When a Hackaday article proclaims that its subject is a book you should read, you might imagine that they would be talking of a seminal text known only by its authors’ names. Horowitz and Hill, perhaps, or maybe Kernigan and Ritchie. The kind of book from which you learn your craft, and to which you continuously return to as a work of reference. Those books that you don’t sell on at the end of your university career.

So you might find it a little unexpected then that their subject here is a children’s book. Making A Transistor Radio, by [George Dobbs, G3RJV] is one of the huge series of books published in the UK under the Ladybird imprint that were a staple of British childhoods for a large part of the twentieth century. These slim volumes in a distinctive 7″ by 4.5″ (180 x 115 mm) hard cover format were published on a huge range of subjects, and contained well written and informative text paired with illustrations that often came from the foremost artists of the day. This one was published at the start of the 1970s when Ladybird books were in their heyday, and has the simple objective of taking the reader through the construction of a simple three transistor radio. It’s a book you must read not because it is a seminal work in the vein of Horrowitz and Hill, but because it is the book that will have provided the first introduction to electronics for many people whose path took them from this humble start into taking the subject up as a career. Including me as it happens, I received my copy in about 1979, and never looked back.

When you open the book, the first thing you see sets the tone, for there is a guide to soldering on the inside of the front cover. This is an optional construction method, but it is presented in a style that does not talk down to the reader. You are here to learn about electronics, not to be reminded that you are a child.

Past the title page, and the you are introduced to radio shown a block diagram of a receiver, and then simple circuitry with a torch (flashlight) battery and bulb as a first example. You are then launched into your first radio circuitry, first with a tuned circuit and then with the addition of a germanium point-contact diode and earpiece, a simple crystal set. One of the first illustrations shows a young boy wearing a shirt and tie, typical of the slightly idealised world of children’s’ books of the era. This was the 1970s, just how many boys would have been dressed like that, really!

Despite the introduction to soldering inside the cover, the signature construction method used in the book is the use of woodscrews and screwcups on a wooden baseboard. The reader is introduced to these, and the tools the might have to master, before being shown the measurements for the board. With this complete, they are ready for their first construction, the crystal set with its coil wound on a ferrite rod.

It is easy to believe these days that children are shielded from anything that might be remotely practical, for fear that they might hurt themselves. Fortunately the ethos of this book has its roots in a far more can-do era, and an action such as fracturing a ferrite rod to create the 3″ (75mm) length required is taken in its stride. Again, the reader is not talked down to, being introduced to all the useful things you need to know if you are to maintain an interest in radio. Few other children’s books deal with the course of standard wire gauges.

Once constructed, the crystal set and its associated aerial (antenna) and earth would have given the 1970s child an instant result, as over most of the more populous parts of the British mainland they would have easily received the strongest AM signal, BBC Radio 2. A crystal set is hardly selective, so it’s quite likely that no matter where it was tuned it would still pick up Radio 2. Still, the sense of achievement at having pulled a signal out of thin air would have been very strong. As an exercise the book takes a brief diversion into home-made radios as created by WW2 prisoners of war with a detector made from a piece of coke.

The book then adds amplification to the crystal set in a series of stages which culminate in driving a small loudspeaker. This section is more than simply the stages of amplifier construction though, because while it takes the reader through those steps it is also a very basic primer on electronic components and transistor circuits. The amplifier is a very old-fashioned, single-ended design with an output transformer. The transistors in question are the now-archaic germanium PNP devices that had probably already been superseded by the early 1970s, but the principles of biasing and transistor circuitry are universal to all bipolar circuits. And the introduction to resistors with the resistor colour code  is something that stays with a young future electronic engineer throughout their career.

Finally, the reader is shown a regenerative front end for their radio that replaces the crystal set. The operation of regeneration is explained, new components are introduced, and the construction is laid out. There follows a guide to using the radio, and finally a page on finishing its case with a mounting for both speaker and battery. The final receiver might not have been as good as its commercial superhetrodyne equivalent, but it would have provided acceptable performance to receive most strong AM stations.

This book has only 50 pages, and of those, half are composed of pictures and diagrams. Within this meagre canvas the author manages to not only guide the reader through the construction of a working radio receiver, but to also lay the seeds of an understanding of solid state electronics. Topics such as the resistor colour code or transistor biasing are part of the early syllabus of a first-year electronic engineering course, yet here they find them presented in a children’s book in a format that a younger reader would understand. You are studying this review because my career as an electronic engineer has its roots in this book, it would be interesting to know how many other readers will tell the same story.

Making A Transistor Radio was published in 1972, and appeared as a second edition in Ladybird’s Learnabout series at the end of the decade. Some of the devices it uses may well have been out of production by the end of its print run; even in 1979 it proved difficult to source an OC44 and they had to use an AF117 instead. The book is now long out of print, so your best bet if you want to read it yourself is to do a Google search on its title for a PDF, or to scour second-hand booksellers. There is a copy on the Internet Archive, though it has some missing pages. The book’s author, [George Dobbs, G3RJV], continues to be a prolific writer and source of radio projects. As founder of the G-QRP Club, he has been very active in furthering the cause of low-power amateur radio.

It would be interesting to see how easily a contemporary version of the book could be created, with silicon transistors, Schottky signal diodes, and a polyvaricon to replace the Jackson Dilecon variable capacitor.  Or perhaps an AM radio is no longer enough to capture the imagination of a child. Ladybird stopped producing children’s books in this format in 1999, though they have recently re-emerged in a humorous form aimed at adults.

If you were introduced to electronics by this book, let us know in the comments. Do you still have your radio? If there are any other similar books that made the same mark for non-Brits, we’d love to hear about them.

Healio › Books › eFaculty Lounge › Special Education

“We are seeing tremendous growth in their Everything-as-a-Service funnel,” said Advizex President C.R. Howdyshell. “These are customers that want us to run and manage their IT for them so they can focus on their business. Our brand as a company has been and will continue to be their technical excellence as an Everything-as-a-Service provider.”

When Advizex President C.R. Howdyshell was a 16-year-old high-school football player at Sistersville High School in West Virginia, he learned a valuable lesson about not quitting and doing what it takes to win.

Howdyshell remembers the principal of the small-town high school threatening to shut down the football program, and one player after another walking away after several lackluster years. But the head coach, Lou Nocida, and his assistant Bob Daquilante “Coach D”—who is Howdyshell’s son Drew’s godfather—refused to throw in the towel and let the team down.

With barely enough players to field a team, the two coaches drilled into the young men the drive, determination and commitment to not supply up along with a fierce will to win—even as the number of players dropped from 26 at the start of the season to just 12 players with an 0-8 record. The commitment to do what it takes to overcome insurmountable odds to win with just 12 players made a lasting impression on Howdyshell, who remains close to both coaches to this day.

[RELATED: Former CIO Superstar Kurt Schnieders Is Now Upping Advizex’s Services Game]

“Coach Nocida and Coach D taught us about being mentally tough, being committed and preparing,” Howdyshell recalled. “It’s not just saying it. It is doing it and preparing to do it with hard work. After going 0-8, they won that next road game by one point with just 12 guys.”

That mental toughness and will to win took the Sistersville Tigers team to an 11-1 season the next year. It also helped transform Howdyshell into one of the leading all-time rushers in Ohio Valley high-school football history and the Sistersville program into one of the top programs in the state. “That taught me about commitment,” said Howdyshell. “It taught me about life and doing what it takes to win.”

Howdyshell has taken that hard-earned grit, determination and commitment from his high-school and college football days and applied them to the business world and a 37-year career in technology solution sales.

Now president of the $200 million CRN Solution Provider 500 star Advizex, Howdyshell is taking the lessons from the grid iron to the technology sales trenches to remake Advizex into an Everything-as-a-Service powerhouse. The commitment and determination he took to heart as a high-school football player has been key to transforming Advizex into one of the leaders in the Everything-as- a-Service market.

“We can’t just say they are going to do Everything as a Service, they have to step back, get prepared and do what it takes to win,” said Howdyshell. “You have to be committed to the cause, committed to the team and committed to the strategy. And then you have to execute. You can’t just blow by and think it’s going to happen. You have to go help customers and be accountable. They have to compete and win against the big guys. They don’t need to be the biggest. They just need to be the best at what they do.”

Making Investments To Be The Best In Everything As A Service

Being the best in the Everything-as-a-Service market, said Howdyshell, means making big investments in talent to build out the managed services portfolio. That technology and sales talent has powered a dramatic increase in as-a-service revenue for Advizex with one big customer win after another, leading to a 27 percent increase in services sales in 2021. Among the most notable wins: a deal with $2 billion chemical manufacturer W.R. Grace & Co; a marquee deal with a genomic research startup that opted for a secure on-premises cloud service from Advizex rather than inking a deal with a public cloud provider; and a complex Epic medical records health-care deal with Mohawk Valley Health System of Utica, N.Y.

“We are seeing tremendous growth in their Everything-as-a-Service funnel,” said Howdyshell. “These are customers that want us to run and manage their IT for them so they can focus on their business. Our brand as a company has been and will continue to be their technical excellence as an Everything-as-a-Service provider. They have to be better than the companies they compete with and even the technical talent at the companies they work with or they don’t need us.”

Among the changes powering the Advizex transformation: the hiring of former L Brands and Dick’s Sporting Goods superstar CIO Kurt Schnieders as COO; the appointment of 29-year tech sales veteran Joe VanPatten as vice president of cloud consumption; and the recent addition of former Xerox executive and MT Business Technologies President Jeremy Wood as chief transformation officer.

Key to Advizex’s success is having business-outcome-focused discussions with IT leaders and CEOs, said Howdyshell. Those business discussions are eye-openers for IT and business leaders who are unaware of the on-premises pay-per-use cloud service models.

Howdyshell’s no-holds-barred bet is turning the heads of the bigger competitors that are scrambling to make the Everything-as-a-Service shift. Advizex, meanwhile, is on track to hit $70 million in recurring revenue services in 2022 as part of a march toward $100 million. “The energy of the organization is all coming together around this Everything-as-a-Service push,” he said. “They see what is happening in the market. Customers want this, and they have a head start over their competitors. They are accelerating and making the investments to be the leader in Everything as a Service.”

Among the areas where Advizex is seeing the biggest recurring revenue services gains are security services, cloud services, IT automation services, Microsoft services, VMware services, infrastructure monitoring and management, and on-premises cloud services with the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use cloud service. The success with GreenLake led to Advizex being named Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s U.S. As-A-Service Partner of the Year in 2021.

“We’re demonstrating really strong growth,” Howdyshell said. “The single bill and single point of accountability that they bring with an Everything-as-a-Service subscription model is resonating with customers. It lets their customers focus on running the business while they focus on running IT. This has changed the game for Advizex.”

That Advizex single point of accountability for complex secure cloud services is backed up by the 47-year-old company’s “Customers for Life” credo. “That Customers for Life philosophy is part of their DNA,” said Howdyshell. “This is not about doing what’s best for your customer once. It is about doing whatever it takes to keep that customer for life like funding a $50,000 fix for a customer that was caught in a crossfire between two vendors. It’s not words for us. It’s what they do.”

Managed Services Momentum Is Fueling Everything As A Service

Advizex’s momentum is being fueled by its long-standing managed services prowess, where profit has doubled over the course of the past year, said Advizex Chief Marketing Officer Matt Gaudio, who oversees the 74-employee managed services organization. “The world changed to this recurring revenue consumption model and it enabled their managed services offering to be front and center,” he said. “Now it is all coming together with the ability for us to provide a single monthly bill for customers for cloud, product and services. Our growth with net-new customers has been substantial over the last six months.”

But it’s not just net new customers—the Everything-as-a-Service charge has opened the eyes of longtime customers to the managed services portfolio, including Database as a Service (a 15-year Advizex crown jewel service that few MSPs have mastered), Infrastructure as a Service, Disaster Recovery as a Service and Help Desk as a Service.

One of Advizex’s biggest managed services wins came late last year when a 20-year Advizex customer—a consumer packaged goods company—inked a multimillion-dollar, multiyear Database- as-a-Service deal, said Gaudio. “They looked at their talent and realized that they had been doing this for years,” he said. “Even these very large historic customers are seeing the value that they are bringing to the table with their smart technical consultants and engineers. They are managing databases from the ground level all the way to the penthouse. They are doing clustering and segmentation, very high-end work. The value they can bring to customers is a no-brainer. They don’t have to find, hire or train people. They do all the work for them and are an extension of their business.”

Advizex’s long-standing technical excellence is the differentiator for the managed services business, said Gaudio. “We win customers over with how smart their consultants and presales teams are,” said Gaudio. “We are solving problems that customers don’t have the time or ability to get to. With the consumption model, customers see the technical excellence and the real value they are providing them. Customers know they can provide these as-a-service offerings with super, super technical talent. The value for customers is immense.”

The Advizex Everything-as-a-Service consumption model is “three steps ahead” of competitors, said Gaudio. “We have a little bit of a head start; they just need to continue to Excellerate their offerings and maintain their lead. They have to just continue to put the pedal to the metal and continue with the strategy that they have gone all in on.”

The Customer Benefits: A ‘Push-Of-The-Button’ Model

Customers like W.R. Grace are anxious to get out of the business of managing data centers so they can focus more on driving competitive advantage, said Advizex Vice President and Northeast General Manager Steve Kucker, a key executive helping drive the Everything-as-a-Service deals. “Customers want to manage the business—not the infrastructure,” he said. “It takes the risk out of IT for them and allows them to focus on making advances in the business. It turns IT into a business driver.”

That was certainly the case at W.R. Grace—which adopted the HPE GreenLake on-premises cloud service 18 months ago and has since then added 20 percent additional capacity on CPU and storage, SAP services and Disaster Recovery as a Service, said Kucker. In addition, the Advizex offering has allowed W.R. Grace to quickly add an acquisition to the as-a-service platform.

“We are running a complete IT as a service for them,” he said. “The great thing is with GreenLake they don’t have to come back for firmware upgrades, technology refresh, capacity planning, performance or scalability. They do all of that for them. It’s basically a push of the button for them for a change order.”

The on-demand consumption model has helped customers avoid supply chain issues because of the proactive capacity management planning that takes place with GreenLake, said Kucker. “The consumption model has allowed us to plan ahead of time on capacity, performance and scalability without supply chain issues,” he said. “We have foresight into what they are doing to avoid those issues. From a financial, operational and business perspective, there is not a better way to sell in the market today. Customers are very happy with this model.”

A ‘Land-And-Expand’ Services Advantage

Advizex has implemented a “land-and-expand” strategy to drive its wide and deep services offerings into customer organizations, said Advizex Vice President Dave Gibbons, a former EMC executive who joined Advizex nine years ago and now heads up the Ohio market. “Once they get in with a service, they just land and expand,” he said. “It comes down to the confidence and trust that CIOs and their teams have in Advizex to deliver and meet all their needs and requirements. They have reached a point where they get what service is all about and they do it well. It is their differentiator.”

One example of Advizex’s success is the services growth the company has seen from what started with a small Office 365 engagement with a Washington, D.C., mid-Atlantic bank. That initial services deal expanded to Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Active Directory on to a full-fledged disaster recovery and business continuity service. Most recently, Advizex has been given the green light to migrate the IT systems of multiple banks that were acquired by the customer. “What they have done with them is establish ourselves as one of their trusted advisers and go-to consultants,” Gibbons said. “Besides all the other services they have done, they are now doing a complete ServiceNow implementation for them. This is a multimillion-dollar services engagement.”

Advizex’s services success is a testament to the high-quality services consultants and teams in the trenches making a difference for customers, said Gibbons, a 40-year technology veteran. “It’s the consultants, services teams and troops that make us successful,” he said. “They are the face to their customers. You have to have people that are able to deliver for the customer.”

The Advizex services talent has been a critical differentiator with companies unable to find high-priced, top-notch technical talent in the midst of the pandemic and the great resignation, said Gibbons. “We are talking about people power,” he said. “This is not about product. This is about coordinating all of the services they have and complementing the entire IT staff of a customer to get things done faster and at the highest-quality level. I can go to each one of the services teams at Advizex whether it’s VMware, Microsoft or ServiceNow and have a plan that works for a customer. What this all comes down to is the confidence I have in their team’s ability to step up quickly and deliver high-quality services.”

The Everything-as-a-Service shift at Advizex is a tribute to Howdyshell’s ability to drive a cultural transformation at the company with a razor-sharp focus on business-outcome-based services from an elite team of technologists, said Gibbons. “C.R. has established a master plan for us,” he said. “Our team is executing on that plan. They are very nimble. They have the ability to make decisions quickly and deliver with high quality. That comes back to the technical knowledge they have and their people. It’s not a matter of us taking the hill, it is a matter of how fast they are going to take it.”

Opening The Door To Top-Notch Technology Talent

Howdyshell’s leadership has opened the door for the company to attract top-notch technology talent that has put Advizex into the Everything-as-a-Service fast lane, said Advizex Chief Technology Officer Chris Miller. “We have created an environment where smart people want to come in, join the team, and test out ideas,” he said. “CR is 100 percent behind that. The culture he has fostered is a big part of their success. It’s all about the culture and the people.”

Advizex is always on the lookout for top talent to add to the technology team, Miller said. “If they don’t have an open head count and they run across someone that they know is a rock star, we’ll pick them up. We’re not afraid to do that; that has paid off big time for us,” he said. “We are seeking people who can adapt and learn new approaches and new ways of doing things faster than the customer. Because if they are not smarter than the customer, then they are no good to the customer. Everybody on the team has that aptitude.”

One of the fastest-growing services areas is Advizex’s IT automation practice. Advizex’s automation business workshops for customers are aimed at identifying cost savings through IT automation and have led to a dramatic increase in automation deals, said Miller.

In fact, nine out of 10 times the Advizex automation workshops result in significant cost savings for the customer, said Miller. One midmarket customer deploying an Advizex automation solution for a VMware environment got a return on investment in a year with five-year savings of $500,000, said Miller. “We’re helping customers look at automation from a pure business-outcome- based standpoint,” he said.

The business-based workshops drill down on specific processes such as IT provisioning, carefully calculating the steps involved and how much time is spent on manual labor, said Miller. “We collect all the information and then they have a spreadsheet that calculates how long it takes for the process,” he said. “The math doesn’t lie.”

Those kinds of business-focused workshops are demonstrating to customers that business and IT are one and the same, said Miller. “IT is the business,” he said. “That gives us an advantage when they are talking to customers.”

Making Investments In Customers

Advizex Vice President Ed Pruett, who oversees the Southeast market, said he sees the Advizex model as a game- changer for customers. “Cloud is an experience, where that experience sits doesn’t matter, it can be on-premises, public cloud, hybrid,” he said. “Customers want everything wrapped around it in a service. They are saying everything can be wrapped into a service, they put it in place and manage it. That’s where they have an advantage. They can do it all, bundle all the products and services together and then manage it. It saves costs and man-hours for the customer. It lets customers make IT a part of the business. It lets IT be a profit center rather than a cost center.”

Pruett sees legacy enterprise licensing agreement renewals as a prime opportunity for the Advizex Everything-as-a-Service offering. “That gives us an opportunity to show customers how they can save them money, help them operationalize IT and make it predictive,” he said. “We can show the ROI. On top of that, they can manage it for the customer and let their IT team transform the business in a different way for IT.”

Ultimately, what separates Advizex from the pack of competitors is its talent and willingness to “invest” in its customers, said Pruett. Case in point: When a prospective customer had a backup issue, Pruett sent one of the company’s top technologists —nationally renowned for her backup expertise—who worked for two weeks at no charge to the customer to fix the problem. “She fixed everything,” he said. “She blew the socks off the customer with her technical knowledge. Our engineers are some of the smartest people you will ever meet. The guys and gals they have on their teams are like unicorns. That is unique. I would put their technical talent against anybody’s. I don’t care who it is.” In another case, Advizex pulled a piece of IT equipment from its own lab for a customer who couldn’t afford a replacement, said Pruett.

It’s those kinds of investments in customers that have led to astronomical sales growth for Advizex since Pruett began heading up the Southeast region five years ago. “Customers know if they are in trouble and need something, they will be there for them,” he said. “We invest in their customers. They do it all the time. They take care of their customers. There is a difference between a partner and a vendor. They are a partner.”

Ensuring Customers Don’t Get Walloped By High-Priced Public Cloud Bills

Advizex’s ability to provide much-needed cloud expertise around private, public and hybrid cloud has been key to the company’s success, said Joe Clarke, director of cloud architecture at Advizex. He pointed to a disaster recovery and backup solution for a financial company on a tight budget that incorporated both on-premises and cloud backup, ultimately saving the customer hundreds of thousands of dollars in cloud charges.

Advizex’s cloud expertise has been key to making sure that customers don’t get walloped by unexpectedly high-priced public cloud bills—no small matter in a high-stakes digital transformation market where some CIOs have moved lock, stock and barrel to the cloud and then been hit with higher-than-expected bills.

“Understanding the vantage point of customers is what separates us from their competitors,” said Clarke. “It is understanding their problems. They hear their problems—not just technical problems, but business problems. It is understanding they have business goals they are trying to reach and seeing the business from their perspective. They listen to customers. Before I came to Advizex, I was a customer. I will never forget my experience as a customer working for a bank and hospital.”

Advizex’s technology vision with an eye toward identifying game-changing technology services has also been key to the Everything-as-a-Service transformation, said Joseph Mixon, an automation architect at Advizex. “Somebody has to have that vision and leadership to see where the puck is going, to be able to get there ahead of time,” he said. “That’s what they do. You have to know what the customer is going to ask for before they need it. They have that vision. That starts at the top of their organization.”

The cloud and automation teams are focused on making IT as seamless and simple for customers as clicking a button, said Mixon. “Everybody knows they need cloud and automation, but nobody knows how to get there,” he said. “That’s where they step in. They help customers down that path. They lock arms with the customer, take a look at where they are at and what are their business objectives and then they supply them a road map to get where they need to go.”

Doing What It Takes To Win

As Howdyshell pushes Advizex to do what it takes to capture the burgeoning Everything-as-a-Service opportunity, he sometimes finds himself reflecting on just how critical the lessons he learned on the Sistersville Tigers football team are to the business challenges he faces today.

“It all comes down to that small town, Sistersville, West Virginia, where they went from almost dropping football to the highest winning percentage in the country,” he said. “It’s the same thing in business. It’s the same thing with Everything as a Service. No. 1, you have to be committed. They are committed. No. 2, you have to execute. They are executing. No. 3, you have to be committed to win. They are three for three.”

Winning that high-school football road game by just one point with only 12 players was a pivotal moment in Howdyshell’s life. The offensive scheme for one of their games—referred to as a “raindrop offense”—required him to run the ball nearly every play. Howdyshell ran the ball 53 times in the game—at that time a state record. “We did what they had to do to win,” he said.

After that losing season, the players who returned for the next year went 10-0, (11-1 with playoffs). After that, the Tigers were in seven straight West Virginia Class A football championships (and won five of them). “Over time, people realized if you were going to play football here you had to be serious,” Howdyshell said. “They respected the coaches’ commitment. People knew they were going to do what it takes to win. That’s the best lesson in life I could ever have received and I owe that to Coach Nocida and Coach D.”

Howdyshell feels the same kind of energy and excitement that he did as a standout at Sistersville High School as he drives the Advizex Everything-as-a-Service transformation. “The team understands Everything as a Service and how important it is,” he said. “I couldn’t be more energized about the company and what they are providing their customers. They have an opportunity to take this straight up and accelerate like it’s a rocket booster.”

Although he is heartened by the gains Advizex has made, Howdyshell is determined not to let up. “What C.R. really stands for is ‘Can’t Rest and Can’t Relax,’ because the lead they have can go away,” he said. “That goes back to the energy they have at Advizex. You can’t look behind you. You have to keep looking ahead. They know what it takes to win and are willing to do what it takes to win. They have the team to make this happen.”

Bucher will report directly to Chief Executive Julie Eastland.

Most recently, he served as executive vice president, general counsel and head of human resources at Eliem Therapeutics. He also served as executive vice president and general counsel for Alder Biopharmaceuticals, held a senior legal position at Exelixis, consulted life sciences companies, and was a partner at Shearman & Sterling.

Crossref Citations

LE BRIS, CATHERINE 2018. La société civile, juge des droits de l’homme: à propos du Tribunal International Monsanto. Canadian Yearbook of international Law/Annuaire canadien de droit international, Vol. 55, Issue. , p. 215.

Lima, Valesca and Gomez, Miriam 2020. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. p. 1.

Lima, Valesca and Gomez, Miriam 2021. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. p. 1.

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Explore the impact and implementation of FRTB within financial institutions from the perspectives of model risk management, capital requirements and data management. 

This virtual event offers participants a technical and detailed understanding of the continuing journey of FRTB implementation, including practical examples for value-at-risk and expected shortfall calculations. Led by subject matter expert and faculty member Thomas Obitz, participants will discuss the progress of implementation globally and analyse concepts such as capital requirements and managing data under FRTB.

Dedicated sessions will explore key components and considerations of the SA and the sensitivities-based approach, emerging risk factors from the interbank offered rates transition impact, and the IMA and the trading book/ banking book boundary under FRTB, and will support delegates in applying FRTB principles at their own institutions.

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 ISG to Publish Reports on ServiceNow Partner Ecosystem

 Upcoming ISG Provider Lens™ reports will evaluate providers of consulting, implementation and ongoing support services for ServiceNow platform deployments

Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, has launched a research study examining the extensive ServiceNow ecosystem of partners working with a growing number of enterprises to transform siloed business processes for improved workflows.

The study results will be published in a comprehensive series of ISG Provider Lens™ ServiceNow Ecosystem Partners reports, scheduled to be released in April 2024. The reports will cover companies offering services for consulting, implementing, integrating and providing managed solutions utilizing the ServiceNow platform.

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ServiceNow is growing rapidly, demonstrating the platform’s ability to meet customer requirements. Enterprise customers are optimizing efficiency by embedding technology components, and service providers are crafting tailored, intelligent workflow solutions to propel businesses forward, adopting ServiceNow capabilities to develop bespoke solutions catering to the needs of vertical industries.

"Strategic partnerships driving solutions amplify ServiceNow's trajectory in workflow engineering,” said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “Through these collaborations, the integration of GenAI and machine learning enhances predictive analytics, propelling enterprises towards more efficient and intelligent operations."

ISG has distributed surveys to more than 190 ServiceNow service providers. Working in collaboration with ISG’s global advisors, the research team will produce three quadrants representing the ServiceNow services the typical enterprise is buying, based on ISG’s experience working with its clients. The three quadrants are:

• ServiceNow Consulting Services, evaluating providers that help customers design roadmaps to use ServiceNow as an integrated “platform of platforms” for major enterprise business operations, IT services, Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) and integration with governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and security policies.

• ServiceNow Implementation and Integration Services,assessing providers that can implement ServiceNow and integrate it with other applications in complex enterprises without adding to an organization’s internal complexity. These providers require expertise in system architecture, low/no-code development and thorough understanding of AI and ML.

• ServiceNow Managed Services Providers, covering providers that maintain and support the ServiceNow platform with monitoring, remote support and centralized management functions. Key capabilities include extensive experience with ServiceNow’s Now platform, workflows, third-party applications, integrators and accelerators and continuous evolution.

Geographically focused reports from the study will cover the global ServiceNow market and examine products and services available in the U.S., Brazil, Europe and Australia. ISG analysts Ashwin Gaidhani (Europe), Phil Hassey (Australia), Sidney Nobre (Brazil) and Tapati Bandopadhyay (U.S.). will serve as authors of the reports.

A list of identified providers and vendors and further details on the study are available in this digital brochure. Companies not listed as ServiceNow services providers can contact ISG and ask to be included in the study.

All 2024 ISG Provider Lens™ evaluations feature expanded customer experience (CX) data that measures real enterprise experience with specific provider services and solutions, based on ISG’s continuous CX research. Enterprise customers wishing to share their experience about a specific provider or vendor are encouraged to register here to receive a personalized survey URL. Participants will receive a copy of this report in return for their feedback.

About ISG Provider Lens™ Research

The ISG Provider Lens™ Quadrant research series is the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG's global advisory team. Enterprises will find a wealth of detailed data and market analysis to help guide their selection of appropriate sourcing partners, while ISG advisors use the reports to validate their own market knowledge and make recommendations to ISG's enterprise clients. The research currently covers providers offering their services globally, across Europe, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, the U.K., France, Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, the Nordics, Australia and Singapore/Malaysia, with additional markets to be added in the future. For more information about ISG Provider Lens research, please visit this webpage.

A companion research series, the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types.

About ISG

ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 900 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,600 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit www.isg-one.com.

Press Contacts:

Will Thoretz, ISG
+1 203 517 3119
will.thoretz@isg-one.com

Julianna Sheridan, Matter Communications for ISG
+1 978-518-4520
isg@matternow.com

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