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4G business benefitswhat faster connectivity can do for the enterprise page 4
6-12 November 2012 | ComputerWeekly.com
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Broadband communicationsBT revenues plummet as broadband roll-out accelerates Bt’s sales have fallen across all of its divisions despite being ahead of schedule with its superfast broadband roll-out. Bt recorded revenues of £4.47bn for the sec-ond quarter of 2012 ended 30 september – down 9% from the second quarter of 2011.
Jobs & recruitmentXerox makes redundancies as restructuring lays off managementXerox is restructuring its European ser-vices business which will see senior staff and sales employees made redun-dant. computer Weekly understands the European services arm of Xerox is making redundancies in management, sales and pre-sales teams in a bid to save $18m.
Jobs & recruitmentParliamentary Migration Advisory Committee undersells IT professionalsthe government pay thresholds for over-seas it workers in the Uk are flawed, meaningless and don’t do Uk it pro-fessionals any favours, according to an it recruitment expert. the migration Advisory committee’s latest recommen-dations on salaries for immigrant it work-ers’ Uk visas group vastly different jobs together and set salaries too low, presum-ing an it director in the Uk can earn as little as £25,000, according to George molyneaux from salary services.
OutsourcingBack-office service providers fail to deliver adequate outsourced servicesBack-office service providers are failing to meet customer needs, with 70% of sup-pliers claiming projects were mismanaged when transferring from an in-house to an outsourced function, says research from kpmG. According to kpmG, 56% of sup-pliers blame this on inadequate resources.
Hackers & cyber crime preventionCyber defences of SMEs lag behind larger firms, study confirmssmall to medium-sized enterprises (smEs) suffer more from malware than larger organisations, but their security procedures are lagging behind, says secu-rity firm kaspersky Lab. smEs are typi-cally more vulnerable to viruses, worms, spyware and other malicious software, according to kaspersky Lab’s Global IT Security Risks survey.
IT strategyACPO uses online crime reportingthe Association of chief police officers (Acpo) and charity crimestoppers are to use online self-reporting platform Facewatch, designed to reduce low-level crime. hugh orde, president of Acpo, said the move would provide the organisations with the latest technology. “Uk police forces will engage fully with both organisations in the fight against crime,” he said. n
WindoWs Phone 8 launch
Microsoft has launched windows phone 8, its latest oper-ating system (os) for smartphones.
Microsoft intends windows phone 8 to take market share away from the likes of apple and google’s android, which currently dominate the smartphone market.
Leading smartphone hardware manufacturers – includ-ing nokia, htc and samsung – have showcased smart-phone devices in recent weeks which will run the windows phone 8 os.
devices including the nokia Lumia 920 and the htc 8X have been released across europe.
access the latest it news via rss feed
the week in it
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Government freezes all neW it frameWorksthe government has put all new it frameworks on hold as part of its review into the efficacy of framework agreements for sMes.
all planned government procurement service (gps) ict procurements will be paused during the review to deter-mine if they are achieving the best results for buyers and suppliers, said the cabinet office. existing ict procure-ment frameworks will continue to be used as normal, it said.
the news comes as the government put a £1bn tender for it services on ice because of hard-ware problems with the tender process. gps said in a letter to suppliers that there is no guaran-tee the tender will be re-issued. whitehall has come under fire for its reliance on large frame-work procurements, which sMes have said exclude them from the tendering process. earlier this year, former g-cloud director chris chant called for a new framework policy that would make it easier for small suppliers to do business with the public sector and whitehall.
the week in it
access the latest it news via rss feed
Business applicationsBSA fines First Choice Facilities after licence shortfall following acquisitionsafety specialist First choice Facilities has been fined £18,000 for unlicensed soft-ware following a number of acquisitions. First choice Facilities must pay an addi-tional £81,000 to buy sufficient software licences covering unlicensed Adobe, Autodesk, microsoft and symantec prod-ucts to address the shortfall.
StrategyVirtual Instruments opens development office in Tech CityVirtual instruments is opening an office in London’s tech city hub to develop new products and revamp old ones. the build-ing on rivington street will initially house 20 software developers, with a further 10 to be added by the end of 2013.
Jobs & recruitmentCapgemini doubles apprenticeships after surge in applicationsoutsourcing firm capgemini is on the hunt for more Uk apprentices after rais-ing its planned intake figure for 2012 from 98 to 200. After reporting a surge in applications, mostly from school leav-ers looking for an alternative to univer-sity, capgemini will take on 200 appren-tices by the end of the year.
Public sector IT procurementGovernment launches open standards principlesWhitehall has launched its long-awaited response to the open standards consulta-tion, which will force government bodies to comply with its list of “open standards principles” when purchasing technology. Departments must use the principles for all software interoperability and data and document formats.
IT strategySouthwark Council out-sources IT transformationsouthwark council is upgrading all it that supports the delivery of council services. the London local authority has out-sourced the upgrade and management of the it to capita for 10 years.
Cyber crime preventionIT security budgets mismatched to hacker targets, study shows it security budgets are not being used to provide defence technology in some of the areas enterprises are most likely to need it, a study has revealed. About 33% of hacker forum discussions are about training and tutorials for data theft tech-niques, such as sQL injection, according to the latest hacker intelligence report by security firm imperva. n
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analysis
As EE rolls out 4G connectivity across 11 cities in the UK, Jennifer Scott reports on the opportunities the faster speeds can present for retailers and enterprises
4G: What it means for businesses
It has been a long and somewhat slow journey to get here, but last week the Uk finally saw the launch of a 4G network by
mobile operator EE.Formed from the merger of t-mobile and
orange, EE has rolled out the faster broad-band connectivity across 11 cities to begin with – going up to 16 by the end of the year – and is investing millions each week into increasing the rest of its network capabilities over the coming months.
Now for EE it is about convincing cus-tomers to ditch their existing mobile net-works and move over to its new 4G con-tracts before the rest of the competition
sets their own networks live – likely to happen in mid-2013 following ofcom’s spectrum auction in December.
But while most of the focus has fallen on the consumer, there is a business story to this launch as well and what the new-found speeds – up to 40mbps – on a smartphone or tablet could bring to a company.
Extra productivityFirstly there is the extra productivity on hand for employees. With the increasing number of businesses adopting mobile working policies, there has been a much bigger focus on connectivity on the move.
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UK mobile operators back
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4G services launched in 11
UK cities
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With 4G connectivity, there is the oppor-tunity to remove these walls and offer a better service, pleasing the consumer and seeing the profits mount up for a business.
the retail sector isn’t the only one that could benefit from the connectivity 4G brings though. A study from EE showed in the Us, where 4G has been available since 2010, a number of verticals had boosted development as a result of the technology.
construction firms have been using it for
sending back real-time data from projects on site, while one car firm has even turned its vehicles into 4G hotspots.
New features become an optionknowing customers can access faster con-nections means businesses can bring new features to their products or services unlike ever before, exciting their users and building up new ventures within a company.
But all these benefits are part of a long term strategy. As we mentioned here, EE is the only provider with 4G right now and only in a limited number of cities where the likelihood is there will already be strong 3G connections and a lot of Wi-Fi on offer.
Where 4G will make a real impact is when all the networks have an offering and seeing the 4G symbol on the home screen of your smartphone or tablet becomes the norm.
this is still some way off, but businesses should look now to ready themselves, inno-vate and make sure they are prepared to offer both their employees and their cus-tomers the great experience 4G will bring. n
We are still not at a stage in the Uk where Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and, while 3G can offer the capabilities of receiving emails or social networking, to send large files fast or to use new business applica-tions such as video calling, a much faster connection is needed.
these tools, as well as increasing produc-tivity, can cut costs for a company, reducing the need for employees to travel, as well as cutting necessary office space as more peo-ple work from home.
With a strong 4G network, these solu-tions can be brought to life in a way that current 3G connections or ad hoc Wi-Fi just cannot serve.
Web and mobile presencethe development and adoption of these new applications are the second way 4G could benefit a business.
there used to be a focus on the need for a web presence but increasingly companies have to invest in a mobile presence too.
A new study from eBay last week showed 39% of consumers were using their mobile devices to browse for presents in the lead up to christmas and 55% were planning to use them to make purchases this year – more than ever before.
companies like eBay or Amazon who have invested into mobile applications have been ramping up their sales on the platform, but even those who do not have an app have had more people accessing their websites on their phones.
the one thing putting customers off from this type of interac-tion, how-ever, is the frustration born from
a lack of connectivity, making the experi-ence awkward and slow, enticing them to head to the laptop or pc, rather than mess about with a poor mobile signal.
Better service for consumersin eBay’s study, the top three barriers pre-venting consumers from shopping on their mobiles were slow connection speeds, pay-ments timing out and network reliability.
› 4G spectrum cleared by Arqiva and DigitalUK› O2 hopes to speed up 4G auction process
› Is Ofcom’s 4G decision good for users?
“Knowing customers can access faster connections means businesses can bring new features to their products or services unliKe ever before”
analysis
1 The cumulative number of unique malware samples in the McAfee* collection exceeded the 75 million mark at the end of 2011. Source: “McAfee Threats Report: Fourth Quarter 2011,” available at www.mcafee.com (http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-quarterly-threat-q4-2011.pdf).
2 No system can provide absolute security under all conditions. Requires an Intel Identity Protection Technology–enabled system, including a 2nd or 3rd Gen Intel Core™ processor, enabled chipset, Àrmware, software, and participating website. Consult your system manufacturer. Intel assumes no
liability for lost or stolen data and/or systems or any resulting damages. For more information, visit http://ipt.intel.com. 3 Intel AES-NI requires a computer system with an AES-NI-enabled processor, as well as non-Intel software to execute the instructions in the correct sequence. AES-NI is available on
select Intel Core processors. For availability, consult your system manufacturer. For more information, see http:///software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-advanced-encryption-standard-instructions-aes-ni. 4 No computer system can provide absolute security under all conditions. Built-in security features
available on select Intel Core processors may require additional software, hardware, services, and/or an Internet connection. Results may vary depending upon conÀguration. Consult your PC manufacturer for more details. Copyright © 2012 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel
Core, and Intel vPro are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Built for Business. Engineered for Security.
Learn more at intel.co.uk/pcsecurity.
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analysis
Collaboration is the most effective weapon in security battle – McAfee
McAfee is the latest information security supplier to admit that the challenges facing organisations are
so great that it will take cross-industry col-laboration to turn the tide.
A cross-industry approach is being advo-cated by other big security suppliers, most notably rsA, the security division of Emc, which has embarked on several strategic industry partnerships.
But last week, in Las Vegas, mcAfee announced that it plans to support this col-laborative approach by providing an open platform to enable the interoperability of security technologies.
the firm’s co-president michael Decesare said: “mcAfee’s security connected platform will enable organisations to select the most appropriate technologies as part of their defence strategy.”
the idea is that mcAfee will provide the plumbing – in the form of a data exchange layer – in an open environment to enable customers to combine security controls from different suppliers that all work in concert to improve overall security.
“We have recognised the need to enable organisations to set up orchestrated defence; to provide a data exchange layer to tie all security controls and intelligence together,” said michael Fey, mcAfee chief technology officer (cto).
“the platform will also provide the means for organisations to consume security intelligence from multiple sources of their choice,” he said.
Security threat informationthis will enable organisations to pull in local, as well as global, threat information to
Firm’s co-president advocates cross-industry cooperation. Warwick Ashford reports from the McAfee Focus 2012 security conference in Las Vegas
Brighter future for
cyber defenders, says
DeCesare
McAfee Focus 2012:
McAfee evolves to enable
orchestrated defence
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ensure they act quickly and appropriately to information security threats.
“When you have the ability to understand exactly what is going on in your environ-ment, there are so many steps you can take in deciding how to mitigate and remedy threats,” Fey said.
According to Fey, the next three years will demand a tremendous amount of innovation, but mcAfee believes organisations need to start with evolving their approach to security.
“it is not enough to block threats, we need to ask questions about who is attacking, why and from where. For this to happen, we need sys-tems that can learn from each other,” he said.
this is at the heart of mcAfee’s strategy to develop intelligence-led systems and to provide a platform to tie them all together to enable orchestrated, context-aware defence.
If you build itin theory, this sounds like a good idea, but if mcAfee builds it, will other suppliers come to the party and use the application pro-gramming interfaces (Apis) it provides for its security connected platform?
two mcAfee customers at mcAfee Focus 2012 in Las Vegas were positive about the security firm’s plans from an end-user point of view.
Advocating a layered approach to secu-rity, corey cush, vice-president of infra-structure services for New York city health and hospitals said the security connected platform would help.
Where mcAfee does not have the best of breed or most appropriate technology avail-able, it will give organisations the flexibility to choose the best fit for their needs, he said.
“mergers and acquisitions is another area that the security connected platform is likely to be of benefit,” said Gene Fredriksen, global information security officer for toy
maker tyco international.
having an integration layer will make
it easier to bring both organisations up to the same level of security capability, he said.
however, Fredriksen said mcAfee is not the first supplier to open up its platform, and it remains to be seen whether other security
suppliers will bite. “We’ll have to see how it goes,” he said.
Good track recordmcAfee has a good track record with the concept of open platforms as the epolicy orchestrator (epo) management console demonstrates, bringing together differing products and functionality to a single point and simplified product management and oversight, said Andrew rose, principal ana-lyst, security & risk at Forrester research.
“the security connected platform seems to seek to allow mcAfee threat intelligence customers to leverage previous security monitoring investments that selected to use the connected platform Api; they can then all communicate with mcAfee’s Global threat intelligence (Gti) solution, theo-retically offering greater threat insight and actionable information,” he said.
“i feel that mcAfee’s intentions are good, and will be of interest to their threat intelligence client base, but we are likely to see adoption more with the smaller solution providers who will see this as an opportunity to feed into a widely adopted, enterprise level solution,” said rose.
there is likely to be less activity from manufacturers with competing products who may be reticent to invest and reconfigure to feed a competitor’s threat intelligence solu-tion, he told computer Weekly.
“one nice benefit of the platform, however, is that it may enable mcAfee to identify and assess potential technology acquisition targets,” said rose. n
› RSA updates NetWitness appliance, unveils threat sharing framework
› OSSIM enables threat intelligence sharing
analysis
“it is not enough to blocK threats, we need to asK questions about who is attacKing, why and from where”michael fey, mcafee
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case study
The regional publisher is embracing mobile devices and cloud software on its journey to become a digital media company. Cliff Saran reports
Johnston Press mobilises workforce by putting Salesforce CRM on iPads
Johnston press has mobilised its field sales team using salesforce.com running on ipads to reduce the need for staff to
come into the office.the regional newspaper company, which
publishes across the Uk and in the republic of ireland, is following an eight-year road-map to transform its business into a digital media company.
key to this strategy is shifting the business towards an advertising-led revenue model, which will involve the sales teams at Johnston press increasingly selling long-term advertising campaigns to help the business attain a steady revenue model that is not affected by seasonal variations.
Deploying salesforce.com on mobile devices is integral to this plan, to provide cloud-based customer relationship management (crm). the software will enable field sales teams to work
more directly with potential advertising customers, by providing a mobile office on the ipad for managing the sales process and running sales presentations at customers’ premises, while allowing those on the road to stay in touch with the office via email and mobile video-conferencing over a 3G network.
Building a mobile office“the sales team is armed with ipads, and can access salesforce directly from the ipad. they are also using Google Docs,” says simon pownall, group technology solutions director at Johnston press.
the Google Docs cloud-based office pro-ductivity tool is used to provide email access and to enable the sales team to customise presentations on the road.
“We wanted to change the sales process. the team was spending a lot of time on administration and repeat orders. We wanted sales people to sell long-term advertising campaigns and we wanted to see where they were getting success,” says pownall.
the company commissioned salesforce.com integrator cloudsense to develop a workflow application for the field sales team. the project involved implement-ing salesforce.com and deploying ipads to access the cloud-based crm system remotely using a smartphone as a tethered 3G modem. salesforce.com is primarily used to manage pre-arranged meetings.
the field sales representatives use salesforce.com on the ipad to capture the
the Johnston press sales team is equipped with ipads, from which they can access salesforce.com
Legal firm deploys
mobile device management
for iPads
Flybe puts flight crew
safety manuals on iPads
Johnston press is following an eight-year roadmap to transform its business into a digital media company
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the company has set up various dash-boards to monitor activity. it uses mobile device management software from Alteris to provision software on the ipads and wipe the devices remotely should they be lost or sto-len. “We can replace an ipad within 24 hours, and if one gets stolen it can be wiped within three minutes,” says pownall. “in the next phase of the project we’re looking at Active Directory integration to have a single point to administer all accounts.”
currently, order confirmations are sent out from the office, but pownall says the firm is looking at the possibility of using electronic signatures signed on the ipad to enable cus-tomers to confirm orders electronically. n
details of a customer’s advertising cam-paign. this information is then transferred to an advisor in the office, who loads the advert into the incumbent advert processing system.
Although salesforce.com can be run on smartphones, it is more difficult to use on the small screen. pownall provides smart-phone access to the system as a back-up to the ipad, but the main function of the smart-phone is for 3G data access. smartphones allow Johnston press staff to use Wi-Fi-only ipads, avoiding the need to purchase addi-tional 3G contracts along with the more expensive 3G-equipped ipads.
Mobile collaborationthe company is also using the ipad to enable the sales team to collaborate with managers. it makes extensive use of salesforce.com’s chatter collaboration tool, which provides messaging and a bulletin board to enable users to share information. “We have 850 users, with 50 groups on chatter,” says pownall.
Johnston press also makes use of the ipad’s built-in video camera. “We use Apple’s Facetime to allow sales people to participate in video-conference calls with managers. Google hangouts, an extension to Google+, is also being used to enable up to 10 people to participate in a video-conference ses-sion, with the ability to share the presenter’s screen,” he says. “We want to ensure our
sales team do not feel they are on their own. Each member of the
team has an opportunity to have five minutes of Facetime with a manager, and hangouts allows the sales manager to hold a confer-ence call with the entire team.”
› Can tablets handle business?› Challenges of office mobility
› Smartphones & tablets in the enterprise
“we can replace an ipad within 24 hours, and if one gets stolen it can be wiped within three minutes”simon pownall, Johnston press
case study
the diGital dimensiondeploying ipads to sales staff reflects a change in how Johnston press sees the future of publishing and demonstrates how it can work with the business to enable a major change in the way the company runs.
in its Vision 2020 strategy document, the company states local newspapers will become predominantly digital on a daily and hourly basis, with most print editions being a weekly, in-depth, read.
the company wants to build deeper rela-tionships with its audience and advertisers, which it says will enable it to move beyond publishing into providing services for its audiences and advertisers.
deploying salesforce.com on the ipad is easy enough, given that the app is available in the apple appstore. for cios looking at the benefits of it consumerisation, it is interesting to see that pownall treats the device as a disposable product, in that there is always a supply of ipads in the office should one get lost or breaks.
Using facetime and google hangouts shows how consumer video-conferencing can be applied in business, while the use of a separate 3g smartphone to act as a mobile hotspot is a good example of how an it department can reduce expenditure, both on the initial cost of a 3g-enabled ipad and avoiding an additional mobile data contract for the device.
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interview
Gwyn Thomas, CIO of the Welsh Government talks to Kathleen Hall about innovation through local cooperation and challenges in the nation’s future
Small population and pragmatic approach is recipe for Welsh success
In many respects Wales has a far bet-ter track record than
England for public sec-tor it. Not only has the
nation avoided any major project disasters but it already has a public services Network running – a feat England has yet to achieve.
Gwyn thomas, cio of the Welsh Government and director of informatics health and social care, puts this down to the size of the nation and a pragmatic leadership approach when it comes to getting the vari-ous public sector organisations on board.
research suggests that populations of under five million citizens are about the right size to roll out it projects, he says.
Wales has a population of three million, with a public sector it budget of around £500m, roughly 3% of the total public sec-tor budget. this means the nation spends roughly half what England does on public sector it per citizen.
But Gwyn thomas points out this is the total budget for Wales and so not under his sole control. his task is to encourage a comprehensive approach to it among the various public sector bodies, while ensuring strategic decisions happen on a national level to benefit from economies of scale.
Innovation, consensus and anarchy“We do things locally, but by agreement, because that’s where you get innovation. And we don’t want to stifle that. An unin-tended consequence of the centralised-devolved cycle is that when you centralise, you standardise and kill innovation, but when you go local you encourage innovation at the expense of anarchy,” says thomas.
“We don’t need everyone to agree, but we do need a coalition of the willing. You are never going to get full consensus.”
it doesn’t always make sense for bodies to move in the same direction at once, as sometimes they will have differing contrac-tual obligations.
“We allow justified diversity. But you need critical mass, it gives you the momentum to get things done at pace,” says thomas.
Unlike England, Wales has not opted for a market approach to healthcare it.
“We have just reorganised to create half a dozen large health boards and they have now got primary and secondary all under one management,” says thomas.
“it makes sense because we are not big enough to foster a market environment. And so co-operation and collaboration will offer us economies of scale.”
Wales as a networked nationWales’ public sector Broadband Aggregation (psBA) has been in place since 2008, run by Logicalis. Wales currently has around 2,500 sites on the psBA, over 100 major organisa-tions that have connected and more sites to come online in the next 12 months, he says.
gwyn thomas, cio of the welsh government
Cabinet Office
confirms full list of PSN
suppliers
Welsh Assembly
networks fire and rescue
control rooms for £2m
CW500 interview
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“the challenge is then migration. We know people are going out to procure on their own for additional storage capacity, but coming in on ours provides cost savings because it’s bigger, so the business case makes sense.”
But public bodies that have invested signifi-cantly in datacentres will not be expected to immediately close them.
“that would be a centralist approach. All we want to do is improve the landscape we’ve got now. We are not purists,” he says.
Aligning technology to Welsh needsDatacentre rationalisation will also be important to the Welsh cloud, but thomas admits this area is still early days, as the country focuses on its broadband plans.
A definition of what needs to be done must always come before the technology for its own sake: “Yes we can use cloud services, but let’s decide what for,” says thomas.
thomas’s background is not mainstream it – he holds a phD in metallurgy – but he says this has helped him in his career as cio.
“i don’t obsess about the technology. really all we are trying to do is make life better for people. that is the ethos of the public sec-tor,” says thomas. “Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that – as long as you can unite people around that vision. that is the job of the ict professional.”
Balancing Wales’s IT booksthere are some big questions around the sustainability of public sector services it.
“Because we’ve got financial pressure, we’ve got technological change and an increasing realisation that the delivery of public services going forward can’t happen without ict,” says thomas.
“Budgets are being squeezed, expectations are growing and there is a global shortage of the skills we need to do all this.”
But he has much confidence in what the Welsh Government can do for the economy through technology.
“We are on the cusp of a shift from the old-style ict department to a new one.
“We have to start looking at the public sector as an asset to drive the economy, not a drain. And the answer in rural areas will be technological,” says thomas. n
“Why would you have more than one broadband network?” he asks. “We did psBA because it was right to do even before we had a strategy.”
the plan went ahead as some big network contracts were expiring.
“Because it wasn’t a greenfield site it was easier, we had a burning platform. We didn’t need everyone to agree to make the business case – just health, education and a certain number of local authorities,” says thomas.
“that gave more people incentive to join in. initially the contract was for something like 1,000 connections, it’s currently up to 5,000 and will hit 9,000 before it ends. so we have every sector now on psBA.
“And if we had waited to get everybody, we’d still be here getting everyone to join in.”
But there is still much to do in broadband deployments for Wales, having just tendered a next-generation broadband contract.
“that is going to give us 30mbps for 96% of Wales by 2013,” says thomas.
Datacentre rationalisationthe other big programme underway is rationalising the datacentre estate.
“We’ve got something like 80 datacentres, it’s not huge but we only need two so we’re in the middle of a rationalisation,” says thomas.
“that will save money, give us the basis for cloud services and improve disaster recovery.”
cost estimates for the programme have not been made, as some datacentres are effec-tively cupboards in buildings and it would be difficult to disaggregate rent.
“A sound technical strategy involves having one network and two datacentres, and you can’t justify not doing that as it’s easier to manage,” says thomas.
“we can use cloud services, but let’s decide what for”gwyn thomas,
welsh assembly
interview
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editor’s comment
Government willing to fight for open standards
The government has released its policy for open standards in it – after an often controversial con-sultation process – and it will delight many who
expected a meek compromise to the lobbying power of the software industry.
the new open standards principles are bold, impor-tant, and appear to have been written with a smart lawyer and a clever linguist looking over the shoulder of the author. they are mandatory immediately for all central government it purchases. And they will worry the big incumbent suppliers, which have been used to a long-term lock-in to their products.
some of the boldest moves will dramatically change how government buys it.
products must not force other users to buy the same product – this is hugely significant. Got Windows server, but cannot subsequently buy a Linux server because it does not integrate? that is no longer allowed.
the cost of moving away from a particular product will be included in the cost of ownership for that prod-uct. this is really clever – the price of switching from an incumbent supplier in future is effectively added to the purchase price for that supplier.
Variations to open standards must be made avail-able under an open licence and publicly shared. so, if a supplier has to spend money to integrate to an existing policy-compliant installed product, it cannot charge for it.
And perhaps the most controversial policy of all – standards must be royalty-free. much of the debate dur-ing the consultation came from lobbying by big software suppliers to convince government that royalty-encumbered software could be defined as an open standard. the cabinet office disagreed. this is the essence of one of the primary goals of the policy – to create a level playing field between proprietary and open source software.
of course, a policy has to be implemented, and the big test will be the first time that microsoft, or oracle, or whoever, loses a deal because they are not considered to be compliant. then we’ll see how much they want to fight the decision, and whether the government has the stomach for that fight.
But by producing the open standards principles that it has, the cabinet office has signalled this is a fight it is willing to take on. n
Bryan GlickEditor in chief
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oPinion
High number of respondents to a survey who admit that they do not fully grasp the technology or its benefits should cause alarm, says Tony Lock
The advantages of big data need to be understood to reap its rewards
Read any it publication and within a couple of pages the merits of big data are
being promoted. indeed, such features often go hand-in-hand with the idea that every organisa-tion is rushing to exploit the big data bounty to be had. But is this an accurate image of everyday business? Freeform Dynamics recently undertook a survey to find out what organisations think about big data.
the most interesting point from the survey is just how little understanding the marketing efforts around big data have managed to generate.
our research indicates only a very small percentage of respondents say they have a clear understanding of the advanced tech-nologies now hitting the markets. this should concern suppliers and it professionals alike. An equally small number have a clear idea of the business benefits potentially available through the use of big data solutions, so it is clear there is much to do before big data can begin to enjoy widespread adoption.
the scale of the educational challenge faced by suppliers should not be underesti-mated since online surveys usually attract a disproportionate number of respondents familiar with the area under investigation or those with strong views on the topic.
in this context, the high numbers willing to say they do not have a clear understanding of either the systems available or the benefits certainly indicates that real levels of aware-ness in the it community as a whole are at very low levels. suppliers need to address these issues head on, instead of continuing to pump good-news marketing messages, if most companies are to take advantage of new data analysis tools to generate business
value from their expanding hordes of data.
As might be expected when levels of understanding of new data storage technologies are low, the new solutions are cur-rently not very widely deployed.
But all is not doom and gloom. the survey also indicates that even though understanding is low, use of such platforms is expected to expand substantially over the next three years.
there is plenty of evidence that it professionals see that
new storage solutions will allow them to be able to tackle problems previously consid-ered too difficult or expensive to address. perhaps even more importantly, it is also apparent many respondents believe these advances will provide the opportunity to tackle key business requirements head on.
these results are significant. We know many organisations report difficulty extract-ing value from their data sources, both structured and unstructured, despite many years grappling with business analytics and intelligence analytics.
the major marketing drives around big data may offer organisations an opportunity to enhance their business intelligence capabili-ties which have often suffered from under investment.
With analytics nudging towards being vaguely fashionable, now is the time to bring forwards good investment initiatives.
in big data, as in almost all areas of it and business at large, technology alone is never enough. n
Big data: Lessons from
the leaders
Analytics: The real-world use of big data
Tony Lock is programme director of Freeform Dynamics
This is an excerpt. Click here to read the full opinion online
Lock: address understanding of big data solutions
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buyer’s guide
By managing it assets effectively, cios can ascertain the cost of delivering it ser-vices. it departments may have run an inventory check on servers, desktops and storage and an annual software licence audit. But it asset management will need to be more granular in the future, especially as more services are virtualised.
the whole industry appears to be pushing cloud computing as the best thing that has ever happed to it. certainly it seems an attractive approach to running certain services on the public cloud using infrastructure on demand, such as Amazon Ec2. But not everything can be put on the public cloud. this is why cios are keen to use it infrastructure built on a private cloud. in practice, mirroring the efficiencies of the public cloud in a private datacentre is not easy.
Apart from the challenges of building an on-demand internal infrastructure with features such as self-provisioning, it must also mirror a pay-per-use model of charging for services, as used by software-as-a-service (saas) providers. this requires an understanding of all the assets comprising an it system.
Forrester analyst stephen mann says it asset management not only reduces costs, but can also improve the way it is run. According to mann, having a better understanding of what assets are used, where and for what purpose (especially if service-aligned) can dramatically improve an it department’s ability to operate a number of information technology infrastruc-ture library (itiL)-espoused it service management processes such as incident, problem and change management. knowing more about the it estate can also help with configuration and capacity management.
thiN
ksto
ck
How to manage your
assets and control
business costs
SMEs: Optimising
your IT assets
Manage your assets to cut costs and plan capacityCompiling an inventory of the organisation’s IT estate can help CIOs rationalise licensing fees and negotiate services needed in the future, writes Cliff Saran
Buyer’s guideasset management part 3 of 3
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Virtualisation complicates it asset management, according to clive Longbottom, founder of analyst Quocirca. the problem is that virtual machines (Vms) are just too easy to use. in the past, if a user wanted to install a copy of an application, the first thing to do was to order a server. then, the user had to wait for a while until it arrived and then get it up and running, installing all the patches to the operating system the supplier had neglected to put in place. then, all the required support software has to be installed, followed finally by the actual application.
this was generally a long-winded process. By con-trast, spinning up a Vm is far easier and, once it is running, it is far too easy to forget about it. this leads to Vm sprawl and avoidable licensing fees for software used in isolation.
Licence auditWhat is the cost of providing a single email box? how much is the business spending on microsoft office licensing? Does everyone need Adobe professional?
A licence audit can reap huge savings, especially if the business can ascertain what it each employee in the company requires. in the report, Optimize your Software Licence Optimization Program, Forrester analyst Duncan Jones recommends it departments run software dis-covery tools to collect a complete inventory on software use or deployment, in line with the publisher’s rules.
these products can run as software on a central server that interrogates every other device on the network, looking for executable programs on hard disks and registry entries, or other evidence of installation, activation or use of a software product. An alternative approach is to install agents on every server and client to track what they are doing and send data back to a central database.
An audit will clearly ascertain whether all the software being used is licensed. But it can also help the cio identify areas of waste, where licences are not needed. some organisations have used licensing audits to reel in unnecessary spending on desktop software, allowing them to renegotiate their microsoft Enterprise Agreement or even switch from a site-wide licence to one more aligned to how the microsoft products are used.
Capacity planningAccurately predicting it capacity in terms of processing power, storage and network capacity enables it to estimate future requirements. this allows it infrastructure manag-ers to buy only what the business needs, rather than paying upfront for expensive process-ing, storage or network bandwidth that may lay dormant.
mainframe systems are charged on a mips (millions of instructions per second) usage per month, so on the modern zseries mainframe, operators can determine the cost of the system on a monthly basis, and estimate how this will change over time.
it can predict when capacity will be low and how much to buy for the future. But any calculation – whether it be storage, networking, cpU power or other elements of it infra-structure – requires a strong grasp of the business and what it wants to do in coming years.
De Vere Group cio Jo stanford predicted future it capacity of the business, based on her understanding of the it requirements of a hotel.
As she explains: “running 65 hotels will require a certain amount of it.” As De Vere Group’s business expanded, she could work out how much extra it capacity
she would need. this helped her negotiate a flexible hosting contract with it services sup-plier ANs Group, which provides the company’s datacentre.
“it needs to figure out what services are offered, their cost and what the business actually gets”mahipal lunia,
vmware
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stanford says the request for proposals (rFp) process took about nine months. it was critical to share not only the current capacity in the datacentre, but also the company’s strategy and potential growth in property.
“Given our growth forecasts, we can grow our usage in the datacentre,” she adds.
ChargebackAs companies move towards consolidated it infrastructure and virtual servers, networks and storage, businesses are changing the way they pay for it systems. rather than buy a physical server, storage and network capacity to run business applications, departments are now being charged to use the it service.
chargeback requires an understanding of more than just software and hardware costs, to include all the component costs of delivering a particular it system.
charging costs this way required it to change how it is run, to understand the cost of individual services. it needed to become a business service. this is how Us insurer Nationwide insurance repositioned its it department and the services it offers.
the company knows the cost of every it service. Departments, business units and users can pick from a service catalogue to decide which services they need. pricing is important and it services need to be comparably priced against industry averages.
it controller William miller at Nationwide insurance said the process of switching to chargeback involved it financial management to align it costs with it drivers.
the process allows the it team to assess the value of any it service and technology investment. speaking at Vmworld Europe 2012 in october, miller said the it department had established a $1.2bn chargeback mechanism, with a shared service providing it-related services throughout. Nationwide insurance’s entire it budget is accounted for through a general ledger. “We recover 100% of it expenses through internal chargeback,” miller says.
the it department provides Nationwide insurance with 220 service offerings and 500,000 transactions per month.
Analyst Gartner helped Nationwide insurance’s it department develop a methodology to put a cost against every it service and map these services against business functions. this has allowed Nationwide insurance to address common it issues, such as the growth in email storage and address mainframe costs (see panel below).
Nationwide insurance used Vmware’s itBm tool to support the chargeback mechanism. the product helps it to effectively become a service broker, sourcing and providing services in a systematic way.
itBm is Vmware’s product to help it departments manage cost, according to mahipal Lunia, group product manager at Vmware.
“it needs to figure out what services are offered, the cost of these services and what the business actually gets in terms of quality,” said Lunia. n
cuttinG email and mainframe costs
“Up until 2008 our storage costs were $600,000 per month for email at Us insurer nationwide insurance. the propagation of data was too much,” says william Miller, it controller at nationwide insurance. rather than set an email limit, which would put a fixed minimum cost for email storage, Miller said nationwide insurance put in place a policy to delete emails older than 90 days. this saved the company archiving costs.
Mainframe efficiency was another example Miller presented at vMworld europe 2012. nationwide insurance spent $2m buying a ziip (integrated information processor) engine for its zseries iBM mainframe. this allowed it to offload certain mainframe workloads, which reduced its mainframe software licensing by $250 per hour.
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wireless networks
W ireless technology is becom-ing a staple in the modern work environment. Although the day that all offices
become reliant on Wi-Fi for their primary connections is some way off, its presence is growing and will often run alongside wired connections, if not instead of them, in the enterprise of today.
But Wi-Fi does not always get a good press. critics have often questioned its security and the ability of cyber trespassers to sneak onto networks through poorly-protected Wi-Fi access points. it is also the questionable reliability of the technol-ogy that has left businesses who need that guaranteed connection shying away from adoption.
New standards are coming out for Wi-Fi regularly though, with the next – 802.11ac – expected later this year and focusing on enabling 1Gbps connectivity on the 5Ghz frequency, reducing to around 500mbps if forced onto higher spectrum bands.
But a group of networking specialists has broken away from the traditional Wi-Fi way and is seeking to form its own rival standard, which it believes will bring better performance and change the reputation of the unreliable wireless connection.
Higher frequencyWiGig works at a much higher frequency than the traditional 2.4Ghz, 3.6Ghz and 5Ghz of Wi-Fi and other mobile signals such as 3G or 4G. the idea is that running on the 60Ghz band, it will be able to avoid all the interference of these lower band technologies and improve performance to reach throughput as much as 5Gbps, if not higher.
Ali sadri is the president and chairman of the board for the WiGig Alliance, which formed in 2009 to start work on this technology.
“Back in 2009, we began by looking at the applications that the existing technology was not suitable for,” he tells computer Weekly. “For example, the existing wireless technology or Wi-Fi is widely used for consumer and internet applications. this is expanding into new areas such as streaming videos, but we needed to go beyond this.”
there is no doubt that consumers and businesses alike are always looking for extra band-width with the current crop of applications, let alone for the new ones that haven’t even been thought of yet.
But aside from the performance, there is another more practical element that drove the alli-ance to create WiGig.
Goodbye Wi-Fi, hello WiGigThe organisation behind the new wireless standard says WiGig will be the wireless technology for the enterprise. Jennifer Scott talks to its president, Ali Sadri
ali sadri, president of wigig
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wireless networks
“if you look at the form factors of devices, the Ultrabooks, tablets, mobiles, they are getting very small,” says sadri. “if you look at the newest iphone, they were struggling with wanting to reduce the size and had to bring out a new connector just to do so.
“We have already moved to much smaller sim cards – from mini to micro – and who knows what is going to be next? We need to find technology that replaces all the cables we use and move away from the UsBs and hDmis,” he adds.
the idea with WiGig, as sadri demonstrated at intel’s Developer Forum back in september, is that as well as working as an access point, it can work as a hub to connect all your devices and enable peer-to-peer sharing.
“take an Ultrabook or a tablet,” he explains. “You are bringing these devices into your office, but you want to have a much bigger display; you want a keyboard, an external hard drive and a connection to the internet at the same time. that by itself is a big problem because either you don’t have a connector anymore or the con-nectors are very limited.
“We think that WiGig is the best technology. simply putting tablets or Ultrabooks on the desk or close to the hub automatically gets you con-nected to all the peripherals around it, with high definition and without cables.”
And this is just for one individual at home. imagine if an office of tens or hundreds could also do this. the lack of cables and the freedom to move around with devices would be a sell-ing point anyway, but add to this the ability to peer-to-peer share work with colleagues without having to seek out a cloud system or send across huge file attachments; a lot of businesses might get excited, sadri says.
“there is no other technology except WiGig that allows you to coexist with another device so closely because of the 60Ghz technology built into the WiGig points.”
the higher the frequency band, the less distance it travels, so if you imagine that 1Ghz equals one billion waves per second, it is clear 60Ghz is way up the scale. this means you could have all of one person’s devices working on one desk without interfering with a col-league’s set up next to them.
so what about that constant concern around security with wireless connections? sadri says WiGig includes all the necessary measures already available in Wi-Fi connections built in as part of the protocol. this means security keys would need to be exchanged between workers to share any connections.
WiGig equipment will also be backwards compatible with Wi-Fi technologies, so current security policies put in place by a business can be replicated on top of the new access points.
“From a networking and security aspect, you will have the same experience as if you were connected to the Wi-Fi, but at a much higher throughput,” he adds.
But there is an extra level of security the alliance has included specifically for those content exchanges between employees.
“When you exchange content, such as video for example, there is another requirement the content owners have and that is the signal level security of the high definition content called hDcp (high-bandwidth digital content protection),” sadri says.
this protocol protects either audio or video content as it travels between devices. After checking the receiver is authorised to get the file, it sends an encrypted version that only another hDcp licence holder can read, meaning if anyone manages to break into the transfer, they cannot playback the file.
“we need to find technology that replaces all the cables we use and move away from the usbs and hdmis”ali sadri,
wigig alliance
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“We also provide hDcp encryption on top of the existing wireless set up to transmit the video content,” says sadri. “so we have two levels of security – at the data level and the content level.”
so if the technology is superior and the security is a step up, is the cost going to be an issue for businesses already struggling with tight budgets? sadri claims the pricing will show little difference to the 802.11n access points or chipsets on the market now.
“this is a physical wireless or Wi-Fi cost reference,” he says. “how much would you pay for an access point that you would put in your office or at home? this is just another version of the much faster Wi-Fi you can consume.
“From a cost point of view, i presume the cost is not any higher than the current Wi-Fi sys-tems in operation. the cost is similar to the Wi-Fi chipset so it shouldn’t potentially be a stalling point.”
it seems the alliance has ticked the boxes of performance, security and cost, but regardless of how impressive the technol-ogy may sound, the only way a new wire-less standard will take off is if you have the partners willing to manufacture products featuring the chipset and network companies building compatible technology.
one look at the board member list puts doubts to one side. the big chip makers like intel, AmD and Qualcomm are all signed up, networking giants like cisco and huawei are involved and manufacturers like samsung, toshiba and panasonic are all ready to build new products with WiGig at the heart of their connectivity.
“the pot is pretty full with the systems integrators, chipset manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (oEms) that are going to build products based on the chipsets that we are going to develop,” says sadri. “But there are many partners working within the ecosystem too, with one company building the chipset, another building the module and another company marketing it. We are always looking to expand though.”
so who is sold on the new standard? rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, said sup-pliers have been mentioning WiGig in discussion on upcoming products, definitely a sign of some of this momentum sadri has been talking about.
“WiGig is going to benefit the enterprise,” he tells computer Weekly. “the demands of performance on a network when it comes to pure throughput are continuously rising and the enterprise is more aware of pushing networks harder with the shift towards different user mod-els and an increase in the post-pc era of tablets and smartphones replacing traditional laptops.
“they need an assured wireless network as technology continues to move from an add-on to the way an office connects.”
WiGig is currently going through its various certification programmes, which sadri believes will finish by the end of
2013. however, he also claimed the clamour in Asia pacific to launch a product featuring the new capability means we are likely to see something on the market before the year is out.
“A lot of manufacturers want to be the first to ship the product and then when the certifica-tion launch happens, they will say they are certifiable,” he says.
“the next version of Wi-Fi claims to offer 1Gbps and they are going to be integrated in access points in early 2013, so naturally manufacturers such as cisco or other infrastructure providers are going to be integrating WiGig as part of their offering as well in 2014.
“And that is where the vision happens. Every access point, every hotspot, you are going to start seeing them based on WiGig too.” n
“the enterprise needs an assured wireless networK as technology continues to move from an add-on to the way an office connects”rob bamforth, quocirca
› WiGig wireless products due in 2013› Intel Developer Forum focuses on wireless
› WLAN performance, management is key
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so stock up on your silk pyjamas because poor little silk worms have to work extra hard to produce enough of the stuff to cover all of Bond’s gadgets.
Ladies, have a floral kiss from FujitsuFujitsu has launched a personal laptop specifically designed for womankind.
Because of course every woman NEEDs a laptop sporting soft pastel colours, a pearl for an on/off button, diamantés as well as horoscope applications.
Well, the ladies in the computer Weekly office don’t actually know how they’ve lived and worked until now. Not to mention that the name “Floral kiss” makes our low-calorie lunch of salad and water come back to say hello.
Available in feminine pink, elegant white and luxury brown. n
Silk worms spin spy camerasWhen a press release about silk mate-rial and self-destructing spy cameras landed in the computer Weekly inbox, we thought it may have been intended for 007’s boss m and sent to us by mistake.
While most people think of silk as a luxury material for clothing, it also has techy properties. By coating electronics with it, you can create a “new generation of spy cameras” by helping to control the lifespan of devices and help them to degrade at a certain rate.
the Us military funded the research which could be used for environmentally friendly electronic devices, and implants which break down in the body and leave no residue behind.
“As the funding for the project came from a Us military research agency, it goes without saying the intended uses for the new devices are highly classified,” said the press release.
the truth about steve ballmer
it’s been a big month for Microsoft ceo steve Ballmer, what with the launch of windows 8 and all that.
it’s certainly been a better week than he has had lately, what with Forbes magazine calling him the most disastrous ceo in the Us, and Vanity Fair saying he has been responsible for Microsoft’s “lost decade”.
But downtime can exclusively reveal the real reason for Microsoft’s leadership problem. take a look at the photos right, taken at the windows 8 launch, and it tells you every-thing you need to know:
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steve Ballmer with a new surface tablet
Uncle fester from the addams family
