Technology Reseller v43

01732 759725 TECH TRENDS 10 Legacy PCs waste time Four in 10 UK workers are losing 3 hours per week (or 6.5 days per year) due to issues with legacy PCs, reveals a survey conducted by Intel to promote Intel Evo vPro platform-based laptops. Almost half of all employees polled said a more powerful or upgraded device would enable them to be more productive in their roles, with 37% saying they could recover more than six hours per week of lost or unproductive time. Key device requirements include connectivity, such as fast Wi-Fi (cited by 76% of employees and 88% of IT decision- makers); better video quality for hybrid working (66% and 81% respectively); and a thin, ultra-light design (60% and 63%). UK organisations prioritise flexibility More than half (53%) of UK organisations say that making effective use of technology is their biggest challenge over the next 12 months, followed by closing the digital skills gap (47%) and improving the performance of a distributed workforce (41%). The top investment priorities cited by 165 senior decision-makers at UK mid-market organisations surveyed by IT, communications and cloud services provider Daisy Corporate Services are cloud and hosting services (53%), cybersecurity (50%), Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 (47%) and business-grade connectivity (44%). Most organisations see value in working with partners, but, because many still need to transform legacy systems, they also want greater flexibility and resilience – 59% say they want to manage some technologies in house and work with partners to manage the rest. One third (34%) state that building a more resilient and flexible supply chain is a top business priority in the next 12 months. dcs.tech Pandemic drives take-up of managed services Half (48%) of small and medium- sized businesses surveyed by Keypoint Intelligence for Konica Minolta highlight data security and protection as their number one IT challenge, with 47% having acquired or upgraded IT security software or services since the start of the pandemic. Over one third (37%) of 550 SMBs in the UK, US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Czech Republic surveyed for Top SMB IT Pain Points & Solutions say that employees have experienced virus, malware and security threats because of changes necessitated by the pandemic. Remote working posed a number of challenges for SMBs, including the difficulty of managing remote workers (cited by 38%) and servicing/supporting remote workers’ IT (44%). Almost half (49%) complained that they had difficulty equipping remote workers with the necessary hardware or software. Other challenges associated with home working include communication with managers/co-workers (51%), locating files (37%) and collaborating on digital documents (30%). In response to these challenges, 33% of SMBs invested in managed IT services; 35% invested in document sharing and collaboration applications; and 45% acquired/upgraded cloud data storage. Overall, 65% of decision-makers said that the pressures of the pandemic had accelerated their digital transformation. www.konicaminolta.co.uk IT service desks win over doubters Satisfaction with IT service desks has improved in 65% of businesses and 72% of public sector organisations following their successful response to COVD-19 lockdowns and working from home, reveals new research from the Service Desk Institute (SDI), sponsored by Sunrise Software. Over 9 in 10 (92%) of those surveyed for The Changing Priorities: The Recovery and Regeneration of IT Ser vice Management report said their organisation had adapted very or reasonably well to home working; 91% said that IT service staff had adapted well to the transition, despite previously being used to working together in the same physical office. Now that lockdowns have ended, IT service desks are continuing to change how they operate, with 47% of all organisations (and 59% of the public sector) focusing on ‘shift left’, enabling end users to solve basic or common issues themselves through access to knowledge and automated processes so that the service desk team can reprioritise and focus on more complex issues or strategic areas. www.sunrisesoftware.com Parcels deliver rapid growth Global parcel volumes rose by 27% in 2020 to 131.2 billion, according to the Pitney Bowes global Parcel Shipping Index . This equates to 4,160 parcels shipped per second and an average of 34 parcels per person. The Index expects parcel volumes to double to 266 billion by 2026. In the UK, 5 billion parcels were generated in 2020, 33% more than in 2019, giving the UK the highest number of parcels per capita – 74, up from 56 in 2019. Prior to the pandemic, UK parcel volumes were growing by an average of 8% per year, but in 2020 this growth rate more than quadrupled to 33%. Pitney Bowes expects UK parcel volumes to grow by 10-14% this year to 5.4-6 billion parcels, rising again to 7.5- 8.5 billion parcels in 2026. www.pitneybowes.com Record year for deal-making Figures from Refinitiv show that 2021 is set to be a record year for global dealmaking, with almost $4tn of M&A deals already agreed since the start of the year. August alone saw $500bn of transactions globally, up from $289bn in the same month last year and $275bn in 2019. The surge in deals is being driven by tech, accounting for 21% of M&A activity. So far this year, tech companies have completed 8,742 transactions worth $832bn, up from $301bn worth of deals agreed in the same period last year and $291bn in 2019. Tom Henriksson, General Partner at OpenOcean, said: “In the next few decades, data-driven technologies like quantum computing and artificial intelligence have huge potential for significant growth, delivering the more connected, sustainable and fairer society customers want in the post-pandemic world. Data is disrupting every industry, driving innovation in everything from customer-facing applications to behind- the-scenes business intelligence to improve decision-making.” n The number of companies sold in the UK increased by 59% in the first half of 2021, compared to the second half of 2020 (source Dealsuite, UK&I M&A monitor). On average, the price paid for an SME was 5.50 times gross profit. However, the average Ebitda multiple was as much as 8.65 for companies in IT Services & Software Development. www.dealsuite.com Tech trends: ICT in the UK today