Blog

Written by Mark Richards

Reactive to Proactive - How to Break the Cycle of Fire Fighting?

A common problem for IT organisations is how to break the never ending cycle of daily “fire fighting”. Frameworks such as ITIL provide a comprehensive end to end framework in which to deliver service efficiency and stability, however, reaching an ITIL Eutopia is usually limited by cultural and budgetary constraints. Given these constraints, most organisations who are committed to Continuous Service Improvement (CSI) must rely on existing over burdened resources to drive the change required. In the majority of cases, this challenge alone results in CSI activities taking a back seat to daily support priorities. Net result is the defined benefits are never actually realised and the fire fighting cycle is never broken!

To overcome this challenge, as a 1st step we believe it is imperative to focus in on only those initiatives that quickly reduces the time burden on the IT Support organisation. Freeing up resource headroom quickly will allow organisations sufficient resource bandwidth the time to focus on more complex and time intensive service transformation activities.

The Applaud Managed Services team has developed a set of 4 Continuous Service Improvement pillars in which to build out these 1st set of focussed initiatives. Automating processes such as Password Reset management are relatively quick to implement and can reduce the daily support overhead at the Service Desk by up to 20%.

Mark Richards
Managed Services Practice Manager

20 comments

Written by Peter Mountford

IPv6 - Are You Ready for the Change?

Remember the planning and effort associated with Y2K? Well, 2011 is the year when the current Internet Protocol (IP) addressing scheme (IPv4) runs out of addresses! A new protocol (IPv6) has been introduced to provide virtually unlimited address space.

This is great news because it will enable things like push applications, peer-to-peer based applications and cloud computing over the internet. However, there is some bad news for internet users – IPv4 is incompatible with IPv6 and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 presents some significant challenges. For enterprises, the transition will not happen overnight. The process takes thorough planning, preparation and execution. The number of “edges” and the depth of the network that must be IPv6-enabled will impact the complexity and even a simple transition may take 6 months to implement.

Applaud can assist with the design, planning, deployment and post implementation support to progress your organisation into the world of IPv6. We possess a broad array of networking design and configuration competence across multiple network vendors, so we would encourage you to contact us for assistance.

Peter Mountford BDM
BDM - Managed Services & Solutions

8 comments

Written by Faiz Nazarali

VISION IS KEY - Applaud's Roadmap Offering

As we begin to wrap up this financial year, Applaud is providentially experiencing one of most successful periods to date. Not only financially, but with the growth of our team internally, and also with the way we deliver services to our customers. As the landscape of IT is somewhat dynamic, Applaud has chosen to innovate and adapt. However, we have and always will continuously improve the friendly, innovative, and proactive service which has always put Applaud in high regard.

At Applaud we have noted a process which yields significant benefit, particularly with new engagements - "The
Roadmap":

Ø As we look to enable businesses with creative strategies, we hold on our belt the tools to mind-map and evaluate different technologies for different corporate ambitions.

Ø In doing so, we have created a format by which we collaborate and develop a "Roadmap" as a technological plan for current and future IT goals of our clients.

Ø This "Roadmap" becomes an evolving, living document which is a foundation for strategy discussions and is also a reference point for stakeholders in the business.

Although the idea of having a plan or roadmap is both common and simple; we have found that we are "re-inventing the wheel" with the way we deliver this service. The positive results have been prevalent with many of our clients, and I would like to highlight one in particular which we have seen amazing results.

Applaud has had the pleasure of working with The Fred Hollows Foundation, who undertake humanitarian work worldwide. " The Foundation works to eradicate avoidable blindness in over 19 countries throughout Africa and Asia; and have assessed the sight of more than 1,300,000 people worldwide and performed over 190,000 eye operations and treatments." Being such a unique organization, FHF had the need for an IT business vision to be in line with the organizations goals. IT is a strong enabler for FHF, and challenges arise with members working in remote areas and developing countries with very limited communications infrastructure. Applaud has added extreme value in developing a roadmap for FHF, and through that roadmap, providing innovative strategies and technology placement to enable Fred Hollows to extend their IT capabilities. Key to the FHF roadmap was selection of technologies that provided seamless integration with existing core IT systems and organizational functions. FHF is now well underway on the journey with Applaud to implement all aspects of the roadmap and further enhance the capability of their IT systems to dynamically scale as the organisation dictates.

Faiz Nazarali
BDM - Managed Services & Solutions

2848 comments