What IT managers should look for in 2019

Digital and technological innovation continues unabated, spawning new trends year after year. Being aware of the latest developments is important when reviewing IT strategy going forward, enabling better and more informed decision making. As an insight to what might lie ahead, here is our overview of three key trends that are shaping up to become relevant for the IT agenda over the coming year.

Optimisation and Transformation

Let’s talk about the difference between these two in the context of digital businesses. Optimisation is a digital journey with the goal of significantly improving existing business models, usually focusing on efficiency through improved productivity, revenue streams and customer experience. Businesses whose industries are fairly stable and are not expecting to see any major disruption in the short term usually take this route.

Digital business transformation on the other hand is a digital journey with the goal of developing net-new revenue streams, products and services, and business models. Transformation tends to be chosen by businesses whose industry is in a state of disruption, or who are looking to do the disrupting.

Any CIO or IT leader who is formulating digital business strategy will face an immense business-changing task but working with skilled partners can help to address each of the challenges ahead. The right platform will undoubtedly help and a flexible responsive colocation partner can significantly ease the transition and virtualisation of the existing infrastructure, regardless of whether optimisation or transformation is the goal. Datum’s proven platform enables clients to undertake a consolidation and assessment phase in readiness for the desired outcome.

IT-as-a-Service

Two trends that continue to advance are the adoption of ‘as-a-service’ models and the shift to the cloud, which has a direct impact on on-premises IT. In a survey where CIOs and IT leaders were asked about their IT budgets and consumption of cloud services, it was found that they are primarily interested in:

• Creating efficiency
• Having more flexibility with their workloads
• Having the ability to scale up and down quickly based on the business requirements

With the as-a-service industry continuing to grow, business have been quick to take advantage and enjoy choosing “a la carte” IT services that are suitable for their specific needs. Scalability, affordable technology, shorter procurement cycles and increased agility are features and services that companies will be expecting from any IT service provider, including data centres. Datum’s digital transformation services have been set up in this way for many years, and is something our existing clients really value.

Accreditation and Security

As every business becomes increasingly digitised, IT security continues to be a top concern and priority for IT leaders. Data is the digital gold and its integrity, availability and security are paramount, not least because of the added impact of GDPR. Going into 2019, it is clear that cyber security remains a real challenge and that the regulations around it will continue to develop.

With the ongoing focus on data security for organisations of all types, integrity of the IT infrastructure is a key concern for CIOs and heads of IT. A third party data centre can provide all the benefits of the latest technologies and the highest standards of resilience to secure and sustain your IT. But what is not always taken into consideration is that although data centre providers may all promise to deliver a certain standard of service and to offer the same levels of resilience and security, in practice their actual offerings can differ greatly.

Third party accreditations can help validate a data centres’ claims. Regularly updated, they illustrate that the provider has been independently and rigorously audited to ensure they meet the required standards. For instance, for a data centre partner to form an integral part of your infosec program, they should be able to demonstrate compliance with IT governance and information security regulation through ISO 27001). Accreditations backed by an in-person and detailed site visit enable you to check how the business is run, validate the offering available and understand the providers approach to each in full detail.

Below is a brief overview of our certified accreditations, with the full details available on our website:

• ISO 9001 – This specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organisation needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable statutory requirements.
• ISO 14001: 2015 – This sets out the criteria for an environmental management system and against which a company can be certified.
• ISO 27001: 2013 – This specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the context of the organisation.
• ISO 50001: 2011 – This specifies requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving an energy management system.
• PSI DSS Compliant – This is a statement by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council that Datum is a service provider to PCI DSS 2.0 for online payments.
• EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres – Datum has signed up to the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres which was created in response to the increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts.
• DCA Class 3 Fully Operational Data Centre – The Data Centre Alliance Certification scheme provides an industry led recognition of a data centre’s designed purpose, its operational integrity, energy efficiency practices and site access security. Class 3 Fully Operation identifies high standards of resilience, environmental control and telecommunications.