One year on

An unforeseen challenge

March 2020: After months of planning we were ready to launch.  The company was registered, the branding was in place and our first client projects had been agreed.  Refractis was about to be born.  Our preparation had been meticulous, our to-do lists were almost ticked off - we felt that we had thought of everything.  But not, as it turned out, what would happen in the event of a global pandemic!

What had started as a curiosity in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, had rapidly spread across the globe with the first European cases of COVID-19 reported before the end of January, and Northern Italy going into lockdown in late February.  By early March it was clear that national lockdowns in Europe were coming and it seemed like it was only a matter of time before the UK followed suit.

In a spirit of “nothing ventured, nothing gained” we decided to launch Refractis at the beginning of April anyway, and to see what came of it.  The upside of living through unprecedented times is that there’s no playbook, so no-one can tell you definitively that you’re doing the wrong thing.

I’m glad to report that Refractis has made it through its first year – it’s been different to how we had planned it, but it’s been an exciting time and we have been privileged to help, and learn alongside, fantastic organisations as they responded to some of the most seismic challenges to both business and technology in recent memory. 

In the following paragraphs I will look at three key themes from the last 12 months, which are helping to change the way that technology is seen in a business context.

Who knew IT change could happen that quickly?

One of the most immediate effects of the lockdown was the need for companies to pivot away from traditional office-based IT and to implement wide-spread remote working capabilities.  Thousands of laptops were procured, built and deployed in a matter of weeks.  VDI farms were provisioned, either on premises or in the Cloud.  New security measures followed quickly behind, recognising the radically changed corporate perimeter and associated risk profile. 

While each of the technical changes is worthy of investigation, more interesting is the speed with which corporate IT departments and their service and supply chain partners were able to move.  Freed from onerous change processes, and with clear business imperatives and direct and regular communication with senior business stakeholders, core infrastructure changes that previously would have taken months, if not years, were suddenly happening in days or weeks.

Although this absolute pace is certainly not sustainable, or arguably necessary, in the long-term, companies should not revert back to the way things were.  Rather they should seek to refine and rationalise their infrastructure management processes to embed elements of the agility and responsiveness that has been shown to be possible.

Consolidation and cloud migration remain hot topics

For many organisations 2020 was a year of reduced revenues, with forecasts for 2021 typically predicting recovery only in the third or fourth quarters.  It is no surprise then, that we have seen an increased focus on reducing corporate overheads, of which IT is often a large component. 

Consolidation of legacy IT estates, reduction of on-premises hosting locations and a move to Cloud are all central to reducing IT OPEX, along with broader application and supplier rationalisation.

Of course, many such programmes were already in train pre-pandemic, but we quickly saw a need for these projects to deliver a broader set of savings, faster and deliver leaner IT functions in general. 

The ability to deliver some of the targeted savings was, and continues to be, constrained by existing supplier contracts, but even here we are seeing opportunities to engage in creative dialogue.  Outsource providers have a good understanding of their clients’ current challenges and have shown willingness to be flexible in return for longer-term commitments and a stronger partnering relationship.    

Pushing for better ways of delivering IT

The third trend that we have seen over the course of the year is the desire to review and refresh the way that central corporate IT organisations are set up and operate.  This is driven in part by the need to reflect the broader rationalisation in technology estate delivered by consolidation programmes, but other factors are also at play.

Over the last few years Cloud subscriptions of various flavours have proliferated across businesses, fuelled by a mantra that individual business units can be empowered to move quickly without the dragging effect of corporate IT.  But multiple subscriptions are inefficient and expensive, and ensuring consistent security and data protection is hard.  With a more general move to the Cloud, the answer for many organisations is to create a central Cloud team that balances the responsiveness valued by business users with enterprise-grade architecture, monitoring and security.

We have also noticed clients reviewing the boundary between outsourced and retained functions.  This is cutting both ways, with some IT organisations looking to repatriate the intellectual ownership of the technology and services that they are offering their business users, while others are recognising the ability of the market to provide highly efficient build and run operations.

Finally, we are seeing a real focus on creating clear and transparent interfaces for the business to use when dealing with corporate IT, whether requesting new capabilities, or understanding the services that are being provided.

The next 12 months

With vaccine roll out well advanced in the UK, I am hopeful that the next 12 months will be less dramatic than the last year.  I am sure, however, that they will be no less extraordinary for the team here at Refractis.  We will continue to bring our blend of delivery-focussed experience and pragmatism to the varied technology challenges of our clients.

Refractis – extraordinary, delivered.