Enhancing Technology Best Practice Through Industry Leading Research

Knowledge Transfer Partnership with the University of Hull

Techbuyer has always been an advocate for research-backed decisions and developments; in 2019 we began our Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Innovate UK and the University of East London to explore the decline of Moore’s Law and what this meant for refurbished technology. This research resulted in an IEEE-published research paper and the launch of our sister company, Interact.

Now, 2 years after the conclusion of this project, we have begun our second KTP project to enhance how we use technology within our own business. We are undertaking this project in partnership with the University of Hull, creating a team that includes Nour Rteil, Techbuyer’s Lead Application Developer, and KTP Associate at the University of Hull, Bilal Khan. Nour was the associate on our first KTP and is now taking a leading position in this latest one.

What is a Knowledge Transfer Partnership?

A KTP is a partnership between businesses, universities and government-funded Innovate UK. The purpose of these projects is to enable businesses to access specialised skills and research whilst also contributing to academic study.

They work to put research into practice and create organisations that develop according to innovative analysis and experimentation.
What Does this Project Aim to do?

This particular KTP focuses on how our business uses the technology that we hand out to staff and how we can better manage the flow of technology through our staff depending on their workloads.

We will be installing performance monitoring applications, designed by the research team leading this project, onto the devices of our staff in order to capture how the device performs against the real time use of our employees.

Once we can analyse how the device is performing against a team member’s workload, we can assess if the device is powerful enough, or even too powerful, for this team member and redistribute the technology accordingly.

This means that we can look at what is working for our business – which devices work for which workloads, and optimise usage as needed.

In addition, the data will be analysed to detect any performance issues and suggest recommendations to prolong the life of the computer in use.

The Process

We began this project by planning and developing the software that will measure performance. Now, with the first iteration of this technology, we are working on installing the application onto ten different team members’ devices. This will allow us to iron out any bugs and get the application working as we need it.

Following on from this testing phase, the plan is to roll the application out to all devices within the UK to begin assessing where changes can be made to optimise technology use within our business.

What We Expect to See

We can’t be sure of the results that we will see from this study, however, the aim of the project is to extend the lifespan of technology within the business by applying each device to its optimal workload and hardware configuration.

We hope to reassign technology as needed so that we can meet the demands of all employees without underutilising higher-spec devices. This will allow us to reuse ageing devices for less demanding workloads, cascading the assets down our business, essentially expanding the lifespan of technology within the business.

This KTP will help us to work smarter, iron out the inefficiencies of technology use and optimise the running of our business by keeping on top of technology use and workload application.

What this Means for Our Customers

This means that we can deepen our understanding of power and configuration needed to support your workloads. It means that we are always working to stay ahead of the curve, conducting industry-leading research to inform your technology decisions and recommend the best solutions for your business according to workload and application.

This project is a 2-year KTP and so we are still in the early days of seeing what impact this could have on our business and our customers. However, the scope of this project is massive for our organisation.