Every year we have 30 to 40 of our suppliers who devote a day to exhibiting at our Suppliers Exhibition. These suppliers vary from specialists to household names such as British Gas and Southern and Scottish Energy. Many of them run seminars during the day – very useful to catch up on latest developments particularly in fast-moving worlds such as telecommunications and IT. The continued convergence in these areas in particular is very interesting. For example, previous functionality that was delivered locally using hardware can be delivered “in the cloud” much cheaper using software and online storage (which is getting so cheap that it is virtually being given away).
Energy prices are set to rise – this may be a good time to review your telecommunications and IT requirements to see where savings can be made to pay for the inevitable increases in energy costs.