25-31 October 2011 | computerweekly.com

Why IT projects failwe ask the experts why technology programmes are plagued with problems page 13

Managing virtual machinesVmware ceo paul maritz sets out his Vision for Virtualisation page 4

Getting NHS IT into shapehealth serVice interim it chief katie daVis on managing the technology to support change page 5

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the week onlineHighlights from

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Samsung sues to block Apple iPhone 4S

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RIM offers free technical support after outages

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Military-grade cyber attacks: How businesses can be safe

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Data warehouse suppliers will integrate Hadoop

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CESG approves first encrypted USB flash drive

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Microsoft will disrupt developer community

computerweekly.com/248163.htm

NHS could lose role of IT chief in department shake-up

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Password chaos linked to network breaches

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Technology is top of the chops in RBS savings memo

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Software suppliers exploit distance between HR and IT

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moSt popular photo Story

> Business apps for the iPhoneIn this photo story we look at the applications, including GoodReader and 1Password Pro, that make the iPhone a smartphone for business.computerweekly.com/48151-1.htm

awardS bloGS

> Faisal Alani: What is the cheapest iPhone 4S package?There are many deals around for Apple’s latest iPhone, but it’s hard to tell which is the cheapest and which is the best for consumers and small businesses. So I have looked at every contract available for the iPhone 4S to find out which is the cheapest in total, inclusive of phone cost and monthly bill.computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget

> Philip Virgo: Lobbying post-Werrity – will we address the “real” corruption?The UK had a simple mechanism for preserving the probity of its public service until Edward Heath gave permission to two senior Ministry of Defence officials to join a defence contractor without losing their pensions: loss of pension if you joined any business with which you or your colleagues had had dealings. computerweekly.com/blogs/when-it-meets-politics

> Adrian Bridgwater: When open source community programming doesn’t workComment has been circulating in certain web-driven circles relating to the size of some open source projects. The subject in discussion is centred on projects that (allegedly) suffer from too small a number of community members; the upshot of which may be to create an elitist group of developers.computerweekly.com/blogs/open-source-insider

> David Bicknell: What sustainability should learn from Steve JobsI liked a blog post from Andrew Winston entitled What sustainability should learn from Steve Jobs. Winston, who writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review, argues that before the iPad was introduced, many asked why you’d need a tablet computer. Steve Jobs, he says, made us want one.computerweekly.com/blogs/greentech

videoS

> CW500: Andy Beale, technology director, Guardian News & MediaIn this CW500 Club video, Andy Beale talks to Computer Weekly editor in chief Bryan Glick to share his practical advice on how to move to the cloud.computerweekly.com/248108.htm

> CW500: Peter Ransom, chief information officer, OxfamWe have heard the theories about what the cloud promises, but advice from IT leaders with real-world experience can help put it into practice.computerweekly.com/248109.htm

> The Computer Weekly Social Media Awards 2011: Nominate nowComputer Weekly’s search for the best use of social media in IT is back for its fourth year and we want you to take part in our new improved awards programme for 2011 by nominating the best uses of social media technology and the bloggers and social media users you most admire.computerweekly.com/248053.htm

> Adobe defines digital enterprise platform for customer managementAdobe is keen to influence a few industry paradigms during its time on Earth, so as the company targets the customer experience management market with its Digital Enterprise Platform, what challenges does it face?computerweekly.com/248117.htm

2 | 25-31 OCTOBER 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

> The reality behind government cloud computing hype: GartnerCloud computing remains an important trend and, in the long run, will have a transformational impact on the way government organisa-tions access and leverage IT. However, the path to the cloud is definitely slower and more tortuous than many wish to think.computerweekly.com/248039.htm

> Research: Do CIOs have more clarity about cloud computing?Xantus surveyed a panel of 50 CIOs from organisations across a range of public and private sectors and sizes. The results show that, while there is still a reluctance to fully commit to the cloud, there is a general acceptance of the benefits and a growing commitment to develop those benefits as far as practicable. CIOs recognise cloud computing offers opportunities and there are short and long-term benefits to making it work.computerweekly.com/248009.htm

> Using technology to drive productivity and growth in the EUICT investment and productivity growth are closely linked - and European countries are lagging behind other parts of the world in both. European GDP could grow by an additional €760bn (or an extra 5%) above forecasts if Europe matched total US ICT levels by 2020. This would be worth around €1,500 per person at today’s prices.computerweekly.com/247991.htm

opinion

the week in IT

3 | 25-31 OctOber 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

desktop software

Microsoft posts record Q1 revenue, despite lacklustre PC marketMicrosoft has reported a year-on-year sales increase of 7% and first quarter profit gains of 6% as slowed growth in the PC market hit sales of its Win-dows operating system. The modest increases still delivered record first-quarter revenues of $17.37bn for the quarter ended 30 September and pushed net income to $5.74bn.computerweekly.com/248223.htm

public sector it

Government invites bids for £60m G-Cloud contractsThe government has invited sup-pliers to bid for a £60m framework agreement to provide the G-Cloud – the public sector-wide cloud infrastructure that will support Whitehall’s cost-cutting IT strategy. The tender document says the con-tracts will be divided into four lots, covering infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, and specialist cloud services.computerweekly.com/248221.htm

Mobile coMputing

Nokia suffers loss of €151m despite phone sales increaseAn 8% increase in non-smartphone handset sales failed to save phone manufacturer Nokia from posting a net loss of €151m (£132m) in its lat-est financial results. In the company’s third quarter, net sales fell 13% year-on-year from €10.3bn in 2010 to €9bn. Overall sales of devices and services fell 30%.computerweekly.com/248217.htm

cybersecurity

Hague calls for international consensus on cyberspaceThere needs to be international consensus on responding to develop-ments in cyberspace, according to UK foreign secretary William Hague. He said this response needs to be a col-lective endeavour involving the major actors in cyberspace, so he has invited representatives from governments, civil society and business to the Lon-don Conference on Cyberspace. computerweekly.com/248210.htm

Mobile coMputing

RIM unveils Blackberry BBX mobile operating systemBlackberry maker Research in Mo-tion (RIM) has introduced its latest mobile operating system (OS), BBX. At the Blackberry DevCon Americas 2011 conference, RIM said BBX combines elements of its Blackberry OS platform and QNX OS, which its Blackberry Playbook tablet device currently runs on. computerweekly.com/248209.htm

outsourcing

Study reveals sectors boosting investment in IT outsourcingThe retail, manufacturing, telecoms and media sectors in Europe have spent more on IT outsourcing during the first nine months of this year than in the whole of last year, according to figures from sourcing advisory TPI. The financial services sector, which accounted for about a third of total spending last year, has slowed its spending on outsourced IT services. computerweekly.com/248204.htm

Mobile coMputing

Intel posts record third quarter profits on back of notebook salesIntel has posted record sales and profits after strong growth in note-book PCs. In its third quarter finan-cial results, Intel’s sales grew 28% year-on-year to reach $14.2bn, up $3.1bn. Profit grew 17% year-on-year to reach $3.5bn, up $513m. Intel’s PC client group sales increase 22% com-pared with 2010 figures to $9.4bn.computerweekly.com/248203.htm

it spending

IT budgets expected to drop in Europe next yearA survey of investment companies has found that 67% of IT industry investors believe European spending will decline in 2012, while 19.1% think budgets will stay the same. The findings suggest significant eco-nomic uncertainty in Europe, with only 13.8% of respondents expecting companies in Europe to spend more on IT next year than last year. computerweekly.com/248195.htm

hardware

IBM shares fall after slow revenue growth in third quarterIBM shares fell almost 4% after its third quarter results were announced as investors worried about cancelled IT projects and slower spending on technology. The company’s sales for the third quarter of 2011 were $26.2bn, up 8% compared with the same period in 2010. Profit was $3.8bn for the quarter, compared with $3.6bn in 2010 – an increase of 7%. computerweekly.com/248185.htm

network infrastructure

EC proposes €9.2bn investment for high-speed broadbandThe European Commission (EC) is expected to propose an investment of €9.2bn (£8bn) for high-speed broad-band across Europe. As part of the proposals, the EC will outline targets to improve broadband speeds and prioritise rural areas. The investment would also create hundreds of thou-sands of jobs.computerweekly.com/248165.htm

Government targets big IT savings The government aims to cut IT costs by £1.4bn over the next four years through cloud computing, the public services network and datacentre consolidation, according to its ICT Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP). The SIP fleshes out the government’s technology strategy released earlier this year and provides a roadmap for 19 areas of change. These include open source, the use of agile methodologies and a move to digital by default.

Key areas expected to generate savings over the next four years are the creation of the public services network (PSN), estimated to save a total of £390m; a move to the cloud and Government Application Store (£180m); the continuation of the government’s moratorium on ICT spend (£650m); datacentre consolidation (£160m); and reducing the cost of procuring devices such as PCs and laptops (£60m). The government expects to save 7% of its estimated annual £6.5bn ICT budget for central departments once its new ICT infrastructure has been established. This will total yearly savings of £460m by 2015, it said.computerweekly.com/248225.htm

“I hope we get to the point where [NHS] IT is something we just take for granted”

Katie Davis, interim head of IT, Department of Health

cio interview

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more onlineNews: Oxford University demos VMware database shared servicecomputerweekly.com/248193.htm

News: Regulators don’t understand cloud, says pharmaceuticals CTOcomputerweekly.com/248201.htm

News: NYSE’s VMware-based community cloud goes livecomputerweekly.com/248211.htm

news analysis

VMware sets sights on integration as virtualisation complexity escalates

4 | 25-31 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

At the VMworld conference in Copenhagen CEO Paul Maritz set out his vision for virtualisation, writes Cliff Saran

Paul Maritz, CEO at VMware, has been in computing since the 1970s, from the age of mainframe, through

client-server and now cloud comput-ing. “One of the ways to categorise computing is the type of application. In the cloud, we are seeing the emer-gence of a new type of applications, which cannot be done on a tradition-al relational database,” he said in his keynote presentation at the supplier’s VMworld in Copenhagen.

Managing virtual machines (VMs) will be key to realising the new appli-cation architecture. Virtualisation is the only way organisations can man-age the complex infrastructure to scale up and down in support of con-text-aware applications, said Maritz.

The company has spent the last few years developing and acquiring products to flesh out a portfolio of IT management tools to manage increas-ingly complex virtual environments.

“Customers have been asking VMware for management tools for years,” said Tony Lock, programme director at analyst Freeform Dynam-ics. “It needs to integrate its own management tools with existing products, such as BMC Patrol, CA Unicenter and Tivoli.”

VMware’s rivals point to the lack of a single interface to manage com-plex virtual environments. Maritz ad-mitted there is still much to do.

“It is a dilemma doing a few things very well and reacting to the rest of the world,” he said. “We are trying to pivot towards a more integrated ap-proach to pull management into a

“We are trying to pivot towards pulling

management into a full suite.”

Paul Maritz,

VMware CEO

virtualisation

full suite. This is a high priority, and we want to take off the rough edges so our customers don’t have to indi-vidually test components.”

Product launchesDuring the Copenhagen event, VMware launched vCenter Opera-tions Management 5.0 and vFabric Application Management and IT Business Management suites.

VMware says the vFabric Applica-tion Suite 1.0 helps IT make applica-tions ready for the cloud. vCenter Operations Management 5.0 com-

bines information from different IT management sources. VMware is tar-geting the CIO with the VMware IT Business Management Suite, which provides a high-level dashboard on service level agreements.

VMware’s Horizon enables users to access Windows applications, based on credentials that can be taken from the Windows Active Directory. It is also working with LG and Samsung, and operators Telefonica and Verizon to support virtualisation on Android devices. This gives their smartphones two personalities: one for personal

use, with its own apps and phone number; and a corporate mode, that accesses enterprise applications and has its own company phone number.

Licensing criticismsVMware’s licensing is again under the spotlight. Rival Microsoft has published data that shows its own Hyper-V hypervisor is much cheaper than a VMware set-up.

Microsoft said its ECI Datacenter suite costs €3,354 per processor, with no additional cost for VMs, while it claimed VMware’s cloud infrastruc-ture suite costs €4,440 per processor and €1,493 per virtual machine.

“VMware is charging per VM and per management tool, which changes the economies of virtualisation. Its li-censing does not scale linearly,” said Edwin Yuen, director of cloud and virtualisation strategy at Microsoft.

He pointed out that as users add more VMs, the cost escalates. “If you have six VMs per processor, Micro-soft will charge €282,000, while VMware would cost €1.4m.” Users also pay €1,500 per virtual machine for vCenter Operations, according to Yuen: “It is incredibly expensive.”

Responding to the criticism, Maritz said users can run x86-based hard-ware more powerful than a zSeries mainframe. “There are truly monster devices in the x86 space, which go beyond a zSeries mainframe in per-formance. Today customers are putting 40, 50 or even 100 VMs on a single server. Moore’s Law is benefit-ing our customers. Customers can put more VMs on a machine.” ■

The Yorkshire Humberside metropolitan area network (YHMAN), a joint venture of universities, provides network connections for more than 60 higher education institutions, further education colleges and others in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

It is developing a shared service, built on a multi-ten-ancy virtualised architecture, to support 190,000 students and 25,000 staff across several universities, including Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Bradford and York.

After virtualisation proved cost-effective and was found to work across large distances, security was the

major challenge faced by the consortium.“Universities ran their own intrusion detection/

prevention systems, virtual private networks and firewalls. We needed to make these available as shared services. The cost of security would have worked out more expensive than storage if the universities ran their own physical firewalls,” said Hugh Lavern, director of information media technical services at Leeds Metropoli-tan University.

Instead, YHMAN deployed VMware vShield Edge for virtual security appliances for the universities.

University joint venture deploys vShield Edge security

more onlineNews: CSC repays £170m as NHS complains of records progresscomputerweekly.com/248073.htm

In-depth: The benefits and costs of implementing telecare servicescomputerweekly.com/247778.htm

News: Burying the NHS National Programme for ITcomputerweekly.com/247976.htm

cio interview

Positioning NHS IT for a healthy future

5 | 25-31 OctOber 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Health service interim IT chief Katie Davis speaks to Kathleen Hall about managing the technology to support change

as controversial plans to restructure the NHS push ahead, only one thing ap-pears certain within the

Department of Health (DoH): change. Katie Davis, interim managing direc-tor of informatics at the DoH, tells Computer Weekly why her role re-flects this process of transformation.

Davis moved from her position as executive director in the Efficiency and Reform Group at the Cabinet Of-fice to become interim managing di-rector of NHS Informatics in July 2011, following the departure of former CIO Christine Connelly. How-ever, according to Davis she is not stepping into Connelly’s shoes entire-ly with the new role.

“I wouldn’t describe my position as interim or permanent. It is a transi-tion role and my job is to transition from where we were to the future,” says Davis. “What that future will bring is a bit too early to say, but I don’t think my role translates that easily into the future. I see it more as making sure we’ve got the right gov-ernance, the right levers and incen-tives to make the future marketplace work as well as it needs to.”

As plans to dismantle Primary Care Trusts steam ahead and the focus moves to a local approach to commissioning, the commissioning board will take a strong role in sup-porting local procurements, says Davis. “This isn’t in place yet, but it will evolve over the next few months.”

NPfIT clean-upThe department recently declared its intention to “accelerate the dis-mantling of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT)”. But Davis says the announcement was primarily a reit-eration of plans last year to move to a more locally-based commissioning approach.

Not all of the programmes under the NPfIT will be wound down. As-pects such as the N3 network and the Spine are genuinely national pro-grammes and deliver a single out-come, so it would only make sense to deliver those systems once, she says. “You wouldn’t want multiple net-works existing across the NHS. And it certainly wouldn’t make sense from a value-for-money perspective. In those situations, no doubt, we will continue to develop national applica-tions. Infrastructure, by definition, falls into that category,” Davis says.

Her aim is to get behind the “brand” of the NPfIT and decide which programmes should be wound down and delivered locally, and which should be run nationally. “The new model is about having the right programmes in place with the right ownership,” she says.

Healthcare revolutionThe healthcare revolution strategy, which now falls under the remit of Giles Wilmore, director of quality framework in the DoH, is not an IT strategy, but it will involve making more information available, in line with a recent drive to open up more datasets in the health service.

“That’s really important because here in the centre we are not as close to the patients as we would like to be. And there are no doubt people better than us at delivering the iPhone apps of the future in a local context. We won’t get the level of innovation we want if we try to deliver everything from the centre. We also won’t neces-sarily deliver the best value for money if we try to deliver it all,” says Davis.

So how would Davis summarise her role? “First of all, making sure that we continue to deliver systems that support the NHS today; secondly, un-derstanding how we can do things dif-ferently in the future; and thirdly, making the transition from where we are today to that future,” she says.

Davis is currently talking with trade body Intellect to open the

healthcare IT market to more suppli-ers, as the department intends to commission a number of the projects under the NPfIT more locally.

“The relationships with the LSPs [local service providers] and the big contracts have dominated much of the conversation,” she admits. “Cer-tainly a disproportionate amount of public focus has been on that. It’s about recognising the reality and spending as much time talking to all the suppliers in the market, not just the big suppliers. Different suppliers will meet the needs of different or-ganisations depending on what they are trying to achieve.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time government has made noise about the importance of SMEs in public sector procurement. But Davis says the risk of small businesses being overlooked in favour of larger suppli-ers is lower than in other areas of government because the NHS is more diverse by definition.

“The reality of the NHS is that what provides value-for-money and benefits for a small rural hospital is not necessarily the same as that for a large metropolitan hospital. The NHS

itself is diverse, which means a varie-ty of suppliers can help to meet those different needs,” she says.

Managing changeAmid the major shake-ups under-way, one of the biggest challenges for Davis has been the impact on her staff of 1,300 people. “Because of the extent of the change, it is not yet possible to make clear to individuals what their future will bring. So that’s a challenge.

“We’ve got some great committed people who have given a lot over the past few years, and it will be a bit of time before we can tell them precise-ly what the future will bring. No doubt by the spring we will be able to bring a level of clarity that we don’t have now,” she says.

Once the strategy is released, Davis hopes to press ahead with her biggest goal: to reach a point where people stop talking about NHS IT. “We don’t want IT to dominate the conversation in the way that it has done over the past few years. I really hope we get to the point where there isn’t such a focus on the IT and it is something we just take for granted,” she says. ■

“My position…is a transition role”

Katie Davis, Department of Health

it leadership

more onlineNews: RSA 2011 focuses on APTs and shares lessons of data breachcomputerweekly.com/247980.htm

In depth: APT strategies to protect your organisationcomputerweekly.com/247039.htm

Blog: APT – It’s about the attacker, not the attackcomputerweekly.com/blogs

news analysis

How to protect your organisation from a military-grade cyber attack

6 | 25-31 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

At its recent conference RSA shared the lessons it learnt from its own APT incursion, writes Warwick Ashford

RSA Conference Europe 2011 provided a useful working definition of the term advanced persistent

threats (APTs) as military-grade cyber attacks on commercial entities.

The term is military and refers to attacks backed by nation states, which non-military IT professionals have never had to deal with before.

But why are nation states now going after commercial businesses?

The answer is that states are back-ing attacks that achieve commercial advantage for domestic industries in a competitive global market.

Around 40 nations are believed to be targeting commercial entities using military-grade tactics, said Sam Curry, chief technologist at RSA.

“It’s not just the usual suspects, but includes smaller countries that have specific industries they want to help, typically mining, pharmaceutical and defence,” he said.

But, because these attackers are going up and down the supply chain to achieve their objectives, any sup-plier to targeted industries could eas-ily be in the firing line.

RSA under attackRSA claimed it was the target of an APT-style attack when its systems were breached in March, as attackers sought specific information to enable them to target defence firms.

The only known use of the infor-mation stolen from RSA was an at-tempted breach of data systems at de-fence firm Lockheed-Martin in May.

The attack on RSA was a means to the end of stealing intellectual prop-erty from RSA’s defence customers.

Apart from the likelihood of a na-tion state backing two groups acting in concert that have never worked to-gether before, the attack on RSA bore the hallmarks of a military-grade in-cursion: It was specialised, sophisti-cated and highly targeted, using so-cial engineering and freshly compiled malware highly tailored to RSA, mimicking RSA naming con-ventions to try to avoid detection.

Such attacks are typically based on expert intelligence gathering to iden-tify the information required, who has access to it and where it is to be

“Attackers even monitor responses to incidents to gauge security capabilities” Art Coviello RSA executive chairman

risk management

Protect against military-grade aPtscomputerweekly.com/248174.htm

found on the breached network.These incursions are not easy to

detect, said RSA executive chairman Art Coviello. They exploit zero-day vulnerabilities where possible and aim to get in and stay in without being detected.

“Attackers even monitor responses to security incidents to gauge an or-ganisation’s security capabilities and enable them to remain on the net-work for long periods without trace.”

Commercial entities targeted in this way are unlikely to have seen an-ything like it before, said Uri Rivner, head of new technologies, identity protection and verification at RSA.

Most business organisations do not have the forensic tools or skills at their disposal required to analyse and understand what is going on in their networks, said Rivner.

Defending against APTsSo where does this leave businesses?

Organisations need a new defence doctrine, which is under discussion by increasing numbers of chief infor-mation security officers, Rivner said.

APTs demand a new kind of strate-gy that accepts attackers will gain ac-cess to corporate networks, but is de-signed to detect, resist, investigate and recover from such attacks.

This was one of the main reasons for RSA’s acquisition of NetWitness. Although the RSA breach was ahead of the acquisition, Coviello said RSA was already using the technology and detected the intrusion immediately, limiting the damage.

Security dogmas and technologies of the past are no longer adequate and offer diminished value, Coviello told conference attendees.

“Security professionals need to start thinking differently about data protection and move from static point products to systems that have integrated elements that add value to each other,” he said.

Using NetWitness in combination with other controls, Coviello said RSA could determine what was taken very quickly and formulate ef-fective remedial action.

“Anyone can be infiltrated, but that incursion need not be successful.

Our adversaries were able to get only a piece of information, but without the right tools the damage could have been more extreme,” said Coviello.

Five steps to limit the damageAccording to RSA president Tom Heiser, there are five measures busi-nesses can take to limit loss or dam-age if their systems are breached:l They should re-evaluate their risk, asking what could make them a tar-get, what information they hold that could be valuable to attackers, how vulnerable they are and how they fit into the supply chain.l Organisations should rethink their protection against zero-day vulnerabilities. “Do not rely on sig-nature-based detection, but also use behaviour-based detection systems,” said Heiser.l Organisations should start deploy-ing security and network analysis capabilities. “Situational awareness is crucial in the face of contemporary threats,” he said.l Hardening authentication sys-tems and tightening access control is important, and should include multi-authentication methods and restricted number of logins.l Educating staff about security is-sues across the organisation is impor-tant to ensure these are discussed and understood at board level. ■

this is an edited version of the original article. Go online to read the full version:

more onlineCIO interview: Gerry Pennell, CIO, London 2012 Olympicscomputerweekly.com/248136.htm

CIO interview: Katie Davis, interim head of IT, Department of Healthcomputerweekly.com/248186.htm

CIO interview: Mike Bracken, UK government director of digitalcomputerweekly.com/247821.htm

cio interview

Changing home-grown to packaged tools as LateRooms extends its reach

7 | 25-31 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Adam Gerrard, IT chief at travel firm LateRooms, talks to Angelica Mari about transforming the firm's IT as it expands

aAfter four years at car rental giant Avis Europe as group CIO, Adam Gerrard faces a fresh challenge as his new

employer, hotel-booking service Late-Rooms, changes its approach to IT to support its expansion worldwide.

Gerrard joined LateRooms in May to help realise its ambitions to at least triple - if not quadruple - its size in the next three to four years.

According to Gerrard, the experi-ence at Avis came in useful when he applied for the chief technology offic-er job at LateRooms.

“Clearly, international experience is one of the things needed here - un-derstanding the challenges and pit-falls of working on a global basis across different time zones and deal-ing with a shared-services centre type of model.” Gerrard said.

Growing painsLateRooms is 12 years old and worth about £500m. Originally a venture capital-backed company, it has grown significantly in the last dec-ade. In 2007 the firm was acquired by First Choice, which was then bought out by TUI.

As a result of these acquisitions, the company now has a fast-growing Asian business in addition to its UK and continental Europe operations. This means that a new and more scal-able IT structure is needed to support expansion.

“From an IT perspective, we have grown from a Manchester-based op-eration to having to think about the global challenge: supporting various time zones, deciding whether we will have a shared services core and some local teams to deliver services and so on – we are going through a lot of growing pains,” said Gerrard.

Currently, the CTO leads a team of about 130 people and expects that number to double in two years if the company adopts a shared services, follow-the-sun approach.

The IT portfolio at LateRooms is

Gerrard: “Understanding the challenges and pitfalls of working on a global basis”

it leadership

mostly home-grown and focused on employing agile development meth-odologies for a .Net product set. Ac-cording to Gerrard, as the IT transfor-mation is pushed forward, there will be plenty of change to come.

“We want to bring in the global picture context to IT here. We will have small teams of agile developers, testers and business owners and work on the quickest ways to im-prove our websites and deliver value back to customers through incremen-tal change,” he said.

“Although it makes sense for a small business to build everything, when you start growing on a global basis and looking at the tools you need to be successful, you conclude that there are software companies out there to provide those tools and that can save you a great deal of time.”

Such an approach will mean a package-focused approach and the firm’s finance system will be the first to tackle. Gerrard said the choice of tools for that requirement is limited to Oracle Financials or SAP.

“I have a personal preference for SAP, purely because I have used it in several implementations in the past, but I am not against Oracle, it is a very good product – I am not overly torn one way or the other,” he said.

LateRooms has its own datacentre in Manchester, although Gerrard thinks there is room for cooperation with TUI. The main hardware sup-pliers for the 200-server facility are Dell and HP.

“It would make sense to have one vendor, but we are not going to make any decisions now. Across all of the tech stack, we seem to have gone for three to four vendors as an attempt to cover the bases rather than bringing economies of scale, so in the next two to three years I would hope we start consolidating and take opportunities as they come,” he said.

Neither virtualisation nor cloud has been employed at the company, but he said there is an opportunity to use virtual servers to transform test-ing processes, while a private cloud could be a good option to improve access to data across geographies.

The skills dilemmaOne of the big issues faced by Gerrard is not related to technology, but to getting access to expertise to deliver the various projects in his IT agenda.

LateRooms doesn’t have the skills for integration and implementation that a firm would need in a packaged software environment, for example. The company plans to move towards

a service-oriented architecture (SOA), for which skills will be need-ed to understand and implement technologies based on an enterprise service bus.

“We are working under pressing timescales and we need to do a lot: get the packages we need, bring skills, implement. In the next three to six months we will recruit a lot and help move people into a different way of working as we will have a common element to IT, rather than agile delivery cycles,” Gerrard said.

The CTO explained the kinds of staff he needs: “We are looking for people who are geographically mo-bile, as this plays a huge part of being able to put the right skills in the right locations.

“We are also looking for very strong analytical skills, since we are trying to assess the state of our IT landscape and working out how to move forward with a global platform. Then we also need project managers, and a different mix of development skills,” he said.

“We are a huge group and there are opportunities within LateRooms but also within TUI. And we want to bring the best calibre of people that we can afford and provide them with as much career potential and oppor-tunities as possible, whether it is the UK or elsewhere.” ■

this is an edited version of the original article. Go online to read the full version:

Meet adam Gerrard, CtO at lateroomscomputerweekly.com/248126.htm

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community

The tell-tale signs of an IT project at risk of failure

The real hard work for public sector IT starts

9 | 25-31 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

In 2003 a research project by Ox-ford University in collaboration with Computer Weekly found or-ganisations abandoned 8% of IT

projects before they were complete. At the time, not much was made of

the data, But a follow-up study turned the spotlight back on aban-doned projects. At a time of drastic fi-nancial cutbacks in most organisa-tions, the cost of abandoning a project is difficult to ignore. It means a complete write-off of the project budget. Often there is reputational damage, both internally and with customers and suppliers.

I worked on the study with col-leagues, Professors Andrew Gemino, and Blaize Reich of the Simon Fraser University Canada. We collected data from project managers in the UK who read Computer Weekly and from glo-bal members of the Project Manage-ment Institute’s Special Interest Group in IT Project Management.

The 250 responses, collected in 2010, showed the proportion of aban-doned projects has stayed roughly constant, at 7%. More significantly, it revealed marked differences between abandoned projects and those that went through to completion.

The research shows problem projects look very much like success-ful projects at the beginning. It found no difference in the complexity of the

projects or of the number of depart-ments involved. However, organisa-tions reported significantly greater difficulty in establishing the require-ments of projects later abandoned.

The troubled projects also suffered from internal volatility. They had sig-nificantly higher turnovers for project manager, client manager and execu-tive sponsor. On average, there were three changes of key personnel com-pared to just one for completed projects. Organisations do replace key staff when projects go off the rails, but the differences are so clear that we conclude high staff turnover is a key contributing factor to projects

“Managers reported much less trust between technologists and business members”

Bryan Glick leader chris sauer opinion

losing their way.Other critical success factors were

in shorter supply in the abandoned projects. Project managers reported that they received less of the neces-sary resources for the project from the project sponsor. And they used fewer project management methodologies, tools and techniques.

It’s hard to know exactly why, but it is easy to imagine a sponsor dis-tancing themself from a troubled situ-ation or a project manager struggling to monitor a project in trouble.

Project managers of abandoned projects reported much lower levels of trust between technologists and business members of the project team. Less knowledge was shared in the team, and less support for identi-fying and developing the information needed. They had less knowledge and less expertise at the start.

The alignment of the technical de-sign with the organisational change plan and the business objectives was poorer in the abandoned projects. Combine this with a perceived dis-connect with the business units and it is clear that these projects were ill-equipped to deliver successfully.

The abandoned projects ran on av-erage nine months longer than com-pleted projects, although they were not significantly larger. Perhaps they were left to struggle; perhaps there was hope for success even in the face of indications to the contrary; the an-swer is difficult to discern from the data. What is clear is that they were not abandoned early.

The data is pretty consistent over time. The key issue for businesses is whether they can spot problem cases and act on what they see. We’d sug-gest careful attention to three areas:l If a project is struggling badly with requirements;l If its relationship with the business is poor;l If you see key staff leaving.

Step in and either turn it around or cut your losses and abandon it early. Turnaround costs a lot of manage-ment time and resources. Abandon-ment throws away the proposed ben-efits. But either is better than letting your project drift in the hope that it will come right. ■

chris Sauer is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information technology

The government’s It chiefs have had a busy few weeks and have set themselves up so that continues with the publication of the Strategic

Implementation Plan (SIP) – a detailed, mile-stone-packed delivery programme for large-scale change in government It.

the plan sets out deadlines to which gov-ernment cIos have committed. It moves the coalition’s It strategy from the “what” to the “how” and reflects the oft-stated desire for greater transparency and accountability. For that, it is to be welcomed and applauded.

the document also lists the key risks to achieving its objectives. Among those are three areas which will present the biggest test for the ambitious changes it outlines.

It is surely no coincidence that the first risk to the overall strategy identified in the SIP states: “Supplier market is slow to adapt to the new Ict landscape.” there’s a euphe-mism if ever there was one. For all the sup-portive words we will hear from the big sys-tems integrators, they will be digging their heels to resist changes to their dominance. We hope that diversity wins.

but supplier entrenchment is only one fac-et. equally entrenched attitudes in Whitehall make cultural change a huge challenge. Some departments already resent the cen-tralised control over It spending imposed by the cabinet office. open, standardised It means open, standardised procurement.

Finally, some of those busy government cIos need to take a long hard look in the mir-ror. For all the criticism of suppliers, govern-ment has not been an intelligent buyer. Insid-ers admit some cIos will struggle to adapt to the move to cloud – a fact recognised by the proposed creation of a cIo Academy.

the drive to outsource government It led to the over-outsourcing of It skills. the pub-lic sector needs to rebuild and retain the It skills the SIP needs and re-take ownership of the technology central to delivering cost-effective, digital-by-default public services over the next 10 years.

big challenges lie ahead; a good start has been made. the real work starts now. ■

editor’s blogcomputerweekly.com/editor

buyer’s guide

10 | 25-31 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

a lthough social CRM defini-tions vary, all share some common distinctions. They all centre on customer-

centric interactions through social media. Competitive intelligence (CI) professionals - inherently customer-focused marketers - recognise the value of social media in learning about and connecting with custom-ers. Here are six top tips for building social CRM strategies.

challenges, a working relationship between IT and marketing, a high level of comfort with data analysis, and a deliberate plan around han-dling customers’ conversations. But underneath all of this, the databases must be capable of handling social data and businesses must ensure they’re on the safe side of their cus-tomers’ privacy concerns.

Six top tips for social CRM strategiesZach Hofer-Shall outlines some pointers for organisations incorporating social media into customer relations practices

2. Social CRM requires strategic social planningMany firms today resist social CRM due to the technology limitations. But adopting social CRM involves a new way of thinking for many brands. Social CRM means accepting and understanding social media as a valid source of customer data. Build-ing social media into the customer

1. Social CRM starts with a socially populated customer databaseIn its most technical form, social CRM combines social media and CRM databases. Before diving into the strategic aspects of social media, CI professionals who are evaluating social CRM can think about it from a database perspective.

Today, customer databases contain traditional fields such as name, phone number, and e-mail. But try adding social content to the customer database - such as a customer’s Twit-ter handle, recent blog post, or Linke-dIn profile. Adding social media data to the customer database involves cross-channel customer recognition

“No matter how many vendors tout their social CRM, it isn’t something you can buy from a single supplier”

CW Buyer’s guideCustomer relations

part 4 of 4

»

buyer’s guide

One of the challenges of social CRM is analysing vast data sets. The industry uses the term “big data”, to describe these data sets, but tools for big data are still immature. One of the rising stars is the open source Hadoop platform, which provides the analytics behind sites such as Facebook.

Forrester predicts Hadoop will become a key component in the product strategies of leading enterprise data warehouse suppliers. EMC Greenplum and IBM already offer Hadoop products and other suppliers offer degrees of Hadoop integra-tion in their product families, or have announced intentions to do so.

Forrester expects that over the next year, companies such as Teradata, Oracle, SAP/Sybase, Microsoft and HP/Vertica will acquire Hadoop start-ups such as Cloudera, MapR Technologies, DataStax, HStreaming and Outerthought.

But Forrester also said Hadoop is an unfamiliar technology to many enterprise data analytics and IT professionals. In a report on using Hadoop in the enterprise, senior Forrester analyst James Kobielus warned that even top-notch advanced analytics and enterprise data warehouse veterans will find it a tough slog to get their heads around Hadoop specifications,

tools and approaches.In the report, Enterprise Hadoop Best Practices:

Concrete Guidelines From Early Adopters In Online Services, he explains that training and professional

certification services for Hadoop are in short supply, making projects not only difficult but

also challenging and even riskier. Further, industry-consensus best practices are conspicuous by their absence.

The report highlights key areas of concern such as the core specification for Hadoop,

which is still being developed by the Apache Hadoop community. In

the report, Kobielus warns that federation, metadata, high availability and machine learning are missing from the specificationThis means businesses are stuck with

proprietary functions that suppliers selling Hadoop put into the open source software.

There is also a lack of a single, integrated, Hadoop software distribution. Many Hadoop implementations involve some custom coding. Given the complexity of Hadoop deployments, Kobielus warned that the messy complexities of custom Hadoop development and data modelling may present a formidable learning curve that delays full deployment.

Will data warehouse suppliers integrate Hadoop?database takes technology assistance, but also requires a strategy. Teams must decide why before how. Social CRM can drive customer support, sales, market research, engagement marketing and more - but each of these comes with a different strategy and with a different execution.

3. Early experiments show promiseAlthough most of the conversation around social CRM is primarily hype, some of the buzz comes from busi-nesses’ early success. For example, Procter & Gamble uses online com-munities to gain insight on customer demographics - then targets product development and marketing around these insights. One financial services firm populates its customer database with information learned through social networks and then segments its database for an informed customer support function. The early adopters share a key similarity: They stick with basic business goals. Advanced targeting, increased sales, or im-proved customer support are tradi-tional business goals - early adopters didn’t change their goals for social media, but enhanced their approach with social CRM.

4. No end-to-end technology exists todayNo matter how many vendors tout their social CRM capabilities, today’s social CRM isn’t something that you can buy from a single supplier. To feed social media content into a customer database, there needs to be cooperation and integration from CRM systems and social data ag-gregators or listening platforms. To enable the action on this data, you need a connection between data-bases and marketing suites or other outbound communication tools like customer support dashboards or social engagement tools. Although no full social CRM platform exists today, many vendors will compete for this business in the coming years. Because social CRM relies entirely on a functioning CRM system, the tradi-tional CRM vendors have a leg up in building the desired platforms. In the meantime, prepare to combine data sources from disparate social chan-nels, integrate complimenting tech-nologies, and automate the data flow from online conversation to action.

“The buzz around social CRM will grow in 2012, as social media continues its rampant spread through business”

5. Social CRM requires data analysis capabilitiesManaging the vast influx of so-cial data, mapping information to customers, deriving customer seg-mentation that incorporates social behaviours, and informing outbound actions may seem feasible on a small scale. But for many companies - with large consumer bases - there will be too many customers to track and too much online discussion to manage.

Achieving a functioning social CRM practice takes ample expertise: customer segmentation, database management, look-alike modelling, advanced data mining, and deep data analysis. The mantra around custom-er data - capture, manage, analyse, apply - will guide social CRM from online conversation into action.

6. How to implement a social CRM strategyThe buzz around social CRM will grow in 2012, as social media contin-ues its rampant spread. Expect many companies to find innovative ways to apply social CRM strategies and

boost business performance.Forrester recommends that before

diving into social CRM, determine if you’re prepared to manage the new data source. Establishing a function-ing customer database can be an ar-duous process - fortunately, social CRM shouldn’t replace existing CRM systems, it should add and integrate to what’s already in place.

Next, begin collecting data. Social CRM is not possible without social media data, so firms expecting to in-tegrate social media data into their customer databases must begin by ac-cessing that data. Today, most firms turn to listening platforms for data sourcing and analysis. To feed data found in listening initiatives, many of the listening platform vendors offer API integrations with some of the large customer databases. But this integration is relatively simplistic, and many companies emphasise how hard it is to consistently connect to primary identifiers in the customer database. Businesses must learn to manage this unstructured data to un-derstand how it will eventually inte-grate into their customer strategies.

Finally, test an outbound pilot using social information. Reach out to your customers for sales, support, or marketing - informed by social data in the database. One successful beverage company we spoke with started small, with a single campaign to learn the social ropes. Following a

recent commercial, the marketing team collected data from online dis-cussion to understand how its cus-tomers responded to the campaign. Although it was only able to identify a small percentage of customers through their social profiles, it com-piled a virtual focus group and col-lected targeted feedback in a matter of hours. Through this process, it identified what worked best and built out scalable best practices to grow larger social CRM initiatives. By start-ing small, you can scale your social CRM strategies without overwhelm-ing yourself in data. ■

This is an extract of Forrester’s What Social CRM Means To Customer Intelligence paper by Zach Hofer-Shall with Suresh Vittal and Allison Smith

more onlineBuyer’s Guide: The companies using social media in their CRMcomputerweekly.com/248041.htm

Buyer’s Guide: Social networking adds a layer to CRM practicescomputerweekly.com/247987.htm

Buyer’s Guide: Adobe defines digital enterprise platformcomputerweekly.com/248117.htm

11 | 25-31 ocTober 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

»

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“Just because we are a small business doesn’t mean that we need to act like one. Managing the increasing amount of paper associated with our business was costing us money and reducing our productivity. Did you know that a misplaced document costs roughly GBP 40* or more? When we heard about Fujitsu’s professional scanning solution ScanSnap and all of its advanced functions, we knew this is our product! It gave us the ability to scan and manage huge quantities of different documents, such as business cards, invoices, project information and other business documents and share them quickly and easily. Only with the press of just one button all our documents were scanned and with the integrated PDF software, our documents can be converted into searchable PDF files and stored in cloud applications, on laptops or to the network. Storing and organizing the paper in binders is thing of the past! We only need to enter a keyword and the document we are looking for is on the screen in seconds – independent where we are! Thanks to ScanSnap, documents don’t get lost anymore; we save money and can concentrate on our real work and business!”

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project management

13 | 25-31 OctOber 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

academics, CIOs, lawyers, a professor of outsourcing, a consultant and an inves-tigative journalist answer

the question on the minds of many a business and IT professional: Why do big IT projects fail?

The National Health Service’s (NHS) National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) is perhaps the best-known IT project that did not achieve what it set out to do, but the public sector is littered with these projects. A study from the European Services Strategy Unit, completed in 2007, reported on 105 government IT projects which cost more than they should, over-ran or were terminated – or even all three. The 105 projects were valued at £29.5bn and cost almost £9bn more than expected. A total of 60 pro-grammes had cost overruns and on average cost about 30% more than they should have. Furthermore, 35 contracts were delayed and 31 cancelled.

Recent research from Oxford Uni-versity’s Said Business School found large IT projects are 20 times more likely to fail than large projects in other sectors, such as construction.

Said Business School research ana-lysed 1,500 global projects worth a total of $245bn, with an average cost of $170m. It found that large IT projects are on average 27% over budget and take 55% longer to com-plete than planned.

The private sector is no stranger to cost and time over-runs and out-sourced project are not immune. In 2009 BT Global Services lost £1.2bn due to cost overruns on big contracts with the NHS and Reuters.

Yann L’HuillierYann L’Huillier is group CIO at financial services giant Compagnie Financiere Tradition. Be-fore his current role he was

CIO at trading exchange Turquoise where, in eight months, he delivered the complete set of IT solutions, procedures and processes for the exchange to go live in August 2008. Before that, he was CIO at the Boston

fail. You will find some common reasons to all. The first one is that even though most budgets are done well from the start, to be approved they must be scaled down, contin-gencies removed, to a level where they will receive the blessing of the deciders/payers. Once they are ap-proved there is nothing left for unex-pected events (Murphy’s law, for ex-ample).

“The second reason is that be-tween the time the decision is taken, the project starts and is completed, the situation will change several times. The economics, regulatory [en-vironment], and competition don’t freeze at the start, so big projects need a wider scope than the original one. One should plan for unknown chang-

“Big projects – IT or otherwise – can’t be completed on budget or on time” Yann L’Huillier, Compagnie Financiere Tradition

Avoid IT meltdownKarl Flinders asks the professionals why big IT projects fail

es and have enough buffer in financ-ing and scheduling to account for an-ything that will go wrong.

“Lastly, when projects are delayed, the wrong solutions are often used, such as increasing staffing instead of de-scoping or phasing the deploy-ment. Design is a democracy but im-plementation is a dictatorship.”

Anthony FinkelsteinAnthony Finkelstein is professor of software systems engi-neering at Uni-versity College London (UCL)

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Stock Exchange (2003-2007), where he designed and launched the Boston Equities Exchange trading platform, and prior to that he spent seven years at the Toronto Stock Exchange where he developed the new Equity Trading Systems.

He says: “Big projects can’t be completed on budget or on time. But it’s not only IT projects – some of the big architecture/engineering projects

»

project management

Tony Collins is an investigative journalist who has specialised in large IT projects. He is co-author of Crash, a book on IT disasters, and co-founder of Campaign4Change, which seeks reforms in the public sector. He spent 21 years at Computer Weekly.He says: “Every project is different, but these are some general lessons: 1. Projects with realistic budgets and timetables tend

not to be approved. 2. The more desperate the situation the more optimistic the progress report.3. Users are likely to reject any system that gives them what they asked for. Better for the project managers to understand what users do rather than what they say they do.4. CEOs who know a great deal about computer projects are dangerous. The over-confident CEO may try to do too much, too soon and with too little – and possibly remove potential savings from business budgets before the savings are actually made. He gets few warnings because he is surrounded by people who agree with him. 6. Keep it small and simple. If it has to be big, split it into components that are each useful in themselves.7. A failing project has benefits that are always spoken of in the future tense. 8. In the public sector the unnecessary secrecy over the progress or otherwise of major projects such as Universal Credit continues. It’s a pity because it increases the chances of failure.”

Tony Collins

and dean of UCL Engineering. Active in industry consulting, he is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the British Computer Society (BCS).

He says: “The Standish Group in its CHAOS report cites reasons such as: inadequate user involvement; un-clear business objectives; failure to control scope; poor architecture; re-quirements volatility; unsystematic development process; and unreliable estimates.

“None of these would come as a surprise to any IT professional. The more interesting challenge is, there-fore, why do we appear to be bound to repeat these same mistakes? I would argue that the problems are more fun-damental and not essentially techni-cal – they lie in governance. That is, in the structure of relations and incen-tives that bind together the business and IT functions of an organisation.

“An organisation with a flawed governance structure cannot articu-late its requirements, charter a project, identify appropriately skilled staff, manage the concomitant change

process, determine if the project has been successful or even deal with the consequences of failure. Governance is becoming more complex as we in-creasingly have organisations with federated and outsourced business structures. We will neither under-stand project failure nor be able to ad-dress the causes until we have ad-dressed governance.”

Brian RandellBrian Randell is emeritus professor and senior research investigator at the School of Comput-ing Science at Newcastle

University. He was a member of the group of academics who became concerned about the NHS NPfIT. From April 2006 until September 2010 he edited the evolving dossier documenting concerns about the programme.

In response to Computer Weekly’s question, he sent this excerpt from his report, A Computer Scientist’s Re-actions to NPfIT (Journal of Informa-tion Technology, Macmillan, 2007): “The NHS’s huge NPfIT project, in-tended to serve 40,000 GPs and 300-plus hospitals, was claimed to be the world’s largest civil IT project. In fact, its ill-fated intended central core, a nationwide electronic health records (EHR) facility, dramatically illustrates one of the most serious causes of large IT project failures.

“The system of systems that was to provide electronic health records was

initially designed by a large central team, and intended as a complete ‘big-bang’ replacement for the many and varied existing EHR systems. It would have been far better to employ evolutionary acquisition, ie. to speci-fy, implement, deploy and evaluate a sequence of ever more complete IT systems, in a process that was con-trolled by the stakeholders who were most directly involved, rather than by some distant central bureaucracy. Authority as well as responsibility should have been left, from the out-set, with hospital and general practi-tioner trusts to acquire IT systems that suited their environments and priorities – subject to adherence to minimal interoperability constraints – and to use centralised services as, if and when they chose.”

Philip VirgoPhilip Virgo is secretary general at the Information Society Alli-ance. He has nearly 40 years’ experience of IT projects.

He says: “Large projects nearly always fail un-less broken into components that can be delivered step-by-step by mixed teams of users and technicians who know what they have to achieve to-gether and what their next job will be if they succeed – and that they can-not move onto it until they have de-livered this one to the satisfaction of

the business. That satisfaction may well be an evolving mix of specifica-tion, time and budget, because incre-mental implementation and market change leads to changing expecta-tions and needs.

“My first major project was the merger and decimalisation of the sales ledgers for the companies that had come together to form ICL. My reward was two years at the London Business School, including a course on programme management led by one of the Polaris team. I have watched successes and failures over nearly 40 years. The reasons have not changed. By far the biggest IT project in the UK was the transition of the payment clearing system, including the ATMs in every high street, to in-ternet protocols and common card standards. It took nearly 10 years to complete all the incremental chang-es. No one has ever heard of it be-cause success is boring.” ■

more onlineNews: IT project failure: Read the early warning signs and act fastcomputerweekly.com/248184.htm

Blog: Write a contract to protect against out of control IT projectscomputerweekly.com/blogs

CIO interview: Katy Davis, interim head of IT, Department of Healthcomputerweekly.com/248186.htm

14 | 25-31 OctOber 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

James Martin is the former IT chief operating officer (COO) Europe at investment bank Lehman Brothers. Over the past 17 years he has worked for several retail and investment banks, often in the IT COO role. He has been involved in hundreds of large IT projects, including three global Year 2000 programmes.

He says: “In my experience, the key reasons for IT project failure have been consistent across firms and

around the world. My top five pitfalls are: Lack of robust business require-ments at the outset, leading to unrealistic IT project budgets and timescales; business sponsorship and participation start off strong and then tail off, leaving the IT project drifting; red herring stakeholders frustrating a project by raising numerous side issues and minor concerns; the world outside moving on, which forces a project to be redefined during its course so it never really ends, but just runs out of steam; and the administrative burden imposed on the IT team eats more resource than technical development work.

“The large projects which have been most successful tended to be externally visible to customers, regulators, the public and media. I’ve also seen ‘best practice’ lead to ‘worst result’ projects far too often and I believe that is the root cause of the problem: process has greater emphasis than outcome, and that is not going to get a project over the line.”

James Martin

“The problems are more fundamental and not essentially technical – they lie in governance” Anthony Finkelstein, University College London

»

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Retirement fund sets police on IT security whistle-blowerAustralian Patrick Webster noticed that, when he logged in to his online account at retirement fund First State Super, the URL contained the unique ID for his account.

By tweaking the number in the URL, Webster found he could ac-cess other people’s accounts. Being the model citizen, he immediately notified First State Super that their 770,000 account holders were at risk.

Proving that no good deed goes un-punished, Webster soon found him-self arrested by police on suspicion of hacking into First State Super’s computer systems.

Adding insult to injury, the retire-ment fund suspended Webster’s account, demanded to inspect his computer and said he could be liable for the costs of fixing the breach.

Boffins spend far too much time thinking of clever namesIT is littered with three-letter acro-nyms (TLAs), but a team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in the US have outdone themselves with a nine-letter classic.

They have created a robot to per-form a simple, yet distasteful task, but naming the beast of their creation probably took longer than developing and building it.

The robot is designed to seek out and identify Potentially Offensive

Objects for Pickup (Poop) from a given field using its colour cameras.

Once all the Poop in the area has been identified and located, the robot will drive to each pile, pick it up and deposit it in a bucket for disposal.

And there you have it, a Perception Of Offensive Products and Senso-rised Control Of Object Pickup (Poop Scoop) system capable of clearing 12 individual Poops in 20 minutes.

Great to know, but as unpleasant as it is to follow your dog around with a plastic bag, it is unlikely many peo-ple will want to spend $400,000 for the high-tech waste disposal unit.

Motorist caught multi-tasking on the movePolice in Hampshire recently caught a motorist driving while using a lap-top, writing down the answers to a radio quiz and sipping coffee, all at the same time.

According to the report in the Daily Telegraph, the behaviour was observed during Operation Tramline, a crackdown on distracted drivers in which the force used a number of vehicles, including an unmarked

HGV cab. The HGV cab allowed officers to

observe and video offenders from an improved viewpoint.

Looking on the bright side, that the coffee-drinking, laptop-using, radio quiz-participating driver is referred to, simply, as a “motorist” – whereas another offender, caught eating a pear with a knife, was revealed to be a man – suggests the motorist in ques-tion was at least naturally disposed to multi-tasking. ■

Read more on the Downtime blogcomputerweekly.com/downtime

Heard something amusing or exasperating on the industry grapevine? E-mail cw-downtime@computerweekly.com

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A survey conducted by Goldsmiths College reports one in 10 Britons leaves web passwords in their will.

Some 53% of those surveyed said they had what they’d consider “treasured possessions” stored or saved online. A quarter cited

important photos. And another one in 10 said they had sentimental e-mails or treasured videos they wanted to bequeath as a “digital inheritance”.

But the most popular reason for handing passwords to the next generation was the value of online content the erstwhile deceased had amassed during their

lifetimes; 25% of the 2,000 who took part said they had collected more than £200 worth of music, video and software.

If Gran were to leave Downtime her iTunes password (if indeed Gran has an iTunes password at all - is it too early to speculate about the benefactors of the Jobs estate?) it’s unlikely the inevitable collection of end-of-the-pier organ music would be of much use or comfort.

Downtime can see how a Gmail or Flickr account could be of interest – passing on photos, memories and conversations in a modern way – but still harbours ambitions for the mahogany kitchen dresser.

Roll over, Beethoven

16 | 25-31 octobEr 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

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