According to the AA UK petrol prices are rising to record levels and could soon average £1.20 a litre. How willl this affect IT?

Inflation
The most likely affect will be on inflation as road haulage prices will almost certainly rise in line with what has been a 17% increase on fuel costs in the past month.  Therefore IT procurement costs will potentially rise with the greatest exposure being on delivery costs.  Delivery lead times may also be affected if haulage firms commence retrenching activities.

Remote Working
As inflation begins to bite, commuters will certainly start to consider their options. Managers may need to offer flexible working arrangements meaning a greater burden on IT departments to offer remote working solutions.  Mobile telephony, secure connectivity and virtual environments offer practical solutions to allow workers access to all their usual IT resources from practically anywhere.
 
Web Conferencing
Already there is a trend to reduce the cost of business travel.  Several large organisations have an unofficial “No Travel Friday” policy.  As the cost of travel increases these informal arrangements will become more widely adopted.  Emphasis will shift to IT departments to provide practical alternatives to travel.  VOIP technologies are already widely used in business and desktop communication tools like Skype and desktop telephony will become more and more significant.  The use of web conferencing software will also increase.  Subscription services like WebExand GotoMeeting are already popular, but there is more and more choice with Open Source and free solutions now available such as Dimdim and WebHuddle.

Cloud Computing
Traditional client-server based applications are already in decline in favour of internet based software.  As more and more workers operate remotely the requirement for online collaboration will increase even more.  Software as a Service (SaaS) and virtualised resources offer reduced IT capital expenditure and promote remote connectivity, so these emerging technology trends will only strengthen in the current climate.

Contact us for more information on any of the technologies described here.