Welcome to B & M Bulletin, produced specifically for users of IT technical services. In this issue:
• Skills to assure business continuity
• Tech View: The Rise of the Silver Server
• 10 ways to measure quality assurance
• Real Skills. Real People - B & M's Matt Jones
• B & M Assure
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Skills to assure business continuity
Amanda Dunn, Sales Director at B & M, explains why sourcing the right IT skills is vital to business continuity
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"..make sure IT systems are always on"
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It is not easy for today's enterprises to ensure that they have the right blend of skills to cater for every eventuality. This is particularly true for organisations with large, complex enterprise systems which need very specific skills to keep their IT systems running without interruption.
One of the issues which is contributing to this problem is the downturn in the number of people studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects at University which, when combined with the challenges associated with an aging labour force and early retirement, presents a major problem for the IT organisation. This problem is made worse for those organisations that have legacy systems as the majority of the people with a STEM degree who have chosen to follow a career in IT want to focus on the latest technologies rather than on current technology or legacy systems.
Another underlying issue is the ongoing requirement to continually cross-skill and up-skill the existing workforce. This is most marked where IT organisations are dedicating more and more skilled resources to building highly automated, highly virtualised 'next-generation' data centres and establishing more efficient services supply chains. These factors have resulted in the migration of key technical people, widening the resource gap and creating a potentially severe shortage of operations-related knowledge.
Analysts predict that the 65 percent of technical resources currently consumed by day-to-day operations will need to shrink dramatically with the increased IT focus on powering growth, innovation and competitive advantage. HP estimates that by 2009 the typical enterprise will have in the order of 20 percent fewer people available for operations-oriented tasks. Yet these tasks, of course, remain essential underpinnings of successful business service delivery.
The only way to ensure continuity of the business, whilst also ensuring sufficient skilled staff to cover regular IT projects, is to develop a relationship with a professional supplier which specialises in delivering resources and services to support large, complex IT environments. To find out how B & M can help, contact sales@bmeurope.com
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Tech View: The rise of the Silver Server
Paul Smith, Technical Manager at B & M, believes that enterprises can reap huge benefits from the skills of more mature IT specialists
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Legacy applications are often cited as the only reason for the continued existence of the mainframe, as transferring these mission-critical applications and their data from one platform to another takes time and resource.
There is a belief in the IT world that most of the support and technical staff responsible for maintaining mainframes are 'Silver Servers' over 50 - and mostly due to retire next week! This comes as something of a surprise to those of us who are somewhat younger - although it has to be said that there is some substance to this belief. Whilst there are indeed younger people coming into the mainframe world, they often don't have the breadth of experience of their older colleagues. When mainframes (mainly IBM and ICL) were the only training ground, every mainframe specialist had to have the skills to work on a variety of systems and tasks.
Distributed systems have increased the number of business applications and operating systems from hundreds to thousands, which means that people now tend to specialise more, as not everyone can be good at everything.
Any business running mainframe systems therefore faces four choices:
- Carry on running their mainframe and try to recruit and train staff to support it themselves
- Re-write all their legacy applications and transfer them to distributed systems for which there is a greater pool of skilled people
- Outsource and get rid of the mainframe problem completely
- Rely on a trusted supplier of IT services to source and deliver the necessary resources
The way to solve these dilemmas is to source the relevant, experienced IT specialists with a skills profile that is wide (but not too wide). They just could be the saviours of a large corporation.
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10 factors that demonstrate quality assurance
Jerry Smart considers the qualities of a supplier that can truly deliver quality assurance:
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1. An understanding that the specialist provided should fit with existing teams
2. The ability to assess skills accurately to ensure that they meet the needs of the customer
3. Access to specialists who are frequently available when the business demands
4. A pool of loyal specialists who will choose to work through the supplier in question first
5. A replacement service whereby they will prioritise finding another expert at short notice if the person originally proposed becomes ill, for example
6. The understanding that large, complex organisations are subject to change and will accommodate change wherever possible
7. They deliver on their promises - every time
8. They meet deadlines - however complex the project
9. Good value for money over the mid- to long-term
10. The ability to engender trust from their customers and can demonstrate this.
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Real People, Real Skills
This month, we profile B & M's Human Resources Manager, Matt Jones
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Matt Jones joined B & M in February 2008 having worked in human resources and recruitment for several years. Matt's main duties at B & M include managing the HR team, planning and implementing strategies to source specialists and dealing with all internal human resources issues.
Matt's first position in the industry was at Manpower where he worked as a recruitment consultant for over three years. He progressed from ad hoc recruitment in a town centre branch to running Manpower's newly-won Hewlett Packard contract, working on site at HP's Reading and Bracknell premises.
Matt then moved to a more HR focused role, working for a small IT software company. His primary task was to implement the company's HR structure and to grow the company from 30 staff to over 100, which he successfully achieved. Matt dealt with all aspects of HR including ultimately making himself redundant when his work with the company was completed! Matt also managed several newly formed departments on an interim basis including a team of 20 telesales graduates.
He took up a new challenge, managing a recruitment team within a private healthcare company, dealing primarily with a new diagnostics project in the West Midlands. The project quickly grew to over 200 medical and administrative staff, at which time Matt's focus changed from recruitment to employee development, including working on several training modules.
Matt spends his spare time immersing himself in any sport he can find, whether it be watching or taking part - captaining his local football and pool teams and supporting Reading FC.
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B & M Assure
Premium continuity services
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B & M Assure is a set of bespoke services designed to meet the ICT needs of today's businesses, no matter what is happening in the business. B & M Assure enables customers to plan for temporary skills shortages - at times of exceptionally high workload or when key IT staff are on leave for example - or to react swiftly to unplanned events, such as staff sickness.
For planned eventualities such as project work or absence cover, B & M's specialists will spend time assimilating the customers' systems and business. For unplanned cover, we offer a priority search and selection service to help source specialists at short notice (subject to availability). Both services use best practice and deliver carefully-screened specialists that meet the needs of the customers' business. For more information on B & M Assure, contact sales@bmeurope.com
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