The ending of one year and the beginning of the next is the traditional time for reflection and reevaluation, just as much so in the technology arena as anywhere else.  It’s the time of year when you’re almost obligated to take a good hard look backward at what’s worked and what hasn’t, and to look forward to consider the changes you’ll be wanting to make.  At Red Level, we’re seeing this introspection lead to some interesting shifts in priorities.

In particular, we noticed that as 2015 drew to an end, more and more of our clients were taking security and business continuity questions very seriously.  The inquires we received and the conversations we were having were tending to focus more and more on measures designed to ensure the sanctity of critical business information, and the survivability of the business in the event of unforeseen catastrophic events.  As the same time, many clients have been looking to us to help find ways to maximize the value of their business information by leveraging game-changing technologies to increase efficiency, drive revenue, and increase the return from marketing efforts.

Evidently, our experience isn’t unique.  Our clients tend to be an astute, perceptive group of people, and as it turns out their interests and concerns are mirrored closely in recent national surveys, as recent Gartner report indicates.  Taken together, they give our team a pretty good road map as to what we can expect our priorities to be in the coming year.

Here are five of the services of greatest interest to our clients as we start the new year:

1. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE.  Many of our clients are increasingly aware of just how much valuable data they have – and how hard it is for them to unlock that value.  We’re using Microsoft’s Power BI to help them easily, quickly, and affordably unlock that value to increase efficiency, drive revenue, and assess business performance.  (Watch this space –  I’ll be posting an in-depth article on the value of business intelligence soon).
2. COLOCATION. As companies come to count on “Software as a Service” offering such as Salesforce more and more, and the cost of maintaining all of the redundancies needed for a high-functioning in house data center continues to rise, the lure of colocation is becoming more irresistible.  For businesses that can’t afford any downtime, colocation can be the most cost-effective means of ensuring 24/7 reliability and high performance.
3. BACKUP AS A SERVICE (BaaS).  As the quantity and value of business data seems to multiply by leaps and bounds, old in-house backup methods just aren’t cutting it anymore.  Companies can’t afford to entrust their lifeblood to tapes or optical drives and BaaS is now widely seen as the sensible, affrodable alternative.
4. DISASTER RECOVERY AS A SERVICE (DRaaS). As with BaaS, companies are deciding that they can’t rely on half-measures for an effective disaster recovery solution.  Where extended downtime was once merely costly, it is now usually catastrophic in today’s fast moving 24/7 business environment.  When a catastrophe strikes, DRaaS is the shortest path from “stop” to “go”
5. VDI. As businesses’ need for security and flexibility increase, virtual desktops integration (or VDI) becomes a more irresistible proposition.  In the age of a mobile-enables workforce, it makes less and less sense to have valuable business data stored on individual user’s devices where it stands a greater chance of being compromised or stolen.

For a lot of companies, a move towards these and other emergent technologies is a significant modernization of their practices that’s going to make a big difference – and deliver a lot of benefit.  For us, it makes for a busy productive year ahead, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.