Construction Industry
Efficiency. Safety. Communication. Collaboration
The construction industry is a very traditional sector, albeit one that is embracing new technology faster now than at any time in its past. Like many industries, the construction industry is now consuming IT services and solutions at an accelerating rate, needing to acquire more and more computing power, with bigger and faster servers to run the latest business critical applications. Although costs of servers may have reduced in recent years, the need to keep servers and software updated incurs significant capital costs and construction firms are finding they have to recruit and retain highly skilled IT staff to keep their existing infrastructure and applications working.
Applications and solutions are being consumed in the Cloud, from traditional applications such as email (Microsoft Exchange) through to the latest buzz within the industry, BIM (Building Information Modelling). Over the last 10-20 years the industry has sought better and more cost effective ways of working with IT.
Given the increased appetite within the industry to produce, manage and consume more and more information it has become clear that in order to compete and become a lean organization in these trying economic times, businesses have had to look at everything they do and utilize all the tools and solutions available. Cloud computing has enabled these companies to work smarter, harder and more economically than ever before and the signs are that this transition into cloud will enable businesses within the Construction Industry to make significant cost savings at a time when the recession had lead to challenging trading conditions. But the cloud is about more than cost-reduction. Looking to the future, Construction firms which move to the cloud should be able to use their enhanced IT capabilities to be more flexible, agile and competitive players in the future.