Computing.co.uk Latest updates

Sun sees sales drop by 25 per cent

Angelica Mari — 2009-11-09T14:01:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 9 November 2009 at 14:01:00

The company will also slash 10 per cent of its workforce due to delays in its acquisition by Oracle

Sun Microsystems saw its first quarter revenue drop and announced it will cut 10 per cent of its workforce due to delays in its sale to Oracle.

The revenue decrease of 25 per cent saw sales fall to $2.24bn (£1.33bn). Despite this, the company’s first-quarter loss of $120m (£71.5m) was less than the same period last year, due to much smaller exceptional charges, down from the $1.68bn reported a year ago.

The company’s results included $6m for impairments and pre-tax charges of $45m for restructuring. This compares with $1.45bn and $63m respectively, a year earlier.

With most of its clients in the battered financial services sector, Sun reported a product revenue drop of 33 per cent, with services revenue down 14 per cent.

The completion of Sun’s acquisition by Oracle, announced in April, is still in progress. It is being held up by an EU anti-trust investigation cased by competition concerns over Oracle - the world's largest database supplier - taking over Sun's MySQL product - the most successful open source database.

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has claimed that Sun is losing $100m (£61m) per month while European regulators ponder whether or not to approve the deal.

Oracle’s shares were among the most actively traded of Friday's late session, according to reports.

Barnsley launches digital inclusion initiatives

Tom Young — 2009-11-09T13:52:00.000Z

Tom Young, Computing, Monday 9 November 2009 at 13:52:00

Council wants everyone in borough online by 2012

Barnsley Council has launched a number of schemes aimed at getting everyone in the borough online by 2012.

The authority has launched a programme called Totally Online Barnsley supported by £1.5m of EU money and £1.5m from the government.

The council will host a number of "Get Online" days based at local online centres aimed at encouraging people to make use of the internet.

Phil Coppard, Barnsley Council chief executive, said the initiative aims to help people understand what the internet can offer them.

“By providing support and training this will give individuals the confidence and skills needed to help navigate the digital world," he said.

Twenty one unemployed people in the area are to be trained as digital outreach trainers. They will work with their communities to spread the message and encourage people to attend the Get Online days.

The council has also invested in a new datacentre as a joint venture with its IT supplier Bull.

As well as supporting council operations, the datacentre will sell services to businesses which spring up as a result of the digital inclusion agenda. It will also be available for use by neighbouring councils.

Barnsley is also one of four South Yorkshire authorities in the process of deploying superfast broadband that will cover 97 per cent of homes and businesses in the area – some 1.3 million people - as part of a £90m programme of investment, including £30m from the European Region Development Fund.

The 25 Mbit/s network will be available in some areas from early next year and completed in 2012.

Government digital inclusion champion Martha Lane Fox welcomed the initatives, noting that one in four people in the UK still do not use the internet regularly.

"Barnsley is a fantastic example of how communities can benefit from being online and has clearly demonstrated that through innovation, forward thinking and engaging in good public-private partnerships, the goals of digital inclusion can be achieved," she said.

Government to proceed with internet snooping plan

Parliamentary reporter — 2009-11-09T13:49:00.000Z

Parliamentary reporter, Computing, Monday 9 November 2009 at 13:49:00

Suppliers will be forced to retain details of all electronic communications for use by law enforcement and security services

The government is proceeding with plans to compel communications service providers [CSPs] to retain electronic data beyond that required for commercial purposes, and make it available to the security services, police and other public authorities, despite substantial opposition.

The Home Office admitted a tiny majority — just 53 per cent — of those consulted back the approach and a large minority — 38 per cent — are opposed to any enhancement of surveillance powers. The plan will see CSPs retaining details of all emails, phone calls, texts and other electronic communications – but not their content.

The proposals are expected to cost £2bn to implement over 10 years, with no indication of any payments to CSPs to offset costs.

Officials also rejected inserting an independent judgement into the process – similar to the requirement for police to obtain a magistrates' signature on a search warrant - claiming it would "impair the effectiveness of the techniques in question" without protecting privacy.

The document spelling out the outcome of a consultation on the proposals complained they had been "widely misrepresented", insisting communications data "is a vital tool for public authorities who protect the public" and must not be limited to dealing with the terrorist threat but extend to crime, public health and public safety as well.

The Home Office insisted the plan does not extend to the interception of the actual communications, which is subject to a stricter regime. The government has always maintained it is not interested in the content of messages but rather in details about the messages – who contacted whom, the time of contact and so on.

The document included a number of instances involving the use of communications data: to rescue a man lost with his dog on a remote moor on Lewis through his mobile phone; to prove members of a South London gang were at the scene of the knife murder of a teenager caught in a love triangle; to secure convictions of the drug-dealing, semi-automatic-armed "Gooch Gang" in Manchester; and the seizure of 16 kilos of heroin imported from Afghanistan through Birmingham airport.

Security minister David Hanson spelled out the government's approach in a written statement to Parliament defending the "middle way" decided earlier this year when ministers rejected initial proposals for a huge national database to retain all communications data, seen as a Big Brother threat.

Hanson said responses to the consultation welcomed the decision against a central database but claimed "there was a recognition of the importance of communications data and agreement that the capability of communications data to protect the public should be maintained".

He said the government would develop the approach requiring CSPs to hold and supply the data but promised "to work closely with CSPs in order to minimise as far as possible any impact on them" and "include strong safeguards to minimise the potential for abuse and ensure the security and integrity of the data".

The government claimed existing legislation including the EU Data Retention Directive are inadequate. It defended the use of deep packet inspection to extract information and carry out "lawful interception", denying this blurred the distinction between communications data and interception of content, and said work on dealing with encryption will continue.

In July, The Information Commissioner's Office expressed concerns over the collection of communications data proposed in the government's programme.

Local authorities should not outsource in bulk, says Deloitte

Tom Young — 2009-11-06T16:15:00.000Z

Tom Young, Computing, Friday 6 November 2009 at 16:15:00

Retaining in-house staff will allow for a more effective IT strategy

Local government authorities should outsource commoditised IT functions such as desktops, networks and datacentres while retaining control of technology strategy in-house, according to a new report from consultant Deloitte.

This will allow it to ensure that IT is being used in the most innovative way while keeping down costs – something that is difficult to do with a bulk outsourcing deal, the report says.

"For far too long, local government has tended to view IT as a black art that is better performed by external contractors," said Costi Perricos, author of the report.

"The result has been failed outsourcing contracts and the growth of disparate IT domains that lack centralised control and adequate governance."

Many bad IT projects are the result of poor communication and a lack of central strategy according to Deloitte, which has worked with a number of authorities on their IT strategies.

Maintaining in-house control of strategy will allow authorities to ensure the value of IT is being harnessed.

Authorities should establish a board that includes directors and suppliers to make IT-related decisions, according to the report.

This will allow IT staff to communicate costs in lay terms and make clear that transformational projects, though costly in the short term, may lead to huge savings in the longer term.

It will also allow authorities to focus on the business strategy that IT will support, rather than investing in technology for its own sake.

In addition, requirements from central government for all authorities to cut costs means that they must look carefully at reusing their existing IT systems for more functions, as well as being prepared to share systems with neighbouring authorities.

"Authorities are being asked to share resources and the good news for authorities embarking on such journeys is that the potential for savings is real," says the report.

It estimates that sharing resources in a co-ordinated fashion could shave as much as 15 per cent off costs in the long term.

Capgemini revenue declines

Angelica Mari — 2009-11-06T14:24:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 6 November 2009 at 14:24:00

Third-quarter results hit by reduced IT spending

A fall in business technology budgets has caused revenue to plummet at IT consultancy and services firm Capgemini.

The French company reported a 7.3 per cent revenue reduction over the third quarter to €1.95bn (£1.75bn) across all its business segments.

Citing a "sharp reduction in corporate IT spending", the company said fourth-quarter revenue is expected to decline by a similar amount to that of the third quarter.

Due to an "extremely tight" rein on costs, the company expects its full-year operating margin to increase seven per cent year on year.

“Although there are signs that activity is stabilising and even picking up in some market segments, we do not expect to see benefits immediately,” the company said in a statement.

The firm said it will launch five service offerings focused on high-growth markets between now and March 2010 to "leverage the upturn".

Fujitsu is notified of strike action

Angelica Mari — 2009-11-06T10:37:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 6 November 2009 at 10:37:00

First ever national strike in the UK IT sector to take place next week

Workers at Fujitsu are to go on a three-day strike organised by the Unite union, following a vote earlier this week.

The walkout is planned for the 12, 13 and 16 November in what is claimed to be the first ever national strike in the UK's IT sector.

According to Unite, 74 per cent of its Fujitsu members voted for strike action, with 92 per cent voting for industrial action of some sort.

The industrial action will also include members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) working for Fujitsu, where 68 per cent of those voting backed strike action with 85 per cent in favour of industrial action of some sort.

The strike is over proposals the company has made for 1,200 UK redundancies, to be implemented from December, as well as changes in the firm’s pension scheme that could reduce employees’ pension payments by around 20 per cent. Unite says 4,000 staff in the main pension scheme are being hit by Fujitsu’s plans to close its retirement fund.

The company imposed a pay freeze on UK staff earlier this year and in August it announced proposals for 1,200 redundancies in the UK.

According to Unite national officer for IT and communications Peter Skyte, the Fujitsu UK chief executive was contacted by the union on Monday to try to resolve these issues but the company has yet to respond formally.

“Our members are saying enough is enough, and employee representatives on the company’s consultative forum have tendered their resignations over the way they are being treated,” said Skyte.

“We recognise the effect any industrial action will have on key customers and clients of Fujitsu, but the responsibility for this rests squarely with the company for failing to talk to us or address our issues,” he said.

NHS Bury goes live with Lorenzo

Tom Young — 2009-11-06T10:34:00.000Z

Tom Young, Computing, Friday 6 November 2009 at 10:34:00

Bury is first trust to deploy new version of software

The NHS Bury trust went live with its Lorenzo electronic patient record software on Tuesday - it is the first trust to use this version of the software and the fourth to go live this year.

The new version, Lorenzo 1.9, has its own patient administration system as well as a electronic health records system, where previous versions of Lorenzo had worked with legacy patient administration systems.

The system was implemented by CSC, the local service provider.

Lorenzo developer iSoft says the system will support almost 600 users across two wards and 1,200 clinics.

The deployment is a much-needed boost for iSoft and the National Programme for IT, which suffered criticism recently after it emerged that only 175 clinicians across the whole country were using Lorenzo patient software, despite extensive costs.

Rollout of electronic patient records is running four years behind schedule and in April, director general of informatics Christine Connelly set deadlines for local service providers CSC and BT to achieve “significant” progress with rollout.

Connelly said that CSC and iSoft must get Lorenzo into a care setting by November and “working smoothly” in an acute setting by March.

Gary Cohen, iSoft’s executive chairman and chief executive, said the company is committed to helping trusts meet these goals.

The university hospitals of Morecambe Bay are due to go live with Lorenzo by the end of March next year.

CSC also announced this week that it has now implemented electronic patient records in 1,000 GP practices across the country.

Government to simulate "total collapse" of UK phone network

Nicola Brittain — 2009-11-05T11:00:00.000Z

Nicola Brittain, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 11:00:00

Cyber security exercise next week will examine response if communications disappear

In the first exercise of its kind in the UK, the government will simulate a "total collapse" of the national phone network next week, as part of the National Strategy for Cyber Security launched by Gordon Brown in June.

The move was announced at the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs yesterday.

The exercise will take place on 11 and 12 November and be codenamed White Noise. It will be designed to simulate a complete shutdown of the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

White Noise will involve hundreds of government and industry players but will not have any impact on those not involved in the exercise.

The government’s response will be monitored by officials in a co-ordinated way and the results will be relayed to Parliament and the public.

Speaking at the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Geoff Smith, head of communications security in the Department for Business, said: “[White Noise will teach us] whether we can respond [to a crisis like this] in real time.”

He added: “Without a functioning communications system we would be reduced to carrier pigeons and semaphore.”

This exercise follows a number of concerns raised by the Lords committee about the adequacy of protection and responsiveness of infrastructure regarding cyber-attacks.

Smith said: "Analysis of the response to White Noise will add momentum to efforts across government to strengthen the UK's communications infrastructure. "

The national strategy for cyber security is part of the wider national security system and aims to increase protection against cyber crime in the digital age and build on themes introduced by the Digital Britain report.

OpenSpace puts people on the map

Dave Bailey — 2009-11-04T17:41:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 4 November 2009 at 17:41:00

Location service plots person's location on webpage with 10-metre accuracy

Mobile device firm Locatorz has launched a new person-location service using the Ordnance Survey's (OS) OpenSpace platform. The new system has an accuracy of 10 metres.

Ordnance Survey sales and marketing development director James Brayshaw said: "Using OS OpenSpace means Pro Locatorz has the perfect online solution to allow users to locate the whereabouts of their selected people.”

The system uses a mobile phone device called Locatorz, which sends a GPS signal over a GSM connection to one of Locatorz' servers. Using the signal, Locatorz sends back a viewable, secure webpage with the person's location plotted.

OS OpenSpace Pro can use high-volume and commercial websites, adding to the standard version of OS OpenSpace, a free online mapping application for community groups and web developers.

Locatorz claims its service is: "The first fully commercial application to use OS OpenSpace Pro." It allows smooth panning and zooming to locate colleagues, friends, and relatives.

Locatorz chief executive Guy Norgrove said: “OS OpenSpace has provided us with a fantastic platform for users to accurately locate people to within 10 metres.”

Security body joins debate over EU Interoperability Framework

Dave Bailey — 2009-11-04T15:48:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 4 November 2009 at 15:48:00

Enisa comments likely to add to fears that EU is caving to software industry pressure

The European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) today stepped into the row over version 2 of the EU Interoperability Framework, which aims to offer governments and businesses guidance on using open source software.

A leaked copy of the document caused uproar within some sections of the technology community for appearing to water down the EU's official definition of what open source is, in response – it is alleged – to intense lobbying by the software industry.

Now, in a move that is likely to further anger the framework's critics, the EU's security agency has come to the defence of proprietary technologies, saying they have a place in a mixed system, and warning that the open source model and code sharing can be "risky" for businesses.

"We recognise the fact that proprietary software and open source software will always co-exist - and that both models have their advantages and disadvantages," said an Enisa spokesman.

"While it is true that open source code is available for all to see, meaning that many vulnerabilities can be detected and corrected, the support offering for open source code is not always in line with business requirements, which can make businesses vulnerable," he said.

However, Enisa conceded that going down the proprietary route is not without its risks.

"Vulnerabilities can arise when companies run software packages from different vendors as part of the same system. This is due to the fact that different vendors often deploy different security models and these are not always totally compatible," said the spokesman.

Enisa said it is already addressing software security problems cited in the EU Interoperability Framework in its strategy document, which is currently under development.

HP revamps infrastructure strategy in response to uncertain demand

Martin Courtney — 2009-11-05T12:13:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 12:13:00

Changes designed to appeal to cash-strapped buyers

HP has reshuffled its server, storage, networking and datacentre management product portfolio in a bid to make them more attractive to corporate buyers who continue to deal with uncertain IT infrastructure budgets.

The company has conducted research that it says shows more than 90 per cent of companies feel business buying cycles will be unpredictable over the next few years, meaning all hardware and software vendors, HP included, need to find new approaches to selling.

Research company Gartner this week published a report saying that 2009 represents the worst year ever for the IT industry, with end-user spending down 6.9 per cent compared with 2008.

Gartner is more optimistic about 2010 in as much as there will be no further fall in spending, but it says the overall market will not recover to 2008 revenue levels until 2012.

“For more than 50 per cent of CIOs, the IT budget will be zero per cent or less in growth terms, and will only slowly improve in 2011,” wrote Gartner senior vice president Peter Sondergaard in a research note.

HP's newly named "converged infrastructure" is an expansion of its former adaptive infrastructure architecture, which now encompasses physical and virtual server and storage network hardware, management software, and applications designed to help datacentres monitor and control energy use in real time.

HP also released a new version of its Neoview Advantage data warehouse platform.

"This really builds on the Opsware acquisition [in 2007] by adding in a lower layer of management software to monitor and report on the resources being consumed [within the datacentre]," said Nathaniel Martinez, programme director at research company IDC.

"I am a bit dubious about any company saying they will offer bundles - it is not the right time for that. Most end-users right now are having infrastructure upgrades dictated by purchasing policy, and people want as much modularity as possible to be able to compare prices."

A consolidation of offerings may help push more customers towards HP’s vast services portfolio acquired from EDS, however. The company has set up converged infrastructure consulting services to push the product set, while its Enterprise Services division offers outsourcing options around the same technologies.

"I believe business processes are key to enterprises, and HP is not pushing these yet. No doubt they will come into play later with the [integration of] the EDS acquisition and local domesticities," said Martinez.

HP rival IBM has successfully integrated hardware and software sales with service and business process offerings in recent years, while Dell indicated similar intentions last month with the acquisition of services and business solutions specialist Perot Systems in a $3.9bn (£2.4bn) deal.

Like other IT vendors, HP has seen its profits fall due to a global slowdown in IT spending. Net revenue for the third quarter of 2009 was $27.5bn (£16.7bn), down two per cent year on year, with profits down 14 per cent to $2.2bn (£1.3bn). Earnings for the second quarter of 2009 saw profit falling 17 per cent compared with the same period in 2008.

HP has cut staff numbers in the UK and elsewhere in recent years, having announced a year ago that it would shelve 3,378 UK jobs in two years following the EDS acquisition, with a total of 24,000 jobs being axed globally.

Exploring the cloud's potential

Dave Bailey — 2009-11-05T07:45:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 07:45:00

Intel CTO Justin Rattner and SAP head of research Lutz Heuser explain how their firms are collaborating to make the cloud truly fit for enterprise purposes

The next generation of cloud computing services and platforms will look very different, and hardware giant Intel and business software firm SAP recently launched a collaborative research facility in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter business and science park to discover how best to provide them.

Computing talked to Intel’s chief technology officer (CTO) Justin Rattner and SAP’s head of research Lutz Heuser about their aims.

What does this collaboration mean for Intel and SAP?

JR: The co-lab represents a new approach to research, with companies such as Intel and SAP demonstrating a high level of mutual trust and helping to leverage one another’s investment. The joint effort will mean better results more quickly for our companies and the industry at large.

In addition, sustainability is a key concern for us. One thing we’re learning from the consumer cloud is that energy is an important consideration, and that a lot of effort is required to make these cloud systems energy efficient, because operating costs are increasingly the main costs.

It is no coincidence that datacentres such as those of Google or Microsoft have sprung up in cooler climates – both are situated on the Columbia river in the US, and use the water as a cooling mechanism.

What do you think are the biggest issues for companies considering rolling out cloud services?

LH: They have to trust the service. If I know that my enterprise’s data is being handled correctly, I don’t care where the data is physically located. However, the trust is not there yet, so we have to work on that.

n addition, we have to make it easy for the chief executive to allow the IT leaders to adopt a solution such as this. Ultimately, companies want to lower their total costs, and the solution should run as smoothly as if it were in-house – it will make life easier, not more complex.

Will Intel concentrate primarily on the hardware aspects of the proj ect, with SAP taking responsibility for the software?

JR: Intel is much more software focused than you would imagine, and increasingly what we do at the hardware level is driven by what we understand at the software level.

Much of our work with SAP will be around software and services, and the understanding we get from this will influence our hardware designs.

We have not seen the first generation of truly cloud-optimised hardware yet. We don’t know what servers designed specifically for these large cloud datacentres will look like; certainly different from traditional enterprise servers.

Look at Google – it tore out the bits it didn’t need from the server motherboards before setting up its cloud centres. So it doesn’t take a genius to realise that a cloud service probably has an optimum hardware architecture that we have yet to identify. We are starting to think about this.

How will you determine whether or not this partnership has been a success and what do you expect the practical results to be?

LH: Our initial joint venture started three or four years ago and we already have some results in the pipeline that we can’t announce yet – these will be around internet infrastructures and sustainable IT.

We are figuring out where the sweet spots are, and who the early adopters are likely to be – these companies will take the cloud infrastructure as part of their business model and drive them further.

We believe there will be a lot of new players in this arena offering services akin to iTunes and Facebook in the enterprise market. In five years there will be successful examples of this because we will have the new infrastructure.

PDA deployment pays off for debt collection firm

Tom Young — 2009-11-05T07:45:00.000Z

Tom Young, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 07:45:00

Bristow & Sutor has seen a significant rise in productivity since it equipped its bailiffs with GPS-enabled PDAs

Bristow & Sutor, a firm based in the West Midlands that collects payments on behalf of local authorities, has rolled out personal digital assistants (PDAs) to more than 150 bailiffs in an effort to improve their time management and make it easier for them to collect payments.

Previously, bailiffs would begin their day in the office, where they would be assigned a number of case files for the day – usually about 30.

They would be provided with hard copies of maps and would then have to try to work out the most efficient route between cases.

Each local authority has slightly different guidelines for extracting payment, so a bailiff would be required to carry a crib sheet ensuring he was following the correct protocol and method of calculating the fee owed – all of which had to be done on the spot.

When it came to extracting payment from people, bailiffs had to ring the payment through to a processing team at the firm’s headquarters in Redditch, and then wait for a return call to confirm clearance. The new PDAs have made things easier.

The bailiffs can have their cases stored on the devices and electronically added, removed and updated. The devices also contain a satellite navigation system that plots the best route between cases and instructs them in the same way as a sat nav.

They also calculate fees and provide the individual authority guidelines for that particular case.

In addition, they have an in-built card-payment machine, so bailiffs can extract payment without ringing back to the office, saving time and staff back at the company’s headquarters.

The system means that the firm can provide evidence of a visit should a member of the public falsely claim a bailiff had not called on them. “It gives us GPS data and a time stamp to check that the bailiffs are where they say they are,” said Bristow & Sutor managing director Andy Rose.

And when it comes to giving feedback on contracts, the system offers greater accountability and security, which helps with compliance. Electronic tick-box forms have replaced hand-written notes, which had proved difficult to read in the past.

The devices also transmit automated real-time alerts to the office base. Should no activity occur after a certain amount of time, an alert is issued that a worker could be in danger.

The firm also operates a client web service so that customers can view the progress of their particular cases online.

Bristow & Sutor operates its own in-house IT system, which made the switch to PDAs much easier, but it did need help from vendor Cognito to help with the external units.

Many of the bailiffs did not have experience of using mobile technology and there was some resistance to the devices.

But now almost all have been persuaded of the benefits and Rose estimated the firm is now turning over between nine and 10 per cent more cases than before it introduced the technology, giving a full return on investment within three years.

The changes in work patterns also mean that Bristow & Sutor can recruit labour in local areas, as well as those who live near its head office.

“This kind of technology is definitely becoming more affordable and suitable for smaller businesses,” said Ovum analyst Tim Renowden. “The price of devices will continue to fall too, but customised software will always be an expense.”

Multifunction handhelds to help police with their inquiries

Devices that perform more than one IT function are becoming increasingly common. The Association of Chief Police Officers is currently tendering for devices that can read credit and debit cards, passport chips and fingerprints, as well as contain a camera capable of capturing someone’s face to run through facial recognition technology.

Such bespoke mobile technology is not cheap – the tender is for 150 devices at £800,000 – but they do allow officers to perform a number of functions at once.

“The more functions a device has on it the better,” said project manager Dave Gunning. “They won’t necessarily all be used, but at least the capability is there.”

The police will use the devices in air and sea ports to check the identity of those coming in and going out.

Staff thrive on variety at C4

Angelica Mari — 2009-11-05T07:45:00.000Z

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 07:45:00

Channel 4 CIO Kevin Gallagher tells Computing how the convergence of TV and web services is opening up new opportunities for IT professionals

Channel 4 (C4) is to revamp its IT skills development strategy in light of the convergence of TV and web services and the rise of commodity IT outsourcing. The broadcaster will also introduce formal succession planning next year as a means of retaining the right staff.

C4’s chief information officer (CIO), Kevin Gallagher, told Computing that the broadcaster’s 60-strong IT team is small enough to allow considerable movement between departments and that this was a way of maximising staff skills.

“As we move to a more converged world, we expect people to move across departments instead of them just being a broadcaster or working in IT,” he said. “For example, we want to use people with traditional commissioning or TV backgrounds to commission web material. It is a different world, but some of the skills and creativity are similar and we want to harness that.”

C4 IT staff largely work on business-critical projects, while commodity IT is outsourced to partners such as Computacenter and Indian supplier NIIT. This means staff often work across business lines and are involved in shaping and managing third-party agreements and business processes, such as those underpinning the station’s recent contract with YouTube (see below).

Having a small team helps when it comes to competency mapping for IT, and the formal succession planning to be introduced next year should help the broadcaster retain its top staff.

“In a lot of flat organisations, people tend to move, but we are keen to retain the right people, see them moving around the organisation and have them become general managers rather than subject-matter experts,” said Gallagher.

Despite the current lack of a structured development programme, C4 has maintained its technical training budget – about £1,000 per employee – even in a challenging economic climate.

The broadcaster has reinstated its IT graduate programme after suspending it for financial reasons for a few years, and has just recruited a computer science graduate into a senior position. “What we can promise [the graduate] is that he will have a lot of business contact. Many systems don’t have a huge number of users, so the interaction between them and the developers is quite close,” said Gallagher.

YouTube deal puts IT centre stage

Under a deal signed with YouTube last month, C4 will make full-length content available through the video sharing web site shortly after shows have aired on TV from 2010.

The move is part of the channel’s strategy to work with third parties to get its content out to as wide an audience as possible, said C4 chief information officer Kevin Gallagher.

“This deal means there is a lot of work in IT to support the business development team in any technical issues that may appear and ensure we deliver from a contractual point of view,” he said.

IT work behind the scenes of the C4/YouTube deal includes the provision of metadata in XML format to YouTube for each show, which includes information on synopsis, cast and breaks for insertion of advertising.

Workflows co-ordinated by IT also include the re-formatting of video content for the web.

“Adding a new platform gets easier each time. And we now have a good suite of systems that lets us add new channels quickly,” said Gallagher.

Online projects planned for next year will see further alignment of web sites around programmes, and more use of social networking.

IBM White Paper download

Read more about social networking and the CIO, and how to use Web 2.0 platforms as business tools

UK Industry Awards 2009: Innovative project of the year

Computing staff — 2009-11-04T14:56:00.000Z

Computing staff, Computing, Wednesday 4 November 2009 at 14:56:00

We profile the finalists in the biggest UK IT industry awards night

Innovation is one of the most important themes of the UK IT Industry Awards, so it is fitting that the Innovative Project of the Year award, sponsored by Konica Minolta, has turned out to be one of the most hotly contested.

This year’s finalists prove that IT innovation remains central to those organisations whose success relies on technology.

The winners will be announced at the prizegiving party, to be held at Battersea Evolution in London on Thursday 12 November 2009.

To view the full list of finalists for each award, and to book your table at what will be the biggest night of the UK IT calendar, visit our web site at www.computing.co.uk/awards.

Flintshire County Council - Virtualisation

Flintshire County Council has built a virtualised, twin-centre IT infrastructure, that uses the minimum possible hardware resources to provide the right level of support to the council’s business systems at any given time. When workload grows or new requirements emerge, Flintshire can expand existing virtual servers or fire up new ones. The automatic shutdown of unused resources, combined with innovative datacentre cooling methods, has reduced energy costs and carbon emissions.

National Grid - Planning for Success

National Grid has an aggressive programme to upgrade Britain’s power network, and has designed pioneering software, unavailable on the market, to improve long-term planning of work on the electricity transmission system. “Optimiser” will allow delivery of increased volumes of work with the same resources and reduce contractor costs associated with delays by at least 10 per cent by managing complex data and business processes through a single software tool.

Glasgow School of Art Digital Design Studio - Venus: Virtual exploration of underwater sites

The Venus project aims to provide accurate 3D reconstructions of underwater archaeological sites, providing virtual access to sites that are otherwise out of reach to all but a few specially trained archaeologists. By recreating the sites as interactive computer-generated virtual environments, experts and the general public can study these important pieces of cultural heritage in a safe and cost-effective environment. For example, an underwater dive simulator provides the ability to dive down to accurate 3D simulations of deep sea underwater wrecks.

HR Wallingford - OpenWEB integrated environmental modelling

To understand how pressures such as climate change affect the environment requires modelling of not just physical, chemical and biological parameters, but how these parameters interact to affect the whole system. OpenWEB is an HR Wallingford initiative researching and implementing integrated computer modelling approaches with a community of users working together to make simulation of environmental systems a reality.

GHL Insurance Services/IT-Freedom - ICE Claims

In 2008, GHL Insurance Services decided to radically improve its claims service and searched the market for solutions to automate manual processes and drive cost out of the business. In August 2008, a joint project team was set the objective of installing ICE Claims to help the firm to realise the benefits from January 2009.

BT Innovate & Design - Risky Starts

Risky Starts is a co-operative effort between Openreach, BT’s communication provider customers, and BT Innovate & Design. The problem involved the re-use of previously connected lines that are at risk of early life failure (ELF). The solution was to identify lines with a high risk of failing and ensuring any necessary engineering work was completed prior to service being provided to those lines. The result was a reduction from 12 per cent to four per cent in the level of ELFs.

Mouchel Group - Maps@mouchel

Maps@mouchel is an innovative system that incorporates central data storage and management, harnesses the latest in web portal and geographic information systems, supports open standards for specialist users of geospatial technologies, and helps protect Mouchel from intellectual property infringement risks.

Teliris - Teliris 6G

Teliris developed its 6G telepresence platform to dramatically reduce bandwidth and related costs. The standards-based client-server software takes telepresence from the heavy, hardware-reliant, high-bandwidth systems typical of other vendors to a lightweight, agile solution that uses general-purpose networks.

Defra/IBM - Energy efficiency research project

IT could eliminate 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, but IT is itself a costly energy consumer. IBM worked with the government to study the energy efficiency of different IT environments. An innovative, structured approach was developed that enables IT departments and decision-makers to make more informed decisions and drive excess energy consumption out of distributed IT.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services - Media Community Cloud

This proof-of-concept project was built to demonstrate innovative use of cloud computing technology, enabling Siemens to deliver new services to its media sector customers. The project addressed the challenges that media firms face as their business models are disrupted by the advent of convergence and the digital age.

The changing face of the datacentre

Linda More — 2009-11-03T11:07:00.000Z

Linda More, Computing, Tuesday 3 November 2009 at 11:07:00

Pressure on organisations to cut capital expenditure, reduce energy consumption and slash emissions is giving rise to a new generation of leaner, cleaner datacentres

The mainframe of yesteryear has morphed into the datacentre of today – one big centralised powerhouse that is at the heart of today’s enterprise.

No longer a single machine, it is today typically a state-of-the-art space crammed with rows of server storage and connectivity, with an ever-increasing appetite for power and cooling. The datacentre has also evolved from being solely the province of the IT department to being a key topic on the boardroom agenda.

Technological advances have also had a major impact on the datacentre landscape. Multi-core processors, virtualisation and 10Gbit/s Ethernet are helping to create a next generation datacentre that is less power hungry, makes better use of resources, costs less to run and improves service delivery. For IT leaders, server virtualisation and storage centralisation and consolidation have been the big developments over the past few years.

Nigel Barratt, IT technical services manager at Bassetlaw District Council in Nottingham, says adopting virtualisation was a lot less painful than he expected.

“We have improved our server and storage use, achieved better energy efficiency and have an effective backup and business continuity strategy,” he says. “All this was achieved despite budgetary, power and hardware constraints, and we are now able to deliver improved IT capacity to the business.”

These improvements have been so significant that Bassetlaw is now able to consider bringing back in-house services that were originally outsourced due to lack of capacity.

For most organisations, moving to a virtualised server environment has been a transformation. But Irene Blaston, head of corporate IT at international payment and ATM specialists Vocalink, is quick to point out that virtualisation is not a panacea for every application or area of the business.

“We process more than nine billion transactions a year securely, and that includes more than 90 per cent of UK salaries and 70 per cent of household b ills,” she says. “Some areas of our business are so critical that these newer technologies are not appropriate, but where possible, for example on the corporate side, we do implement them.”

Whenever a server needed replacing, Vocalink has consolidated, virtualised and used blade technology to maximise service delivery while reducing its carbon footprint.

“As well as saving four million kWh of electricity over the last three years, we now have an environment that is much easier to manage,” says Blaston. “In the virtual world you can just pick up a server and move it, which is much harder to do when the server and its services are tied together.”

Blaston believes that in future the datacentre and its services will diverge even further as hardware becomes decoupled from applications.

One of the big issues for IT teams over the years has been the management of corporate data. Often dispersed across the organisation and held departmentally or, even worse, on local hard disks, this has been a nightmare to manage, secure and maintain.

Ryan Sclanders, IT infrastructure team manager at credit information specialist CMA, says that moving to a centralised storage area network (SAN) has saved the company at least £300,000 over a six-month period.

“We made the move from servers with attached storage to a virtualised server environment with a Compellant SAN,” he says. “We now have 250 virtual servers running on 35 machines all looking at the SAN. Our footprint may now be larger, but our capacity has also grown significantly and none of our systems is idle.”

The big trends in datacentres are around power efficiency, virtualisation and reliability, according to Tom Howard, chief technology officer at datacentre operator Qube. “If you have thousands of transactions per second hitting the server and it falls over, you have a big problem. Reliability is key,” he says.

Power, certainly in the London area, is still high on the agenda. “Docklands has run out of power,” says Howard. Many companies, including CMA, have horror stories to tell of the day the power went out.

“Before we chose our co-location partner, I did some quite serious analysis of a lot of datacentres and they are all struggling to supply the power to run their operations in the London area,” says Sclanders. “It’s a common problem that is not going to go away overnight.”

However, Sclanders still chose a London location because of accessibility, admitting that being able to physically visit his equipment was part of his personal security blanket. “There are benefits in being able to get to the equipment. Not long ago, when our datacentre had an outage from the public side, I was able to get in there and manually reroute our traffic,” he says.

The London School of Economics (LSE) solved its datacentre issues by splitting its provisioning in two and outsourcing half of it to SunGard. Adrian Ellison, assistant director of infrastructure services, admits it was one of the best decisions he has made. “We still have local issues with power and air conditioning, so I’m thinking of outsourcing some more,” he says. “We now have a co-location strategy that mitigates the risks associated with our location in central London.”

New entrant to the datacentre services market, NGD Europe, has solved the power problem in what it claims is Europe’s largest datacentre by housing it in the £100m building in South Wales that was built for electronics firm LG’s manufacturing, but never occupied. With its own electricity substation on site capable of generating enough power to run a small city, it is confident power will never be an issue.

“With fibre connectivity from three main providers, incredible physical security and sufficient power, we offer a tier-3 environment at half the price of a London datacentre,” says Simon Taylor, NGD chairman. “Even when the building is fully populated, we will still have plenty of power left.”

While virtualisation, consolidation, blade technologies and centralised storage have turned today’s datacentre into a streamlined powerhouse at the heart of the enterprise, there are still plenty of concerns to address. For example, green issues surrounding datacentre costs are high on the agenda.

“It’s hard to talk about datacentres and green in the same sentence,” says LSE’s Ellison. “While there are lots of initiatives for making the datacentre environmentally friendly, we’ve gone for an obvious one and increased the operational temperature from 20°C to 25°C.”

Cloud computing is also set to have an impact on datacentres, but it is still in its infancy and has yet to prove its capabilities.

“The latest buzzword does seem to be cloud computing,” says Blaston. “At the moment, it hasn’t got the security wrap around it, but at some point it will and then it will become a very interesting proposition.”

Five trends that are transforming datacentre computing

Server virtualisation

Swapping multiple dedicated servers with attached storage for one high-performance machine that can be subdivided into several virtual servers running at optimum operating capacity has made sense for many organisations. Saving money, energy and physical datacentre space, these virtual machines are rapidly growing in popularity. Once configured, management is significantly reduced, and in case of failure the virtual server simply reconfigures itself on another piece of available hardware.

Storage centralisation

Centralising storage requirements through the provision of a storage area network (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS) allow enterprises to take control of their storage devices and manage the corporate data more effectively. Sharing storage simplifies management, increases availability and supports disaster recovery processes. Once centralised, techniques such as virtualisation can be deployed to further increase utilisation and ease management.

Blade technology

Developed in response to a critical need in the datacentre, blade technology provides additional server performance and availability, without dramatically increasing the footprint or power requirements of the machine. Consisting of a single, integrated chassis into which blades containing servers, communications and other peripheral components can be slotted, blade technology offers up to 45 per cent higher server density with reduced power requirements. Once a blade server chassis has been installed, adding more server power is easy – simply slot in an extra blade or two.

Datacentre-in-a-box idea

Coming to a field or empty building near you, these containerised datacentre pods will be arriving on the backs of lorries, ready to be slid or stacked into place and plugged in, ready to go. These are not a new idea, having been promoted as the ideal disaster recovery or expansion solution to existing bricks and mortar datacentres. The novelty is that these unmanned units could be stacked together in a physically secure environment to provide the datacentres of the future.

Natural cooling

With energy costs and environmental issues firmly on the global agenda, datacentres are looking for new ways to reduce power consumption and cooling costs. Natural cooling – using the outside atmosphere to improve cooling efficiency and lower energy bills – is becoming fashionable. Datacentre operators are now looking for cooler locations such as underground caves and mountain areas, and geographical regions such as Iceland and Scandinavia.

How to finance a startup

Steve Everhard — 2009-10-27T10:58:00.000Z

Steve Everhard, Computing, Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 10:58:00

In the current economic climate, startups need all the financial support they can get. So where can funding be found, and how should fledgling firms go about securing it? Steve Everhard reports

Life has never been tougher for new businesses. But if you are considering a new venture or have a great idea you would like to turn into a company and you can create a tech startup in the current climate, you will definitely thrive in the good times. Despite the downturn, there are still plenty of options to help find the funds you will need to succeed.

The first steps are to develop a business plan and a forecast model. These are key tools that document your ambition for the business, your competitive position and your market proposition. The forecasting model is your view of key financial inputs and outputs and also documents the assumptions you are making about market size and conditions, and what you expect to achieve within specific time frames. It will also stop you becoming distracted by unrelated areas and non-commercial activities.

The model also shows cashflow, which will yield your funding requirement. Too many businesses arrive at a random number – £1.5m, £3m and £5m are the amounts I most commonly hear – which they try to justify. A proper model will often surprise you as to how little you need, especially as you flex some of the elements to reflect your best and worst-case market response.

Too many technology businesses believe their cashflow difficulties arise from being ahead of their market and if they could only get access to bridging cash, the revenue would emerge. Although legendary stories about garage startups such as HP and Google abound, the reality for most businesses is that a lack of connection with their target markets will not result in open-armed acceptance – and certainly will not endear them to potential investors.

So what are the funding options for technology entrepreneurs looking to start a business?

Banks

Government intervention has increased liquidity and banks are open for business, but the cost of borrowing has increased. Banks are trying to pay back governme nt loans, and credit committees within banks are being conservative, especially with new businesses.

For the best chance of receiving finance:

develop a good business plan and bring in a team with a track record of delivering against forecasts in other businesses;

make regular contact with your bank manager to develop a good working relationship; and

keep your business plan up to date to fit the rapidly changing business environment.

If you have contracts for supply, you might want to explore specialist lenders as well.

Government initiatives

There are well-publicised government initiatives designed to help small businesses. These are normally business loans and are tailored to the firm so they can be fixed rate, variable or “mezzanine” – in a mezzanine loan, part of the interest due is deferred until the end of the loan term.

The Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) has been promoted heavily by banks and the government as a way of funding small business growth, from startup through to expansion. The government will underwrite 75 per cent of the loan value. To qualify:

your turnover cannot exceed £25m;

the business must have insufficient assets to secure a normal bank loan;

you will need a strong business plan; and

you must be looking to borrow between £10,000 and £1m, with higher minimums for partnerships and sole traders.

Each bank implements the EFG in a slightly different way, so shop around as attitudes to risk and preference for specific industries vary. A premium will have to be paid to the government each month to insure against their risk. In addition, the loan will probably have to be mitigated with directors’ personal guarantees.

Businesses considering technology research and development (R&D) investment should look at the UK government’s R&D tax scheme. This allows for up to 175 per cent of the associated R&D employment, and some of the consumables, costs to be offset against tax. For companies where profits are low or unrealised, HM Revenue & Customs will make cash payments at a lower rate instead.

Seek specialist advice to ensure your claim is properly structured and that appropriate expenses for activity have been included.

Grants

The government operates a number of EU grants that encourage venturing with universities. The EU Framework Programme will fund research collaboration within the newly defined European Research Area for businesses that turn over less than €50m (£45m).

Regional Development Agencies are funded by six government departments and have cash set aside for investment and regeneration. There are also special funds for assisted areas so consider that possibility when deciding where to base yourself.

Business investment grants are available for plant, machinery and buildings as well as R&D, including costs of testing and protection of intellectual property.

The UK Council for Employment and Skills is funded to support retraining and cross-training, so cash might be available to help you expand or adapt your workforce.

Private equity and venture capital

Private equity is generally off the radar for startups unless you have some truly stellar people in your management team who are known to be industry heavyweights. Some venture funds and angel networks are worth exploring, but seek out those that have a track record of actually investing in similar businesses as you do not want to waste your time.

Community lending

New forms of community-style lending have also sprung up as alternatives to traditional sources of finance. Examples include Zopa, which uses personal credit scoring to approve loans from private investors, and First Funding, which uses angel-style funding matched to business plans and risk.

Prudence and sound management practices will yield the cheapest source of funds, and collaboration could enable new opportunities by sharing risk and reward with other businesses. If you need new sources of funding, ensure that you shop around carefully and understand the risk as well as the reward.

Steve Everhard is associate director in the technology group at accountancy Grant Thornton

Discipline and prudence are the keys to maintaining a healthy cashflow

Early discipline will reap rewards in both yielding future additional investment and in convincing investors that you will treat their cash prudently.

Be aware of your cash position. In the early days when the coffers are full or when early adopters proclaim you as the new Google, remember that cash in the bank gives you options and independence. Debt can lead to loss of control and might place the business in the hands of someone whose view of the risk changes over time, which might lead to the sale of your debt to a less sympathetic organisation.

Check the obvious things such as supplier/reseller contracts and other payment arrangements.

If you are generating revenue, collect debts or settle outstanding ones. Many businesses worry that pressing for payment compromises future business, but if your relationship with a client is that tenuous, you will have to consider their true value to your business.

Explore asset-based borrowing using techniques such as invoice discounting or sale and lease-back. Although invoice discounting means accepting less cash, this is exchanged for the benefit of immediate payment. Sale and lease-back can free up capital linked to high-value equipment.

If you procure components from abroad or have significant non-UK business, consider a specialist foreign exchange firm. Many beat large banks in their rates as they work on narrower buy/sell spreads.

Watching over the detectives

Robert Blincoe — 2009-10-27T10:41:00.000Z

Robert Blincoe, Computing, Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 10:41:00

The woman leading the police fight against e-crime – deputy assistant commissioner Janet Williams – tells Robert Blincoe that the forces of law and order are finally gaining the upper hand

It is a mark of how seriously the police service is taking the threat and scale of e-crime that the officer taking the national lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) – deputy assistant commissioner Janet Williams of the Specialist Crime Directorate – has previously been detective chief inspector and senior investigating officer in the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch.

But it is perhaps less impressive that ACPO took until August this year to publish its first outline strategy for handling e-crime. And that the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU, pronounced “peck-u” in cop parlance) has only been in full operation for about nine months.

Williams laughs at the idea that this could have all been done years ago. “Yeah well, I wasn’t here then,” she says, but she feels all society is playing catch-up with technology, not just the police force.

The fight against computer criminals in the UK has been a stop-start affair, and both a cause and effect of that is the lack of a national reporting mechanism for e-crime. The result, in Williams’ words, is that both ACPO and the government are only now beginning to get to grips with the e-crime threat.

“I don’t feel that society as a whole, and ACPO as part of that, has a comprehensive understanding of the risk and threat. One of the reasons is that there’s no one intelligence source on e-crime. There’s no intelligence accrued nationally. As a result, the understanding is fragmented,” she says.

Reporting is one aspect of the ACPO e-crime strategy, and will be handled by the National Fraud Authority’s national fraud reporting centre. E-crime will piggyback onto this, and the speed of its set-up is outside ACPO’s hands.

There are other challenges, too. “The gauntlet that e-crime hands to us is that we’re going to have to work in a different way. We’re going to have to work faster and smarter. We will have to be able to jump across jurisdictions like criminals can, and that means changes in legislation, and changes in the way we do business,” says Williams.

She acknowledges the police and partner agencies can be bureaucratic in the way they work, but dismisses the suggestion that this and securing fresh legislation is going to keep law enforcement some steps behind the criminals even in terms of the technology they can access.

“We’ve got some real challenges in bringing e-criminals to justice if they’re working overseas. However, in terms of protecting the country, protecting our national infrastructure, protecting our financial sector, I absolutely disagree with you. People are investing a lot of brain power, money, time, and thinking into that – the agencies really are working together to do that,” she says.

“In protecting, patching and mitigating risk, we are very much ahead. It’s bringing people to justice that is a bit slower. But having said that, working with other organisations speeds us up – that’s why I’m keen to do that.”

This is an area where Williams feels she and her colleagues have been very successful. As well as industry and academia, good IT people want to work with the police.

“Absolutely they do,” says Williams. “Because it’s so exciting and new.”

Within the PCeU there are a large number of tech-savvy investigators, although Williams does not want to say exactly how many there are. “It sort of gives the opposition a bit more fire power,” she says.

The PCeU also benefits from secondments from industry, and has a number of part-time officers who work in industry. “They’re adding real value,” she says.

In addition, Williams is developing virtual task forces involving industry and academia working alongside the police on the biggest e-crime issues. Parties agree to share information and intelligence. She cites Chatham House, the independent international think-tank, as having been particularly helpful in bringing together partners and giving her set-up credibility.

“The police orchestrate this but lever resource from elsewhere to move faster, and have more brains on it. This is enabling us to start to really understand the problems, and deliver some really good outcomes,” says Williams. “We needed a new mindset for e-crime – it doesn’t all have to be cops. Cops play a critical part but they’re by no means the total solution to this. For example, I might need academics who truly understand the nature of botnets, how they’re composed, how they potentially might mutate, and then what the risks are to our infrastructure. A combination of brains is required, and it truly isn’t just a policing solution,” she says.

Williams, a Met officer since 1982, became involved in e-crime when she led the investigation into the loss of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) child benefit data in 2007. An HMRC office junior burned the entire database onto two discs, and sent them to the post room for collection by TNT. It triggered the country’s biggest police investigation into possible identity theft, exposing 7.25 million families to the risk of fraud by organised criminals.

She’s not a techie: “Oh God no – definitely not. But in a way that’s a strength, because I understand the business of policing; my background is serious and organised crime and terrorism,” she says.

But the next generation of detectives are going to have to be clued up on IT.

“I’ve been very clear that detectives most definitely need to understand e-crime,” says Williams. “They need to know their way around technology to be effective. I don’t think people will be capable as detectives in two years if they can’t do that.”

Williams considers that the £7.4m she has been given to fund the PCeU until 2011 has been spent proving a concept. She is hoping to be able to put figures against how much the operation has saved individuals, communities, and the country by preventing e-crime attacks, and to then get the budget boosted.

The high-profile successes this year have included taking out about 100 web sites that claimed to be selling tickets for Premier League football matches. Fans received either fake tickets or nothing at all. Operation Phyllite was the result of co-operation between the PCeU, the Premier League, FIFA and various ISPs.

The PCeU also worked with the FBI in Operation Lumpfish, which targeted a fraudulent music sales web site that collected banking information for a gang.

“The PCeU has already started to have a very good reputation in industry. The financial sector is particularly keen to work with us, as are the retailers. We’ve already had high-profile sets of arrests, recouped millions of pounds. We’ve already started to prove our worth,” says Williams.

She considers the level of funding the PCeU received meant that she has had to be creative in getting resources, which has benefited the police approach to tackling new crimes.

Williams and her team have to have their antennae up for all possible threats. Counter-terrorism is part of her portfolio in the Met, and the exploitation of technology as a terrorist weapon is something she has naturally considered as part of her ACPO brief.

”There is no intelligence or evidence to suggest that Al-Qaeda or a terrorist organisation is looking to use technology in that way,” she says. “However, it is incumbent on all agencies to do the thinking, and to be prepared.”

Anatomy of an IT leader: How to earn the confidence of the board

Sharm Manwani — 2009-10-20T12:43:00.000Z

Sharm Manwani, Computing, Tuesday 20 October 2009 at 12:43:00

CIOs must demonstrate a good understanding of the business challenges facing their employer

The debate about the role and future of chief information officers (CIOs) is an ongoing one. Why is this so, when there is relatively little discussion about the scope of other executive roles such as the chief financial officer?

One reason relates to the scope of what CIOs do. This typically ranges from internal management of IT services to proactive engagement with senior stakeholders on business change. All the leading CIOs that I have interviewed or who participated in my focus groups agree on one thing: someone who only has an IT departmental view may be a great IT manager but they are not a true CIO.

While leading CIOs agree on the importance of being a change agent, there is less consensus when it comes to the role of CIOs in managing information. Some say this is the responsibility of their business colleagues, while others recognise it as part of their role. Either way, few have actually set proactive agendas in this area. If CIOs are to justify the middle letter of their role, they need to do more in this area, both in the control and exploitation of information.

The scope of the CIO’s role has an obvious bearing on the skills he or she needs to fulfil that remit. Much of the research in this area explores the leadership competencies of the CIO. The general conclusion is that the CIO needs strong stakeholder engagement and influencing skills to be viewed as a business partner.

Other research, such as a survey I conducted with the BCS, focuses on a broader range of skills required by CIOs. Results of the survey confirmed the existence of five skill groups – business, management, professional, technical and personal. The biggest gap for aspiring CIOs was in personal skills, with business skills in second place. This may explain why some organisations have appointed CIOs who have minimal technical skills. The most surprising example in my experience was a sales director being chosen as the CIO. Once in place, this particular CIO asked me to support him in changing his IT team’s mindset and capabilities. He went on to achieve notable success in the role, before moving on to another general management position.

The follow-up to this story was that I was asked to help the organisation recruit the CIO’s successor from a shortlist drawn up by an executive search firm. Having achieved the behavioural transformation of the IT department, the new demand was for a well-rounded CIO with an IT background who also had a good cultural fit with the organisation. I agreed a set of criteria for the role, which each member of the recruitment team used to evaluate the candidates. Only one of the four on the shortlist met the criteria sufficiently well.

Reflecting on the cultural fit leads us to another key assessment category for the CIO – the situational perspective. While the five types of skills mentioned above remain valid, a different balance and mindset is required depending on what challenges the organisation is facing. Several situational models have been developed, including one with three scenarios – turnaround, evolutionary and transformation.

In the first scenario, the organisation has significant problems related to IT. These may be that the service levels are poor or that projects are failing, often combined with relationship issues. A CIO for this situation will be action-oriented, quick to identify the source of the problems and able to motivate colleagues to resolve these. Once this task is completed, the CIO may be less happy to work in an evolutionary role.

Stakeholder facilitation skills are important in an evolutionary scenario since there is no “burning platform” for radical change. Different requests need to be balanced through effective governance forums. New services are added in a controlled fashion with the emphasis on progressive enhancement while reducing risk.

Sometimes organisations will persist with an evolutionary approach when a transformation capability is long overdue. Transformation almost invariably requires both a business and IT overhaul. The CIO must be capable of engaging with the chief executive and the top executive team to create a vision of the target business model and enterprise architecture. These goals are challenging, leading to fulfilling assignments as a CIO. I was fortunate enough to work for large multinationals with a strong track record of acquisitions that were predicated on a transformation capability.

So how does a CIO acquire the competencies necessary to meet all the various demands made of them? A CIO should first be comfortable with engaging in business dialogue. This requires a broad-based business education that can be acquired by undertaking a range of project management roles or working in different departments, and may be supplemented by an MBA.

Developing personal competencies can be particularly demanding and while training courses will help, many executives look to coaching to get real insights into their own behaviours. This can also help in enhancing management skills, particularly in a matrix organisation.

Many educational programmes exist for professional skills. In my view, there are three core professional areas: services, projects and business change. Methodologies such as Prince2 and Itil support the first two areas. I was involved in helping the BCS develop a foundation qualification in the third area. CIOs will typically appoint specialists in these three areas but need to know how they fit together and where the tensions lie.

Does the CIO need to understand the technology? In-depth skills are not required but a little knowledge can be dangerous, particularly when a non-technical CIO feels the need to display their IT competence. A broad understanding of business technology is a must, however.

In summary, CIOs need to reflect on their environment and organisation so that they build the competencies needed to make a success of the role in changing circumstances. Over the past two years, I have launched a Masters programme at Henley Business School aimed at business IT professional development. It is encouraging for the future of the CIO role that there is so much interest in creating this holistic capability. We are now building a transformation hub at Henley so that we can help organisations to achieve their goals.

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Dr Sharm Manwani is an associate professor at Henley Business School and a former CIO. For more information on any of the above, email sharm.manwani@henley.com.

Anatomy of an IT leader: CIOs must be champions of integration

Colin Beveridge — 2009-10-20T12:33:00.000Z

Colin Beveridge, Computing, Tuesday 20 October 2009 at 12:33:00

The role of CIO needs to be fundamentally redefined to meet the evolving needs of business

Achieving and sustaining the relevance of IT leaders in the current turbulent economic context will need a radical new approach to the way we deliver value to our stakeholders.

A good first step would be to scrap the role of chief information officer (CIO) and create a genuinely useful role: the chief integration officer. After years of careful observation, I have reached the conclusion that the role of CIO is not only redundant but was never needed in the first place.

When the acronym CIO first emerged, many couldn’t see any need for the job at all because they thought the title was more suited to some sort of corporate librarian, rather than custodian of crucial commercial intelligence. And many joshed that CIO simply stood for “career is over”.

Nevertheless, the CIO role has persisted, although it remains poorly defined in too many instances. There is, however, still no consensus about whether a CIO is actually needed, let alone truly belongs at the top table. CIO reporting lines are equally dilatory and liberally distributed across the chief executive, finance director and chief operating officer portfolios.

Without a clear-cut definition, the role of CIO can be very confusing indeed, particularly when too readily combined with its common counterpart – a chief technology officer (CTO). This double act has been known to create double the confusion for all concerned. Nobody could ever accuse us of doing things by halves.

Some prefer to interpret the CIO role as chief infrastructure officer, with the incumbent happily embroiled in the bowels of technology, instead of managing the lifeblood of an effective enterprise. Others, meanwhile, see the CIO as quite a different beast: chief innovation officer. But that is an even more ephemeral concept than the chief information officer we know.

Sometimes I think there are probably as many interpretations of CIO as there are holders of the post. So I suppose one more will not hurt.

My proposal is for the CIO to be reinvented as chief integration officer – a job that can be universally defined and a key corporate function for the foreseeable future. No individual, group or organisation is a standalone venture. At every level, our world is constituted from constantly interacting dynamic systems and these living systems engage with each other, directly or indirectly. In a joined-up world, successful systems must effectively integrate with each other for mutual benefit.

And yet, when it comes to our formal business systems – also known as IT – we do not yet achieve seamless integration. For sure, lots of people talk passionately about extended value chains, partnership collaboration or electronic data interchange. But when push comes to shove, most organisations have big gaps in their information systems – internally and externally.

That’s where the chief integration officer comes in – a consistent, clearly defined role that will facilitate trans-enterprise integration, by providing natural mutual points of engagement and communication.

The key function of a chief integration officer is to ensure their organisation is coherent and congruent, internally and externally, by integrating effectively with other bodies: individual, corporate or statutory.

How is this different from the function of a chief information officer? It is significantly different, for many reasons.

First, the current parallel CTO job leads to great confusion of boundaries and responsibilities in many organisations. With the CTO reporting to the chief integration officer, any uncertainty of accountability for integration of people, process and technology would be removed.

Secondly, the role of the chief integration officer would be unequivocally recognised as a top-table function, rather than the uncertain position of a traditional CIO who is often kept at arm’s length by senior executives.

But this is not just about job titles – it is about delivering effective information systems, in a world populated by uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity. Let’s get on with it.

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Colin Beveridge is an independent management consultant and author of the blog: Fighting the Trillion Dollar Bonfire at www.colin-beveridge.com

Get ready for the next 40 years

Computing — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Computing, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

IT leaders would do well to reflect on the innovations that they, as the corporate enablers of internet business, must adopt

When it comes to birthdays, the internet is a bit like the Queen – it is fortunate enough to have two.

For some purists, the birth of the internet came on 2 September 1969 when a connection was first established between two computers on the US Arpanet network. But for populists, the 40th birthday came last week, on 29 October, the anniversary of the first exchange of data between those two systems.

For most of us, 40 is a milestone that generates much reflection, and a redefinition of what we always meant by “middle age”.

For the internet, 40 is certainly a marker of a growing maturity, but any mid-life crisis is felt far more acutely by those established industries that have seen their business models radically changed by the online revolution.

While downloads – both legal and illegal – transform the entertainment industry, and online advertising decimates areas of publishing, every other sector should be assessing the pace of change and wondering how it will affect them.

There will be no getting away from it – 40 years is just a passing moment in a revolution that will yet transform business and public life more than even the industrial revolution.

As more big public sector IT projects struggle, there can be little doubt that the fragmented, open, collaborative nature of the web is the likely architecture that must and will underpin public service delivery through technology.

And as the financial services sector tries to avoid the scale of change that many of its recession-hit consumers demand, you can be sure that at some point, new models of banking that provide greater transparency will emerge, enabled by the opportunities and experiences of the internet.

It is almost a cliché already to say that when it comes to the internet revolution, you ain’t seen nothing yet. IT leaders would do well to reflect on the innovations that they, as the corporate enablers of internet business, must adopt to keep their organisations at the forefront of inevitable change.

How to use IT to enable innovation

Colin Ashurst — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Colin Ashurst, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

IT must thrust itself into the spotlight to prove it can drive profitable business change

IT as an enabler of business innovation? The chief information officer (CIO) as entrepreneur? Is it aspiration or reality?

If you approach the world positively, a downturn is a good time for innovation. The shortage of people and money can create the pressure that leads to creativity.

There are three areas where action will help organisations succeed in exploiting IT to enable business innovation:

Kick out Prince2

What more is there to say about innovation and Prince2? The focus of the Prince2 project management methodology on organisation and control, and defining what to deliver before you have begun is death to innovation.

It is a bad solution trying to solve the wrong problem. It takes the IT profession in the wrong direction if we want to contribute to business innovation. It has to go. The agile development movement provides much stronger foundations for succeeding with projects that result in business innovation.

Move from support to exploitation

Innovation is not just about new technology and spending more money. What about all the technology we already have in place and have barely begun to exploit? Why not start with Word, the rest of Microsoft Office, SharePoint or even your ERP system? Without a doubt you can quickly find innovations that make a real difference to individuals, teams or your wider organisation and perhaps start a bigger process of building a climate where innovation happens.

For most organisations, these opportunities just fall through the gaps between the helpdesk, which fixes problems, and the investment of technical skills in major projects. It is important to free up some resources to enable exploitation of existing IT investments.

Shift the focus from governance to relationships

IT people like to talk about governance. We put a lot of effort into setting up structures and processes. It is important to remember that outside the IT bunker this is not how real organisations work, at least not at the top level. Too much focus on formal structures indicates that the CIO is not part of the top team.

Governance structures are a means to an end getting the right people together to take decisions. It is far better to take a different approach and focus on building relationships person to person. It is out of these relationships, not the IT governance committee, that innovation will grow.

The CIO or the chief executive or any other leader is not going to be the one who has all the good ideas. We need to get much broader involvement in innovation. Our staff, customers, suppliers, competitors, perhaps even the local business school and university should all contribute.

The CIO needs to go out and find innovators and learn from their ideas. They also need to provide opportunities for sharing resources to enable people to put their ideas into practice.

There are opportunities for quick wins in each of these areas. There are also opportunities for longer-term changes to structures and processes that will deliver value through business innovation. Now is not the time to retreat into the IT bunker. Get out there and take some risks. The world does not stand still.

Colin Ashurst is a senior teaching fellow in management information systems at Durham Business School

IT should not bend to the prevailing winds of fashion

Chris Barling — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Chris Barling, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

Technologies should be assessed on their business merits, not their trendiness, says Chris Barling

In IT we may sneer at the fashion industry where experts pontificate about what’s in and what’s out. But should we be so smug?

The IT industry is guilty of similar crimes. Anyone who dares query the latest trend is called a luddite, even when the panacea in question has been tried and found wanting.

One of the presentations at the recent Future of Web Apps conference was on cloud computing. It noted that this trend was predicted 40 years ago, and has existed in some form for years. In fact, time sharing from the 1970s has a list of benefits that sound remarkably like those of cloud computing you could access time-sharing computers from anywhere with a phone, and someone else worried about the technology. All you had to do was plug in your modem and dumb terminal, and pay the bill.

Developments since have seen time sharing replaced by in-house mini-computers that were in turn replaced by PCs. Each move was heralded as reducing costs and providing more control. Now we are centralising into the cloud, based again on cost savings and convenience.

This centralisation or decentralisation debate is not unique to IT. It is like the cyclical argument in large organisations: centralise so that duplication is eliminated and waste is reduced, then later decentralise to get closer to customers. And so it goes on.

There have been steady advances in software engineering techniques, but these have been smaller than any experts would care to admit. The fundamental ideas of formal project stages, being responsive to user requirements, prototyping, developing modular and reusable code, and applying appropriate project management controls have been around since the computer was invented. So has paying monthly for hardware, software or services.

The truth is, the IT industry is driven by fashion. Whether to go with the latest fashion is a critical decision for an IT manager, especially when resisting the flow can limit a career. But assessing trends on their business me rits, not their “hipness”, is a professional imperative. It’s what we are paid to do.

Chris Barling is a BCS contributor

How to fashion a winning IT team

Graham Benson — 2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Graham Benson, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 08:00:00

M&M Direct’s Graham Benson discusses what it takes to become a successful IT leader in the fast-moving world of online commerce

During the first incarnation of the internet and up to the 2001 dotbomb, the media depicted a certain type of dot commer, illustrated best by programmes such as the BBC’s Attachments. These IT staff were young, fashionable, driven mavericks. They also operated in the business equivalent of dog years - that is, they would squeeze seven years into one.

That was a fairly accurate assessment in my experience, but things have changed. The web as a channel has matured since 2001, and this has been further accelerated by the Web 2.0 environment. The result is that many online businesses have changed their expectations of what constitutes good IT.

IT leaders are now expected to take fewer risks, be more grown up and less radical, while retaining some creativity, pace and entrepreneurial spirit.

So what are the key requirements of today’s internet IT team? Or come to that, any high-growth small business? There are many, but in the interests of brevity I will highlight just one example from each of the three drivers for change: process, people and systems.

Process: know your organisational maturity level and match your IT maturity to it

Organisational maturity is a measure of the level of discipline, rigor and process within any business. At one end of the spectrum is the anarchic, chaotic, creative and often dictatorial organisation that flies by the seat of its pants. At the other is a business so involved in process and bureaucracy that it takes six months, five signatures and three steering groups to issue a new pencil.

It is important to understand where your business fits on this scale, and match the maturity of the IT department to the rest of the business.

If you want your IT department to be less radical and more grown up, you wil l need to move the maturity level of the business concurrently. The IT department will only be successful if it is aligned.

People: balance analysts and entrepreneurs

High-intensity IT demands generated by rapidly growing organisations require an IT director to assemble a team with the right psychological composition. Maintenance specialists do the same things over and over again, analytical types look to do the same things differently, while entrepreneurs do different things.

All three approaches are valid at certain times but need to be balanced to achieve the right mix of change and continuity. The number required of each employee type will vary according to the business requirements and how “IT mature” the business is.

My advice would be to recruit your key intellectual property (entrepreneurs) from inside, use a mixture of sources for your analytical capability by combining a core permanent team with temporary staff during times of high demand and outsource commoditised maintenance wherever it makes sense.

Systems: avoid the seduction of new systems

New systems can be traps for unwary IT directors. There are several reasons why an otherwise sound individual might replace a legacy system without robust justification. These include technical snobbery the IT director might want to seem new and current; technical vanity the IT director will certainly want other people to think he knows his stuff; and finally the IT director might believe that skills pertaining to an old system are difficult to come by.

If snobbery is an issue, the director should give the technology a makeover with web services or a service-oriented architecture. If it’s vanity, the director should hire an expert to prove that he is a great delegator. And if you cannot find the staff, or the technology is obsolete, there are a multitude of IT service companies who will help resolve the problem.

Joking aside, when presenting a business case to a board for approval, the IT director needs to be aware of his own motivations and ensure that the justifications put forward to support the proposed investment are sound and well informed. He must be certain that he hasn’t fallen into any of these traps.

Graham Benson is IT director at online fashion retailer M&M Direct

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The sun has not yet set on this debate

Dave Bailey — 2009-11-05T07:00:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 5 November 2009 at 07:00:00

It is clear why Oracle is keen to retain MySQL - and why the EU seems just as keen on quashing the deal for the sake of competitiveness

Anybody who sat through the 86-minute YouTube video of Sun Microsystems’ former president, Ed Zander, grilling Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley, will be under no illusions that Oracle does not want to spin off the open-source database MySQL if its acquisition of Sun goes ahead.

Zander asks: “If [the European Union] asked you to spin it off, would you?”

“No,” answers Ellison.

“If they told you to spin it off, would you?” adds Zander.

“No. We’re not going to spin it off,” states Ellison categorically.

Look at the determination on Ellison’s face at 33 minutes 17 seconds into the video he’s deadly serious, although he was careful not to put the boot into the EU competition team that is running a fine-tooth comb over the Sun deal.

The EU investigation, according to Ellison, is costing struggling Sun $100m (£61m) a month, and with the deadline for the EU’s musings set for January 2010, it could result in half a billion dollars of Sun’s cash disappearing down the drain.

Of course, there is steam coming out of Oracle’s ears at a non-US body having the temerity to put the boot into its plans for world domination. But given the size of the European market, lip-biting for acquisitive vendors is turning into a fine art.

As one of the big four IT vendors, and the biggest in database technology, why would Oracle take over Sun and then decide to spin off MySQL? Because, make no mistake, even though in the YouTube clip Ellison said Oracle and MySQL never compete, MySQL was always a threat to Oracle.

Why? Well, check out the last statistics from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which shows that small businesses contribute more than half the overall turnover, and nearly 60 per cent of the employees, of UK companies. I don’t know the equivalent statistics for the US, but the reason Oracle wants to hold onto MySQL is right there.

MySQL is normally deployed by smaller firms. If Oracle owns MySQL, when growing companies move into the large enterprise category through expansion, what better way to increase Oracle use than to offer an upgrade from MySQL?

And there is another reason. Imagine the people at MySQL saying one day: “We have a lot of market share among small businesses. Why don’t we put in some big tweaks and see if we can expand into the large enterprise market?”

Given the expertise of the open-source community, such tweaks would not be that difficult to develop, and that would make MySQL a threat not just to Oracle but to other vendors of top-end database systems. That would make a lot more competition in the market and could even lead to competing vendors reducing their prices.

So what will the EU regulators decide? If Oracle gets its tentacles around MySQL, which is probably the premier open-source database, it could reduce competition in the technology market. That is what the EU regulators want to avoid, and why they have previously applied hefty fines to US giants such as Intel and Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour.

I suspect the EU will try to force the issue and approve the acquisition, but on the condition that Oracle spins off MySQL. Ellison would not take such a decision lightly, so expect more fireworks to come.

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