Five reseller and MSP projects that epitomise the post-Covid world
From remote jury technology, to AI chatbots, here we round up some of the new-style projects MSPs and resellers have won during the last 11 months
The wave of digital transformation triggered by Covid is throwing up projects and opportunities that wouldn't have existed 18 months ago.
As part of the CRN Rising Stars 2021 report - in association with Agilitas - we rounded up five projects landed by resellers and MSPs over the last 11 months that epitomise the new-look world, and asked whether they are just a sign of things to come for the channel.
Rising Stars looks at the post-Covid opportunity for the industry, picking out seven fast-growing, high-profit resellers, MSPs and tech consultancies. This septep of firms grew by an average of 109 per cent in their latest years and boast average net profit margins of 7.8 per cent - well above the 2.5 per cent VAR 350 average.
Court on camera
Ensuring justice could continue to be done during lockdown, HMCTS turned to audiovisual integrator Kinly to roll out its videoconferencing technology at more than 100 courts last Spring. Kinly managing director Northern Europe, Tom Martin, gave us an update.
In a nutshell, what did the project entail?
HMCTS had already been working with Kinly since 2018 and were able to quickly start consulting with our team about how best to respond to the challenges of the coronavirus outbreak as we approached a potential lockdown in the UK during March 2020.
The required video conferencing solution needed to be interoperable with existing endpoints/ ISDN connections used in UK courts, connect to prisons via the existing video conferencing technology and also allow Skype for Business from police stations in particular with browser connections via WebRTC for the public (eg witness testimony) to enable all to connect into the same virtual space. The nature of the project and associated time pressures did not allow for a ground-up development.
Currently the Kinly Cloud Video Platform is one option for joining a criminal hearing amongst others. Looking ahead, HMCTS are also expanding the capacity and testing of the HMCTS Video Hearings Service, which has already been used on a small-scale in specified civil, family law and tax tribunal hearing types. It will see everyone involved in the hearings - including judges, legal teams on both sides, and appellants - taking part via video.
Has the pandemic changed the game when it comes to the type of projects and opportunities Kinly - and companies like you - are seeing, or will see in the future?
We see a clear shift towards all meetings being a mix of digital and physical participants, and we also have seen an increased demand for projects specific to a particular workflow. Due to the pandemic, organisations are looking at particular events, conferences, processes that were always done physically and then looking at ways to create that in a virtual setting using video.
The kids are all-byte
When schools shut abruptly last year, the Department of Education turned to the channel to help it roll out Google and Microsoft remote teaching and learning platforms. These projects could be just a taste of things to come, says Melissa Rambridge, CEO of MSP Sweethaven (pictured, below right), one of the firms involved in the roll out.
How many schools has Sweethaven personally helped under the scheme?
We've rolled out around 70 platforms across the UK.
Was Covid instrumental in this project, or was it going to happen anyway?
I think it accelerated it ten-fold. The idea of what they call hybrid or blended learning in schools - using technology to be able to better combine the results you're getting through homeworking with what happens in the classroom - has been on the DoE's agenda for a fair while, but it didn't really have impetus behind it. And then Covid happened.
Is the wave of digital transformation triggered by Covid throwing up new opportunities or projects you wouldn't have seen 15 months ago?
Absolutely. I'm not entirely sure if there was anything we wouldn't have got to eventually, it's more the speed of transformation these things have happened at. The future workplace - this idea of flexible, lighter remote working - was a buzzword before but the necessity for it has brought it to life for a lot of companies. In the same way we're seeing Google and Microsoft platforms being rolled out for remote collaboration in schools, we're seeing that across the businesses we support as well.
What the doctor ordered
Microsoft partner Cielo Costa built a doctor register for BMI Healthcare in 48 hours flat last spring after NHS doctors and patients began using its private facilities. But the project is just part of a wider digital transformation trend, according to CEO, Ali Sanaei (pictured, below left).
How did the project come about?
Around 10 months ago, the NHS had this very urgent contract with all the independent healthcare providers where the patients and doctors would use their facilities as opposed to the NHS. We were contacted on a Tuesday at 4pm by a senior member of our client saying ‘we're in trouble because the contract was signed yesterday and we've already had nearly 100 NHS doctors come to our hospitals - our staff at the lobby aren't trained to deal with this, and it's a huge risk - help us urgently'. Literally, they needed it today.
Within 48 hours we had the first iteration of the software out and live across 50 hospitals. There were elements of using Microsoft tools, such as Power Apps and Power Automate and storing the data in Sharepoint, which allowed us to hit the ground quicker and build something rapidly.
Is Covid a game changer for digital transformation?
It has speeded things up. Now suddenly clients want to have the Teams we were talking to them about for two years and are saying ‘can you implement it for 1,000 of users'? It's put us in reactive mode as a business where we're having requests come in all the time.
Does that mean you're seeing growth?
We grew 80 percent last year during a pandemic year and expect to double in terms of size. At the start of last year we were 12 staff and should be over 30 by end of this year. The software industry right now is doing well, especially if you have a focus on cloud solutions - and we've not touched a non-cloud solution for three or four years.
Chatbot challenge
When the pandemic struck last February, NHS Wales approached IBM partner Meridian IT to help it develop ‘CERI', a virtual assistant designed to communicate with patients, healthcare workers and the general public.
The pandemic has opened the minds of every organisation to the power of technology, Meridian's Lionel Butler and Andy Haley tell us.
How did CERi come about?
LB: The idea was to build an AI chatbot not with the mandate of a traditional chatbot - where you ask a question and get a straight answer - but more the mantra of it being a friend, where you're getting responses back that have human emotion and aren't just clinical or matter of fact. The idea was for it to scale up to use more and more of the AI facilities IBM provides, like tonality - and also help with the Welsh translation.
AH: One of reasons we were able to respond quickly was because we applied techniques and skills we'd built previously for other similar applications. The ability to be able to respond empathetically came about because we'd developed that capability on previous projects where we were translating text into voice.
Are we seeing new types of project popping up in the wake of Covid?
AH: When I talked to CIOs and CEOs all of them were saying by the middle of last year ‘we'll never go back to the way we used to work; it's opened our minds to what technology can do for us and how much more efficient we can be by applying better technology, better automation, better processes and better digital transformation'. It's very difficult to persuade people there's an alternative approach and you only get to this point because of something catastrophic.
There's definitely a greater enthusiasm to move as many workloads off premise as possible. Quite often what's restricting that is legacy applications, so the kind of thing we see more of now than before is application modernisation.
Nightingale necessity
The NHS' IT hardware needs have ramped up during Covid. Jon Sugden ( pictured ), head of unified communication at Prodec - which supplied comms and AV kit to Nightingale Hospital North East - assesses how Covid has shifted the technology landscape
What was the project in a nutshell?
Prodec Networks has supported NHS trusts across the UK, deploying audio visual and collaboration systems for many years. Covid increased the demand for these types of solutions substantially. The project we are most proud of was supporting the Nightingale Hospital North East by implementing telephony, video conferencing and audio visual solutions, all within an extremely short time frame. More recently we have equipped a Covid testing facility which operates 24 hours a day, processing 80,000 Covid tests daily, with audio visual and video conferencing systems.
Are we now seeing a ‘second wave' of digital transformation that's distinct from the tactical projects triggered by lockdown 1.0?
During the first wave of lockdown most organisations had little choice but to go with solutions that were quick and cost effective to implement. At the time nobody knew how long the lockdown would last or the impact it would have on their business, so most organisations were cautious in their approach to digital transformation. The second wave brought with it the realisation that the workplace has probably changed forever. Businesses now see digital transformation as a key part of long-term strategic planning and an opportunity to improve efficiency and cost. As a result Prodec has seen a significant increase in projects around UCaaS and other cloud based collaborative solutions such as Teams, together with security and connectivity solutions to enhance the home working experience.