Business Ready 2012

Business Ready 2012 is a network of professionals focusing on business issues around London 2012 and how to make the most of the Games.

In the first part of our exclusive interview with Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Minister for Olympics, she talks about her long term commitment to the programme and how the government is working to safeguard against the risks associated with hosting London 2012. Find Business Ready 2012 on Twitter and LinkedIn.

In the second part our exclusive interview with Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Minister for Olympics, we ask about opportunities for UK business (both big corporates and SME's). Tessa speaks about the CompeteFor network and opportunities outside the supply chain for local business. Find Business Ready 2012 on Twitter and LinkedIn

In the third part of our interview with Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Minister for Olympics, she talks about London 2012 being the most sustainable Olympic Games in history. We ask if local businesses will benefit from the infrastructure after the Games. Tessa also talks about managing the extra congestion and how the country will be gripped by the Olympics.

Scalability and the modern world

On 29 October 2009, there will be 1,000 days until the opening ceremony of the London 2012, Olympic Games.  Perhaps the central preoccupation for the organisers of this celebration of sport is making sure the Games’ legacy is as rich as possible.  In a perfect world, London 2012 will become a blueprint for the power of good the Games can bring to a host city.

But an Olympic Games is also a chance for businesses to thrive, as it presents a huge opportunity for thousands of them, small and large, to win a share of the Olympic pie.  A whole host of businesses, not just from the UK but from all corners of the world, will be seeking their own Olympic-related legacy in three years’ time – an uplift in sales, business contacts they would not otherwise have made, perhaps even the chance to launch an important product right there, in the full glare of the world’s media.

But what will it really be like for businesses taking advantage of the London 2012, Olympic Games?  Fast-forward 1,000 days to July 2012 and picture this scenario: the CIO of a large travel company has been working for more than a year to make sure she can respond to Olympics-related demand: booking planes, trains, ferries, hotels and apartments for customers all over the world.  It’s been their busiest year ever, and the end of year results will reflect a huge boost to worldwide sales generated by the Games.  The board will undoubtedly be happy.  Coming on the back of a serious economic downturn, this kind of commercial shot in the arm is extremely welcome.

The CIO, however, is troubled.  She is concerned about the unstructured and expensive IT estate that has grown up over the two years running up to the Games, as demand repeatedly outstripped even the company’s most ambitious forecasts.  This structural problem could happen to any CIO facing break-neck growth in the run-up to such a singularly important event, but the issue they then face is that, just one month later, a significant portion of their IT estate will be mothballed indefinitely.  And how will the IT department’s return on investment figures look at that year-end results meeting?  Not so rosy.

Nor is the challenge confined just to companies whose sales grow due to London 2012, Olympic Games.  There will be broadcasters, sports associations, media, information providers – all of which will need to upscale their IT networking and/or contact centre operations in the run up to and during the Games.  Expanding these services will be costly if the Games then leave them with a legacy of unnecessary equipment and infrastructure.

Global corporations are increasingly being exposed to economic and market trends beyond their control, so it is vital that they are prepared to scale up and down operations such as customer service, sales fulfilment and product development in line with market demands.

The problems this presents to CIOs and IT heads, whose hands are generally full thanks to the relentless march of technology innovation, can be monumental.  But two of these innovations have reached a point of maturity that for the first time offers a solution for CIOs aiming to build flexibility into their organisations.  They are virtualisation and cloud computing.

Most technology commentators have become die-hard cloud computing fans for the past few years, and can’t say a bad word about this immaculate concept.  Yet if you ask any CIO how he plans to implement a cloud computing architecture in his enterprise in the next six months, you will very likely receive blank looks.

This is not the fault of the CIOs, but of an industry itching to turn cloud computing into something as game-changing as the invention of the motor car.  In reality, cloud computing is neither new, nor the ultimate solution to every enterprise IT challenge.  However, it does bring with it some immediate winning potential – and one of the first things CIOs should be thinking about is how they can use virtualised infrastructure in the cloud to counterbalance the demand fluctuations their business faces.

Most enterprise IT networks already run on cloud-like principles.  Many virtual private networks, for example, provide operating system and application deployment and maintenance over the wire, without the need for IT staff to actually get their hands on individual machines.  Similarly, many applications are hosted on a company’s servers and delivered to desktop machines remotely, allowing workers to be far more mobile than would have been possible in the past.  Indeed, mobile applications and unified communications technologies are reaching a point where workers can use network applications and remain in constant contact from literally anywhere.

In addition, most large enterprises are well down the road of virtualising their own servers, reducing the costs of running the estate and lowering carbon impacts as an additional and desirable outcome.  The next stage will be for CIOs to realise the huge positive impact that can be achieved by basing capacity calculations for their IT estate on typical demand levels, rather than what their forecasts suggest will be peak demand.

Manage the rules

Better use of technology such as business rule management systems (BRMSs) will help, as it holds the potential to transform cloud computing into a standard part of the CIO toolkit. BRMSs enable an enterprise to link its private networks or clouds to multiple private clouds or the public cloud, as appropriate for various infrastructure, platform and application-level needs.

They use logic to monitor network and application performance being delivered across multiple clouds, and route information accordingly, potentially achieving service levels above those offered by the individual cloud providers.

By the time the Games rolls into London, technologies such as BRMS will have turned virtualised data centres and clouds into a genuine option for CIOs seeking high levels of flexibility and scalability. For corporations seeking to maximise the impact of London 2012, Olympic Games, BRMSs offer a way to benefit from the positive impacts associated with a huge event like the Games, yet avoid being left holding the baby once the organisers, visitors and sporting heroes have left town.

For the CIO in the large travel company, a virtualised London 2012, Olympic Games looks far more like the kind of career enhancing performance that will be witnessed on track and field in three years’ time.