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The PSTN Switch-Off Arrives on 31 January 2027 With 1.5 Million Lines Still Analogue

The PSTN Switch-Off Arrives on 31 January 2027 With 1.5 Million Lines Still Analogue

The UK retires its analogue phone network on 31 January 2027. Openreach said in July 2026 that 1.5 million lines had yet to migrate, including roughly 350,000 business premises. This piece traces how the date moved from December 2025, what stops working (voice, ISDN, ADSL and WLR-based FTTC, plus lift lines, alarm signalling, telecare, door entry, card terminals and franking machines), how to audit a line estate, the migration options (hosted VoIP, SIP trunks, SOGEA, full fibre, mobile signalling), the protections for telecare users, sector-by-sector exposure for hospitality, property, care and retail, and a dated checklist for the months before the deadline.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
Construction Project Management Software for UK Contractors With CIS and RAMS

Construction Project Management Software for UK Contractors With CIS and RAMS

UK contractors need construction software to do five jobs that generic project tools were never built for: CIS verification and deductions, RAMS production and sign-off, CDM 2015 documentation, payment applications under the Construction Act, and retentions tracking. This comparison establishes that the international platforms (Procore, Autodesk, Fieldwire, Bluebeam) do none of these natively, while UK products (Access Coins Evo, Eque2 Construct, Causeway) and specialists (Payapps, HandsHQ) do, and sets out published sterling pricing where it exists, quote-only status where it does not, and a checklist for choosing a two-layer stack by contractor size.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
The Bank of England Now Oversees Your Cloud Provider

The Bank of England Now Oversees Your Cloud Provider

HM Treasury designated Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, Google Cloud EMEA Limited, Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited and Oracle Corporation UK Limited as critical third parties, effective 13 July 2026 under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 regime. The Bank of England, PRA and FCA can now set requirements directly on the providers, including scenario testing, phased incident reporting to regulators and affected firms, self-assessments and skilled-person reviews. The piece explains the designation criteria, the obligations and their timeline, and the point the primary documents state plainly but commentary will miss, that regulated firms keep every outsourcing and operational resilience obligation they already had. It closes with practical steps for fintechs, insurers, payments firms and the MSPs serving them.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
ERP for UK Manufacturers Turning Over £5m to £50m

ERP for UK Manufacturers Turning Over £5m to £50m

This guide compares the ten ERP systems realistically available to UK manufacturers turning over £5m to £50m — Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage X3, Sage 200 with a manufacturing add-on, SAP Business One, Epicor Kinetic, Infor CloudSuite Industrial, Oracle NetSuite, 123insight, WinMan and Priority. It establishes that only Business Central publishes a UK list price, explains the licence-versus-implementation cost structure behind quote-only pricing, documents UK data residency and compliance checkboxes, describes what buying through the UK partner channel means in practice, and turns the published record on ERP implementation failure into specific questions that de-risk selection.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
Shadow AI Discovery and Governance Tools Compared for UK Buyers

Shadow AI Discovery and Governance Tools Compared for UK Buyers

The tools sold to govern employee AI use do five different jobs that vendors blur: discovery, enforcement, sanctioned access, data protection and licensing visibility. This comparison groups Microsoft Purview and Defender for Cloud Apps, the SASE platforms, browser and endpoint tools, and the AI gateways by the job each does, states which prices are published and which are quote-only, and sets out the Microsoft licence tiers and consumption meters Purview's AI capabilities require. It then examines the dividing line that matters most: which tools read employee prompt text, and why ICO guidance makes that a workplace monitoring decision needing a DPIA, transparency and a lawful basis before deployment.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
Digital Social Care Records Hit 80 Per Cent Sixteen Months Late - What Providers Still on Paper Should Do

Digital Social Care Records Hit 80 Per Cent Sixteen Months Late - What Providers Still on Paper Should Do

The government's target of 80 per cent of CQC-registered care providers using a digital social care record by March 2024 was reached in July 2025, and DHSC's latest statistics put adoption at 83.7 per cent of locations in March 2026. This piece reports the documented target and outcome, then turns to the practical side for the providers still on paper: NHS England's 22-solution assured list and what assurance does and does not mean, the current state of funding, CQC's position on digital records, GP Connect access, published pricing, and the selection questions that DHSC-funded research links to buyer regret and abandonment.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
Choosing a UK Data Centre for Cloud Repatriation in 2026

Choosing a UK Data Centre for Cloud Repatriation in 2026

The piece establishes that UK cloud repatriation is real but selective, with AWS itself telling the CMA that customers move back, and vendor surveys (disclosed as such) showing most organisations considering partial moves. It maps the UK colocation market from operators' own websites, showing London's 91 per cent grip on 1,803MW of live capacity against a thin regional layer, and explains why Ofgem's 125GW connection queue makes power the deciding constraint. It then sets out seven selection criteria with the exact questions to put to providers, weighs London against regional sites on latency, cost and staff access, and closes with a workload-led decision framework and a ten-point checklist.

Daniel Thomas 6 August 2026
How a 5-Person UK MSP Can Build a Cyber Essentials Certification Practice and Charge £500 to £2,000 Per Assessment

How a 5-Person UK MSP Can Build a Cyber Essentials Certification Practice and Charge £500 to £2,000 Per Assessment

Walks 5-person UK MSPs through building a Cyber Essentials certification practice. Covers the choice between becoming an IASME certification body and partnering with an existing one, assessor qualification requirements, the CyberSmart automated platform, pricing structures from £500 guided self-assessment to £2,000-plus for Cyber Essentials Plus, margin calculations, and how to package certification alongside ongoing compliance monitoring as a recurring revenue stream.

Kate Bennett 27 February 2026
Finance dashboard with AI analytics on multiple screens

Agentic AI for UK Mid-Market Finance Teams — What Sage Intacct and Dynamics 365 Finance Can Actually Do Today

Agentic AI — software agents that can plan, act, and iterate without constant human prompting — arrived in UK mid-market finance in late 2025. Sage Intacct launched a network of five AI agents covering close management, accounts payable, time tracking, assurance, and a Finance Intelligence Agent that answers natural-language questions through Sage Copilot. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance shipped an Account Reconciliation Agent and Copilot for Finance as a production add-on. Both platforms target the same pain point: finance teams spending 64 per cent of their time on manual work that leaves no capacity for strategic analysis. But the products differ in design, pricing, and readiness. Sage Intacct starts from around £6,570 per year and uses modular pricing with AI included at no extra licence cost. Dynamics 365 Finance costs £161.50 per user per month before Copilot credits, which are billed separately. The comparison covers what each platform can do right now, maps the capabilities against Making Tax Digital for Income Tax deadlines starting April 2026, and provides a practical evaluation checklist for UK mid-market CFOs.

Thomas Burke 27 February 2026