2016 is the year of the Red Monkey and Fire element. Monkeys are a smart, naughty, wily and vigilant animal. The Fire is strong and destroying. If many people think that 2016 will see an unstable economic situation, I am confident that if you can outsmart the Monkey and take the decisions that will make 2016 a very positive year. I wanted to share my resolutions for 2016 with you.

Monkey year: uncertainty ahead

With the low price of oil, many companies in the oil, gas and energy sectors have been tightening their belts and looking for ways to reduce spend and become more efficient.

For Asia and specifically China economy continues to slow down with growth cut to the lowest level seen for many years. This has had an impact to neighboring and countries reliant on the Chinese boom.

In Singapore landlords owning offices & homes are feeling the slowdown, the huge rise of available properties on the market have added to this slump in demand.

According to Gartner IT spending will be much unchanged this year so it’s ever so important to ensure you are spending on the right areas and not wasting your company’s dollars.

Acuutech view

This year is to continue partnering clients to do more with their actual technology investment and future budgets.  Acuutech understands that market conditions above are uncertain and tough but also understands that technology can make a difference by saving time, reducing operating costs, or planning for growth

Cloud(ing) continues to be a priority

Use of (the) Cloud continues to be a game changer. Traditionally businesses had to wait a long time to add technology investments and plan so that they can scale up and heaven forbid if they needed to scale down after spending all those dollars. With cloud companies can afford to invest knowing how much is the cost, predicting the outcomes and if the business need grows for the cloud technology then it can scale up, likewise if the demand drops they can scale down.

Cloud is not only being used for workloads such as email and general collaboration tools, we see a number of companies doing away with application servers to run part or all of their business in the cloud.

A large part of companies’ technology, marketing, and human resources budgets (it’s not just IT) will be in cloud platforms, services, and apps. According to IDC by 2019 cloud software spending will pass S$112.8 billion.

Acuutech view

We’ve been helping companies cloud for more than 10 years. Whether it was privately hosted in an automated datacenter, publicly on Microsoft Azure or Office 365 or a mix of On-Premise and Private or Public which is known as Hybrid. This year we plan to educate our clients and help them with their journey into the cloud. Since our invite to become a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider with a Tier-1 relationship it enables our clients to deal with one party for billing and support making it easier to do business with Acuutech in the cloud.

Security and privacy concerns

2015 was a year for many CIO, CTOs, and CEOs who sat up and realized that their trust and reputation could and was destroyed overnight. Large-scale losses of data, personal information and company secrets had been taken by weak security practices or lack of training.  As a consumer according to ZDnet the changes are your data was leaked online.

Whilst companies are eager to leverage the cloud, Security continues to be the biggest mental barrier to the business.

Business leaders are ever so conscious about their data and where, how and by whom it is accessed and much of the budget focus will be about securing existing technology and practices in place to handle potentially embarrassing and damaging leaks.

Acuutech view

Security is important for enterprises but it is equally important for Small-Medium Enterprise. This year we will continue to speak with our clients and educate them how to limit risks and improve practices. Using best practice and layered approach to security. We are also investing heavily in educating our team in this area as we see this as a huge differentiator when choosing a partner.  We were recertified last year for the Security standard ISO27001 and will focus to build on this.

My Personal Company Goals

Focus on improving Customer Experience for our team, be it on our Sales, Pre-sales and After Sales Service teams as this will benefit our clients

As a trusted advisor, share knowledge to empower and educate clients through our blog, how-to-guides, Genius Bar drop in sessions and Events with our Partners

Grow our Asia Pacific Business with our great partners in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, and China, to support our clients expanding businesses.

Continue to grow and develop our Cloud offering ensuring clients understand what they have now and how they can maximize the cloud to be more successful in their respective businesses in the future.

Conclusion

2016 will be positive and if you agree with me please comment and if you are in Singapore let’s meet!

Happy Lunar New year!