Computing Awards: Best IT Strategy shortlist

Who will win a Computing award?

Computing Awards for Excellence: Best IT Strategy shortlist

Berwin Leighton Paisner

A green IT strategy has already produced results at the law firm. New laptops lowered energy consumption, investment in blade server technology saved space and power, and use of virtualisation has increased performance and resource utilisation. Introducing new printers and electronic filing has reduced the amount of paper required, and helped staff to work more efficiently.

Liverpool Direct

Liverpool Direct is a joint venture between BT and Liverpool City Council. Over the past seven years the partnership has modernised datacentres, rationalised its servers, introduced digital telephony, improved web services and hosting, and upgraded the local and metropolitan area network. This has led to lower power consumption and emissions, plus cost reductions.

PDSA

IT plays an important role at the veterinary charity. This year it began updating its IT strategy and has implemented data warehousing and analysis. A wide-ranging intranet is in pilot, and a major overhaul of all veterinary systems is due to take place soon. The IT strategy has had input from all areas of the business.

Swiftcover.com

The insurer’s IT strategy has three objectives: To build an agile IT platform, to maintain an innovative online service, and to increase revenue opportunities in insurance aggregator sites. All areas of the business had input into the strategy ­ an effort that delivered industry firsts.

VocaLink

VocaLink implemented the hub of the Faster Payments service in May, providing near real-time interbank money transfers. It operates under ever increasing volumes, continually exceeding performance expectations.