AI : Coming of age?

08 December 2017

Now I’m a Computer Science graduate, and have been aware of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for decades, but it transpires that for a raft of reasons AI is really starting to become mainstream so I thought it would be interesting to think about how to apply it to a “normal” company. By “normal”, I’m excluding hi-tech or high data dependent companies, more your average midmarket UK company just going about its business.

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Midmarket IT team : How to create one!

24 October 2017

Within the consulting aspects of Embedded’s world we are often invited into clients to review the performance of their technology in its mission of supporting the business processes. For our smaller clients, this is usually a big decision to take but is driven by a combination of real technology problems and a lack of any internal skilled resource to support / drive their technology agenda.

The conclusion is usually to get the skills needed to understand, represent and manage technology into the company. These skills need to be broad and experienced, and cost money, however without them technology sits out of focus of the business and ends up being under invested and unmaintained, which will just lead to problems in the long term. Being out of license compliance, having unsupported versions of hardware or software, suffering performance problems; all of which can hinder your business processes on which technology sits. The case for IT resources is stronger now than it ever has been in history as technology is an enabler to competitive edge within every industry.

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Microsoft : Future Decided

31 October 2017

I am supposed to be independent in the context of IT advisory services, but I also think it’s important to have an opinion on technology vendors. I spent today at Microsoft’s UK flagship event, Future Decoded, held at the Excel in Docklands over two days – I only attended for the first day.

From start to finish, you cannot help but be impressed with how Microsoft have effected a transition (which they are still going through) from a dull vendor of fairly average operating systems to an end to end, progressive, software and services vendor.

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Avoiding the noise of our industry

06 October 2017

I have made no secret of my frustration with the IT Channel in the UK. It is fragmented, disorganised, difficult to navigate and not particularly useful. If its purpose is to deliver vendor product to clients then it sort of works, but if its purpose was to support clients in a quest for understanding how to consume technology then I think it fails spectacularly.

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