The Network Effect

Join us at world famous Michel Roux’s restaurant in Parliament Square .

It is nearly six months since the announcement of the details in Chancellor George Osborne’s Spending Review that restated the government’s commitment to austerity and reiterated a desire to drive digital transformation across Whitehall.

It is a world that over the last few years has seen large government departments and agencies wrestle with how to effectively insource long-running outsourced IT contracts, develop a more mobile-enabled workforce, tackle digital transformation, learn how to effectively utilise the Cloud and exploit developments such as big data analytics technologies.

And yet, there is still something that is often forgotten: the glue that helps adheres all this change together. Outdated government IT networks are increasingly incapable of fully exploiting the transformation promise offered by these innovative technologies that have been dubbed the Third Platform.

For example, effective solutions are needed that can provide fast, reliable application delivery across virtual and cloud platforms at massive scale. Automated application delivery and centralised management speed can simplify service deployment, while application-level security protects business.

Then there is a desire for better value hybrid cloud. Government organisations that want to burst applications into the cloud can use virtual application delivery controllers to move between cloud providers to be able to take advantage of the best value provider at any time.

And finally, the desire for digital transformation demands 100% uptime of digital services to make critical applications available, resilient and fast.

Digital transformation is driving business leaders to build agile organisations, which themselves rely on IT agility. But the one area of IT that has yet to fully evolve is the network. The architecture used to build networks has been in place for well over three decades. But it is anything but agile. Indeed, the lack of network flexibility today is arguably the single biggest inhibitor to organisations being able to capitalise on digitisation.

The issues around creating effective networks that provide the bedrock for effective digital transformation in an austerity-drive world will be discussed at a Government Computing dinner in association with Brocade on 6th July at Roux at Parliament Square in London.

The dinner, for CIOs, IT directors and business leads will how an effective networking landscape should evolve to support digital transformation and change in today’s Whitehall landscape.

It promises to be an excellent evening, with lively, informed debate in a convivial setting. Attendance is entirely free of charge but spaces are strictly limited, so please register today. We look forward to welcoming you.