www.managedITmag.co.uk 25 IT Power BI with Node4. “We can now lead the way, not trail behind,” says Simon. He adds that it is not just Node4’s technical expertise that he is able to draw on but also the breadth of its service offering, including the provision of database administration services. “We had two business-critical databases managed by our previous provider that would no longer be covered. I was concerned about their maintenance going forward, so Node4 referred me to their data services team who could take it on as a database admin role. It’s a real value-add for us and proof of how valuable it is working with an MSP with a wide breadth of services; there is nothing they can’t help us with!” www.node4.co.uk But through collaboration and careful planning, we did it. Everything came across cleanly, including our oldest, most critical applications.” Early delivery and no downtime The entire migration was completed with no downtime ahead of schedule and before South & Vale’s legacy contract ended on September 30th. By the end of June, council staff were no longer logging in to the old systems, which were finally switched off in July. South & Vale are now in complete control of their IT environment and able to embrace new technology as it emerges. In fact, they are already discussing the deployment of Copilot and followed by the migration of 800 laptops that were on South & Vale’s previous provider’s network. All intellectual property had to be removed and the laptops had to be reimaged and rebuilt to join the new network. “We also took this opportunity to migrate from Windows 10 to Windows 11,” says Simon. “Node4 developed the Windows 11 package and built the Intune Autopilot platform so that the devices could be onboarded, rebuilt and reimaged in a standardised and efficient manner. This enabled us to rebuild 800 laptops in just four weeks.” As part of the project, Node4 replaced South & Vale’s legacy telephony platform with Teams Calling integrated with their contact centre (this now supports 790 users with fully configured hunt groups, voicemail and PSTN via Node4’s Direct Routing platform) and migrated 14 legacy servers from the old provider’s data centres into Azure. For Simon, this was the most demanding and critical part of the exit plan. “If we lost the servers, we would lose the data from some of the Councils’ most crucial applications. One of the applications we were migrating is 30 years old and highly embedded across the authorities, so making it work properly was complex. UK CIOs struggle to keep pace with AI adoption One in three CIOs wishes AI had never been invented, reveals new Logicalis report More than half of CIOs globally (51%) and one in three (36%) in the UK believe AI is being adopted too fast by their organisations, according to the latest CIO Report from global technology service provider Logicalis (Harnessing AI: IT Leadership in the Next Era of Enterprise Technology). While nine out of 10 UK CIOs say the appetite for AI adoption has increased in the last 12 months, many have misgivings about the lack of alignment between AI strategies and overall business plans, cited by 61% of UK CIOs; the impact of AI on business governance; and the lack of stable operating models which runs the risk of regulatory exposure, operational disruption and wasted investment. Almost two thirds (63%) of UK CIOs say staff lack skills for responsible AI use, risking compliance and reputational issues. More than three quarters (81%) say a lack of internal technical skill/ talent is a barrier to AI adoption within their organisation. Almost four out of 10 CIOs (38%) say that given the challenges it presents they wish AI had never been invented. Nonetheless, UK CIOs admit that AI is delivering value in specific areas, notably in improving day-to-day service delivery (59%), strengthening predictive analytics/forecasting and actionable business insights (57%) and enhancing the customer experience (48%). Neil Eke, UK CEO of Logicalis UKI, said: “What this latest research reveals isn’t hesitation, but realism. CIOs must now focus on building governance frameworks that evolve alongside AI deployment, ensuring innovation does not outpace operational resilience.” https://www.uki.logicalis.com/
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=