Comms Dealer

VMware has revealed new European research highlighting the pressures businesses face concerning mobile devices and applications in the workplace.

The majority (67 per cent) of UK office workers surveyed said they do not believe their organisation provides them with the mobile tools and applications to be productive and efficient, or mobility policies that provide the flexibility to work effectively on the move (62 per cent).

More than a third (39 per cent) of UK employees said they would actually consider leaving their organisation if told they couldn't use their mobile device for work.

IT departments, however, are currently unable to meet employee requirements, with the European research, conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by VMware, revealing that almost half of IT decision makers across Europe (47 per cent) do not agree that their department can meet the mobile needs of staff across the business.

Encouragingly, businesses are recognising that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies can boost productivity and employee satisfaction, and are looking to take action. Nearly three quarters (70 per cent) of UK IT decision makers said they have implemented or plan to implement BYOD, with almost a third (32 per cent) of those respondents saying it was to attract and retain talent. Furthermore, almost half (46 per cent) of UK IT leaders questioned said they are or will be designing systems and policies in 2013 that assume employees are mobile and accessing data remotely as the norm rather than the exception.

"This is evidence of an emerging class of mobile rebels with a real cause - a new wave of employees using mobile devices to their advantage, to work more effectively and drive innovation," says Joe Baguley, CTO at VMware, EMEA.

"Many companies are playing catch up to this trend. If workers aren't provided with the mobile resources they require, many will take the initiative and drive change themselves.

"Savvy businesses are recognising this and are prioritising formal mobility strategies to harness the initiative of their workers and deliver competitive edge."

The research also highlights the security dangers that await IT departments not getting involved. In the UK, more than two thirds (69 per cent) of IT leaders believe company information is being stored on personal devices, with almost half (43 per cent) of them suspecting the information could be commercially sensitive. Their suspicions are legitimate: only a third (35 per cent) of employees questioned across Europe (and 41 per cent of British) were confident the data they stored on their personal devices was not commercially sensitive, implying that the vast majority cannot be sure on the issue.

"Businesses must tread a fine line between embracing and promoting a flexible working culture, while protecting corporate intellectual property and customer data. There's a mobile uprising occurring, and it's creating management and security challenges for IT departments," said Baguley.

"There's also a great opportunity here, however. VMware believes alternative ownership models for companies, such as BYOD, can be implemented using an integrated workforce mobility approach. This can help businesses improve workforce productivity, gain faster access to new innovation and achieve differentiation, without compromising information security or business resilience."

ISP and Internet Telephony Service Provider Spitfire has continued its successful graduate recruitment programme for a fourth successive year.

Last year saw the company take on over a dozen graduates under a scheme that was introduced to nurture future talent and to address a growing skills shortage experienced by the company.

The specialised nature of Spitfire's service has created the necessity to train graduates from scratch which is overseen by highly skilled and experienced members of Spitfire.

Despite the recent economic downturn the company has found recruiting the right calibre staff challenging. This year graduates attended a recruitment day at the company's headquarters in London and participated in a number of exercises designed to evaluate their skills in negotiation and presentation. Successful candidates were then offered graduate entry sales jobs with the company.

Susie Ward, Spitfire's Marketing & HR Director, commented: "Our continued growth means we now require a steady stream of new personnel across all departments of the business.

"Experience has shown that recruiting graduates straight from university produces better outcomes as they learn their craft the 'spitfire way' untainted by preconceptions and bad habits learnt elsewhere.

"Consequently retention rates are higher and career progression is faster. While this represents a major financial investment and a big commitment in staff mentoring time it has proved very worthwhile."

This year the employment news has been widely positive with government, surveys and business leaders all indicating a broad upswing in staffing plans from here on. If the June REC survey is correct, '60 per cent of companies are now looking to increase headcount'. So where on earth are these candidates going to come from? Asks Clive Jefferys, JMA Network.

The UK employed workforce is already the biggest ever at 30 million and the only immediate gain to be had is part-timers increasing their hours. This will mostly benefit lower skilled positions in the broad economy, but it's not much use to us in telecoms!

Well I've seen this before in the early 90s and the consequence is a salary war. Last time around salaries increased by 45 per cent over a five year period! So to win the best people the obvious option telecoms employers have is to outbid their competitors. I don't say this gleefully. While it will improve agency fee cash pro rata, the real cost will be ever more intense, frustrating, often fruitless negotiation as companies gazump each other left, right and centre.

So this is not a game for greenhorns. Your best recruitment partner is someone who is well connected to find people and has the maturity to secure the offer in a lasting way. It's no good using hard closing techniques. If the job offer isn't presented properly it will come unstuck later on.

Fast-talking sales bullies never prosper for long.

The top candidates are only going to leave a secure job if you are able to meet their buying criteria and improve their lot. However it's never ALL about money. If the candidate's best offers are financially similar, the deciding factors will be how the company targets its products, working conditions, the people and management style.

Smart hirers aren't afraid to woo their candidates quickly.

So with the summer slowdown here already, it's time to start thinking about your recruitment plans for September and beyond. If you already have empty chairs, recruitment is only going to get a lot tougher for you unless you change how you do it!

The new ShoreTel Mobility 7 software release incorporates a new user interface and simplified integration to boost workforce productivity for iPhone and Android users.

With ShoreTel Mobility 7, users can 'transform' their iOS smartphone or tablet into a desk phone with the ShoreTel Dock.

The new Today screen in the application integrates with the native calendar on Android and iOS platforms. The ShoreTel Mobility Client automatically displays conference calls on the mobile user's calendar and enables one click access to web and audio conferences.

A Join button automatically dials the specific conference call and enters the conference participant code.

ShoreTel Mobility 7 also integrates with ShoreTel Conferencing so that users can switch to the presentation view with a single click, which provides both audio and visual participation.

"Enterprise end users expect mobile UC clients to be as intuitive and easy to use as consumer apps found on a wide variety of smart phones and tablets," said Brian Riggs, principal analyst at Ovum. "This increases adoption of UC in the enterprise, helping businesses to derive the most benefit from their IT investments, while reducing training costs, resulting in a lower TCO of UC solutions purchased.

"ShoreTel Mobility 7's rich set of integrated voice, conferencing and collaboration, presence, IM, and other features presents businesses with the communications tools central to successfully deploying UC."

David Petts, senior VP of worldwide sales at ShoreTel, said: "Customers are able to integrate leading smartphones and tablets securely, simply and cost-effectively into existing enterprise communication applications and infrastructure to provide greater flexibility and increased productivity."

South West Communications Group has signed a deal to deploy a ShoreTel Unified Communications (UC) solution to gas turbine and turbine components experts Centrax.

The gas turbine manufacturers and turbine components supplier has operated for more than 65 years and has been based in Newton Abbot since 1955.

Centrax will take delivery of its new telephone system this summer to serve the needs of its 700-plus employees and to link its multiple plants and workshops at its Newton Abbot site.

The ShoreTel Unified Communications solution will provide telephony functionality to more than 650 users on site as well as integrating its 100 global mobile users via a Smartphone app to eliminate expensive overseas roaming charges while still giving them access to the functions of the telephone system.

In addition, IP phones will be deployed at Centrax's 10 overseas depots throughout Europe, Russia, North Africa and the Middle East.

Nick Sanderson, of Centrax, said: "Our existing telephone system has become outdated and both expensive and difficult to support. We needed a modern IP replacement that will accommodate the two divisions of the company while encompassing the size of our site, number of employees, overseas sites and mobile workers."

Voicenet Solutions has introduced VNinternational to its portfolio, enabling companies operating on a global basis to have a solution that offers geographic and non geographic toll-free numbers in over 50 countries and 4,000 cities worldwide direct to the customers Voicenet system.

This will give Voicenet customers and partners a solution that is easy to integrate allowing them to enhance their own customer services, said the firm.

Notts-based Adodo Consultancy has launched a free web application designed to help organisations of all kinds focus on the basics of marketing and creating an online presence.

"Old marketing methods are being replaced through technological innovation," stated Tim Glynn, Adodo's MD. "Just like the dodo, if you don't adapt your business will die."

The webapp, called HangoutLocalHelp.com, provides simple guides on how to create an online reputation and offers brand building information on social media and mobile marketing.

"Building and protecting your reputation is crucial," added Glynn. "Online reviews are second only to personal advice as the main driver for purchase decisions. It is critical that a business has its 'Reputation Marketing' in check."

Glynn's mantra, 'New Technology, Traditional Values', applies to all businesses that want to grow, he believes. "Small innovative organisations are the future and for those willing to grasp the opportunities these are exciting times," he added.

Glynn describes the webapp as a checklist to help users ensure users receive maximum return for their efforts.

"There are more benefits planned for the tool later in the year but for now the majority of SMEs, charities and social enterprises could improve their chances of success by acting on the information provided."

To incentivise downloads of the HangoutLocalHelp.com webapp Adodo has introduced an introductory offer and the chance of receiving a complementary £500 market research voucher.

Manchester-based cloud and colocation firm UKFast has been named as a finalist in four categories at the National Business Awards.

The £20m turnover firm has been shortlisted in the Blackberry Business Enabler of the Year, the Customer Focus Award, and the Croner Employer of the Year category; while CEO Lawrence Jones has been named as a finalist in the Smith and Williamson Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Jones said: "It has been a phenomenal year for UKFast so far, adding new directors, making our first acquisition and launching our eCloud range. To now add four shortlistings in the nation's biggest business awards is a huge nod to the hard work, professionalism and awesome attitude of the UKFast team.

"Once again we are representing the North West on a national stage and we couldn't be prouder."

So far this year the hosting firm has scooped several accolades including ranking as the 5th Best Workplace in the UK (medium category), the DataCentre Solutions award for Service Provider of the Year and the Institute of Customer Service Employee Engagement Award.

Enterprise-wide healthcare informatics will improve quality of medical services and efficiency of operations while reducing expenditures, according to Frost & Sullivan.

Like many other verticals, the intensely competitive and dynamic healthcare industry is looking to cloud computing as a means to improve quality of services while reducing costs, notes the think tank.

The mature healthcare IT market, in particular, needs a solution to grow revenues. While workflows are being streamlined and made accurate by solutions such as picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), radiology information systems (RIS), healthcare information systems (HIS), and clinical information systems (CIS), the market is in need of solutions that integrate these technologies, enabling all relevant patient and imaging data to be available at one spot and yet accessible across various locations. Such enterprise-wide data sharing can help healthcare service providers increase efficiency at nominal expenditure.

Cloud computing is quickly expanding into a key enabler for enterprise-wide solutions. Implementing cloud computing technologies appropriately can aid European healthcare providers improve the quality of medical services and the efficiency of operations, share information across geographic locations, and manage expenditures. The concept can be applied in a variety of ways, including data storage and data loss prevention, maintaining patient information records, and authorised sharing of information. For instance, recorded patient information may need to be shared beyond hospital boundaries during an emergency where time is a crucial factor. This can be done quickly and efficiently by providing authorised access to this information on the cloud.

With a mature PACS market across Europe, healthcare providers are in need of additional storage systems to back their data up, which can make the process of storing data into an expensive affair, affecting the operational budget. "By using cloud computing, the expenditure on hardware and storage space would be cut down, as cloud storage can cost almost 10 times less than regular storage systems," notes Frost & Sullivan Healthcare Analyst Raghuraman Madanagopal. "In addition, cloud storage implementation may result in a drastic readjustment of the amount spent on training resources to manage the storage systems."

Risk of data loss is also a major concern for most healthcare providers, as it has crucial impact on the operational efficiency of hospitals. Cloud computing provides extra safety in reducing the risk of data loss, by regularly upgrading itself and improving protection standards. Upgrades occur without any downtime and real time access is not impacted by this, therefore ensuring the 24/7 accessibility required by healthcare providers.

Cloud computing implementation is, however, in its early stages, and there are still a few restraining factors such as security and compliance concerns, shortage of qualified personnel to shift data from hardware to the cloud, and poor broadband penetration or low internet speeds in many parts of Europe.

Nevertheless, cloud computing and its services provide hospitals across Europe with excellent options to improve treatment quality and this will encourage large-scale implementation in the coming years. "Cloud service providers are constantly innovating themselves and improving their security standards in order to comply with different regulations and ensure high security," says Madanagopal.

"The advantages of cloud computing in terms of storage size and storage efficiency, data loss prevention and facilitating synchronised and authorised sharing of data can change the dynamics of the European healthcare informatics industry in the course of time."

Ness Technologies, provider of software product engineering services, business technology solutions and services, has named Pete Rogers as Vice President and General Manager of the UK and Ireland for its EMEA business.

He will focus on building the growing business in those geographies for Ness's Software Engineering System's (SES) business unit.

Rogers has worked in European sales and operations for over 30 years with VP-level jobs with both large and early-stage software and services companies.

Paul Lombardo, Senior VP & Managing Director of EMEA at Ness SES, said: "Pete's ability to work with clients to help them understand the business benefits of technology and services, as well as his expertise in Agile software development and SaaS and SLA-based service delivery, make him a significant asset to the EMEA team."