Innopsis

What do doughnuts and Big Macs have to do with providing communications and services to Home Workers? The answer is in this podcast. Listen to Justin Day, CEO of Cloud Gateway give his views on the question of how do you provide business services to a distributed workforce and why the answer does not include SD-WAN.

In the Internet Age, more than ever before, customers are increasingly knowledgeable about products available on the market and thus prefer working with salespeople who offer solutions and insights rather than a product pitch. In fact, a survey of 1,500 Business to Business decision makers found that buyers are five times more likely to engage with a sales professional who provides new insights into their business. While there are several different sales methodologies, solution-based selling is one that works well for B2B sales, because the process is centered around a deep understanding of client needs and challenges. Solution-focused selling also supports a more efficient customer experience. In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Gill Barstow of Orbit Business Development about the ten traits of a solution selling organisation. Take a listen and see if your company meets all ten. If not, then perhaps give Gill a call.

Change. This is the one thing that remains constant in our lives. Success for individuals or businesses is not guaranteed. As the bible verse states, The race is not for the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. We all have the same amount of time and irrespective of whatever talent or resource we have, how we use those resources in the time allocated to us, dictates our success. Whilst repeating the same actions will create perfection and efficiency, they will not change the outcome. Doing the same and expecting a different outcome is the root of madness. You must adapt to the environment or becoming extinct. In this podcast, Lynne Magennis talks to Gary Camp of Smart Tasking, who are change agents who, not only identify what needs to change within businesses, but also provide the resource to make the change happen.

The focus for this podcast is the New Normal. Not the American Sitcom from eight years ago, but the suggestion that the Covid-19 virus will have a lasting impact on society. Similar previous pandemics such as The Plague or the Black Death caused terminal changes to medieval serfdom and the decline of religion. Will the “inspirationally” named Covid-19 change the country into a utopian vision of a workforce living and working in socially interactive villages with little travelling, or will we revert to pre 2020 lifestyle as soon as we stop being frightened of catching the virus?

The covid pandemic has caused a number of challenges across all sectors of industry. The telecommunications sector has, generally, been less affected that some others. Generally, there is little personal contact required and many roles can operate remotely by staff safely isolating at home. However, the change to the sector’s customers has raised some particular issues for resellers. In this podcast, Lynne Magennis talks to Ian Fishwick, the Commercial Director at Innopsis, about one issue that surfaced and how he helped deal with it.

With the advent of social distancing, there has been an enormous quantity of new equipment purchased for home workers. Whilst this has boosted the revenue streams for a number of suppliers, the change in work habits will create a glut of equipment, either when people return to work in offices or the office-based equipment if people remain working from home.

In this podcast, Lynne Magennis talks to Gill Barstow, a Director and an expert in people development and change management at Orbit Business Development about coping with Covid-19. @Orbitbusinessgr #gillbarstoworbit

In this interview, Lynne Magennis talks to Des Ward of The Common Framework about what he believes companies should be doing now to prepare for the end of the outbreak so that better governance can be applied

In this podcast, Lynne Magennis talks to Martin Atkinson of Equinix, the Interconnection and Data Centre organisation about the issues that organisations may like to consider in utilising the internet for their business applications.

The UK health system is one of the most telling barometers of our society. How do we care for a growing and ageing population? How do we make patients the winners? What are the greatest upcoming risks? One thing is clear. Success will only be possible if politicians, clinicians, managers, patients, families, suppliers and all staff work jointly in a way they’ve never done before. In this episode Lynne Magennis talks to Rebecca Pope, the Head of Data Science and Engineering at KPMG to gain her insight into the situation.

We will probably look back at 2019 as the year dominated by Brexit. Undoubtably the on-off activities of Brexit have had a significant impact on Suppliers as Government works out what to do depending on the agreed outcomes. Coupled with a Winter General Election, the period of uncertainty has definitely had an impact.

In this podcast we turn our attention to the excellent work being carried out in London Schools regarding technology, networks and more. It is crucial for the future prosperity of the UK that we have a world class education system that can help develop the next generation ready for the workplace and help them make the world a better place for us all.

A new approach to using the Internet in the Public Sector to replace the traditional corporate Wide Area Network (WAN) is featured in this podcast. In this episode Lynne Magennis talks to Keith Smith of Virgin Media Business about a new service they have brought to market.

In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Georgina Owens, SVP of DAZN about Digital Transformation, about what impact it is making on our lives, Digital Identity and listening to the Voice of the Customer.

Meet Avril Chester. She is in that new wave of women in Technology who has not only succeeded in a predominately male world, she has also identified how her career in technology and industry has helped her to help others as they progress down the path to recovery she was forced to follow after battling cancer.

Join Lynne Magennis, Ian Fishwick, Lee Shorten and Adam Zoldan as they discussing judging for the Comms National Awards

In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Cloud Gateway’s c0-founder and CEO, Justin Day about networks, internet, blue plaques, work-wives and the Dino-to-Digi Scale.

Ian was recently asked to give a speech at Child & Co Bank, which is one of these small historic banks owned by the RBS NatWest. The event was co-organised by Evolution Capital, and the audience were owners of technology businesses. Having bought over 25 tech companies, they wanted Ian's view on what the impact of Brexit would be on the appetite for UK technology acquisitions.

We are getting used to seeing in the news how the politicians are going to ensure that all the homes and offices in Great Britain are going to have 100% high speed fibre internet access in an ever-decreasing timescale plus the progress of the removal of the existing copper network in an even shorter timescale. Add to this the initial roll out of the various 5G networks, with or without Huawei, plus declared strategy statements that the ‘Internet is Ok’ and ‘Internet First’ for Government data, we have a cocktail of change which is causing both Suppliers and Customers to re-think their own strategy.

When Matt Hancock announced that the NHS will adopt an Internet First strategy, it came as no surprise to those familiar to Public Sector telecommunications. As time has moved on, the detail of what Internet First actually means is becoming clearer. In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Ian Wilcox of MLL Telecom - one of the SME's who have been instrumental in transitioning an number of NHS customers from N3 to HSCN.

Lynne Magennis talks to Exponential-e's Afshin Attari about the the digitising of the UK Health Service, who is being left behind and what the opportunities are.

Across the Public Sector, the proposal to migrate services to the Internet is accepted. HSCN, in many respects, is technology agnostic with additional controls and service assurance that supports NHS drive to digital, therefore Innopsis sees use of the Internet as complementary and not a radical change in direction. Lynne Magennis talks to Jill Sharples, the Programme Head for the NHS-Digital Internet First Programme.

Patrick Clark (NHS Digital) and Matt Agar (DCMS) talk to Lynne Magennis about fibre connection to all NHS sites

"The baby boom and increased life expectancy are two elements that contribute to the high aging population in the UK. A rise in the aging population puts a lot of pressure on health and social care to provide the necessary services. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one solution to decrease the costs of this care and boost its quality. In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Clive Emmett, the CEO of the Council for Voluntary Services at Uttlesford about how the Council is doing tackling these issues."

"Public Sector information technology is changing fast and networks are no exception. The traditional Wide Area Network is fast becoming old hat and new technology like SD-WAN are changing the look and functionality of networks. So, how do you keep abreast of the developments? How do you make sure that your investments are being made in the right direction? Some or all of the above may impact your network, your organisation and ultimately your ability to deliver services cost effectively"

Last year, in 2018, OpenReach announced the closure of the telephone network in six years’ time at the end of 2025. Since the announcement, a series of consultations have been taking place with Industry. The impact of the removal of the copper network, including tail circuits, telephone lines and more will be the biggest shakeup for UK telecoms since the privatisation of British Telecom in 1984. The rush to get Britain fibred is being led by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and is becoming increasingly important in the event of Brexit to ensure that the UK is ready to take on the world. In this episode we try to bring to up to date with the progress so far.

This year's buzzwords are ‘Social Value’ and ‘Social Impact’. Despite being buzzwords, and meaning much the same thing, there is an important question behind them: what contribution to society do Public Sector Suppliers make?

In this episode we explore the transition and migration of Unified Communications services into the workplace. We explore what we mean by Unified Communications, the adoption of technology, the transition to the Digital Workplace and whether you need something as sophisticated as Microsoft Teams or would a mobile phone and Slack meet the requirements of the Millennials entering the workplace. Is the power to adopt in the hands of the ICT function or is it in the hands of the Users?

In the last episode of the Innopsis podcast, we brought you the view of a first time SME applicant, Opus Telecom, on their application for a major CCS Framework - Network Services 2. Whilst Opus had experience of applying for G-Cloud, the experience was very different for Network Services. In this episode we bring you the view of a more seasoned applicant, Telefonica O2. This is not the first application for Telefonica O2, nor are they an SME. So how did the application for Network Services 2 impact them? What did they think had improved? What still needs work?

In this podcast, we talk to Craig Walden of Opus Telecom, an SME and a new potential supplier to the framework, about his experience about applying for a Framework. What was good and what could have been better?

It’s nearly a year since the Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) issued their policy “AI Sector Deal” in which they stated that they will put the UK at the forefront of the artificial intelligence and data revolution. Given the opportunity for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to improve customer service, alongside an expanding use of software to update legacy-systems and automate simple tasks. Are we seeing growing investments in infrastructure planning, legal adjudication, fraud detection and citizen response systems representing the first phase in the ongoing digitisation of government? AI-based applications could potentially reduce backlogs and free workers from mundane tasks while, at the same time, cutting costs. To discuss this area further, Lynne Magennis talks to Jonathan Wright of consultancy organisation Digital Assured about their activity in this area

We start 2019 with a new member, Advice Cloud. Advice Cloud are Public Procurement specialists and G-Cloud consultants, specialising in helping both Public and private organisations to buy and sell services including IT, Cloud Services, Business Process Outscourcing and Professional Services.

Andrew Halliwell, Product Director at Virgin Media Business tells us his outlook for 2019. What does he see for Networking in 2019? An Evolution? or Revolution? Listen to find out

Being able to interrogate DNA data opens up the possibility of an exponential increase in irradicating dieseases and being able to increase food production, amongst a host of other benefits. Being able to share and process the enormous amount of data that mapping the DNA creates is one of the challenges that we face. Connie O’Donnell of Oxford Nanopore Technologies speaks to us about what they are working on in 2019.

On the sixth day of Christmas, we bring you Alyson Edmonds from O2 Telefonica, who is their Head of Digital Innovations. Alyson has recently won a place in the Top 100 women in Technology by the WeareTechWomen organisation which celebrates and encourages more women into the Technology Industry. We hope to feature Alyson and the work she is involved in with Telefonica in a podcast in the new year.

The present administration in Government have made it a manifesto commitment that more public sector spend will be given to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, that is organisations less than 250 employees with a revenue of less than £5m a year and a less than £43m in assets. The target is for SME’s to receive one in every three pounds that the public sector spends by 2022.

At the end of 2018, we bring you Des Ward from the Common Framework who provides his view of Data Governance direction on 2019 and reflects on the impacts of GDPR.

As we close out the year, Michael Bowyer reflects on 2018. What were the issues faced by Industry by the Public Sector? What impact did Brexit make to the marketplace? Looking forward to 2019, does the next year look to be better or worse for Suppliers of the Public Sector? Are there any more Carillon's   on the horizon?  Listen to Michael as he provides his view.

Jonathan Wright has been working during 2018 in Silicon Valley with Apple and Paypal together with advising the UK Government on the implementation of Cognitive Technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In this podcast, Jonathon tells us the top 10 technologies to look out for in 2019. Jonathan will feature in an Innopsis podcast in 2019

Matthew Riley, the Chairman of Daisy Group speaks tells us what he thinks will change in 2019. Topics covered include understanding customer’s requirements, the Carillon impact and movement away from System Integrators in Government.

This episode of the Innopsis podcast looks at the recent experience with an SME provider based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire regarding their experience of migrating 500 health customers from the old NHS N3 network to the new HSCN model. Lynne Magennis talks to Ben Mutch and Zoe Oxley from Nynet about their experience

At the of each year Innopsis renews its Directors. Three Directors step down and elections are held. This year, Kelvin Prescott has decided to leave his Innopsis post, as his work commitments at Telefonica are taking him away from the Government marketplace. In this episode, Richard Barnes talks to Kelvin about his time at Innopsis; what he gained from the experience and what he has seen change during his time within the Public Sector. Kelvin also shares with us, his thoughts of the future.

In this episode, Des Ward is joined by Mike Barlow and Phil Siveter from Nokia. The conversation covers :- SDN, is it hype or better, Smart Cities: how Smart do they need to be or is it just in understanding the needs?

Two and a half years ago, the government digital service put on their blog that the "Internet is Ok". What does that do to the Public Services Network? What security model, and WAN model are we going to see in the near future? None of us actually know the answers to those questions yet, including GDS, but they've already started work to define what the future Public Services Network will look like, through their initiative called The Future Network for Governments (FN4G).

In this podcast, Lynne Magennis speaks to Ian Fishwick, CEO of Adept Telecom about why he has decided to invest in sponsorship of Digitech18.

Digitech18 is set to be the biggest technology event for the UK Public Sector in 2018. In this Podcast Lynne Magennis talks to Ieuan Trigger from the Crown Commercial Service about their involvement

On 31st October 2018, the eyes of the Public Sector technology customers and suppliers will be focused on the First Direct Arena in Leeds. 

In this episode, Lynne Magennis talks to Martin Kemp from Cityfibre about the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Full Local Fibre Initiative. The government announced in 2018, that the entire UK should have access to full fibre internet by 2033. The announcement is just part of a technological revolution that’s being planned by the government to bring the UK back up to speed with the rest of the world.

In this episode, Kevin Prescott talks to Lynne Magennis about how to win business on Government procurement frameworks.

On 20th January 2017, GDS issued a blog which had an impact on the telecoms world. The title of the blog; The Internet is Ok, reported that the Government’s Technology Leaders Network had decided that all Government data should traverse the Internet rather than the secure Public Services Network (PSN) designed by the Cabinet Office 7 years previously. Fourteen months later, GDS announced that they have a budget of over a third of a million pounds to hire consultants to discover the User Need. We will see if this changes from the ones quoted by Keith last year from the start of the PSN project. The consultants work is targeted to start in the Summer and last until the end of 2018. Following this, it is suggested that an automated mechanism is created to implement common standards, architectural patterns, guidance and service process to test and deploy effectively a replacement for PSN.  In ths episode, Mike Thomas introduces Keith Smith of Virgin Media who talks about Why have a WAN (Wide Area Network)?

In this podcast, Kelvin Prescott talks to Nigel Sergent, the Managing Editor of Comms Dealer about the Reseller Channel. Kelvin asks Nigel about the opportunities offered to Resellers by selling to the Public Sector. With the encouragement of SME's over the last 10 years by the Government to supply them, what is stopping Resellers from seizing that opportunity?