Monthly Archives: July 2021

Cloud Migration, News

Clearvision Announces Atlassian Cloud Enterprise Migration Service

Clearvision, an ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials-certified Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, today announced the launch of Atlassian Cloud Enterprise Migration, its new migration service for organisations looking to migrate to Atlassian Cloud.

Atlassian Cloud Enterprise Migration is a fully managed structured service that helps organisations migrate from Atlassian Server or Data Center editions to the Cloud. Clearvision’s new offering enables organisations to mitigate the risk associated with the migration, while contributing to the improvement of data quality.

Included in this service is:

  • An initial Risk Assessment to understand organisations’ Atlassian landscape, identify risks and determine the minimum data required.
  • A Solution Architect to design the organisations’ pilot solution and how that will be rolled out to the rest of the business.
  • A Project Manager to ensure timely delivery, resolution of potential roadblocks and to report on progress.
  • A dedicated Atlassian certified professional to deliver your full enterprise migration. Guaranteed, vetted, and tested by Clearvision’s  resourcing division, ClearHub, to execute the migration project throughout its entire duration (6, 12 or 18 months).

“We realise that migrations are big, risky ventures for organisations to undertake and feel that this approach helps achieve this in a more manageable way. Over the last year businesses have been transitioning rapidly to the cloud because it delivers innovation cost and convenience. With our new service and approach, Atlassian customers can be more confident that their move to the cloud will be achieved in a fully managed, timely and effective manner,” says Gary Blower, Solutions Architect, Clearvision.

This approach is recommended for organisations operating large-scale projects and/or with multiple Atlassian tools. To ensure teams can continue working effectively and securely over the transitional period, old and new applications will run in parallel during the migration. The process starts with the assessment, after which a first team or business unit is identified for migration and an initial pilot project is undertaken. Clearvision evaluates the results and subsequently initiates the roll-out to the rest of the business. The duration of the migration can take 6, 12 or 18 months, depending on its size and complexity.

The benefits of adopting Clearvision’s Atlassian Cloud Enterprise Migration are:

  • Effective migration that mitigates risk and minimises disruption
  • Reduction in time required for data rework
  • Improved data quality
  • Planned data archival and decommissioning

Gary Blower added “Clearvision expects that Atlassian Cloud Enterprise Migration will help smooth the transition to cloud and mitigate the operational risk.  Our  aims to help businesses embrace this new digital shift by helping them to manage their resources and data in a more effective way”

For more information on Clearvision, visit www.clearvision-cm.com.

Book Releases, Children and Childcare, News

Summer Holiday Saviour: M&S Launches First Ever Children’s Story Book Containing A Whopping 15 Hours Of Fun Family Activities

(Don’t tell the kids: It’s educational too!)

Farm to Foodhall, The Magic Ingredient is the first ever children’s book to be sold at M&S Food and was co-created and published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, with words by Linda Chapman and illustrations by Sarah Jennings. Aimed at children aged 4-9 years old, this 64-page storybook is just £5 and includes 10 different activities for families to do together during the summer holidays. A wonderful story, and hours of hands-on recipe and crafting fun sprinkled in too!

The book is an entertaining and educational story aimed at helping children to understand the importance of where their food comes from, how it can be produced with the environment in mind and of course, delicious recipes and meals that can be created too! Taking the reader on a captivating journey through the British countryside, the book explores the world of sustainable farming and is designed to provoke conversations about more ethical eating.

M&S Food is passionate about excellent quality, British grown and produced foods, and wants to ensure the next generation understand more about food and farming. A recent study by Arla* suggested 1 in 5 primary school children don’t know where milk comes from, as well as confusion about the origin of other basic foods like bread. M&S wants to do its part to help change these statistics and ensure the next generation has the tools to make informed choices and understand more about the food they consume.

Farm to Foodhall brings to life different and varied types of farming, including dairy,  cherries and chicken to name just a few. We join main character Amalia, as she looks to create the perfect birthday feast for her grandad by journeying around amazing M&S Select Farms. At each stage of the journey, she discovers fun facts, recipes and activities, including building a bug hotel for the garden and creating a herb garden. There’s also a beautifully illustrated pull out map of all the amazing produce sourced by M&S from across the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Juliet Matthews, Colour Publisher, HarperCollins Children’s Books said: ‘We are delighted to have worked with Marks & Spencer on a truly collaborative project, creating a book that will not only entertain children but also deliver important learnings on sustainability and the journey of food from farm to foodhall.’

 Lauren O’Kelly, Farm to Foodhall production team at Marks and Spencer, said: “We wanted to create a fun and engaging story for families, whilst also wrapping in recipes and activities that could keep them entertained during the summer holidays, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. Each page springs to life with the beautiful illustrations, and we hope readers enjoy Amalia’s journey as much as we did helping to create it.”

To create these delicious recipes, including cherry pie, chicken korma, salmon parcels and more, mini chefs will need some stylish kitchenware!  To complement the book, M&S has created just the thing, with a limited edition set of Farm to Foodhall merchandise, including mixing bowls (£3), cookie cutters (£3), utensils (£5) and a tote bag (£3) to carry home all those ingredients too!

The book and merchandise will be in stores from July 27th, with the book priced at just £5.

Healthcare, Healthcare Tech, News

Securing what matters most: healthcare devices ensuring patient safety

Written by Phil Howe, CTO, Core to Cloud

COVID-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of the healthcare industry and is helping healthcare organisations to adapt to the new reality and offer effective patient care. Now, virtual healthcare tools have been widely implemented to improve healthcare delivery and quality, reduce costs, increase care efficiency, and boost revenue.   The Internet of Things (IoT) is just one technology that is helping to improve the quality of input information and analysis. Today a range of connected medical devices are being utilised across the healthcare industry, but these devices need to be protected to ensure patient safety.

 

The challenges around securing medical devices

However, this is easier said than done. Securing medical devices on clinical networks is not straightforward and is compounded by problems such as:

  • security updates, patches and potentially virus signatures must be properly assessed by the supplier and confirmed as safe before they can be implemented on the medical device. This can take three months from the time that a security update is released.
  • when security updates are released, they are retro-analysed by attackers, increasing the likelihood that exploitable vulnerabilities will become known.
  • the latest security mitigations not being present increases the impact of vulnerabilities, making exploitation more likely to succeed, and making detection of any exploitation more difficult.

 

Finding a clientless way to secure devices

NHS Trusts need to find a way to protect these devices while tackling the challenges outlined above. However most devices can’t be scanned in real-time, because if they are taken out of service this could impact patient care. Therefore, Trusts need a clientless way to secure devices, provide an overview of vulnerabilities, as well as granular device information on aspects like utilisation and segmentation.

This is one of the reasons why we partnered with Cylera, a leading IoT healthcare cybersecurity provider.  Cylera’s MedCommand platform is purpose-built to solve these technological and operational challenges. The platform delivers real-time visibility, inventory, operational intelligence, risk and vulnerability analysis, risk mitigation, segmentation, and threat detection and response.

Additionally, the platform’s capability is unified through a central management console to streamline operations and provide value across multiple sites and teams.

 

Creating a virtual digital twin

But what is really clever is that Cylera learns the behaviour of each medical device and creates a virtual digital twin.  Then it leverages industry standard and proprietary scanning technology to scan the digital twin, 24 x 7, and notify the Trust in real-time of vulnerabilities and threats, anomalous behaviour as well as outdated firmware and so much more.

Likewise, Cylera’s Patented Adaptive Data Type Analysis automatically identifies Zero Day devices and Zero Day protocols. So, if a new, never before seen type of medical device is speaking to a new, unknown protocol which is dropped onto their network, it will identify it and proactively notify the customer about the device and its physical location, reducing exposure to unknown risks from that device. And it automates the manual labour-intensive task of creating policies, reducing time to mitigate risk and improving productivity, as well as providing deep medical device utilisation analytics that can be used to optimise patient scheduling.

 

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust

One great example of the Platform in action is Dartford and Gravesham (DGT) NHS Trust who, through Core to Cloud, chose Cylera to safeguard its medical device and IoT infrastructure. As one of the key hospital trusts in North Kent, DGT provides acute and outpatient services. DGT recognised the need to identify and secure its medical devices as a top priority. However, other more generalist solutions considered could scan networks and inventory devices, but only Cylera provided the ability to examine and quantify real-time risks to patient safety and clinical services, align with regulatory requirements, and optimise clinical workflows and devices, all in one simplified platform.

 

Why not join us?

If you are interested in finding out more, why not join our LinkedIn Live event: Securing what matters most: healthcare devices ensuring patient safety on 27th July at 4.00 pm BST and understand how you can better secure your connected environment. To register click here.

News

Aegon UK formally accredited as a Living Wage employer

Aegon has informally adopted the real Living Wage with its workforce for many years but the official accreditation enables Aegon to now go beyond the commitment to its workforce and extend the positive impact to its supply chains. Now, as well as requiring in-scope suppliers of regularly contracted staff to pay the real Living Wage, Aegon is encouraging all of its UK suppliers to adopt the real Living Wage and its non-UK suppliers to identify and adopt an ethical pay standard.

The real Living Wage commitment formalises the fact that everyone working at Aegon receives a minimum hourly wage of at least £9.50 in the UK or £10.85 in London. Both rates are significantly higher than the government minimum for over 23s, which currently stands at £8.91 per hour.

In Scotland, more than 15% of all jobs pay less than the real Living Wage – around 350,000 jobs. Despite this, Aegon has committed to pay the real Living Wage and deliver a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work.

The real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate calculated according to the costs of living. This recognition means that Aegon is choosing to pay the real Living Wage on a voluntary basis, recognising the value of their workers and ensuring that a hard day’s work receives a fair day’s pay.

Mike Holliday-Williams, CEO at Aegon said: “Aegon is delighted to be recognised as a Living Wage Employer. People are at the heart of the business and make Aegon a great place to work.

“We have been committed to paying all employees the real Living Wage rates informally for many years now. But with this formal accreditation, we will now be able to work with third parties to encourage them to do so as well to ensure more people have a fair and equitable future.”

Richard Lochhead, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work says:

“It is fantastic to see Aegon UK become formally accredited as a real Living Wage employer. Ensuring staff are fairly remunerated is fundamental to Fair Work and benefits individual workers as well as business – by improving retention and productivity, and reducing recruitment costs. The Scottish Government encourages all employers regardless of size or sector to pay the real Living Wage.

“I congratulate Aegon UK in making this public commitment to Fair Work and I encourage all employers to follow their lead.”

Peter Kelly, Director of The Poverty Alliance said: “Too many workers in Scotland are in the grip of poverty and employers choosing to pay at least the real Living Wage can loosen that grip. Payment of the real Living Wage allows those in work to become more included in society, better meet their everyday needs, and feel that their value and hard work is recognised by their employer. Congratulations to Aegon on their Living Wage commitment, and I hope more organisations follow their lead by becoming Living Wage accredited.”

Lynn Anderson, Living Wage Scotland Manager said: “Aegon joins a growing movement of over 2,000 employers in Scotland who together want to ensure workers earn a wage that meets the cost of living.

“Having paid their own employees the real Living Wage for a long time, the formal process of accreditation meant that Aegon were able broaden their impact by extending the Living Wage commitment to regular workers employed through their supply chain. We hope Aegon’s Living Wage accreditation will inspire similar action from other large employers, to recognise the important leadership and influencing role they too could have in growing the Living Wage movement.

“Our Living Wage employer network includes lots of smaller employers as well as other iconic brands like SSE, Standard Life Aberdeen, Barrs, & D.C. Thomson.”

Since 2011 the Living Wage movement has delivered a pay rise to more than 45,000 people in Scotland and put more than £240 million extra into the pockets of low paid Scottish workers.

News

Mental health plummeted in 2020, but there’s plenty to be optimistic about in 2021, says MYNDUP data

Lockdowns drove many to therapy and counselling, but people feel much better about the future as life gets back to normal

2020 was a rough time for the nation’s mental health. New data from mental health startup MYNDUP has revealed just how difficult things were, with a massive increase in therapy and counselling sessions as lockdowns wore on. More positively though, there are also encouraging signs that people are seeing light at the end of the tunnel as we move into summer, as fewer clinical sessions are being booked.

Findings include:

  • 57% of sessions booked in October-December 2020 were therapy or counselling – up from just 18% in January-March 2020
  • 38% of customers were aged 35 or over in the last three months of 2020, up from just 9% in the summer months
  • The above data shows lockdowns and isolation hit people hard, especially around Christmas time
  • But there’s light at the end of the tunnel: based on thousands of sessions booked, around 30% weren’t happy with their mental health in 2020 and early 2021, but this decreased to 18% in the last three months

The data was taken from 3,500 sessions booked with MYNDUP. In early 2020 before the pandemic gained a foothold, just 18% of sessions were for therapy or counselling. By the end of the year, after months of lockdowns and a cancelled Christmas for many, this rocketed to 57%.

People over 35 really started to feel the strain towards the end of 2020. Between July and September, they made up just 9% of customers. From October to December, this surged to 38%. This demographic in particular seemed to suffer as winter set in and the outlook became gloomy all over again. There are several possible explanations for this, such as school closures putting extra strain on parents and the inability to spend time with extended family.

Joel Gujral, founder and CEO at MYNDUP, said: “We’ve all had our struggles during lockdown, but this data lays bare just how tough it’s been for many. Before Covid came along and we were living our normal lives, people were more likely to opt for things like life coaching over therapy or counselling. This trend continued for a good few months as people handled early lockdowns stoically, but there was a shocking turn towards the end of the year as people’s positivity dwindled.

“It’s also interesting to see how the over-35s turned to mental health support more often as the year went on. There are lots of possible reasons for this, including the stresses of combining home working with home schooling, alongside the general isolation that we’ve all felt.

“Looking on the bright side, it’s positive to see that these people are engaging with mental health support rather than suffering in silence. After all, one of the biggest mental health challenges we face is smashing the stigma around it.”

Looking at the positives even more, only 18% of customers said they weren’t happy with their mental health over the last three months. This is an encouraging drop from 33% in the first three months of 2021.

Joel added: “When you’re out and about at the moment, it’s clear that people are much more optimistic about the future than they were a few months ago. There finally seems to be an end in sight, which is being reflected in the way people see their mental health.”

He concluded: “What’s important now is for all of us to keep our foot on the gas as far as mental health is concerned, and keep encouraging ourselves, friends, family members, and colleagues to take steps to ensure our mental wellbeing is always in the best possible shape. There’s no single solution to mental health after all, so people will deal with the challenges of the next few months in different ways. Keep all of this in mind, and we’ll have much to look forward to for the rest of the year!”

News

Web-Based Solution (SaaS) El-Brokers Launches In The UK To Improve Listing Management Across Small Estate Agencies

el-Brokers, a leading web-based listing management solution for realtors and small estate agencies, is today announcing its BETA launch into the UK market. The affordable software allows agents and brokers to easily manage and enhance their property listings to professionally market them and compete on the same level as larger estate and lettings firms.

The first of its kind solution from the Egyptian start-up company is designed for both commercial and residential real estate agencies competing for property listings in smaller towns and regions of the UK. Available on a free six-month trial, productivity tool offers a range of highly tailored features to help agents and brokers manage their leads and property listings better as well as create professional reports for clients in a matter of minutes.

The revolutionary tool from el-Brokers syncs all property listings with client requirements into one database, meaning agents no longer have to search through multiple files and locations on their servers to find the latest version. By enabling agents to share a common database and a single version of the truth, they can enhance their collaboration, become more time-efficient, and ultimately offer a better service to those looking for a new home or office.

Yasmine Soliman, Co-founder at el-Brokers says: “Our specialised online tool addresses the startling shortage of low-cost and fit-for-purpose solutions for smaller agencies and brokers who still largely rely on outdated spreadsheets to keep track of listings. All too often realtors miss a certain property or share incomplete or inconsistent information with their clients, risking losing them to a competitor. We want to facilitate better communication between team members to drive agents’ productivity, and as a result, client satisfaction and profitability.”

El-Brokers offers to upload agents’ current database on their behalf, ensuring no disruption to their daily operations whilst the heavy lifting takes place. The solution is currently available free of charge on a six-month trial basis before becoming low-cost, subscription based.

Next on the roadmap by September, is the launch of a mobile app to complement the current desktop solution. Alongside the standard features, the fully integrated app will enable agents to import clients’ contact details directly from their phone books, add property images from their photo galleries as well as sharing listings reports on the go.

About el-Brokers

El-Brokers is a leading web-based services provider specifically focused on the real-estate sector. The affordable listing management solution helps level the playing field for small estate agencies and brokers, enabling them to achieve the efficiency and access to greater resources required to compete with much larger rivals. El-Brokers is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. For more information, visit https://elbrokers.com/

HR News, News

4-day working week trial proves huge success for Arken.legal, employer reports increased productivity, more job satisfaction and improved work life balance

Arken.legal, experts in digital estate planning solutions, has introduced a four-day working week for full time employees following a hugely successful nine-month trial – and it’s proved so successful, the company have implemented it permanently and are recommending it to other employers,

  • Reduced working week has made a ‘significant difference’ to job satisfaction and family life for nine in ten staff
  • 95% say they are either equally (19%) or more (76%) efficient and productive doing their job in four days as opposed to five
  • 81% of employees more likely to stay at Arken.legal now the 4-day week has been introduced

Since October 2020, all full-time employees at the firm have had Fridays off – with the exception of two staff who take a different day to ensure cover – but have maintained the same level of output.

The result has been an increase in productivity and efficiency, improvements in job satisfaction and a better work-life balance for staff. It has also changed the way staff rate Arken.legal – eight in ten say it has improved their view of the company and 85% say the introduction of the four-day week has increased the time they are likely to stay at Arken.legal.

Staff can use their day off however they wish, and while some do catch up on work, most use it to spend more time with family or do chores and run errands so they can free up their weekends.

Many also use the day for upskilling and fitness – Arken.legal runs staff yoga on Friday mornings for those who want to join. The four-day week also gives staff the opportunity to take long weekends away without having to book holiday.

Speaking of the change, an Arken.legal employee said

“I manage to get all my admin and chores done, so it doesn’t eat into family time on weekends. I also have the ability to do any extra work if needed but at my own time, with no interruptions. Essentially it is a ‘me’ day that allows me to use the time as I feel I need to – that can be getting admin done or just chilling out.”

“School drop off/pickups and then upskilling – it’s a lot harder to find the energy to do this after work in the evenings so to have a day available for this is amazing. Then late afternoon with the kids.”

Arken.legal ran the trial period covertly, and none of their clients realised that staff were working a four-day week, proving outputs were maintained despite the reduced hours. Pippa Shepherd, Head of Customer Engagement at Arken.legal explains the four-day week was always something Arken.legal had been advocates of, and lockdown offered the perfect opportunity to put it into action:

“Studies show that a four-day week boosts employee work life balance and lowers burnout without sacrificing productivity, as well as challenging gender inequality, and we had been supportive of the idea for some time.

“Then, following the first lockdown, which proved not only that productivity could be maintained in a non-traditional remote working environment, but also that maintaining a good work-life balance is absolutely key to overall wellbeing – we decided to pilot the scheme, and it has been a huge success.”

As a software as a service provider, Arken.legal is all about increasing productivity using technology – its solutions deliver business efficiencies and an improved customer experience – and it wants to encourage other businesses to consider investing in tech to improve efficiency and free up staff time.

Pippa concludes: “If the last 18 months have taught us anything, it is that we need to create a more sustainable way of working, one that improves business productivity, but has worker wellbeing at its core. By introducing a four-day week we have been able to improve work-life balance, strengthen families, and reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing productivity, and we would urge all businesses to consider it.”

 

Charity & CSR, Hospice News, News

Forever Flowers display opens to the public

A striking display of expertly crafted flowers within the grounds of Cardiff Castle opened to the public on Saturday (July 24).

Launched by leading Cardiff charity City Hospice earlier this year, the Forever Flowers campaign celebrates the lives of loved ones in a special way with unique and lasting tributes.

Supporters were invited to pre-order the limited-edition flowers to remember cherished family members, friends and loved ones. The campaign received an incredible response and over a thousand Forever Flowers feature in the display, which is free to visit and runs until Sunday August 8.

Forever Flowers supports the work of City Hospice, Cardiff’s local hospice, which is the only provider of home-based specialist palliative care in the capital.

The charity provides care and compassion to 550 patients at any one time with terminal or life limiting illnesses such as cancer, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and motor neurone disease (MND), as well as counselling and support services for their families.

Liz Andrews, Chief Executive of City Hospice, said: “We are so pleased to welcome everyone to the Forever Flowers display at such an iconic location. We have been overwhelmed by the positive response to the campaign which helps us to remember and cherish loved ones, as well as celebrate the important work of the charity.

“The display is free to visit and is something truly special; we encourage people to make a visit part of their plans during these first weeks of the summer holidays!”

Cybersecurity, News

ThreatQuotient Named 2021 TAG Cyber Distinguished Vendor

ThreatQuotient™, a leading security operations platform innovator, today announced the company has been recognised as a Distinguished Vendor by TAG Cyber in their Security Quarterly report for Q3 2021. TAG Cyber selected ThreatQuotient as one of only a handful of industry-leading cyber security solution providers to be featured in the report, which offers expert guidance, research and analysis, and education across the entire cyber security ecosystem.

In 2021, the frequency and scale of cyberattacks has increased and affected businesses and critical infrastructure ranging from hospitals to power plants. Amid the growing intensity and risks associated with these threats, enterprises, governments, and individuals are in need of more research and resources to protect against the damage cyber attacks can inflict on vital systems. To address security personnel shortages and an industry need for more curated and data-driven threat intelligence, ThreatQuotient recently announced two new capabilities built into the ThreatQ platform, ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator and ThreatQ Data Exchange.

“Existing approaches to security automation work for repetitive tasks, but to actually support detection and response needs, the focus of automation should be on the data and not the processes. ThreatQuotient is helping organisations focus on what is learned from their data, resulting in stronger detection and response,” said Leon Ward, VP Product Management, ThreatQuotient. “ThreatQuotient is building on this approach to improve overall security operations, as well as strengthen industry threat intelligence sharing. We are pleased to be included in TAG Cyber’s report as a distinguished vendor, and we appreciate their work to further educate the market on timely threats and leading solutions.”

Katie Teitler, VP of Research and Advisory at TAG Cyber, added, “We are thrilled to feature ThreatQuotient in this publication. Given the rise of ransomware, phishing and other attacks this year, their insights on achieving efficiency in security operations and curating data for effective automation to defend against attackers are of great interest and importance to IT and security professionals right now.”

To download TAG Cyber’s Q3 2021 Security Quarterly report for free, which includes an interview with Ward, click here. For more information about ThreatQuotient’s award-winning solutions, please visit www.threatq.com.

About ThreatQuotient

ThreatQuotient’s mission is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations with a platform that accelerates and simplifies investigations and collaboration within and across teams and tools. Integrating an organisation’s existing processes and technologies into a unified workspace, ThreatQuotient’s solutions reduce noise, highlight top priority threats and automate processes to provide greater focus and decision support while maximising limited resources. ThreatQuotient’s threat-centric approach supports multiple use cases including incident response, threat hunting, spear phishing, alert triage and vulnerability management, and also serves as a threat intelligence platform. ThreatQuotient is headquartered in Northern Virginia with international operations based out of Europe and APAC. For more information, visit www.threatquotient.com.

 

About TAG Cyber

TAG Cyber is a trusted cyber security research analyst firm, providing unbiased industry insights and recommendations to security solution providers and Fortune 100 enterprises. Founded in 2016 by Dr. Edward Amoroso, former SVP/CSO of AT&T, the company bucks the trend of pay-for-play research by offering in-depth research, market analysis, consulting, and personalised content based on hundreds of engagements with clients and non-clients alike—all from a former practitioner perspective. For more information, visit https://www.tag-cyber.com/.

Cybersecurity, IT Support, News

Clearvision Launches Experts on Demand Subscription Service

Experts on Demand gives customers the ability to plug skills gaps, focus on their business priorities and tap into guidance, advice and support as and when needed.

Clearvision, an ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials-certified software services company, today announced the launch of its Experts on Demand Atlassian Subscription Service.

Experts on Demand is a monthly subscription-based Atlassian consultancy service designed to provide teams with coaching, mentoring, and advice. Working on a credit basis, with each credit granting access to a solution expert for up to half a day, this unique service means that organisations can now access Atlassian experts and consultancy services on an ad-hoc basis.

The service offers a range of consultancy services such as one-to-one coaching and mentoring, optimisation and configuration, health checks and problem-solving, process improvements, consultant-led training sessions and Q&A sessions with an expert.

There are also a range of consultancy services in this new offering include solution design for digital transformation programmes, Agile/SAFe best practices, ITIL/ITSM/eSM best practices, continuous improvement, as well as prototyping and managed adoption.

“We launched this service in response to increasing customer demand and, in a matter of weeks, we already have a number of beta customers benefiting from it,” says Gary Blower, Solutions Architect, Clearvision.

“Knowing that it will typically be the small-to-mid sized organisations that will utilise the service most frequently, we based it on a subscription model as the cost per hour or day is lower. This enables customers to plan more effectively, as each credit grants access to a solution expert for up to half a day. Additionally, organisations can budget for this, rather than have unexpected costs at the end of the month, our fixed cost price puts them in control, and they aren’t hit with any nasty surprises,” Blower adds.

Experts on Demand is available in three packages: Starter, Annual, and Enterprise.

  • The Starter package is for small/medium teams looking to expand their Atlassian usage with minimal commitment and investment. It includes one credit per month for six months.
  • The Annual option is for teams with well-defined needs and objectives looking to benefit from the knowledge and availability of an Atlassian expert. It includes two credits per month on an annual basis.
  • The Enterprise package is for large teams with strategic requirements in need of bespoke solutions without limitations or constraints. It includes unlimited monthly credits on an annual basis.

In the current economic climate, among the many ‘hard-to-fill’ and skills shortage vacancies in 2020 were IT programmers and software developers. As businesses look to digitally transform so demand for IT skilled professionals and developers continues to outperform supply. In fact, a recent article from Deloitte suggests that less than half of executives believe they have the skills to compete and lead within the digital economy.

Experts on Demand will help to fill that gap and ensure that organisations have the specialist skills, knowledge, support and expertise that they need in order to compete and remain relevant – both now and in the future.

For more information on Clearvision, visit www.clearvision-cm.com.