keeping app -...
TRANSCRIPT
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 1
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
cOmputerweekly.cOm
XX-XX MONTH 201529 SEPTEMBER-5 OCTOBER 2015
GRE
YFE
BRU
ARY
/IST
OC
K
Keeping app pirates at bay
Developers must look beyond digital rights management to overcome
the rising challenge of digital piracy
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 2
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
IT industry seeks permanent staff as vacancies grow Demand for IT professionals grew above the national average between July and August, accord-ing to research by consultancy firm KPMG. The company’s index that measures vacancies in the IT sector climbed from 62.8 in July to 64.4 in August, showing a sharp accelera-tion in open positions for IT profes-sionals. Staff in the IT sector are now the fifth most sought-after in the UK.
Healthcare sector 340% more prone to IT security threats Healthcare organisations are 340% more likely to be hit by an IT security incident than the aver-age across all sectors, and 200% more likely to experience data theft, according to research. Medical information sells for 10 times more than other data on the black mar-ket, making it a key target for cyber criminals, according to the study from supplier Raytheon|Websense.
Device shipments stagnate as users sweat their assetsA slowdown in combined ship-ments of PC, tablet, ultramobile and mobile phone devices is loom-ing as users increasingly opt to hang on to their equipment, accord-ing to a forecast from Gartner. Global shipments of these devices are now expected to contract by around 1% this year, compared with 2014, reported the analyst house, which had previously forecast mod-est growth of around 1.5%.
DCMS takes over responsibility for data protection policyThe government has transferred policy responsibility for data pro-tection policy, sponsorship of the Information Commissioner’s Office and sponsorship of The National Archives from the Ministry of Justice to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The changes came into effect on 17 September, said a statement on the Houses of Parliament website.
Worldwide Skype outage finally fixedA major Skype outage that left users of the app-based version of the online mes-saging service unable to make calls or log in to the service on 21 September has been resolved. The service is understood to have run into technical difficulties around 9am GMT, with the administrator of the Microsoft-owned messaging tool confirming Skype was working on a fix. The problems left some users unable to log in to the app, update their status or see if their other contacts are online.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
NEWS IN BRIEF
ERIK
KH
ALI
TOV/
ISTO
CK
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 3
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
NEWS IN BRIEF
Fidor bank launches in the UKFidor Bank is the latest challenger financial services firm to start oper-ations in the UK after the German company announced its UK launch.The bank – which applied for a banking licence in the UK in January – also plans to operate in the US.
Department store retailer House of Fraser appoints CIO Department store group House of Fraser has announced the appoint-ment of Julian Burnett as CIO. Burnett, who worked as chief tech-nology officer at John Lewis from 2012 to 2015, will begin his position at the company on 5 October.
Met Police’s £240m network procurement opens for tendersThe Mayor of London’s Office for Policing and Crime has formally issued a contract notice to tender for the supply of network services to the Metropolitan Police Service’s digital policing function.
UK broadband consistently top among major European marketsDespite the continuing controversy over the national superfast broad-band roll-out, coverage, take-up and average speeds across the UK remain well ahead of most European countries, according to a report from Analysys Mason.
Chi Onwurah appointed shadow minister for digital industriesLabour leader Jeremy Corbyn has appointed Chi Onwurah as the party’s shadow minister for digital industries. Onwurah will shadow the government’s minister of state for culture and the digital economy, Ed Vaizey.
More than half of 12-year-old girls say Stem subjects are too hard More than half of 12-year-old girls in the UK and Ireland believe science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects are hard to learn, according to research by Accenture. n
Oxford University takes SaaS-led approach to IT department consolidation
The University of Oxford has hailed the success of its recent push to merge sev-eral of its IT departments, claiming the move has helped it to respond quicker and more efficiently to tech support issues of its staff and students.
❯ Ofcom hikes licence fees for mobile spectrum.
❯ Industry is 12 months out from mass IoT adoption.
❯ Telcos could help drive cloud services into SMEs.
❯ Microsoft Azure partners with DataStax.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
ZOD
EBA
LA/I
STO
CK
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 4
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
What next for NHS Care.data as its leader Tim Kelsey heads for the door?Tim Kelsey, the driving force behind the Care.data project to set up an NHS patient records database, will leave NHS England in December, but what does his departure mean for the troubled IT programme? Lis Evenstad reports
Tim Kelsey, the man behind the controversial Care.data NHS patient records database, announced in September that he will be leaving his role as director of patients and
information at NHS England, where he led the drive towards a digital healthcare service.
When Kelsey came into the role in 2012, he soon established himself as driven and full of promises, manifested through claims that seemed outrageous to some and courageous to others. To many people, Kelsey is like Marmite – you either love him, or you don’t. What cannot be argued, however, is that he leaves behind a legacy of NHS IT projects, including Code4Health, patient access to online medical records, a paperless NHS and, perhaps most notably, Care.data.
Many of these projects have other great leaders behind them, with NHS England technology director Beverley Bryant leading the drive towards paperless with remarkable effort, and head of busi-ness systems Richard Jefferson taking on Code4Health. However, Care.data has always been Kelsey’s baby, and his departure raises
questions on the future of the much-debated programme. With Kelsey leaving to take up a job with Telstra Health in Australia, the question remains: Who is brave enough to pick up the pieces of the Care.data programme? Dogged by controversy, delays and
ANALYSIS
Tim Kelsey, the man behind Care.data, will leave NHS England in December
to take up a job with Telstra Health in Australia
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 5
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
outrage among the public and privacy campaigners, the project has not been as straightforward as first envisioned.
Doubts anD DelaysOriginally, the project was established to expand Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) – a data warehouse containing details of all admissions, outpatient appointments and A&E attend-ances at NHS hospitals in England – and link them to other data-sets, beginning with GP data, before rolling it out further. The datasets would be available to researchers and pharmaceutical companies and fill the holes in information about patients and quality of care.
The potential benefits of Care.data are clear, such as better ana-lytics to understand health trends, feeding into improved preven-tive healthcare and research into new drugs, but NHS England and Kelsey were criticised for brushing off the public’s concerns about data privacy and ploughing ahead with the project.
The trouble first began in 2013, when Care.data was due to start. Lack of information around what was happening led to uproar among the public and the media, with accusations that the programme was being pushed through without explaining the implications for highly sensitive patient records.
To rectify the situation, NHS England began an education cam-paign, which consisted of sending out a leaflet to every household in England. The leaflet, often delivered hidden away in between a Chinese takeaway menu or other junk mail, only found its way to a third of households. Another big mistake was failing to include any information on the risks of the data being shared.
While privacy campaigners argued that patients should have the choice to opt in, rather than NHS England assuming their par-ticipation and expecting them to opt out, Kelsey argued that Care.data would have to be opt-out “to have as much data as possible”, further claiming that without Care.data “we won’t have a health service for much longer”.
In February 2014, the programme was put on hold for six months following widespread criticism. It was due to start again that autumn, with 500 GP practices selected as pilot sites, but was put on hold yet again. Kelsey said the project would not subscribe to “artificial deadlines” and the extraction of patient data would
ANALYSIS
Who is brave enough to pick up the pieces of the
care.data programme? dogged by controversy, delays and
outrage among the public and privacy campaigners, the project has not been as straightforWard
as first envisioned
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 6
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
only begin when it was ready. In June 2015, the programme began again, with four areas chosen as pathfinders to trial the project.
Care.Data 2.0?Kelsey has repeatedly promised to listen to the public’s con-cerns and, just as he leaves the NHS, it seems he finally has. Earlier in September, Care.data was paused again while Fiona Caldicott, the national data guardian for health and care, issued guidance on how to word a new model of consent and opt-outs for the programme.
“There can be no assumptions made about today’s citizens. They have a right to know and object about how their data is used. Their understanding and choices must be actively engaged with,” said Caldicott. “Then we can use information for its enormous potential benefits. Without that trust and openness, people will tend to believe the worst of motives.”
According to NHS England, no replacement for Kelsey has yet been decided, but Phil Booth, co-ordinator of campaign group MedConfidential, said “serious questions of consent and trans-parency” in NHS England remain unresolved.
“We need new leadership. Kelsey’s whole directorate was toxic and was probably a bad idea in the first place, given how funda-mental information is to the operation of the NHS,” he said.
However, Booth said he is hopeful Fiona Caldicott will provide a “safe setting” for patient data and meaningful consent. The chal-lenge for NHS England now is whether Care.data can recover from the negativity surrounding the programme that will inevitably be part of Kelsey’s legacy. n
ANALYSIS
❯Employment tribunal hears how IT problems put patients at risk at one NHS trust
Care.data - a timeline of troublesJANUARY 2014: NHS England expands patient data collec-tion from hospitals to include general practice, raising data protection questions.
FEBRUARY 2014: NHS England under increasing pressure from medical groups to reconsider Care.data roll-out; NHS England admits failing to explain benefits of Care.data to patients.
MARCH 2014: Without Care.data, the health service will not have a future, says NHS England’s Tim Kelsey.
APRIL 2014: Up to 500 GP practices expected to trial collec-tion of patient data as part of delayed Care.data project.
MAY 2014: NHS England abandons plan to roll out Care.data patient records sharing scheme by autumn 2014.
JUNE 2014: British Medical Association votes for Care.data programme to be explicitly opt-in.
DECEMBER 2014: Independent NHS watchdog raises 27 ques-tions about Care.data project, saying they must be answered for it to proceed; NHS Care.data scheme faces more delays due to concerns over lack of publicity and clarity of proposals.
JUNE 2015: NHS England Care.data project to restart as trials to upload patient records to central database ready to proceed.
SEPTEMBER 2015: Trials to upload patient data from GPs to central Care.data database put on hold for fourth time as gov-ernment works on opt-out model; NHS England’s digital chief Tim Kelsey announces he will leave in December.
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 7
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce marketThe healthcare underwriter is taking a lateral approach to the indemnity business, writes Cliff Saran
Axa PPP Healthcare is looking to rewrite the rulebook. Earlier in September 2015, the health insurer joined the ranks of e-commerce retailers Amazon and eBay with the
launch of its MyActive+ retail platform, selling discounted health technology products and other services.
Many insurers embark on digital customer experience projects, but Axa PPP Healthcare is creating an entire retail platform to gather business intelligence and better understand its customers.
Providing a customer experience that meets the needs of con-sumer segments is key, analyst Gartner noted in its Top 10 busi-ness trends impacting Life and P&C Insurers in 2015 paper.
Making smart use of data is one way insurers are innovating. For instance, health insurer Bupa has tied a data strategy to the business strategy. “I wanted to think of the culture and vision of the organisation by creating an insight-driven world where infor-mation is democratised,” Bupa IT director Tony Cassin-Scott, said at Gartner’s Business Intelligence and Analytics Summit in March 2015. The company runs workshops to identify emerging data-driven business opportunities.
Writing on The Harvard Business Review blog, McKinsey consult-ants Tanguy Catlin, Pradip Patiath and Ido Segev noted: “The abil-ity to mine the digital data consumers leave on the internet, social media, driving apps and even health-monitoring wearables could help insurers better target customers, price and underwrite poli-cies more accurately – and manage claims more effectively.”
But such initiatives may not be radical enough to truly embrace new digital customer experiences. Apps, such as those developed using Apple’s HealthKit for the Apple Watch, could power a cul-tural shift in the population, where people take greater responsi-bility for their health. And this is an area healthcare professionals and insurers are keen to embrace.
Gordon Henderson, digital and innovation director at Axa, said: “People don’t see value in insurance.” Most people only deal with insurers when renewing a policy or making a claim. “When they buy your product, they feel they’re not getting any value.”
For Henderson, Axa PPP Healthcare’s online store represents a first step in a long process to fulfil and deliver goods and services to members and non-members.
ANALYSIS
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 8
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
From insuranCe to retailBut why is Axa attempting to break into a market dominated by giants such as Amazon and eBay? What is the value of selling non-insurance products to customers?
The answer goes back to basic economics. Henderson said 79% of the insurance premium pays doctors’ bills, so helping custom-ers become healthier represents a major saving.
“What if you could look at lifestyle to minimise risks and iden-tify any problems up front? This is far cheaper for us than finding out about a condition at A&E – and it is good for our custom-ers,” Henderson said. “Eighty percent of people with cancer are diagnosed in A&E. By then it is too late for the customer and too expensive for us.”
He said Axa is moving away from being a “health payer” to evolving into a “health player”. Its e-commerce platform ties into an overall change in the marketplace. “People are taking more responsibility for their lives,” he said. Technology advances are helping people stay informed about their health.
For instance, Henderson said: “You used to go to a doctor to take a pill and be gone. But the rise of wearable technology means you can build your own solution for your health. There is a new paradigm and it involves a lifestyle change where you can reduce cholesterol yourself.”
This is the rationale behind Axa’s MyActive+ website – to encourage Axa customers to manage their wellbeing themselves. Henderson said: “We are the only business that can reward peo-ple for healthy behaviour. Strava [the fitness tracking app] or Facebook don’t make any money if their population is healthy.”
ANALYSIS
NEC
IP Y
AN
MA
Z/I
STO
CKOnly discovering a serious
illness when it necessitates a hospital attendance is
often too late for the patient and uneconomic
for the insurer
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 9
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
The insurer’s e-commerce site offers 6,000 health products and, according to Henderson, Axa will add thousands more in the future. It carries no physical stock risk, relying instead on fulfil-ment from approved suppliers, with whom it has negotiated pref-erential discounts for customers. The pricing is not set to compete with Amazon; Axa’s goal is to improve the health of the member-ship, bundling free health coaching with the products it sells.
segmenting usersHenderson said the firm will achieve this through “attitudinal segmentation”, using behavioural analysis to determine which products and incentives would tempt an individual.
While obesity is linked to a number of health conditions, only 16% of the popu-lation will respond to a rational medical consultation, such as the warning a clini-cian may give a patient on the need to lose weight or risk developing conditions such as diabetes or heart problems. But the driver to change may be completely different: “You could get a much better result offering a little black dress as an incentive to lose weight,” Henderson said.
The MyActive+ site uses the Magento e-commerce platform with a few bolt-ons to profile people on the fly, enabling Axa PPP Healthcare to build its attitudinal segmentation model. The com-pany uses six segments to profile people in certain groups, which determine the types of products they are offered.
In the insurance business, IT moves slowly. Large-scale projects take years to deploy, and often need FCA regulation: “Insurance companies love to build internal, multimillion-pound programmes that take five to 10 years to develop,” Henderson said.
But recognising the need to move quickly, Henderson had to convince the business that the e-commerce site needed to be developed differently.
He said Magento did 80% of what Axa needed straight out of box. It is also instantly scalable. To avoid being
hamstrung by the FCA regulatory framework that governs Axa, Henderson needed to build
the e-commerce site completely separately. He chose Pier 1 to host the servers, RedBox Digital to develop the Magento-powered site and opted for a virtual supply chain, which meant Axa did not need to hold any physical stock.
Henderson said he regards MyActive+ as a platform to fulfil goods and services to
subscribers. From a digitisation perspective, he said the underwriter has a number of develop-
ments in the pipeline: “For example, we are looking at monitoring devices that will create points which will be
redeemable on MyActive+,” Henderson said. Over time, Henderson said he hopes to create autonomous
social groups among the membership on MyActive+, where peo-ple with similar health and wellbeing motivations can share ideas among themselves. n
ANALYSIS
❯Wearable technology is set to make its mark in the enterprise in the near future
KAT
IV/I
STO
CK
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 10
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and ITDutch technology giant talks up the success of its attempts to embrace agile IT delivery methods and how it’s shaping future customer engagements. Caroline Donnelly reports
Admitting you have a problem is often said to be the first big step towards taking action to address it. This is cer-tainly true in the case of Dutch technology giant Philips,
which was facing up to the issue of having an under-performing IT team in the summer of 2011.
Working out how to make the department more efficient and engaged with the needs of the organisation as a whole was not quite so straightforward, explains Edgar van Zoelen, who was brought in to oversee an overhaul of the firm’s IT operations.
“IT was not performing as expected. The costs were too high, the engagement of employees was low and the business was not happy with how IT was communicating with them, what it was doing or how it was going about it,” he says.
For someone with a background in the business of IT, van Zoelen says it soon became apparent Philips could benefit from adopt-ing a more agile approach to IT delivery, which would encourage greater collaboration between its line of business units and its tranche of techies.
“If a team is fully functional, IT will be empowered to pick up work and connect with someone in the business who can help them prioritise what to work on,” he says.
From here, they can embark on short cycles of software devel-opment, the results of which are shared with the relevant busi-ness stakeholders every two weeks. This not only allows them to check on the progress of the project, but provides them with an opportunity to give feedback.
“The business might give us the thumbs up and say they love what they saw, but have a couple of feedback points – or they might say they didn’t like it,” says van Zoelen.
“The latter shouldn’t really happen because business and devel-opment should be interacting during those two weeks so they know what we are going to present to them.
“That’s why it’s every two weeks, so if something does go wrong, we only have to throw away or redo two weeks’ work,” he adds.
To ensure the company has something new to showcase at the end of this two-week slog, Philips has automated the testing
CASE STUDY
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 11
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
process to spring into action as soon as its developers down tools for the day.
“This means they can pick it up and fix it when they come back in,” says van Zoelen.
However, if the errors picked up during these overnight testing windows cannot be easily fixed, this helps focus the development team on what to address during the next series of sprints.
Before the overhaul in 2011, van Zoelen claims developers could be toiling away for months on projects with no oversight from the rest of the business, only to find what they had been working on was wide of the mark, which could have costly repercussions.
There is also less pressure on developers to deliver if they are only expected to turn in work every few months, which some-times had a negative impact on their productivity.
“Over a longer period, it’s easier to miss a few edges. The finan-cial impact is also much greater as you need a lot of management to keep everything on track in a six- to nine-month project,” says van Zoelen.
“The amount of code we throw away is limited so we save money. I would almost say everything we do now is focused on delivering the most value possible.”
For this reason, and since throwing its weight behind agile in 2011, the company claims to have made savings in the region of €47m as project lead times have fallen from 54 business days to 20. Over this same period of time, the number of teams involved has also grown from seven to 120.
Within the teams are high levels of engagement and the work-ing environment is largely positive, says van Zoelen.
“Work is great, but you need to have fun at work and have a positive energy. The teams have more of a feeling of belonging, but they have their own identity and almost their own culture, and the engagement is much higher as they don’t want to let their team-mates down,” he says.
Winning over the WiDer businessWith the organisation employing more than 110,000 people across the globe – 10,000 of whom work either directly or indirectly with
CASE STUDY
Van Zoelen: “I would almost say everything we do now
is focused on delivering the most value possible”
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 12
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
the IT department – getting to this point was a sizeable undertak-ing, given that van Zoelen had to take into account the different business cultures of Philips’ employees worldwide.
“In terms of dynamics, that makes things very complicated because you’re talking about different locations and cultures. In India, we have a very different culture than in the US, UK and the Netherlands, for example,” he says.
Ensuring the needs of all were catered for was essential to every part of the business brought into the strategy in the first instance. This meant it had a better chance of succeeding in the long run.
The company could have taken a more dictatorial approach to agile, says van Zoelen, and introduced processes and procedures that forced people to change the way they work, but that would still not guarantee long-term success.
“You will definitely make progress by taking that kind of approach, but in every company you have a few heroes who are responsible for pushing these changes through. What happens if they leave? The process is at risk of falling apart,” he says.
“When we started with agile, we did it with zero budget, but you can work in an agile manner without much budget because it’s a mindset change we were focused on.”
monitoring ChangeAs part of the company’s business transformation, Philips worked closely with Rally Software, a provider of agile project manage-ment tools that was acquired by IT giant CA earlier this year.
Through this collaboration, Philips’ agile ambitions benefited from having access to Rally’s consulting, services and platforms
to enable it to track the performance of its IT teams as the agile transformation took hold across the business.
Furthermore, it also aided the work of development teams whose individual members might be working on the same projects from different corners of the globe, by allowing them to flag what they were working on at any given time.
“The partnership with Rally provides the bridge that helps the team collaborate better and helps management gain insight and transparency about where the teams are. It helps us work out how to improve the effectiveness of our teams,” says van Zoelen.
taking an agile approaCh to usersWhile Philips clearly benefited from going down the agile software delivery route, van Zoelen has now turned his attention to getting the company’s healthcare customers actively involved in the crea-tion and development of new products, in his recent role as head of HealthSuite Labs for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Philips.
“We are going to create an environment where we have work-shops with our customers, which will be where we use method-ologies such as design thinking and agile,” he says.
“So, in a short-cycle, iterative way, we will work together with the different stakeholders and Philips people, such as research, design and the digital people who develop apps. They will be working together and asking what is the vision, what are the challenges and what is the solution to solving them?
“It might end up with products from Philips or it might not, but the goal is to solve the fundamental problem of the customer,” he says. n
CASE STUDY
❯The top 10 most common misconceptions in the field of agile software development
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 13
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital firstN Brown CIO Andy Haywood tells Angelica Mari about how digital transformation is driving the technology agenda at the retail group, previously best known as a specialist in catalogue-based selling
The future of N Brown Group is digital, as the parent com-pany of brands such as JD Williams, Simply Be, Jacamo and Figleaves pushes a multimillion-pound transformation
agenda to become a digital-first business in the next two years.First-quarter results published in June confirmed the trend. The
retailer said 68% of shopper demand was generated online, while online sales totalled 62% of revenue.
Leading the technology underpinning the company’s digital ambitions is group chief information officer Andy Haywood, pre-viously CIO at The Co-operative Group, who describes the initia-tive as “delivering the rocket fuel” needed for the company to be better equipped to do business online.
“This is a bold and big intervention that will get us from where we are now to becoming a fully digital retailer. It’s a holistic refresh of all the technology platforms,” Haywood tells Computer Weekly in his first interview since taking up the job in August 2014.
According to Haywood, the underlying toolset at N Brown is “adequate and suitable” for a business with a history of
INTERVIEW
Haywood: “This is a bold and big intervention that
will get us from where are now to becoming a fully
digital retailer”
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 14
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
catalogue-based selling, but the recognition it had to focus on digital required different systems at the front and back end.
reshaping the agenDaThe first thing Haywood did on joining N Brown was to com-mission an eight-week review of ongoing IT work. The focus was then to re-shape the programme into delivery sequences in terms of benefits realisation and priority, as well as de-risking the initiatives by simplifying them.
“We’ve gone from longer delivery timescales to a two-year delivery window, so we’ve speeded the programme up, going for fewer, more impactful releases,” says Haywood.
Technology highlights to support the digital-first strategy include a full-scale Hybris implementation in the front end, which will cover all the customer-facing e-commerce operations.
Haywood says almost all customer revenues will come via the platform in the future, the only exception being revenue received through stores – and even then a Hybris kiosk will be rolled out in
each location. With the front-end implementation, the aim is to gain agility and pace, he says.
“Our current digital offerings are very good, but they’re not as fast as some of our competitors. I don’t mean web speed, but the ability to change and adapt. In the digital world, we want to be making changes every hour of every day,” says Haywood.
“That’s the difference between winning and losing in the digital space - agility and speed is needed to react to the market and to customers. That’s what the Hybris digital platform will give us.
“It will give us that leading technology, but it will enable us to deliver and deploy changes in flight, rather than more traditional IT waterfall approaches,” he adds.
On the back end, there is another large implementation – the company’s core trading platform will be the Oracle Retail Suite, which will include sub-products Retail Merchandising System, Retail Sales Audit and RPM for database monitoring.
“[With the Oracle systems] it’s all about controls, stability, joining up – the usual things. We’ve got lots of heritage sys-tems. So the idea is to get a back end that’s solid, secure, reliable and less complex than other technologies we currently have,” says Haywood.
stable platFormThe CIO’s ultimate goal is to create a “bi-modal approach”, with a robust, predictable and stable platform that doesn’t change much and is invisible to customers. For the customer-facing, digital front end, Haywood wants an agile set-up that is afford-able and easy to change.
INTERVIEW
“agility and speed is needed to react to the market and to
customers. that’s What the hybris digital platform Will give us”
Andy HAywood, n Brown Group
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 15
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
In addition, the company is creating its own private cloud using services from IBM. Haywood expects this will provide more flexi-bility in areas such as allowing business users to create customer-facing content themselves, where before they had to ask the IT team.
“This will make things much more efficient and quick – what used to take months will now take weeks and what took weeks will take days,” he says.
The company will also look to the introduction of better deci-sion support tools for its financial services business, to allow credit decisions to be made online when customers try to apply for a credit account.
“It’s about that customer-centricity being brought to bear on the transformation programme. The credit element is just one example where we’re not yet able to provide the flexibility and choice that most other businesses are giving their customers,” says Haywood.
“To a certain extent we’re playing catch-up. It’s a classic retail truism that if you give customers choice they will do more busi-ness with you,” he adds.
For the transformation programme, 2014 was the year of planning, 2015 is the year of delivery and 2016 will be the year of exploitation.
The first key Oracle deliverable has already come, with big deployments “every quarter” through the rest of 2015 and into 2016. The Hybris implementation starts in November and will be complete in September 2016 via a series of regular, staggered implementations.
leaDership ChangesHaywood’s team at N Brown is composed of 330 professionals – and some people-related changes at the top level were a core part of the transformation.
“Assembling a world-class team was the first thing – focusing on bringing forward the things that are going to add the most cus-tomer and business benefit-enabling technologies to the front of the programme, introducing this kind of rigour of delivery, get-ting a balance between the creative ability and programme assur-ance,” he says.
“When we’re embarking on these huge, complex and risky programmes, we can demonstrate that ability to deliver to the business almost on a monthly basis. We’re all too familiar with programmes that promise everything and end up getting halfway through and go over budget.”
Haywood sought to do the complete opposite of such unsuc-cessful transformations by delivering often and being transparent.
“There’s a lot to be said about the confidence that we can do this. OK, it’s scary, but we have the confidence that we’ve got very good and prioritised plans,” he says.
But delivering on these commitments is also the biggest hurdle Haywood’s team faces – simply because there is a business to run that is being transformed at the same time at a very large scale.
“In retail you don’t have the luxury of doing one thing and not the other. It’s about juggling today’s challenges and delivering something that’s going to transform this business in the next 12 to 18 months,” says Haywood. “Our biggest challenge is getting that balance right.” n
INTERVIEW
❯Retailer John Lewis is spending £100m on IT initiatives in 2015, says IT director
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 16
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Computer Weekly, 2nd Floor, 3-4a Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JB
General enquiries 020 7186 1400
Editor in chief: Bryan Glick 020 7186 1424 | [email protected]
Managing editor (technology): Cliff Saran 020 7186 1421 | [email protected]
Head of premium content: Bill Goodwin 020 7186 1418 | [email protected]
Services editor: Karl Flinders 020 7186 1423 | [email protected]
Security editor: Warwick Ashford 020 7186 1419 | [email protected]
Networking editor: Alex Scroxton 020 7186 1413 | [email protected]
Management editor: Lis Evenstad 020 7186 1425 | [email protected]
Datacentre editor: Caroline Donnelly 020 7186 1411 | [email protected]
Storage editor: Antony Adshead 07779 038528 | [email protected]
Business applications editor: Brian McKenna 020 7186 1414 | [email protected]
Business editor: Clare McDonald 020 7186 1426 | [email protected]
Production editor: Claire Cormack 020 7186 1417 | [email protected]
Senior sub-editor: Jason Foster 020 7186 1420 | [email protected]
Sub-editor: Ben Whisson 020 7186 1478 | [email protected]
Sub-editor: Jaime Lee Daniels 020 7186 1417 | [email protected]
Sales director: Brent Boswell 07584 311889 | [email protected]
Group events manager: Tom Walker 0207 186 1430 | [email protected]
Independent Openreach the best option
Perhaps Ofcom should review the UK communications market every year – because its current one certainly seems to be causing waves at BT. The regulator put the future of BT’s Openreach network infrastructure subsidiary on the table in July when it published a discussion document offering a break-up of the telecoms giant as one of the future options under consideration.
Despite BT’s multibillion-pound investment in what it refers to as fibre broadband – in reality, fibre to the cabinet (FTTC), not to your front door like the world’s most advanced broadband countries – the firm faces frequent criticism over its roll-out of superfast connectivity.
The accusations against BT have been well documented – ignoring rural areas, monopolising the government funding for roll-out, steamrollering smaller local broadband providers, to name a few – and have been equally robustly defended.
But the focus of debate is increasingly around Openreach, as rivals such as Sky and TalkTalk call for it to be split off to encourage more investment in replacing the country’s ageing copper infrastructure.
BT, while stoutly insisting there is no case to be made for separation, has responded with a raft of commitments to further improving the UK’s broadband infrastructure, including FTTC beyond the current 95% target, increasing minimum speeds to 5Mbps and beyond, and a faster roll-out of “ultrafast” – but still copper – broadband offering speeds up to 500Mbps.
It’s amazing what a whiff of regulatory and competitive pressure can do. BT will say it would have done all that anyway, but there’s little doubt the Ofcom review has focused minds, if not accelerated plans.
Nonetheless, the fact that BT needs to be so assertive is a sign that competition in the broadband market doesn’t work. In a fully func-tioning market, rivals would be falling over each other to compete by improving their services, instead of relying on BT to improve the infrastructure for them to resell.
The Ofcom review has thereby demonstrated not only its own importance, but the reason why separating Openreach is the best option. An independent Openreach, relying not on a dominant parent but on a diverse market for its income, means less regulation in the sector. Less regulation means more competition; more competition means the UK’s digital infrastructure can keep pace with the world leaders, not just the comparatively moribund broadband of our European neighbours restricted as they are by the dominance of their former tel-ecom monopolies. n
Bryan Glick, editor in chief
❯Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs
EDITOR’S COMMENTHome
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 17
The corporate IT department is just a service function for the business, ensuring those bright minds and red hot sales folk – using an increasing number of personal technology devices in the workplace – make the prod-
ucts and rake in the cash that keeps the corporation going. Corral-ling all these devices and applications is a never-ending task that only grabs headline attention when something goes wrong.
IT service management (ITSM) must address a broad range of data and application responsibilities, both on-premise and in the cloud (private, public and hybrid). This typically includes patch management, vulnerability management, maintenance con-tracts, quality assurance and control, project management and so on. Service management requires forward thinking to support DevOps, address developments in business areas – such as the enterprise internet of things (IoT) and intelligent building man-agement – and support human resources (HR) functions.
For example, BMC’s Remedy 9 service management plat-form offers native support for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) schemes. With better overview and control, the IT department can engage critical business operations.
The IoT is another area service management tools are starting to support. Axios Systems’ Assyst ITSM platform, for instance, handles “smart objects” by centralising service management and drawing all of the service domains (and smart assets) together under one service desk, one helpline number and one self-service portal. Smart objects provide self-diagnosis, automated alerting, self-healing/run-book automation and remote control without expanding the service desk or field engineer workforce.
Evolving iTSM To SupporT agilE iT and BYod
Bernt Ostergaard looks at how IT service management is addressing emerging technology today – and the needs of innovation in the future
BUYER’S GUIDE TO NEXT-GENERATION SERVICE MANAGEMENT | PART 3 OF 3
ASK
OLD
RO
MA
NO
V/IS
TOC
K
Home
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 18
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Another area of current interest lies in linking building and facilities management to IT service management such as IBM’s ITSM platform, which interfaces with the supplier’s Tririga intelligent buildings management application.
This software combines real-time monitoring with event management and analytics to help building managers optimise their energy consump-tion, and enhance operations and reliability. It integrates with the ITSM platform and monitoring equipment to capture data, which can be used for improved energy analytics and performance.
An example of HR support is in ServiceNow’s ITSM plat-form, which comes with additional HR capabilities. The human
resources management application uses the same format as the incident management application to allow users to create HR requests, which can then be handled by an HR management team using the same tools as the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) best-practice processes.
tHe supplier landscapeITSM applications are today available from over 400 suppliers – most of them focused on specific functions, while ITSM plat-forms are available for on-premise implementation typically for the larger enterprise, or as cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) for the SME market.
BUYER’S GUIDE
❯Cern – the home of the Large Hadron Collider – is using
IT service management (ITSM) to support operations outside
the IT function.
Checklist of considerations before buying ITSM software
When choosing the ITSM software for your organisation, there are a number of issues to consider at the outset:n Is the software scalable? n Is the software user interface role-based and easily config-
ured to support different user groups? n Is the software extensible to integrate with other core
third-party applications? n Iif so, does this include the use of public cloud platforms –
software as a service, infrastructure as a service etc?
n Can the software be customised, or must the suppliers come in every time a small tweak is required?
n Does the software include business process automation that has drag-and-drop tools, wizards, debugging tools and re-usable process libraries?
n Does the supplier have a robust portfolio of ITIL-compliant modules and include systems that extend beyond core help-desk functions – such as software asset management, client lifecycle management and web self-service?
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 19
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Modern ITSM platforms enable process automation at a high level. They come with intuitive user interfaces based on a flex-ible web design and provide access to a common database. There are also predefined, customisable ITIL processes allowing users to build to their own specifications using integrated workflow editors with self-service portals, such as the one provided by the
RES Software Service Desk. Ideally, ITSM tools should operate with the user-friendliness of modern web applications and social media platforms. In this way, ITSM is an important technological step for the internal IT operation, which allows the IT department to keep tabs on the current operating environment, while concur-rently supporting business initiatives.
BUYER’S GUIDE
What to look for in IT service management tools
Make sure your IT service management (ITSM) tools include these core components:n Real-time dashboards providing information on configura-
tion and services availability.n Change management for standards, procedures and sup-
porting customers.n Cloud platform management to ensure integration, with
internal IT support. This will often require a third-party tool such as RightScale’s multi-cloud management platform, which integrates with ServiceNow’s ITSM.
n Configuration management to identify requests for change with the status of IT assets and their relationship to inci-dents updated in real time.
n Incident management addresses helpdesk best practice to categorise issues and automate workflow. A real-time, customisable dashboard capability is very useful here.
n Knowledge management provides support staff with sys-tems to solve issues and allows users to search for systems over the web to reduce the pressure on the service desk.
n Problem management able to analyse root causes. n Release management to design and implement procedures
to distribute releases and communicate changes to IT staff and customers.
n Service level management to maintain and improve IT ser-vices through service level agreements with service provid-ers and line-of-business customers. This is also important when defining and managing service catalogues.
n Self-service management allows users to view the status of their issues and submit issues over the web.
n IT service support management tools manage how services are used, the infrastructure that supports them and the organisation’s responsibility in supporting them.
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 20
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
wHat are you looking for?Buyers risk paying a lot of money for functionality they won’t use in the lifespan of the tool. A rational buying decision must be based on detailed requirement studies.
There has been little progress toward maturity in infrastruc-ture and operations organisations in the ITSM market, so buyers must structure and codify their needs. Suppliers such as Splunk Enterprise offer a platform for real-time operational intelligence to search, analyse and visualise the large streams of machine data generated by corporate IT systems and the corresponding technology infrastructure – physical, virtual and cloud.
One commonly used structuring tool is the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) touched on earlier, a set of practices for ITSM that focuses on aligning IT services with the business. Companies with limited in-house ITIL expertise, or that lack the resources to develop best-practice processes, should find a supplier that will become a business partner and help customers design and build best-practice processes based on ITIL.
To develop a consistent view of service management the ITIL framework can be applied to cloud computing to identify gaps. But ITIL and cloud are not a direct fit. ITIL must be reframed in the context of cloud, not simply extended. Service vision, design, migration under a set of defined processes, efficiently operating and managing those services and continuously improving them in a DevOps environment, are all useful and applicable to cloud com-puting. ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 compliance is relevant for organ-isations that face governance, regulatory and legal requirements.
Define the business goals (for example, a strong service culture and management of business-critical apps) before embarking on ITSM; identify the sought-after effects; identify the right pro-cesses and assess the company’s competence and maturity lev-els. Finally, buyers need to assess the system providers and their ability to provide ongoing development support.
itsm in tHe longer termThe future of ITSM is shifting focus from the static reviews of machine data to dynamic, big-data operational intelligence ana-lytics, and the ability to create completely new product capa-bilities based on data insight that can respond in real time. A leading-edge company such as Volkswagen in Germany is using its ITSM platform with Splunk to help manage its connected and self-driving cars programme together with Vodafone SIM cards and Apple Car-Play. Data is fed into iPhone and smartwatch apps, and then passed on to Volkswagen datacentres and ITSM platforms for real-time data analytics.
The next step in the world of the IoT could be collecting and ana-lysing data from “smart dust” – tiny microelectromechanical sys-tems including sensors, robots and other devices used to detect light, temperature, vibration or chemicals. Other long-range areas that will influence the future of ITSM include software-defined security, the connected home and quantum computing – which are all approaching the innovation trigger stage. n
BUYER’S GUIDE
Bernt Ostergaard is service director at analyst company Quocirca.
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 21
With the rise of the smartphone, so has there been a rise in digital piracy. While some organisations claim piracy is rampant across all platforms, design product studio Ustwo announced earlier
this year that only 5% of its Monument Valley installations on Android were paid for, compared with 40% on iOS.
So how can developers protect themselves from piracy?One tactic developers can employ is to install digital rights man-
agement (DRM) in an application. However, although DRM can be successful, it is also a notoriously unpopular method. Author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow believes DRM removes ownership from the user as they can be locked out of their own purchases due to registration problems, for example.
Installing DRM tools does offer some protection against attempts to reverse engineer the code and acquire the develop-er’s intellectual property (IP). These are run after the coding is fin-ished to inject protection software that changes the code (using control flow obfuscation) and detect any attempts to change it.
Harnessing the update cycle of smartphone applications improves app security, says Winston Bond, the European techni-cal director at Arxan Technologies.
“If someone is trying to reverse engineer your code, they will keep getting knocked back to the beginning each time a new build is released,” he says.
If there is an update every two weeks, users are forced to use the update, meaning someone would only have a narrow window of opportunity in which to crack it. The more frequent the app is updated, the more secure it will be.
How app dEvElopErS can TakE on THE piraTES
How can digital companies protect their IP against digital piracy? Peter Ray Allison looks at whether digital rights management is
effective enough – or if it is time to adapt the business model
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Home
YAPA
ND
A/I
STO
CK
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 22
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
However, one drawback of DRM is that it can lock content into using a specific system, which can cause issues for customers when they try to use a different system.
Another method of protection is to threaten legal action against people found to be illegally down-loading, allowing developers to seek compensation while acting as a deterrent to those considering it.
But this requires caution. Intellectual property law specialists ACS:Law once employed legal tactics which have since been widely criticised – described as “blackmail” by Lord Lucas in a debate at the House of Lords.
Targeting website owners, initial uploaders and repeat offend-ers is another tactic, but these require additional time and costs, which subsequent settlements do not always match.
“Legal systems have not caught up with the interconnected modern world,” says Patrick Klug, co-founder of Greenheart Games. “I don’t think there is any value in suing someone. The answer lies in education, not punishment.” Klug gives the exam-ple of Greenheart Games’ web landing page. “It is often the most visited page on our site and we hope it convinces people that pay-ing for games is worthwhile,” says Klug.
piracy as indirect marketingAlthough digital piracy means a loss of sales, it can also serve as an indirect form of marketing. Foo Fighters vocalist Dave Grohl said in an interview the band is not selling as many records as before, but continues to sell out stadiums: “Because the people
are getting the music somehow, and coming to the shows.” While no software developer, Grohl oper-ates in an industry similarly adapting to piracy by seeking alternative revenue streams.
Of course, piracy does not purely equate to a loss of income, as it can also impinge on the developer’s intellectual property, with some applications being downloaded and cloned.
A downloaded clone often comes with embedded malware, which infects the user’s smartphone. While this may seem like a poetic consequence, it can negatively reflect on the developers.
There are currently no robustly secure methods of preventing cloning as, once the application has been downloaded, the code can be examined. Pocket App’s client director Milo Trzcinski rec-ommends all clients should “introduce a level of security that is industry-standard encryption”.
When it is a proprietary algorithm that needs protecting – which some might wish to steal or re-use in their own applications and sell – Trzcinski recommends moving the algorithm from the app code to the server. “The algorithm is not stored in the code, but in the cloud. That way people cannot get their hands on proprietary information,” he says.
But installing the algorithm in the cloud means users will need to connect to the internet to use the app. This will not be a prob-lem when users have access to Wi-Fi, such as at home or in the office, but when they are using mobile internet it will depend on signal strength and the capacity of the particular mobile data plan they have for the device.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
❯Software publishers have several options to protect their
intellectual property. But none are foolproof and all risk negatively affecting
the user experience.
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 23
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
Developers will need to weigh how and where the user will typi-cally want to access the app against how important it is to protect their algorithm. For apps typically used at home, such as health or media apps, the cloud method is an effective form of protection. But if navigation apps were to connect to the cloud for map data, users could find themselves burning through their data allowance – or losing connection on a route with poor signal coverage.
Regardless, Arxan’s Bond advises caution in relying too much on the cloud for app security. “We have customers protecting their server software because they do not trust the people who run the datacentre. If you want to keep your software secure from IP theft wherever it goes, you need to protect it,” says Bond.
tHe freemium modelAndrew Ferrett, managing director of mobile app development company Brightec, recommends clients follow the “freemium” method: “I had one client who placed a high value on their data and applied a significant price on the app. The result was that the final number of downloads was incredibly low,” says Ferrett.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
LIN
DSA
Y/W
IKIM
EDIA
The Foo Fighters continue to sell out concerts, despite
– or perhaps because of – widespread piracy in the
music business
“offer premium-priced value-added services or an enhanced
version to your customer base”Fred wilson, venture cApitAlist
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 24
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
“If it had been distributed for free with premium options, it would have been quite different.”
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson famously summarised the free-mium business model on his AVC blog in 2006. “Give your service away for free – possibly ad-supported, but maybe not. Acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks and organic search marketing, for example. Then offer premium-priced value-added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base,” he wrote.
Companies such as Evernote and Dropbox have embraced the freemium business model for their applications. Casual and small business users can use the basic versions of these applications for free, with larger companies and those who want to use the full versions offered a monthly subscription service.
There are a multitude of avenues by which users can pay to upgrade the apps for premium content, from credit and debit cards to PayPal and bitcoins.
However, Trzcinski says “running everything through the app stores and using their payment methods is the recommended revenue stream for freemium”.
This freemium business model ensures the intellectual property for the developer’s applications remains untouched, as the service has been offered for free. Furthermore, the brand is spread further than any
promotional campaign could reach. The key to a successful free-mium strategy is to use the enhanced visibility to demonstrate not just how useful a service is – but to convince users of the ben-efits of subscribing to the enhanced features. Trzcinski says the freemium business model has been “shown to reduce piracy and improve revenue rates for quite a lot of companies”.
subscription model versus one-off payment Adobe Systems is another company that has abandoned the one-off payment, opting instead for a subscription system. Rather than a single initial payment of £1,800 for the latest ver-sion of its packages for professional creators – which would need to be renewed approximately every three years – Adobe Systems instead offers users various subscription models.
These subscriptions vary from £8 a month for the latest ver-sion of Photoshop, to £45 a month for the entire package, which
includes mobile applications.This subscription method means
businesses no longer need to buy the latest version of the software.
But the business model also offers a more attractive pricing policy for erstwhile users who might have been deterred by the initial high expense. Despite the early scep-ticism of existing users, Adobe Systems Software has reported annual increases in its profits.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
piracy is here to stay, Whether We like or not. it has become such an endemic part of our culture that attempting to
fight it has ultimately become cost-prohibitive
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 25
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
But the online subscription method is not without its flaws. Adobe suffered an outage to its online subscription system in 2014 which prevented customers accessing products they had bought until the back-end service was restored.
alternative revenue streams in tHe age of piracyDeveloper Six to Start exploited the success of its app Zombies Run and its media attention. The company is exploring other revenue streams with branded merchandise such as T-shirts, which increases profits, and raises awareness of the app.
The merchandising route is not just available to games devel-opers. Evernote similarly offers branded products, such as the Scansnap scanner, Jot Script stylus and Isar Rucksack.
The ad-supported route is another means by which developers can freely distribute apps, while seeking to monetise them. As with the freemium model, this reduces the risk of your intellectual property being infringed, as the app is freely distributed yet main-tains a constant revenue stream from the adverts. Care must be taken to ensure the content is appropriate for the intended audi-ence and the adverts do not impinge on the users’ experience of the app by dominating the screen.
Piracy is here to stay, whether we like or not. It has become such an endemic part of our culture that attempting to fight it has ulti-mately become cost-prohibitive.
Instead, seeking ways to embrace these digital distribu-tion methods and discovering new revenue streams, as well as employing freemium payment models, will allow innovative com-panies to not only survive, but thrive in this land of the free. n
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Developer Six to Start exploited the success of its app Zombies Run with branded merchandise
such as T-shirts
ZOM
BIES
RU
N S
TORE
computerweekly.com 29 September-5 OctOber 2015 26
Home
News
What next for NHS Care.data after its leader Tim Kelsey quit?
Why insurer Axa is entering the retail e-commerce market
Philips takes agile approach to building bridges between business and IT
Simply Be and Jacamo group CIO orders IT transformation that puts digital first
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to next-generation service management
How app developers can take on the pirates
Downtime
At last – how to end the blight of Apple fanboy queuing Congratulations to mobile operator O2, which may finally have found a way to put an end to the most tedious and embarrassing aspect of the consumer digital revolution.
With Apple releasing the iPhone 6s, we saw the usual response from fanboy freaks to queue for hours outside an Apple store to get their hands on a new smartphone with a few more features than the one they have.
This trend continues at every product launch, despite the fact the gadget will still be available a couple of hours later to normal people who arrive at the store during a common sense time of the day.
O2, however, clearly realising that these people need to be shocked out of their delusionary behaviour, resorted to the ultimate deterrent. They sent in the Chuckle Brothers.
Apple shoppers at the Westfield White City shopping mall in London’s Shepherd’s Bush were sent screaming in terror at the sight of the chucklesome duo bearing down on them brandishing iPhones with the intent of inflicting mild, seaside humour upon them.
Well, perhaps not screaming in terror. But we can only hope that the long-term effect will be similar. We at Downtime praise O2 and the Chuckle Brothers for their valiant attempts to rid us all of this annual spectacle of Apple idiocy. n
DOWNTIME
❯Read more on the Downtime blog