allows team members to work together, share ideas and communicate more. Your team will feel connected to each other. Your business will benefit from the sort of innovation that shared ideas and greater communication between team members brings. Real collaboration is when multiple people can work on the same thing, at the same time, all making live changes. Collaboration in the cloud means a document syncs in real-time, so you’re always working on the latest version.
3. Prioritise
Without the drive, we all have more ‘space’ in our diaries for meetings. Some find this ability to go ‘back to back’ extremely ‘productive’, but another argument is that we now have too many Teams meetings because it’s so easy to pull people in. Teams meetings can run really efficiently if you make them. You can even set a timer to finish the meeting early to give you time back to decompress. Being productive is about setting agendas, prioritising and doing the important things.
4. Build trust
Over the past 18 months, as the realisation came that remote employees could be trusted, businesses have opted for more honest and authentic styles of communications. This transparency is valued by employees and shows them that they’re part of a trusted team. Trust has long been an essential ingredient for building productivity and engagement. It’s also important that remote workers feel connected to an organisation’s goals and have a clear understanding of where they fit into its mission. In turn they will feel less detached, share the common goals and be productive members of your organisation.
5. Speed up your approvals process
Whether you need written acknowledgement from your manager, a formal authorisation from a group of stakeholders, or an official signature from a customer, getting things approved is part of almost every workflow. At Emerge Digital, we use the Approvals function in Microsoft Teams, which lets us manage approvals directly with the relevant colleague. We can start an approval request from a chat, in a channel conversation, or from the Approvals app itself. We select an approval type, add the details, attach files and choose the approvers.
6. Use a Task Manager
Everyone likes a to-do list. The first thing we do is set out our daily tasks. The Tasks by Planner & To Do app in Microsoft Teams brings together your individual tasks from To Do and Outlook with your team tasks from Planner so you can efficiently cross them off your lists. As a management tool, you can assign tasks to people and know when they are done.
7. Give them the right technology
It would be impossible for me not to include a section on why providing the right tech stack for a remote workforce is crucial to its productivity. The only way any workforce can function efficiently is if they have access to everything they need. We encourage clients to use software that makes sharing files safe, secure and simple. This software can work on a range of devices, giving employees the power to work on the same documents simultaneously.
8. Create a Hub
We used to say all roads lead to Rome, now all roads lead to home. But, if you build the right tech stack, your people will come running back. It’s human nature to take the path of least resistance, so use something like Microsoft SharePoint to create a single hub that enables your workforce to get what they need quickly. If they can access files and apps, or get answers to key questions then you won’t have to force their behaviour, it will happen organically. People want to be productive, not wait for someone to send them the file they need to complete a task.
9. Remove the barriers
We have seen many instances where businesses had a physical server located behind a locked server door. During the Covid pandemic, they were in trouble. But migrating servers to the cloud is only one way that cloud technology can remove barriers to productivity. Managing access and process of information is key to streamlining efficiencies. Knowing who to speak to if you get stuck as well as having the right data and software access means you don’t lose time waiting for someone to send them a folder.
10. Create your flexible working policies
Without precedent, so few employee handbooks had effective working from home policies. Everyone is familiar with an IT Misuse policy; ‘don’t do anything illegal on a computer we give you’ is pretty standard fare. But by now, businesses should have implemented policies that reflect their new remote or flexible working practices. Does your video meeting policy outline how employees should behave? Do you expect cameras to be switched on, colleagues to be dressed appropriately and ideally without washing in the background? Does everyone know what to do if a meeting is cancelled? If they are having technical problems, what is the escalation process?
To find how Emerge Digital can help implement flexible working solutions which transform how your remote workforce operates, book a meeting with us today.
Introduction
Ready or not, almost overnight, millions of organisations were forced to enable remote or flexible working to keep their businesses going.
In the build up to the first lockdown in March 2020, some businesses were able to seize the moment and prepare for a future workplace that allowed colleagues to continue working seamlessly from their homes. Many, however, were unable to complete their move to a home working business. Millions of businesses weren’t prepared for the initial lockdown, but even a year on, is your business ready to support a long term remote or hybrid working model?
Tom Henson, Managing Director of Emerge Digital, highlights where some businesses came unstuck.
1. Connectivity
Poor internet connection kills home working before it’s even begun. Thankfully, the majority of us do have decent internet connections, but there are still many that don’t. And it’s not just poor connection; during the pandemic, as families all consumed online content from Netflix, TikTok, and games consoles by the terabyte, the bandwidth of many a home connection was stretched like never before.
2. Suitable working spaces
Long term home or flexible working might be a perfect solution for somebody who’s got an office or a dedicated workspace, but for those working on the kitchen table, the bed, their lap or those that are co-habiting with parents, partners or friends all vying for the one decent chair and flat work surface, it was a different story. Not everyone had a suitable, ergonomic chair, with a desk and monitor set at the right height. Not every company was able to think about this when they were scrambling to make working from home possible.
3. Having the right tech and tools in place
Technology has played a key role in enabling continued communication and home working, but we know that poor technology or lack of infrastructure was one of the biggest barriers to effective remote working. Over the last 18 months, cloud-based communication, collaboration and employee-facing technologies have become increasingly prevalent, but this sudden large-scale remote-working migration will definitely surface additional lessons learned — and opportunities for further improvement.
4. Work from home policy
Without precedent, so few employee handbooks had an effective working from home policy. An IT misuse policy was relatively common place, ‘don’t do anything illegal on a computer that your employer gives you’ is pretty standard advice. But during the pandemic, perhaps for the first time, businesses needed a video meeting policy that stipulated whether cameras were on or off and whether employees used a branded company background rather than having their washing in shot. But it also brought into focus the meeting cancellation policies or the route to escalate technical issues to their remote IT support team.
5. Planning for the future
I think the pandemic caught out a lot of organisations that had let their IT infrastructure plans stagnate. IT Business continuity and resilience planning have not always been a priority and many organisations weren’t proactively addressing their future business’s technology strategy. If you had servers on site, hosting business critical applications that were running behind locked doors, then Covid was a nightmare. As an managed IT services provider, we offer cloud-first business solutions, so have migrated the majority or our client’s on premise solutions to the cloud. Cloud IT services provide flexibility and platforms that allow you to work from anywhere, anytime.
6. Train your staff on your tech
There’s no point having all the right technology – giving colleagues access to the right platforms and turning on latest functionality – without enabling your staff to get the most out of them. A lot of organisations may have been able to swiftly migrate to a cloud solution like Microsoft 365 but their staff received no training on what it offered. Having the tools is useless unless you know how to make the most of them.
7. Automate manual tasks
Many organisations took the approach of replicating their office processes as they enabled staff to work from home. They missed a trick by ignoring the opportunity to update or automate some of the older, more manual processes. We use the suite of tools in the Microsoft Power Platform to automate many repetitive tasks for clients but a remote organisation also has a great opportunity to become a paperless environment. Everything is possible online; work can be accessible, colleagues can self-serve and processes can evolve and not be reliant on a paper-based or manual model.
8. Update to cloud telephony systems
Lots of organisations still use traditional phone systems that require physical phone lines running in and out of the building and having phones on desks. How do you deal with that when people are working at home? You can’t take the phone home – it just doesn’t work. We have helped clients migrate to a cloud telephony platform, which uses a standard internet connection and enables the phone system to work without the physical infrastructure. Everything stays the same – nothing changes apart from how you access it.
The office of the future
I think we all expect that the future of work to include some kind of flexible or hybrid working models. Some people will want to return to the office, but the vast majority will prefer to work remotely some of the time, but with opportunities to come together and meet colleagues.
In the workplace of the future, the office may just become another building with an internet connection. It may represent a meeting place rather than a desk space. In this scenario, you may not even need an office firewall because if you set up your portable and mobile devices to be secure, protected and flexible when they’re being used at home, then actually, when you’re in the office, you don’t need anything other than somewhere to sit and somewhere to plug in. It’s irrelevant really whether you have an office, or work at home or in a café, a properly secured device will work from anywhere.
Adapt to a more flexible working model
The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of business continuity, resilience and recovery planning for large scale events. While productivity needs to be maintained, cyber security threats have increased and the wellbeing of a workforce needs to be closely monitored. Few could have predicted the scale of the impact of Covid-19 but now is the time to review your infrastructure and technology plans and adapt to a more flexible working model.
Flexible Working Solutions for your business
To find out how Emerge Digital can help implement solutions into your business which transform how your hybrid workforce operates, get in touch with us today!
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has become the accelerator for one of the greatest workplace transformations in generations – the rise of hybrid working.
How we work, exercise, shop, learn, communicate, and of course, now where we work, has changed, possibly, forever. Businesses need to adapt and change quickly to stay on top of the pandemic-driven innovation curve and to do this effectively, they need the right tools, people, processes and support in place.
With the end of the pandemic in sight, businesses have begun to look into how they can use the new ways of working that were discovered during lockdown. Research carried out by YouGov and CIPD show that the majority of workers want to, at least for some of the time, keep working from home. Call it what you want – remote working, flexible working, agile working, blended working, a dispersed workforce, or hybrid working – they all include the practise of your employee’s splitting their working hours between being in the office and at their home.
Hybrid working: the future of work?
The term ‘hybrid working’ has a slightly different meaning to the others though – it offers choice to your employees. It’s a form of flexible working, where employees generally have the freedom to choose where they work, and when. A hybrid worker may spend 90% of their time remotely working from home, but only come into the office for important meetings. Or, they may simply choose where they work when they wake up that morning.
The purpose of office spaces has also been deeply considered by businesses, reserving the space for meetings and collaboration, and with home working use for individual focus time. Employers are using hybrid practises to maximise returns on office overheads as well as empowering employees with more productive time alone and a better work-life balance.
What IT Solutions are needed to support hybrid working?
We believe there are three things that need to be considered when it comes to hybrid working solutions:
The Wellbeing of your People
Technology allows us to stay connected from anywhere in the world, but there’s a difference between being connected and feeling connected. While your employees might be sending messages via Teams and attending a host of video calls, their emotional connection to your business and the relationships they have with colleagues are what will drive long term engagement. Work is just an extension of life after all.
Create regular opportunities to connect on a personal level. Schedule virtual meet-ups and events, designed specifically for non-work-related chats. From coffee catch ups to virtual wine tasting, there are plenty of things you can do to give your employees the opportunity to socialise while using the technology you provide.
When utilised properly, Microsoft Teams can become a central hub for your business. Teams is a highly customisable, communication and collaboration tool. It allows you to message, chat, call, meet and innovate all in one place, however many places you and your team are in.
Employee Productivity
Providing the right tech stack for any workforce, whatever their working practices, is crucial to its productivity. The only way a workforce can function efficiently is if it has access to everything it needs. We encourage our clients to adopt software that enables secure and simple file sharing, works on a range of devices and gives workers the power to work on documents simultaneously.
We used to say all roads lead to Rome, now all roads lead to home. But if you build the right tech stack and make it easy to navigate your people will come running back. It is human nature that we generally try to take the path of least resistance. If you use something like Microsoft SharePoint to create a single hub that enables your workforce to get what they need quickly, where they can get answers to key questions, they can get on with their day and you won’t have to force their behaviour, it will happen organically. People will self-serve and try to stay productive rather than waiting for someone else to send them the file they need to complete a task.
Cyber Security
One of the challenges is that businesses all reacted to the pandemic differently. Some provided equipment, some asked employees to use their own and of the 61% of businesses that did issue work devices, amazingly, 65% did not deploy any new antivirus solutions for those devices.
To fully protect your remote workers from cyber threats, a comprehensive suite of cyber security services are required to protect users, devices and your data. We recommend a combination of intelligent Next Generation Antivirus software, cloud-based firewalls and Microsoft 365 security products to ensure your business is secured from all angles.
Conclusion
The uptake of hybrid working will differ for every business, and it’s up to you to choose what’s best for you. You could give your employees a regular timetable of where to work, or simply let them choose what works best for them. Consider how to use your office – and whether downsizing is right for you. Think about how to best support the mental wellbeing of any remote employees. Take action to defend against the added cyber security risks that come with home working. And give your employees the tools they need to stay productive despite being dispersed.
Emerge Digital are here to support you on your journey to hybrid working – get in touch today to see how we can implement IT solutions that transform how your hybrid workforce operates.
Introduction
If you are considering moving to managed IT services but you’re not sure exactly what the benefits are or you would like more details on what is normally included in managed IT service packages, you’ll find the information you are looking for in this article.
What is a Managed Service Provider?
Simply put, this is a third-party company you can collaborate with to help manage parts of your business, such as your IT or cloud needs. It provides technology and expertise to boost your organization’s scalability.
What Managed IT Services Can Do for Your Company
As experienced managed service providers in the UK, we offer a full range of IT services to companies in Bristol, Swindon, Cheltenham and surrounding areas, delivered by a team of highly-skilled and superbly qualified professionals. Our managed IT services, in common with those of other reputable service providers, have many benefits to offer companies of all sizes:
24/7/365 Technical Support for a Fixed Fee
This is an especially useful benefit for small to medium-sized companies that might struggle to justify the cost of an in-house team of IT experts. Paying a fixed rate for third-party technical support is far more economical than paying the salaries of full-time staff who may have little to do when their support is not required.
24/7/365 IT System Monitoring
A good managed service provider will not wait for something to go wrong; they will actively monitor your systems so they can address potential issues before they have the chance to disrupt your business activities. Software such as our Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) platform is designed to ensure that your corporate IT systems are running efficiently at all times.
First-Class Data Security
Managed IT services include risk intelligence software that assesses the potential cost of data breaches, scans for vulnerabilities and protects your systems from a variety of threats. This protection includes antivirus/antimalware and other measures to prevent hacking attempts.
Automatic Software Updates
With managed IT services, you never have to worry about updating software and operating systems again. Patch management and maintenance functionality will ensure that your IT systems are always up to date and that your security measures continue to provide a high level of protection against all types of threats.
Predictable and Scalable Costs
With a managed IT service provider, it’s not just your helpdesk costs that are easy to predict. All your IT operating and maintenance costs will be both predictable and scalable. Downsizing or upsizing your IT systems and services will be a painless procedure that is very easy to budget for.
Maximising Technology Investment
Partner with a managed service provider that provides strategy and upgrade advice as part of their services, with regular reviews of your IT systems, and you can maximise your investment in technology. A comprehensive managed service package will include reviews that target cost reductions and help you to plan how best to spend your IT budget.
For full details of what Emerge Digital have to offer, please see our Managed Services page or call and speak to us right now.
