10 Year Anniversary - 10 things that have changed over the years

Over the last 10 years ITWORX UK and the IT industry have changed a considerable amount (as has the amount of grey hair I now seem to have sprouted). Below are my thoughts on just a few of the many changes that I’ve noticed over that time…

1. The amount of coffee ITWORX UK consumes…

Back in 2010 when Jill and I founded ITWORX UK, a jar of coffee or box of tea would last months – we now could rank on the best customer list of the local supermarket!

The team tells me it’s because it keeps them awake when having to listen to Jill and I - absolutely no idea what they mean by that!

2. Plethora of Devices

Over the last 10 years the number, types, sizes, price and rapid development cycles of new devices we support has increased dramatically - there is now a plethora of end-user devices available and used across our client base.

Keeping our staff trained on the main variants of Smart Phones, tablets, laptops, smart watch, 2-1’s, Chromebook’s etc is becoming more and more challenging.

I know secretly however they all love getting to play with new devices regularly...

3. The Cloud

When we started ITWORX UK we saw the cloud coming with the release of Microsoft BPOS suite, now called Microsoft 365. We started preparing for this change at the time, retraining ourselves and designing solutions that would work in this new world for our clients.

The amount of data being generated by business systems now is astonishing to me, I remember not so long ago having a 1GB mailbox was considered a privilege and end-users were constantly being asked to cleanout their sent and deleted items.

Some of our small business clients now have 50GB or 100GB mailboxes and over 1.8 million files stored in the cloud.

How incredible is that? I just love it...

4. Speed of provisioning

Back in the day, when a business ordered a new server it could take days / weeks to arrive and be installed – planning was key.

We can now provision entirely new email systems, servers, storage, collaboration platforms and or applications in minutes rather than days.

In short – wow, what a pleasure it is to have that resource available at the click of a button if / when our clients need it.

5. Connectivity

We now have 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-fi, Hot spots, Fibre, Point to Point, MPLS, 21CN, VPN, EFM, FTTC, Leased lines etc etc etc– all of which we provide for our clients so they can connect, save money and enjoy consistent performance from in order for the to access the vast number of cloud systems we utilise.

As a Cisco Premier Partner, I don’t think our Communications Team have ever been more in demand. Well done guys…

6. Cyber Security

2020 will always be a year to remember. Security has never before been as important than during this covid pandemic.

We have literally thousands of end-users within our clients connecting to business systems from home internet connections and working without the safety / reassurance of having their co-workers or office systems round them.

We’ve seen lots of new approaches by hackers to target our client’s systems and banking and have had to onboard numerous solutions to counter these threats and keep our clients safe.

In my opinion, security is only going to become more and more important and I’m delighted with all the new offering we have available to continue to enable us to counter these threats and also in the way in which we are able to continue to quickly onboard new solutions.

7. Expectations

In my opinion over the last 10 years the biggest change I have seen is the expectations our clients have of the IT industry and ITWORX UK.

When I started my career, if the IT systems went ‘down’ end-users reverted to paper or phones and kept working.

IT is now viewed like electricity or water in my opinion, people literally cannot work without it. As a result, any outage no matter how small requires immediate investigation and resolution - requiring greater immediate IT resource availability whilst the price of such staff / systems is falling.

Balancing this is a constant challenge for our industry.

8. Business Continuity

I believe Business Continuity is now essential for all business sizes, regardless of whether they use on-premises, hosted or cloud systems.

A decade ago, a backup tape was still predominantly the go-to choice for our industry. Now with Datto business continuity acting as the backbone of our clients business continuity, we can recover data in minutes not days.

Less stressful for our clients and our engineers, faster recovery, less downtime – win win!

9. Market Conditions

Who would have thought ten years ago we would be working from home due to a pandemic, Donald Trump would be president or Game of Thrones would be such a hit?

10. The colour of my hair…

I love my job / industry and cannot imagine doing anything else (I’m really a bad singer so busking is definitely out).

The past ten years have flown by - time seems to do that when you’re your having fun! Hopefully the enjoyment returns for us all once we find a way to beat this virus and can have a cuppa coffee together again…

If you need any advice on IT, please don’t hesitate to contact us.