Written By: Rob Greenslade, Centralis.
The creation of a shared service offers large financial savings plus the opportunity to transform desktop delivery, enabling BYOD (bring your own device) and flexible working. Additionally, centralising IT and desktop delivery within the data centre means specialist resources are pooled at a single location, providing increased levels of performance, security, and resilience.
However, with a constantly changing set of virtualisation, cloud and hybrid solutions available it can be difficult to identify the right one. On top of that, with the responsibilities of Primary Care Trusts (PCT) being transferred to local authorities this year, PCT staff will need secure and reliable access to NHS systems. Any shared services infrastructure must therefore adhere to the code of connection compliance (CoCo) for access to the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx).
While the National Audit Office has highlighted the potential savings from shared services, the Gershon Review cautioned the public sector’s poor track record. Many projects ultimately fail because of a mismatch with the organisation’s longer term strategic goals or the adoption of an inflexible technology that can’t adapt to the needs of an ever-changing world. So a vital first step for any shared service project is to clarify and capture both broader strategic goals as well as specific functional, technological, and user requirements.
This involves bringing together IT directors and heads of service delivery from several separate organisations, some of whom may feel personally threatened by the consequences of a shared service. It can be hard to achieve agreement and avoid harmful compromises in these situations but an independent outsider can play an invaluable role as facilitator, expert advisor, arbitrator and peace-keeper.
The shape of things to come
Although the shape of the shared service and the underlying technologies may vary, it is likely to involve some combination of desktop virtualisation and cloud technologies.
While there are a growing number of applications and services that can effectively be delivered from the cloud, a wholesale move to the cloud is not yet practical for sizeable organisations.
However, there is scope for developing on-premise, private cloud infrastructures that enable organisations to easily transition to becoming a service provider or service consumer in the future. This is likely to be a five-stage journey:
- Implement a centralised infrastructure – with desktops delivered via the data centre and a standardisation policy for critical applications
- Create a storefront for delivery of Windows applications, mobile applications, software as a service (SaaS) applications, and web applications (not forgetting data as well) – a storefront provides a single point of management and control, with single sign on, and automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of accounts
- Adopt public cloud techniques around automation and orchestration – effectively building a private cloud infrastructure to automatically provision the infrastructure behind these services
- Evaluate who is using the applications and services and calculate the cost of provisioning them – with this level of control and intelligence, organisations are in a position to decide the services it might want to deliver from the cloud, and those it might want to deliver internally
- Assess benefits of becoming a provider of services to other organisations, with departmental billing to charge back customers on a usage basis
Any transformation requires organisational inclusion, clarity of objectives (short and long term), appropriate but not overly-detailed needs development and most importantly agreement. Chairing and managing this process is a key success factor for any shared service project. Only then can the plan, the results and the next steps be agreed.
Although driving cost efficiencies remain the primary focus, with the right technology infrastructure in place, public sector organisations can ensure they deliver on other important targets – namely improved service quality, value for money, and price certainty.
About Centralis
Centralis is one of the UK’s leading independent IT consultancies, specialising in delivering applications securely to their point of use. Backed by top-level partnership with industry leading vendors, including Citrix, Microsoft and VMware, Centralis provides consultancy, support, managed services and resale of selected products. Strong technical skills and commitment to delivering on time and to budget has led to long-term business partnerships with many customers across the private and public sectors, including Standard Life, Centrica, BUPA and many NHS Trusts and Universities. Centralis remains independent and wholly owned by employee shareholders.
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