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Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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XX-XX MONTH 201511-17 AUGUST 2015

Data unlocks personal service

Big data offers an opportunity to deliver services tailored to customer

requirements across multiple channels

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

Microsoft to invest $100m in UberMicrosoft has reportedly agreed to invest $100m in San Francisco-based internet ride-sharing company Uber Technologies. The deal was final-ised on 31 July 2015, reports the Seattle Times, citing a source who asked not to be identified discuss-ing a private deal. Uber, which was valued at $40bn when it raised financing earlier this year, is expected to use Microsoft cash to expand operations worldwide.

Court rules TCS did not discriminate against UK manA court has ruled that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) did not indirectly discriminate against a UK man seeking employment with the company because he was a UK citizen. Prashant Sengar claimed he was discriminated against when seeking employment with TCS at its Leamington Spa office because the company has a policy of recruiting lower-cost staff from India.

British Gas to invest £500m in connected homes businessBritish Gas is to invest £500m into developing its connected homes business, after selling more than 200,000 of its Hive smart thermo-stats. The energy firm is soon to release further products, including smart lights and smart plugs, and is trialling a connected boiler. British Gas also said it is further advanced than any of its rivals in rolling out smartmeters, with 1.5 million of the devices now installed in UK homes.

HMRC to transfer Capgemini staff in-house ready for contract end HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is to transfer 250 Capgemini staff into the department to support plans for ending its £800m-a-year Aspire outsourcing mega-deal. As part of its programme to replace Aspire, the department has been planning how to re-provision IT services in a cost-effective way. HMRC aims to save £200m a year by scrapping the contract when it ends in 2017.

Video effects firm Framestore offloads rendering to Google Compute Engine with Avere

Framestore has begun using Google Compute Engine with the Avere filer appliance to offload video rendering jobs from its on-premise server farm to the public cloud.

❯Catch up with the latest IT news online

THE WEEK IN IT

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

THE WEEK IN IT

Outsourcing hits record levelsThe value of outsourcing contracts in the UK increased by 150% in the three-month period to the end of June, as Europe saw a record num-ber of contracts awarded. In its lat-est index of IT and business process outsourcing contracts, ISG recorded 169 deals valued at €4m or more, with a total value of €2.2bn.

Alan Turing Institute gets to workThe Alan Turing Institute has announced its new director and confirmed £10m of research funding from Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a research partnership with GCHQ, a collaboration with Cray and EPSRC, and its first research activities.

2FA key to defence against cyber espionage groups, says DellTwo-factor authentication (2FA) for all remote access services is key to defending against indus-trial and government cyber espio-nage groups, according to Dell SecureWorks.

Mike Bracken to become chief digital officer at the Co-opMike Bracken is to become chief digital officer at the Co-operative Group. Bracken, whose surprise departure from his role as executive director of the Government Digital Service and government chief data officer was announced last week, will join the Co-op in October.

Commercial software more secure than open sourceCommercial software code bases are more secure than open source, according to the latest Coverity scan open source report. Open- source code outpaced commercial code for quality in 2013 and 2014, it revealed.

Huawei supplier ecosystem to emulate internet giantsChinese networking equipment maker Huawei is targeting the financial services sector, which includes a UK focus, alongside tech-nology and IT services partners to enable Google-like performance. n

❯ EMC reportedly mulling over selling up to VMware.

❯ Halifax offers mortgage agreements on mobiles.

❯ GE prepares Predix platform as a service.

❯ Insurer Vitality outsources IT to Atos.

❯Catch up with the latest IT news online

MoD shells out £1.5bn on two IT contractsThe Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed two contracts costing a combined total of just under £1.5bn for the supply of IT and communications.

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

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GE is one of the world’s largest industrial companies, with products ranging from turbines to jet engines to medi-cal equipment. But while heavy machinery is what it has

been known for, the company is one of the pioneers of digitisa-tion, creating software-powered, cloud-based services to improve the efficiency and reliability of its equipment and help its custom-ers derive greater value.

GE has been developing software for many years and pro-vides monitoring services for remotely observing and checking equipment. In parallel, the company has fleshed out its software

capabilities, using a common platform called Predix, which pro-vides core analytics for GE. GE will open up the Predix platform as a cloud-based service in 2016, in a bid to capitalise on cloud-powered industrial internet applications.

At an event in London two years ago, GE CEO Jeff Immelt told its customers how software would power emerging business models, stating that “small changes drive big outcomes”. For GE, these small changes are built on top of Predix and realised through an industrial cloud platform. “We have been focused on building applications to generate these outcomes,” said Immelt.

ANALYSIS

GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

Irish Power is an early adopter of GE’s Reliability Excellence software, which is built on the company’s Predix platform. Cliff Saran reports

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

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Software-powered servicesPredix is an industrial application platform which can be used by other parts of the GE business to create value-added, software-powered services.

Irish Power was one of the first GE customers to use the technology, implementing it at its Whitegate Power Station in County Cork, Ireland. Rory Griffin, operations engineer at Irish Power’s parent company, Bord Gais Energy, said: “GE’s software technology is an ideal solution to help increase our plant’s reli-ability and availability while making the most of our planned maintenance outages.”

Ramon Paramio, general manager for GE’s power-generation services business in Europe, said: “The Whitegate project’s scope

establishes a data-driven foundation, based on reliability, while delivering capabilities that enable the operator to make better business decisions based on real-time operational readiness.”

In phase two of the project’s implementation, Irish Power plans to roll out an operations module for process optimisation. This will pro-vide a more flexible operation and connect the plant performance to the real-time energy marketplace. These analytics will help cus-tomers identify actions for lowering production costs, increasing plant capability and improving system reliability, said GE.

Dick Ayres, general manager of power-generation software at GE, told Computer Weekly: “We want to help customers make better decisions in the medium and long term. Having a deeper dataset gives us a much better baseline and stronger reliability.”

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GE says predictive analytics tools can help customers identify actions that will reduce costs and increase capability and reliability

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

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For instance, applying predictive analytics built on the Predix platform can enable GE to offer customers such as Irish Power anomaly detection or enable cost savings by reducing the need for preventative maintenance, thanks to the visibility of the opera-tional data GE can now provide.

Combining datasetsUsing this analytics platform, GE has been able to collect opera-tional data, IT-related data and unstructured data such as social media and ambient temperature. Ayres said a predictive ana-lytics feature enables GE to use real-time operational data to predict or prevent downtime: “We can take advantage of tech-nology to deliver new insights and outcomes.”

For instance, he said the software takes SAP data from the main-tenance management system or workflow data and makes con-nections across maintenance reports, workflow and work orders to correlate to uptime or downtime. “We are taking different data-sets to improve reliability and understand principal drivers,” said Ayres. “We want to combine our expertise to deliver better reli-ability and performance capabilities.”

The application – Reliability Excellence – is now used in North America, Pakistan, Italy and other industrial customers in the Middle East. GE offers Reliability Excellence as software as a service (SaaS) or as an application.

Using blueprints and fuel accounting models developed by GE, Ayres said customers can identify areas of power generation that can be improved and derive actions to help them improve. He said the power generation companies are given an analytics

sandbox for uploading maintenance records, documentation and reliability data into their own data repositories. Data can be connected to training records to help companies identify where staff need additional training. According to Ayres, the Reliability Excellence software could enable power plants to run more flex-ibly. “If plants have more flexibility to deliver ancillary services, they can gain access to new markets,” he said.

What GE is starting to achieve with Predix and products such as Reliability Excellence is analogous to what happened in the soft-ware industry when SAP took everything it had learnt about how multinationals run and encapsulated it into SAP R/3.

Key to the success of the Predix platform is creating a vibrant ecosystem where third parties can build value-added services. The question is whether GE has the appetite to extend its plat-form to partners or competitors.

As GE head of software Bill Ruh remarked earlier this year: “Many of our businesses say, ‘Don’t you dare sell to our competi-tor’, but our software has to work with other products.” n

Key to the success of the Predix Platform is creating a vibrant ecosystem where third Parties

can build value-added services

ANALYSIS

❯GE expands its vision of an industrial internet to an industrial cloud

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

Tackling the challenges of improving government technology procurementCrown Commercial Service, the government’s procurement agency, has plenty of critics, but its technology lead, Sarah Hurrell, insists IT and digital purchasing is improving fast. Bryan Glick reports

You would think a purchasing department that saved £5.9bn in a year would be rather popular. But for the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), the government’s

central procurement agency launched on 2 April 2014, its first 12 months in existence saw criticisms flying in from all angles.

At least £220m of those savings came from IT – and yet, since its inception, CCS has been labelled dysfunctional, accused of undermining plans to buy more from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and described as “perhaps the last and least forward-thinking people in government” by one disgruntled supplier executive.

It hasn’t helped that CCS has rarely been allowed to defend itself publicly. Read through most of the Computer Weekly arti-cles about CCS and you won’t find any CCS executives quoted. The Cabinet Office has kept them quietly under lock and key, hid-den behind bland press office statements.

So when Computer Weekly was offered the opportunity to meet with Sarah Hurrell, the CCS commercial director for

technology – effectively the senior IT procurement leader in Whitehall – there was plenty to discuss. Let’s start with those widely aired criticisms.

Hurrell believes there was an expectation that CSS was going to be able to change agreements – even those that had been running for three of a five-year contract – and fix everything overnight.

“People still think we’re doing things wrong, rather than noticing what we’re doing right. It’s a culture change for CCS, so it’s down to us to tell people what we are doing right,” she says.”

INTERVIEW

“PeoPle still thinK we’re doing things wrong, rather than

noticing what we’re doing right”Sarah hurrell, CCS

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

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Changing buyer behaviourThe challenge is as much about changing buyer behaviour as it is about procurement processes, says Hurrell.

“Some of the criticisms were fair for the old organisation – only some, not all of them. Some might still be fair in places, but that might be because we’re in service of our [government] customers.

“If a customer wants a 20-year agreement with a systems inte-grator, we can advise [it’s not] best practice, but if they get it through spend controls then that’s their choice,” she says.

“There are occasions where it’s not what we want them to do, but it’s inappropriate for us to treat customers like [we’re] a schoolmaster and tell them off.

“As we build our credibility, people will trust our guidance more and understand that we know what we’re talking about, so we can help them do a better job as well,” she adds.

At times, the criticism has clearly stung: “I sometimes feel like I’m in an inner-city school where people think it’s okay to chuck abuse at you and tell you all the things you’re doing wrong – and not for them to recognise all the great stuff you’re doing.

“It’s hard work because you have a lot of people complaining. Sometimes it’s a Hobson’s choice to upset this person or that per-son. If I can sleep at night, that’s my measure of success.”

Simplifying frameworksHurrell’s focus for the past year has been to simplify the dizzy-ing array of technology purchasing frameworks into something that makes it easy to use for government clients, and simpler for small suppliers to win business.

Her team is responsible for “common goods and services” and uses the economies of scale of public sector purchasing power to get the best deals possible for technology products and services. Any bespoke purchases remain the responsibility of departments, but CCS can be brought in to advise.

None of the work CCS does is mandatory for Whitehall decision-makers. Instead, it has to prove its worth and make sure buying through CCS means getting the best deal – commercially and legally. CCS is funded via commissions from the buying departments, therefore it needs to deliver value for their money.

Hurrell joined the civil service in November 2013 at CCS’s predeces-sor, the Government Procurement Service. At that time, there were 26 different pro-curement frameworks for IT. By the end of 2015, that will be down to eight.

INTERVIEW

Hurrell: ”As we build our credibility, people will trust our guidance more and understand that we know what

we’re talking about”

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 9

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

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“What I’m hoping you’ll notice is the simplification I tried to bring. When I landed, it felt like [I was reading] Dalek with all the three- and four-letter acronyms.

“Now, I have technology products, technology services, digital services and G-Cloud – I’d love to just call it cloud, but everybody knows the brand G-Cloud – and I have network services. Those are my key agreements,” she says.

Her team is also responsible for software licensing deals, saving £85m in the past year through auditing departmental estates.

“In the past, we’ve asked for inside leg measurements from sup-pliers. They provided them, but it cost us a lot and we ended up paying too much because we either ‘gold-plated’ the terms and conditions or we asked for too much data.

“Part of it is trying to understand what’s appropriate and what would be easy for suppliers to deliver so it’s cost effective for them and us,” she says.

Opening up to SME suppliersAnother priority in IT purchasing has been to create a better bal-ance between smaller suppliers and the big, traditional sellers that have dominated government technology spending for so long, as well as support the digital by default policy led by the Government Digital Service (GDS).

“I’m passionate about small businesses – I was a small business [owner] myself once, running a consultancy company. I under-stand how hard it is when you start as a small business and how hard it is to understand the rules,” says Hurrell.

“Of the agreements under my watch, it’s typically 30% or more that are small businesses, up to around 80% on some. And that’s not bad,” she says.

The new network services framework has 31% SMEs, which is up from 16% on its predecessors. G-Cloud has 87%, the Digital Services Framework (DSF) has 83% and the Local Authority Software Applications agreement has 72%. Some SMEs have won so much government IT business, they are no longer classi-fied as SMEs.

Despite this, some SMEs complain it is too difficult to do busi-ness with Whitehall – not least with DSF, which was widely criti-cised by the agile software companies it was designed to engage. However, a consultation for a new version of DSF was announced on 22 July 2015.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for a small business to understand that, although they are incredibly important, we have to service both [sides] and make it simple for suppliers and the customer needs,” says Hurrell.

INTERVIEW

❯

“sometimes it’s difficult for a small busines to understand

that, although they are incredibly imPortant, we have to

service both sides”Sarah hurrell, CCS

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

❯Office of Fair Trading tells the government how to improve IT procurement

She says some of the press reported unfairly on DSF, making it sound like it was hated and did not work for SMEs.

“Our customer satisfaction on the digital services framework was running between 8.6 and 9.1 out of 10 – everybody had an opportunity to give feedback. You’re trying to equate what it says in the media with what the data says.

“There used to be 70 pages of paperwork to fill in – it’s currently down to about 12. It’s not perfect and it probably should be less. But it is an iterative journey and we have to keep the business running and able to buy things while we make changes,” she says.

Changing supplier behaviourBut bringing in more SMEs is not just about altruism towards small businesses – it’s also intended to force a change of behav-iour among the large IT companies that are perceived to have abused their dominance in government through over-priced contracts and technology lock-ins.

One example Hurrell cites is mobile phone contracts, where suppliers used to keep the devices locked to their networks at the end of the deal: “If you’ve paid for your phone, why should it be locked?

“We’re looking after taxpayers’ money, but if we can show peo-ple there is a better way forward, that’s good. We talk a lot to our strategic suppliers about the percentage of SMEs they subcon-tract to,” says Hurrell.

“We talk about payment terms and whether they pay quickly and we set the bar for what we expect from a strategic supplier. They might not always deliver it, but we set a clear expectation.”

According to Hurrell, CSS saw a substantial behaviour shift in price point with the network services framework because people realised it was more competitive than previous vehicles.

“We are seeing an understanding from strategic suppliers that they have to behave appropriately to small businesses and smaller entities in government,” she says.

“There is also a point where we have to be careful we don’t end up in big-boy bashing, so it’s a fine line. As a government, we often ask the larger players to take a big commercial risk – to take on a huge amount of funding up front, and we’re not always the easiest or most transparent organisation to do business with.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is help departments make sure they are not inadvertently gold-plating or putting hurdles in place that mean only the big players can bid,” she says. n

This is an edited excerpt. Click here to read the full article online.

INTERVIEW

“we are seeing an understanding from strategic suPPliers that

they have to behave aPProPriately to small businesses and smaller

entities in government”Sarah hurrell, CCS

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookingsHotel booking site tells Caroline Donnelly how it has benefited from using public cloud and NoSQL database tech

Hotels.com claims its decision to embrace the public cloud and big data technologies has helped convert more site visitors into holiday buyers over the past three years.

The Expedia-owned hotel bookings firm operates 89 websites in 68 countries, and started experimenting with the public cloud three years ago to give customers faster access to information about the holiday properties on its books.

As such, the cloud is used to power some of its sites’ smaller functions, such as the auto-suggest capabilities of its search boxes, while ensuring they have the overall capacity to cope with the seasonal peaks in demand for Hotels.com’s services.

Chief technology officer of Hotels.com Thierry Bedos spoke to Computer Weekly at the 2015 Cloud World Forum conference in London, which took place on the 24 and 25 June.

“Demand starts to increase around summer, so that is when we would use the public infrastructure or expand our infrastructure,” said Bedos.

“Getting data close to customers is key. It’s what drives us to the public cloud, more so than the ability to scale,” he added.

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Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

The reason for this, he explained, is because web users typically have a low tolerance for slow-performing websites, so being able to respond quickly to online requests for information is essential.

The company’s online activities are also underpinned by a sizeable datacentre estate, although Bedos declined to confirm the number or location of these facilities, only that it doesn’t have one in every country it operates.

These sites are primarily used to carry out the heavy “number crunching” involved with the transactions that take place on the sites whenever someone books a holiday.

“There are certain use cases that are very good for public cloud, and then there are use cases we want to keep in our datacentre, albeit on a physical machine or private cloud,” he said.

Big data insights drive customer conversionsAlongside its cloud experiments, the company also embarked on a move three years ago to step up its adoption of the NoSQL distributed database management system Cassandra to improve the overall resilience of its systems.

“We started realising that if we wanted to move to the cloud and become more resilient, while dealing with the volume of data we receive, our traditional relational databases wouldn’t be able to cope. We started looking at NoSQL databases and selected Cassandra,” said Bedos.

“The reason we chose Cassandra is because it was very well-suited to our use cases and highly distributed, meaning data can be on multiple nodes. So, if some fail, that’s fine,” he said.

Thanks to some initial successes with the technology, Hotels.com has steadily started moving more workloads over to Cassandra to help it scale with greater ease and in a more resilient way, Bedos added.

“Using distributed systems requires a shift in mentality com-pared with relational databases. The way the data store and schema is designed is very different, so we had to really get to know it. The use of it is now spreading to other parts of the organi-sation,” he said.

From a user point of view, Cassandra is used to feedback real-time information about the holiday properties people might be perusing on the site.

“If you go to a certain hotel, you might see a pop-up that says ‘five users are also looking at this particular hotel’ or you’ll see a pop-up that says ‘5,000 people have looked at this hotel in the past 24 hours’. I need to collect a lot of data and surface it to the users to perform this, so we use Cassandra for that,” said Bedos.

The company has also found the Hadoop big data analytics platform to be a good fit with Cassandra, he added. “Hadoop

CASE STUDY

“we chose cassandra because it was very well-suited to our use

cases and highly distributed”Thierry BedoS, hoTelS.Com

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 13

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

crunches a lot of data and gives insights that we can move back to the online world. This is stored in Cassandra, so it’s available the next time the customer needs it.”

For example, users need the data so they are provided with personalised insights about the properties they have previ-ously viewed or suggestions for similar places that might be a good match.

According to Bedos, offering up these types of services can help users weigh up where to stay. It has also contributed to an increase in the number of visitors that go on to book hotel stays.

“We’re trying to get the best hotel relevant to users. If we achieve that using the power of big data and make it so compelling for users to do so, they will book through us. All these features have increased the conversion rate on the site and made us more rel-evant for consumers,” said Bedos.

“We’ve improved the performance of systems, reduced licens-ing costs, become more distributed and lowered the risk to the business. These could be considered intangible benefits, but they’re still important,” he added. n

CASE STUDY

❯Google extends its data processing strategy and introduces Cloud BigTable

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“hadooP crunches a lot of data and gives insights that we can

move bacK to the online world”Thierry BedoS, hoTelS.Com

Hotels.com is using big data to deliver the “best hotel

relevant to users”, encouraging them to book through the site

ahead of its competitors

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

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Connected cars set CIO agenda at VolvoDigitisation is set to play a big part in the future of the car industry, but Volvo CIO Klas Bendrik is using modern technologies to deliver more immediate benefits to drivers. Cliff Saran reports

IT has always tried to align with the business, but for Klas Bendrik, group CIO at Volvo Cars, it seems business has aligned with IT.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015, car maker Volvo showed how a connected car could share safety information with other road users (see Volvo Cloud, page 15). Bendrik was on the Ericsson stand at MWC, where Volvo showed visitors its vision for a connected car.

“Connected safety uses systems in vehicles to detect friction on the road,” he says. “This information is made anonymous and communicated to other Volvo cars via the Volvo Cloud. If your car identifies slippery roads, you get a warning, and warnings are sent to cars in front of and behind you.”

The fact that car companies attend MWC is testimony to the influence IT and communications are having on the future development of motor vehicles. Digitisation is coming to the car industry, and while there is a lot of excitement about autonomous vehicles, connectivity promises a raft of near-term benefits for drivers.

Bendrik has been involved in this quiet revolution.

Changing the CIO’s focusBut the CIO’s role is to sup-port the company on its journey to make beneficial changes. And increasingly, these changes are powered by IT, he says. “There are very few industries where IT won’t be a vital component,” says Bendrik. So IT needs to be focused on the business.

INTERVIEW

Klas Bendrik, Volvo: “There are very few

industries where IT won’t be a vital component”

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GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

“Modern IT is vital for a car company,” he says, pointing out that IT supports the sales process. Configurator tools that support the buying process and social media are becoming increasingly important for car companies, says Bendrik, and the use of opera-tional IT is increasing as the business becomes more tech savvy.

“IT may know more about IT than the business, but sometimes the business will know more about IT than the IT department,” he observes. “Naturally, we will continue to develop connected solutions.”

The role of a modern CIOAs group CIO, Bendrik has responsibility for IT across the busi-ness, from manufacturing and research and development to dealer systems, which are all expected to run smoothly. But there is more to IT than supporting operations. “I am part of a strategic journey at the forefront of innovation with technology,” he says.

Bendrik believes IT is now at a sweet spot, given that many businesses are looking at ways to shift from products to services, along with the adoption of technology across society globally. “In

my role as group CIO, I participate in short-term and long-term product strategy,” he says. “Technology is fully integrated into everything we do.”

Some people argue that IT’s role is to maintain servers and systems, applying patches and making sure the IT is fit for use. Apple, Google and the smartphone makers have pushed the con-cept of over-the-air (OTA) updates, but can IT truly evolve to support the operational technology in a car, where software is a key component? In the short term, despite Volvo’s presence at MWC, Bendrik does not expect OTA to be widely used for updat-ing in-car software.

“In our value chain, we provide excellent solutions for software downloads to the car,” he says. “The update is supplied to the fac-tory and dealerships around the world.”

INTERVIEW

“i am Part of a strategic journey at the forefront of innovation

with technology”KlaS BendriK, VolVo

VO

LVO

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 16

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CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

In other words, it is unlikely that the general car-buying public will be offered a rich app store for in-car apps. If Bendrik is right, software downloads will be tightly controlled by the manufactur-ers, rather like the command-and-control policies of locked-down desktop IT.

That said, Bendrik points out that software could be updated by downloading to the vehicle: “We could have pre-installed apps where the current version can be downloaded.” A connected car also offers the manufacturer the ability to run remote diagnostics, he adds. “Certain aspects of monitoring will become possible.”

But managing cars in a similar way to how IT assets are moni-tored by system administrator tools is not an approach that a

car maker should take to supporting connected vehicles, says Bendrik. “I don’t think you can manage a car in the same way as a smartphone or laptop. But the car is already being managed through our existing dealership ecosystem. Now there is an addi-tional component for connectivity.”

Bendrik is one of a number of CIOs who are redefining what it means to be a chief information officer. For years, IT leaders have struggled to be relevant to business, he says, adding: “I don’t think there is any value for the CIO to get money to do what the CIO wants to do.” Instead, as is the case at Volvo, the CIO and IT department are supporting the greater use of technology beyond back-office IT to the forefront of new product development. n

INTERVIEW

❯Ford uses Microsoft Azure to power software delivery and vehicle monitoring service

Volvo cloud

Volvo used MWC 2015 to unveil its Volvo Cloud. The sys-tem enables the manufacturer’s cars to detect slippery road conditions and warn other Volvo drivers of the danger. This means that, for the first time, Volvo cars will be able to com-municate with each other. Eventually, this technology could be opened up to all car manufacturers and drivers.

“Our ambition is to make it standard in the Nordics in 2016 for our connected vehicles,” says Klas Bendrik, group CIO of Volvo Cars. “Based on the pilot, we will evaluate how to expand the roll-out further.” V

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Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

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What will GDS do with Bracken’s legacy?

Within minutes of Mike Bracken announcing his departure as the government’s digital chief, Twitter was full of tributes from people in his team at the Government Digital Service (GDS), and from the wider digital community across Whitehall and beyond. But his leaving inevitably prompts speculation about what happens next for GDS and the management of

digital transformation.Sources suggest that Bracken has not always seen eye to eye with his boss, civil service CEO John Manzoni. We know from Manzoni’s

public pronouncements that he favours giving power to departments, not the centre, a model that doesn’t suit the current shape of GDS.Bracken said on Twitter soon after the announcement: “My last challenge will be to set up digital centre of government for the next

Parliament”, which seems to suggest that the governance of digital government is going to change, and that the role of GDS is set for a rethink.

Further speculation suggests that Bracken’s plans for government as a platform (GaaP) have not received the backing at Cabinet level that he hoped; and that Manzoni wants to cut GDS down to an architecture and policy unit and go back to the days when IT suppliers did most of the delivery. If any of this speculation is true, it will be a huge disappointment for the many people who support what Bracken has been trying to achieve.

Bracken has been the driving force of pushing digital into Whitehall departments – he personally helped select more than 100 digital leaders and experts to build up departmental teams. But some in those departments – often old-school IT types, sometimes civil serv-ants with less enthusiasm about digital – resented the influence Bracken and GDS had been given.

Bracken’s biggest achievement was in changing the conversation about technology in Whitehall – recognising the broken nature of IT delivery he inherited and making that the common view.

Bringing IT and digital skills back into government has been the single most important improvement in Bracken’s time, changing atti-tudes and organisations to put digital and technology much closer to the heart of government decision-making. His successors must retain that knowledge in Whitehall – surely, hopefully, government has accepted it cannot outsource everything to Big IT and needs to be a more intelligent customer. n

Bryan Glick, editor in chief

❯Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs

EDITOR’S COMMENTHOME

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 18

For the best part of a decade, the IT industry has been increasingly pushing the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model as a way for organisations to reduce the cost and complexity of traditional software licensing. CIOs were

encouraged to believe SaaS would bring to an end the growing number of compliance audits imposed by suppliers and give them more flexibility to deploy and use applications as and when needed. Plenty were sceptical - with good reason, it seems. A report last year from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the software industry’s leading anti-piracy lobby group, warned there are plenty of compliance pitfalls for those using SaaS (see box, page 20).

The focus of the report was on the need for firms to deploy effective software asset management measures, an umbrella term for all the processes and tools an organisation needs to have in place to ensure they remain compliant with the licensing and

CIOs say SaaS compliance is a two-way street

We’ll ensure we don’t break contract terms, but providers must better meet our needs in terms of simplicity and flexibility, say IT bosses.

Jim Mortleman reports

BUYER’S GUIDE TO SAAS MANAGEMENT | PART 3 OF 3

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

contractual terms imposed by their software (including SaaS) provid-ers. Ian Cohen, formerly group CIO of financial services firm Jardine Lloyd Thompson, says: “Many think that because a solution is ‘as a ser-vice’ or multi-tenant, it is somehow okay to behave poorly. Sharing ID’s has always been an issue and even though there are various access management solutions out there, the bottom line is that there is an obligation on an organisation to promote good behaviour and quickly jump on any inappropri-ate activities.”

For most experienced CIOs in large organisations, though, ensuring compliance with software licensing terms is simply standard practice, SaaS or otherwise. Myron Hrycyk, until recently group CIO at Severn Trent Water, says: “I’ve always had in place strong internal audit processes and controls to ensure people don’t misuse logins, be that for on-premise software, internal security purposes or logging on to cloud services. There is a responsibility on clients to have the right level of controls.”

And that, Hrycyk points out, isn’t just about deploying appropriate tools. “It has to go beyond a purely technical IT audit. You need training in place for user teams, as well as management checks and

processes, because you can’t look over everybody’s shoulder all the time,” he says.

Yet while blue-chip CIOs are in agreement about the need for effective processes and controls to prevent falling foul of SaaS compliance issues, many are also irritated by the software industry’s apparent hectoring of customers, particularly since in many cases the suppliers’ SaaS contracts and licensing agreements don’t offer

businesses the kind of flexibility they need, or thought they were going to get.

Suppliers need to simplify termsFormer Irish government CIO – and before that UK government deputy CIO – Bill McCluggage has been instrumental in promot-ing the use of SaaS and cloud services in the public sector. Now

running his own CIO advisory service, Laganview Associates, he says: “I know from government’s perspective, they’re increasingly frustrated by ven-dors trying to squeeze ever more money out of them for services on which they’re already mak-ing margins of 80%. A lot of bigger vendors are coming in to audit customers simply because they know they’ll be able to recover additional revenue,

BUYER’S GUIDE

❯Organisations should evolve their SaaS selection criteria to focus on newer metrics that

are better indicators of supplier performances.

“a lot of big vendors are coming in to audit customers

simPly because they Know they’ll be able to recover

additional revenue, and i thinK that’s unreasonable”

Bill mCCluggage, laganView aSSoCiaTeS

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

and I think that’s unreasonable. When somebody provides you with a rental car, they don’t come in and say, ‘We want to make sure you only have one passenger not three, so we’ll audit you and charge you extra if you carry more people’. They charge you on the basis of hiring that vehicle. Similarly, many SaaS provid-ers need to simplify their contractual terms and give customers the flexibility to use the software how they need, at as low a cost as possible.”

Maturing marketOn the positive side, the market is growing and maturing, and not all SaaS providers are so inflexible with their terms. Hrycyk says: “The contractual structures providers are putting together are becoming increasingly mature and flexible, particularly among the smaller suppliers. For example, they’re beginning to set up contracts that align to business metrics, which is very helpful if you’re looking for models that will flex up and down. For instance, a SaaS billing engine I put in place at Severn Trent was struc-tured so that if the number of supply points went up, the pricing went down.

“I’ve seen those models coming through in other sectors I’ve worked in, too – for instance, basing the price on the num-ber of sites you’re running or the volume of product passing through a supply chain. So there are some good opportunities for CIOs to be more imaginative when they’re trying to set these contracts up.”

But he still thinks SaaS suppliers need to do more to more to move to a model of lower-cost subscriptions with greater

BUYER’S GUIDE

Key SaaS compliance pitfallsThe BSA’s 2014 report Navigating the cloud identified five key compliance worries for organisations using SaaS:

n Multiple users sharing the same login details to access SaaS applications.n Ignoring geographical restrictions on use – for example, using US-only licensed SaaS products in the UK.n Automated systems (as opposed to individual users) using a person’s account to access SaaS products.n Breaking restrictions on giving access to non-employees or affiliated entities.n Ignoring terms that prevent users providing information generated from the SaaS system to others not paying the subscription fee.

The report goes on to note that some SaaS providers are introducing analytics systems to monitor usage patterns for signs of unauthorised use to flag up likely offenders for investigation. It cautions that SaaS users must ensure they have appropriate software asset management tools and processes to ensure they remain compliant with the contractual terms of their SaaS providers

Download the BSA’s report here.

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 21

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Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

BUYER’S GUIDE

flexibility: “We’re still coming from a world where you had licence fees and annuity streams. Of course, the suppliers still need a level of com-mitment from a customer – and there’s no sign of them offering pure ‘pay as you go’ yet – but they cer-tainly need to flex more.”

Ian Cohen agrees. “Too many pro-viders are just re-badging old annual licence models as annual subscrip-tions and that was never the point of moving to a pay-per-use model – at least not from the buyer’s perspective.”

And, like Hrycyk, Cohen sees that the maturing SaaS market affords CIOs the option to be more choosy about (and demanding of) their suppliers. “It’s becoming easier to find alternatives and negotiate because there are so many options out there, even by going open source. However, many of the bigger SaaS providers still believe their own hype and that can make things difficult – particularly for smaller companies. Unfortunately, the challenge is as much inside the buying organisations, since many procurement functions often still feel more comfortable negotiating big, old-fashioned deals because that’s what they’re used to.

‘Software vendor beware’Former group CIO of the Highways Agency Ian Campbell, who is currently working for a US bank, finds the online sign-up and

monthly billing of the typical SaaS model a far simpler way to consume software than in the past. But he too agrees that CIOs need to negoti-ate with SaaS suppliers upfront to secure the most mutually benefi-cial contract. “We all know there’s a list price and what you’re able to negotiate in terms of discounts and flexibility depends on who you are. But no one should just accept the

standard terms without question. We’ve never been penalised for breaking SaaS contract terms, but providers can be tricky and people have to watch out,” he says.

Something CIOs should be particularly vigilant over when nego-tiating SaaS terms, advises Hrycyk, is ensuring contracts can be moved across to another entity without renegotiation in the event of a merger or acquisition. “That’s often overlooked with SaaS, and then the new owner may be contractually obliged to purchase an entirely new subscription,” he warns.

Ultimately, though, the SaaS suppliers that refuse to be flexible may end up the losers, suggests McCluggage. “To me the most interesting perspective in all this is how the market for consum-able SaaS – things like the Apple App Store, where you pay a small one-off fee or modest subscription for unlimited use of an app – will affect the future of the corporate model. The SaaS mar-ket is constantly evolving, and it shouldn’t really be ‘buyer beware’ as much as ‘software vendor beware’,” he says. n

“many of the bigger saas Providers still believe their own

hyPe and that can maKe things difficult – Particularly for

smaller comPanies”ian Cohen

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 22

T he OpenStack platform is an open-source collaboration to develop a private cloud ecosystem, delivering IT ser-vices at web scale.

OpenStack is divided into a number of discrete pro-jects, each with a code name with parallels to the purpose of the project itself.

Virtual machines – or compute – are delivered through a project called Nova. In early OpenStack implementations, Nova virtual machines were stateless, that is they were not kept on persistent storage, and a Nova virtual machine would lose its contents when it was shut down.

As Nova developed, a feature called nova-volume was intro-duced to store virtual machines on persistent media, similar to the way Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute stores instances on persistent media known as Elastic Block Store. The nova-volume feature was eventually superceded by a separate project called Cinder that delivers persistent block-level storage to OpenStack environments.

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-

source cloud platformChris Evans looks at the fundamentals of Cinder, how it is implemented, how to provision it, how it works

with third-party storage arrays, its features and more

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Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

How Cinder worksCinder performs a number of operations in OpenStack envi-ronments. In the first instance it acts as a piece of middleware, providing application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow Cinder volumes to be created through use of the Cinder cli-ent software. A single Cinder volume is associated with a sin-gle Nova compute instance, or virtual machine. Cinder keeps track of the volumes in use within OpenStack using a MySQL data-base created on the Cinder services controller.

Through the use of a common interface and APIs, Cinder abstracts the process of creating and attaching volumes to Nova compute instances. This means storage can be provided to OpenStack environments through a variety of methods.

By default, Cinder volumes are created on a standard Linux server that runs Logical Volume Manager (LVM). This allows physical disks to be combined to implement RAID data protection and to carve out logical volumes from a physical pool of space, called a volume group. Cinder volumes are created from a volume group called cinder-volumes, with the OpenStack administrator assigned the task of deciding exactly how this LVM group is mapped onto physical disk.

Cinder and external storageCinder can also manage external storage resources, either from a physical external storage array or from software-based storage implementations. This is achieved through the use of a Cinder driver that maps Cinder requests to the commands required on the external storage platform – in fact, the default

LVM implementation is simply another Cinder driver.

Support is available for iSCSI and Fibre Channel protocols, with specific support based on the capabilities of the supplier’s storage hardware.

Storage suppliers have been quick to provide Cinder support for their platforms, enabling a wide range of storage hardware to be used in OpenStack deployments. Depending on the specific implementation, the driver allows

OpenStack to automate the process of creating volumes and assigning them to Nova virtual machines.

Some hardware platforms require storage administrators to create a pool – or pools – of storage for OpenStack to use, such as traditional arrays that use pools of RAID groups, for example.

A list of supported platforms is available but this isn’t exhaustive and many suppliers are not mentioned. You should check with

STORAGE

storage suPPliers have been quicK to Provide cinder suPPort for

their Platforms, enabling a wide range of storage hardware to be

used in oPenstacK dePloyments

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 24

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

your storage supplier for specific information on Cinder support and the features their drivers offer.

The use of external storage for OpenStack provides the ability to take advantage of native features on the storage platform where available, such as data deduplication, compression, thin provisioning and quality of service.

External storage isn’t limited to physical hardware appliances; block storage can be assigned to OpenStack from a variety of software-based systems, both commercial and open-source. This includes Ceph and GlusterFS. Ceph, for example, is implemented through the use of Rados Block Device, a device driver in the Linux kernel that talks natively with a Ceph storage cluster.

OpenStack Cinder featuresWith each successive release of OpenStack (the most recent being Kilo – versions are named after successive letters of the alphabet), new features have been added to Cinder. Some of these have been implemented through a second version of the Cinder API, as version one didn’t have support for the newer features.

Version one and two APIs provide commands to create, update, delete and extend volumes, as well as attach and detach them to instances. Volumes can be assigned volume types, allowing them to be matched to a specific storage provider, where an OpenStack deployment takes storage from

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Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

multiple providers. Alternatively, volume types can be used to differentiate between different classes of storage, based on, for example, physical characteristics such as RAID protection or performance.

Cinder provides the ability to take snapshots of Nova instances. For external storage platforms this is achieved by using the native snapshot process of the underlying storage platform. The Juno release of OpenStack introduced the ability to group Cinder volumes into a consistency group, allowing all the volumes to be taken as a single snapshot. To date, only a few suppliers support this functionality.

Cinder also supports the ability to take Nova instance backups. Unfortunately, this process is limited to using an object store as the backup target, with restores that require restoration of the entire volume. This may prove limiting in many circumstances and is one reason why Manila – the OpenStack file services project – could provide a more appropriate way to manage application data.

Cinder in OpenStack distributionsOpenStack distributions are available from a wide range of suppliers – well over 20 at last count. Each supplier provides

support for a specific release of OpenStack and for each of the core OpenStack components. Cinder is a core component and ships with each distribution. The OpenStack marketplace provides a list of suppliers and their offerings. This also lists each of the projects and their supported levels as well as the supported level of the APIs. Today almost all suppliers support the version two API for Cinder.

Cinder provides great flexibility to add storage to OpenStack environments, whether through native LVM support or via an external appliance or software. However, as with all components of OpenStack, Cinder requires time and effort to understand and configure correctly. This is especially true for the process of fault diagnosis, such as volumes getting out of sync in the Cinder database.

In addition, users should remember that Cinder drivers

could be removed as well as added to new OpenStack distributions if suppliers don’t meet the specifications or requirements set by the OpenStack project. This could cause problems for future upgrades and so it is always worthwhile checking the commitment of your storage supplier to supporting Cinder features and future OpenStack releases. n

STORAGE

cinder Provides great flexibility to add storage to oPenstacK

environments. however, as with all comPonents of oPenstacK,

cinder requires time and effort to understand and

configure correctly

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 26

Customers are generating vast amounts of data across numerous channels, and companies are eager to capi-talise on this to deliver a more personalised experience. Analyst firm Gartner says advanced analytics will be

key to customer service – but points out that adoption of big data analytics is currently limited to less than 10% of organisations.

Many companies are still struggling with structured data and deploying a useful analytics framework based on their customer relationship management (CRM) systems, as well as consolidat-ing different internal and external data sources.

But organisations need to be extremely responsive to cope with the volatility of customers engaging through digital technologies. Being able to react in real time and make the customer feel indi-vidually valued is only possible through advanced analytics.

Big data offers the opportunity for interactions based on the personality of the customer, by understanding their attitudes and taking into account factors such as real-time location to help deliver personalisation in a multi-channel service environment.

Aphrodite Brinsmead, senior analyst for customer engagement at analyst Ovum, says personalisation and analytics are inter-twined and, when developing a multi-channel strategy, organisa-tions need to consider the unique traits and behaviours of their individual customers.

“They should be reviewing existing behaviours, use of differ-ent channels across the web and which questions customers are commonly asking in different channels. Understanding trends is essential before deciding how to add new channels or connect data,” says Brinsmead.

Using data analytics to deliver personalised

customer serviceRetailers have long strived to tailor their pitch to the prospect –

and now big data can fulfil that ambition, writes Lisa Kelly

BIG DATA ANALYTICS

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

“Organisations should then focus on reducing customer effort and improving first-contact resolution rates. They should try to retain context as customers switch channels, use analytics and push relevant data to customers and agents,” she says.

Finding the preferential times and ways to engage with cus-tomers is key to personalisation – and data analytics can unlock this intelligence and save costs. Gartner says contextually rele-vant knowledge needs to be available from any channel, includ-ing website, mobile app or during interactions with a customer engagement centre.

According to Gartner, delivering contextual knowledge to an employee reduces a provider’s time to answer, which raises com-petency and satisfaction. It also makes sense financially as, when a proper knowledge management discipline is in place, compa-nies can reduce customer-support costs by 25% or more.

“Look at ways to connect the content with customer data, so customers receive personalised information based on their pref-erences. By having information on typical customer journeys and support questions, the organisation can predict what information a customer needs,” says Brinsmead.

Knowing your customer as an individual and mak-ing their interaction as smooth as possible is key to a positive experience, says Jamie Turner, chief technol-ogy officer at address management firm Postcode Anywhere. He believes personalised customer ser-vice is essential for survival in the digital economy.

“Service is like insurance – when you need it, you really need it. It shouldn’t be taxing or complex, it

should be frictionless and painless. Those companies that get it will be here for the long term. There’s very little loyalty online, so you need to fight to keep your customers. Too many organisations still focus on acquiring customers, rather than keeping the ones it has happy,” says Turner.

Investing in analyticsBut it is not easy to effectively personalise customer service or experience without investing in analytics.

“It’s what everyone wants and it’s hard to do properly. We all like the pub that knows ‘your usual’ and the corner shop that knows what you’ve come in for before you say a word. That’s personal – but it’s very hard to scale,” says Turner.

According to Turner, good analytics can help an organisation become proactive, rather than reactive, to customers’ expec-tations: “It’s something very important to us, and we’ve built a bunch of technologies to help us understand and predict what our customers ‘feel’. That way we can hopefully pre-empt things and be ahead of the customer,” he says.

He believes big data has a role to play in evolving a smarter ser-vice which acknowledges customers’ individual likes and dislikes: “Big data is absolutely the key. It means different things to different people but, for me, big data is more of an approach. It’s really about collecting as much data as you can, then using tech-nology like machine learning to sift out the impor-tant bits from the noise. One of the challenges is being able to react, or ideally act, in real time.”

BIG DATA ANALYTICS

❯More than half of UK consumers believe their overall online purchasing experience

would improve if retailers delivered a consistent service

across all platforms.

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 28

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OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

Turner says it is no longer enough to rely on insights gained through big batch processes of data which deliver “insights” a few days after they would have been useful.

“People offer the best service because they unwittingly process loads of cues from behaviours and make instant judgements on how to behave. Mirroring that in technology will help provide truly natural and supportive personalisation that’s also useful to the customer,” says Turner.

Don’t be intrusiveBut with big data comes big responsibilities. Brinsmead says best practice means using analytics in a non-intrusive fashion.

“Be wary of using customer data to push offers and sales, or risk losing the trust of customers,” she says.

Firms need to use data wisely and creatively by integrating knowledge across websites, social feeds, community-driven infor-mation, mobile applications and automated chat: “Customers don’t want to have to leave a mobile application to then go to a community or chat to get technical assistance,” says Brinsmead.

BIG DATA ANALYTICS

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Data analytics can help an organisation become proactive to the customer’s expectations

“organisations should realise when an interaction needs to

go to a live agent”aphrodiTe BrinSmead, oVum

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 29

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Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

A customer’s choice about how they want to interact can change at any stage: “Live support will always be needed for questions with personal, complex or urgent requests. Organisations should realise when an interaction needs to go to a live agent and allow the customer to quickly connect. Organisations should push con-text about the customer’s web history or previous questions to an agent in advance,” says Brinsmead.

Brian Manusama, a research director at Gartner, says organisa-tions that use big data for customer service will increase customer satisfaction by providing rich, analytical, personalised customer services. As a result, the organisation can benefit from increased revenue through predictive analysis. Avoiding problems before they escalate is the most sensible path to reducing support costs and retaining customers.

“Through analysis, organisations can get a better understanding of the service issues customers are experiencing, and take action to avoid problems and resolve issues before customers reach out to customer service,” says Manusama. n

BIG DATA ANALYTICS

“organisations can avoid Problems and resolve issues

before customers reach out”Brian manuSama, garTner

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Live support will always be needed and organisations should realise when an interaction needs to go to a live agent

computerweekly.com 11-17 August 2015 30

Home

News

GE predictive analytics optimises Irish Power electricity production

CCS director discusses improving government technology purchasing

Hotels.com turns to cloud and big data to drive up online holiday bookings

Connected cars set CIO agenda at Volvo

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to SaaS management

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

Using data analytics to deliver personalised customer service

Downtime

Google and Apple know exactly where you’ve beenGoing by the recent hack on the Ashley Madison adultery website, someone obviously got rubbed up the wrong way.

The so-called Impact Group behind the hack warned that if the site did not shut down it would “release all customer records, profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures and conversations, matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails”.

“Avid Life Media will be liable for fraud and extreme harm to millions of users,” it continued.

But it’s not the only way technology could expose cheaters.

Even for those who aren’t users of the Ashley Madison site, it’s worth knowing both Google and Apple are keeping a close eye on the movements of husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends via a handy location timeline.

Downtime has learnt that anyone using a device running Android or iOS has their location history tracked by their device, meaning their other half can check where they’ve been and when.

Best practice for cheating smartphone users: if you do plan to go somewhere you’re not supposed to, switch off your phone before you leave and don’t turn it back on until you are where you said you would be. n

DOWNTIME

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