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Mixing IT up

Blending internal and external IT delivery models will help public sector organisations achieve cost-effective collaboration in the workplace

From instant messaging and wikis to video conferencing and microblogging, the opportunities for collaboration in the public sector have never been greater.

Collaboration software will be one of the top application software growth segments this year. According to Gartner¹, “unified communications and collaboration will see increased adoption in 2012, and context-aware and presence-based computing will gain more traction in 2013”.

Public sector organisations in the UK will be making a substantial contribution to this growth after the government made collaboration a key pillar of its new ICT strategy.

Although employing a wide array of collaboration channels can help government organisations stimulate productivity and reduce costs, it also represents a major operational and data security headache, which must be addressed by ICT departments.

Pierre Hall, Workplace and Software Solutions Director for Computacenter, comments: “As well as getting to grips with emerging collaboration technologies, ICT departments need to ensure the continued availability and performance of more mature solutions, such as email.”

Safeguarding the user experience means ensuring that there is sufficient storage capacity, security controls and network bandwidth to support both current and future collaboration platforms as the new government ICT strategy becomes a reality for local and central public sector organisations.

To support the shift towards using more ‘open’ collaborative tools, including ‘social networking’ solutions, public sector organisations must be ready to adopt new policies and tools to ensure identity governance and data protection. This is particularly key for organisations dealing with sensitive personal information, such as medical and criminal records.

As a result public sector ICT departments will need to invest in a lot more than just new software if they are to meet the government’s collaborative goals and reap the benefits of increased efficiency, flexibility and sustainability

Enabling remote working and shared services 

Whitehall’s new ICT strategy is not the only factor driving adoption; public sector employees are also influencing the collaborative agenda with users increasingly demanding the same technologies at work as they use at home.

Although many activities in the public sector have to be carried out at dedicated sites, such as hospitals and colleges, collaborative technologies can provide a valuable link to not only community and remote sites but also ‘on-call’ emergency staff. For example East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust uses video-conferencing to connect hospital staff and paramedics with stroke consultants in their homes.

Collaboration will also be a key enabler as more regional public sector organisations adopt a ‘shared’ approach to offices, services and ICT facilities.

Duplication is rife in the public sector, for example, local councils all have their own HR, legal, procurement and finance teams as well as their own approaches and suppliers, all of which help to undermine the potential for economies of scale.

Against this backdrop of duplication, Socitm, the professional association for local authority IT managers, has launched an ambitious strategy to encourage more integrated service delivery.

Greater collaboration between local authorities, emergency services, health, education and civil society organisations sits at the heart of this strategy along with re-use of assets, standardisation and innovation.

Collaborating via the cloud

The call for increased investment in collaboration comes at a time when public sector ICT directors are under relentless pressure to achieve more for less. Budget issues remain the most pressing challenge for 60 per cent of organisations, according to a survey by Loudhouse².

Against this backdrop of cost reduction, it’s not surprising that cloud computing is being heralded as a key enabler for collaboration. With its promise of scalability and utility pricing, cloud computing can offer a compelling and cost-effective alternative to internal datacenters.

Although the government has embarked on a central cloud computing initiative, G-Cloud, its future is unclear – especially after the ICT strategy failed to refer to the platform.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding G-cloud, cloud computing in general is destined to be a key landmark on the public sector ICT landscape. The Cabinet Office ICT strategy states the government will:

• Push ahead with the shift towards cloud computing
• Develop a desktop prototype for the cloud
• Publish a cloud computing strategy.

While these central initiatives are under development, individual ICT departments need to start taking their first tentative steps towards a cloud-based future.

According to analyst Quocirca³, “Cloud need not be a massive project where everything across a department or group of departments has to be replaced. A sensible, evolutionary approach is possible and would provide extensive benefits to the public sector.”

Some public sector organisations have already embarked on this evolutionary journey by evaluating alternative delivery models, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and the cloud, for a range of applications including collaboration. However, according to Gartner⁴ the big rush to cloud email and collaboration services will not be visible in earnest until 2012 to 2014.

Matt Lovell, Computacenter’s Chief Technology Officer, comments: “Organisations’ reluctance to migrate can be attributed to ongoing concerns about security, user support and service levels in today’s nebulous and evolving public cloud market.”

Fifty per cent of organisations cite service level degradation and concerns over cost benefits not being realised as significant factors that could slow or prevent migration to the cloud2.

The issue of data sovereignty both in relation to sensitive citizen and national information also poses a major adoption barrier for central and local government organisations.

Public cloud providers use datacenter resources in a range of locations, which makes it difficult to verify the sovereignty of information. Fifty-eight per cent of the organisations surveyed by Loudhouse were opposed to hosting critical data off-shore.

While ICT directors wait for these issues to be addressed, the cost and complexity of delivering collaboration services to users will only intensify. “Organisations need a viable alternative to internal service delivery – and they need it now,” says Matt.

A pragmatic alternative

Many public sector ICT directors already recognise that the future of email and other collaboration applications lies outside the doors of the corporate datacenter. According to the Loudhouse survey, only nine per cent of organisations will host their email infrastructure internally by 2014 compared with today’s 58 per cent.

Instead organisations will leverage a blend of public and private clouds along with third party datacenters and shared infrastructures for a variety of desktop and end user collaboration applications.

“Public sector organisations need minimise operational and capital expenditure while also maximising efficiency, which means reducing the number of applications hosted on internal infrastructures,” comments Matt. “Although public clouds are currently viewed as a step too far for many organisations, there are other alternatives that come with the same benefits and no added risk.”

For example, Computacenter’s C³Mail and Collaboration service delivers the same benefits of a public cloud – lower costs, utility consumption, greater agility – coupled with the security, performance, compliance, service integration and user support needed in today’s connected workplace.  

Part of Computacenter’s pragmatic approach to cloud-based IT services, C³Mail and Collaboration offers the flexibility of a dedicated or shared infrastructure implemented and managed on your behalf either on-premise or in one of Computacenter’s high availability environments. This limits the need for investment in internal infrastructure assets, support staff, and management methodologies.

“By taking advantage of shared resources and industrialised processes, CIOs can not only cut costs but also provide users with rapid and reliable access to collaboration tools that will help boost productivity and flexibility,” comments Pierre. 

Encompassing key collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync, which includes instant messaging, video calling and web conferencing, C³Mail and Collaboration can be adapted to meet the needs of different user communities; implemented as part of a wider workplace transformation programme and integrated with public cloud offerings.

Simplifying the transition

As an independent advisor, Computacenter can also help public sector organisations assess the different email and collaboration cloud delivery options available. For example, Computacenter can not only assist with advice on licensing Microsoft’s new cloud-based offering, Office 365, but also provide migration and service desk support.

Microsoft Office 365 combines the familiar Microsoft Office desktop suite with online versions of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Lync.

“Microsoft Office 365 follows the trend towards more integrated collaboration and communication services,” explains Pierre. “As this and other new workplace technologies become available, organisations will need to evaluate how they deliver functionality and services to the business to ensure they are achieving maximum efficiency and continuing to control costs.”

With more vendors choosing to provision new workplace technologies via the cloud, public sector organisations will soon find themselves operating a hybrid IT infrastructure that includes internal and external resources.

It’s important to consider the practicalities of data aggregation in this hybrid world. Integrating information residing in the cloud with back-end systems is not a trivial task especially if an organisation has yet to resolve the challenge of integrating its pre-existing systems and data sets.

According to Gartner¹, “using cloud computing services to create environments in which multiple vendors participate in assembling, deploying, selling and consuming IT services will broaden in appeal”.

This blended approach will enable organisations to adopt cloud computing on a phased and pragmatic basis. As Matt explains, “Although collaboration services are being increasingly linked to cloud delivery models, many organisations will continue to host some applications on dedicated infrastructures either on or off site. Despite all the hype, cloud computing will not sound the death knell for the datacenter.”

Ensuring a return on investment

Organisations need to take an equally methodical approach to adopting the new collaboration technologies that are clamouring for attention – and precious ICT budget.

Gartner⁵ cites that “even when there are reasonable expectations of business value, these are hard to quantify in a way that would justify such deployments in opposition to those who fear time wasting, loss of quality control and system abuse”.

“Although collaboration technologies have the potential to empower users to work faster and smarter, public sector organisations need to ensure they are not seduced by this promise into implementing superfluous tools, especially when it comes to ‘social networking’,” comments Pierre. “Many organisations are already struggling to take full advantage of their existing collaboration tools, so new investments must come with a solid business case and measurable benefits.”

Gartner⁵ issues a similar warning: “Time and time again, we hear of organisations that have rolled out ‘social’ capabilities as an infrastructure play, rather than working with the business to supercharge the performance of selected special ad hoc teams. Projects focused on specific activities and defined business outcomes are the ones that will deliver the highest return on investment.”

As well as recognising the needs of diverse user groups, government ICT departments need to understand how new applications will impact infrastructure operations and the pros and cons of different delivery options for their workplace collaboration strategy to be a success. 

Simplicity is a major factor – with the workplace collaboration toolset constantly growing, users need straightforward and fast access, which can be achieved through a single interface and single sign-on. 

“To meet the demand for greater workplace collaboration, IT departments will need to address a range of much wider issues, which will require an equally wide skills set,” comments Pierre. “Get the foundations right, and collaboration will be an enabler; get them wrong, and it could prove to be an expensive encumbrance.”

Find out how Computacenter can help you with your cloud strategy

The practical reality of Cloud
Read the full independent survey by Loudhouse Research

Read more about Socitm's vision for local delivery of public services

Sources
¹ Market Trends: Enterprise Software Markets Are Shifting From Bricks and Mortar to 'BRIC and Mortals', Gartner, January 2011
² Computacenter 2011 Cloud Computing survey, Loudhouse, January 2011
³ Cloud Computing in the Public Sector, Quocirca, April 2011
⁴ E-Mail and Collaboration in the Cloud, Gartner, July 2010
⁵ Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Gartner, October 2010