Shut 'Um Down

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Its all very well for you switched on and on the ball organisations, all your quality data in the Cloud and most of your staff applications presented in any modern browser they want to work with. But spare a thought for the Councils and Socialhousing providers, who are still working hard to complete (or maybe just start) that journey. It’s not through want of trying generally I would say. Often budget holds organisations back, sometimes its way more complex, or cultural. While the benefits of Cloud should be quite obvious, however suppliers often fail to make the case for a sale, particularly finance budget holders !

Pretty much eight out of ten of my recent clients, have been trying to move on from something, often multiple challenges. All sizes of organisation are facing this, from managing under 150 homes on an MS Access solution, up to those having tens of thousands assets. Keeping cybersecure is also a growing challenge.

A recent theme has been the vulnerabilities of one of the sectors old favourite Asset Management solutions Keystone, showing up being discovered, getting on for two years since Microsoft pulled security updates for Silverlight. That was no surprise however, since I originally blogged about it in early August 2012, a full 12 years ago. The on-premise servers its installed on can be ‘isolated’ from the network and outside world, although this does make it more challenging to use asbestos info and other asset data, particularly to enhance repairs service and keep it safe & compliant. A quick move off Keystone is not particularly practical to its owners suggested replacement. It certainly looks like a slow transition if its selected. There are good alternatives out there, although insight and third-party guidance would be advised, for folk going down that path.

Solaris desktop in all its glory

Its amazing how much old kit is out there, much of it way beyond its sell-by-date and some clearly on its last legs. 

If I had £50 for every time ICT techie told me that they dreaded servers needing a reboot and feared they might not come back up, I would certainly have £600 this year by now. Late, great names such as SunOS, Solaris pop up, decade old not-upgraded SANs, either technically out of support or close too practically. While many organisations have been in a transition off these boxes/platforms for some months or years, clearly some are yet to start on that journey.

 

The other area that pops up are legacy domains. Some of these are sometimes in the EU and being used in the UK or visa-versa, clearly not totally compliant after Brexit. Also, there are still many group organisations with remnants of original constituent domains left over. These often contain lots of unstructured data, files, documents, spreadsheets etc, many of which historically should have been data cleansed. Again, easier said than done in order to achieve a sufficiently high level of social housing GDPR compliance.

An accurate and up to date infrastructure and application inventory is an essential tool. Clearly, running on recent versions of our applications (harder when not Cloud apps OBVs) is also essential, particularly where we need to rely on supplier helpdesks for support. Its not unusual for me to encounter applications many years out of date, which based on software contracts helpdesks shouldn’t even be taking calls for. However, annual support and maintenance is still being paid on time!

So, have ICT check and update your inventory, getting a short-medium term strategy formed to migrate away and shut your troublesome legacy hardware & infrastructure down. While its perhaps not a quick move, it will shore up foundations to a smoother future for staff and your ICT team supporting it all 

If you are stuck on legacy SocialHousing solutions, reach out

please just get in touch , for a chat over a brew and some digestives ☕😋

       Related Post: How can the right Critical Friend guide you to a new system?

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Shut 'Um Down.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

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