Month: September 2018

With so much talk about cloud technology and its benefits to business, many business owners have begun venturing into this burgeoning area of technology, in the hope of greater efficiencies, integration and functionality. But whilst the benefits are widely published, it’s easy to be seduced into migration without a clear roadmap.

The result? For many, it’s “hang on and hope for the best”.

If you’re reading this, a fair assumption might be that you’ve considered the big picture and identified your organisation’s objectives in migrating your on-premise servers to the cloud. The reasons for migration are many and varied: such as improving your company website’s capacity to manage growing traffic, reducing IT infrastructure costs or simply making your business more agile. However, once you’ve identified a clear purpose for the migration, it’s time to plan out the process. Here are some important steps for you and your IT team to consider:

3. Your Migration Window – Essentially, when you do you want the migration to take full effect? Like any significant change in business operation, it takes time to ensure all contingencies are accounted for. Seeking professional guidance from a migration specialist at this point can help you set realistic timelines.
4. Communication and training – It’s also vital to communicate the change early to staff and provide any necessary training ahead of the migration. Consider how the training needs of each area of your business may differ depending on how they interact with your IT systems – are they heavy users? Do they have remote access? Do they handle sensitive data?
5. Human resources – Also consider: do you have enough of the right staff with the right skillsets to best manage the migration? Consider not only your internal resources but the need for and associated cost of external support during the transition.
6. Workloads currently in the cloud – Depending on the size of your organisation, there are likely many applications, as well as physical and virtual servers working behind the scenes to keep you operational. One of the first critical steps in your migration is to clearly delineate which of these are on-premise and which are already in the cloud, and of these, which are independent, and which interact or are interdependent?
7. Security – Depending on your organisation’s operational and security requirements, you may need to consider either a temporary or ongoing hybrid set up. The option you choose will depend on many factors including the volume of overall data being migrated, and the level or levels of security required of each key dataset.
   Tools such as Microsoft Azure Migrate can help you structure this process.
8. Infrastructure resources – It’s also important to consider if you have enough of the right kind of infrastructure resources such as storage and network connectivity to ensure a smooth transition. If not, do they need to be purchased outright, leased or subscribed?
9. What if… the backup plan – Migration often brings with it some challenges. But as in any area of business, the best you can do is anticipate the contingencies and be prepared with a backup plan.
10. Time and corruption – Consider what you’ll do if the migration takes longer than expected, corrupts or suffers an outage: what will be the impact on resources and productivity? Will it impact your customers? In situations like this, tools such as Azure Site Recovery (ASR) can provide a live replication facility to maintain data integrity and operational continuity during migration, safeguarding against time blowouts, corruptions and outages, and ultimately, protecting your reputation and your bottom line.
    In conjunction with recovery tools such as ASR, it’s also highly recommended that you establish a rollback plan: that is, a way to revert to the original on-premise system should the migration go awry.  To this end, it’s vital to keep your data continuously backed up, according to the optimal replication frequency needed for your organisation. Tools such as Azure Backup and Azure Traffic Manager can help you maintain seamless recovery systems.
11. Legacy servers – If your current servers are running Windows 2008 or earlier, you will need to make specific provisions to ensure a smooth migration.

It’s easy to be dazzled by the benefits of cloud migration, for they are many. But like any significant change in the operation of your business, it requires planning, expert advice and most of all, a willingness to be focused on the outcome but flexible in your approach. Give it the attention it deserves, and your business will be rewarded with a system that offers great agility and flexibility. You’ll make cost savings on physical infrastructure and upgrades and enjoy the peace of mind of a server that’s as secure, if not more, than your current on-premises set up.

If change and meeting your customers’ needs is a constant, doing nothing isn’t an option. Be sure you are partnering with a company with the depth and breadth of expertise you require. Particularly one who can help you navigate end-to-end managed services, cloud, mobile and paperless office technology. GPK consultant, Ben Holian, is available for a no obligation discussion on how GPK can help you reduce operational costs, manage your IT footprint more effectively and create an exceptional experience for your customers. Contact: Phone 1300 000 475 or email info@gpkgroup.com.au for more information.

 

Our General Manager, Anthony Agnello and his brother Alby, have entered into the National Cancer Council – Mystery Box Rally.  We want to ensure they are both given a boost of support for such a good cause. So please get behind Anthony and Alby and support this great initiative. To support this great initiative by way of donation of any sum, please visit:

 

Anthony and Alby sell the story better than us!

In Alby’s words: Anthony (Co-driver) and Myself (Alby, Driver- team leader) are really happy to announce that we’re taking part in the Mystery Box Rally in 2018! It’s our first time and we are really excited to join into something that helps all Australians future health. Both of us have family that have been affected by cancer, as does James Freeman (Co-founder of the sh1tbox rally ), and we really want to join him in this wonderful and exciting fundraiser. Mystery Box Rally is one of the largest community lead fundraising events for the Cancer Council in Australia having raised over $2.7 million in the last 5 years. Part of the requirements for our participation is to raise a minimum of $3,500 but most teams raise well above this amount. These funds go to the Cancer Council and we are extremely proud to be doing our part to support such a worthy charity. Fundraising is the hard part, so any donation you can give is greatly appreciated. As we have entered the Mystery Box Rally just under 2 months before it starts, we will need all the help we can get to meet this target of $3,500, the more will be a bonus to the foundation.

In Anthony’s words: We are required to purchase a vehicle that is above 25 years old, RWC, registration and insured, and go on a 5-day trek of unknown path leaving Midlura and returning to Mildura. We have managed to get a car already of which I am testing every day. We purchased a 1992 Holden Commodore VP Exec (as you can see in the picture). I’m looking forward to spending time with my younger brother, really test our relationship 🙂

We are late to the party only joining 2 weeks ago, but we are up for the challenge at both the rally and the money raising. Fundraising can be done via a donation or sponsorship.

Background of the Mystery Box Challenge

Teams will drive their own 25+ year old cars along a mystery route in this unique 5 day challenge, all in the name of cancer research. The route is a loop starting and finishing at the same location, but all the other details are kept under wraps, only given to the teams each morning.

The rally is not a race – it’s a fun, colourful, unpredictable adventure with participants travelling at their own pace in smaller groups. Vehicles often break down but “we never leave anyone behind” and each night is spent camping beneath the stars and celebrating the day’s achievements. It all adds up to an incredible opportunity to see Australia’s vast and beautiful countryside and make lifelong friends, many brought together after experiencing cancer themselves or seeing cancer impact family and friends.

Since it’s inception the rally has been the largest fundraiser for the Cancer Council nationally.

Propelled by an increasingly online, experience-driven consumer, the past decade has seen a radical transformation in Australia’s retail scene. And with seismic shifts expected in the wake of retail giants like Amazon adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technology this trend looks set to continue. Yet consumers are not entirely familiar, nor at ease with the concept of AI. So, what does this mean for the future of Australian retail and consumers?

It begins with the very reason so many consumers are taking their shopping online: time. Less time spent at the checkout, waiting in queues and comparing prices makes buying online attractive and convenient. Consumers want freedom and flexibility to purchase what they want, when they want – a preference that has seen sites like Amazon and eBay grow at a phenomenal rate.

Yet whilst consumers have been quick to take many purchases online, one category has not kept pace, namely grocery. In this category, customers have traditionally preferred to be hands-on, due to the personal nature of the grocery shopping ritual, along with the perishability of and individual tastes around fresh produce.

But now even these areas of grocery have undergone a transformation, with consumer desire to be personally involved in their selection being replaced by,  you guessed it, convenience. The overall online grocery shopping has grown more than 23% in the last 12 months, but along with it a new category of fresh ‘convenience’ produce has been born. In the name of keeping up with a busy lifestyle whilst making healthy choices, items like ready-peeled vegetables and chopped salads are finding their way into more and more shoppers’ trolleys.

And it’s in the trolley that AI technology is now looking to meet consumers. Microsoft is currently exploring ways to challenge its nemesis Amazon after the online giant launched its cashless and check out free concept store, ‘Amazon Go’ in Seattle in January 2018. The store, which relies on a smartphone scan as customers enter, numerous in-store cameras and sensors to monitor what they take off the shelves, and on-file credit card details for automatic billing, has an expensive and somewhat complex tech footprint.

In contrast, Microsoft is considering a more streamlined concept that leverages in-trolley cameras linked to the cloud. Using sensors to monitor and record what goes in the trolley, this scalable concept is expected to be a good fit for large retail environments like supermarkets and discount department stores – and has the potential to help further systemise the many stores that already support cashier-less and ‘scan and go’ checkouts and increasingly popular contactless payment options like Google Wallet and Apple Pay.

To effectively shape the algorithms and refine the sensors needed to make this work seamlessly is going to require a lot of shopper behaviour and purchase data. This means we’re likely to see the introduction of many more new concept stores similar to Amazon Go, as well as the trial of different types of data capture technology such as facial recognition – a concept which is already being tested by China retailer, JD.com.

This all adds up to an exciting time for Australian retail and Australian consumers. AI technology already pervades many areas of our lives – if you’re doubtful, just ask yourself who you were talking to when you last said, ‘Hi Siri’ or ‘Hey Google!’ The direction our retail industry takes will likely be greatly influenced by the big technology players like Amazon and Microsoft – but like social media it will also be user-led, giving consumers a unique opportunity to define what convenience means to us, and determine how we want the future of retail to look. What it holds may be unclear, but one thing is certain: it’s retail, just not as you know it.

If change and meeting your customers’ needs is constant, doing nothing isn’t an option. Be sure you are partnering with a company with the depth and breadth of expertise you require. Particularly one who can help you navigate end-to-end managed services, cloud, mobile and paperless retail technology. GPK Retail consultant, Cordell Quaine, is available for a no-obligation discussion on how GPK can help you reduce operational costs, manage your IT footprint more effectively and create an exceptional experience for your customers. Contact: Phone 1300 000 475 or email info@gpkretail.com.au for more information.