The biggest threat to IT? Your own staff

The notion that staff are now broadly techno-literate has been rubbished by a report from Kaspersky Lab, which finds 60 per cent of IT professionals admitting they lack the resources to protect against cyber-attacks welcomed by unsuspecting workers.

Will techies or managers rule IT in 2020?

There has always been an uneasy alliance between IT and the business, with each party equally suspicious of the other’s motives and actions.  The polarity is even more pronounced when it comes to programmers; the hardcore IT elite who baffle those without a maths degree versus the average worker with no comprehension of the complexity of coding.

Why IT support can no longer avoid the service revolution

IT teams are being warned to improve customer service or risk losing their grip on business technology, with a study from Rackspace finding that 69 percent of organisations have ended relationships with tech providers in the last year because of poor after-sales service and support.

What have you done for IT lately?

Delivering the kind of proactive IT that businesses need means looking at recent and long-standing problems, and suggesting fixes.  Richmond Systems says we should consider rethinking whether bottlenecks occur because of user-error or technology failures.

BYOD wasn’t tackled in a day - start with the fundamentals

Faced with the enormous challenge of supporting user-owned devices, many service desks are choosing instead to ignore this vital issue.  Richmond Systems urges support teams to start with the basics - the solutions may be easier to find than you think.

Is consumerisation the beginning, or the end, of the IT department?

The IT department is increasingly becoming a bit player in the technology buying stakes, and its waning influence could see it shrink or even disappear.  Richmond Systems explains the forces redrawing the tech landscape and how you can safeguard the future of your department.

All mobile apps are a security risk

Service desks criticised for their cautious approach to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) have been vindicated by research showing that more than 90 per cent of mobile applications have been hacked.

BYOD polices find support with business leaders

Business leaders have become highly receptive to the idea of staff using personally owned mobile devices for work purposes, with research from Trend Micro finding that 77 per cent of organisations have now implemented bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

Remote working: has the point be proven?

The run up to the 2012 Olympics saw many organisations, particularly those based in London, concerned how the games would affect operations, with specific concern regarding staff commuting to the capital.  Now the event has finished, is it time to accept that home-working policies are the way to beat the commuter blues and do staff really want them?

Service desks warned: ignoring social media akin to ignoring the phone

Service desks treating social media users as second class citizens risk alienating staff and customers, with Gartner believing that social communications will be as crucial to businesses as phone and email contacts by 2014.

Ageing software fuels cyber-attacks

Organisations are placing themselves at risk of cyber-attack because of poor data protection, with a study from consultant KPMG finding that more than three-quarters of businesses listed in the Forbes 2000 are using outdated software that is ‘leaking data’, making them prime targets for hackers.

Service desks sitting on massive cost savings (and it’s nothing to do with user support)

By looking outside of its own walls, service desks can deliver significant savings to the business.  Richmond Systems explains the latent potential of the software you use everyday.

IT a commodity? Tell that to millions of banking customers

The IT troubles befalling UK banks will have huge financial implications, with lost customers, extra staff to cope with problems and compensation claims.  Richmond Systems looks at whether ‘IT as a commodity’ is damaging the industry.

Technology becomes the top business spending priority

Following years of neglect, IT investment has become the number one focus for organisations according to analyst Gartner, with company leaders willing to spend on the latest technology to gain an advantage over their competitors.

Why the £10 IT education crisis threatens all of our futures

Like many parts of the public sector, IT in schools and colleges is suffering from budget cuts, yet the problem may be so profound it threatens the future of Britain's global IT standing.

Forget product knowledge, IT asset specialists need better communication skills

IT asset management professionals now need legal expertise and negotiation abilities to complement their analytics and product experience.

It’s the end of the helpdesk (again)

The era of the IT helpdesk is almost over according to industry analyst Gartner, marginalised by consumerisation, cloud and crowdsourced IT support.

Has government succeeded in safeguarding against ITSM disasters?

It’s easy to mock central government’s attempts to a pattern of wasted IT spending, but there are reasons to believe it may succeed and create a model for ensuring that all businesses get value form technology spending.

‘Forgotten’ IT services costing $58 billion in lost revenues

The never-ending battle to supply cutting-edge mobile technologies is causing businesses to neglect less-glamourous IT systems, with massive cost implications.  Research from Juniper shows that in the mobile industry alone, failure to invest in and optimise back office billing systems cost the industry $58 billion in 2011 because of lost payments and costs associated with fixing payment errors.

The two lessons of IE’s demise that IT support must understand

For technology enthusiasts who vilify it for poor security, lack of performance and incompatibility with modern web standards, Internet Explorer belongs to a bygone era of computing.  For many users however, Microsoft’s often criticised web browser is quite simply ‘The Internet’.  The Internet Explorer (IE) desktop shortcut was - until collective technical knowledge began improving - the only gateway to the online world for millions of people, making it the most popular web access tool by a massive margin.  Yet a recent re-evaluation of browser usage figures, which show that the reign of IE is seriously under threat, helps us make two very important points about the use and perception of IT today which those in a support capacity must grasp.

Don’t let ‘IT innovation wars’ blind us to common sense

IT innovation is currently one of the biggest buzz phrases in ITSM, and with good reason.  Many IT departments had become stale, a fact highlighted vividly by the speed at which business users have adopted consumer devices.  That users will accept the pitfalls of being an early adopter - and use their own cash to acquire expensive equipment in the process - shows how great the appetite is for cutting-edge tech.  We have argued before that IT operations need to have the same mindset if they are to remain relevant today.

Consumerisation merely a precursor to the ‘major wave’ of personal tech

If you are surprised how quickly individuals in your organisation - who previously had no interest in technology - have taken consumer tech to their heart, analyst Gartner has the following message: you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Will IT make big banks redundant?

Advances in technology will allow savers and investors to bypass financial services providers and, in the process, end the monopoly of the incumbent banks. 

Stop ignoring consumer device support (before your customers start ignoring you)

Service desks may curse the day that Apple unveiled the iPhone, kickstarting as it did a movement which has seen consumer devices undermine the internal IT stronghold.  Yet the need for IT teams to get past their prejudices towards Apple and Android products, and broaden the net of products which they support, has been further underlined by a research from Jabra, which shows that 83 per cent of office workers now regularly work remotely (the report is available here, there’s plenty of good material about demographics/types of devices being used which will be helpful for any support team investigating this issue). 

Join our campaign demanding value from your service desk investment

We recently wrote a blog article about the latent potential of most service desk installations (50 per cent of service functionality is unused), and explained how vendors and customers need to work harder to derive value from their investment. 

IT a priority as businesses prep for recovery

Pessimism regarding the economy will not deter small businesses from investing in new systems, with 50 per cent of those questioned by Iconnyx insisting they will plough money into technology this year.

More for less: how to meet the contradictory challenge of 2012

It’s an outlook that has become depressingly repetitive: IT teams must do more for less.  Research from Gartner says that technology departments are expected to deliver on a number of priorities over the next 12 months to help their businesses stay competitive.  However the ongoing squeeze on global spending means that worldwide IT spending will increase just 0.5 per cent in 2012, while European businesses will see a decrease in funding.

Why 50 per cent of service desk functionality is wasted

Do you use all the functionality that your service desk software offers?  Don’t worry if the answer is ‘no’: you’re not alone.  We describe some quick techniques for getting more value from your investment.

Education IT skills shortage hampering UK economic growth

Service and IT delivery are the two pillars that the UK economy is now built on, but are our schools reflecting the massive shift in skills requirements?

Back2ITSM? Why not go back to the front line?

The way that best practice is delivered and shared is flawed, and so Back2ITSM should be welcomed by the industry.  However, in our eagerness to find answers from our peers, are we ignoring a resource much closer to home that can teach us exactly what the business needs - and what is causing service delivery failures.

Love or loath it: what the Apple experience tells us about IT

Apple saw its PC marketshare in the US improve to 11.3 per cent last year according to IDC.  This may not seem a significant figure - after all, it means that almost 90 per cent of buyers still opt for Windows machines.