organizations spend big bucks on enterprise social ... · pdf filebuy enterprise social...

T H E P U L S E O F C A N A D A ' S I C T C O M M U N I T Y

V O L U M E 2 9 , N U M B E R 3 I A P R I L 2 0 1 3I T W O R L D C A N A D A . C O M

CHROMEBOOKSTHREE LIGHTAND INEXPENSIVE UNITS FOR THE ROAD

Organizations spend big bucks on enterprise social networking tools that promise better collaboration.

So why are many staffers resisting?

ANTI-SOCIA

L?

©2013. All rights reserved. Acer America Corporation. Information and prices are subject to change without notice. Acer and ICONIA Tab are registered trademarks of Acer Inc. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Explore the entire Acer commercial line at

AcerKnowsBusiness.ca

You know effi ciency.As your business expands, every single part needs

to work seamlessly—and you need the technology

to manage it all. Acer ICONIA W7 Series tablets let

everyone stay connected in a scalable network you

can centrally manage. They’re part of our portfolio

of high-performance commercial-grade systems.

Acer knows business.

Acer recommends Windows 8 Pro.

Acer_AKB_Q1_CmptngCnda_Efficiency_F.indd 1 3/1/13 12:14 PM

ITWorldCanada.com I APRIL 2013 I 3

AGENDAO P I N I O N S A N D C O M M E N T A R Y

SUBSCRIBE

Tooling up for the social enterprise

As we went to press international systems integrator and cloud provider Dimension Data re-

leased a global study of unified com-munications and collaboration among large organizations.

Of the 1,320 IT decision makers inter-viewed, 42 were from Canada. Not a big number, but some of the results relates to this month’s feature on social enter-prise networking tools, which you’ll find on page 22.

Fifty per cent of Canadian respon-dents said their organization has social software like Yammer or WebEx So-cial. That’s in line with what I heard from industry analysts, that a large number of firms at least have these tools available for staff. Another 24 per cent of respondents said they expect to have these tools added within the next two years.

Interestingly, for all the marketing hoopla around these tools, more than a quarter (26 per cent) of respondents said their organization has no plans to buy enterprise social networking tools.

There could be several reasons, but one might be that they are hearing I

what I learned: Staff in a large number of firms aren’t using these tools.

It’s not that they aren’t useful. London, Ont.,-based Info-Tech Research argues that social collaboration can improve knowledge sharing and productivity. They can be great for cutting down travel and long distance calls, too. But, it adds, IT departments and business must work together to match collabora-tion patterns with different tools.

Unfortunately, too many compa-nies think ‘Everyone uses Facebook and Twitter. We’ll just buy some tools and let ‘em go!” It doesn’t work with ERP, it doesn’t work with CRM and it doesn’t work with social enterprise software either.

Just as with other major – and some-times minor – new pieces of technol-ogy, new social tools need training periods, evangelists and management support.

And don’t forget that internal experi-ence with social tools allows staff to become more familiar with the advan-tages of leveraging them with custom-ers. With the right preparation, these tools can be an advantage for most organizations.

We’d like to hear about your organi-zation’s experience with these tools.

Howard [email protected]

4 I APRIL 2013 I ITWorldCanada.com



CONTENT CLOUD: APRIL 2013It's our new take on the traditional table of contents. Follow the tag reference to the indicated page. In our electronic version, simply touch or click the tag to be transported to the story.

CRMLTEPAGE

18

cloudPAGE

8

BrocadePAGE

18

CISCOPAGE

14

SaaS PAGE

12 SDNPAGE

19

PAGE

10

Bla

ckB

erry

PAGE

18

SpywarePAGE

10

CromebooksPAGE

27

eHealth

eReader

PAGE

17

PAGE

26

SUBSCRIBE WEBSITE AUDIOVIDEO SLIDESHOW

SLIDESHOW

PROBLEMS VIEWING THIS POLL? CLICK HERE

Recently a huge distributed denial of service attack

on a spam exposer ended up disrupting Internet

service of a large number of organizations. Here’s a look at what happened, and what your organization can do to

stop these attacks.


GRAPHIC CONTENT

Vulnerable WindowsKaspersky Labs recently poured through reams of data

collected in 2012 from users of its endpoint software to get a picture of weaknesses on Windows-based PCs. This graphic

presentation shows what it found: Lots of people aren't updating their applications

Cloud computing and Microsoft’s built-from-the-cloud-up Windows Server 2012 platform can give Canada’s countless SMEs the performance boost needed to help them compete with larger players.

“Canada is a land of mid-market companies,” said Vinay Nair, senior product marketing ma-nager for Windows Server at Microsoft Canada. “There’s a clear perception that some features like robust storage, disaster recovery and virtua-lization capabilities are too expensive for them, but that has changed.”

Nair noted that Microsoft Windows Server 2012 has enterprise-grade capabilities “har-dened” into the OS, giving smaller businesses

some never-before-seen edges. As well as sto-rage and disaster recovery capabilities, Nair pointed to VPN-like capabilities, built-in security in the form of Dynamics Access Control and Identity Management, Hyper-V virtualization, and WAN optimization as some baked-in bene� ts of the OS, typically only available at great costs.

“Virtualization, in particular, is a major area of spend for many businesses from a server pers-pective. WAN optimization, like that found throu-gh Branchcache, extends mobility like SMEs haven’t been able to experience.”

He added, “The thing is, many small busines-ses will be investing in Windows Server 2012, but may still pay for highly-expensive point solutions. Why do that when many enterprise-grade appli-

cations are now available right out of the box, for use on commodity hardware? That’s the value proposition for SMEs.”

Through Windows Server 2012 Storage Spa-ces, for example, a business’s mobile workforce can access corporate documents or information without the need to login through a costly Virtual Private Network (VPN) tunnel.

Branchcache in Windows Server 2012 provi-des substantial performance, manageability, sca-lability, and availability improvements over past versions. Deeply integrated with the Windows � le server, this feature can cut bandwidth strains placed by mobile workers and branch of� ces. It reduces WAN traf� c, and related performance degradation, by storing often-accessed content in caches on computers at the local branch.

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 greatly ex-pands support for host processors and memory. It now includes support for up to 64 processors and 1 terabyte of memory for Hyper-V guests, a new VHDX virtual hard disk format with larger disk capacity of up to 64 terabytes, and additio-nal resilience.

The Hyper-V support in the new OS is a signi-� cant advantage for SMEs trying to economically shore up performance, according to Adis Tu-cakovic, vice-president of advanced infrastruc-ture at Microsoft partner Navantis Inc. He poin-ted speci� cally to the advantage of Microsoft’s licensing models.

“For the longest time, the business model for virtualization was driven by density. If you had 10 virtual machines on one box, the licence was greater than if you had four,” Tucakovic said. “With Microsoft’s ECI Datacenter licensing mo-del, that density is free.”

This allows SME’s to save money by conti-nuously consolidating hardware and reducing power costs, all while eking as much performan-ce as possible out of their existing equipment—

ultimately getting greater computing capacity without the cost. “We have clients now who run hundreds of virtual machines on two servers. A lot of organizations couldn’t afford that in the past, but with the advent of the cloud and the new platform it’s more cost-effective.”

The bene� t of managing all of this enterpri-se-grade functionality under Microsoft System Center 2012 also can’t be dismissed.

“If you think about it, from a mid-sized busi-ness perspective there are three components for having enterprise-grade performance. One is the hardware itself, and at the end of the day it’s still a computer, and its capabilities drive performan-ce,” Tucakovic noted.

“The second is the operating system, the Hyper-vising capabilities to maximize utilization of that hardware. And the third component is the management, and that’s where it’s an advantage to be able to manage the whole stack right from the application down to the hardware.”

Tucakovic admitted that many small- and mid-sized businesses remain burdened with outdated hardware, and need a way to make the most of it until they are next able to refresh, a point with which Nair agrees. Built on the same core tech-nologies that Microsoft uses for its own cloud services, like Bing and Azure, Nair noted that the platform is designed to scale alongside the SME adopter as they grow performance and business.

“From an SME perspective, Windows Server 2012 is a lot stronger than they expect, since they get a lot of things in the box that most people would be paying a lot of money for,” he stressed. “So as you grow you just turn on more and more features that are already there.”

ADVERT IS ING FEATURE ADVERT IS ING FEATURE

Enterprise-grade performance for mid-sized business


NEWSI N B R I E F

The articles you made happen are available in this month’s issue

[ READ THEM NOW ]

SPONSORED BY

PROBLEMS VIEWING THIS POLL? CLICK HERE

CANADA 9TH IN CLOUD REGULATIONS: INDUSTRY GROUPCanada ranks ninth among 24 nations whose laws and regula-tions encourage cloud computing, according to a software group.

That's up three plac-es since the The Soft-ware Alliance compiled its first scorecard a year ago.

“I don’t think (Cana-da’s) cybercrime laws are fully aligned with the Budapest Conven-tion, and they’re not as far reaching as some countries,” said Chris Hopfensperger, tech-nology policy counsel for the alliance.

“We would like to see a little more compre-hensive coverage in those areas.”

On the other hand the alliance recognizes that there has been “signifi-cant law reform in intel-lectual property” here recently.

Alliance mem-bers include Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., Adobe, IBM Corp., Autodesk and In-tel Corp. It lobbys for protection of intellectual prop-erty and including

anti-piracy laws.Canada is a signatory

to the Budapest Con-vention on Cybercrime, which came into force in 2004. However, the Web site of the Council of Europe’s treaty of-fice indicates Canada hasn’t ratified the document yet. The alli-ance argues that orga-nizations and individu-als won’t fully accept cloud computing until they are confident pri-vate information stored in the cloud won’t be used or disclosed by a service provider “unex-pected ways.”

The report also cred-ited Canada among the countries that score well in having privacy rules that don’t include “onerous registration requirements.”

According to a num-ber of industry experts Canadian organizations are cautious about using cloud providers if there’s any chance of personal data be-ing stored outside the

country. This is in part because of fears that Ameri-can officials could access data through the U.S. Patriot Act.

The scorecard ratings are based on a formula cre-

RELATED CONTENT

Keeping data here no

protection against US:

Lawyer

DOCKET # MSF CPT F27745

REGION None

LIVE: 7” x 10”COLOURS: 4C

Cyan

MAGENTA

YELLOW

BLACK

PRODUCTION:None

CREATIVE: None

ACCOUNT EXEC: None

STUDIO: Lino Scannapiego

PREV. USER:Lino Scannapiego

DATE INITIAL

TRIM: 8.125” x 10.875”CLIENT

BLEED: 8.375” x 11.25”CLIENT: None

JOB DESC.: Flexibility Mag Eng - Computer World/Computing Canada

FILE NAME: 27745_R0_CC_STB_Flexibility_April_8.125x10.875_E v0.indd

START DATE: 2/05/13

MOD. DATE: 3-26-2013 4:06 PM

MEDIA TYPE: None

INSERTION DATE: None

REVISION NUMBER: None

STUDIO

TO PRE-PRESS:

TO PUB:

PRODUCTION

CREATIVE

WRITER

PROOFREADER

ACCOUNT

FONT DISCLAIMER: The fonts and related font software included with the attached electronic mechanical are owned (“Y&R Proprietary Fonts”) and/or licensed (“Y&R Licensed Fonts”) by The Young & Rubicam Group of Companies ULC. They are provided to you as part of our job order for your services, and are to be used only for the execution and the completion of this job order. You are authorized to use the Y&R Proprietary Fonts in the execution of the job order provided that any and all copies of the Y&R Proprietary Fonts shall be deleted from your systems and destroyed upon completion of this job order. You warrant and represent that you have secured the necessary licenses for the use of Y&R Licensed Fonts in order to execute our job order and will abide by the terms thereof.

None

None

WINDOWS SERVER 2012 INCREASES YOUR ABILITY TO

DEPLOY APPLICATIONS ANYWHERE.

Bring the exibility of cloud computing inside your datacenter with

Windows Server 2012, the only server built from the cloud up. It lets

you build and deploy applications that live on-premises or in the cloud.

microsoft.ca/windowsserver

27745_R0_CC_STB_Flexibility_April_8.125x10.875_E v0.indd 1 3/26/13 4:06 PM


NEWSI N B R I E F

ated by the alliance.Japan still tops the

scorecard. Australia remains in second place, while the U.S. edged into third this year, pushing Germany into fourth place. Can-ada totaled 75.8 points compared to Japan’s 84.1 in the alliance’s ratings.

— Howard Solomon

MICROSOFT ADDS HEFT TO CRMMicrosoft Corp. is mak-ing it sure that it’s not going to play second fiddle to competitors in providing customer relationship manage-ment solutions.

The company an-nounced at its Conver-gence conference for the Dynamics enter-prise resource man-agement family that it has bought Swiss-based Netbreeze Gmbh, a provider of social media analytics.

NetBreeze analyzes Twitter, Facebook, millions of blogs and hundreds of thousands of message boards so chief marketing of-ficers can track mar-keting campaigns and product image.

NetBreeze will even-tually be integrated into Dynamics CRM, Micro-

soft’s on-premise or cloud suite for connect-ing with customers.

The acquisition fol-lows on December’s deal to buy Marketing-Point Software, which helps chief market-ing officers track the success of marketing campaigns.

Microsoft will soon offer a connector from MarketingPoint to Dynamics CRM cus-tomers in the U.S. In a post-conference inter-view, Richardo Wagner, Microsoft Canada’s CRM lead, said Canada will be among the first countries added by the end of the year.

Finally, Microsoft said that when Dynam-ics CRM is updated later this year it will include a mobile ap-plication for Surface tablets and Windows Phone 8, BlackBerry, Apple iPad and iPhone and Android platforms.

“The key thing is Mi-crosoft is going after the marketing budget” of organizations, said Rob Helm, lead analyst at Direc-tions on Micro-soft, an industry analyst firm. “Microsoft rec-ognizes there is an opportunity there –triggered

by things like social networks and the continued growth of digital advertising --to really make marketing a centre for IT spend-ing and Microsoft’s own revenue growth.”

The acquisitions are needed for the com-pany to keep pace with competitors like Sales-force, Siebel CRM, Oracle and SAP AG.

The NetBreeze deal is “a very important piece on the social offer” for Microsoft, Wagner said. Dy-namics CRM already works within Outlook, Wagner said, and soon NetBreeze tools will be integrated with Microsoft Yammer, a social media platform used internally by enterprises. At that point Microsoft will be able to make an “end to end offer” to orga-nizations with a plat-form to attract, retain and grow customers, leveraging the infor-mation within CRM.

MarketingPoint helps automate marketing project man-agement, spend and budget management and campaign management.

best prospect

for Microsoft getting new customers, Helm said.

Also at the confer-ence Microsoft said Dynamics GP for accounting will be delivered in the cloud through partners hosted on Windows Azure in June.

It also expects its ERP solution for enter-prises, Dynamics AX, to be updated in the second half of 2013 with the mobile appli-cations as well as and capabilities such as warehouse manage-ment and transporta-tion management.

— Howard Solomon

TORONTO PROVIDER WON’T TOLERATE SPYWAREA Toronto Web hosting company has termi-nated the account of a customer that used its servers to run Internet surveillance software which is supposed to be sold only to law en-forcement agencies.

Michael Carr, execu-tive vice-president of SoftCom Inc., said the FinFisher software was found March 15 after the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab gave it an IP address

RELATED CONTENTWhy calling

back customers can work

NEWSI N B R I E F

so it could track the software.

Citizen Lab alleges a number of govern-ments around the world use FinFisher, made by a division of Gamma International GmbH, and its remote monitoring product, FinSpy, against their residents.

Last month Citizen Lab released a report tracking the software to servers in a number of countries, including SoftCom’s in Canada.

Carr said the ac-count was terminated because its agree-ment with customers clearly states that its servers cannot host

any sort of spyware. For privacy law rea-

sons he can’t divulge who had the account. Nor does SoftCom know how much, if any, data it pulled in. Carr can say the software was installed some-time in the last 12 months.

It’s still a mystery who installed the soft-ware and what their target was.

The owner of the account doesn’t matter, Carr said -- if, for example, it was a Canadian law en-forcement or in-telligence agency lawfully using

the software. The company policy clearly forbids “spyware or any related software that records a user’s activities without their permission and for-wards that information via the Internet.”

“We do not as a busi-ness want that type of activity on any our servers,” says Carr.

Carr said SoftCom staff were surprised to

hear about the claim that the software was on its servers. It only found out by reading a newspaper article on the Citizen Lab re-

port. Citizen Lab didn’t contact the provider before publishing its study.

Softcom has been in business for 15 years, leasing data centre space in Toronto and the U.S. It offers domain name regis-tration, email hosting under the Mail2Web.com brand, and virtu-al private server host-ing services. Carr said it has over 50,000 customers.

SoftCom’s chief executive officer is Turker Sokullu, who co-founded the com-pany along with chair-man Firat Eren.

— Howard Solomon

RELATED CONTENTWho’s using spy software on Toronto

servers?

CUSTOM INTERNET SOLUTIONS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

POWERFUL, FAST INTERNET CONNECTIONSRELIABLE, 24/7 MONITORING AND SUPPORTCUSTOM TAILORED INTERNET SERVICES

Ontario’s Premier Internet Service Provider

FOR THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF A PERFECT TAILORED FIT.

416 967 [email protected] US OUTFIT YOUR BUSINESS TODAY!


ANALYSIS

BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

Software as a service (SaaS) provider BlueSun Inc. has managed to drastically cut its IT costs by consolidating seveal

managed hosting contracts and handing over the hosting of its mission critical activities to BlackIron Data’s latest Tier III data centre.

A privately-owned Canadian company, Blue-Sun’s WealthServ flagship suite of SaaS ap-plications provides integrated back and front-end technology for financial and insurance companies such as Canadian Tire Financial Services, CIBC, TD Waterhouse and Transam-erica Life Canada.

“The core of our business is to provide an outsourced service to clients where we run the applications and house their data,” said Steven Wilson, COO and CFO of BlueSun.

Since 2004, BlueSun has installing servers and storage in a BlackIron data centre in Markham, just a few minutes north of Toronto, and a redundant Black-Iron site Ottawa. BlackIron is a sub-sidiary of Primus Telecommunications Canada.

However, when BlueSun acquired an-

other company in 2009 it inhertited another managed hosting relationship with a different data centre service provider, said Wilson.

Deciding which provider to keep depended on its ability to provide the security and service sought by BlueSun’s clients, said Simon Tomlin-son, CEO of BlueSun.

Advancements such as the widespread use of cloud technology also drove BlueSun to review its approach to outsoruced data centre services and their need for a more robust disaster recov-ery strategy.

BlueSun’s annual planning cycle began in 2012 at the same year Blackiron was finishing construction of its new Tier III certified data centre in Markham. As BlueSun’s service con-tract renewal scheduled for 2013 got nearer, the company decided to move all its hosted services with BlackIron.

Its new Markham data center is a multi-tenant facility with a 30,000 square feet raised flooring space capable of housing 1,000 server cabinets.

The building also employs a LEED- certi-fied, environmentally friendly cooling system which passed testing well beyond the average Tier III testing.

The move, according to Steven Wilson, COO and CFO of BlueSun, enabled his company to migrate from a legacy environment with clients supported on stand-alone dedicated servers, to a virtualized environment with a reduced num-ber of physical servers.

The transition and purchase of new hardware to install in the BlackIron data centre was the largest purchase BlueSun had ever made, ac-cording to Wilson. “The money we saved by moving to a single colocation solution represents a 60 per cent savings and amounts to hundreds

of thousands of dollars annually,” added. Tomlinson said another reason for

their decision to move with BlackIron was the service provider’s flexibility – BlackIron was willing to revise open up its existing contract and revise it with new terms that boosted BlueSun’s disas-ter recovery posture.

RELATED CONTENT

OnX exec talks on Canadian cloud trends

SaaS provider saves big with BlackIron Data

Dedicated Infrastructure For Your Business

Dedicated server MG 5

ProcessorIntel Core i3 2130 (SANDY BRIDGE)2 Cores (4 THREADS)3.4 GHz+ RAM8 GB DDR3Hard Drive2 x 1 TB SATA2RAID SOFT (0/1)Guaranteed Bandwidth100 Mbps5TB traffic/month

ProcessorIntel Xeon E5 1650 (SANDY BRIDGE-E)6 Cores (12 THREADS)3.2 GHz+ ( 3.8 GHZ TURBO BOOST)RAM64 GB DDR3 ECCHard Drive2x 300 GB SSDRAID SOFT (0/1)Guaranteed Bandwidth200 Mbps up to 1 GbpsUnlimited traffic

Dedicated server KS1

$39.00/month $249.00/month

free setup free setup

Least expensive to most expensiveLeast expensive to most expensiveLeast expensive to most expensive


ANALYSIS

At the annual Cisco Systems Inc. Editors Conference reporters were told there’s a $14-trillion opportunity for business BY DAVE WEBB

Let’s say you want to shop at Sean Curtis’s fictional CWI retail store.

A map on your mobile device indicates four nearby locations; a green pin marks the most promising consumer experience, with 10 cashiers open and eight specialists on the floor, according to data supplied in real time by the store.

Dwell time data from the mobile phone network indicates a three-minute checkout wait. And a city data source indicates 42 of 120 spaces in a nearby lot are available. Your mobile phone can now make a peer-to-peer connection with the parking kiosk and reserve a spot.

CWI is fictional, and Curtis is the senior manager of technical demonstrations with Cisco Systems Inc. But his demo at Cisco’s annual editors conference in San Jose showed how a number of available data, network and application resources combine to create what Cisco calls “the Internet of Everything.”

It’s where network-aware applications meet application-aware networks.

And it means new requirements for the net-work, according to Cisco chief technology and strategy officer Padmasree Warrior.

Given that the network has to handle, at one extreme, bandwidth-intensive real-time video, and at the other, continuous but tiny data streams from myriad sensors, actuators, RFID tags and devices, intelligence has to be distrib-uted around the network.

The network will also have to have a higher level of programmability as it becomes more applications-based than Web-based, she said.

She foresees a fewer number of layers in the network stack compared to the stack for the client-server model of fixed device locations, perhaps to three “uberlayers”: Application, plat-form and Infrastructure.

Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s president of development

and sales, said writing to the 700 application programming interfaces that access the 160 million lines of code in Cisco’s three operating systems will allow programmers to unlock the resources of the platform.

At the peak of the client-server era, about 200 million devices were attached to the Internet. The mobile explosion has brought us to about 10 billion. That number will reach 50 billion by 2020. The issues that the technology indus-try faced getting up to 10 billion connections will look “very, very minor” compared to those facing the integration of 50 billion connections, Lloyd said.

Cisco estimates there is $14.4 trillion worldwide that can be harvested from the Internet of Everything, including better asset utilization, improved employee pro-ductivity, supply chain and logistics and

improvements, According to Lloyd, based on opportunity

size, ecosystem characteristics and “inser-tion points” – for example, an auto plant will have as many as 50,000 IP-ready devices – the likely first verticals to take advantage will be manufacturing, public sector, energy and utilities, health care, finance and insur-

ance, transportation, and distribution.What does it mean to the IT department? For a

start, Lloyd said, technology spending is shifting from IT to the line of business.

“The Internet of Everything will be driven by business funding,” Lloyd said.

He also called out three “differentials” in the delivery of IT:• An experience differential, driven by the rising

user expectations of the mobile and BYOD lifestyle;

• A velocity differential, as cloud computing al-lows the delivery of applications anywhere and at any time, to any device;

• A data differential, as the network plays critical role in turning the deluge of data from devices and machine-to-machine transactions into us-able business intelligence.

‘Internet of everything’ is coming: Cisco

Cisco's Rob Lloyd says

there will be 50 billion IP devices by

2020

DOCKET # MSF ICE F38557

REGION None

LIVE: 7” x 10”COLOURS: 4C

Cyan

MAGENTA

YELLOW

BLACK

PRODUCTION:None

CREATIVE: Chris Tuckett

ACCOUNT EXEC: None

STUDIO: Lino Scannapiego

PREV. USER:Mathur, Anant

DATE INITIAL

TRIM: 8.125” x 10.875”CLIENT

BLEED: 8.375” x 11.25”CLIENT: None

JOB DESC.: Print Sustain - O365 Tom - CC

FILE NAME: 38557_CC_R0_Office365_Tom_FP4C_8.125x10.875.indd

START DATE: 03/21/13

MOD. DATE: 3-26-2013 4:38 PM

MEDIA TYPE: None

INSERTION DATE: None

REVISION NUMBER: None

STUDIO

TO PRE-PRESS:

TO PUB:

PRODUCTION

CREATIVE

WRITER

PROOFREADER

ACCOUNT

FONT DISCLAIMER: The fonts and related font software included with the attached electronic mechanical are owned (“Y&R Proprietary Fonts”) and/or licensed (“Y&R Licensed Fonts”) by The Young & Rubicam Group of Companies ULC. They are provided to you as part of our job order for your services, and are to be used only for the execution and the completion of this job order. You are authorized to use the Y&R Proprietary Fonts in the execution of the job order provided that any and all copies of the Y&R Proprietary Fonts shall be deleted from your systems and destroyed upon completion of this job order. You warrant and represent that you have secured the necessary licenses for the use of Y&R Licensed Fonts in order to execute our job order and will abide by the terms thereof.

None

None

Scan the tag to see more of what Office 365 can do.

Download the free scanner app at http://gettag.mobi

YOUR COMPLETE OFFICE IN THE CLOUD.

HD videoconferencing / Business-class emailSimplified IT management / Enterprise Social Anywhere access to documents / Full Office

Find out how Office 365 can change the way your teams work at Office365.ca

completely TomTHE BIG PITCH Get last-minute idea at gym, send out videoconference invite + Adjust PowerPoint with team in real time + Open doc on phone, practice presenting it in cab + Videoconference with the team from client’s of ce + Post congrats to team on company newsfeed

Functionality requires WiFi, internet connection or mobile data plan (fees may apply). HD-capable hardware required.

38557_CC_R0_Office365_Tom_FP4C_8.125x10.875.indd 1 3/26/13 4:38 PM

CAREER WATCH

Lazaridis to leave RIMBY HOWARD SOLOMONResearch In Motion co-found-er Mike Lazaridis is retiring as the company’s vice-chair. He is the last link to BlackBerry’s once glori-ous past when it dominated smart phone sales around the world. Now he’s turning his attention to Quantum Valley Invest-ments, trying to commercialize research in quantum computing with RIM co-founder Doug Fregin.

“With the launch of BlackBerry 10, I believe I have fulfilled my commit-ment to the board,” Lazaridis said in a statement the day the company’s latest quarterly results were released. CEO Thorsten Heins and his team “did an excellent job in completing BlackBerry 10. We have a great deal of which to be proud. I believe I am leaving the com-pany in good hands. I remain a huge fan of BlackBerry and, of course, wish the company and its people well.”

Speaking to financial analysts, Heins paid tribute to Lazaridis, saying he revolutionized the commu-nications indus-

try and is widely recognized as one of Canada’s greatest innovators. “Mike has played a pivotal role in the last 15 months in helping with the leadership transition and with the successful launch of Black-berry 10,” Heins said, adding he is grate-ful for the advice Lazaridis has given him since becoming CEO 15 months ago.

RIM will shortly change its name of-ficially to BlackBerry.

Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie were co-CEOs of RIM but were forced to cede their positions as sales slid and the company went into the red. Balsillie announced early in March he would be leaving the board.

In a 2004 interview with Comput-ing Canada, Lazaridis recalled passing up an opportunity to work on an ac-cess card for the International Space Station’s Canadarm to pursue wireless communications.

“It was a very difficult decision for Doug [Fregin] (a RIM co-founder) and me, because on the one hand you don’t pass up an opportunity to build part of a spacecraft — especially when you’re an engineer,” Lazaridis explained. “On the other hand, we had no idea how long it was going to be before any of this hap-pened and it’s not like it’s really a volume business. I mean, how many spaceships are going to launch?”


CAREER WATCH


BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

T he head of eHealth Ontario says the organization has learned three valuable lessons about IT deployment that will help

it deliver health records of every Ontarian in digital form by 2015.

Top among these lessons, according to CEO Greg Reed, is accepting that the organiza-tion can’t go it alone.

“We realized we had to determine which jobs were better done by the government and which one were best suited for the private sector,” Reed told Toronto Region Board of Trade.

Reed became chief of eHealth Ontario after its former CEO Sarah Kramer left office in 2009 amid reports of lavish over-spending and a scandal over untendered contracts worth $4.8 million. eHealth Ontario has been seen by critics as foun-dering on its mandate and considered a laggard in the electronic health record field among Cana-dian provinces.

A $46.2 million contract won by CGI Information Systems and Management Con-sultants Inc. to build an electronic diabetes registry for the agency was cancelled over delays.

Today, Reed said, 70 per cent of Ontarians have some form of elec-tronic medical record. About 90 per cent of exam results such as x-rays, mammogram and CT-scan results are in digital form and can be trans-mitted via the Internet.

The three lessons Reed learned are:

Don’t reinvent the wheel Ontario’s 160 hospitals as well as a large number of clinics and health centres already have their own form of digital health record systems.

“The problem is, these systems are isolated,” said Reed. “Our job is less about rebuilding a new system and more about connecting hospi-tals, physicians and clinicians.”

It’s not all government’s workA lot of private companies are better suited for

developing end user technology and services. “Our role is to set the standards and fund the programs to foster e-health,” said Reed.

Focus on early impact Projects that have an immediate impact on users are vital, according to Reed. By working closely with doctors and clinicians on the ground, eHealth Ontario is able to focus on what they need urgently, he said.

For instance, he said, It used to take two to three weeks for doctors to receive reports on procedures a patient has undergone or new

prescription or drug dosage the patient is taking.With two new registries, doctors are able to get

the information within an hour, and therefore see patients faster.

Provincial eHealth

agency has learned a lot,

says CEO Greg Reed

3 lessons learned by eHealth Ontario chief

TELECOM WATCH


Brocade adds new FC management tools

ROGERS’S LTE COVERS 44 MORE MARKETSBY NESTOR E. ARELLANOCellular carriers contin-ue to expand LTE cover-age across the country.

Rogers Communica-tions said last month its LTE service is about to be added to 44 more loca-tions across Canada.

Among the 44 LTE markets launching this spring are: Saint John, N.B.; Medicine Hat, Alta.; Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.; Guelph, Ont.; Mus-koka, Ont.; Collingwood, Ont.; and several cities in Quebec

“This means that Rogers LTE customers using a 2600-enabled device can do even more and have access to the fastest speeds available,” the company said.

Meanwhile Telus Corp. said its LTE service now is in Woodstock, Ont., and Saint John, N.B. af-ter having been added to St. John’s, Moncton, Charlottetown and Halifax.

Bell Mobility added five new markets in March, in-cluding Saint John, North Bay, Ont., Sa-guenay, Que., and Summer-side, PEI.

RELATED CONTENTCan Fibre Channel survive

Ethernet’s assault?

Update to Network Advi-sor has new monitoring and visualization capa-bilities to make Brocade fabrics more reliable. There’s also a new 96-port FC switch

BY HOWARD SOLOMON

Let’s face it: running a stor-age area network isn’t the glory side of IT. But with

a few tools it can be easier.Brocade Communications

Systems Inc. hopes it has done that with the latest release of Brocade Network Advisor and its Fabric OS operating system for Fibre Chan-nel switches.

The company says that Network Advisor 12.0 now has new moni-toring and visualization capabilities to make Brocade fabrics more reliable and solving problems quicker.

At the same time the compa-ny also released a new 96-port 2U-sized switch.

The new are dashboard views let administrators view the health of the network and drill down into details.

Monitoring and Alerting Pol-icy Suite is a set of tools that lets administrators set thresh-old policies for Brocade net-work elements, while another set of tools called Flow Vision, show data is flowing through the network. Flow Vision also lets managers generate traffic

to stress test the fabric. Together Brocade dubs these

capabilities FabricVision.“What used to be a very labor-

intensive process of setting up thresholds and monitors in a fabric is very now easy,” Scott Shimomura, Brocade’s director of product marketing, said in an interview.

Brocade also said that it is giving its FC line a new name: Gen 5 Fibre Channel encom-passes the current four and eight slot directors, fixed prot switches from 24 to 96 ports,

embedded switches for IBM and Dell blade serv-ers, and a line of adapter cards for rack servers and mezzanine cards for IBM chassis switches

Until now the products have been known by their network speeds (ie: the 16 GBps line).

Brocade is now working on Gen 6 switches, which will operate at 32 GBps.

The newest switch is the 96-port 6520, aimed at or larger implementations that need an end of row switch, or those with smaller data centres looking for a core FC switch.

The new switch is available now through Brocade channel partners as well as through Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard and NetApp. Later this year it will be carried by other OEM partners including Dell, EMC and HDS.

RELATED CONTENT

Ottawa tries to improve

wireless competition


TELECOM WATCH

BY HOWARD SOLOMON

T he fledgling software-defined net-working movement has always car-ried the possibility that it could dam-

age large switch manufacturers through its approach of centrally managing net-works on volume switches and servers.

Big Switch Networks may make that threat possible with the release of what it calls an open source thin-switching soft-ware platform for white-box switches.

White box switches using merchant silicon — that is, non-proprietary chips for third party equipment makers — aren’t new: They are the networking equivalent of white box servers.

But Big Switch says its upcoming Switch Light platform enables the OpenFlow pro-tocol to run on top of Linux-powered white box switches that use merchant silicon, or as a virtual switch in environments that use Linux’s KVM hypervisor.

Switch Light is based on the open source Indigo Project, part of the open source community’s SDN Project Floodlight.

Big Switch’s first deal is with chip maker Broadcom Corp — whose silicon is used in switches made by Quanta and Accton Tech-nology Corp, — according to Jason Matlof, Big Switch’s vice-president of marketing.

“Switch Light is a catalyst to drive best in class OpenFlow implementations in the industry.” Matlof said.

To be released in the second half of the year, Switch Light would give Big Switch a foot in each of the three-level stack it be-lieves a software defined network (SDN) needs: Switch Light in the data plane, the Big Network Controller in the control plane and its Big Virtual Switch and Big Tap — a network monitor — in the applications layer.

Switch Light will be free to commercial uses if they buy Big Network Controller,

Big Virtual Switch or Big Tap.Industry analyst Zeus Kerravala of ZK

Research said the announcement will help the adoption of OpenFlow-based software defined networks because it makes more switches available to those interested in that approach. But, he added, it will likely be service and hosting providers — who he said have more inter-est in infrastructure running on commod-ity boxes — that will be interested most.

Enterprises will likely want the comfort of an SDN approach from their traditional infrastructure suppliers, he said, compa-nies like Cisco System, Juniper Networks and others.

In practice, Matlof said, an organization wanting to use a physical switch in an SDN network to take advantage of Switch Light would buy a white box switch that offers the capability, plug it into the network and point it at a site to update the firm ware. Then the Big Network Controller would be centrally configured and provisioned.

Extreme Network said it will support Switch Light.on its hybrid switch line.

While initially Switch Light will be avail-able for physical switches with Broadcom chips and for KVM hypervisors, Big Switch Networks hopes to add other platforms.

Thin switch coming for software defined networks

RELATED CONTENTBig Switch

touts commercial SDN switch

Economics and the user experience are entwined, but as many IT budgets stall, businesses can look to the cloud to maintain or even improve user experience.

“For many businesses, IT budgets are flat, but user expectations are not,” said Adis Tucako-vic, vice-president of advanced infrastructure at Microsoft partner Navantis Inc. “It’s like with a house. When you walk in, you simply expect the lights to work. You walk into an office and you expect things like email to work.”

Tucakovic pointed to email as a once-game-changing, now-commodity, application ripe for migration to cloud computing to cut costs and to maintain expected quality levels, while freeing

up IT to instead look to new ways to transform business.

“Applications like email that were leading edge 10 to 15 years ago have become a staple of busi-ness, and so their perceived value has dropped, but at the same time must be supported, and at the same time there’s demand is to innovate and find new ways to bring value.

“The only way to do that in a cost-effective way is through the economics of cloud.”

Moving commodity-type applications to the cloud not only frees up IT resources locked into them, it provides an opportunity to be even more focused on the end user experience. Tucakovic said often the migration to cloud will in itself im-prove the experience.

For example, Tucakovic said he sees busines-

ses still spending a great deal on maintaining old, often-limited systems, when by a side-by-side comparison should easily point them to cloud. “Why have employees on a 200 to 300 MB email inbox, when 25 GB cloud solution is available and cheaper?” he asked rhetorically. Of course taking that plunge requires vision from the CIO and business leaders, and can sometimes use the help of a firm like Navantis who has the expe-rience.

Whether turning to public, private or hybrid varieties, cloud solutions afford the agility needed to keep up with user demand that puts strain on traditional infrastructures and user patience, said Vinay Nair, senior product marketing manager for Windows Server at Microsoft Canada. “After all, we know users don’t have a lot of context around what’s going on behind the scenes. If an application they’re accessing hits the limits of the servers’ computing power, all they see is service degradation.”

When it comes to improving that user expe-rience, Nair noted that businesses need to em-brace cloud computing to scale past the limits of the 1:1 app-to-server ratio. This is particularly true, he added, when investigating social appli-cations, which can be more viral and “sticky.”

In fact, without the flexibility that comes from running those social applications on the cloud, Nair said, many Canadian businesses have been reluctant to embrace them. “In the past we weren’t able to be prepared for the uptake that embedding social into apps might bring, so we didn’t want to open that door,” Nair said. “Now, with cloud, the ability to scale is almost limitless and businesses can be bold with what they offer their users.”

Nair also pointed out the increase in browser-based cloud applications is a further method of meeting and exceeding user expectations. For starters, it opens up the device flexibility BYOD-oriented users are demanding. Also, while the browser was once considered unsophisticated,

Nair noted, this is far from the case with today’s users and applications.

“That client piece that had to happen in the past was limiting, but now through browser-based apps users can have the same experience delivered to their phone as their laptop,” he noted. “And from a performance perspective, whether using Office on their PC or Office 365, they will experience no difference in any of the common functions.”

Tucakovic suggested there are three often-opposing forces influencing the user experience and transition to cloud computing: IT consu-merization, IT department fears and business unit demands. While tech-savvy users, already familiar with cloud-based consumer services like Dropbox, expect that same level of convenience from their business apps, many IT departments fear losing control, and business units seek to circumvent IT through cloud services.

“It’s a very interesting dynamic,” Tucakovic said. “For example, Salesforce.com has made a business of telling people to go around IT.”

He looks back to days past when employees and users used to be excited about the techno-logies IT introduced, but instead admits today many users are instead annoyed when the ca-pabilities of the office don’t mirror their personal computing lives.

“IT and business need to make a strategic commitment and recognize that, for some appli-cations, cloud is the way of moving forward and meeting those user demands,” he said. “Whether you do it yourself or engage a professional servi-ces firm, you need to be thinking about investing in future technologies, not maintaining legacy ones, and look to leverage cloud to do that.”

ADVERT IS ING FEATURE ADVERT IS ING FEATURE

Improving user experience during flat IT budgets

FEATURE


FEATURE

ANTI-SOCIAL?Organizations spend big bucks on enterprise social networking tools that promise better collaboration. So why are many staffers indifferent?BY HOWARD SOLOMON


here are perks to working in foreign countries. Staying up – or waking up — at odd hours of the night for a business meeting isn’t one of them.

But that’s what overseas staff faced at Winni-peg-based Duha Group, a company that makes color marking tools like paint chips and fan-decks for paint companies around the world.

With sales staff in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Australia, Singapore and China, regular audio conference meetings and email were essential for everyone to keep on top of things.

But it was a strain.“One of the things we try to do is exchange

best practices and ideas across the sales teams,” says Douglass Crabb, Duha’s global director of sales and marketing. But “trying to round people up when you have such a global spread, even for a conference call, someone’s getting up at an awkward hour. Not matter what you do, you just can’t win.”

It wasn’t just meetings. Internal sales staff also deal with customers on projects

– which usually extend over sev-eral months – who regularly query

where their orders are.Because staff use Salesforce.com, he turned to its en-

terprise networking tool called Chatter. It lets users set up project folders, share information (either internally or with cus-tomers), engage in real time messaging and, by linking through Sales-force, approve business processes.

“We didn’t want to introduce a new platform

for sharing information,” Crabb explained. Today, after about 16

months after being intro-

duced, everyone gets a good night’s sleep“For us it created a real central platform” for

information. When a sales person wants to ask about the status of an order, the question can be inserted in Chatter – tagged to the order so staff know what is being talked about — and seen almost instantly at headquarters.

“It’s really powerful for us.”So-called enterprise social networking tools

(sometimes called social CRM when they are open to customers) are bidding to take the experiences of Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIn behind the firewall to give corporate staff more communications weapons for collaboration.

It’s a fast growing area, with some of the big-gest names in the business rushing to extend their productivity or unified communications suites to include social capabilities. At the same time cloud-based startups are pushing their way into the market (and sometimes, because they are easy to sign up for, without the knowl-edge of IT departments).

Wide featuresTheir feature set ranges from upgraded instant messaging, the ability to create blogs and dis-cussion forums and content management. One desirable capability is being able to search staff biographies to find subject matter experts.

Among the most well-known brands are Sales-force’s Chatter, IBM Connections, Jive Soft-ware’s Social Intranet and VMware’s SocialCast.

Last summer Microsoft Corp. bought Yam-mer for US$1.2 billion and is integrating it into the SharePoint, Office, Dynamics and Skype families. Oracle Corp. has Oracle Social Net-work, Cisco Systems Inc.’s entry is WebEx Social (previously Cisco Quad), SAP’s is called StreamWork and Citrix’s is Podio.

Startups include SocialText, Bazzarvoice, Lithium, Attensity, Telligent, Get Satisfaction, Kana, Artesian and many others.

Organizations are rushing to bring these tools to their staff. According to a recent IDC survey 78 per cent of 700 North American organiza-

FEATURE


I would say a lot of companies are not firing on all cylinders right now when it comes to effectively employing the tools they have

Ben DickieInfo-Tech Research

tions have deployed an enterprise social network. Twenty-eight per cent have more than one.

However, a number of industry analysts report while deployment is high for too many companies actual adoption by staff is low.

Far too often management essentially says to employees ‘Go ahead, collaborate’ or ‘Go ahead and figure it out yourself,’ reports Tom Petro-celli, senior analyst specializing in social enter-prise at the Enterprise Strategy Group

“And they don’t have time for that, especially when they have alternatives that were perfectly fine like email.”

In a survery earlier this year of knowledge workers in North American organizations, only 13 per cent of respondents who have access to social tools use them daily.

Think that’s stunning? Try this: A full 40 per cent said they never touched the tools.

“For a product and a process that depends on network effects for it to be valuable, this is troublesome,” said Petrocelli.

And when ESG asked what users thought the impact of these tools on their productivity and ability to collaborate “what we got was a resounding ‘meh.’” — figures on the mid-point of the satisfaction scale, suggesting staff felt it had no impact. It didn’t matter the size of the organizations, job roles or any other metric, Petrocelli adds.

Majority are strugglingLondon, Ont.,-based Info-Tech Research also surveyed North American organizations within the past six months, with 38 per cent reporting “moderate to high usage” of social tools, says Ben Dickie, a consulting analyst.

Still, he believes only one-third of the organi-zations he’s spoken to have had an “optimal roll-out where they’re seeing high levels of adoption.”

“The vast majority are still struggling with user adoption.”

The result: Thousands of dollars (or more) in wasted software licences and servers.

An Info-Tech slide presentation for custom-ers on the subject mentions the case study of a professional services firm that tossed away

$80,000 because IT focused solely on getting the platform deployed as soon as possible, with no testing, training or ongoing solution design.

“I would say a lot of companies are not firing on all cylinders right now when it comes to effective-ly employing the tools they have,” Dickie says.

Some of the problem is generational: Younger staff are more familiar with consumer tools like Twitter, so they take to enterprise versions easily; older staff struggle. Some of the problem has a familiar cause, lack of training.

Suppliers have been quick to notice. Staff will go where others go, says Ian Gallagher, Cisco Canada’s vice-president of collaboration. “If con-tent is elsewhere, if they’re sharing information or email attachments or posting files in a sepa-rate repository, people will go to where informa-tion is regardless of the quality of the new tool.”

That’s why Cisco tries to work with lines of busi-ness as well as IT departments, he said, to ensure there’s an environment ready – and willing – to use these tools.

One advantage of a cloud version of a social tool, Gallagher added, is that it lets an organi-zation get its toes in the water in a per user/per month basis.

Matt Wolodarsky, Microsoft Canada’s senior


FEATURE

CMCAAUDITED

HOW TO CONTACT COMPUTING CANADA Telephone: (416) 290-0240

Fax: (416) 290-0238 Mail: Computing Canada, 55 Town Centre Court,

Suite 302, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4X4

Employees may be reached using a combination of their first initial and last name,

for example: [email protected]

Online: ITWorldCanada.com

Subscription inquiries: tel: (613) 475-3217 or 1-800-565-4007 fax: (416) 290-0239 or 1-800-565-8148 e-mail: [email protected]

PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40063800 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT — IT WORLD CANADA INC.

302-55 TOWN CENTRE COURT SCARBOROUGH ON M1P 4X4

E-mail: [email protected] Published by: IT World Canada

Computing Canada is published 12 times a year byIT World Canada Inc. a unit of Laurentian Media Group,

Michael R. Atkins, Chairman. IT World Canada Inc. also publishes Canadian CIO, Computer Dealer News and

Direction Informatique. Computing Canada is distributed free of charge to the following job categories in Canada only: company executives, public servants responsible for computing,management/computer consultants, IT

managers/supervisors, systems analysts, programmers, operators and computer field engineers.

Subscription rates outside of Canada: in the U.S. US$75/year; other countries US $95/year. Available to non-qualified readers

in Canada at $2.50 per single copy. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in part

or in whole without the consent of the copyright owner.

ISSN #1484-9089. GST Registration #R122605769

IT World Canada Inc. is an affiliate of International Data Group, the world’s largest publisher of computer-related information

and the leading global provider of information services on information technology. International Data Group publishes

over 300 computer publications in 85 countries. Ninety million people read one or more International Data Group

publications each month.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical

Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities.

EDITORIAL

Editor Dave Webb

Twitter: @cwceditor

Brian Bloom Twitter: @Brian-at-CWC

Contributing Editors Howard Solomon

Jeff JedrasBrian Jackson

CREATIVE SERVICES

Senior Graphic Designer

Mel Manasan

Creative Director Jeff Coles

CIRCULATION

Circulation Manager Cheryl Patfield

SALES

Vice-President and Associate Group PublisherBrad McBride

Senior Account ManagerDavid Hamilton

Account ExecutiveDesere Ross

CORPORATE

Chairman Michael R. Atkins

President and Group Publisher Fawn Annan

Controller Rob Novorolsky

product manager for Share-Point, said sometimes “social has been adopted as an island on its own – yet another inbox employees are being asked to monitor. We take a contrary view to that …Social needs to be a natural way of how we work.”

That was echoed by Shelly Renaud, IBM Canada’s collabo-ration manager. “IBM believes that social should not be an is-land that you go to to be social, but should be integrated into your business applications and processes,” she said in an email.

“Some companies take to it like fish to water,,” says Ren-ny Monaghan, head of mar-keting for Salesforce Canada. “Everybody gets it.” But other companies need to encourage their staff – for example by using a social tool to launch company events.

CEO daily messageOne company, he recalled, set up large screens in a meeting room with staff to help them get used to the mobile ver-sion of Chatter on the smart phones they were holding in their hands – the demonstration could be seen easier than on the handsets’ small screen. Another CEO uses Chatter for a daily message to the troops, he said.

Industry analysts also say enterprise social networking tools need to be integrated into business processes. Ide-ally, says Vansssa Thompson, IDC’s research manager for enterprise collaboration and social solutions, a social net-work – or networks — will be

the backbone of an organiza-tion’s work f low.

The reason why some organi-zations aren’t getting the most leverage from their social tools is because they haven’t done that. Until they do, she said, those companies will struggle to fine value in their spending.

The amount of training needed for social network tools can’t be underestimated, says Info-Tech’s Dickie. Rewarding staff for using the tool through incentives –so-called gamifica-tion – may work, he says, but only if there’s a real reason to use the tool. It also helps to identify staff who adopt to them early and can be evangelists for the technology, he adds.

Senior management needs to be using the tools as well, he said. They should regularly make announcements through the social network, not email.

Petrocelli suggests organiza-tions start with a small group so value can be found early rather than spreading social tools suddenly across the enter-prise. So called “force-feeding” – use it or else – rarely works, Petrocelli says.

But to increase the odds, find a department that needs help collaborating – perhaps staff is spread out, or perhaps it regularly has trouble making a decision at a specific time in a business process. These are issues that social network tools can help resolve.

And if little value is discov-ered in the pilot, Petrocelli adds, don’t spend more. The organization isn’t ready yet.


BRING YOUR OWN

ALL HANDS ON TECH

Kobo ArcThere’s no end of 7-inch tablets on the market, and no wonder — they combine low price and relatively easy pocketability. ITBusiness.ca editor Brian Jackson reviews one choice, the Kobo Arc. It’s a combination eReader with tablet capabilities that’s a great alternative to Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Sony’s eBook Reader. The $200 unit has a high contrast colour screen, a dual core processor and can run Skype. Click

above to see why Brian finds it appealing.


BRING YOUR OWN

Acer C710-2478This is the more expensive of two Acer Chromebooks because it has a six-cell battery rated for up to 6 hours of life. The model with the four cell battery weighs 1.4 kg. Power comes from a dual-core Intel Celeron processor. It also has three USB ports and a card reader. $279

Travelling lightHow to pick the right second digital device to tote around? Tablets are convenient, but don’t have keyboards. Laptops have keyboards but are heavier — unless you get into the $900+ range. So-called Chromebooks using Google’s Chrome OS are starting to pop up in Canada. Think of them as next-generation netbooks. Here are three, plus a new Sony handset.

Sony Xperia ZLThis 5-inch Android handset started being sold at a number of Canadian carriers this month for LTE/HSPA networks.

Under the covers is a Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor, 13MP camera, NFC a microUSB port and battery saving technology. It can even be a TV remote control.

Samsung ChromebookWeighing a mere 1.1 kg., and promising over 6.5 hours of battery, this unit is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5 dual core CPU. It has an 11.6-in. screen and a 16 GB solid-state drive plus 100 GB of Google cloud

storage. There’s one USB 3.0 port and one USB 2.0 port. $270

HP Pavillion 14Comes with a generous 14-in screen, it is powered by an Intel Celeron 847 CPU with a 2 MB L3 cache. Also inside are 2 GB of RAM,

a 16 GB solid state hard drive, a card reader and three USB 2.0 ports. There’s a four-cell Li-Ion

battery. It weighs 1.8 kg. $330

SHARK TALES


Don’t worry, be HappyThere’s a good reason why you spent over $200 on your smart phone and $60 a month in wireless fees – not to improve business productivity, not to improve collabo-ration with colleagues and certainly not to keep track of your NHL fan-tasy team.

No, you have a smart phone so you can have a phone app that acts as a Happiness indicator from your life experiences. Mil-lions of people will share their minimally invasive daily activity data to help the world define well-being beyond wealth.

Haven’t heard of this app? It’s going to be developed

at a Happathon next March.

Why involve a smart phone? Because it col-lects data about where you’ve been, what your’re doing and could synthe-size this into a measure of contentment.

Haven’t heard of this app? It’s going to be developed

at a Happathon next March.

Organizers hope en-thusiasts will hold work-shops this summer to work out the details, then build the app next year.

Until then, think happy thoughts.

Always answer the phoneMost of our readers know that nefarious people can spoof an IP or address to make it look like it came from some-one else. That’s how worms are spread. Few may know that a caller ID phone

number can also be spoofed. U.S. security reporter Brian Krebs was the victim of such a call last month to local police, which dispatched the Swat team to his house thinking there was an emergency. Spammers who don’t like his work were likely behind the call, just as they

were behind last month’s massive de-nial of service attack against Spamhaus. The thing is Krebs was vacuuming his house before the Swat team arrived and ignored a police phone call that was trying to verify if the call it received was legit. Lesson: Some-times the policeman rings twice.

Many people are relieved at the increas-ing number of closed circuit TV camer-as around our cities. So, allegedly, was a group that decided to ease the burden

on an Australian casino, according to the Melbourne Herald Sun. A gambler

walked away from the tables after eight hands of cards with $32 million with a little help. The paper says an unauthorized person was given access to the casino’s security camera system, and then signals were relayed to the bettor. Lesson: No matter where you are, keep your cards close to your vest.

They really are watching you

REGISTER NOW and SAVE $100www.cdmn.ca/canada30

METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE

PRESENTS

APPLY NOW for the CDMN Moonshot Awards

To learn about partnership opportunities, contact:

[email protected]

Network Sponsor, Mentor Sponsor

Film Screening Sponsor

Emcee - Amber Mac KEYNOTES:

Chris AndersonJane McGonigalLane Merrifield

JUST ANNOUNCEDNetflix Founder & CEO, Reed Hastings

Workshop Sponsor

Lead Sponsor

MAY

Official IT Media Sponsor

connectwith expertise, resources and successfultrail blazers to navigate your own success.

collaborateOne-on-one face-time with influential industry,government and academia all in one place. A unique convergence of brilliant minds made possible by Canada 3.0.

commercializeBook time with experts who have already secured millions of dollars, experienced globalaccelerator programs and done business with or been acquired by multi-national corporations.

Register for the exclusive Mentoring Lunch“I sold my startup to Google.”

“My $7.49 investment turned intoTIME Magazine’s #7 website.”

“I competed on and got investment on Dragon’s Den.”and 60+ more director-level or above

influential Canadian innovators

CANADA’S ONLY NATIONAL

DIGITAL MEDIACONFERENCE

FOCUSED ON THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF INNOVATION

CompCan_Ad_April3_Final.pdf 1 03/04/2013 4:03:10 PM

organizations spend big bucks on enterprise social ... · pdf filebuy enterprise social...

Documents