Leaders IT Services

Liberate and Protect Your Mobile Workforce with Syncplicity Enterprise File Sync & Share

Ged Roberts — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 06:24:16 +0000

Today mobile is changing the way we all work in the enterprise. Today’s workforce demands the ability to access and share the files they need from any device at any time and on any platform but no one wants to be troubled by the technical challenges. Syncplicity from EMC makes it easy to make this now.

With beautiful mobile applications for all popular platforms, a very simple implementation process and pricing that is well within the reach of all organisations. Add to that the enterprise grade features and security that it competitors do not offer, Synplicity allows you quickly and easily address this growing enterprise problem.

Interested in hearing more about how to solve your enterprise file synchronisation and sharing challenges, contact us at info@leaders.com.au.

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An Analytics Lens on your Unstructured Data with StoredIQ

Ged Roberts — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 04:53:27 +0000

Information is everywhere, every day organisations retain increasing volumes of information. Email, knowledge management, operational insight, management of business as usual processes, compliance and records retention policies all are voracious producers and consumers of information that is now streaming at us at an ever increasing pace. This “fire hose” of information is the source of immense potential value but it is now also turning into a real liability.

Information volumes are growing so fast that we no longer have control of our information. In fact, the reality is that this point of inflection happened some time ago but we lacked the tools and motivation to address this “tsunami” of information. Storage is no longer cheap, as for many organisations, the increase in information volume outstrips the ongoing reduction in the cost of storage.

The liability information creates now rapidly outweighs its longer term business value. In fact most business information looses much of its value within 2 to 3 years and we can no longer ignore this problem; it has become too big and is now the elephant in the room for many organisations. Fortunately, there are now methodologies and tools that can help you tackle this issue; what was a problem too hard to solve has now become an opportunity to reduce cost and liability, whilst also creating new value, competitive advantage and differentiation.

Here at the Leaders Information Group, we work with our partner IBM and their product StoredIQ to help our customers take on this these challenges and convert them to opportunities.

What does StoredIQ do and how does it work? Here is a short explainer that goes straight to the heart of both the problem and the opportunity.

Contact me on 0415 534239 or ged.roberts@leaders.com.au to see how StoredIQ can help you get control of your information once again.

Ged Roberts,
Information Group Lead
Leaders IT Services

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InfoArchive, Reduce IT Complexity – Optimize Infrastructure – Ensure Regulatory Compliance

Ged Roberts — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 05:27:56 +0000

Here at Leaders IT Services, we have been really impressed by the Capabilities of EMC’s InfoArchive. It enables you to reduce IT Complexity, Optimise Licencing and Infrastructure whilst also ensuring that you meet your long term regulatory compliance requirements. This solution is one of the tool in our Information Group’s toolkit and we are really expecting this to take off in the AsiaPac region over this year.
Have a look at this great case study from the Bank of Montreal.

THE INFORMATION DILEMMA
Many organizations are experiencing an exploding growth in business information, as well as an increase in regulatory requirements. Unfortunately, this mix of opportunity
and risk is hitting IT departments at a time of serious cost cutting. Legacy and enterprise applications are bursting with different forms of information: transactions,
documents, voice recordings, xml data, print streams and other types of structured and unstructured data and content.
This accumulation stretches capacity to the breaking point, with higher costs for servers, storage, application maintenance, database software, and operations.
Keeping all information in its source application is neither cost-effective nor scalable. And backup is only a temporary measure; difficult to access and not a compliant
solution. Deleting everything is also not an option because of regulatory mandates and internal policies for information retention due to privacy, security and legal preservation
requirements. In addition, many organizations are spending millions to maintain legacy applications that are kept alive solely for their data. This is an unnecessary drain on IT – not only for
their high costs, but also for the scarce resources needed to maintain these systems. The ideal solution to all these challenges must have the capacity to:

Ingest and retain all information types, structured or unstructured, in a consolidated
repository
Provide the ability to audit and preserve data and content to meet a variety of
regulatory and governance mandates
Easily manage simple to complex retention policies via an intuitive user interface for
centralized retention policy management
Store information in an open, industry-standard format for long term retention and
easy access.
Have no dependencies on the originating application for managing or referencing
the information

AN ENTERPRISE ARCHIVE
EMC InfoArchive is an integrated product suite that enables organizations to reduce IT complexity and costs, optimize infrastructure and ensure compliance for valuable and
regulated information. Structured and unstructured information from multiple applications is then managed by a single application, removing information silos and
streamlining access control and compliance management. EMC InfoArchive provides mechanisms to not only safeguard the integrity of the content, but also to ensure
continual access throughout the entire retention period.

If you want to learn more about InfoArchive, call Ian Simpson on 0402 517 166 or email Ian at ian.simpson@leaders.com.au.

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LEADERS IT SERVICES APPOINTED TO SA GOVT PANEL

Ged Roberts — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 09:18:10 +0000

Media release: FINAL

Leaders IT Services announces it has been appointed to the Government of South Australia’s eProjects Panel.

The eProjects Panel enables SA Government departments to contract project-oriented ICT and cybersecurity services up to the value of $700,000 from selected suppliers. The eProjects Panel is managed by ICT Strategic Sourcing, a business unit in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, and has contracted out over 230 projects for more than 30 agencies to date.

The appointment is a milestone for Leaders IT Services: marking Government-level acceptance of its Perfect Fit™ model, through which it sources the team of best fit for each client project, from among its extensive network of consultants.

The appointment also reflects the organisation’s deep pool of expertise. Leaders IT Services has established a large network of industry certified consultants, and also draws on the database of 500,000+ IT professionals of its partner, Peoplebank, to quickly build a quality team for project opportunities.

Campbell Johnston, Managing Director of Leaders IT Services (Leaders) commented, “As part of the eProjects panel, Leaders will go head-to-head with some of SA’s largest IT services providers, giving us the opportunity to prove the advantages of our business model.”

“In our eight months of operation, Leaders has made great inroads: setting up a number of panel memberships and striking partnerships with market leaders including IBM, HP and EMC. As well as, of course, designing and delivering a broad range of highly successful ICT projects for public and private sector organisations.”

“With our appointment to the eProjects Panel, Leaders will now be able to demonstrate how our approach out-performs the old world of professional services, and how our teams deliver outstanding project outcomes in a value-for-money way.”

Leaders IT Services is headquartered in Melbourne, with operations in each of the major capital cities and in Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

Since its establishment in 2013, the company has built up a customer base in enterprise, utilities, telecommunications, Government, banking and broader sectors based on its ‘Perfect Fit™ model, through which it identifies project teams – individualised for each project – from experienced contractors drawn from sister company Peoplebank’s unrivalled database of ICT professionals.

Leaders IT Services SA Governemnt ePanel Appointment

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Throughts from IBM’s Insight 2014 Conference Las Vegas

Ged Roberts — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:43:55 +0000

I am just back from Insight 2014 in Las Vegas where the standout announcement for me was the advances that IBM have made in their Watson technology. Watson was announced a couple of years ago as the beginning of the cognitive computing era and up until now has been a little ephemerous. IBM told us that it had won Jeopardy and that it had passed its medical exams but there was little in the way of practical application.
At Insight, IBM announced some specific vertical applications that gave us a good idea of how Watson could be applied to solve some of the more tricky problems out there. They showed us how it is being used to recommend specific treatments and procedures in oncology. How Watson has been trained to give best practice advice in cancer treatment based on machine learning from thousands of individual cases.
IBM also showed us a financial use case, an application that could be used in the wealth management business to offer expert opinion based on market information and trends all learned form historical financial records and up to the minute news feeds. They also showed us a more trivial example where Watson has learned from thousands of recipes to recommend existing and newly created recipes based on the more usual food combinations (as well as some more eclectic and eccentric variations.
What was particularly impressive was Watson’s ability to understand natural language. Enquiries can be entered in full sentences which Watson cognises incredibly quickly and accurately. Watson already understands many languages and is currently learning how to speak. Presumably, listening will come soon after and we are getting very close to the point where we will be able to interact directly with a computer vocally. Apples voice recognition and generation engine Siri is far from this level of cognition as it has a very limited vocabulary and grammar is doesn’t infer in the way Watson does.
Now my question here is how does IBM monetise Watson? What is clear is that the amount of effort and time involved in training Watson for a particular domain or vertical application is very extensive which will rule Watson our for most small to medium sized organisations. Although you don’t program Watson, the machine learning effort is probably the same as a medium to large software development project (albeit needing very different skills). So my prediction is that Watson will initially play in the B2B space. Companies will start to build out specific vertical services and sell these services to other companies that can use them. The cost of developing these services will be large so companies will have to be confident that they can sell the service on to recoup the cost of building the service. Initially this could create a high barrier to entry although the cost will come down over time as the development cost is recouped. From there, services will then be delivered to consumers either by the companies that create the original services and we will then see the birth of new start ups that do things that we have not thought possible until now. The opportunity to innovate is huge.
Watson could be a game changer and may be the “rabbit in the hat” that IBM need to begin its next reinvention. IBM has re-invented itself many times in the past and will no doubt be reborn again. I’ll be watching this space carefully, what are your thoughts?

Ged Roberts,

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MEDIA RELEASE: LEGG HOTFOOTS IT TO LEADERS IT SERVICES

Ged Roberts — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:05:13 +0000

MEDIA RELEASE:

16th October 2014

LEGG HOTFOOTS IT TO LEADERS IT SERVICES

Building on its rapidly-growing reputation for project execution, Leaders IT Services has appointed industry veteran Mike Legg as Client Executive, based in Melbourne, Australia.

Mike Legg brings to the role two decades’ industry experience, including senior roles with SMS Management and Technology, JDS, NAB, BMC Software and KPMG Australia.

In his new role with Leaders, Legg will build teams that deliver brilliant IT solutions in value for money ways, using the Leaders model of building bespoke project teams for each client project. Leaders draws its project teams from sister company Peoplebank’s database of 500,000+ proven contractors, ensuring each team offers deep expertise in key project parameters.

Mike Legg commented, “Leaders is an impressive organisation. Its model of building bespoke project teams puts us in the rare position of utilising our Perfect FitTM methodology to offer each client the best expertise for their needs.”

“I’m proud to be working with Leaders, and I’m very much looking forward to showing more businesses just how we can cost-effectively build IT solutions that help achieve their business goals,” Legg said.

Leaders IT Services has operations in each of Australia’s major capital cities and in Hong Kong, Singapore and China, delivering commercially-responsive solutions free from the margins associated with traditional management and IT consultancies’ projects.

Since its establishment in 2013, the company has built up a customer base in enterprise, utilities, telecommunications, Government, banking and broader sectors.

– Ends –

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Steptember – $9000 and 1.4 Million Steps

Ged Roberts — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 13:51:09 +0000

The Leaders IT Services Steptember team of Campbell Johnston, Ian Simpson, Jason Atkinson and Ged Roberts stepped up for the month of Steptember and raised nearly $9000 for Cerebal Palsy. Over the month our team stepped through 1.4 million steps which averages out at over 12500 steps per day for each of the team members. The outright winner (apart from Cerebal Palsy) was Ian Simpson who raised over $3600 and stepped nearly 400,000 steps over the 4 weeks.

We’re all feeling fitter and healthier and can’t wait to do this again next year.

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Getting information into the hands of those who need it – Syncplicity File Sync and Share

Ged Roberts — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:06:03 +0000

Getting information into the hands of those who need it with EMC’s Syncplicity File Sync and Share.

Syncplicity is a solution that forms part of our Information Group’s capability. Simple File Synchronisation and Sharing across the enterprise or department with intuitive and elegant mobile applications for iPhone and Android. We are seeing a lot of interest in this product. Let us know if you are interested in hearing more about what it can do for your organisation.

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Leaders IT Services Launch our Information Group

leadadmin — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 10:00:44 +0000

Leaders IT Services have today launched our Information Group, a capability dedicated to Information Intelligence, Analytics, Governance and Legacy Retention.

The Information Group wraps several solutions that are targeted at addressing some of the critical issues facing organisations around the ever increasing growth of unstructured data in the enterprise.

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Leaders IT Services Supports Steptember

Ged Roberts — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 12:11:39 +0000

Leaders is supporting Steptember and and will be raising money for Cerebal Palsy over the month of S(t)eptember. Campbell Johnston, Ian Simpson, Jason Atkinson and Ged Roberts will each be setting themselves the target of stepping at least 10,000 times each day over the 4 weeks. They are hoping to raise over $5000 for Cerebal Palsy.

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