Technology is a driver of competitive advantage. Businesses in the 21st century need to adopt and develop their technology to enhance the experience of their customers, increase their capacity and productivity, and keep up with their competitors. If a business is not actively driving forward it’s technology adoption, it will be falling behind in it’s industry.

Cloud computing is the consumerisation of computational resource into products and services that are available on demand. Cloud computing can either be developed internally by an organisation, or purchased publicly through cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure and a plethora of providers at various levels.

As the vernacular has evolved, using ‘the cloud’ or going to ‘the cloud’ is generally used to describe the outsourcing of storage and computational power to external providers, who host these resources as consumable products.

For most New Zealand businesses, yes. The easiest way to think about the cost comparison is to imagine how much an internal IT technician, or manager would cot annually. If the same amount was invested towards service outsourcing, an organisation would get the following advantages:

• A team of skilled engineers to support the daily operations, instead of one person.
• A range of skills and expertise, instead of a static set of capabilities from one person.
• Cover from other engineers when the usual contact is off sick.
• Cross-pollination of innovation and ideas from other customers and clients.
• A motivated provider, driven by a very competitive market to keep the business happy and operational, instead of an employee who has the comfort of an employment contract.

There are several more, but you can clearly see the qualitative elements of outsourcing. In most cases, businesses will not need to pay the equivalent cost of a full time internal IT person or team, anyway; depending on the type of service engagement required, it would usually be much less, due to the more efficient use of time.

Carefully! In 2020 and beyond, New Zealand businesses will need to take care to invest in tech support companies who are willing to become allies, over and above contracted partners. The pace and intensity of technological development means that a poorly chosen service provider could mean the difference between keeping up with competitors, and falling behind them. Here are three key tips to consider when considering a new service provider:

1. Do they talk a long-term game? Monitor carefully to gauge whether they are focused on immediate sales, or willing to sacrifice that for a long-term outcome.
2. Do they have skills and capabilities outside of the typical day-to-day tasks? Service providers cannot be one dimensional anymore, and business should pay careful attention to whether or not their provider can help with technology development in other areas, e.g. cloud computing, app development, cyber security.
3. Are they looking for a win-win situation? A service provider should be willing to adapt their approach to suit their client’s needs and posture themselves to support their client’s technology trajectory.

At Unify Digital we have a simple mantra: “If our clients are successful, then we will be successful too.” We focus on figuring out how to make our clients successful, because we know our success will flow out of that.

There is only one way to do that – turn off all your computer systems. Network security is an ever-moving, ever-evolving target. Maintaining good network security hygiene will require a continuous improvement mindset – you cant achieve it overnight, but you should have a security support partner, or strategy to persistently and continuously add layers of security to your network. Please view this blog post.

Most likely. Thought leaders such as McKinsey & Company believe that all businesses will need to become tech business to stay competitive over time. Software engineering is key to that evolution and something New Zealand businesses need to get better at.

Software engineering will deliver two key abilities to a business: Firstly the ability to integrate between discrete systems – businesses are adopting multiple software platforms more often, and the ability to get data moving between these platforms is crucial. Secondly, the ability to differentiate – unique and exclusive apps and other software enhancements aimed at customers helps businesses stick out from their competitors.

Our favourite example is how the evolution of the internet led to a revolution in the airline industry. Twenty years ago, passengers relied on intermediaries like travel agents to help them book tickets and get favourable deals. The rise of online pricing platforms, allowing passengers to find their own tickets and deals, has led to an all-out price war between airlines. This has led to the rise of multiple airlines, lower prices, and the empowerment of consumers when it comes to air travel. It also forced the travel agent industry to reinvent itself.

A more esoteric example is the rise of Elon Musk and SpaceX. 20 years ago he asked a simple question: “Why should NASA have a monopoly on the launch of space craft in to space? SpaceX has pioneering the concept of reusable rockets, the consumerisation of satellite launches, and arguably re-invigorated the space race, as multiple countries and companies now vie to be the first to set foot on Mars.

Yes, we have a series of managed service templates to help right size our service provision to your business.

Service contract templates are a subset of service offerings and levels, with a particular pricing matrix, used to right-size a service package to a business.

For most New Zealand businesses, it costs less to outsource your IT than it does to hire an internal IT team. It also comes with a much greater set of benefits.

Yes, all of our software development is focused on satisfying the needs of businesses.

We can build any software solution, but we will also help a prospective client to review the solutions already on the market to see if their problems can be solved with existing technology before recommending the commitment of developing a bespoke platform.

Agility is a commitment to delivering software projects in a way that suits the process of developing software. For years, software projects were shoehorned into the waterfall project management structure, and failed at horrendous rates. Since 2000, software developers have adapted their project management to respond to the evolving needs of the customer for their software product, the realities of development being difficult to quantify, and better measurement systems to make accurate predictions of cost and timeframes.

At Unify, we follow a variant of Scrum agile methodologies, and have adapted that to the needs of our clients, and the needs of their software products as they grow and evolve themselves.

Yes, we have a particular strength in building progressive web applications (PWAs), but we will also help a prospective client to review the solutions already on the market to see if their problems can be solved with existing technology before recommending the commitment of developing a bespoke platform.

A cyber security breach is any incident that intentionally causes an interruption to a business’s operations by an internal or external actor. The breach may or may not involve financial loss or reputational impact. In most cases cyber security breaches are difficult to detect.

Data security is probably a subset of cyber security. Cyber security is the overall posture and approach of a business to external cyber threats and the interaction thereof with operations, identity and data. Data security, specifically, is the needs and the mechanisms for protecting valuable information on a business network from inadvertent, or malicious loss.

Cyber security is a mindset issue for most New Zealand businesses. Before discussing the mechanisms and technologies for managing cyber security, an organisation needs to establish two things:

• An internal company culture of vigilance and resiliency to cyber threats.
• Internal polices and processes that are oriented around protecting data, particularly personally identifiable information (PII), and keeping staff and users safe from cyber threats.

As these are established and developed, a business can adopt technology solutions to help enforce and manage these policies, and enable staff to be resilient to cyber threats. As to the technical requirements, these will then vary from business to business.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-ways-manage-cyber-threats-your-business-2020-daniel-oliver/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cyber-security-trends-2020-email-still-most-common-attack-oliver/

Digitisation is the process of transforming analogue information into digital information. When you add a friend’s phone number to your contact list, you are digitising their contact details.

Digitalisation is the process of reforming systems and processes that rely on human interactions and interventions with digital technologies. When you stop using your pen and paper address book and instead start recording your contacts in an email client, or a smart phone, you have digitalised your contacts system.