Tom

Hi everyone,Today we're going to talk about a few things. First, Vedika will introduce our project. Then we'll have Peter and James talk about the existing problem we're facing. Next I'll show you the practical business issue we're trying to address. The technical team will then take you through what we've done so far, and what we're hoping to do in the coming week. We're eager to tell you all about our project, so I'll hand straight over to Vedika!

Time: 30 secs

Vedika

. Our project is called FTP Discovery. Most companies use File Transfer Protocol or FTP, to manage a majority of their file transfers internally and externally with business partners and client. Our objective is to understand and visualise their homegrown maze of file transfer management systems, bring out the risks they face and encourage them to use the more secure, robust and configurable solution provided by MFTs, or managed file transfer systems. So we're trying to kill FTP. The question is, why? I'll let Peter tell you.

30 secs

RYO FTP is often messy...

Peter

FTP is rubbish. It's an archaic technology from 1971 predating TCP and IP which is sadly still in use today. The bulk of FTP networks are based on roll-your-own scripts which have been added hither and thither to networks as they have grown from tens of servers to hundreds and thousands of servers. As FTP is generally insecure and completely unmanaged, this does NOT make a pretty sight. It generally looks less appetising than the spaghetti in this slide...

This mess I've just described suffers from some serious issues; I'll hand over to James, who's going to chat about one of these

30 secs

Epistemic complexity

(Epistemic: of or relating to knowledge and its validation) Relates to the predictability of system properties when changes are proposed If you don't have enough knowledge of the system and its components - you cannot make predictions about it Even if the system does NOT have dynamic, dependent relationships between components Therefore large complicated systems are also complex systems when it is practically impossible to aquire the necessary knowledge

James

Epistemic complexity goes here.

So now we've covered an overview of the kind of problem we're facing, I'll hand off to Tom who'll be talking about the business concerns of our project.

1 minute

What are the business problems?

Tom

Thanks James. So we've shown that FTP is messy, and that it leads to a whole bunch of problems for businesses. You guys understand these issues because you're IBMers, but the people we're trying to convince don't. These people are our target audience. Not these three specifically, but businesspeople in general. They don't really listen when their tech department talks about things like epistemic complexity,and as a result FTP is still widespread. They DO listen, however, when they're told about money.

Our main business concern for the first phase of our project will be to design a product that will show businesses visually how much of a mess they're in, and help to put it in dollar terms. We will then make sure our product can help them out of their mess. Once businesses realise they're in trouble, there are a couple of products that we will be able to suggest. The products that can help them best are supplied by a company some of you might have heard of...

1 minute

So our aim, at its core, is to move companies from using FTP onto the safer, more reliable, more secure MFT offerings in IBMs portfolio. There are many interesting concerns, including how to price our product, what sort of market we'll be supplying, and how to ensure any transition is to MQ FTE or Connect:Direct. I will be going into more detail about these in subsequent presentations, but before we get to talking about the future, it seems sensible to fill you in on what we've done so far. Vedika?

30 secs

How we're organised

Peter

Okay, so we're going to be using the SCRUM framework for managing our project. Based on the Agile manifesto:- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;- Working software over comprehensive documentation;- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;- Responding to change over following a planThis should be fairly familiar to you guys, as IBM is a huge proponent of Agile methodologies. We'll be doing one week iterations, and fully expect to have a deliverable at the end of every iteration. So we've not only been busy planning, check this out.

30 secs

Plan for next week

Create a simulator

Start filtering and storing the data we capture

Work on a rules engine

Begin to implement some visualisation of the data

Create clear business scenarios

Examine the potential market

Peter

Okay, so our plan for next week note that this is still fairly rough is to do all of the following, so:- James is creating a simulator in order to prove that our software can potentially cope with thousands of hosts- I'll be working on extracting and storing data which we've captured- Vedika will be working on a rules engine in order to work out what the business context of our traffic is- All of the developers will be starting to work on some visualisations in order to work out which we want to use- Our dear Tom will be creating our business scenarios and also looking into our potential markets I'm perfectly happy to leave this to him!

30 secs

Tom

I hope we've given you a good idea of where we hope to take the project over the next 11 weeks. We had a lot to cover today, and next week we hope to look a bit deeper at some of the more challenging issues we expect to face. We hope to see you then, thank you for listening!

30 secs

Total time: 7 minutesVedika and Peter: 1.5 minsTom and James: 2 mins