Rarely when learning a new technology skill-set are we given the chance to cut our teeth on interesting work with tangible benefits to the wider community. But like an abandoned kitten adopted out to a doting Remuera household, I’m luckier than most, as my first Salesforce project was with the SPCA Auckland.

Today’s digitally savvy consumers expect real time information and personalised shopping experiences. It is these consumers that are now in the driver’s seat - shaping the retail industry and forcing retailers to be more innovative. So how do Australian and New Zealand retailers keep up with the pace? Here are my top 5 tips.

Though most Australian businesses would have completed the somewhat dreaded ‘budgeting process’ by now, New Zealand organisations are perhaps still in the throws of the annual budgeting challenge. Regardless of whether you’re past the challenge or not, the following top 3 tips from our organisation’s leaders are worth considering to manage your business in 2016.

The need to address digital transformation and industry disruption is forcing organisations to look for new operating models to meet the challenge. An increasingly popular approach is ‘Bimodal IT’.

In 2016 cloud computing models continue to be a tool or enabler for business disruption, digital transformation, competitive advantage, fast growth or fast failure. Moreover, cloud has the ability to impact the cost structures and overall governance of any organisation far more than many people realise.

With cloud technology’s ability to impact both the top and bottom line of business, it’s important for high level execs to have a look at the new risks that need to be managed. Of course, cloud has countless benefits, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to question things. So here are the top three questions you need to ask about your cloud technology:

2015 has become the year that Public Cloud won the Datacentre Battle. The effect of this can be seen with global organisations like Rackspace and HP exiting the IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) market and beginning to sell their competitor’s Public Cloud offerings. This year we also saw local based Datacentre providers (somewhat reluctantly) launch Public Cloud offerings. You should expect to see further consolidation of global and local providers as they hastily exit the IaaS market as their businesses begin to be heavily substituted by Public Cloud Services.

One of our many missions at Fronde is to empower leading healthcare industry clients in delivering secure, real-time communication across employee groups. Using cloud-based productivity solutions from Google, we really are helping healthcare providers to easily collaborate and focus on the important work that they provide in our communities. In many cases our customers are already using a lot of the Google platform in their personal lives (i.e. Gmail, Drive, Search).