VitAL Magazine July-August 2013 by 31 Media

Title

VOLUME 6 | ISSUE 6 | JULY-AUGUST 2013

V ITAL INSPIRATION FOR THE MODERN BUSINESS

The quantified self The implications of wearable technology for business

Mass customisation Applying manufacturing principles to IT www.vitalmag.net | May-June 2013

The order behind creative chaos Rolling out ITSM at the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s biggest physics experiment B

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Leader EDITOR Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 TO ADVERTISE CONTACT: info@31media.co.uk Tel: +44(0)870 863 6930

It’s what you wear

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Tina Harris tina.harris@31media.co.uk

According to our feature on wearable technology (The Quantified Self – page 56) in the next few years, what we wear will be having a massive impact on many aspects of our lives. Wearable technology connected to the cloud could be transmitting data on your geographical location, your activity, your behaviour and even on your emotional state and stress levels in three years from now.

EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES 31 Media Ltd, 41-42 Daisy Business Park, 19-35 Sylvan Grove, London, SE15 1PD Tel: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 Fax: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 Email: info@31media.co.uk Web: www.vital-mag.net PRINTED BY Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood, NP12 2YA © 2013 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved. VitAL Magazine is edited, designed, and published by 31 Media Limited. No part of VitAL Magazine may be reproduced, transmitted, stored electronically, distributed, or copied, in whole or part without the prior written consent of the publisher. A reprint service is available. Opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or VitAL Magazine or its publisher, 31 Media Limited. ISSN 1755-6465 PUBLISHED BY:

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“What,” you might well ask, “has any of this got to do with the price of fish?” Well the implications are potentially massive and so far only the tip of the ice berg has been revealed. Like the smartphone and tablet before, the growth of wearable technology will be dictated by the development of applications for the technology and by the desirability of the hardware and the benefits and advantages the combination of the two can offer us in our everyday lives. The interest of the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries in the technology is a given offering round the clock monitoring of patient/test subject/insurance risk, but there is also interest from business and industry.The ability to map the productivity of individuals being an obvious -though perhaps unwelcome to the individuals monitored – benefit. It will be fascinating to see where this technology takes us. Who could have predicted all the weird, wonderful and altogether not so wonderful things that smartphone app development would produce seven years ago? It was also very interesting in this issue to catch up with the goings on at the on the CERN campus on the Swiss/French border. While the Large Hadron Collider has shown signs of detecting the first evidence of the elusive Higgs boson – or God particle – the General Services department has been bringing order to the systems and utilities that support the physicists in their everyday – and not so everyday – work. Giving them the order they need to participate in the structured anarchy of this most advanced area of scientific experimentation. The Service Desk I am reliably informed has yet to receive a call asking how to find a Higgs boson or indeed how to deal with a wormhole in the fabric of time/space and this is all down to the very strict list of services laid down in the CERN Service Catalogue. The tool by which General Services imposes order on the creative chaos!

Until next time

Matt Bailey Editor

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

Contents

Contents 6 8

NEWS THE

VitAL COVER STORY

The order behind creative chaos The news that it seems to have detected a Higgs boson particle last year was certainly cause for celebration at CERN, but the work of the leading particle physics laboratory is far from over. Matt Bailey spoke to Reinoud Martens, service manager of general services at the site about how ITSM underpins the whole massive organisation.

8. The order behind the creative chaos

VitAL SIGNS – LIFE IN A WORLD WITH IT

Business Support or IT Support Are you support the IT or the business? According to Steve White it is a crucial distinction...

VitAL MANAGEMENT 14. PRISM a warning for business

PRISM a warning for business The PRISM scandal has sent shockwaves around the world but what does the news that the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US has had direct access to servers used by Facebook and Google since 2007 mean for businesses? IT security expert David Sturges sifts through the fall out.

The three benefits of BYOD

Fit for the future

As one of the largest law firms in the north of England, Ward Hadaway’s IT department is deploying new technology to add value and make its work force more productive. Matt Bailey spoke to the company’s head of IT Greg Taylor.

While elsewhere in this issue we tackle the thorny issues of security and BYOD, here Justin Hadler, director of engineering at hardware.com, attemps to focus on the positive aspects of comsumerisation.

Automate and innovate

Tijl Vuyk, founder, Redwood Software discusses how automation can utilise your workforce and provide real business benefits

Painless XP migration

Almost 40 percent of organisations are still using Windows XP with less than a year to go until support stops - but migration obstacles can be overcome and costs significantly reduced by understanding software usage as Richard Pegden of Centrix Software explains.

24. A utomate and innovate

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

28. Time for mass customisation

Time for mass customisation

Hans de Visser, CSO at Cordys reports on how smart and efficient manufacturing principles can be applied in IT, thanks to a wealth of services that can be consumed from the cloud.

Contents

Contents 31

The big training voucher question

Training vouchers hold the key better use of IT, better return on investment and cut down on IT support requests – so why aren’t they being used? Bill Walker, technical director at QA reports.

Getting creative in the workplace

Seventy percent of UK firms don’t encourage creativity in the workplace and they could be missing a trick as psychologist Ros Taylor.

34 VitAL PROFILE

34. The golden age of gaming

The golden age of gaming G2G3 is known for its best-practice based immersive business simulations, gamification, serious games and other engagement solutions. Matt Bailey spoke to managing director, Mark Sutherland, about how the company is helping IT organisations transform, and how G2G3 is evolving following its acquisition by Capita.

38 VitAL PROCESSES Big Data, meet enterprise security Big data security expert Mark Bower shows how comprehensive solutions to ensure the security of sensitive information in Big Data environments without impairing their operational flexibility or performance can help.

42 Software vanity purchases for enterprise users Will middle management come clean if they understand how expensive ill-considered purchases can be? Mark Flynn is managing director of Snow Software looks at the real cost of ‘software as a status symbol’.

56. The quantified self

54 How technology is changing the way we work It’s no secret that technology is changing the workplace on an almost daily basis, but what kinds of technology are small firms embracing to expand their businesses?

The quantified self

New research shows that IT is still not always aligned with business strategy.

Wearable technology will drive the rise of the ‘human cloud’ of personal data, but what are the implications for business? Matt Bailey spoke to Chris Brauer, director of CAST, the Centre for Creative and Social Technology.

44 Only 27 percent of businesses think IT contributes to strategic business objectives

The changing WAN

With the continuing shift to the cloud, the nature of network management and application control has changed. Béatrice Piquer-Durand, VP marketing at Ipanema Technologies explains this shifting picture - WOC to WOS.

50 Printing on the go We have heard plenty about how consumerisation and BYOD are changing the way we work for the better, but not much of that has been focussed on the realities of working in this brave new world. In this ar ticle Daryl Miller, VP of engineering at Lantronix tackles the problems of printing on the go in this new mobile paradigm.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

The cloud delivers

When you get the security basics right, the cloud can really start to pay dividends for businesses. Dave Anderson, director of strategy, at Voltage Security gives you his top five brilliant things the cloud can deliver in the areas of security and harnessing business benefits.

SECRET OF

MY SUCCESS

Brandon Read, IT assistant at NewVoiceMedia..

News

Government’s Information Economy Strategy welcomed The launch of the Government’s Information Economy Strategy, which sets out a plan for government and industry to continue to work together to promote the success of the UK information economy sector has been broadly welcomed by the IT industry. The strategy lays out a vision of a strong, innovative Information Economy supporting UK excellence to the world, and enabling companies of all sizes to use technology confidently. It underlines the need for a highly skilled digital workforce, with expertise ranging from leading-edge technology innovation to the exploitation of technology for business advantage.

Data fragmentation putting businesses at risk

IT managers believe that fragmentation of corporate data across their IT infrastructure and an emerging ‘Shadow IT’ network of user devices or consumer cloud services outside their control is putting their organisations at risk and driving up costs. New research from Freeform Dynamics shows over 80 percent of respondents believe effective business decision making is hampered by data availability and inconsistency issues. 83 percent are concerned about the security of their corporate data as it is increasingly dispersed across their network and outside. Getting the situation under control is also proving difficult with 93 percent saying that tracking and managing critical corporate data is now a big challenge, with the associated costs highlighted by 84 percent as being a further concern. The report ‘Storage Anywhere and Everywhere – dealing with the challenges of data fragmentation’ is the result of interviews with 300 IT professionals in mid-sized organisations across the USA and UK completed in April 2013. Dale Vile, research director at Freeform Dynamics commented: “IT staff are finding it extremely hard to manage and protect corporate data vital to their business as it fragments across their own infrastructure and the so-called ‘Shadow IT’ network. Managing the complexity and the storage overhead is expensive, and protecting the data is a security and business-continuity risk. Despite broad acknowledgement of these issues, only a handful of our respondents appear to be in proper control.”

Underscoring the importance of establishing a pipeline of talent into the sector, the strategy’s Improving Skills strand promotes actions including a redesigned school curriculum; encouraging young people and particularly girls to pursue technology careers; and helping people to upgrade their skills through online learning, conversion courses, degrees and diplomas. The strategy also lays emphasis on cyber security, pointing out that confidence in the integrity of online services is essential to growth. On a wider level, developing the deep skills to protect our national security and defend our online infrastructure is highlighted as a priority.

Karen Price OBE, CEO of e-skills UK, was enthusiastic, “The sector welcomes the government’s focus on the Information Economy, and the recognition of its importance to growth and prosperity. Employers know that a coherent skills strategy is essential to make the most of the opportunities the UK has in technology, which underpins the whole economy from advanced manufacturing to energy to life sciences. Employers are putting together ambitious plans for an Industrial Partnership for the Information Economy that would deliver on the objectives of the strategy and ensure the UK has the technology skills for accelerated growth right across the economy.”

Over 100 more IT apprenticeships created

A partnership between the National Skills Academy for IT, training provider NITP, and BT has created 108 more apprenticeships for young people, 89 percent of which are with small to medium sized employers (SMEs). This means the partnership has created a total of 313 new IT apprenticeships since October 2012. The apprentices receive training that is quality assured by BT and delivered by NITP at its further education colleges in 11 towns and cities across England, with Birmingham and Milton Keynes the latest to join the programme. Peter Marples, director, NITP, says: “Quality apprenticeships help businesses grow their own talent and develop a motivated, skilled and qualified workforce. More and more organisations are starting to realise this and over 100,000 nationwide are now offering them.” One such business is EPOSability – an IT services firm based in Hertfordshire, which has already recruited two apprentices through the partnership. Its managing director, Robbie Francis, says:

“For the foreseeable future, our aim is to take on board two new apprentices each year. Apprenticeships allow us to offer full-time employment to prevetted candidates. Investing in them will continue to play a role in our longterm future.” All of the 313 recruits are piloting the IT Gold Standard Apprenticeship – a new programme, which is being designed to help apprentices settle into the workplace and gain technical and professional skills more quickly. To do this, they are working towards clearly defined, in-demand job roles and trialling a personal development experience, comprising a ‘virtual campus’ website and employersupported events. Karen Price, CEO, e-skills UK, says: “Ensuring that apprenticeship training is high quality and relevant to IT employers’ needs is vital to increasing their uptake, particularly among SMEs. That’s exactly what we’re doing through this partnership, and the number of jobs we’ve created highlights the effectiveness of this approach.”

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

News

Accessing work apps on the move may be more destructive than productive

Independent research, commissioned by Ping Identity has revealed a lack of mobile working policies can lead to destructive consequences for businesses. On a regular basis, 44 percent of employees access up to five applications via their mobile work devices, with 13 percent accessing more than five apps in order to get their jobs done remotely. However, when accessing work applications outside of the office, 45 percent of respondents said there were no restrictions around what they could access. Only 26 percent said the device they were using impacted what they could access, 22 percent said access was linked to their role and 15 percent said access was restricted by where they were geographically. Moreover, 20 percent of respondents said their work either has no policy in place around the general use of corporate-owned mobile devices, or policies are not actively enforced. Only 37 percent of companies asked their employees to set a password on their corporate device. Even more worryingly, when asked if they’ve ever had a device lost or stolen which contained corporate data, nearly a third of respondents (32 percent) said ‘yes’ – with 39 percent of men experiencing a loss of this manner (compared to 24 percent of women). Looking at the other end of the scale, 16 percent of workers aren’t allowed to access any work applications from corporate-owned mobile devices, bringing into question the point of having them in the first place! “Deploying corporate devices, allowing remote working, and enabling access to corporate applications is all very well, but if a business is not managing this closely, it could be a recipe for disaster, especially if a device falls into the wrong hands,” said Andrew Hindle, director at Ping Identity. “Security measures must start with an individual’s identity, not the application they’re accessing, or device they’re using. Granting staff seamless access to applications, and managing these connections closely, is essential for businesses looking to ‘free’ their employees from the chains of the traditional working environment. Only then will application access on the move be truly productive, without the risk of disruption.”

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

Offshore IT service still growing service organisation ITC Infotech. “With ITIL IT Service Management best practise as par for the course now in the offshore sector, clients can be secure in the knowledge that they are receiving excellent service.”

In spite of recent reports that the onshore services sector is growing in the UK, offshore IT service providers in India say they are maintaining and growing their presence as outsourced support organisations for companies in the UK, Europe and the US. Indian providers are bullish about their business. “Many organisations are looking to offshore service providers for their outsourced Service Desks,” says Hardeep Garewal, Europe president of India-based

Multilingual Service Desk support is a new area of expansion for the offshore sector. “We have seen growth in multilingual Service Desks which reflects the fact that organisations are looking to expand beyond their traditional markets in these tough economic conditions,” says Garewal. “This hasn’t been a big area of interest for Indian offshore Service Desk providers historically, but we have trained our staff up and have started to offer a multilingual service in response to requests from our customers.” The cloud is having an impact too. “With the implementation of cloud-based solutions like Office 365 or Oracle SalesCloud there are still elements that need support from a company like ITC Infotech,” adds Garewal.

IT certification more important than ever With millions of students about to graduate from university, digital media training centre Academy Class has issued a reminder of the importance of real world qualifications and IT certification for those battling for a place in the job market. Having recently added two new Adobe exams to its course offerings, the firm, which operates classroombased learning centres in London, Manchester Glasgow, Newcastle, Cardiff and Birmingham is reporting unprecedented interest from design, publishing and engineering professionals who are using the certifications to shore up their CV and validate their technical and practical expertise in the face of increasingly competitive working environments. Academy Class has seen an estimated 23 percent growth in candidates studying and sitting for IT exams while already active in the workplace over the course of the last three years. It cites a growing awareness on the part of employers of the availability of training programmes and formal qualifications, elevating them from a luxury to a necessity and an eagerness on the part of candidates to stand out from the ever-growing crowd. Mark Young , Director of Academy Class said, “The years of economic turmoil and a flood of eager, hungry graduates entering the workplace means that IT certifications are now incredibly valuable from a number of viewpoints. It is an interesting divide as new graduates are often already very technically capable but can benefit from a training programme and exam as a bolt on to their degree certificate. It is a means of bridging the gap between the classroom and the office and getting a foot in the door in what is a very competitive industry. We also get a lot of professionals who have been in their roles for at least a couple of years who aren’t necessarily behind the times when it comes to technology or the software packages they choose to study, but they see the value in formalising their real word experience and keeping a finger of the pulse on the very latest developments. For them IT certification is a way to consolidate their job prospects and accelerate their career path.”

VitAL Cover story

The order behind the creative chaos The news that it seems to have detected a Higgs boson particle last year was certainly cause for celebration at CERN, but the work of the leading particle physics laboratory is far from over. Matt Bailey spoke to Reinoud Martens, service manager of general services at the site about how ITSM underpins the whole massive organisation.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Cover story

ERN is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it is the world’s leading and largest laboratory for particle physics. Last year CERN announced that it had perhaps fulfilled part of its founding brief when a boson with mass around 125 GeV, consistent with long-sought Higgs boson or ‘God particle’ as it is sometimes more sensationally called, was detected.

CERN employs just under 2400 staff, 1500 other members of personnel (fellows, etc..), and hosts some 10,000 visiting scientists and engineers, representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities. Its main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research - as a result, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN following international collaborations. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The main site at Meyrin has a large computer centre containing powerful data-processing and storage facilities, primarily for experimental-data analysis; because of the need to make these facilities available to researchers elsewhere, it has historically been a major wide area networking hub. At the heart of CERN, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) lies in a tunnel 27km in circumference, 175m beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was built to test various predictions about high-energy physics, including testing for the existence of the hypothesized Higgs boson and of the large family of new particles predicted by the supersymmetry theory.

Supporting the biggest experiment in the world Reinoud Martens, a man with a background in IT services, is service manager general services at CERN. He explains how the service organisation facilitates the ‘non-experimental’ IT at the facility and much more besides. “Firstly,” he says, “I am not strictly speaking in the IT department, my focus is general services. In 2008 I was in the IT department when we started down the ITIL road, but then I moved across to general services which covers facilities, logistics, the fire brigade, the library, the dedicated CERN hotel, cars and buses as well as all the applications including administrative software, workflow software, project management software PLM (product lifecycle management) software, CAD/CAM, computerised maintenance management etc. The IT scope covers all the data bases, all the hardware, all the IT infrastructure, the desktops and the network etc. We have tens of thousands of servers - CERN is the birthplace of the

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

World Wide Web – and we are in the process of starting up another computer centre in Hungary which already has 20,000 computing cores and 5.5 peta bytes of storage installed, remotely managed from CERN.

We had not adopted best practise as an organisation. There was a lack of coherence, so the idea was to use ITSM best practise beyond IT.

“CERN is big,” adds Martens. “There are over 650 buildings and over thousand cars.The 10,000 people visiting and working here every day need wifi and they need to go to the toilet, they use the infrastructure. Where I think we are still unique is that our approach was to roll out Service Management best practise across the board. In 2009 when we started there was certainly a certain amount of chaos and room for improvement. We had not adopted best practise as an organisation. There was a lack of coherence, so the idea was to use ITSM best practise beyond IT. Why not strip off the IT from ITSM and introduce service management best practise across the board?” That project star ted early in 2009 and the first job was to create an inventory of services – a business service catalogue. “We designed the catalogue with two sides,” explains Mar tens. “On one side we have all the tools which help to provide the services (the ‘how’) and on the other we have all the customer services as defined in ITIL. With the help of an ITIL black belt consultant we ended up with something that can be understood by both the specialists that have 30 years of CERN experience and know the three letter acronyms by hear t, and the non-specialist users that don’t care about the details, but just want to use the services. After the initial version covering general services was prepared towards the end of 2009 it took another six months to load IT on-board with the same concepts and ideas in early 2010. During this period we also defined a common request and incident process that covers the needs of both IT and non-IT services.

Software as a Service At this stage Martens’ department started looking for a product to support their project. “I was always interested in Software as a Service,” he said, “because I thought it would be quicker and easier than the alternatives, so we were happy to be able to sign a deal with ServiceNow. There were a lot of people having mixed feelings about the idea to run such a critical tool ‘in the cloud’, but we managed to get consent.

VitAL Cover story

There was a certain level of distrust of anything ‘not invented here’ according to Martens, which is understandable given the formidable expertise on-site at CERN. Nevertheless the cloud-based approach was adopted and rolled out to all parts of the service organisation. “Given the scope of the job, the Service Desk can’t know everything about toilets, transport and IT upgrades for example, it’s too much. Because of the Service Catalogue it works very well; we have over 300 services listed covering everything from the more traditional networks and video conferencing services to building facades and green space,” says Martens.

Google-like search so they go straight to where they need to go. They fill in a form for example if they want to rent a car and the request goes straight to a car rental service.” The organisation now has two and a half years of experience using the system. It went live with about 400 ITIL supporters, “Today we have over 900,”says Martens, “so the scope has grown and we are alive a kicking today. It was a challenge but it works well.”

The heart of the LHC

Like any other high technology undertaking, the data from CERN’s experiments is processed often using custom software (after all, who better to write the number crunching programmes than the computer literate physicists running the experiments?) on a massive IT network. Reinoud Martens’ general services team doesn’t have responsibility for this part of CERN – the exotic We have tens of thousands of servers - CERN software and hardware -. “CERN is split into three parts,” is the birthplace of the World Wide Web – and we explains Martens. “There is the Physics part which is the core business of the organisation and runs the experiments; are in the process of starting up another computer then we have an Accelerator and Technology sector which centre in Hungary which already has 20,000 includes the technicians, engineers and the hardware of the accelerators. These are the two areas we do not cover. computing cores and 5.5 peta bytes of storage We bring order to the third sector which covers the total installed, remotely managed from CERN. infrastructure: the buildings the roads and the commodity IT infrastructure, the networking and the desktop suppor t.

“We need tools to hide all this complexity from the user,” he explains. “So we have developed a service portal which allows users to do a

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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VitAL Cover story

The CERN Computer Centre is in our scope, but not the very sophisticated hardware and computers that run next to the experiments.

it’s a mechanical problem or an electronic problem or an IT problem or whatever. If you have a single process and everybody uses the same tool then this kind of cooperation becomes possible.

“It isn’t in our scope right now, but maybe one day it might be because it makes sense to have the one point of contact,” predicts Martens. “Right now our scope is General Services, IT, Finance, HR and so on. The physicists are a group of 3,000 people and they have their own way of doing things, it’s another culture. Some level of chaos with the Nobel Prize winning scientists is OK , probably necessary, they must be creative. Chaos in the Finance department is not so good. We try to introduce best practise across the CERN campus, but trying to introduce industry best practise to the physics research world is another challenge altogether!”

“Everything goes through the same channel and this is why the Service Catalogue is at the hear t of what we do,” says Mar tens, “and that’s why we insisted it was there from day one, fully suppor ted, so we could use it to automate the assignment and reassignment of tickets.”

The underlying stability is much needed to allow the physicists the space and the freedom to do their work. “We don’t want these guys wasting their time figuring out what to do if their toilet doesn’t flush; they need to be spending their time doing their jobs, looking for the Higgs boson or whatever,” says Martens.

Life with Service Automation There are six operatives that take calls and receive tickets at the Service Desk they filter out the spam and check the tickets are correct and comprehensible before pushing them to the second line if they can’t resolve them at the first line. “There is still a significant first line resolution,” says Martens. “We also have a knowledge management system with 1500 articles which can also be consulted through the portal, so there is an element of self help too, but they run just like any other Service Desk really. “We introduced a single point of contact for any problem. We have a number, the portal website and a physical location in a building where people can come, although not many do that,” says Martens. “The process is coherent across all these routes and in the portal you can see how your ticket is progressing, whether it is an IT ticket or not. We are about 50:50 IT and non-IT at the moment. The strength of this is that we can pass tickets across boundaries whether

BYOD Just as in every other area of the IT world, bring your own device (BYOD) is bringing benefits and challenges to CERN, especially when the organisation has – at first glance at least – such tech-savvy people. “Some devices are supported and some are not supported,” says Martens. “And that’s where the scope definition has to be very clear – there are things we do and things we don’t do. But if people come in with requests for a special device or particular equipment and we do not support it, we still register it and compile the statistics so we know that there have been so many requests to support a particular device and maybe we should think of supporting it. It is not necessarily true though that the staff are tech-savvy. The IT support staff certainly know their way around a PC, but the cleaning support staff or the bus drivers are not necessarily at all technically inclined and may need additional support and hand-holding.” The beauty of the CERN deployment of ServiceNow is that the technology allows the people to provide better support without them having to jump through so many hoops according to Michael Dortch, senior product marketing manager at the Software as a Service specialist. “It enables those users that are more technically savvy to support themselves more, but if someone needs to talk to a human being that same technology enables the person providing that support to find what they need quickly and to deliver a better experience. One way or another when the user accesses the Service Desk or goes to the portal directly the same underlying technology makes that experience more efficient and makes the user happier sooner, whether they go through a human being or not. That is

The physicists are a group of 3,000 people and they have their own way of doing things, it’s another culture. 12

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Signs - Life in the world with it

Business Support or IT Support Are you support the IT or the business? According to Steve White it is a crucial distinction...

something that we are seeing more and more of our clients taking advantage of. Our clients tell us over and over again that whether the support goes through a person or is provided directly, the users walk away feeling empowered.”

You could define a very small set of Wildly Important Goals (which will be business support related) with your team.

Facing the future Although Mar tens has the experimental hardware and software suppor t in his long term sights, what other areas does he see for expansion of the General Services depar tment? “We have grown from 400 to the 950 supporters today and we intend to see if we can double this figure over the next three to four years,” says Martens. “We want to grow in scope too, but not necessarily to the experimentalists – not unless they are eager to adopt our framework anyway. Maybe we will move first in to the accelerator part, they use electricity and they have cooling and heating equipment that needs to be supported, but it’s more specific and maybe less standard equipment, they also have their own contracts right now, but the framework could very well be used to support them. “We also want to grow the maturity of the individual support groups,” adds Martens. “With hundreds of support teams, not all have the same maturity in terms of Service Management best practise so we have to coach these people to a higher level which is a lot of work. Finally we want to extend the number of processes we support from the library of best practise.” According to Martens no one has yet sent in the ticket ‘Can you help me find the Higgs boson.’ “That’s why you need the Service Catalogue,” he says, “so you can explain what you can expect and what you will not get. That’s where it all started, with an inventory of what you are supposed to do so the expectations are clear.” This also absolves Martens for when the call comes through asking what to do about the wormhole that has just been created in the fabric of space/time; he can have a clear conscience when he passes it back to the physicists because it’s not in the Service Catalogue.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

the IT.They suggest that in five years, between 50 percent and 75 percent of the current support organisations will fold, support moved to people who support business. One of the garages that I have used to get my cars repaired and serviced has stopped lending a pool car, which they say it’s too expensive and awkward to run. Their ability to provide excellent mechanical and electrical exper tise, and years of experience on that make of vehicle is still unquestioned. However, their decision has consequences… What are the tell-tale signs of an IT department supporting IT and not the business? If success is measured in business terms, then they are on the right lines. If success is measured in internal, automatically calculated metrics, then they are not supporting the business - they are measuring their internal efficiency but not their value.

Since January this year, my department has been experimenting with the concept from ‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’ book. This is not a book review; I have not read the book. I am living through an implementation of the principals involved, which is being driven by a colleague of mine. Some aspects I found intensely annoying, and I could easily have disconnected from it in the early stages as it’s a quite different way of being managed. I chose to grit my teeth and live through the ‘change’, and six months on I have seen the benefits in terms of engagement, clarity, focus and business results.

Some of the support clients I see are measured in business revenue, client or customer satisfaction, uptime availability, transaction volume support, support of the business through periods of peak trading or unexpectedly high volume processing.

If you are currently supporting the IT for the company you are working for and you are in a position of power, and you care about the people who work for you, then I offer you something different. You could define a very small set of Wildly Important Goals (which will be business support related) with your team. Generate a causal tree of Lead Indicators (which will be quality and quantity indicators of supportive behaviours). Drive the game differently.

Some are measured by number of rings before pickup, time to restore, cost per transaction. This is not wrong necessarily, but measuring only quantitatively will not drive business-supportive behaviour.

My local garage has chosen to support the vehicle and not the customer, and their value to me has dramatically reduced. Instead I’ll be taking my vehicle to a garage further away which lends me a car. Their loss…

At a recent itSMF Round Table an industry expert suggested that while some support organisations understand how to support the business, some are continuing to support

Contact Steve White at: stevescolumn@vital-mag.net

VitAL News Feature

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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onfirmation from the White C House that US intelligence agencies have been collecting

We can all appreciate the need for Government agencies to be given access to data in the interests of national security. However, this scandal has raised much broader concerns about data security and privacy levels as a whole in relation to cloud computing.

data held by companies including Facebook, Google, Apple and others for nearly six years, sent shockwaves through the business community. Their justification was the need to ward off threats to national security as part of a ‘classified program’ whereby agents have access to information stored by some of the biggest Internet companies. This practice was first exposed by The Guardian, which reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) had direct access to servers used by Facebook and Google since 2007.

The Guardian also reported the existence of a secret NSA operation - PRISM –through which it could obtain free access to emails, file transfers, search histories, live chats and other material. Full details of PRISM’s scope are contained in a highly classified 41-slide Powerpoint presentation, believed to be used by US intelligence officers to explain its capabilities. Some of the published slides exposed the names of companies involved – household brands like Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube.

Privacy and the cloud We can all appreciate the need for Government agencies to be given access to data in the interests of national security. However, this scandal has raised much broader concerns about data security and privacy levels as a whole in relation to cloud computing. According to Gartner, 70 percent of businesses are already using some form of cloud computing. Opting for cloud computing services means ‘trusting’ an external company to manage, protect and maintain data, keeping it secure and, most importantly, private. Any business thinking about migration to a hosted desktop or infrastructure as a service model needs to have a clear understanding of how their company data will be stored, managed and protected. When evaluating the different cloud computing options, it is important to consider the following questions: Do I need a private or public cloud service? Cloud computing can be completely secure, for example, if businesses opt for a private and managed cloud computing service. Companies should appreciate the distinction between public cloud services like Gmail, iCloud and Dropbox and a privately managed service. Whilst Gmail, Dropbox and iCloud might be free and offered by excellent companies, they carry potential security risks. Where data privacy must be guaranteed, it is also recommended that customers check whether their connection to the cloud computing provider is encrypted. Under which legal jurisdiction does my data and service provider fall? One of the big issues with cloud-based services is that organisations and their employees store data on the Internet without understanding where it is, what that means for the relevant legislation or who is controlling it. Microsoft, for example, holds its European Data in Ireland and Holland. However, the company is governed by US law (as a US company) and this extends to its policies on data. Trust is a major issue for any company moving into the cloud and security is understandably

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

a major concern, particularly given this scandal. Companies need to know where their data is held not only for their own peace of mind but to reassure customers and suppliers that their data will be secure too.

People using public cloud services won’t know where their data is held – they will also be moving from their secure desktop environment to an insecure one and if their data is held in the US for example, it may come under the jurisdiction of US authorities. Such options are therefore not suitable for all organisations. Responding to the growth in the number of companies adopting cloud computing,The Information Commissioner’s Office recently issued clear guidelines and a stark reminder to businesses that they are responsible for their data wherever it was held. Organisations must know where their data is held and take responsibility for its security. How can security be further improved with a private cloud service? One way for them to do this is by opting for a privately managed cloud computing service, such as a Desktop as a Service (DaaS), where data will be managed and stored in a secure UK datacentre behind corporate grade firewalls. The provider will take care of all the data security and backups - assuming responsibility for the online and physical safety of the data. In this situation, once a customer enters the desktop environment, this is more secure than the former local server set-up. As an extra validation, companies should look for reputable providers, seek customer references and check security accreditations such as ISO 9001, ISO 27001. Ask for a trial service Asking providers for a trial account is also a good idea to test security levels. It will enable them to see if they can browse the network from Windows explorer and access other servers or any data they shouldn’t be able to see. We would also recommend that companies check if their connection to the cloud computing provider is encrypted too. Consider the provider’s own disaster recovery plans in an emergency Customers should be aware that security threats are unfor tunately not always external and it is impor tant to have audit trails in place in case of employees’ breaching confidence. In addition, depending on the location, some offices may be at risk of physical threats such as burglary or flooding. With a reliable DaaS (desktop as a service) provider, the physical location of servers will be in a resilient, high security environment with constant backups and a foolproof disaster recovery solution. This ensures data is always protected to the highest levels and business as usual can be guaranteed for customers at all times. People will inevitably be seeking strong reassurances about privacy and security from the companies involved in the PRISM scandal. Although it is alarming to learn that the Government has easy access to personal data, this issue has positive implications. It has helped to raise wider awareness for companies migrating to cloud services, to check exactly where their data is being held and ensure that it is in a secure and private environment. www.workplacelive.com

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The three benefits of BYOD While elsewhere in this issue we tackle the thorny issues of security and BYOD, here Justin Hadler, director of engineering at hardware.com, attempts to focus on the positive aspects of comsumerisation.

ccording to a study conducted by Intel, there are over A five billion connected devices in the world today—and this number is expected to soar to an astounding 15 billion

by 2015.This explosion of wirelessly enabled internet devices—most notably smartphones, tablets, and laptops— has resulted in more and more employees bringing their personal devices into the workplace and connecting them to corporate servers en masse.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) is the latest buzzword taking the IT world by storm. Increasingly companies are not only tolerating employee usage of personally-owned, wirelessly enabled devices in the workplace but actively encouraging it by introducing comprehensive BYOD programmes. The BYOD trend has a lot of IT depar tments nervous. Their concerns can be summed-up in two questions: “How can we retain control of personal devices that interact with company machines and data and maintain security?” and “From an operational point of view, how do we manage so many devices of all different models and types?” Yet these concerns, whilst wholly legitimate, should not prove to be barriers to the introduction of a BYOD programme. With the right framework (a clearly-written policy and a good management platform) in place, BYOD can realise a number of benefits for a business.

1. Empowering employees As technology continues to permeate every aspect of our personal lives, we increasingly see continual, mobile access as a basic right. We now expect to be able to choose from a vast array of personal technology to suit our unique needs and to connect them wirelessly to the internet everywhere and anywhere. By allowing employees to bring their own devices to work, a business is affording them the same choice they have come to expect in their personal lives. They get to use the devices, including both hardware and software, of their choice and have the flexibility to work anywhere, anyway. However, it is not just the satisfaction of current employees (and the corresponding higher retention rates) that will be impacted. A BYOD programme also has the potential to attract new talent. According to Cisco’s 2011 “Connected World Technology Report,” for one third of

the 2,800 US students surveyed, device flexibility, work mobility, and access to social media were more important than salary. As the tech-savvy ‘Millennials’ enter the workforce, many will seek positions that allow more freedom in how they work. By instituting a BYOD policy and enabling access to corporate systems via a cloud interface, businesses can capitalise on these desires and attract the best and brightest of the next generation.

2. Boosting productivity Today most individuals are highly adept at using their personal smartphones, tablets, and laptops outside of work, and these skills translate when working in a BYOD-friendly environment. With their own device, employees can engage with one another more quickly even when away from their desks. Faster internal communication has the potential to allow a business to run more efficiently with queries answered and action points agreed speedily. Yet it is not only internal communication which can be boosted by BYOD, customer or client engagement can also be dramatically improved from such a policy. Creating meaningful connections with customers is an important part of many (if not most) jobs. In an age when we are all increasingly connected, and instant information is only a click of a button away, customers have come to expect to engage with organisations easily and anticipate quick responses. Whether a customer is using an organisation’s app, searching for a product or service quote, or even filing a complaint, the process should be uncomplicated and positively engage the end-user. The consumerisation of IT can aid the creation and development of positive customer relationships. By allowing workers to go mobile, companies can ensure customers will get help in a timely manner even if the appropriate contact is not at the office. Gone are the days of being tied to the desk—and with them, employees losing connection with customer and co-workers when in the field. A great example of this is Kraft Foods, which began providing employees with their own iPhones in 2008 . Nearly half of all workers had their own by early 2009 and were actively encouraged to use the devices to expand the value they could bring to customers. This directly led to the development of the company’s innovative phone app, which offers customers recipes, cooking tutorials, and store locator tools. Without embracing consumerisation, the company would have been slower to develop this fantastic tool, if at all.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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With a sound framework in place, BYOD can prove to be the soothing balm, rather than the cause, of a number of IT headaches in the long-run. 3. Curing IT headaches With a sound framework in place, BYOD can prove to be the soothing balm, rather than the cause, of a number of IT headaches in the long-run. Equipping employees with self-supported devices that they are confident and skilled at using frees up time for IT departments by limiting the need to act as a help-desk and respond to basic employee queries. Additionally, by using applications such as Smar tsheet, Dropbox, and Google Docs, employees have the ability to complete many projects without the help of the IT depar tment. New applications are continually being launched, meaning it is likely a solution exists for any business task. IT staff can therefore focus more time and resources on proactive, strategic tasks.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

Welcome Change. Join the BYOD Revolution. BYOD is already here, and (if the manufacturers of consumer technology have their way) it is a trend that is here to stay. Employees are already doing it, and will continue to do soâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;whether their company has given outright permission or not. So whilst some companies may be inclined to prohibit the use of personal devices, sometimes at the behest of nervous IT departments, the sheer prevalence of these devices means it is better to provide an eco-system that allows personal devices to be used safely and securely within the workplace. But BYOD is more than just a necessity. It is rapidly emerging as a proactive, forward-looking route to giving employees the freedom and choice they want, boosting their productivity, whilst releasing IT departments from significant financial and management headaches.

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www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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Fit for the future As one of the largest law firms in the north of England,Ward Hadaway’s IT department is deploying new technology to add value and make its work force more productive. Matt Bailey spoke to the company’s head of IT Greg Taylor.

Established in 1988, Ward Hadaway has grown to be one of the largest full-service law firms in the north of England. What’s more, the firm is ranked among the top law companies in the United Kingdom, according to legal industry guide Chambers & Partners. It has offices in Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester and has a substantial client base of regional, national and international clients from the private and public sectors. Law is a par ticularly competitive market, and law firms face the constant challenge of providing services cost-effectively. It’s not enough to simply deliver favourable outcomes to clients – it has to be done in such a way that customers see great value while the firm maintains its margins. For years now, technology has provided the answer to this ongoing issue – and Ward Hadaway has regularly invested in IT so that its personnel have the tools to work in more efficiently. As one of the largest full-service law firms in the North of England and one of the top ranked law firms in the UK, clearly the IT function has a crucial role, head of IT Greg Taylor outlines the company’s history and how the IT function fits in o the organisation. “As a company, we were established in 1988 and serve our base of local, national and international clients from our offices in Manchester, Newcastle and

Leeds.There’s an old joke that law firms have more IT than NASA. We have around 410 end users at Ward Hadaway and something like 50 different software solutions that support our personnel on a day-to-day basis. Our PC builds are more complex than those in other businesses – our standard image includes 12 pieces of software. As a company, we were looking to make our IT more efficient so that it could deliver improved services to our end users, as this would ultimately help us provide better services to clients.

IT challenges There are a number of particular challenges faced by the IT staff at the organisation. “With so many applications to install and manage, we wanted to simplify our processes, such as software distribution, patching and inventory control,” explains Taylor. “Some of these processes were already automated but the existing tools were complicated. Our key goals were to increase the IT team’s efficiency and give end users better service, which would give them the ability to better serve our customers. “We already had the Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance in place to help with inventory assessment, operating system and application provisioning, migration and recovery. The appliance had been a success, helping our IT team significantly reduce the time it took to build the images. The K2000 allowed us to deploy a standard image in just a few minutes, compared to the half a day it took using our old solution. As a result of this time saving, our staff were able to spend more time responding to help-desk calls instead of image building and staff get their new PCs quicker. “When we began looking at systems management and the improvements we could make there, we did already have a potential solution in mind. Based on our experience with the K2000, we evaluated the Dell KACE K1000 appliance as it supports inventory tracking, software distribution, configuration management, patching and security vulnerability remediation.”

Competitive market

Any investment that we make in IT has to deliver a good return, either through direct cost savings or through making staff much more efficient.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

Ward Hadaway acts for a number of high profile PLCs, highgrowth companies, entrepreneurs and start-up businesses and advises a range of local authorities, NHS Trusts and Government agencies. For these companies and organisations, the emphasis is on getting quality advice and guidance around legal issues as well as delivering a service that is efficient. With challenging conditions in the economy and trading as competitive as it’s ever been, even the once aloof legal profession is finding the going tough. “Law is a particularly competitive market and we all face the constant challenge of providing services in the most cost-effective way possible,” says Taylor. “It’s not simply enough to deliver favourable

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Clients are expecting more from us than ever before and IT has an important part to play in both maintaining and improving client service delivery.This will ultimately lead to an even more complex IT set up and require flexibility from our systems. outcomes to clients, it has to be done in such a way that the customer sees great value while we retain our margins. “Any investment that we make in IT has to deliver a good return, either through direct cost savings or through making staff much more efficient. It is not a case of just automating processes, but making that automation work as well as possible. By doing this, we have been able to see concrete savings on time and money.” In addition to the tough economic climate there are also current regulations, legislation and an explosion in new technologies that are having an impact on IT departments. “I think BYOD is a big trend that will only continue to grow,” predicts Taylor. “Similarly, cloud and software-as-a-service will continue to be attractive based on their cost-saving potential. We work with SaaS providers where there is a good technology fit, and there is the potential to differentiate services.”

Here to help Fortunately there are technologies that are making things easier, improving productivity and allowing a higher degree of flexibility for staff as well as taking care of otherwise potentially costly issues. “Following our implementation, our personnel no longer have any disruption to their working days due to software issues because the Dell KACE K1000 carefully monitors how many software licences are being used and alerts are automatically generated if there is a problem,” says Taylor. “Each morning, our IT team receives an update

on the licensing situation across the desktop estate, including any surplus or deficit against the licensing baseline. “A member of the IT team recently completed a licence review of Microsoft software in less than an hour with this appliance. Under our previous system, this would have taken at least a few days of manual licence checking and reporting. This saved time is key for us; it allows us to focus on further developing our company’s IT and helping our personnel provide even better services to our clients. “There are other benefits that we have seen from implementing the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance as well. For example, our patching process no longer impacts the performance of an employee during the working day. In the past, patching was controlled by Windows Server Update Services and there was little control over when patches were applied and how often it happened during working hours. Some personnel complained that their machines were running slowly at times and this was because of the patching. With the K1000 appliance, patching is now completely automated outside of office hours so our staff are more productive.”

Fit for the future We plan to continue to invest in the firm generally but particularly in IT, not just to make our IT staff more productive but also to make our fee-earners more productive. Clients are expecting more from us than ever before and IT has an important part to play in both maintaining and improving client service delivery. This will ultimately lead to an even more complex IT set up and require flexibility from our systems. Products such as the K1000 appliance are an important part of that investment to keep us up to date.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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Case Study - Ward Hadaway With so many applications to install and manage, Ward Hadaway wanted to simplify processes such as software distribution, patching and inventory control. Some of these processes were already automated, but the existing tools were complicated. Head of IT Greg Taylor comments: “Our key goals were to increase the IT team’s efficiency and give end users better service, in turn, giving us the ability to serve our customers more effectively.” The move coincided with the deployment of 350 Del OptiPlex 780 desktops with Intel Core processors running Windows 7 across its Newcastle office. The PCs were a refresh of an existing Dell OptiPlex desktop estate, where the machines had reached the end of their life cycles. Taylor says: “We knew that personnel would be able to improve their performance and deliver better service to customers with the increased performance of our Dell OptiPlex desktops and Windows 7. We wanted to build on this by making the process for managing the software on these machines better too.” When Taylor began looking for a systems management appliance to support the team, he had a solution in mind. Ward Hadaway already had the Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance – which helps IT teams with inventory assessment, operating system and application provisioning, migration and recovery – installed to automate tasks such as PC image builds. The appliance had been a success, helping the IT team significantly reduce the time it took to build the images. Taylor says: “We can deploy a standard image build on a PC in just a few minutes with our Dell KACE K2000 Deployment Appliance. With our old solution, it could take up to half a day to configure the build. As a result of this new efficiency, IT personnel spend more time responding to help-desk calls instead of image building. And staff get their new PCs quicker to maximise their productivity and deliver great customer service.” The company again turned to Dell to help it more effectively manage its systems, attracted by the fact Dell could offer end-toend solutions. Taylor says: “We’ve purchased a wide range of Dell solutions – including servers, storage and desktops – and we’ve been consistently happy with the results.” The current environment includes 12th-generation Dell PowerEdge R620 servers with Intel Xeon processors, and Dell EqualLogic PS6500E and PS6500X storage arrays. These are located in the primary site and a disaster recovery (DR) location, with all key virtual machines replicated to the DR site. The Dell PowerEdge servers support VMware-based virtualised environments in the Leeds and Newcastle offices. “We’ve gained higher virtualisation server density with our PowerEdge servers.They’ve provided us with greater scalability and reduced our cooling costs because of their energy efficiency,” says Taylor. The business quickly found a solution to meet its software management needs with the Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance. Among other things, the appliance supports inventory tracking, software distribution, configuration management, patching, and security vulnerability remediation. Being familiar with the simplicity and reliability of the KACE K2000 Appliance, Taylor was convinced the KACE K1000 Appliance would be just as effective. “I knew that the Management Appliance did everything we needed,” says Taylor.

Soon after deploying the solution, personnel participated in JumpStart sessions, where they received web-based training on the Appliance. “The great thing about the JumpStart programme was that we knew the solution thoroughly after just a couple of two-hour sessions,” says Taylor. According to Taylor, he and his team have a good working relationship with Dell KACE. “Whenever we turn to the Dell KACE team, we receive great advice and support. Its personnel like to extend our knowledge of Dell KACE so we can get greater business value from the KACE Appliance,” he says. The law firm can continue to compete successfully in its market with personnel now working more efficiently than ever. That’s because patching software – an essential part of the systems management process – no longer impacts the performance of employee desktops during the working day. In the past, patching was controlled by Windows Server Update Services. There was little control over when patches were applied and often it happened during working hours. “Some personnel complained that their machines were running slowly at times, and this was because of the patching. But with the Management Appliance things have changed. Patching is completed automatically outside office hours, so staff are more productive, helping the company deliver improved service levels and win new business,” says Taylor. Personnel also stay highly productive because software can be deployed across the desktop estate much faster. Before the solution, IT personnel installed software updates directly on PCs, visiting each desktop individually. Now, the process is much more efficient. For example, the IT team recently had to deploy a new application on each PC. Using the Appliance, the team created and tested an installation script in about two hours, and the appliance rolled out the software in less than half a day. “We saved about two weeks’ work using Dell KACE to deploy one application, and every end user avoided the 15 minutes of disruption expected if we had manually installed the software on their machines,” says Taylor. He adds: “Finding the time to do the work would also have been difficult because of our busy schedules. But with Dell KACE, we were able to just get on with the software deployment, combining it with our other duties.” Personnel no longer have any disruption to their working days due to software issues because licensing is carefully monitored by the Management Appliance and alerts are automatically generated. Each morning, Taylor gets an update on the licensing situation across the desktop estate, including any surplus or deficit against the licensing baseline. In addition to helping Taylor plan ahead, the system also saves him and his team a lot of time. He says: “I completed a licence review of our Microsoft software in less than an hour using our Management Appliance. Under our previous system, it would have taken a few days.” Taylor can now use the time saved to focus on further developing the company’s IT. He says: “Because inventory management is so efficient with the Appliance, there’s no risk of staff being disrupted by licensing matters and we can spend more time helping personnel provide even better services to our customers.”

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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Automate and innovate It’s time to unlock the potential of your workforce. Tijl Vuyk, founder, Redwood Software discusses how automation can utilise your workforce and provide real business benefits. While many are worried that new levels of automation will lead to a ‘rise of the machines’, we cannot ignore the fact that companies are already investing in business process automation.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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n the economic downturn, it is particularly important for Ibringing businesses to deliver with scarce resources. Rather than in more people to complete unnecessary manual tasks, companies should consider how they can better utilise their current workforce, and therefore deliver more, with less. Automation has the potential to boost business efficiency and the bottom line by developing a new generation of skilled workers. However, British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that “technological unemployment” would present problems for 21st century economies and, with the increasing sophistication of machines, many people are questioning what impact automation will have on the workforce.

The rise of the machines While many are worried that new levels of automation will lead to a ‘rise of the machines’, we cannot ignore the fact that companies are already investing in business process automation. The workplace is becoming ever more complex as new technologies emerge, forcing companies to increase their manual ability, usually by employing more human resources or by going the other way entirely and outsourcing that requirement. For those companies who seek to achieve more for less in this digital world, automation is becoming an obvious means to achieve greater efficiency and reduce costs, while still maintaining full control of your business processes. With so many employees tied down by unnecessary manual tasks, automation has the potential to free their time for concentration on other more strategic responsibilities. We recently commissioned a survey with Vanson Bourne on this issue, and found that 99 percent of businesses are repeatedly undertaking manual tasks, with almost two thirds (63 percent) saying IT spends over 25 percent of their time doing so. It doesn’t take any great mathematician to calculate that this is an extraordinary waste of businesses’ resources, especially when these people could be concentrating on more business critical tasks which deliver tangible benefits for their organisation.

Where to automate While many enterprises automate processes to some degree, this is largely limited to certain tasks and functions within organisations, such as HR, payroll and billing – not the business critical processes which would truly benefit from automation. Every day we get home and complain about the annoying tasks we have had to complete at work, so imagine the transformative effect we would see on the workplace if human skill could be freed up to concentrate on more creative, innovative roles. Many of these current, mundane manual tasks could be easily completed by a machine in your place. Businesses thrive on innovation and creativity and restricting workers to repetitive chores like data entry or process integration is not only an invaluable use of their time, but it creates a business environment that fails to unlock the true potential of their workforce.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

For those companies who seek to achieve more for less in this digital world, automation is becoming an obvious means to achieve greater efficiency and reduce costs, while still maintaining full control of your business processes. Businesses today generate a huge volume of data, nowadays and the task of handling this spiralling amount of information is a massive undertaking for mere mortals. By introducing automation, enterprises can package this information in a way that informs business processes, rather than leaving employees to battle with reams of big data. With this approach, companies can create new business scenarios that are efficient and cost effective. The business case is all the more convincing when we consider that almost no IT operation involvement is required to install cloud automation processes. From our research with Vanson Bourne we found that the anxieties most commonly raised by companies against adopting cloud automation centred around complex processes, a lack of knowledge about its benefits and implementation process, or concerns about complicating existing applications. However, when internal adoption of automation is feasible, companies have the luxury of building and testing automation themselves, enabling them to better understand their business ecosystem and also its potential for greater productivity.

Adapting service delivery Those companies that are willing to adapt their IT service delivery network can look forward to a more innovative workforce. As automation enables greater efficiency across the business model, employee time can be used more resourcefully, freeing them up to learn new skills. Informed by the reliable data collected from automated processes, workers can instead direct their energies into creative and strategic tasks that rely on human innovation. This is an exciting development across the whole IT sector, but specifically for small businesses who will be able to compete with bigger companies like never before. Rather than trying to repel the advance of the machine, businesses should recognise its potential to evolve rather than remove the workforce, as employees are freed up to concentrate on more valuable tasks that contribute to overall productivity. Those businesses which unlock the full potential of their workforce through automation will be the most competitive in this new technological era as they deliver significant cost-savings, increased efficiencies, greater control and ultimately greater business productivity. www.redwood.com

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Painless XP migration Almost 40 percent of organisations are still using Windows XP with less than a year to go until support stops - but migration obstacles can be overcome and costs significantly reduced by understanding software usage as Richard Pegden of Centrix Software explains.

staggering 38.7 percent of companies still haven’t migrated to Windows 7 and 8, according to MarketShare. That means come Wednesday April 9th 2014 millions of workers could be sat down at their desks ready to start work, but find something’s gone wrong. Considering why such a high number of companies have not completed the migration from Windows XP, it is likely that some have been faced with far more complexity and technical challenge than was originally expected. Organisations are now struggling to wade through the obstacles and complete on time. Others have simply deemed it too lengthy, complicated or costly a project. The challenge here is that the project will only get bigger with each new version of Windows; it is already estimated that a migration from Windows XP to Windows 8 will take an additional five percent of time, cost and effort compared to a migration from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Lift and shift Organisations that are behind schedule or have simply left it late might be tempted to adopt a ‘lift and shift’ approach to the migration; taking everything they have and delivering the same environment on the new operating system. While this may appear like the fastest and most low-cost option, it is often anything but. It’s true that migration projects can be overwhelming, time-consuming and have cost implications, but there are huge potential risks for companies that have not fully migrated from Windows XP by the April 8th, 2014 deadline. The key to a successful migration is a detailed analysis of software usage; understanding the who, what, when, where and how of every single application being used, as well as identifying those apps that are never used. The experience of our customer base tells us that up to 50 percent of companies’ apps are never used. More significantly, many of the apps that are incompatible with Windows 7 or Windows 8 are those that are never used. So while IT departments could be reducing the app portfolio by half, they could also be reducing app compatibility challenges by upwards of 75 percent.

of IT decision makers think that they would save money due to a better understanding of their app libraries.

The key to a successful migration is a detailed analysis of software usage.

Once an IT department is in possession of this kind of detailed software usage information then it can remove all the apps that are unused or incompatible from the project scope. This provides a much clearer and less daunting picture of where to start. So IT can significantly reduce the burden and cost involved in typical corporate desktop migration projects, but where does it begin? Implementing the following suggested steps should help remove the risks, and deliver migration projects on time and on budget. Understand exactly which apps are used. Not just the top 30 or 40, but every single app; including web apps and those delivered through virtualisation technologies. Understand the dependencies between apps, plug-ins and batch files. A user’s experience is in seeing an entire process work - this can often mean more than one app or executable being used. Rationalise the app portfolio. Only take forward the apps that are being used, standardising on a couple of versions as you go. This will also significantly reduce app compatibility issues. If your migration project looks too complex, too lengthy or too large for your budget, think again - there is another way. Taking these steps will enable you to dramatically streamline, accelerate and reduce the cost of the migration – and most importantly make that crucial April 8th 2014 deadline. www.centrixsoftware.com

Furthermore, work with Windows XP migration project managers at global organisations, has revealed the following app usage statistics: - Between 75 to 95 percent of the apps that are incompatible with Windows 7 are not used; - Up to 90 percent of total apps are used less than 10 percent of the time; -

50 percent of apps are not used at all;

- Unused apps cost companies an average of £350 per desktop; - Typically over 20 percent of installed apps compatible with Windows XP are not compatible with Windows 7 and Windows 8. Emphasising this, a recent survey found that 81 percent of European IT professionals admitted to their networks holding unused apps. And findings from Dell and Forrester, report that 44 percent

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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VitAL Management

Time for mass customisation The cloud will be the catalyst for innovation through mass customisation in IT. Hans de Visser, CSO at Cordys reports on how smart and efficient manufacturing principles can be applied in IT, thanks to a wealth of services that can be consumed from the cloud.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Management he cloud is often perceived as T nothing more than a means of cutting costs, but there are a number of ways that it can be leveraged for innovation at affordable cost.This article will explore how smart and efficient manufacturing principles can now be applied in IT, thanks to a wealth of services that can be consumed from the cloud.

Mass customisation is described as effectively postponing the task of differentiating a product for a specific customer until the latest possible point in the supply network.

Many people view the cloud as a means of just reducing the cost of IT and, while that is definitely an important factor, there is a far more fundamental pattern that revolves around consuming IT services and applications from the cloud, tailored to the needs of customers and end-users at affordable cost.

The cloud industry is currently undergoing a radical shift in which there appear to be a lot of similarities to how the manufacturing industry has evolved over time. One could say that cloud services and applications are ‘democratising’ IT and fostering innovation by combining various services at (relatively) low cost into tailored and personalised solutions that drive productivity and engagement through personalised experience of customers, partners and employees.

Mass customisation In the manufacturing world this concept is called mass customisation, and was first described by writer and business consultant Joseph Pine 20 years ago. Mass customisation is all about postponing differentiation until as late as possible in the production process combined with lowest possible unit cost, and is something we will look at it more detail later on. Enterprises should take advantage of this concept and apply it in IT by first embracing the cloud for consuming services on different XaaS (everything as a service) levels where and whenever possible, and secondly, by making sure that they use an ‘assembly line’ to integrate, aggregate and orchestrate these services. We will start by looking at the best way to capitalise on the opportunities that this affords, with the short and simple suggestion being to apply a BPM (business process management) platform as a ‘cloud service assembly line’.

BPM as the ideal assembly line A BPM platform can be viewed as an ideal assembly line as it can perfectly handle the initial provisioning, the ‘stitching’ of the services, and the orchestration of running aggregated services. If a business is smart, it will use BPM ‘as a service’. Companies that are adopting this approach are driving innovation at a cost level that is substantially lower and at a pace that is significantly higher than the alternative of doing it on premise. Those businesses that fail to take advantage of this opportunity to leverage the cloud and to apply mass customisation are likely to face greater competition the longer it is left ignored. To better understand how the concept works in practice, it is probably worth, at this point, taking a deeper look into the background of mass customisation. The Cordys core team has its roots in the ERP space, working for Baan Company, one of the four players that actually shaped the ERP market in the nineties. Cordys was particularly strong in the discrete manufacturing vertical with best of breed functionality to support multiple manufacturing principles varying from make-to-stock, engineer-to-order and assemble-to-order.

Manufacturing principles Make-to-stock production is typically for commodity goods where mass production allows for lowest possible price per unit. aOn the contrary, engineer-to-order is typically suitable for capital-intense

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

industrial goods such as high-end machinery that is built uniquely or in small series. In between the two extremes is the assemble-to-order concept which allows companies to assemble a product with unique characteristics but built up from standard modules and assemblies that, in turn, could be make-to-stock, or produced on demand based on pre-defined specifications. Assemble-to-order combines elements of make-to-stock and engineer-to-order to produce larger series at affordable cost.

A smart form of mixing these concepts is the manufacturing principle known as mass customisation. As mentioned, mass customisation is described as effectively postponing the task of differentiating a product for a specific customer until the latest possible point in the supply network. It combines the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customisation.

Cycles in industry To better illustrate this concept, it is worth considering how complete industries such as car manufacturing have gone through cycles when it comes to applying these manufacturing principles during their lifetime. For example, a hundred years ago cars were largely engineeredto-order. Then Henry Ford revolutionised the industry with the introduction of the Model T that could be ordered in “any colour, as long as it was black”. In the last few decades car manufacturing companies have driven lean and assemble-to-order manufacturing principles to perfection, including the support of mass customisation in recent years. One of the best examples of this is how BMW has turned the Mini Cooper into a personal and affordable style icon. The car manufacturer says that, out of 100,000 new Minis, only five will be exactly alike. Here then, in a nutshell, is what it takes to apply the principles of mass customisation:

Putting the pieces together First of all, a business requires the right set of standard components, assemblies and modules to be used as building blocks, along with the definition and routing of the operations to be performed to get the final product. Secondly it needs the production line to perform the assembly tasks and operations and, finally, the end-customer must have the tooling needed to actually configure the product within the applicable rules and constraints. But, while this might all make sense in terms of the manufacturing industry, we should now look at how it applies to the world of IT. In much the same way as the cycles that the car manufacturing industry went through, IT started off with engineer-to-order systems and applications as the predominant model. Then the model of ‘commercial-off-the-shelf ’ software or ‘packaged’ applications came along, a market boosted by the availability of client–server systems. The rise of the internet, followed by Web 2.0 based on the worldwide web standards, and the availability of bandwidth infrastructure has propelled the proliferation of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings for both consumers and businesses at a pace previously unseen in the history of technological innovation. So the industry now has the building blocks on various levels of the ‘stack’ and various levels of granularity. If you consider network, storage, virtual servers, and a myriad of applications for CRM, ERP, SCM, BI, office productivity, mobile apps etc., you will realise that they are all available as services from the cloud, along with the standards (Rest & SOAP) for “plug & play” integration of these services.

VitAL Management

The last piece required then is the ‘assembly line’ needed to create, aggregate and orchestrate the right bundles of integrated services that are tailored to the needs of the end users. A BPM platform, assuming that it is supported by solid integration and application development capabilities, is the perfect assembly line for leveraging the mass customisation principle using cloud services.

Mass customisation in practice As an example to illustrate this point, Cordys has replaced a Siebel CRM system at one of the leading emergency centres in The Netherlands with a BPM / Case Management application that combines core application logic built as per customer specification (engineer-to-order) with a set of standard public- and private cloud services which allow this company to handle road assistance support calls very efficiently and effectively. BPM is essentially used as the mechanism to steer the application (assemble-to-order). Dynamic workflow is then mixed in so as to support the call handlers with straight-through workflows calling and generating the right mix of services to coordinate all stakeholders in the value chain. One of the ways which mass customisation is applied here is that, by integrating Google Maps with the application to plot salvage companies, hotels etc. in the neighbourhood of an incident on the map, the call handler receives visual support for selecting the right services for the client that’s in trouble. Similar services are called for number plate checks, insurance policy checks and the like. There is no way that an equivalently rich solution could be built at an affordable cost level and that would be so tailored to the needs of the

customer without leveraging these public- and private cloud services.

The cloud industry is currently undergoing a radical shift in which there appear to be a lot of similarities to how the manufacturing industry has evolved over time.

The case above leverages fairly simple and straightforward cloud services. In another example, one of Cordys’ strategic partners has built a full blown solution for “a 360 degree view on the customer” with an integrated portfolio of cloud applications for web content management (Drupal), marketing automation (Eloqua), sales-force automation (SFDC) and analytics (Adobe). This portfolio is offered as a single solution to the customer, connected to on premise systems such as ERP and managed by the partner under a specific Service Level Agreement. In both enterprise customer examples, the BPM platform acts as the decoupling layer between different types of services, supporting the aggregation on multiple levels of granularity, and introducing a level of flexibility to influence (Business Rules), change and replace these services at an unparalleled level of productivity. Should this approach be industrialised with ‘service configurators’ on the front end and an assembly line that takes and personalises the right mix of services, it could soon lead to the widespread adoption of mass customisation in IT. www.cordys.com

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Management

The big training voucher question The IT department holds the key to unlocking millions of pounds of training vouchers.Training vouchers hold the key better use of IT, better return on investment and cut down on IT support requests – so why aren’t they being used? Bill Walker, technical director at QA reports.

hen chatting to an associate at Microsoft recently, I was astounded to learn that within Microsoft alone, millions of pounds of Software Assurance training vouchers go unclaimed each year. Yes, millions of pounds worth. In fact, I was so astounded that I thought I’d check with peers at VMWare and Cisco too, to see if they had the same issue – and yes – it appears that there’s a black hole out there, absorbing training vouchers randomly from within our galaxy. OK, so maybe that’s a little dramatic, but the fact remains that vendors provide this training allowance for a reason. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that an end user will not get maximum benefit from a new product unless they know how best to use it; meaning that the organisation, in turn, doesn’t get best value from its technology investment. A lose/lose situation.

Whither the training voucher? So in my quest to find out what really happens to these vouchers, I’ve been asking around the IT community as to the whereabouts of these allusive credit vouchers. It would appear that some get lost in that black hole more commonly referred to as ‘the procurement department’. They simply expire without the end user, HR or even the IT department, for that matter, ever knowing that they existed. Others, are simply undervalued and underused. Nobody communicates the true benefits of them and so they are left rattling

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around the largest black hole of all –at the bottom of an enormous, anonymous Inbox within the IT department. Once these vouchers end up in the black hole, it seems it is very difficult – but not entirely impossible - for them to reappear. They are time limited, usually for a year, and due to data protection laws, resellers and training partners are unable to trace vouchers back to customers to encourage them to cash them in. So, this puts the emphasis firmly at the door of the IT department, with a little help perhaps from their IT partner, to keep accurate records and adopt systems and policies that ensure that they are releasing the value of the training that’s owed to them. Although these vouchers are marketed as ‘free’ for customers, the reality is that the cost of them has already been paid for and is built into the cost of the product. My message, loud and clear is quite simply don’t miss out on this opportunity to delight your end user with some training and cut down on support calls. Training is a valuable asset and this asset costs business nothing more than the deal already done. It makes staff more productive, departments more effective and businesses more profitable. Communicating the value of these vouchers should be an integral part of your IT strategy. If you’re not sure how to do this, ask a training partner to help tailor a programme for your business. It’s a business asset you’ve paid for – so make sure you use it. www.qa.com

VitAL Management

Getting creative in the workplace Seventy percent of UK firms don’t encourage creativity in the workplace and they could be missing a trick as psychologist Ros Taylor.

reativity in the workplace is critical to enable C businesses to survive and thrive, particularly during a recession, but only 30 percent of UK firms are doing

anything to encourage it.That’s according to research I carried out for my book Creativity at Work (published by Kogan Page) where I challenge the traditional definition of creativity and highlight how firms are stifling ideas and innovation at a time when it’s vital for UK businesses to foster a creative environment in order to stay afloat.

Creativity is the precursor to innovation, the practical result – creativity made manifest. Innovation can transform a business into an adaptive and evolving entity, yet only 25 percent of employees in the UK are actively given time to come up with new ideas in the workplace. If there were ever a time that we require to do things differently and have ideas it is now! The research, which included a poll of 1,000 working people in the UK and interviews with leaders from organisations around the world, highlights common misconceptions around what creativity is. Many case study subjects stated that they felt creativity was the preserve of the ar tistic and that they didn’t see their workplace as a space for it; although they had ideas at work, they didn’t rate this as being ‘creative’. Creativity is about new ideas in any domain, even the world of work, whether you’re a designer or a HR Director. Individuals fall into one of four different creative styles and that diverse teams with all creative styles represented perform better because by working together the team can fully engage with the creative process without accidentally ‘shor t-circuiting’ some of the key steps. UK companies should actively hire for creativity and employees should be routinely assessed to determine their creative styles. Without an intentional approach to creativity at work, individual team members may be prevented from playing to their strengths and frustration or conflict may hinder the company’s overall productivity. The research also outlines how many employers are failing to create the right environment for creativity and ignoring impor tant components such as valuing feedback, fostering diversity and encouraging brainstorming. If employers don’t see their workplace as a space for creativity and their role as fostering it, how can we expect there to be new ideas and true innovation in business?

Ideas are the lifeblood of a company and organisation. Those businesses that recognize this and take creativity seriously are already poised for success.

Ideas are the lifeblood of a company and organisation.Those businesses that recognize this and take creativity seriously are already poised for success.

Google Let’s look at Google to see if there are transferable skills for us in our businesses. Google, founded in 1998 by Sergei Brin and Larry Page as a result of a grad school project, is now a multi-billion dollar company. The Google search engine is like breathing – we just can’t do without it. One secret of Google it seems to me is its constant desire for new products, which it tests with new users to obtain feedback. It keeps its creativity crackling. Every member of staff is encouraged to come up with completely new ideas and given time off each week just to do that. Apparently in the fields around head office people in anoraks are often to be seen staring at horizons or communing with nature. The ethos is that you problem solve first then the money will follow. Brin and Page, despite being multi-millionaires, are still hands-on in the business and both focus on what they love. They are renowned for fast-paced change. Another secret to success was the arrival of Eric E Schmidt as executive chairman. Since joining Google in 2001, Schmidt has helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley start-up to a global leader in technology. As executive chairman, he is responsible for the external matters of Google: building partnerships and broader business relationships, as well as advising the CEO and senior leadership on business and policy issues. This left Sergei and Larry to do what they do best – focus on the technology and creativity of the company. They are now working, I believe, on downloading a map of the human genome so that we, the customer, can download our own DNA. Larry Page, commenting on his success, has said that optimism is really impor tant for companies to move forward and ‘You’ve got to be a bit silly about your goals.’

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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VitAL Profile

Many people who work in complex or high-risk occupations be it soldiers, pilots or surgeons - use simulated environments as a method of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;mission-rehearsalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an incredibly powerful medium for change.

The golden age of gaming Edinburgh-based G2G3 is known for its best-practice based immersive business simulations, gamification, serious games and other engagement solutions, which it delivers to IT enterprises worldwide. Matt Bailey spoke to G2G3 managing director, Mark Sutherland, about how the company is helping IT organisations transform, and how G2G3 is evolving following its acquisition by Capita.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Profile

is a leading provider of engagement solutions G 2G3 based around creative game science.The company’s

co-founder applied lessons he learned in experiential learning from his days in the military to the problems of getting to grips with adopting and realising benefit from best practice in IT organisations.VitAL speaks to G2G3 managing director, Mark Sutherland. VitAL: What is your background in IT?

Mark Sutherland: I was an army officer before joining the IT industry. On leaving the army I gained valuable IT experience working in the areas of ERP, document management and service management and then joined Axios Systems in 1994. I worked for Axios Systems

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for six years and was involved in the development and selling of its integrated ITSM software solution, assyst. During that time, I frequently experienced frustration at the fact that many customers would invest significantly in large service management technology solutions or process improvement programs, but rarely would the benefits expected be delivered. I knew there had to be a better way to drive positive change for these organisations. With this in mind, Andrew Speake and I co-founded G2G3 at the turn of the millennium. The name G2G3 is a military acronym: G2 stands for ‘intelligence’ and G3 stands for ‘operations’. Every business needs both to survive and be successful. Where G2G3 differed from every other vendor in the industry was in the fact that we focused on people. Everyone talks about the triad of ‘people, process and technology’, but too often the focus is placed

VitAL Profile

I frequently experienced frustration at the fact that many customers would invest significantly in large service management technology solutions or process improvement programs, but rarely would the benefits expected be delivered. on process and technology, and people are nothing more than an afterthought. We wanted our core purpose to be about engaging hearts and minds. In building our business, we took inspiration from my previous military experience. The military uses simulations and serious games to train and educate people in a risk-free environment then deploy them into high-risk situations safely, with everyone aligned and focussed on the task in the hand. Our vision was to take this model and successfully translate it into the IT enterprise environment. Ultimately we engage people – particularly large IT enterprise workforces, using simulation, serious gaming and gamification technologies. Game science has always been at the heart of what we do. VitAL: Explain what is meant by simulation, serious gaming and gamification? MS: Simulation involves putting a group of people into a realistic simulated environment to allow them to experience what it’s actually like to run a business with a complex IT infrastructure facing reallife challenges. These are interactive, face-to-face workshops that help people practically understand the benefits of complex best practices, such as ITIL, PRINCE2 etc. by demonstrating benefits and consequences. The strongest simulations are based around authentic and realistic scenarios that people can actually relate to. Context is important. Many people who work in complex or highrisk occupations - be it soldiers, pilots or surgeons - use simulated environments as a method of ‘mission-rehearsal’. It’s an incredibly powerful medium for change. Serious gaming is a different discipline where traditional gamecraft techniques such as video games are used for a serious outcome. Examples of serious games we have worked on include designing and building video games to educate or provide information around complex topics such as cloud computing, storage management or integrated service management. The third arrow in the quiver is gamification. This is a concept more than a product where game thinking and game mechanics are extracted and applied to non-game environments and activities. It’s about taking the ‘DNA’ of games and using them to make normal, day-to-day activities more compelling. Gamification can be applied to any people-related activity, and can help drive desired behaviours within the context of that activity. For example, from an ITSM perspective, activities that can be gamified are wide-ranging and can include operations, communications and education-based tasks. One good example of a gamification project we worked on – our client, a very large global organisation, was struggling to find ways to populate their Configuration Management Database (CMDB) with quality data. They wanted to create an accountable community where people understood the importance of quality data, took on this responsibility and in doing so, had an emotional connection to the process. G2G3 devised a gamified application that allowed all staff to directly enter local asset information, which would then result in donations being made (by the organisation) to charities that were chosen by staff. The more data entered, the higher the donations. There was also a regional competitive element included as part of the ‘game’.

These three things: simulation, serious gaming and gamification are all elements of game science and are our foundational disciplines. We typically augment them with creative solutions such as visualisation, communications and infographics to add value and make our solutions compelling, understandable and pleasurable for people to engage with. VitAL: How has G2G3 grown and how is it structured? MS: Our headquarters are in Edinburgh but we operate internationally. The company was growing organically until April this year, when we were acquired by Capita plc, a FTSE 100 company with 55,000 staff. We are now part of Capita’s Justice and Secure Services division, but will continue to operate as a separate organisational entity. As part of the Capita family, we now have access to resources that will help us build and strengthen our solutions set for the future. We currently have around 35-40 staff but the intention is to grow significantly over the next few years. In related news, Capita were recently selected to form a best management practice training tools and accreditation joint venture with the Cabinet Office. The joint venture will support and develop the SWIRL best practice portfolio (ITIL, PRINCE2, MOR, P30 etc.). Thanks to our experience around engaging people with game science, G2G3 bring a wealth of capabilities to Capita that can help support this new joint venture in the future. VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group? MS: We specialise in engaging people and driving positive change through the use of creative game science. We offer a range of off-the-shelf solutions, including our well-known ITIL and ITSM simulation suite, Polestar. We also create custom simulations, serious games and gamification solutions for licensing to large corporations to directly engage their staff and customers. For example, we recently created a bespoke ITSM simulation for Ford which has been rolled out globally to educate and inform all those being impacted by their service management improvement programme. We also license these capabilities to vendors – for example, IBM, HP, Microsoft and ServiceNow all use our technology to help bring the benefits of their tools and services to life. We also engage with large enterprises directly. These organisations are typically trying to transform though service improvement, cost reduction or changes to operational models. Often they may have found that traditional change management approaches have not been particularly effective, and they need an innovative approach to achieve the results they need. VitAL: Who are the company’s main customers today and in the future? MS: Our customers are typically large global organisations with a need for change and transformation. We also work closely with large software vendors who license our gaming technologies, such as IBM, Microsoft, HP, CA and more.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Profile

VitAL: What trends in IT are having an effect on your business and how do you address these trends? MS: Game science is an approach that really engages ‘millennials’ or Generation Y. The presence of this ‘Xbox Generation’ within the workforce is growing at an exponential rate. Consider the fact that the average Gen Y person will have played 10,000 hours of games by the time they reach the age of 21; they are literally virtuosos in gaming. Gen Y is a new breed of connected employee, for whom multi-sensory engagement is the norm. To maximise the potential of this generation, we need to engage them with similar technology in the workplace. These millennials are fundamental to the future of IT - they’re the guys who will be designing the next generation of technology and user interfaces. We need to operate at their level. The other exciting area where game science is at the precipice of what’s possible is the quantification of self. The growth of wearable computing and personal data acquisition is going to have a huge impact on the future enterprise. Even now, many of us use wearable computing technology in the office in the form of Nike Fuel Bands. You simply press a button to find out how many fuel points you’ve got. That is gamification. We’ve actually started working with some of our more forward-thinking clients to incorporate self-quantification into their gamified solutions, and I see this growing significantly in the future. We’re transitioning from quantified self to the quantified workplace. Some people may find this creepy, but we’re incredibly excited by the opportunities it presents. VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities? MS: From a service management perspective, we are about to enter a new era. For a number of years now, there has been

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an overwhelming call from practitioners across the industry for change and modernisation – and that change is about to come. The establishment of the Capita/Cabinet Office joint venture shows significant promise in terms of building a future for service management which is based around community, collaboration and engagement. New approaches, new IP and different frameworks will be integrated, giving people choice and freedom to ultimately do what is best for their business. Business focus is paramount because the economy demands that we be competitive in cost, quality and performance; and we are competing in a global market. VitAL: What are the future plans for the business? MS: We’re very excited about what the future holds. Being acquired by a company with the strength, scale and global reach of Capita has given G2G3 a phenomenal opportunity. We plan to grow our global footprint, improving our market leadership in our core areas of expertise. Capita itself also provides us with a huge amount of opportunity. Its diverse range of businesses, including army recruitment, emergency services training, police systems, call centres and more, can all benefit from implementing game science in order to improve education and engagement. I believe that we are about to embark on the next golden age of gaming. The individual components are aligned - the workforce is evolving, the technology is ready and there is a need for people to be engaged. Never has the world been more ready. VitAL: Mark Sutherland, thank you very much. www.g2g3.com

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Big Data, meet enterprise security Will data security and compliance issues put big data developments on hold? Big data security expert Mark Bower shows how comprehensive solutions to ensure the security of sensitive information in Big Data environments without impairing their operational flexibility or performance can help.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

Big Data includes a wide and growing range of data types, many of them new: text messages, social media posts, ecommerce click streams, GPS location traces, machine logs and sensor measurements.

The success of huge online companies, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, in using Big Data techniques to manage very large volumes of data – think terabytes and petabytes of information – has meant that many large organisations worldwide are working to develop and deploy Big Data facilities alongside their established business intelligence infrastructure. This phenomenon is still the new kid on the block and, as a result, few standards are currently in place to ensure that these new systems are successfully integrated into existing policy frameworks that guarantee governance, compliance and security. Data security, for example has the potential to stop many of these developments if not properly addressed. This article offers comprehensive solutions to ensure that the security of sensitive information in Big Data environments is maintained without impairing their operational flexibility or performance.

It’s a Big Data world Large organisations worldwide are working to develop and deploy Big Data analytical facilities alongside their established business intelligence structure. These initiatives are motivated in nearly equal parts by the conviction that new business insights and opportunities are buried in the avalanche of new data, by the knowledge that conventional business intelligence systems are unequal to the task, and by the fear that competitors will be first to master and exploit the available new data streams. Because the phenomenon of Big Data analytics is only a few years old, few standards exist to ensure that these new systems and the analytical activities they support are successfully integrated into the existing policy and frameworks that ensure governance, compliance and security. One of those critical policy domains – data security – has the potential to arrest many of these developments and block the realisation of their business benefits if not adequately addressed. This feature presents a comprehensive solution that cost-effectively ensures the security of sensitive information in Big Data environments without impairing their operational flexibility or computational performance.

A big step up for data-driven decision-making Most accounts now distinguish Big Data from the established domain of enterprise management information by three characteristics first noted by Gartner: volume, velocity and variety. Volume: Very large data sets - think terabytes and petabytes of information – are not a new phenomenon, but the rise of ecommerce and social media, the global distribution of machine intelligence business networks and personal electronic devices, and the exponential growth of commercial and scientific sensor networks are making them commonplace. There are now many organisations with volumes of data that exceed the ability of conventional methods to organise, search and analyse in meaningful time intervals. Velocity: One reason these data sets are so large is their unprecedented growth rate. In a recent Harvard Business Review article , Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson report that:

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VitAL Processes

As sensitive data flows into new Big Data facilities, many of them still pilot stage developments, the issue of security becomes an increasingly urgent problem for business sponsors eager to bring them into production. • As of 2012, approximately 2.5 exabytes of data are created every day, a number that is expected to double roughly every 40 months.

payment card account numbers, personal health records – each with its own set of security mandates.

• More data now crosses the internet each second than was stored in the entire internet just 20 years ago.

Data security: A pothole in the Big Data roadmap

• It is estimated that Wal-Mart collects 2.5 petabytes of customer transaction data every hour.

As sensitive data flows into new Big Data facilities, many of them still pilot stage developments, the issue of security becomes an increasingly urgent problem for business sponsors eager to bring them into production. Unless these systems can be rendered compliant with the full range of global data security and privacy regulations, their potential business impacts may remain a matter of purely academic interest.

Variety: Big Data includes a wide and growing range of data types, many of them new: text messages, social media posts, ecommerce click streams, GPS location traces, machine logs and sensor measurements. Structured, unstructured or semi-structured, much of this data is incompatible with the relational database repositories at the heart of most business intelligence facilities.

Rapid rise, quick commercialisation Until 2004, the three Vs seemed to put Big Data beyond the reach of practical commercial analysis. That’s when Jegg Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat published their seminal paper on the MapReduce programming model developed at Google for parallel, distributed processing of large datasets on scalable commodity clusters. The model was quickly embraced by the open source community, leading to the Apache Hadoop project and the development of a complete software framework for distributed analytical processing. This success promptly launched start-ups like Cloudera and Hortonworks to commercialise the new technologies. The combination of Big Data analytics based on the MapReduce programming model, open source software, and commodity hardware clusters offers some extremely appealing business benefits for organisations with large data sets at their disposal, including: • The ability to derive business insights and competitive advantages from data streams that cannot be addressed with conventional BI tools. To ask questions that were previously unanswerable. • The ability to respond more quickly and intelligently to changing business environments and emerging opportunities. • A game changing cost differential of up to 20:1 relative to proprietary business intelligence solutions. The conspicuous success of online companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook in using Big Data techniques to manage and query very large data volumes has stimulated intense interest and accelerating adoption in other industries. While up to 45 percent of annual investment remains targeted at social media, social network and content analytics, the majority of spending now represents a diverse range of market sectors, including financial services, communications, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and government. Each of these segments brings its own interests in sensitive data types: Social Security and national ID numbers,

But data security in Big Data environments is no small challenge. Their processing and storage clusters typically encompass hundreds or thousands of nodes. The software stack is entirely open source, with many alternatives for most key components, most of them still in very active development. Compared to a proprietary business intelligence infrastructure, a Big Data facility presents a large attack surface with all the vulnerabilities associated with rapid, ongoing change. The one similarity is the extreme sensitivity of administrators and business users alike to any imposition by security on query response times.

Existing security solutions: A gap analysis In these environments, none of the conventional approaches to system and data security are satisfactory or sufficient. Perimeter security and user access controls are essential starting points but inadequate on their own. Even the best solutions are sometimes defeated by today’s blended, persistent threats. File-system encryption only protects data at rest. Sensitive data is immediately exposed to theft or compromise as soon as it is decrypted for transmission and use by an application. Decryption on access is required because the encryption process destroys the original data formats, rendering it useless to applications without extensive recoding. Needless to say, this approach also introduces significant processing overhead for the continuous write encryption and read decryption. Data masking is typically a one way conversation technique that destroys the original data values. It is useful in de-identification for testing and development, but problematic when used in many analytic use cases. For example, if masked data is used in a financial fraud detection application it may be possible to identify suspicious transactions, but not to quickly recover the relevant user and account identities for corrective action. Data masking also requires the creation and maintenance of large lookup tables which quickly become a significant management project in their own right.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL News Feature

There are now many organisations with volumes of data that exceed the ability of conventional methods to organise, search and analyse in meaningful time intervals.

Needed: Data security that’s high strength, low impact

• Integrates quickly and affordably with existing infrastructure and adapts flexibly to new analytical applications and data sources.

What’s needed to ensure the viability of Big Data analytics is a datacentric solution that:

• Allows quick policy based retrieval of original data values by properly authorised and authenticated users and applications.

• Protects sensitive data wherever it is stored, moved or used, with no exposure between storage, transmission and processing.

• Imposes no significant overhead on analytical performance.

• Enables compliance with most global data security, privacy and data residency mandates.

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• Preserves the formats and referential integrity of protected data, so that existing analytics and ad hoc queries don’t need to change.

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As a trend, vanity purchasing has been a problem within most organisations for many years. It is akin to retail therapy for the workplace.

Software vanity purchases for enterprise users Will middle management come clean if they understand how expensive ill-considered purchases can be? Mark Flynn is managing director of Snow Software looks at the real cost of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;software as a status symbolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

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Enthusiasm is one of the greatest human traits and we should all look to harness it wherever possible. Nobody wants to crush the spirit of their work force, because the psychological effects will neutralise any spirit of endeavour. However, for an IT asset manager, this presents a very tangible problem, because enthusiasm can become costly. One by-product of over-enthusiasm is that people over reach themselves and buy software they never really use - other than as a status symbol. As specialists in software asset management, we can verify the significant cost to businesses of this practice - known as ‘vanity purchasing’ through previous proof of concept projects undertaken with enterprise customers. Our research gathered during these preliminary exercises show that customers can, on average, save around £105 per device when spending on software licenses can be centrally controlled and managed in accordance with the users’ specific requirements. As a trend, vanity purchasing has been a problem within most organisations for many years. It is akin to retail therapy for the workplace. Analysts have always recommended the introduction of tighter procurement systems to reduce the practice, but the problem of misused assets has persisted. Migration to the cloud potentially makes things worse and left un-checked, could seriously exacerbate the problem. According to Gartner Research forecasts, over 40 percent of IT infrastructure will be located in the cloud by 2014. This means it is vital that cloud-based assets are managed efficiently with costs controlled through license optimization.

The most common vanity purchases Which software is most commonly the subject of a ‘vanity purchase’ as we see it? Adobe’s Creative Suite is a typical example with its impressive range of design and development tools.Yet in reality, few non-programmers ever find the time to learn Flash and continue creating their presentations in Powerpoint. Neither do they master the web design tools, or illustration and mobile applications that come with this suite.This means a large proportion of full suite licenses are wasted. Microsoft Office is another product that has been historically under used. A significant number of people who license this package have only ever used Word on a daily basis, with Excel and Powerpoint being used irregularly. Other applications in the package also go unused with Sharepoint, Dynamics, Project and Visio licenses being the most frequently wasted. For instance, one particular customer we worked with identified that 89 percent of Office Pro deployments were unnecessary. Around £214,500 worth of cost savings were seen from reining in the use of MS Project alone. Now, cloud computing equivalents like Office 365 could be giving rise to additional rash buying. Buying software licenses in the era of the cloud is easier than ever before. This is a dangerous phenomenon, given that the foundations of cloud computing, such as virtualisation, have made licensing rules more complex than ever. Although users now have the capacity to buy software, few understand that the rules of licensing have changed dramatically. They might realise that subscription software has replaced licenses per machine, but are they likely to appreciate how those subscriptions work?

Virtualisation Additionally users might know enough about virtualisation to spin up a new server when database performance needs boosting, but do they realise that each new server needs a separate software license? Do they understand the level of detail needed to keep tabs on a system in which charges are levied on the basis of CPU time used? How widely are the new methods for calculating usage understood? Oracle’s virtualisation rules provide an excellent case in point to illustrate how complex it is for users to understand in an enterprise environment. Oracle doesn’t support soft partitioning on VMware clusters, so it is important to have full visibility of exactly where Oracle is deployed in the estate and what the underlying virtual server architecture relates to. A common scenario we uncover when working with customers, is that the IT administrator installed Oracle database products on a virtual server but failed to recognise the licensing impact this has. They have

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assumed that only the virtual server needed to be licensed, when in fact, they should instead have taken in to account the underlying architecture of the physical servers. Or in the case of a VMWare cluster, the whole cluster needs to be licensed for every physical server where the virtual server could potentially be running. Not having a clear understanding of Oracle Licensing demands puts the organisation at risk of non-compliance. And a small ‘oversight’ like the one illustrated above can be a very expensive mistake to make – to the tune of millions of pounds in penalties.

The cost implications of software Maybe one day there will be a system of signing up to software that warns people what they are letting themselves in for. People could be quizzed to see whether they understand the cost implications and charging model of the software they are ordering. Many would struggle if asked to explain the basis on which SQL servers are costed. How many people outside the SAM community have ever read a software licensing agreement anyway? This sort of policing is not an option, however, and SAM professionals cannot be seen as a handbrake on progress or a productivity blocker. So retrospective asset management is the order of the day. Some of the new, more advanced software asset management systems offer surprising features for optimising cloud-based applications. They go beyond confirming the suspicions that asset managers have long held (such as the practices of vanity purchasing and over-licensing of software packages described above) to expose patterns of waste that would otherwise have passed under the radar. This in turn means helping organisations shave millions off their IT budgets in the medium term, as we saw during a recent project with Kingfisher Plc.

Over-provisioning To provide an additional example, in one particular engineering company, CAD/CAM licenses were massively over provisioned. In this instance, it was not mere vanity purchasing – nobody can design a car or create a construction blue print without computer aided design (CAD) software – but was an incidence of poor version control. Many licenses were still payable for Version 3 of the software, when the majority of users were simultaneously in possession of Version 4. The resulting investigation allowed the company to drastically cut the number of licenses owned, from 400 to 300, creating a substantial reduction in software costs. Just as the cloud has created an environment for rash purchases, it has compensated by improving the management tools for rationalising this chaos. Software asset management systems, which can be installed and run in-house or provided as a managed service over the cloud, can help rein in the costs. There will be many cases where software has been paid for, but is not being used regularly. Since a refund from the vendor is not an option, it makes sense to re-allocate those resources. Software asset management systems help administrators highlight the mismatch between demand and supply of licenses. Departments can trade off their excess licenses with each other, so if Marketing has too many licenses of video conferencing software that it never uses, they can be traded with, say, the Engineering department. This internal market helps optimise assets and budgets, within the enterprise. When department heads realise they can recoup some of their budget, they are soon motivated to act. Software asset management, by optimising the use of licenses and budgets, is seen to be incentivising greater efficiency. Delivering license coverage over the cloud only helps to fine tune this process and empowers companies with greater liquidity and, in turn productivity improvements. Perhaps one day then, asset management systems will be the ultimate status symbol for an ambitious middle manager. We think they should be! www.snowsoftware.com

VitAL News Feature

Only 27 percent of businesses think IT contributes to strategic business objectives New research shows that IT is still not always aligned with business strategy.

usinesses are still failing to see IT as a strategic tool, according to new research that compares the attitudes of senior executives and service teams. In an independent survey of UK CIOs, only 27 percent of respondents said that senior executives viewed IT as contributing to strategic business goals, such as growth or diversification. In contrast, 73 percent stated that IT is viewed either as a necessary trading expense that needs to be tightly controlled, or at best as a means to reduce costs and increase efficiency. There is a firm belief from those ‘on the ground’ that IT can do more than this, borne out by the findings. In a survey by the SDI (Service Desk Institute) of its own members, 98 percent believed that IT could play a greater part in advising how technology can support business goals.

More than just a utility “The simple fact is that IT is far more than just a utility,” said ITSM industry veteran and chief evangelist at Hornbill Patrick Bolger, commenting on the results. “While 43 percent of organisations see it as simply a way to increase efficiency, and 30 percent see it as a trading expense that needs to be reined in, IT can be used for much, much more. The mythical separation between IT and business strategy needs to end, so IT can take its rightful place; providing services and capabilities that support mainstream business goals. Some organisations may well believe they are doing this: 67 percent of CIOs say that the IT department understands the vision and mission of their organisation, while 57 percent of SDI members say the same. Yet the fact that a sizeable minority say otherwise, coupled with executives’ view of IT, suggests more needs to be done.” While a majority of IT departments claim to understand the overall strategy of their organisation, there is far less understanding of departmental or business unit objectives. 57 percent of SDI members say they don’t understand the goals set for different business units, such as improving sales or customer retention. Furthermore, 66 percent say that service desk teams aren’t given adequate time to spend

The simple fact is that IT is far more than just a utility.

with other business units; which would help them understand these goals and how they can help achieve them. From the CIO point of view, 53 percent believe that Service Desk teams do not have enough time to spend with other business units.

Business engagement Even if IT teams are engaged with business strategy, the way in which their work is recorded and reported often doesn’t allow any contribution they make to be measured. According to the CIO survey half of organisations either have no formal reporting mechanism for IT performance (17 percent), or have a mechanism focused entirely on metrics such as downtime (33 percent): reinforcing the view of IT as little more than a utility. In comparison 21 percent of organisations base their reporting metrics on user satisfaction, while 29 percent link performance to strategic business objectives such as improved sales and reduced customer churn. While this is not perfect, it still paints a rosier picture than the SDI research: only 16 percent of respondents measure the contribution of activities their organisation requests to actual business goals. This suggests that even those organisations that do measure performance based on business strategy may not be applying that measurement to the whole IT department.

The key to success “The key to any successful relationship is communication and understanding,” continued Bolger. “Without this organisations will never realise what IT can contribute to their overall strategy, while IT itself will struggle to demonstrate value and prove that it can do so much more than just keeping the lights on. Indeed, 68 percent of CIOs state that senior executives and business units are not effective at communicating business strategy and individual line of business goals to IT. The SDI’s research shows that service teams are quite clear on what they need. 93 percent want better collaboration with business units to understand their goals and needs, while 82 percent want improved reporting of IT’s activities and metrics so the business has a clear understanding of its contribution. Lastly, 69 percent want clearer communication from executives about overall business plans and goals. However, any improvement in communication won’t come out of the blue: service teams should already be acting to demonstrate they can do more than simple ‘utility’ work. Indeed 92 percent also recommend the increased automation of low-value work, ie, that which is closest to IT as a utility; in turn giving more time to focus on high-value interactions that support mission critical business activities.” The CIO survey was under taken by independent market research company Vanson Bourne and covered 200 CIOs in the UK. The SDI survey covered 100 of its members. Both surveys were completed in May 2013.

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The changing WAN With the continuing shift to the cloud, the nature of network management and application control has changed. BĂŠatrice Piquer-Durand,VP marketing at Ipanema Technologies explains this shifting picture - WOC to WOS.

81 percent of US respondents say that they think completely implementing cloud technology would improve employee productivity.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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ver the last five years, computing has shifted into the O cloud.This has brought considerable implications for network management and application control.The changing nature of cloud computing is discussed below, with a focus on what the growth in applications running to and from the cloud have meant for companies.Then the shift from one type of network control to another is considered.Through understanding these topics, companies can start to truly take advantage of some of the many benefits of cloud.

Cloud computing is becoming ubiquitous There are both numerous definitions for, and benefits of, cloud computing. With regards to the former, the overarching central concept of cloud computing is that of thin client computing where applications and computing infrastructure are delivered to users as a service via the network. In terms of the latter, the benefits of cloud computing include high levels of scalability, flexibility, freedom and efficiency.These are often provided with a lower price tag than traditional methods. Companies have started jumping on the cloud bandwagon. Towards the end of the 1990s, IT departments decided to reduce the number of servers by consolidating applications into core data centres. Through virtualisation, companies could build data centres that were flexible, affordable, and easy to maintain. They started turning to cloud computing to

save money and maximise time. Today companies are increasingly using applications located in the public cloud to compliment in-house, private cloud applications. A recent study from Google noted that today, 96 percent of chief financial officers believe that “cloud computing provides their business with quantifiable benefits.” 81 percent of US respondents say that they think completely implementing cloud technology would improve employee productivity. Similarly, just over half believed that cloud computing “offers better value” than traditional outsourcing.Taken together, these figures suggest that cloud computing is only going to grow in importance.

How cloud computing is changing the network Services used by companies are increasingly provided both from private clouds (hosted by the likes of IBM) and the public cloud (such as Google’s enterprise application portfolio which is hosted in an unknown location and delivered via the public internet). This trend is strongly driving enterprises to operate with hybrid MPLS, Ethernet and internet based IP-VPNs. For businesses, this trend puts pressure on the Wide Area Network (WAN). Applications like SAP, Oracle, Unified Communications, VoIP and telepresence all have varying performance parameters and must be treated appropriately by the WAN. This drastically increases the challenge of guaranteeing applications performance. As cloud computing becomes more common, branch offices are being transformed from passive network ‘spokes’ to network hubs in their own right. No longer does a branch office communicate simply with a handful of local servers hosting all its applications. Today, the branch office pulls applications from the public and private clouds. The branch is now drawing on multiple sources and transferring data to remote and mobile works at multiple locations, increasing complexity. These various factors and the changing, increasing role of the cloud bring numerous unknowns. Important applications are hosted in far-away destinations. Traffic over networks is increased, resulting in either ‘traffic jams’ that slow internet usage, or in the need for costly bandwidth upgrades. Customers become unhappy and dissatisfied. This problem is exacerbated as employees stream various non-business related applications, like BBC iPlayer or YouTube. Like large lorries on the motorway slow traffic, these apps can cause delays. For businesses, where each transaction is of considerable importance, such delays carry the threat of disaster. The solution lies in having tools that allow visibility and application performance control. Companies need to see what is flowing across their networks. They need to understand how their IT is working. And they need to be able to guarantee the performance of the business critical applications (prioritising business critical apps and ranking recreational ones below those that are business-critical).

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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WOC to WOS Up until a few years ago, the importance of managing the performance of applications over the network was of significance only to Wide Area Network (WAN) managers within the business. Today, increasing numbers of companies realise the importance of reliable application performance, and just how crucial the smooth running of applications across their network is to overall IT productivity.

Today’s businesses have significantly changed the way they use their IT systems and networks over the past decade.This poses challenges for IT and network managers who must now deal with this change in the demands placed on their corporate networks.

We’re seeing that WAN optimisation solutions are not only coming to the fore for businesses, but also evolving in their method of delivery. Previously, they might have been delivered as hardware appliances, known as WAN optimisation controllers (WOC). Now, companies are looking for easier ways to deploy and consume WAN optimisation. They increasingly prefer to use WAN optimisation as a service (WOS), such as software-based or services offered via the cloud.

WAN optimisation WAN optimisation refers to the process of monitoring, controlling and improving application performance across the wide area network. One of the main challenges enterprises have to deal with today is dynamically managing increasing complexity from the number of applications, users, sites, technologies, mixed recreational and business apps, along with new types of dynamic applications like UCC, SaaS and/or video over corporate networks. Each application running over a network (such as Salesforce,YouTube,Twitter, videos, or business critical applications) drains the network’s resources a little. If one app consumes extensive bandwidth due to heavy usage, then the other apps suffer from poor performance and users end up frustrated. What’s more, today’s businesses have significantly changed the way they use their IT systems and networks over the past decade. They rely heavily on cloud-computing apps and services. This poses challenges for IT and network managers who must now deal with this change in the demands placed on their corporate networks. WAN optimisation helps network managers to have transparency over their networks, to understand and manage application usage and performance. This transparency is crucial. Applications like SAP, Oracle, Unified Communications, VoIP and telepresence all have varying performance parameters, and must each be treated appropriately by the WAN. This therefore drastically increases the challenge of allocating bandwidth and network resources in real time. From a business perspective, today’s CIOs require the performance of each application to be guaranteed, not at the network level but at the individual user level. Companies are now drawing on cloud applications from both the public and private clouds using combinations of networks including MPLS, IP-VPN, Ethernet and mobile to deliver them. These demands can be too much for legacy, static networks based on traditional Classes of Service to cope with. The demands of cloud computing are outstripping the capabilities of pure MPLS networks. In brief, CIOs have found that they must be able to sense the demands of each individual user, understand the business criticality of each application relative to other demands, be able to dynamically select the correct network for certain traffic, and allocate resources appropriately. This is where WAN optimisation comes in. It enables companies to understand what is happening on their networks, how applications are working, and where issues are occurring.

optimisation tools.

more and more to solutions that guarantee application performance.

How things are shifting The transition from WOC to WOS is closely related to the shifting role and growing importance of cloud computing. Historically, WAN optimisation solutions have been delivered as hardware appliances. These are known as WAN optimisation controllers (WOCs). WOCs would require a fairly extensive hardware to be set up within a company’s main office and similar tools within the branch office. While suitable and indeed to some extent necessary for large enterprises, the hardware aspect of WOCs pushed up the general price point of WAN

Now, using more cloud computing or virtualised environments, enterprises are looking for easier ways to deploy and consume WAN optimisation.They increasingly prefer to use WAN optimisation as a service. The WAN optimisation market is still growing at a significant rate (CAGR 7.5% by 2015 according to Gartner), but the drivers behind this growth have changed. When considering the right WAN optimisation solution to buy for their business, IT managers want an option which is simple to deploy, operate, and use, and which offers good value for money. In essence, they want the benefits of cloud computing in their network management. Analysts confirm that on-premise WAN Optimisation solutions are becoming commodities. Enterprises are looking for easier ways to deploy and consume WAN optimisation. They are finding this via WOSs. To put the transition from WOC to WOS in figures, the WOS market today represents $450M revenue. By 2015, the figure is expected to be more than $1billion (according to Gartner).

The future of the network According to Gartner, by 2013 one-third of all WAN optimisation projects will be delivered as a managed service, either as an onpremise managed device or as a network-based service. The compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2015 should be around 32% according to Gartner. These service offerings will be attractive to the full spectrum of companies, from small firms with five to 15 locations and limited IT expertise, to globally distributed enterprises that prefer to outsource non-strategic services. It’s expected that these services will mainly be delivered by telecoms operators or used as cloud services. One of the really interesting things is the considerable revenue potential within the WOS and WOC market. As it stands today, the WOS market is emerging, representing $450M for large enterprises, and $13M for SMBs. The potential of this new market is immense. The top-line on WOC to WOS and the growing importance of the cloud For those moving to cloud computing, or for those already there, managing the pressure put on networks is important for a variety of reasons. Here’s where WAN optimisation comes in. As noted above, the transition from WOC to WOS is happening. This shift will bring considerable change for the network – and for those involved in the network’s management. www.ipanematech.com

Interestingly, many companies are moving beyond classic WAN optimisation tools, as these can struggle to manage newer types of application flows (voice, video, tele-presence etc). Things like social media, hybrid networks, and cloud applications (discussed more below) are out of the scope of WAN optimisation. They’re turning

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Printing on the go We have heard plenty about how consumerisation and BYOD are changing the way we work for the better, but not much of that has been focussed on the realities of working in this brave new world. In this article Daryl Miller, VP of engineering at Lantronix tackles the problems of It is rarely questioned whether printing on the go in this new mobile paradigm.

the demand for mobile printing exists since the iPad gained recognition as a productivity tool.The inability of mobile devices to print is becoming a problem that begs for a solution.

devices such as the iPad are becoming idueOS increasingly prevalent in work environments largely to their ease of use and flexibility. However, aside from the security issues that BYOD poses, businesses need to address the practicalities of these devices in the workplace, for example, if staff are given the freedom to work where they want, they should be able to print where they want.

Printing outside your own network was a problem even before smartphones and tablets had become everyday professional tools. Previously laptop users were only able to get around the problem by storing the file on a USB flash drive and giving it to someone who had access to a printer, eg, the front desk at a hotel. But the challenge of mobile printing has reached new levels with the ‘consumerisation of IT’ and ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD), because Smartphones and tablets were not originally set up to meet demands such as printing on the go. In addition to the usual issues with mobile printing, for example how the device connects to the printer and how it can transmit data, there are now new questions, such as: • How is the print job rendered (on a device, by a cloud service or by a print server)? • How does the device recognise and communicate with the printer (special printer drivers, universal print drivers, protocol)? • How is the print command given to the printer (Wi-Fi, email, Bluetooth)? • How is the user interface set up in such a way that it is consistent with the habits of smar tphone and tablet users (text entry, printing apps, integration into the operating system)? On the other hand, it is rarely questioned whether the demand for mobile printing exists since the iPad gained recognition as a productivity tool.The inability of mobile devices to print is becoming a problem that begs for a solution. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies have implemented iPads. In the US, it is now pretty common practice to do coursework on the iPad and students need to be able to print out their work. Lawyers, real estate brokers and sales people frequently attend appointments or go on business trips with just an iPad in hand, yet still they may want to print things occasionally. FedEx and AT&T are leading the trend in the US by offering printing services in their offices. Even

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leading hotel chains want to provide their guests with easy access to a printer in their lobby.

Typical applications for mobile printing Analyst house, IDC, lists the following typical usage scenarios for mobile business printing (The Mobile Business Printing Landscape: Assessing the Opportunity, IDC, May 2011): • Printing a boarding pass at the hotel; • Printing a contract for signing while visiting a customer; • Receiving an email at home and printing it without using a PC; • Printing at any company branch without the need for IT support; • Having to make a change at the last moment before an important presentation and printing the final version directly from your mobile phone, in time for the meeting; • Printing documents in the office even when you’re out, so they are ready when you return. The technical challenge of mobile printing is comparatively small when a user always wants access to the same printer, eg, a printer on a network where the user has corresponding rights – for instance the network in the company office where they work, or their home office. The focus of this article is therefore on what mobile workers do when they are out and about and want to print a document from their smartphone or tablet. In this case, these mobile workers must work with a variety of networks, connections and printer types. The user of a mobile device will usually have to overcome several arduous hurdles along the path to attaining the printed document. These may include: installing the printer driver; uploading the file to the cloud; authenticating or registering oneself; securing access to a Wi-Fi network; locating a printer via Wi-Fi or via an email address or other identifying features; and installing an application. There is no perfect standard by which all these hurdles can be easily overcome. Rather, there are different approaches to solving the problem for different user groups.

Strategies: Printer manufacturers Nowadays nearly all printer manufacturers offer an email-based printing service. The first and most advanced service in use today is ‘ePrint’ from HP, other examples include ‘Email Print’ from Epson or ‘Mobile Print’ from Xerox. To use these, the network printers receive an email address through registration. If you send a file to this address, then this will first be rendered in the cloud, then the print file will be sent to and output from the printer. Among other factors, cloud printing has the advantage that the printer drivers are stored there and the burden of rendering is also relieved from the device. Email provides a very simple and universal means to transport the data. The disadvantages lie in the fact that the path across the cloud can take a relatively long time. Moreover, it is primarily a way to allow a limited number of mobile employees to occasionally print in advance of their return home or to the office. HP however also offers an app, which mobile users can use to find out where public ePrint-capable printers are available. Printer manufacturers have noticed that they aren’t getting very far with companies by offering solutions that only work with their own printers. As such, they are increasingly trying to find ways to integrate printers from other manufacturers into their solutions, even if the range of features is then often limited.

Strategies: Google and Apple Solutions offered by the smartphone heavyweights Google and Apple have very different product approaches. With its ‘Google Cloud Print’, Google is focused on the cloud. The device uses an app to send the file to the cloud via an HTTPS connection. From there, the service sends the print file either to a Google Cloud-capable printer or a computer with Chrome, which serves as a print server and sends

the file to print. In contrast to other cloud services, Google doesn’t use thousands of print drivers, but rather one standard process and potentially the print driver on the PC. No print drivers are required on the device and the user only needs a Google account. But even Android devices require their own printing app in order to use Google Cloud Print services. Only a very small number of apps, such as the Gallery, can use the service directly. The disadvantages also include the fact that only new printers support this standard. Users in the US can use Google Cloud Print to print files at a FedEx Office location. Google is marketing the service as an alternative to conventional printer administration in networks. The Google service is still only a beta version, but even Apple has taken care of the issue, if somewhat late: they only offered AirPrint since iOS version 4.2, an OS-integrated protocol that doesn’t require any downloads or drivers. The rendering is done directly on your Apple device and printed via a peer-to-peer connection on a WiFi network. The advantage here is that apps can print directly via the native iOS menu and the detour through the cloud is avoided. Provided the developer of the respective app did actually consider the option to print, then the user will not need to open an additional app in order to print. The downside is that AirPrint offers very few options regarding the design or optimisation of the print. For example, you cannot define the resolution or type of paper. But the biggest challenge is in practice similar to that of Google Cloud Print: that printers found in companies these days have a long useful life, and in spite of widespread manufacturer support, AirPrint-enabled printers are still rare.

Print server and apps Since AirPrint-enabled printers are not widely available, there are print server solutions available to make standard USB and network printers AirPrint-enabled. The xPrintServer from Lantronix, for example, recognises all network printers and connected USB printers via plug and play and can forward AirPrint commands to them without the need to install new software. iOS devices communicate with the print server via Wi-Fi and also provide additional management functions via a web interface. These include authentication options via Active Directory, protecting a printer through authentication queries and printer logs which records what has been printed and when. The costs are similar to what they’d be with a cheap printer for home use and the power consumption is less than one watt - that is a fraction of what they’d be for a computer used as a print server. The further applications of mobile printing include in particular apps such as printMe or printerShare, which can locate and use printers within WiFi networks.

Where will mobile printing establish itself? Today there are numerous public WiFis available, ‘mobile printing’ could become a common service in the future. The ability for customers to print directly will become part of the service in environments that are centred on business travellers, such as hotel lobbies, business centres and airports. It is likely that universities and companies that are open to customers will set up a guest network using Wi-Fi that is separate from the company network but linked to a printer that is able to receive jobs from AirPrint and Google Cloud. Mobile printing could become a paid-for additional service in environments like cafés, schools or libraries, which could be used to make up a small proportion of the operating costs of wireless networks. Even post offices, parcel drop points, shopping centres and stationery stores, as well as conventional printers could become typical service points. However, mobile printing will gradually become more widespread following the adoption of plug and play systems, which can be operated by untrained personnel. www.lantronix.com

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

How technology is changing the way we work Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no secret that technology is changing the workplace on an almost daily basis, but what kinds of technology are small firms embracing to expand their businesses? David Sturges reports.

Increasingly, hosted desktops are allowing businesses to connect all the office packages they may use â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from databases to accounts and administrative packages enabling employees to operate truly as if they were in the office even if they arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

mall companies need to be able S to act like larger companies to compete in a highly competitive

marketplace. Increasingly, companies are embracing technologies such as cloud computing,VOIP, Skype and video conferencing to improve their responsiveness, support their consultants working remotely and expand their businesses.

Advances in technology have made this possible and systems such as hosted desktops supported by cloud technology are being adopted by companies to enable their consultants to work smartly and effectively from any location. Using a hosted desktop, consultants can access all their files and databases on the move. This means they can respond quickly to clients. It also means they can work more productively – for example, updating their notes post meetings without having to return to the office and making use of down time when travelling on a train for instance.

A quick response The ability to respond quickly can put businesses ahead of competitors that don’t have such facilities. Using hosted desktops in conjunction with technologies such as video conferencing or Skype also allows a flexible and remote workforce to function from any location, improving workforce productivity and effectiveness, as well as negating the need for big offices, which can save money. I recently attended an exhibition and was approached by several startup recruitment firms looking for technology to support completely virtual businesses, with all the consultants working from home and on the move. I think this will be a key trend in the future. If a company outsources all data and IT systems to a managed service provider they won’t need any servers in the office or have to manage any software licensing or administration issues, saving them time and money. The latest software and security will also be provided and having ‘corporate grade’ IT at an affordable price could aid new business development and growth.

Expanding business One company that has adopted a hosted desktop service to expand internationally is Oasis HR, a fast growing, HR recruitment agency that has successfully developed its business using a partnership model. In 2011 Oasis’s directors wanted to expand into the USA and Asia by developing a network of exclusive strategic partnerships in these countries. The plan was to identify associates that could be integrated in the business quickly and at the same time ensure that its clients received a seamless and consistent level of service. The company required all its employees to access the same IT systems, including the CRM database and talent management software, from anywhere in the world to enable real time information sharing and consistent working processes. The company realised the most logical progression would be to move away from a local IT server supported by an external provider and adopt a cloud-based, hosted model instead.

Today, its consultants around the world are all using the same IT systems and working just as effectively when they are out of the office working remotely as if they were sitting at their desktops.

The future of ‘the cloud’

Companies will further benefit in the future from hosted desktops that incorporate packages such as Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) which allow people to make telephone calls using a computer network over the Internet and video conferencing. This can support expansion, especially overseas and can save companies money on phone calls, as well as reducing the need for face to face meetings. Increasingly, hosted desktops are allowing businesses to connect all the office packages they may use – from databases to accounts and administrative packages enabling employees to operate truly as if they were in the office even if they aren’t. The home office will soon be functioning in the same way as being in the office and this will help smaller recruitment to expand more quickly as it can save overheads and office costs. Additionally, if companies embrace home working they will be able to access a wider talent pool, including mothers or people with disabilities who are unable to commute into offices. These days’ people tend to use multiple devices for accessing information. Analyst firm Gartner predicted last year that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide, and by 2015, media tablet shipments will constitute 50 percent of laptop shipments. This shift in how people access their works means businesses need to consider how they can offer their employees the facilities to switch between devices and bring their own devices to work. In the future it will become more commonplace and easier for employees to use multiple devices for work and ensure data security. Using a hosted desktop provider means that data is not stored on any devices but, instead securely stored at the data centre of the provider. Information is kept centrally, which eradicates the security risks if laptops or iPads are stolen or lost.

Getting connected The future will see improved connectivity and interoperability between software packages and clouds, so that they will all talk to each other and the use of multiple clouds will not be unusual. In the recruitment sector there are around 60 different software vendors and at the moment it’s not possible that all the software that is being used is connected to each other. In the future it will be possible. The way people are using technology is changing and it will become impossible for businesses to ignore cloud computing in the future. IT depar tments will also find it increasingly hard to keep pace with the advances in technology. Joined up thinking and joined up systems will make working life much simpler for recruitment companies and those that embrace the cloud will make sure they not only remain competitive but have access to the latest technologies and ways of working. www.workplacelive.com

This approach supported the organisation’s international expansion plans and enabled it to offer employees flexible working arrangements.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

As long as the innovation curve keeps accelerating the way it has then we will see it as ubiquitous technology within a three year period. 56

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

The quantified self Wearable technology will drive the rise of the ‘human cloud’ of personal data, but what are the implications for business? Matt Bailey spoke to Chris Brauer, director of CAST, the Centre for Creative and Social Technology.

he findings of an in-depth study into the use of T wearable technology and its impact on consumers and businesses has found that, although only 18 percent

of UK and US respondents have actually used wearable technology, 82 percent of those users in America and 71 percent in Britain believe that these cloud-powered devices have already enhanced their lives. The study, ‘The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Productivity’, was commissioned by Rackspace in association with the Centre for Creative and Social Technology (CAST) at Goldsmiths, University of London. It was supported by quantitative research into attitudes and behaviour regarding wearable technology among 4,000 UK and US adults. Chris Brauer, director of CAST explained the implications of wearable technology. “Cloud computing is powering the wearable technology revolution. It allows the data generated by wearable devices to be captured, analysed and made readily accessible whenever users need it. However, research has found that users experienced frustration with the quality and accuracy of data provided by wearable technology devices. To gain competitive advantage as the market evolves, wearable tech vendors need to work closely with cloud providers to optimise data capture and analysis,” he said. “Additionally, as wearable technology users create huge volumes of data, the demand for local cloud will increase. As data protection law is tightened, more of the data created by these devices will need to be stored in the country where it is generated, leading to a global demand for more in-country cloud storage.”

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

Business applications So far the most explored applications – as so often happens with new technology - have been in the leisure space, but there is growing and serious interest from business and industry. “We were looking at applications where wearable technology is generating data for what we call the ‘quantified self ’ or life logging applications like MapMyFitness,” says Brauer. “From a business perspective quantified self data related to productivity and health and wellbeing in the workplace would be important. Wearable fitness bands, accelerometers and devices that track movement, temperature and light and so on are of interest. Also wearable cameras – like with Google Glass – are useful for capturing the data that is around you. Smart textiles with sensors integrated into clothing to monitor biometric data are entering the field along with the first generations of headbands that monitor brainwave information to assess stress and concentration levels. All these types of technologies produce enormous amounts of data – between one and two gigabytes per user per day which has implications for the cloud and the network.” “We are at the beginning of massive mainstream uptake of wearable devices, with the launch of Google Glass set to further boost adoption,” added Robert Scoble, startup liaison officer and technology evangelist at Rackspace. “However, it is important to note that wearable technology and the cloud go hand in hand – together they provide the rich data insights that help users better manage many aspects of their lives. Cloud computing is powering the wearable technology revolution. It allows the data generated by wearable devices to be captured, analysed and made readily accessible whenever users need it.”

VitAL Processes

Technology in the real world There are examples of the technology at work in the real world. One company that has embraced wearable technology is Appirio; it has used wearable devices (Jawbone UP bands) for its Cloudfit programme. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the insurance industry has also seen the potential. “The insurance industry has been very quick to adopt these technologies. They are very interested in the quantified self as are people in the health, medical and pharmaceutical industries,” says Brauer. “Quantified self produces real-time data feeds which can help develop specific policies and premiums in the insurance industry and provide data for medical trials and assessments in the health sphere. “This is really the first wave,” adds Brauer, “but another wave is on its way with applications in the incentivising area. There has been much discussion in corporate circles around consumer behaviour and the way in which organisations are harvesting and mining the data to put together marketing strategies and applications. All this has implications for privacy, but the quantified self offers opportunities for the individual to take control over their own data feed and make decisions about that as a commodity and trade it with various organisations to get benefits . So far most of this has been around fitness applications.”

and fitness activities being logged daily by MapMyFitness users, our ability to effectively manage this data is critical,” comments Robin Thurston, CEO of MapMyFitness.

Privacy & security Despite the many possible benefits that wearable technology is set to deliver for both consumers and governments, there remain serious concerns about privacy, with over half (51 percent) of respondents citing it as a barrier to adoption. Almost two thirds (62 percent) think Google Glass and other wearable devices should be regulated in some form, while one in five (20 percent) are calling for these devices to be banned entirely. There are of course issues with wearable data being always on, or always transmitting. “One of the risks is the dispersion of all this data,” says Brauer. “If you have five or six devices in a wearable ‘stack’ at any one time then you’re likely to have five or six different cloud services or providers where that data is being stored in real time so the data gets fragmented across various locations. We’re working on ways to consolidate the data and the need for an aggregated area space. Companies like Google are positioning themselves to try to be the place where you store all this quantified self data.”

Crowd sourcing

Wearable potential

With adoption becoming mainstream, wearable technology will form an integral part of the ‘Internet of Things’ – a growing network of devices, from wearable tech and smartphones to road traffic sensors - that connect to the Internet to share data in real time. The research revealed that citizens may be willing to share the data generated by wearable technology with central or local government, enabling authorities to crowd-source insights which can be used to enhance public services.

We have seen many technologies grow from a position of being expensive specialist items to the state of a commodity owned by the majority in very short spans – the smartphone and the tablet being just two recent examples. Are we looking at the same sort of growth for wearable technology? “I think so,” confirms Brauer. “But I think the degree of penetration depends on innovation. With smartphones people developed apps and found a whole new world of utility there that drove the growth. The software layer is the layer where wearable technology resides at the moment, For the sensors and the hardware, that innovation curve is where we are right now – we are seeing lots of new devices, we are seeing them get smaller and more powerful, more discrete and integrated into everyday fashion. There will be the same issues over aesthetics that mobile phones had in the early days too. As long as the innovation curve keeps accelerating the way it has then we will see it as ubiquitous technology within a three year period. We would anticipate the same sort of growth as with smartphones over the last five years.

“The rich data created by wearable tech will drive the rise of the ‘human cloud’ of personal data,” said Brauer. “With this comes countless opportunities to tap into this data; whether it’s connecting with third parties to provide more tailored and personalised services or working closer with healthcare institutions to get a better understanding of their patients. We are already seeing wearable technology being used in the private sector with health insurance firms encouraging members to use wearable fitness devices to earn rewards for maintaining a healthier lifestyle. It is likely that the public sector will look to capitalise on the wearable technology trend with a view to boosting telehealth and smart city programmes.” And with such a strong emphasis being placed on establishing a healthier lifestyle across the UK and US, adoption of wearable technology among health conscious consumers is on the rise.

“Wearable technology will become embedded into so many different, everyday things that it will stop be a discreet thing and maybe part of the everyday fabric of technology,” concludes Brauer.

“The growth of wearable technology devices tailored for the health and fitness market is exploding and is a trend we expect to continue. With 16 million registered members and more than 200,000 health

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

The cloud delivers

The truth is that the Cloud undeniably has the potential to open up a whole new dimension of opportunities to businesses â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but only if data security is properly addressed.

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

VitAL Processes

veryone has an opinion about the E ‘Cloud’ and its effect on business – some believe it is dark and scary and

fraught with unnecessary risk, while others would argue its silver lined and the path to greater business performance and cost savings.The truth is that the Cloud undeniably has the potential to open up a whole new dimension of opportunities to businesses – but only if data security is properly addressed.

No longer will you arrive for a meeting only to find the materials on your USB stick are a previous version. Instead you access the original file wherever you happen to be.

First let’s dispel any misperceptions you might have about the Cloud. It’s nothing mystical, nothing whimsical, nothing to be afraid of. Or is it? The reason many fear the Cloud is its reputation as a dangerous, or ‘risky’, place. And that is true. Anything beyond the physical perimeter of the organisation is also, theoretically, beyond the physical protection of the organisation. And let’s face it, there are dangers and risks out there, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay behind a locked door. Instead, by arming yourself with the right security you can stay clear of danger and fully tap into the cloud’s potential.

The cloud and security The cloud and security are intrinsically intertwined, and only when both work in symbiosis can a business truly grow. There are five main areas where security can team up with the Cloud to offer companies the greatest potential to thrive - and it isn’t hard to get it right:

1. Data protection Data is key and possibly the most important asset for organisations - a single breach or leak of sensitive data can cripple the entire business, so a data protection strategy must protect the data itself. The ability to move sensitive information into and throughout the cloud is essential for businesses to function and collaborate efficiently, quickly and freely - but this ability must be supported by a comprehensive data protection strategy. The trick is to protect data at the moment of creation, before it moves out of the enterprise or even enters the Cloud. Only by doing that can you ensure that any data source is comprehensively protected, and the risk to potential exposure is minimised.

2. Regulatory compliance and data residency requirements Sensitive data that is moved into and across cloud infrastructures can easily introduce additional complexity and cost to regulatory compliance - potentially costing thousands in fines and damaging reputations. Companies that ensure sensitive data is

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

comprehensively protected can greatly reduce cost, complexity and overall risk in meeting and maintaining regulatory compliance.

3. Scalability and flexibility The cloud has opened up previously unseen oppor tunities for organisations to grow and expand quickly, smoothly and with ease. With information immediately and easily available anywhere, anytime, regardless their own infrastructure the cloud offers the flexibility and scalability that in the past was an insurmountable obstacle for businesses restricted by their on-site resources.

The key to successfully harnessing this opportunity is a flexible data security architecture that is extensible and adaptable across multiple applications and systems, while not adversely impacting the user experience. Failure to put a comprehensive, data-centric protection program can cause Cloud initiatives to be delayed or fraught with hidden security issues.

4. Cost efficiencies This element is two-fold. Reap the powerful cost savings, by only paying for what you use, so there’s the capital, and operating, expenditure benefits. The second element is that most cloud computing platforms provide the means to capture, monitor, and control usage information for accurate billing. A single, comprehensive data protection platform can eliminate the threat of risky fines from compliance breaches or data loss while also reducing the need to invest into multiple security tools.

5. Access to data anytime, anywhere When harnessed correctly, cloud-computing capabilities offer numerous opportunities to drive business innovation. Rather than having to provide remote access to your infrastructure, it is available 24/7 for the workforce to access. No longer will you arrive for a meeting only to find the materials on your USB stick are a previous version. Instead you access the original file wherever you happen to be. Sales teams can check stock levels in real time. An employee stuck at home waiting for a delivery, or in an airport waiting for an ‘ash cloud’ to disperse, can still work as effectively as in the office. By employing a security strategy that protects and travels with all data, anywhere, anytime businesses can confidently tap into this invaluable resource.

Business benefits With so many key business benefits of the cloud directly affected by and depending on security one would easily be mislead into thinking

VitAL Processes

A data protection strategy that includes encryption and tokenisation which can be performed locally at the application, database, or web server level allows an organisation to dynamically protect terabytes of data on demand, without having to introduce complex procedures, additional technology or interrupt current business process. that a plethora of security measures has to be adhered to in order to address potential issues. Truth is, it all comes back to the data. A single framework that comprehensively protects all enterprise data from point of creation and throughout its lifecycle can eliminate practically all potential security hazards that could threaten the cloud. Below are five tips for a security framework that will allow you to fully harness the cloud’s business benefits: Leverage data-centric encryption: By encrypting data, regardless of type or source, at capture and protecting it throughout the entire lifecycle, wherever it resides and wherever it moves, data can be protected, used and moved across the enterprise and into the cloud without the need to encrypt and decrypt the data as it enters or leaves different IT environments. Maintain referential integrity: Format-preserving encryption (FPE) retains the initial structure and format of the data set, encrypting the data while ensuring the structure fits into existing schemas without requiring changes in IT infrastructure or underlying systems in order to store and manage the data. FPE also preserves ‘referential integrity’ of the data, which allows the data to be analysed in a protected state, without having to de-crypt it first.

Ensure high performance processing: High performance encryption results from eliminating manual and constant encryption and decryption processes as data moves through the enterprise, which removes database performance bottlenecks and enables linear scalability. A data protection strategy that includes encryption and tokenisation which can be performed locally at the application, database, or web server level allows an organisation to dynamically protect terabytes of data on demand, without having to introduce complex procedures, additional technology or interrupt current business process. Policy controls: By giving users or applications permission to decrypt or de-tokenise directly, linking directly to enterprise data access rules and policies, the extension of enterprise controls into the Cloud can be enabled and user management is simplified. “Stateless” tokenisation: Tokenisation is a way of substituting sensitive data with non-sensitive values, and is one of the prescribed data protection methods recommended under industry regulations, including PCI DSS. Stateless tokenisation eliminates the token database and any need to store sensitive data as well as the keys that map the tokens to the initial sensitive data. This allows organisations to efficiently address national and international data residency and privacy requirements, as sensitive data can be maintained in a valid jurisdiction with only a representation of the data being moved. In-scope data can be securely moved and stored across Cloud environments, and only decrypted and used within jurisdictions where it is specifically permitted. When harnessed correctly, cloud-computing capabilities offer numerous opportunities to drive business innovation. Recent technology and social connectivity trends have created a perfect storm of opportunity for companies to embrace the power of cloud to optimise, innovate and disrupt their existing business models. Could you join them? www.voltage.com

www.vital-mag.net | July-August 2013

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The order behind creative chaos Rolling out ITSM at the world ’s biggest physics experiment

The secret of my success

Brandon Read IT assistant, NewVoiceMedia Brandon Read, IT assistant at NewVoiceMedia, receives his award as a top performing apprentice at a House of Lords reception.

Brandon Read, an IT assistant at NewVoiceMedia, was recently honoured as a top performing apprentice at a House of Lords reception.The prestigious event, staged by West Nottinghamshire College Group, saw Brandon presented with a trophy and certificate by Andrew Jones MP, Apprenticeships Ambassador in Parliament. Read was amongst 30 apprentices in attendance, selected from its crop of 12,000 across the country, in recognition of his contribution to NewVoiceMedia, a leading provider of cloud contact centre solutions. He was offered a role at the company’s Hampshire headquarters following a nine-month advanced apprenticeship in ‘IT, Software, Web & Telecoms Professionals’ after completing his training through Vision Workforce Skills, a subsidiary of the college group.

Everyone makes mistakes and I still do now, what you have to learn is to overcome them and treat everything as a learning process.

VitAL: Name, company and job title please? Married? Kids? Brandon Read: Brandon Read, NewVoiceMedia, IT apprentice, single and no kids.

I am always hungry to learn.

VitAL: What got you started in IT? BR: I always loved new technology and especially gaming. I then found an apprenticeship course where I could turn my hobby into a promising career.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition? BR: To have my own martial arts class in the future, and to progress my career to a high standard and importance. I have a short term goal of climbing England’s highest mountain next month.

VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration? BR: People like Bill Gates and Microsoft are a huge inspiration for anyone. To build a massive empire from scratch is truly inspirational. The culture, environment and growth around me at NewVoiceMedia feels special and exciting and I’m just happy to be a part of that. But most of my inspiration and encouragement comes from my close family.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests? BR: I have always been into Martial arts but especially wing chun kung fu. I love sports and mountain climbing, but also just relaxing, gaming, and seeing friends.

VitAL: What was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph? BR: My first IT job is at my current workplace NewVoiceMedia, and my first major IT triumph was passing my CompTIA A+ operating systems & networking exams, and also 2 MTA exams.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job? BR: The variety of the work I do and the people around me.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success? BR: To always strive for more and never be happy with just being content. To always have a positive attitude and work with a smile on my face. VitAL: Brandon Read, congratulations and thank you very much.

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them? BR: Everyone makes mistakes and I still do now, what you have to learn is to overcome them and treat everything as a learning process;

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