Expert opinion from Roland Singer, Vice President of IT Services at Sharp Europe.
The range of IT services available to small and medium-sized businesses is constantly evolving. Whether it’s the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI), the challenges in the area of cybersecurity or the rise of cloud strategies, businesses will face numerous challenges and benefit from just as many opportunities in the year ahead.
IT services and AI integration
AI has rapidly entered the market over the past two years and continues to challenge the way many industries operate. However, simply acquiring the tools is not enough to realise the potential of AI; a strategic approach is needed at all levels of the organisation.
To be fair, the potential of AI has been widely reported in the media. Some of this hype is justified, some of it is not. As a result, businesses are not currently making the best use of this breakthrough technology. Tools such as Microsoft Copilot promise significant productivity gains, but their implementation can be daunting, especially for micro-businesses and SMEs that don’t have advanced IT services expertise.
This is due to two reasons: The first is a concern about using AI to explore resources within the organisation. AI can perform a search of what is available in the company’s internal systems, providing access to information that employees would not take the time to track down. This raises issues of security and how to structure the use of AI at the heart of the organisation to prevent information leakage.
Secondly, there are genuine questions around how individuals and businesses can best utilise AI to increase productivity and reduce costs.
The trend that can be observed in the face of these challenges is the need to expand training for the use of AI. As a result, companies are turning to IT service providers for advice on how to effectively integrate AI.
These services aim to demystify AI and help companies customise solutions to their specific needs. Whether it’s using tools like Microsoft Copilot internally to increase productivity or training on IT security policies and how to use them.
Cyber security – a priority for IT departments.
With data at the heart of business operations and IT systems increasingly interconnected, cyber security is critical for organisations of all sizes. It is becoming vital to business operations as it protects networks and employees from malicious attacks, data leaks and unauthorised access that could compromise sensitive information and disrupt business operations. Such disruptions not only have a business impact, but can also cause financial and reputational damage.
Typically, IT security threats are a phenomenon that occurs outside the company. However, despite constant advances in cyber security technologies, human error within a company is still responsible for 88% of data leaks of all sizes.
To counteract this, it is necessary to raise awareness of cyber security, but the trend is towards more and more personalised training. Companies need to train their employees to recognise phishing attempts, social engineering and other threats.
Beyond cyber threats, external influences also affect the IT security of companies. New regulations, such as the EU NIS2 directive, require companies to optimise their cyber resilience. The approach to the NIS2 directive varies slightly from country to country, but the basic compliance, which includes training and raising awareness of cyber security as part of the audit process, is similar throughout the European Union. It forces companies that have not taken the issue of cyber security seriously enough to act.
The directive requires companies to take more stringent measures in the area of cybersecurity, but it also impacts all aspects of the supply chain, regardless of where they take place.
Towards the platformisation of cloud services
n recent years, the cloud computing market has outgrown the simple approach of migrating to the cloud. Organisations are now looking for more sophisticated and flexible strategies that optimise performance and deliver greater profitability.
Modern businesses recognise that no single cloud solution provider can meet all their needs. Instead, they are adopting a multi-cloud approach, in which businesses combine on-premises infrastructure, private cloud and public cloud services to meet their specific needs. We call this a hybrid cloud strategy because it allows different services to be strategically placed with the providers that offer the best performance, price and specialisation, depending on your needs.
As cloud technologies have evolved, the ability to seamlessly integrate and manage different cloud services has become a competitive advantage for businesses. However, while moving to the cloud may initially seem profitable, expenses can quickly spiral. Companies are now looking for strategic partners who can help them optimise their spending.
They are looking for a flexible multi-cloud ecosystem, but no longer want to be dependent on multiple contracts. As a result, we are seeing the creation of a layer of managed services with platforms interposed that simplify processes.
About Sharp Europe
Sharp Europe empowers small, medium and large organisations to improve performance and transform their working environments to meet tomorrow’s needs by providing a variety of professional technology products and services.
Headquartered in London, the company serves the needs of private and public sector customers, educational institutions and government agencies with a portfolio that ranges from printers and advanced flat screen technologies to collaboration platforms and IT services.
As part of Sharp Corporation and with the support of Foxconn, Sharp Europe is investing in and leading the way in technologies that can change the world. The company was the first in the world to launch an 8K monitor and in 2019 launched the first certified Windows collaboration display.
To find out how Sharp Europe is changing the future of work, visit www.sharp.eu.
For more information, please visit www.sharp.eu.