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computerweekly.com 18-24 December 2012 1
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The road to RioCIO Of 2016 OlympICs talks exClusIvely abOut the lessOns
that Can be learned frOm lOndOn’s suCCess
18-24 December 2012 | ComputerWeekly.com
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bbc TIgHTeNs up speNDINg wITH
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the week in it
IT servicesNetwork Rail CIO takes on wider shared services roleNetwork Rail chief information officer (cio) Susan cooklin has taken on the added responsibility for finance and HR shared services. The expanded role, which officially commenced on 30 November, sees cooklin’s team expand from 600 to 1,000 people, most of whom are based in milton Keynes.
Public sector ITGovernment IT leadership team sees major reshuffleThe government’s iT leadership team is to undergo a major organisational reshuffle, according to a notice from cabinet office chief operating officer Stephen Kelly. Andy Nelson will remain government cio under the new structure, but with reduced responsibilities as he concentrates on the digital transformation agenda at the ministry of Justice.
IT servicesThree chooses Huawei for managed services contract Three has announced a new partnership with Huawei, under which the chinese firm will manage Three’s network. Huawei will take responsibility of service manage-ment and operations surrounding Three’s core network, and will use its technology partner, Tech mahindra, to take care of internal iT applications.
IT skillsLow-level tasks eat up 30% of IT departments’ time, report revealsiT staff are spending 30% of their time carrying out basic tasks and are grow-ing frustrated with the lack of time left to focus on transformational work, according to a report from Quocirca. The average iT worker is also only using half of the skills they possess as a result of time spent on straightforward tasks.
IT skillsDemand for big data IT workers to double by 2017, says eSkillsData specialists can earn 20% more than other iT professionals and there has been a 43% increase in data roles during the past year. Research from e-Skills UK, spon-sored by SAS, suggests demand for big data analysts will double over the next five years.
IT securityUK government jobs website exploited by hackersHackers have been able to exploit security flaws in a new government jobs website to steal personal information about job appli-cants. The Universal Jobmatch website has been described as a “scammer’s paradise” in a Channel 4 News investigation, which uncovered security flaws that enabled access to data including passport scans.
Cornwall CounCil partners with bt for it outsourCingCornwall County Council has voted in support of an It out-sourcing and telehealth partnership with bt after rejecting a plan to privatise a broader range of council services.
after councillors threw out their executive’s privatisation plan in October they had to decide between 13 possible alter-native outsourcing scenarios produced by the council execu-tive, with another option of keeping everything in-house.
Councillors voted for a much-reduced privatisation option covering Cornwall’s It department and a joint venture with bt and regional health bodies to develop a telehealth hub. the Council cabinet is checking the plan before contracts are signed.
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the week in it
access the latest it news via rss feed
Enterprise softwareRetailers let down by poor ERPUK retailers could lose an estimated £147m of revenue this christmas due to missed sales opportunities through out-of-stock products, according to Vanson Bourne. The survey of 100 retailers, sponsored by NetSuite, used statistical modelling from the centre for economics and Business Research (ceBR) to calculate the loss in revenue.
Mobile dataUK users rack up highest level of mobile data downloads worldwideUK users download the most data on their mobiles, according to a report from UK telecoms regulator ofcom. The international communications Report for 2011 compared 17 countries worldwide, but found the average 424mB download by UK mobile users per month was higher than any other, pushing Japan into second place with 392mB per month.
Security softwareLittle change to antivirus spend expected in 2013, survey showsonly 8% of european companies plan to decrease spending on antivirus and antimalware in 2013, a survey of iT secu-rity purchasing intentions has revealed. Some 21% of more than 250 iT profes-sionals polled by computer weekly and TechTarget said they were planning to increase spending in this area compared with 2012.
Cloud computingMost IT professionals do not trust cloud services with sensitive dataJust over half of iT professionals who focus on cloud computing do not trust cloud services for personal data, a survey has revealed. Some 86% of those polled by Lieberman Software said they did not trust the cloud for storing their organisation’s more sensitive data.
Cyber securityUK student convicted for Anonymous cyber attacksA leading player in the 2010 and 2011 dis-tributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in the name of activist hacking collec-tive Anonymous has been convicted. christopher weatherhead, 22, who had entered a plea of not guilty, was convicted on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers, contrary to the criminal Law Act 1977.
Public sector ITVast majority of public sector organisations lack BYOD policiesThe majority (87%) of public sector organisations have no formal bring-your-own-device (BYoD) strategy, accord-ing to Freedom of information research. of the 41 local and central councils that responded to questions submitted by data backup software and disaster recovery company Acronis, only one-third said they intend to review this by next year. n
ee to switCh on 4g in 17 more uK loCations
ee has announced 17 further towns and cities it will be bringing 4G to in the new year. the new locations to get access to the faster mobile network will be bradford, Chelmsford, Coventry, doncaster, dudley, leicester, luton, newport, reading, rotherham, st albans, sunderland, sutton Coldfield, Walsall, Watford, West bromwich and Wolverhampton.
ee promised the network would be deployed by march at the latest, and announced it was boost-ing its existing connections with the addition of more masts, helping expand 4G coverage in the cities where it has already introduced the network.
derby, newcastle and nottingham were the latest locations added to the network, and ee claimed belfast, hull, maidenhead and slough would be turned on by the end of the year, bringing the total number of 4G cities to 18 by the end of 2012.
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analysis
Debriefing involving key members of the London 2012 team gives Brazilian IT team the benefit of wisdom learned. Angelica Mari reports
Rio gears up for Olympic challenges
It is all done and dusted. The London organising committee of the olympic Games (Locog) has passed the baton
to its Rio 2016 successor after a debriefing event to provide the Brazilian hosts with the lessons learned from the London olympiad.
The debriefing event lasted for eight days, three of which were dedicated to technol-ogy – the international olympic committee (ioc) puts a big focus on iT given the sheer amount of technology-related detail that goes into the olympic Games.
The event in Rio was attended by 330 people, including the entire iT team of the Rio 2016 committee – currently 40 people, but expected to be 400-strong at the peak of the Games – headed by cio elly Resende, and 16 staff from Locog, including the London 2012 cio, Gerry Pennell, as well as heads of various iT areas from results technology and telecoms services to service delivery and operational readiness.
The debrief conversations started last year and more thought started going into it at the start of 2012. The fine detail was decided just after the London Games closed.
“At the Paralympic Games, we had a more in-depth discussion of what we thought
would be relevant to approach during the debrief, but we didn’t decide on it by our-selves – it was something done in partner-ship with the ioc and Locog,” says the Rio 2016 cio, in an exclusive interview with computer weekly.
The themes of the debriefPlenaries took place at the start and end of each day. Pennell presented at the plenary sessions, where he covered themes such as the lifecycle of the iT work for the Games and relationships with partners. His final session focused on the human element of the 24x7 olympic operational jigsaw.
Between the general presentations, break-out sessions were held, in which the techni-cal details around the technology used in London were discussed. Locog presenters took the delegates through the material and a chairman from the ioc or Rio 2016 would facilitate the session.
Topics discussed at the Rio iT debrief focused on four key areas: time scoring and results; business iT, including areas such as asset management; operations; and venue planning, where aspects such as logistics of fitting equipment at venues were debated.
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Olympic Games 2012:
Preparing for a mobile data
deluge
Gerry Pennell, CIO, London 2012
Olympic Games
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demand. The country has auctioned 4G spectrum for the world cup in 2014, but the winners were mostly companies that have barely managed to cater for 3G demand and voice services. in July, the government imposed an 11-day ban on signing up new clients on three of the four big mobile phone firms in the country – one of them being claro, an official partner of Rio 2016.
if London encountered challenges with its already stretched mobile network, how will Rio be able to cope during the olympics in 2016? Resende was keen to stress that the country has what it takes to deliver the required services.
“i’m not sure that our scenario is so differ-ent to London,” says Resende. “even though the UK is more developed, there is still the need for a communications network that is robust and scalable, planning and so on.
“London had some great planning and prep-aration for the Games, the delivery took place in the correct timescales. But running iT for the Games is not a simple task and London also faced challenges. we have our backbone, our structure, as well as partners which will support our needs,” says Resende. n
“The event was divided that way so we could get as much information as possible about the most critical iT components we deal with dur-ing the Games, with iT positioned not only as a provider but receiver of resources from other parts of the organisation,” says Resende.
Key highlightsThe Rio cio says that although all of the con-tent provided by Locog during the debrief was “extremely useful”, the main takeaways were around mobility and the effect of the internet – especially social media – on the Games. in particular, the bring-your-own-device (BYoD) approach taken by Locog was of real interest to the Rio iT team.
in London, staff were allowed to use either their own kit or the devices supplied by official sponsors. The consumer angle is also something the olympic committee watched closely, and offering services such as the London 2012 mobile app, which had 12.5 mil-lion downloads, is a top priority. with Brazil becoming the fifth-largest social networking population in the world – with internet user penetration set to hit 48% of the population by 2016 according to Nielsen Research – this is a crucial area of focus.
Brazil also has significant challenges around infrastructure to support that future
This is an edited version.You can read the full article on www.computerweekly.com
the technology plan follows the rio 2016 master schedule model, which determines the main activities, milestones and outputs of the technology programme during the key planning phases for the 2016 Olympics.
Operational planning – September 2012 to July 2014n the main output expected in this phase is to have an Integration test lab live.
Testing – August 2014 to January 2016n technology Operation Centre (tOC) operationaln equipment deployment Centre (edC) operationaln all Games management systems live
Readiness – February 2016 to July 2016n all technology at the venues liven perform test eventsn perform technical rehearsalsn deliver radio spectrum for the Games
Games – August 2016 to September 2016n all technology at the venues liven results system live
Dissolution – October 2016 to July 2017n removal of technology equipment from the venuesn technology post-Games reportn financial reportn technology debrief for future 2020 Olympic Organising Committee
analysis
the teChnologY plan for rio 2016
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case study
Web intelligence dashboards are enabling BBC managers to focus more on decision-making and less on manipulating data. Brian McKenna reports
BBC management gains tighter cost control with SAP dashboards
Managers at the BBc are gaining tighter cost control with SAP Business objects web intelligence
dashboards.Simon Griffiths, data and reporting
improvement manager at the BBc, presented the corporation’s home services manage-ment information strategy at the recent SAP UK and ireland user group meeting in manchester.
He says the goal of the BBc management information strategy is to focus managers more on decision-making for future pro-grammes and less on manipulating data.
The dashboard project began in December 2011, and has become part of a Finance effectiveness programme, headed by John Turner, programme change director at the organisation.
Griffiths initially carried out a proof-of-concept dashboard, on cost centre reporting, to get the project started without involving consultancies.
His team is relatively small, consisting of six data warehousing and business intelli-gence professionals and three other contrac-tors from the Finance effectiveness effort.
He is a trained accountant with a back-ground in engineering. He joined the BBc in 2006 as a continuous improvement consult-ant. Though more on the business side of the organisation, he says he knows enough about the detail of the technology to know when he does not know enough.
Data to dashboardThe challenge, he says, is to knit together those who know how to grab and filter the data with those who know what to present to which user group.
“it is difficult to find people who can take the data all the way from the data warehouse to the dashboard,” says Griffiths.
He recommends the approach of getting stuck in to real data and proving the value fast.
How to streamline a BI
dashboard
What is a business
intelligence dashboard?
simon Griffiths’ team is now creating a new dashboard each month
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rather than three or more. New starters are used to buying stuff on Amazon and it is as easy as that. The dashboard knows who the manager is, and the manager can write notes within the dashboards, which is an aid to working more effectively with colleagues,” he says.
The next stage is mobile access, deliver-ing dashboards on tablets. “The business case for mobility remains a challenge,” says Griffiths. “it is almost an act of faith. i’ve not seen one killer application for that, but it would improve the user experience.” n
“Don’t sit back and do an involved cost- benefit analysis. You can do a proof of con-cept for free. it doesn’t have to be SAP. i’ve used QlikView too. The tools are much of a muchness,” he says.
His team is now creating one dashboard per month. The core idea is to provide a dashboard targeted for each audience inside the business. The dashboards are spread across 1,300 cost centres, with 600 manag-ers using them.
“we’ve got managers asking for them, and that is new,” says Griffiths.
managers can now see things like top 10 expenses, and can quickly see what is in policy or not. But the dashboards are not just for finance. Doctor Who is but one programme run as a project in an SAP environment, he says.
Griffiths says his team has good statistics on take-up, coupled with good anecdotal evidence of interest.
The dashboards are at the end of a long chain, stretching from a broadcast ware-house through Business objects to web intel-ligence, where the data is modelled.
Reduced training needsThe dashboards are proving their worth, he says, in cutting down on training.
“it’s more efficient to have one system,
“Don’t Do an involveD cost-benefit analysis when you can Do a proof of concept for free. it Doesn’t have to be sap. i’ve useD Qlikview too. the tools are much of a muchness”
case study
BBc
/AD
RiA
N R
oG
eRS
doctor Who is one bbC programme run as a project in an sap environment
Strategies for successful
dashboards
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the shard in london is one of many prestigious landmarks for which aggregate Industries has supplied various materials
interview
In-memory capabilities essential to Aggregate Industries’ deadlines
Aggregate indus-tries has many prestigious pro-
jects to its name, such as supplying various materi-
als for the construction of Blackfriars Bridge, the Shard and wembley Stadium, to name just a few.
But cio mike Gibbons says one of its weaknesses as a company has been a fail-ure to capitalise on the huge amount of data it generates.
“it’s the one thing we are not short of. But i don’t think we have necessarily had a good culture of seeing that as an asset,” he says.
it was not until the office of Fair Trading (oFT) launched an investigation into the industry, following a merger between two of the company’s competitors, that Aggregate industries realised the importance of having
a modern, usable tool to handle its reservoir of data.
“Suddenly we had to gather information on every shipment received across 360 sites over the past seven years,” says Gibbons.
The value of business intelligenceThe company had a business intelligence (Bi) legacy platform from iBm cognos, but the growing amount of information meant the data was becoming unmanageable.
“we had more than one version of the truth, so people were seeing different ver-sions of the data, which was resulting in conflict and mistrust,” he says.
But it had also recently bought some licences to trial Qlikview’s data analysis tool.
“we were finding that we couldn’t hit the deadlines, and the only way we could was with Qlikview. Rather than taking us six
Mike Gibbons, CIO of Aggregate Industries, talks to Kathleen Hall about handling a reservoir of data and why investment is more important than ever
Gathering retail
intelligence
QlikView’s business
intelligence platform
Sim
miS
imo
NS/
iSTo
cK
PHo
To
CW500 interview
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weeks with cognos, it was taking us two or three days.”
Qlikview’s in-memory capability allows a large amount of data to be handled in a manageable state, which then enables the information to be presented in the appropri-ate form, says Gibbons.
That experience helped the business to bet-ter value the importance of Bi, having previ-ously found it hard to make a case for further investment when it had an existing platform.
“And on top of the oFT review, we are now into a two-year general review of our sector by the competition commission,” says Gibbons.
Qlikview is intended to replace the cognos platform with a range of business apps. “we have already rolled out the financial perfor-mance app. The commercial app alone will probably retire 50% of the cognos platform,” he says.
The company is also pulling together its non-transactional enterprise resource plan-ning (eRP) services to create mash-ups of data. “we are also looking to deploy a management app encompassing health and safety and human resources.”
But the presence of Bi applications is creating some discussion as to who in the company should have access to these tools. “Some of the directors are saying, ‘i don’t want my team playing with this all day long’. But that’s obviously a management issue rather than a technology one,” says Gibbons.
Technology as an enablerGibbons’ iT team comprises 70 people, with the company operating a multi-sourced model. He says around 70% of the iT is managed in-house.
His team are also looking to improve other areas across the business through targeted investment in iT.
“we recognise that in the current eco-nomic climate we have to get better with our commercial performance. That means
an investment in electronic trading, it means invest-ment in cRm
(customer relationship management). we have deployed cRm, but not quite got it right. At the moment we are using oracle in
the cloud,” he says.“whenever we go through any software
renewal, we are always looking for the poten-tial for cloud. i had not been in our datacen-tre for a while, and when i went in recently, there was hardly anything there. we have replaced the storage area network and virtu-
alised the citrix farm. And that is spawning things like bring-your-own-device (BYoD). we’re starting to put together policies so people can bring their own tablets, laptops, mobile devices.”
internal cost efficiencies are another key driver. “we have a big project that is look-ing at the £270m spent on logistics and the time it takes to get products to market. So we are looking at taking 10% out of that using vehicle route optimisation, putting telemetry software on vehicles.
“But there is still a way to go. A lot of auto-mation needs to be done, and we want to roll out handheld terminals for the vehicles. when our product gets to site we need con-firmation with a proof of delivery note, and we are looking to make all of that electronic.
“There is probably more on now since the inception of the company. You can’t just cost-cut for the sake of it – you have to invest and move forward,” he says. n
› Forrester: rethink your CRM strategy› Jane Moran, global CIO, Thomson Reuters
› Gwyn Thomas, CIO of the Welsh Government
interview
“you can’t just cost cut for the sake of it – you have to invest anD move forwarD”
mike Gibbons, CIO, aggregate Industries
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editor’s comment
The real battle for reform of government IT gets underway now
Despite the scepticism that was aired about the government’s iT reform plans when the coalition came to power, it is worth reflecting on some of
the achievements that have been delivered this year.The new Gov.UK website was developed using agile
methodologies, open source software, and has pub-lished all its work. You simply cannot imagine any of that happening three years ago.
The G-cloud project is starting to show how small suppliers can compete with the oligopoly of large sys-tems integrators that dominate whitehall iT.
we now have an open standards policy that rides roughshod over the demands of proprietary software suppliers to protect their incumbencies.
Those initiatives alone promise to end many of the old criticisms of government iT. it would be wrong to under-estimate how far the iT reformers in whitehall have come to reach this point. But the real battles lie ahead.
it is all very well putting policies in place, but get-ting the big government departments to follow them is another matter. insiders say there is a growing backlash from departmental iT teams.
And now, a major iT leadership reorganisation at the cabinet office has provoked fears from reformers that the dissenting voices of those who want to slow change, or protect the status quo, are gaining influence.
The internal civil service politics is brewing up, and it’s no longer as clear where the real power and influence in driving iT reform lies. insiders fear the impending shake-up in the iT leadership organisation threatens to confuse and dilute ownership of the reforms.
Next year is going to be critical – can the policies put in place to enable change be turned into actual changes in iT strategy, delivery, purchasing and supplier rela-tions? The words of one insider put into context the need for the reformers to win the battle:
“i just try to keep reminding myself why i’m trying to help do this: the poor old taxpayer working their socks off in some boring job in the belief their taxes are going into something important like education or health - not bloated and poorly designed iT.” n
Bryan GlickEditor in chief
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opinion
As technology begins to dominate almost every walk of life, more must be done to help those who have difficulties accessing applications, says Nigel Lewis
Mind the digital gap: addressing the costs of technological exclusion
In an increasingly self-service economy, how are we ever going to bridge the gulf
between what we are expected to achieve and what we are capable of? There still exists a digital gap and it is vital to understand the ways in which digital exclusion might be remedied in the future.
For a long time, the debate around acces-sibility has focused on issues specific to the UK’s 12 million disabled people.
Despite the equality Act (2010) and previously the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), the law has not succeeded in pre-venting 95% of websites being inaccessible to disabled people who are using access technologies due to an impairment.
But testing a website after it has been built, or pursuing legal action to ensure all digital content includes alt tags for people who use a screen reader, is not succeeding in promot-ing a digitally inclusive environment.
As high-end technology begins to domi-nate shopping, entertainment, work and communication – as well as citizenship itself – age and disability are progressively barring people from full participation economically, socially and even politically.
That is why AbilityNet has launched Mind the Digital Gap – a strategy document that takes a fresh look at the obstacles faced by the huge numbers of people who simply struggle at the digital interface with tech-nologies that are badly designed and don’t meet their needs.
we urgently need to recognise the social and economic costs of this digital gap and identify clear actions to begin closing it.
while organisations such as AbilityNet, Go oN UK and its disability focused partner, Go oN Gold, are making great strides to close the gap between the computer-literate and
the technologically disenfran-chised, the gulf is more far-reach-ing than that.
Those who commission and build online services, operating systems, user interfaces and digital devices should be encour-aged to put a user-centric approach at the heart of the
design process. By incorporating a core set of inclusion technologies across all platforms, products could and would appeal to the widest range of consumers.
Access technologies – such as text to speech, speech to text and magnification – already exist. To deploy them as standard should not be a big task.
if building in functionality – such as task intelligence and the option to customise an interface to suit individual preference – can-not be easily integrated, the solution lies in platform extensibility, the ability to link to a smarter device that can offer these features.
Highlighting the business case for acces-sibility – a potential spending power of some £80bn – and the security of legal compliance may not be enough to win the hearts and minds of big business however, and we are urging government to offer tax incentives to accelerate the process. This would focus attention on the benefits and create a tipping point for organisations to implement new or updated solutions.
combined with other measures such as closer partnerships between business and other sectors and a commitment to embed inclusive design at all levels of the iT profes-sion, we are proposing a radically new, joined-up approach to digital inclusion through design for all. n Basic online
skills gap costs UK £63bn, says
Go ON UK
Martha Lane Fox
launches Go On UK
Nigel Lewis (pictured) is CEO of charity AbilityNet
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As applications have become more mobile-centric and smartphones, tablets and other portable devices have proliferated, iT administrators have looked for a means of performing maintenance on applications and the data they use remotely.
in response, mobile device management (mDm) developed to provide trouble-shooting, administration and security functions so that device configuration settings, patches and even a degree of data manipulation can be performed without the device itself being physically present.
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Enabling mobile device management
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Enterprise mobile device management
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Shore up your organisation’s fleet with the right MDMThere are many mobile device management products, but approaches vary. Adrian Bridgwater outlines how to choose the right one for your business
Buyer’s guideMobile device management part 3 of 3
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The bring your own device (BYoD) trend has of course increased the number of enterprise users that now have mobile access to corporate assets, so encryption and data lock-down has climbed up the iT department’s agenda. meanwhile, mDm’s core value proposition centres on the ability to implement a firm’s security, data protection, access control and acceptable-use policies via a reporting function.
So given that basic refresher course on mDm, it makes sense to find considerable growth in this sector, as major iT suppliers including microsoft, oracle and others seek to ensure they have a marketable offering. By virtue of its acquisition of Sybase back in 2010, we find SAP now redefining its mDm position through its Afaria product line.
A mobile gateway to SAP dataSAP effectively went shopping and got itself a store-bought mDm solution through buying Sybase, which directly boosted its own enterprise mobility strategy. There is no blame to be attached to this; Sybase itself bought Afaria from XcelleNet some years ago now. But as SAP now refines and extends Afaria, the firm is being careful to position mDm as a key facilitating tool to extend the use of its own database platforms, now encompassing the breadth of Hana, Sybase ASe, Sybase iQ and SQLAnywhere as they do.
SAP technology evangelist John Strano spoke at an SAP Sybase UK user group meeting in London in November 2012 to urge the professional developer audience in attendance to look to the importance of mDm when developing new applications for the mobile market.
“when working with this kind of technology you will need to run some level of mobile device management whether you choose SAP Afaria or one of its competitors. mDm will give you the ability to control administration, deployment and security. But really, i should say that mDm brings administration, deployment and security, security and security - it’s that important.”
How to do MDMwhile SAP is keen to validate the importance of mDm with Afaria, the firm explains that customers should consider exactly how they use the tools on offer and at what level. For example, a firm should not necessarily extend its mDm capabilities to support an addi-tional as yet unsupported operating system if the use of applications on that new platform will bring only limited additional business functionality.
Case studY: hillarYs blinds
blinds and curtains manufacturer hillarys blinds rolled out a custom android sales application to help its self-employed sales agents manage customer orders. sales agents use the app to visit customers’ homes and take orders for made-to-measure blinds and curtains.
the firm’s on-demand manufacturing system is based on sap erp Central to support 500,000 permutations of colour and fabric. as part of a byOd policy, sales agents buy their own samsung device, choose their own mobile contract and then download sap afaria mobile device management (mdm) software from Google play marketplace.
the app authenticates onto the hillarys blinds back-end system and then connects to the company’s internal app store, which downloads the sales-processing app to the smartphone.
“mDm brings aDministration, Deployment anD security, security anD security - it’s that important”john strano, sap
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The product has been built to enable mobile manage-ment regardless of bandwidth available thanks to an optimisation engine. Applications managed with Afaria have continuous, consistent availability as the manage-ment activity itself happens in the background, leaving the user undisturbed.
As well as the more expected functions of mDm – such as the ability to roll out mobile antivirus protec-tion or perform role-based user admin management – there are also options here to tune device telemetry functions and control asset management. Data and content is backed up and can be deleted if a device is lost or stolen.
Updates to Afaria in September of 2012 saw new support for ioS 6 key features and devices. New ioS 6 features include an “Authorised mode” for pre-loading applications so that iT administrators can remotely instruct a device to enable or disable a particular app, based on user policy compliance or permissions.
SAP mobile division head Sanjay Poonen has explained his company’s position of supporting any device from the iPhone 5 to Android and windows Phone 8 devices.
But does mDm go far enough?Analyst firm Yankee Group asserts that mDm solu-
tions do not necessarily offer businesses the full range of security, policy and compliance features they need to be truly able to manage mobile assets deployed in the corporate environment.
in a report entitled MDM Is Dead. Long Live EMM! the firm states: “Some managed mobile service suppliers are integrating capabilities onto unified platforms, shifting the focus to enterprise mobility management (emm). This will force a response from all players from across the entire enterprise mobile ecosystem.”
of course SAP is not alone in either the mDm or indeed the emm market and the firm faces competition from big and small players alike who are now addressing a delivery model based on software as a service (SaaS). Pushing out mDm via a cloud-based desktop inter-face is cortado, a firm that commands a user base of 3.5 million devices deployed in 15,000 organisations worldwide.
cortado ceo carsten mickeleit says that his firm’s speciality lies in the integration of new devices and technologies. “A solid mDm solution should be able to adapt to all devices and platforms, leverage resources and simultaneously integrate them into back-end systems like file drives, printers and rights management,” he said.
A growing MDM marketplaceSo SAP’s mDm offering is arguably blossoming right now. The firm’s opportunity to inte-grate Afaria with its backbone eRP services (although it prefers the term “systems of record”) is extensive. while smaller, possibly more nimble contenders will also now most certainly come forward, the expansive R&D departments of oracle and microsoft have been hard at work to produce offerings in this area.
oracle tends to place its mDm under a mobile enterprise Application Platform (meAP)
“a soliD mDm solution shoulD be able to aDapt to all Devices anD platforms, leverage resources anD simultaneously integrate them into backenD systems like file Drives, printers anD rights management”carsten mickeleit,
cortaDo
› Future-proofing mobile device management› Four approaches to mobile device protection
› Guide to mobile device management software
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heading when it explains its “write once, then deploy to multiple mobile plat-forms and channels” messages. The oracle meAP offering itself is not perhaps as extensively documented as those of its competitors from an iT administrator’s point of view. The oracle meAP offering is more firmly positioned towards software applica-tion developers as a platform for future programming support.
microsoft by contrast is, if any-thing, somewhat more open to a mobile device management landscape that could be quite fragmented. The
firm’s open message is that most exist-ing mDm tools will integrate with its System center offering, but that System center 2012 configuration manager exists in its own right to provide tools to help manage mobile devices in an organisation.
According to microsoft, System center 2012 is the only unified management platform where you can manage multiple hypervisors, physical resources and applications in a single offering. The firm asserts that its competitors offer only “multiple fragmented point solutions” in comparison.
in this product set, microsoft offers System center 2012 configuration manager and System center 2012 endpoint Protection. These tools exist to provide a means of managing mobile client computing environ-ments on the same infrastructure that exists to protect physical and virtual resources.
without starting a completely new stream of discus-sion, it is worth noting that some analyst firms will use the term “client management tools” to discuss mDm management software. Gartner’s definition is as follows, “client management tools manage configurations and support system administration tasks for client devices. They are used by desktop support organisations to automate system administration and support functions that would otherwise be done manually. windows Pcs
are the primary target of management, but organisations are looking to use these products to manage macs and mobile devices as well.”
Positively disrupting future MDMLooking ahead, cloud-based delivery of mDm will certainly
be a key element of enterprise mobility and firms such as coSoSys with its endpoint Protector product for ioS and Android plus codeproof Technologies with its mobile Security & cloud mDm managed service to businesses could shake up the bigger players and disrupt their total platform integration plans.
if indeed this is a disruption, it will arguably be a comparatively “positive disruption” as enterprise mDm now adapts to SaaS delivery models. However we choose to define and label it, the future is mobile, the future is cloud and the future needs to be managed. n
› Best practices for mobile device management› Traditional vs. cloud backup for mobility
› Mobile device management checklist
“client management tools manage configurations anD support system aDministration tasks for client Devices”gartner
buyer’s Guide
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Financial services
Despite a stagnating economy and the resource-draining process of adhering to thousands of pages of regulations, UK banks are investing time and money on mobile and internet technologies to improve customer services.
Banks in the UK have a long way to go to match the mobile banking experiences of consumers in Asia and the US, but next year will see them begin their journeys.
However, financial services companies need a strong business case to spend money on iT. Technology budgets are drawn into the firing line when economic conditions take a turn for the worse, as they did in 2008. Banks have cut thousands of iT staff since then and assets are being sweated. citigroup’s swingeing cuts – where thousands of iT workers were shown the door – is but one recent example.
Then there are regulations to adhere to, which takes up time and capital. There are reams of regulations produced on a frequent basis and meeting them usually requires significant iT changes. For example, banks are currently wrestling with a rule created by the Banking commission that will guarantee consumers can change bank accounts in seven days. Banks will need to link their systems to a centralised database to make this possible.
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Mobile banking innovation stimulates banks’ IT spendingEuropean banks are racing to catch up with the mobile services available in the US but remain twitchy about over-extending budgets. Karl Flinders reports
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Mobile journeys in 2013But although banks are focusing on compliance and improving operational efficiency, they must meet customer demands and invest in services – such as the online and mobile chan-nels – as consumers increasingly demand these banking platforms.
This year will see banks in the UK step up their interest in upgrading technology, believes Daniel mayo, financial services analyst at ovum: “it has taken a long time for european banks to realise that mobile banking is important, compared to Asia and North America, where there is real innovation,” he says.
A recent study of 300 banks in 66 countries, carried out by iT supplier infosys and banking association efma, supports this view. it found 70% of respondents plan to increase their spending on innovation, with the mobile and online channels seen as the most important delivery channels to invest in. The research revealed that 93% of banks will offer mobile payment services and 89% plan to offer bespoke tablet banking applications to customers in the next three years.
So far UK banks that offer mobile banking functionality have tended to replicate online banking services, which themselves are quickly growing out of date. “mobile banking in europe is currently just a repetition of what you can do online but next year we will see a lot more from the european banks,” says mayo.
in contrast, consumers in the far east and US have richer mobile banking experiences, with personalised product offerings in retail or insurance, for example. They also offer services such as instant security warnings when unusual activity is detected in an account.
A good example of what banks can offer are value-added services, such as personalised location-based offers. The efma and infosys research predicts that, in three years, more than 76% of banks will focus on this area, up from just 8% today. Some 87% of the banks inter-viewed are focused on integration with social media; and 86% on interactive services such as web chat and video conferencing.
imagine your car speeding down the Autobahn at 100mph and your bank sends you an offer for car insurance on your mobile. Today it would appear a coincidence but in the future mobile banking services might do this.
mayo at ovum says the aim is to make mobile banking as easy as using Facebook, with a single sign-on for all services.
Investment essential to survivalAn example of a UK finance firm spending money on iT while most are tightening their belts is Nationwide. The building society realised it had to improve its iT if it was to survive after years of underinvestment. while the company is doing a total refresh – with SAP at the back and microsoft in the front office – it is also innovating around its channel offering, with mobile and online banking developments.
Nationwide launched a new online bank in october, replacing a 14-year-old in-house system with one developed with iBm. The new platform integrates with over 30 line-of-busi-ness applications and has taken almost three years to develop. Last month it released a mobile banking platform built on the internet bank.
Nationwide coo Tony Prestedge highlighted the importance of innovations around mobile and internet technologies when he told computer weekly that customer satisfaction was a critical measure of the building society’s success. He says Nationwide will innovate around its mobile and internet offerings to try and retain its identity.
“The customer experience is vital,” says Prestedge, adding that the experience of the technology is an essential part of that. Nationwide measures customer experience and the results influence strategy. “Since upgrading our technology we have seen an uptick in cus-tomer satisfaction,” he says.
This is just one example of what banks are doing to make delivery channels more efficient and user-friendly and meeting customer demands.
But there remains much to do.
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Missed opportunitiesRik Turner, another analyst in ovum’s financial services unit, says UK banks were slow to invest in mobile banking platforms because they just saw it as a cost with no benefit in driving business. He says some of the newer banks, such as Tesco Bank and metro Bank, have missed a trick by not differentiating through mobile and online banking offerings. Turner thinks this could have put them ahead of the big banks, which were struggling and proving unpopular with consumers.
“The new players that have broken into the market have not been aggressive enough,” says Turner. “There could have been a lot done two years ago to develop iPhone and iPad apps, for example.”
The big banks are tentatively improving mobile services. while they are not yet as fulsome as those in Asia, they are being opened up to more people. For instance HSBc recently made its online banking app for businesses available on Google’s Android mobile operating system (oS).
The Business Banking app was already available on Apple and BlackBerry devices. And Barclays Bank launched a mobile banking app, Pingit, that enables mobile phone users to make free payments to other UK mobile users directly by just using their phone number.
Big future for mobile bankingBut the business and customer benefits can go much further. with mobile banking comes greater interac-tion with customers and the opportunity to acquire a better understanding of them.
The increasing use of mobile and online banking services is opening banks’ eyes to the opportunity that big data could present. The use of online and mobile channels is providing banks with additional data. mobile platforms will give them petabytes of intelligence about customers which could be used to provide added value services to consumers.
mayo says big data has moved from something that people ask about to something that people are doing. “At the moment there is a realisation that big data is about your internal and external data and we are just starting to see the user cases emerging.”
At a presentation by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) at the ovum Banking Forum, RBS iT architect Benjamin Stopford described how banks need to open up more data and have it all
in one place to benefit, saying closed and siloed data makes the organisation opaque and unresponsive.
Stopford says banks have more choice in which technology suppliers they work with for big data projects rather than just the big database suppliers. But he adds: “The technology is not quite there yet but it is close.”
The UK banking industry suffered a downturn that had it on its knees. But now the banks are trying to regain the consumer confidence they enjoyed before the crash. customers today want to bank while they sit on a train via their mobile device and they are interested in being made appropriate offers. Luckily for banks in the UK, new players in the market were cautious and failed to get a head start in mobile banking, unlike banks in Asia and the US. But the big banks have the opportunity to invest now. The business case is more proven, new opportuni-ties such as big data are better understood and now 4G is here. n
“at the moment there is a realisation that big Data is about your internal anD external Data anD we are just starting to see the user cases emerging”Daniel mayo, ovum
› Mobile banking strategies to maximise income› Nationwide completes mobile banking
› Realising instant-on mobile banking
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Amazon is in the volume business and, unlike most of the iT world, so is its cloud business, Amazon web Services (AwS).
According to Amazon’s founder and ceo, Jeff Bezos, traditional providers such as HP, iBm and oracle operate on a 60-70% margin. A high-margin business is
not the right one for AwS, he says.There is no incentive to be efficient for
businesses operating on high margins because they would make profits anyway, Bezos told delegates last month at the company’s first AwS user conference, AwS re: invent.
“operating a low-margin business is harder,” he says.
Bezos also said the AwS business model is very similar to the retailer’s Kindle busi-ness model – where the money is not made when the device is sold, but when people use it and keep buying services for it.
The gold standard in public cloudAwS was launched as recently as 2006 and it is estimated that the cloud division will gen-erate about $1.5bn in revenue in 2012, according to a Baird analyst report.
“it is just six years old and has more than 50% of the public cloud market. it is the
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Are cloud backups
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Gold standard of the cloud?Amazon Web Services is the benchmark for cloud in the enterprise but can it handle the challenge of federated cloud services? Archana Venkatraman reports
“aws is the golD stanDarD in clouD. it is what everyone wants to benchmark against”william fellows, 451 group
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rising tide that is floating all other cloud boats” says william Fellows, principal analyst at 451 Group.
The company’s public cloud uptake has surprised even its founder. in his keynote speech, Bezos said that he is surprised by its reach into not just the enterprise market, but also the government and higher education segments.
Among its enterprise customers are its own retail division – Amazon – as well as Nasa, the Guardian, Nasdaq, Thomson Reuters, Netflix, orange Digital, Lamborghini, the US state of washington, Reed elsevier and Spotify. These enterprises run mission-critical and data-intensive applications on the public cloud.
According to a Nasa spokesman, the underlying AwS infrastructure was critical in the success of the landing of curiosity Rover on mars, in August 2012. The landing was watched by millions and Nasa was able to stream the landing live and devote huge compute resources to support large volumes of data generated only because of the agile public cloud system.
“AwS is the gold standard in cloud. it is what everyone wants to benchmark against,” Fellows adds. The 451 Group draws an analogy with the cola market and compares AwS to coca-cola. “There is no Pepsi in the market yet, but some credible yet smaller brands of cola are emerging in the market,” he says.
AwS’s cost and scalability prospects are so promising that some iT teams are looking for ways to convince traditional business stakeholders to adopt the public cloud.
“we have tried to make our internal datacentre unattractive so that our organisation
what maKes aws tiCK
among the highlights of aWs re: Invent were the 25% price cut for amazon simple storage service (s3) and the launch of new cloud services – such as the low-cost data warehouse service called redshift and the big data analytics service called data pipeline. aWs also launched two new instances designed for analytics – cluster high memory eC2 instance and high storage eC2 instance.
data pipeline is the workflow services with which users can create a variety of reasonably straightforward data processing workflows, says rich miller, chief executive of telematica, a technology consultancy company in the us.
“While it won’t be the tool of choice for the expert dba, it will be appropriate for the work-group user that signs up to use aWs rather than the corporate It resource. Over time, this will become more sophisticated,” says miller.
users at the re: Invent conference said they use aWs cloud services because it offers high scalability at low costs improving their businesses’ time-to-market.
“We are a medium-sized enterprise. aWs has allowed us to have the same uptime and speed to market that large enterprises have with their own infrastructure,” says fred nelson, president of accountable Internet systems. “ability to offer extremely low costs and high-availability to all its customers is what makes aWs tick,” he says.
but it is not just small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) that are reaping the benefits of the public cloud. nasdaq’s global head of access services, ted myerson says nasdaq has built its own secure community cloud service for its users including brokers, regulators, and financial services companies on aWs technology. Its community cloud – finqloud – combines aWs’s secure, flexible, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure with nasdaq ‘s experience in providing advisory services.
“We thought of building our cloud internally but when we assessed the scalability and cost savings of s3, it was a no-brainer,” he says.
myerson was very pleased with the latest s3 price cuts, too. “aWs listens to us and that makes us feel confident about using its services,” he says.
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adopts more cloud-based services,” said Sean Perry, cio of recruitment company, Robert Half international.
AwS also provides a hybrid cloud set-up for public sector organisations that are stuck with legacy infrastructure and a long-term hardware contract.
“we are not happy with our existing iT service provider, but are continuing to work with them,” says Yan cerf, the systems architect at the Federal Authorities of the Swiss confederation. Public sector iT contracts in Switzerland tend to run long-term. it now uses a hybrid cloud based on AwS.
“we have now started using the cloud side of our infrastructure for all important applica-tions and databases, including road and highway management applications,” says cerf.
Aggressive pushAwS is five years ahead of competition such as Azure, according to some experts.
“AwS thinks from a software point of view, while most of the traditional iT suppli-ers think from a system administration point of view,” says mehrdad Piroozram, an iT analyst and technology start-up investor.
The company also understands volume business, thanks to its success in online retail. “AwS is focused on cannibalising the entire iT enterprise with its disruptive busi-ness model,” says Piroozram.
Amazon’s strategy of aggressive price cuts and launching services in new seg-ments, such as data warehousing, is its big push to grab further market-share.
“Redshift [the AwS data warehouse] has the potential to kill off existing business intel-ligence (Bi) providers with its appealing cost, if they follow the same strategy of high vol-ume/low margin in the data warehousing space,” says Piroozram.
The future of cloudHow AwS addresses the issues of contractual responsibility and liability of data steward-ship, and similarly how it brings clarity on the contractual responsibilities of AwS and its enterprise customers regarding the use of multi-tenant resources, will determine its success in the future.
“when these issues are addressed to the satisfaction of compliance auditors, the resulting explosion of cloud usage in hybrid environments by enterprise customers will definitely put the past few years’ growth to shame,” says Rich miller, chief executive of Telematica.
michael Barnes, research director at Forrester believes more businesses will adopt AwS if it improves documenta-tion, makes its billing transparent and offers reference archi-tecture for a variety of scenarios.
while Amazon has helped make the cloud more main-stream without a doubt, the future of cloud computing has
to move beyond monolithic providers. Ditlev Bredahl, the chief executive and co-founder of onApp, a cloud-based service provider, thinks the future of cloud computing is federated cloud services – which could make AwS redundant.
A federated model is one where cloud providers come together in a global market, and combine their own specialities with infrastructure, technology and expertise from that mar-ket to create innovative services for their customers. But currently, existing cloud infrastruc-ture lacks portability, interoperability and is not federated. n
› Enterprise Cloud Security School› Salesforce launches Cloud BI tool
› AWS re:Invent to highlight security issues
“aws is focuseD on cannibalising the entire it enterprise with its Disruptive business moDel”mehrDaD piroozram,
it analyst
computerweekly.com 18-24 December 2012 23
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downtime
Life harder for primary school parentswhile dropping kids off at school this week, one Downtimer was horrified to see the clever tricks that parents are using to make their kids popular. if you sign into the school portal you can see who your child’s classmates are.
Parents are using this to make sure their child gives a card to every child in the class. miss a popular kid and you are history. This Downtimer has had to re-think his strategy. it seemed great when his child claimed to hate more classmates than she liked, but now you have to give everyone a card.
Bah humbug!However iT can always fail and the lat-
est news is that the school portal is down. So it’s a level giving field, again. n
Holy tweet, Pope!watch out Justin Bieber and Stephen Fry, there is a new Twitter account in town and this guy could use divine intervention to get his follower count to heavenly heights.
in case the puns haven’t given it away yet, this week saw Pope Benedict XVi join the Twittersphere and begin sending the message of the catholic church straight to your stream. whoever said the church wasn’t modernising?
in just 24 hours, he has already tweeted seven times, and is sticking to a question-and-answer format, with pithy openers like: “How can faith in Jesus be lived in a world without hope?”
we await the pictures of cats in cardinal outfits.
down the hobbit hole
downtime shall reserve full judgement on peter Jackson’s speeded up (48 frames per second!) film version of our ill-remembered tale of bilbo baggins and his escapades until it has been properly viewed in the picture house.
a neat trick to have conjured three films out of one rather slender, if fondly remembered, childhood book. happy days! Treasure Island, Swallows and Amazons, The Hobbit...
and, of course, Bored of the Rings - quite the most amusing parody of prof tolkien’s magnum opus. Will Age of Hobbits, the film parody of Jrr’s story of a little loved hobbit’s adventure beyond the stultifying, bigoted, parochial back-water of the shire with dwarves, hit those heights? again, downtime will have to reserve judge-ment, given the restraining order slapped on it by a federal judge in the us.
at least Jackson’s film opens, downtime understands, with some grand explosions rather than the lame: ‘In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit’. It picks up after that, admittedly, espe-cially the sylvan scene with the elves. Or is that something else ...?
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