We are all acutely aware of the difficult economic climate in which we have to operate. For many, concepts such as growth and profit are mere memories, and the main day to day objective is survival.

And if this weren’t bad enough there are lots of other constraints and pressures on businesses today. For example, legacy network and IT infrastructure may be a constraint on efficiency and indeed a real cost to the enterprise. The business no longer fits within the four walls of the office, and changing workstyles need to be accommodated, posing real challenges. IT staff may be hard to obtain and retain, exposing the business to unacceptable risk. And even legislation may be impacting on organisations with ever more stringent requirements for auditing and compliance. All of these issues can cause a drain on the business, its profitability and even its very survival.

Against this back-ground, why should you be interested in what BT has to say about anything?

You will be well aware of BT as a telecommunications company but, we are also one of the top two IT service providers. With these two strings to our bow, we are in a unique position to cater for the multiple needs of our customers and for many business and public sector organisations we are the Networked IT Services company of choice in our market.

We have a clear set of Solutions spanning our main areas of focus, and these can be summarised as

• Network Optimisation
• IT Optimisation
• and “Collaborative Working”.

Our Solutions deliberately emphasise the word “Optimisation” as we believe that what we do and how we serve our customers yields significant efficiencies for them in their day to day operations.

Our focus on efficiency starts with the network where we have identified a three stage journey, starting with Consolidation, leading on to Convergence and from there, on to an Extend stage. At each point on this journey we are seeking to save costs and drive efficiencies.

Consolidation could mean the rationalisation of multiple different network types, or indeed, suppliers, reducing maintenance costs, or allowing different departments that have grown separately to share common network infrastructure and drive down management costs. We can help customers to understand their network estate and drive out cost by eliminating duplication. We also provide Network and Application Auditing to ensure that those critical applications which drive the company’s business are performing at their optimum level. Even small improvements that can raise staff efficiency can pay for themselves many times over in a short period. As a recent example, a network optimisation strategy which we recently proposed could enable a particular company to save 20 seconds every time a staff member opened a file from their Data Centre. Although this might seem insignificant, when multiplied out across all relevant staff and over multiple similar operations, the saving amounted to tens of thousands of Euro per annum for a single operating site.

Similarly, some of the opportunities that arise from converging voice, data, video and other applications on to the one Network Infrastructure can provide significant savings and improvements in Operational Efficiency, and beyond that, some of the developments we are seeing in the area of Unified Communications are opening up even further the opportunity to improve methods of working and improve collaboration among internal staff and indeed between organisations. Collaboration is the “Office of the future” where the barriers of space and location are tumbling and people are enabled to be more productive, and even more satisfied, in their work.

One of the major strengths of working with BT is our still at bringing IT and the Network together. Our IT Optimisation portfolio further enables organisations to save and to prosper. We spoke about Consolidation from the Network Perspective, but the same forces are at play in the IT environment. There is a continuous push to consolidate IT Services into central Data Centres, and this allows for further refinement such as Virtualisation which has a proven track record in reducing server foot-print, in reducing licensing costs and even in reducing power consumption which can be a cost that is often overlooked in the IT Department. There is even a Green benefit to be had which is becoming ever more important in a world where Corporate Social Responsibility is being valued more and more.

This is an area where our Network and IT Optimisation propositions tie together very closely. Whereas it may be very desirable to centralise multiple servers and applications in a single data centre, this may give rise to performance issues where delay across the network is significant. Applications which run smoothly locally may crawl when separated over distance. Within our Network Optimisation practice we have a group of experts who can analyse such problems and deploy suitable solutions to eliminate the problems. This is a good example of what I mentioned earlier: that BT is the Leading Networked IT Services company in Ireland, with such a broad range of knowledge and capability across numerous different disciplines that we can help organisations, both large and small to avail of technology in a way that best suits them, and to be safe in the knowledge that they are working in a smart and efficient way keeping costs under control.

One of the features of today’s global economy is the increasing importance of horizontal, collaborative relationships between employees, customers and business partners. The ability to communicate and collaborate with people inside and outside the business is becoming a key business differentiator.

To address these key business challenges, many companies are choosing to deploy collaborative working solutions that reduce costs, improve team working, drive employee productivity, and increase overall operational efficiency.

Through its Networking and IT capabilities, BT is leading the market to assist our customers in their journey towards improved collaboration, not least because of our own experience in facilitating remote and home working across a large proportion of our over 100,000 employees world wide.

Please take the time to look through the articles in this newsletter, and if you see anything of relevance to yourself or your organisation, please be sure to contact us and we shall be delighted to discuss it with you.