Featured Advisory Papers
Workplace Innovation
As a Service
Security Leadership
Governance & Planning
Infrastructure
Applications
Sourcing & Staffing
Operations & Service Delivery
Workplace Innovation
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Workforce transformation Part 6: Microsoft Teams user adoption
Conclusion: When it comes to embracing collaboration, organisations should recognise that it is difficult to manage diverse personalities, perceptions and beliefs. In addition, every individual is...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Workforce transformation Part 7: Governance is now essential for your collaboration platform
Conclusion: Many organisations have implemented collaboration and in particular video-conferencing facilities to support critical business operations in response to managing the COVID-19 pandemic....
- Philip Nesci -
The future of work: Soft skills surpass digital skills
Conclusion: Since the rise of personal computing in the 1970s, organisations have focused on acquiring digital tools and, since the late 1990s, on promoting digital skills. While we are now in the...
- Sue Johnston -
Engaging employees during COVID-19
Conclusion: Organisations should tap into their management team (department heads, managers and team leaders) to keep their working-from-home employees committed to the organisation. These...
- Sue Johnston -
The journey to Office 365 Part 8: Is a third-party backup or archival solution needed?
Conclusion: Being Cloud-based, Microsoft’s Office 365 includes features that would traditionally be considered backup. According to the Microsoft Office Trust Center, Microsoft establishes itself as...
- Joseph Sweeney
As a Service
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Post-pandemic new service fundamentals roundtable
Post-pandemics require changes to IT services, vendors' contracts and service levels. Organisations must re-examine their service foundations to meet business expectations and remain compliant with...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 58: Digital transformation requires effective IT value creation and management
Conclusion: Digital transformation is more than another software development stream to replace legacy systems by mobile applications. Digital transformation includes building a new IT capability...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 57: Cloud migration strategy – pragmatic approach
Conclusion: IT organisations wishing to migrate to Cloud should adopt a pragmatic approach that strikes a balance between migration cost, Cloud risks and benefits. The bottom line is to avoid the...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Get board agreement to the Cloud strategy
Conclusion: Cloud services have now been around for over a decade and since that time many of the services available have evolved in both scope and maturity. Most organisations now have a range of...
- Philip Nesci -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 56: Digital transformation systems should cope with stress
Conclusion: IT organisations challenged with predicting performance requirements of new digital applications should undertake end-to-end stress tests that can detect systems performance problems prior...
- Wissam Raffoul
Security Leadership
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Ransomware, to pay or not to pay?
Conclusion: Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly common and Australian organisations have experienced several high-profile incidents in 2020. While the preferred option is to recover from...
- Philip Nesci -
Make use of APRA CPS 234
Conclusion: Australian financial organisations have been bombarding their suppliers and partners with requests to complete security assessments. If servicing or dealing with financial organisations is part...
- Peter Sandilands -
Is it safe to use Zoom?
Conclusion: In the current COVID-19-driven environment, video conference calls have become the stuff of life. They are used for school, family, leisure and even work. Numbers of call attendees have...
- Peter Sandilands -
SIEM: A worthwhile security tool that requires care in use
Conclusion: Many vendors, consultants and managed service providers are pushing ‘security information and event management’ (SIEM) as a panacea to security failings. The intent is correct. Having...
- Peter Sandilands -
COVID-19: Practical risk assessment tools
Conclusion: Risk assessment tools help protect and support staff and minimise business disruptions by following Australian risk management (and health) guidelines.
- Peter Bickerton
Governance & Planning
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Making the case for enterprise architecture
Conclusion: Many organisations have integrated enterprise architecture (EA) into the business processes, whilst many have not. To some, it is a religious argument as to why the ICT group even needs...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Teams governance: Five essentials
Observations Technical environment A governance software framework is a set of well-communicated and up-to-date policies that support strategic business directions. However, developing governance for...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Post-pandemic: Selling IT infrastructure investment proposals
Conclusion: Due to the pandemic and economic decline, politically astute IT managers will need all their selling skills to get one-off IT infrastructure proposals approved. Not only is this due to a...
- Alan Hansell -
Online web presence: Considerations resulting from the COVID-19 experience
Conclusion: As a result of COVID-19, has the criticality of web presence for your business changed? Is your organisation now exposed to threats and risks that previously were a lower order concern? Are...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Post-pandemic: Defending the ICT expense budgets
Conclusion: To prepare for the inevitable questioning by senior management of whether an expense line item can be reduced, management must review its breakdown and be prepared to justify it to...
- Alan Hansell
Infrastructure
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Asset management maturity model: Are the processes a living part of your organisation?
Conclusion: Asset management can be described as ‘the life cycle management of physical assets to achieve the stated outputs of the enterprise’. To achieve the appropriate level of asset...
- Mark Unwin -
ICT health check: Win-win for ICT and business
Conclusion: ICT health checks enable organisations to better understand risks and prioritise activities to both maintain and improve the performance and reliability of ICT in support of business...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Telecommunications capability: Not the way we have always done it
Conclusion: Telecommunications services and the supporting infrastructure have historically been complex, costly and difficult to change. The modern technology landscape now allows for greater...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
PROTECTED Cloud: Cyber considerations
Conclusion: The Agency Head/CEO is responsible to accredit the ICT system for use at the PROTECTED level. The accreditation process is specific to the services being delivered for the organisation....
- Mike Mitchelmore -
ICT monitoring strategy: First principles
Conclusion: What to monitor and how you respond to the data is often poorly documented and not fully understood until after a failure occurs. In this world of “no surprises”, effective monitoring is a key...
- Mike Mitchelmore
Applications
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Workforce transformation Part 2: The evolving role of folders for controlled collaboration
Conclusion: Dropbox’s announcement of a new interface may seem trivial, but its repositioning of ‘folders’ heralds the next disruptive phase of information management. By changing folders from being...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Part 2: Planning the ERP strategy for modernisation
Conclusion: Reimagining the ERP strategy will require IT and business collaboration to ensure requirements are clear. Retaining the 5–10 year old ERP system1 may serve back office functions but this...
- Mark Unwin -
CRM modernisation Part 5: Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce total cost of service
Conclusion: The aim of IBRS’s CRM modernisation series of advisory papers is to help organisations create a contemporary CRM strategy, not to advocate for specific solutions. Many organisations are...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Email/social platforms: Policy, etiquette and best practices
Conclusion: Email is one of the most pervasive IT applications spread throughout organisations of all sizes. It is hard to imagine any employee in any organisation not having an email account. It is...
- Peter Hall -
Familiarity can create blind spots
Conclusion: Agile approaches are being applied to a wide range of projects and activities within organisations including infrastructure upgrade projects of known tools and devices and across...
- Sue Johnston
Sourcing & Staffing
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Motivating key IT staff during tough times through mentoring programs
Conclusion: Working remotely has become the default option for most companies in the new normal setup. Although this has led to rising demand in technological tools and IT systems, it is unlikely...
- Sue Johnston -
Sourcing Monthly June 2020 – July 2020
Conclusion: This month, the first anchor tenant signed up to the new Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct. The NSW Government first announced plans for the Tech Central precinct, located in...
- Irene Pimentel -
Sourcing Monthly May 2020 – June 2020
Conclusion: This month there have been increased discussions regarding the security services sector, marketplace expansion and triggers for growth. New market conditions, operating frameworks and...
- Irene Pimentel -
Employee working from home feedback and instructions for use
Conclusion: Remember, constructive feedback is of benefit to both the employees submitting the form and the staff who provide the services to enable working from home arrangements. Continuous...
- Peter Bickerton -
Sourcing Monthly April 2020 – May 2020
Conclusion: This month there has been a focus on the impact of the current economic environment on managed service providers. Declines in vendor service uptake, or difficulties experienced by...
- Irene Pimentel
Operations & Service Delivery
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New generation IT service management tools Part 2: Multi-Cloud management
Conclusion: The traditional IT service management (ITSM) tools have allowed IT organisations to automate key IT processes (e. g. incident management), promote service management disciplines and meet...
- Wissam Raffoul -
New generation IT service management tools Part 1
Conclusion: The traditional IT service management (ITSM) tools have allowed IT organisations to automate key IT processes (e. g. incident management), promote service management disciplines and meet...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Maintaining disaster recovery plans
Conclusion: The disaster recovery plan (DRP) should be seen as significantly more than a technical document for IT resources to be accessed only in times of crisis restoration. Use regular IT DRP...
- Peter Bickerton -
New-generation service desk maturity assessment
Conclusion: Traditional service desks which are based on voice communication and email to engage with clients are no longer adequate for the current IT market. New-generation service desks should:...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Workforce transformation Part 5: Planning for Microsoft Teams – Create a vision and assess your collaboration ecosystem
Conclusion: Microsoft Teams is a collaborative hub for teamwork with links to a wide range of information sources and communication capabilities. While a latecomer to the collaboration software solution...
- Joseph Sweeney
