Member Article

Remote Working and Security Conferencing top the agenda for prestigious IT leaders peer-to-peer group

Not an empty virtual seat in the house as leading “UK blue-chip organisations’ attend the first digital TVeX, Remote working and security conferencing top the agenda with return to work on the horizon.

The rapid shift to remote working in response to Covid-19 has placed additional complexity on the leadership of many of the UK’s blue-chip organisations, according to the latest peer-to-peer discussion at The Value Exchange.

Originally founded in 2005, The Value Exchange [TVeX], is an established and sophisticated cross industry “vendor free” peer to peer community of IT “Practitioners” who come together and discuss common pain points, issues and successful problem resolution cases under the Chatham House rule.

Last month, Brad Day, co-founder of revolutionary London-based tech firm, CloudStratex, hosted the first TVeX virtual meeting since the community began 15 years ago and welcomed around 30 IT thought Leaders from UK companies spanning Financial Services, Government, Retail, Publishing and Manufacturing, to discuss the collective challenges experienced as a result of Covid-19. The discussion revolved around managing the rapid shift to remote working, the collaboration technologies being considered as well as what the future may look like if and when businesses return to the office.

Key findings from the discussion included:

• The future is now remote, flexible, digital with a new approach to markets and customer experience.

• The time is now for companies to make the right investment to reset their technology estates and future proof their operating models to stay relevant into the future.

• Technology is broadly working well post Covid-19, as existing remote working capability was and is already in place. Major increase in service desk tickets & some transitioned to other service desk providers to support remote working.

• Compelling debate over the use and security of the video conferencing platform, Zoom. Some members advised they had aggressively rolled out Zoom “post organisations completing thorough due diligence”, whereas others expressed concern over its security.

• Other participants were in the process of identifying how Zoom and Microsoft Teams meeting rooms could work together, but pre-empted challenges and complexities, with other participants advising that the Teams and Zoom integration is nowhere near where it needed to be but deemed this a long-term aspiration.

• Companies experience issues that could have been managed more effectively by Zoom, such as the Facebook SDK issue.

• When discussing whether organisations would return to ‘business as usual’ once lockdown eases, participants advised it is unlikely that all staff members would return to the office environment, with many roles newly made remote.

In reviewing the insights delivered through the peer-to-peer discussion, Brad Day said:

“I am delighted the first virtual TVeX was a huge success – the quality of the dialogue was compelling from the off with many learnings shared from these challenging and extraordinary times for the greater good of this inspiring community.

We are planning a follow up “virtual meeting” in mid-June with an agenda based around the implications on IT of the imminent return to work or office. We will attempt to predict “what good looks like” in terms of making the right technology investments to drive excellence for the IT leaders of today.”

Headquartered in London, CloudStratex was co-founded by industry veterans Adrian Overall, Brad Day, Tony Irving and Adam O’Hare, previous Directors of CloudTalent, an IT Consultancy acquired by Avanade in 2015.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Ford .