ClevrBytes

Welcome to another edition of ClevrBytes. In this issue, we’re sharing a playbook for IT leaders to build an IT strategy and roadmap for the upcoming year. We’ll share our process of auditing current infrastructure and identifying the right initiatives to invest in while aligning with your goals.

Also, catch up on the latest in the IT, cyber security, and communications world.

Let’s dive in!

Monthly spotlight – Building a strategic IT roadmap for 2025 and beyond?

We know every IT leader faces the challenge of planning a strategic technology roadmap each year.

How do you align IT with business goals, optimise costs, enhance security, reduce complexity and prepare for emerging technologies such as AI – all while justifying every investment?

This is easier said than done.

Below is a step-by-step plan for developing an IT roadmap that we use for our customers and a playbook that you may want to steal for your organisation.

Key stages of developing your IT roadmap

For many companies, IT strategy is reactive. Maybe your leadership decides it’s time to cut costs, and now your team is scrambling to identify savings.

Or you’re affected by a security incident and need a plan to bolster defences.

The downside of such an approach is that it ends up being a tick-box exercise where you patch issues without a comprehensive look at what’s really needed.

Instead of a reactive approach, we’ll guide you through a proactive framework broken down into four key stages. ??

1. Align IT strategy with business goals

?Business strategy drives your technology strategy, not the other way around. However, more often than we think, organisations jump the gun into planning without looking at their business goals. Before you do anything else, take a step back and ask what your business is really trying to achieve.

• What are your top 5 business and technology challenges?
• What are your top 5 business objectives, and how can IT help you achieve them?
• What are you trying to achieve in the next 12 months?
• What’s a drain on your team’s productivity?
• Are there any specific regulatory or industry challenges on the horizon?

Talk to key decision makers within your business and understand your ‘WHY’.

2. Audit everything (Yes, everything)

Once you identify your ‘WHY’, it’s time to look at “WHAT”.

What does your current IT setup look like? This step is all about auditing your systems and processes and capturing detailed insights so you can make informed decisions.

It may not always be clear where to start or what to look for, but breaking things down by IT pillars can make this process manageable.?

For example, for your?cloud services, look at the following.

• Are you paying for capacity that you don’t need?
• Can you save by committing to longer durations or fixed workloads?
• Were applications simply lifted and shifted to the cloud? Can they be refactored for better performance and cost efficiency?

In this ebook, we've explored each pillar and the questions to conduct a full audit. We've also included some suggestions from experts on what to prioritise investing in for each area of your IT in 2025. Download the ebook here.

3. Highlight the gaps/risks and develop an action plan

Next up? It’s time to pinpoint the gaps and risks you need to address. We recommend starting with a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status for each area, highlighting the number of issues against each.

With this info – and the business goals you set in Step 1 – you can start building an action plan that addresses the highest-priority risks and gaps. But not everything can be done simultaneously. No one has the budget or time to do that without disrupting daily operations.

Instead, we recommend plotting your projects on an?Impact vs. Urgency Matrix. This helps you figure out which tasks should take top priority and which can wait.

4. Review, optimise and improve

An IT roadmap is a living, breathing document that needs to be reviewed and optimised regularly.

Sure, it doesn’t dramatically change every year, but regularly revisiting and refining your plan is essential to staying on track and prepared for the unexpected.

Even if nothing changes, it’s a good way to monitor how you’re performing against achieving your business objectives and staying aligned with your goals. It’s also a good opportunity to fine-tune your plan, adjust timelines, reallocate budgets, or refocus efforts where needed.

In this ebook, we go into each of these steps in detail. Download now and get a practical playbook that helps you build a strategic IT roadmap. No need to fill out any forms. Get instant access in just a click.

What's coming up?

If you want an even more in-depth view of creating this IT roadmap, sign up for our upcoming webinar.

What you’ll learn:

• How to align IT strategy with business objectives
• How to achieve cost savings & efficiency
• Essential security priorities for 2025
• How to develop a clear action plan for your IT roadmap
• How Clevr360 gives you the visibility you need

Wednesday 5th March 2025

11-11:45 AM GMT

Register today!

What’s the latest in the tech world?

• Cybercriminals bypass MFA and conditional access policies: A new report says a botnet has been conducting a huge password spraying campaign targeting Microsoft 365 accounts that are still using basic authentication techniques that often don’t require MFA. This is said to be affecting at least 130,000 devices globally.

These attacks are recorded as non-interactive sign-ins, making them easy to overlook and allowing threat actors to operate undetected. The report urges organisations to phase out basic authentication, monitor login patterns, and implement strong detection mechanisms to combat these attacks.

• Windows 10 users face rising costs for delayed upgrades: If you don’t upgrade Windows 10 this year, you’ll face steep costs, Microsoft warned. Windows 10 support is due to expire on 14 October 2025. Extending services beyond this date, which allows you to access critical security updates, will cost $61 per device for the first year, doubling every consecutive year to $122 per device in year two and $244 in year three.

With 82% of companies still not on Windows 11, uncertainty around migration remains high. While the transition can be time-consuming and disruptive, delaying it could become an expensive mistake. Need help with migration? Get in touch with us today.

• Avaya will have a 200-seat minimum contact centre seat commitment: From June 2025, Avaya users will have to terminate their subscription if they don’t meet this requirement. We anticipate this will create huge opportunities for competitors like Zoom and RingCentral in the mid-market sector.

The company is also discontinuing its SIP Trunking and CPaaS cloud services on April 28, 2025. If you use these services today, contact us to discuss your alternate options.?

• Device code phishing: Microsoft has also found that a group of Russian hackers called Storm-2372 is increasingly using a new phishing technique called device code phishing that bypasses MFA controls. Microsoft warns that this successful campaign mimics messages from Microsoft Teams, Signal, or WhatsApp.

The device code techniques are particularly dangerous because the phishing emails don’t carry malicious links or attachments and aren’t easily identified by cybersecurity products. More on how device phishing works and how to stay protected here.

That’s all from us in this edition. See you next month with more updates and news!

Did you find this newsletter useful? What would you like to see featured in the upcoming editions? Let us know in the comments.