As these advances are driven rapidly within the retailing sectors where the fight for profit and market share is most intense, I hope we start to see some of those innovations breakthrough into other sectors like education and healthcare where they can have a positive influence on the services provided to millions of people."
Adam Gerrard, CTO, LateRooms
"My highlight for 2011 was the commissioning of Loughborough University's hybrid cloud solution, including the approval of cloud bursting activity from Loughborough University to Logicalis' private cloud.
This gave us extra capacity when required via the JANET connection a national first."
Phil Richards, director of IT, Loughborough University
My tech highlight of 2011 has been the rise of consumer technology. It is forcing us to move at a new pace.
"The key tech highlight for me in 2011 is the introduction of the Mobile Device Management system that allowed us to extend the service we offer to mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones. This enabled us to leverage personal devices, while still delivering the service in a secure fashion.
Extending on from this we have also started profiling our users across the group so that we are in the position to deliver a more tailored service. This will be paramount when extending the service further to consumer-based devices and incorporating them into the overall total cost of ownership."
Vlad Botic, chief enterprise architect, Norton Rose
