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Navigating the Tech Hype in 2024: Choosing the Right Path for Your Business

Louis Ridout
Celsior Technologies

The first step is for companies to take a close look internally at their business and the direction the business is heading. What are the business goals, and how does the business plan to achieve them? It's essential to determine the path to success and the steps required of people, processes, and technology to reach those milestones. Only then can businesses identify the areas where technology can play a crucial role in supporting these goals.

A thorough examination of people, processes, and technology will help you identify areas where innovation can be a catalyst for business growth. As you meticulously analyze your goals, you will be able to develop a custom roadmap of potential projects to chart the course to future success. Of course, these projects must be evaluated from an ROI and possibly an NPV standpoint to determine which ones are worth doing. Once you identify the most worthwhile projects from a theoretical standpoint, you will next need to identify practical gaps or impediments to implementing the projects.

Some of the more common gaps or impediments are skills gaps, capability deficiencies, and funding problems, which require further internal analysis.

The funding component is ubiquitous and must be addressed. Often, relying solely on the corporate budget will not be sufficient. This is where tough decisions come into play. Countless organizations have failed due to issues related to funding. If the lack of funds influences you to make decisions based on an inadequate budget without considering the downstream impact, you risk becoming diverted from the path you've created, thus resulting in a partial or ineffective technology solution.

Additionally, funding that is not secure can result in the dreaded "bridge to nowhere" with a partially completed effort gathering dust and rust. One approach to avoid this is to look internally for areas from which you could free up budget dollars to augment your corporate-approved funding. Perhaps you can phase out older, costlier, less effective technology to make room for innovation. Look at outdated technologies and functions that are not delivering the desired business value. Next, consider reducing, eliminating, or outsourcing them and earmark the savings for your new strategic efforts.

Skills and capability gaps represent another dilemma you will face.

Do you develop these skills and capabilities internally?

Can you afford to do so?

Should you use vendor partner(s) for this?

Most companies will land on a hybrid model where critical skills and capabilities are at least partially in-house, and vendors are used strategically. Vendor models may include training of internal or external personnel, staffing augmentation, and SLA-based solutions. If you use an outside vendor, make sure that they have a do-it-with-you philosophy that avoids loss of control. To the extent that it is important to you, also make sure that your contract has provisions for appropriate knowledge transfer back to your own organization so that you are not captive to your partner.

Finally, businesses must remain focused on their unique goals and aspirations. By carefully examining internal capabilities, making tough decisions, and selecting vendors strategically, companies can navigate the ever-evolving tech landscape and position themselves for success in the digital era.

Louis Ridout is Director of Customer Solutions at Celsior Technologies

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Navigating the Tech Hype in 2024: Choosing the Right Path for Your Business

Louis Ridout
Celsior Technologies

The first step is for companies to take a close look internally at their business and the direction the business is heading. What are the business goals, and how does the business plan to achieve them? It's essential to determine the path to success and the steps required of people, processes, and technology to reach those milestones. Only then can businesses identify the areas where technology can play a crucial role in supporting these goals.

A thorough examination of people, processes, and technology will help you identify areas where innovation can be a catalyst for business growth. As you meticulously analyze your goals, you will be able to develop a custom roadmap of potential projects to chart the course to future success. Of course, these projects must be evaluated from an ROI and possibly an NPV standpoint to determine which ones are worth doing. Once you identify the most worthwhile projects from a theoretical standpoint, you will next need to identify practical gaps or impediments to implementing the projects.

Some of the more common gaps or impediments are skills gaps, capability deficiencies, and funding problems, which require further internal analysis.

The funding component is ubiquitous and must be addressed. Often, relying solely on the corporate budget will not be sufficient. This is where tough decisions come into play. Countless organizations have failed due to issues related to funding. If the lack of funds influences you to make decisions based on an inadequate budget without considering the downstream impact, you risk becoming diverted from the path you've created, thus resulting in a partial or ineffective technology solution.

Additionally, funding that is not secure can result in the dreaded "bridge to nowhere" with a partially completed effort gathering dust and rust. One approach to avoid this is to look internally for areas from which you could free up budget dollars to augment your corporate-approved funding. Perhaps you can phase out older, costlier, less effective technology to make room for innovation. Look at outdated technologies and functions that are not delivering the desired business value. Next, consider reducing, eliminating, or outsourcing them and earmark the savings for your new strategic efforts.

Skills and capability gaps represent another dilemma you will face.

Do you develop these skills and capabilities internally?

Can you afford to do so?

Should you use vendor partner(s) for this?

Most companies will land on a hybrid model where critical skills and capabilities are at least partially in-house, and vendors are used strategically. Vendor models may include training of internal or external personnel, staffing augmentation, and SLA-based solutions. If you use an outside vendor, make sure that they have a do-it-with-you philosophy that avoids loss of control. To the extent that it is important to you, also make sure that your contract has provisions for appropriate knowledge transfer back to your own organization so that you are not captive to your partner.

Finally, businesses must remain focused on their unique goals and aspirations. By carefully examining internal capabilities, making tough decisions, and selecting vendors strategically, companies can navigate the ever-evolving tech landscape and position themselves for success in the digital era.

Louis Ridout is Director of Customer Solutions at Celsior Technologies

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Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...