TECHNOLOGY

Preparing for what’s next in SME IT

Published

6 months ago

October 21, 2023

After moving on from lockdowns and supply chain shortages, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) now face entirely new challenges: layoffs, recession fears, and a different kind of economic uncertainty.

Recent research from McKinsey found over one-third (37%) of SMEs consider inflation to be their biggest challenge, the highest it’s rated in four decades. The same survey highlights that SMEs are preparing for more tumult: 20% expect slowed growth, 50% say it’s hard filling open positions, and nearly 90% believe few or no qualified candidates are available.

If IT teams within SMEs have internalized any lesson over the last few years, it’s that modern IT management demands flexibility and adaptability to balance complex current needs while keeping the organization ready to respond to new developments and growth. Effectively managing new workplace models requires a relentless commitment to securing employees and to prioritizing a friction-free digital experience no matter what external factors arise.

A biannual survey, commissioned by JumpCloud, gauges the state of IT in SMEs. This most recent edition reveals the acute challenges and opportunities faced by IT practitioners in SMEs, how they’re responding to a rapidly evolving digital landscape while facing economic uncertainty, and best practices for how others can embrace flexibility, ingenuity, and innovation to establish a new IT norm.

The changing IT landscape

The pandemic accelerated digital transformation across businesses of all sizes. Three years later, the trend continues. SMEs in particular experienced a shift from single device-type environments to a mix of devices and systems. On average, SMEs’ device environment is now 64% Windows, 20% macOS, and 16% Linux. SMEs are looking for alternatives to legacy systems: of the 63% of SMEs who use Microsoft AD or Azure AD, 62% would replace it with something more flexible and user-friendly. The line between corporate-owned and personal devices is blurrier than ever, as 62% of SME admins use personal devices for work-related tasks. Legacy systems and wired machines have given way to SaaS applications, virtual servers, and wireless networks. To meet tomorrow’s needs, SMEs are seeking a tech stack that embraces an open, cloud-based model capable of supporting their evolving requirements.

The role of IT admins

Often serving as the engine that powers entire organizations, SME IT admins are digital transformers within their organizations. Their critical insights shed light on the path forward for organizations grappling with economic uncertainty, complex IT environments, and a broad range of responsibilities. The present survey suggests that today’s IT teams wrestle with major security concerns and complicated IT environments. To tackle these challenges, IT admins are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) for help with a broad array of services, from help desk support and disaster recovery to system management and cloud storage.

Some key findings:

Security remains a top concern: As external threats grow in sophistication and frequency, security remains paramount: 59% of SME IT admins rate security as their biggest challenge. External threats loom large: network attacks topped the list of concerns (38%), followed by ransomware (33%), software vulnerability exploits (27%), and use of unsecured networks (25%).

Tooling is complex and costly: A plurality of admins (44%) need between three and seven tools just to do their job. An unlucky 5% need more than 19. As IT admins respond to the changing landscape of devices, identity, and access management, licensing costs are increasing. Nearly one-third (31%) spend between 25–50% of their budget on it.

A complicated tech stack leads to worry: Most admins are managing a device landscape that includes Windows, macOS, and Linux devices, requiring a security approach that adequately covers all. Nearly half of IT teams (49%) report being more concerned about their organization’s security posture than they were six months ago; 68% fear that any cuts to their security budget will increase their organization’s risk.

MSPs are increasingly important and valuable: In light of today’s IT reality—the growth in different types of devices in the workplace, the accelerated sprawl of applications and resources employees need to access, the increasing sophistication of hackers—many SMEs are seeking support from MSPs. Nine in 10 (90%) of SMEs are either working with or considering working with an MSP. For 27% of SMEs, an MSP manages the entire IT program. And MSPs are delivering value: 56% of respondents say their MSP use has resulted in better security; 61% report that MSPs are up-to-date with the latest technologies, and 55% say MSPs are providing a better user experience.

Building resilient IT environments

For smaller firms who lack enterprise-sized teams or budgets, IT is the heart of any organization. These findings reveal steps SMEs can take to improve productivity, bolster security, and enable better working environments for employees and the IT teams that support them.

Listen and let IT lead on spending: IT admins possess a deep understanding of organizational tech needs and value measurement. Organizations should heed their recommendations, whether about cybersecurity investments or MSP partnership considerations.

Prepare to accommodate diverse device environments: Implementing a mobile device management (MDM) strategy centralizes device management for Windows, macOS, and Linux devices, ensuring robust security measures and policies no matter the operating system.

Consolidate tools: IT admins overwhelmingly express the desire for a single tool to streamline their job responsibilities. Consolidating tools alleviates the burden on overworked admins, improving user experience, convenience, effectiveness, and security. It can also deliver significant cost savings by eliminating unnecessary or underused tools.

Optimize operations with an MSP: The benefits of working with MSPs are widely recognized by IT professionals, so it’s understandable why the MSP market is projected to see significant growth. Organizations should consider leveraging partner expertise to enhance security, employee experience, and overall IT operations.

Listening to SME IT teams and their experiences, aspirations, and concerns offers organizations a valuable opportunity to build an IT environment that can withstand whatever challenges lie ahead. By embracing flexibility, adaptability, and direct insights from these IT teams, today’s SMEs can be resilient as they confidently navigate digital transformation and prepare for future growth.

(Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by JumpCloud)

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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

5 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

5 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

5 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud