VitAL Magazine - May-June 2012

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 5 : Issue 5 : May / June 2012

mindset migration Why moving to the cloud involves more than just technical change

The evolution of iT Charting the transition from manager to service broker

Preparing the next generation Ensuring tomorrow’s school leavers are more IT literate VisiT ViTal online aT: www.ViTal-maG.neT

Properly equipped for the job?

In the current climate every organisation is balancing the need to reduce risk and costs, but at the same time maintain or increase service levels. Headcount freezes are becoming the norm, but the IT organisation is still expected to deliver the same, if not better service to its customers.

When most companies need additional or temporary resource the first port of call is the preferred recruitment agency, who will perform a word matching exercise in their CV database, then send you a stack of CVs. With a Pink Elephant resource you get much more than a body – you get people who: • Are cost competitive • Are highly skilled in their field and have a very high aptitude for delivering ‘Service’, not simply ‘Techies’

• Understand ITIL and IT Service Management • Will transfer their knowledge to your staff • Have the backing of the world’s leading niche player in Service Management behind them – with the ability to call on their colleagues for help and support And finally, you will be using an organisation that really understands IT Service Management and can help you to reduce risk and costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

• Understand how good process can deliver benefits to the organisation, and will look to improve at any opportunity

To speak to us about our resourcing solutions and the quality of personnel we provide;

phone us on: + 44 (0) 118 324 0620 email us at: info.europe@pinkelephant.com or visit our website: www.pinkelephant.com

Pink Elephant – Leading the way in IT Service Management Best Practices © Pink Elephant 2008. These contents are protected by copyright and cannot be reproduced in any manner. Pink Elephant and its logo, PinkVERIFY, PinkSCAN, PinkATLAS, PinkSELECT, and PinkREADY are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Pink Elephant Inc. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

LeADeR

The IT renaissance Leader I

n previous Leader columns I have waxed lyrical about how great the good old days were when everyone could have a crack at programming using their BBC Model B, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 or Atari Amiga (delete as appropriate to your own formative experiences) and perhaps go on to forge a career as an IT entrepreneur.

It seems that other more creative and philanthropic brains than mine have been having similar thoughts. In the wake of the schools’ ICT curriculum and IT apprenticeships news in recent months this issue brings us what is perhaps the most significant development in getting young minds engaged with IT, namely the raspberry pi (See news section page 6), a credit-card sized computer that the makers – a Cambridge-based charity – want to see “being used by kids all over the world to learn programming”.

As you will see in the news section, the makers describe the raspberry pi as “a capable little pC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop pC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.” But clearly the real, long term benefit from the device will be for kids to get programming just like those of us ancient enough to remember to afore-mentioned machines did back in the early ’80s... Some with more success than others!

In what is a more than usually topical issue of vitAL, we take a closer look at how we can ensure the ‘next generation’ is equipped for their future IT-reliant careers in our cover story. having experienced some difficulty recruiting the right technical people for the company he co-founded, thinkbroadband.com, Sebastien Lahtinen suggests that some changes are necessary in the UK’s education system to ensure the next generation are more IT literate. I can already see how the raspberry pi has a role to play in this area.

But in case you are worrying, we have not neglected the other touchstone topics in the IT services world today. We also delve into such topical areas as the social media, consumerisation, Agile (a buzzword that in penetrating all areas of the IT world it seems at the moment) and cloud arenas in this issue as well as having a timely look at how proposed Government monitoring of on-line activity could impact all our business lives.

Until next time...

matt Bailey, editor

if you have any thoughts, feedback, or suggestions on how we can improve Vital magazine, please feel free to email me matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk

www.vital-mag.net

May / June 2012 : VitAL 1

vital Inspiration for the modern business

VitAL : Inspiration for the modern business

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 5 : Issue 5 : May / June 2012

Mindset migration Why moving to the cloud involves more than just technical change

COnTenTs

Contents 6 news The Vital CoVer sTorY

10 Preparing the next IT generation seBasTien lahTinen Experiencing some difficulty recruiting technical minds for the company he co-founded, Sebastien Lahtinen reflects on the changes necessary in the UK’s education system to ensure the next generation are more IT literate.

The evolution of IT Charting the transition from manager to service broker

Volume 5 : Issue 5 : May/June 2012

Preparing the next generation Ensuring tomorrow’s school leavers are more IT literate VISIT VITAL ONLINE AT: WWW.VITAL-MAG.NET

editor Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4598 Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk editorial & Advertising enquiries Tel: Fax: email: web:

+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 info@31media.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

Printed by Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood. nP12 2yA © 2012 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.

Vital siGns – life in a world wiTh iT

13 Crisis learning sTeVe whiTe Steve White considers how warm pasties and jerry cans of petrol could be key learning opportunities… Or maybe not.

Vital manaGemenT

14 Choosing the right SaaS solution how to decide whether a premise or SaaS solution is right for you, and the questions to ask if you decide to go to the cloud.

16 Service Desk says “no!” marCus harris Service Desk staff need to know their ABC. Marcus Harris pinpoints the attitudinal, behavioural and cultural problems preventing good performance of the IT Service Desk and how these can be addressed.

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:

20 The risks and rewards of social media Chris huTChinGs The commercial use of social media brings risks and rewards. Media litigation specialist Chris Hutchings helps you navigate the uncharted waters.

VitAL Magazine, Proud to be the UKCMG’s Official Publication ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.s. Patent and Trademark Office.

23 IT evolution: from manager to service broker manoJ paTel The role of IT in the business changing from one of managing the IT organisation to managing relationships with service providers; Manoj Patel reports.

PRInCe2® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce MsP® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce

suBsCriBinG To Vital maGaZine

VitAL Magazine is published six times per year for directors, department heads, and managers who are looking to improve the impact that IT implementation has on their customers and business.

For a fREE annual subscription to VitAL Magazine please visit: www.vital-mag.net/subscribe May / June 2012 : VitAL

3

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Engage. Manage. Improve.

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COntents

Contents 26 Leveraging the power of social media for the Service Desk Chris Rixon A growing trend to seek information and guidance through social collaboration has clear implications for the Service Desk.

Chris Rixon considers how the Service Desk and social media can optimise the customer experience.

30 When governance gets Agile

42 Riding the wave of IT consumerisation Ewen Anderson Ewen Anderson explains how organisations can manage consumerisation in an efficient and secure manner, boosting productivity and employee satisfaction while delivering on longer-term strategic objectives.

46 The power of feedback Ed Lennox Ed Lennox believes that reacting quickly and decisively to customer experiences, both good and bad, can have an enormous impact on your business.

50 Critical and cloudy Clive Grayson There are many challenges when deploying business critical applications in the cloud, Clive Grayson looks at some of the key ones.

James Yoxall and James Thomas Can any control be imposed without losing the inherent flexibility of the Agile approach in large scale IT development projects?

James Yoxall and James Thomas show how the dynamic management of uncertainty within a clearly defined framework has delivered effective control and managed complexity while benefiting from an Agile approach.

VitAL support

34 Marrying ITIL with traditional management Noel Bruton For an effective ITIL implementation, it usually needs adjustment to match the business environment. Noel Bruton says that these re-jigs are a clear indication that IT delivery is not all about ITIL.

VitAL processes

36 The mindset migration

Robert Rutherford Even though many IT service providers are still touting cloud services as a silver bullet that can solve every business challenge, that’s really not an accurate portrayal according to Robert Rutherford.

VitAL eyes on

David McLeman David McLeman explains why moving to the cloud involves more than just technical change and argues that the real benefit of migrating to the cloud is the innovative transformation of business operations as a whole.

38 Will Big Brother be watching you?

Rob Sheldon They know where you are and what you’re doing, but does the Government know what it’s doing? Legal expert Rob Sheldon assesses the implications of planned legislation to allow the authorities to monitor the online activity of everyone in the UK.

www.vital-mag.net

54 Is the cloud right for your business?

57 Data castles in the cloud – how safe?

Jonathan Westlake Following on from the last Eyes On column about Safer Internet Day, Jonathan Westlake examines whether the cloud can help make the Internet safer.

VitAL planet

58 Is flexible working the way of the future?

Emma Clark The current state of technology and the access to broadband services have made flexible/ remote working achievable for most employers. Taking in the environment, employee health and morale and compliance with European Working Time Directives, Emma Clark makes the case for flexible working.

64 Secret of my success Maff Rigby, founder of IT SmartDesk.

March / April 2012 : VitAL

5

news

EU backing for the cloud

T

he European Union’s recently announced plans to overhaul data protection legislation and create a Cloud Partnership, similar to the UK’s GCloud Initiative, look to be good news for both users and providers of cloud computing services.

Like the UK Government, which announced the first providers in its GCloud store earlier this year, the EU is backing the use of public software-as-a-service solutions as the way forward for meeting public sector IT needs.

The EU is also looking to make using cloud solutions simpler and more secure for all users,

including the private sector. EU Commissioners Neelie Kroes and Viviane Reding seemed to have grasped the fundamentals of cloud computing and have announced plans for a new legal environment that should make it simpler for cloud providers to offer solutions to users that support innovation and mobility while also providing security and data portability.

At the heart of the commissioners’ plans is a new approach to data protection that means it will no longer matter where the data is or where the provider is based – “in Madrid, Mumbai or Mountain View”, as commissioner

Kroes put it in a recent speech. If the customer is based in the EU, EU data protection standards will apply.

That will give cloud providers the flexibility to locate operations for maximum resilience and minimum cost, while ensuring customers can be confident services meet EU security standards no matter how or where they access them. In short, says commissioner Reding, cloud service providers will need to offer “privacy by design” as standard: the kind of true multi-tenanted solution you’ll already find in Google Apps for Business, where security is built in from the ground up to allow secure access from the public internet to a single application or set of data.

The two commissioners have also announced that the EU’s new approach will provide strong safeguards against supplier lock-in. Cloud service providers will have to make it easy and straightforward for users who want to switch services to get their data out.

SQL injection is top SMB Compare the (IT) market database security concern A A

survey of more than six thousand IT administrators, DBAs, data security professionals and consultants about their most critical database security concerns has highlighted that the respondents’ primary concerns were: SQL injection attacks from internal and external users (51 percent); Internal threats, including unauthorised database access, database administrator errors, and data exposure to non-privileged internal users (31 percent); and regulatory compliance (18 percent).

“In today’s environment, it isn’t a matter of whether you will be hacked, but when. Cybercriminals recognise that not only enterprises but also SMBs are especially vulnerable,” said the research’s sponsor GreenSQL ‘s CEO, Amir Sadeh. “Databases contain the crown jewels of an organisation, which means a break-in by insiders or outsiders can cost millions in fines, lawsuits, and customer attrition.”

Cybercriminals use SQL injection to target both external websites and internal databases when seeking data for identity theft and other profitable black market activities. Public websites serving as the face of an organisation are known to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks but so are internal collaborative sites as shown by the recent assault on the internal Nokia developer application.

Internal data security leaks let corporate data get into the wrong hands.

While developers, administrators, and customer service representatives all need data access, they should have different access privileges. In addition, true data protection covers threats from both employee theft and error. Coordinating database access control and command permissions can significantly reduce data loss from errors while lowering the cost to repair any that remain.

6 VitAL : May / June 2012

free IT search portal that the operator says enables businesses to research and compare IT technologies, and puts them in touch with expert suppliers that can support their IT project needs has been launched with a focus on IT security. Comparetheware.com is a new search portal dedicated to IT that gives UK businesses a fast and easy way to find the right technology solutions and accredited suppliers.

The new service has what its operators say is a focus on IT security and will expand its profiling of solutions and services across a range of business technology sectors including virtualisation, VOIP, networking, storage and cloud services.

“Our mission is to provide a resource that makes it easier for businesses to find the right information on technologies and then put them in touch with relevant expert suppliers who can help meet their business needs,” said Mike Worby, co-founder of comparetheware.com. “Our site addresses the information search challenges that businesses face, is backed by a trusted team and will continue to evolve and feature a comprehensive range of vendors and suppliers.”

Using the service, businesses will be able to research technology products and services based on key criteria, compare them side-by-side to find the right solution, and ask for quotes from accredited IT solutions providers through special filters on the site. Selected suppliers can then respond directly to requests.

The launch of the new service follows increasing evidence that businesses want faster access to trustworthy and relevant information when sourcing technology solutions or specifying IT projects. According to independent research, 65 percent of IT professionals have problems finding the information they need when looking to select a technology vendor or solution. In addition, 40 percent of IT decision-makers cite time pressures as a problem when making purchasing decisions. www.vital-mag.net

news

The new IT tool for schools T

hE rASpBErry pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into any Tv plus a keyboard which the makers – a Cambridgebased charity – want to see “being used by kids all over the world to learn programming”.

The idea for a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer science. “From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design,” he commented.

The Cambridge colleagues observed that something had changed the way that kids were interacting with computers. A number of problems were identified: the colonisation of

the ICT curriculum with lessons on using word and excel, or writing webpages; the end of the dot-com boom; and the rise of the home PC and games console to replace the Amigas, BBC Micros, spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 machines that people of an earlier generation learned to program on.

Social media defy the downturn

D

ESpITE WIDEr market volatility, social media are on course for a record year in 2012, as investor interest continues to rocket. But as valuations of some businesses reach outrageous levels, is it possible for the fortunes of the sector to be sustained? The latest research suggests it can.

PwC’s annual Global entertainment & Media Outlook shows a wealth of cashrich buyers in the TMT marketplace; while world newsmedia’s recent Innovation study found that more than half of respondents considered the social media space to be the top area for investment in the coming five years; and BIA/Kesley, a Virginia-based media consultancy, says that social media ad spending will hit $8.3 billion in 2015, up from

www.vital-mag.net

$2.1 billion in 2010. while cries of “bubble” continue to worry commentators, investors seem convinced that social networks will prove as successful at monetising their communities as they have been at growing them.

“Private equity and corporate buyers are lining up to buy social media assets at the moment, and we are seeing a clear effect on pricing,” commented natalie Tydeman, a partner at GMT Communications Partners. “we don’t expect this trend to reverse any time soon, but not every business will be the runaway success that Facebook or Groupon have proved to be. Therefore it is more important than ever that investors in the space know the market, or risk being found out.”

The makers describe the Raspberry Pi as “a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.”

Many are already seeing the potential of the Raspberry Pi. “we’re aware of a few books being planned and written around the Raspberry Pi,” says the maker, “and others have already started to produce some excellent tutorials including video. we’re also working with partners to use it as a teaching platform for other subjects, including languages, maths and so on. we hope that the community will help bodies like Computing at school put together teaching material such as lesson plans and resources and push this into schools. In due course, the foundation hopes to provide a system of prizes to give young people something to work towards.”

Business still fears the cloud A FTEr rESEArCh revealed 76 percent of UK businesses fear the cloud due to concerns over its security, the report’s sponsor has warned that an aversion to technology could see UK businesses trailing behind their European counterparts.

The research supports findings that show UK businesses are slower to adopt the cloud than the rest of Europe, with UK adoption at just 48 percent, compared to 60 percent in Europe. Among senior UK IT decision makers, 46 percent have admitted concern over losing in-house control, with 43 percent confused to how the cloud can benefit their organisation.

Karsten Horn, director international sales of the Inventory and Supply Chain Division at the company that commissioned the research, Inform, says: “UK businesses may be averse to the cloud because of fears it will wrestle control away from them, but I firmly believe this is the wrong approach.

Technology can be an enabler for business growth, and to purposely avoid cloud solutions, which offer wide benefits, may have a detrimental impact and leave UK organisations failing to compete with their European rivals.”

May / June 2012 : VitAL 7

news

Service Desks doing more with less

N

ew research has revealed mounting pressure on service desks to support organisations with reduced funds and resources. As organisations continue to feel the impact of limited budgets within fast-paced, demanding industries, service desks are under more pressure than ever to keep them running day-to-day, according to the research. In the first survey of its kind in the UK, which captured responses from over 10,000 IT service management professionals, the report tells a story of service desks struggling to provide first-class service with a lack of resources: in short, having to do more with less.

The research reveals that an overwhelming proportion of service desk professionals feel that their working environment inhibits them from being

efficient, as indicated by 93 percent of respondents agreeing that their service desk needs to be more efficient. Increasingly, service desks are feeling the pressure of being stretched beyond their limits and frustrated that they can’t do more. This feeling of frustration is widespread, as just over half of respondents (52 percent) said that they did not have enough resources to deliver the level of service that they aspire to, and 79 percent admitted to feeling under pressure at work.

“The service desk plays a pivotal role in keeping organisations running smoothly, but it is clear that they are feeling increasingly ill-equipped to provide the support businesses rely on,” said Ian Aitchison, director of product management, LANDesk, the company that sponsored the research. “More must be done to provide the resources service desks need to drive efficiency and maintain support levels, thereby increasing the value they can deliver to their organisation.”

The survey also highlighted that one of the biggest hurdles to efficiency is time spent dealing with simple tasks that arise on a daily basis, with respondents revealing that 67 percent of a service desk’s time is spent on fire-fighting rather than strategising and forward planning. These responses uncover an endless cycle of service desk professionals spending too much time dealing with everyday niggles – meaning that only 33 percent of them have time to spare to strategise.

“These figures reveal a widespread epidemic amongst service desks – professionals are spending too much time addressing menial needs, which consequently leads to a lack of planning and strategic direction,” concludes Aitchison. “It is vital that organisations take steps to ease this cycle.”

Think tank recommends iPads for all frontline public sector staff A

report on the Government’s use of data published by the think tank Demos recommends that all frontline public sector staff, such as social workers, police and health visitors should have ‘smart phone or iPad-style’ data stores that can keep track of service users and their specific needs.

The report argues that constantly updated information on at-risk families could prevent costly mistakes. An encrypted data-base combining health and social care services could target intervention by social and health workers; prevent overlap of provision; limit abuses of the system; minimise the occurrence of public sector workers missing or overlooking serious problems; and cut red tape by putting an end to burdensome form-filling and back-room administration.

Almost 20 years after customer loyalty cards became commonplace on the high street, the report argues that Government has failed to keep up. It points out that while over 16 million people hand over valuable personal information every day with their Tesco

8 VitAL : May / June 2012

Clubcards or Sainsbury’s and Homebase Nectar cards, Government has no equivalent method of quickly capturing everyday data.

Demos recommends the adoption of pilot project modelled on a successful scheme in Berlin, which gives civil servants access to databases when visiting care homes for the elderly and hospitals in deprived areas.

Max Wind-Cowie, co-author of report comments: “The public understands the benefits they get by handing over personal information to Tesco and Google – it should be the same with Government services.

Whether it’s keeping track of frequent truants, or recognising that a child has had unusually frequent trips to the doctor – avoiding another Baby P scenario – the value of joining-up services is incredibly high. Equipping front-line public servants with iPad-style devices would ultimately save money through minimising error and targeting services more effectively.”

Graham Kemp, head of public sector, SAS UK, sponsors of the report, adds, “This report highlights the data gap between the public and private sector. People are obviously

happy to give out their personal information to companies like Tesco when they can see the benefit. The government needs to do more to encourage the public by demonstrating that the information it holds can be used to improve frontline services. If the government is to deliver on its promise of open data and more citizen-centric services, real-time access to data, powered by analytics, must be at the heart of its information strategy.”

www.vital-mag.net

COVeR sTORy

Preparing the next generation Experiencing some difficulty recruiting technical minds for the company he co-founded, thinkbroadband.com’s Sebastien Lahtinen reflects on the changes necessary in the UK’s education system to ensure the next generation are more IT literate.

10 VitAL : May / June 2012

www.vital-mag.net

cover story

F

ollowing the launch of the low cost Raspberry Pi (see News section, page 6 - Ed), there has been significant discussion about how schools are failing their students in the provision of their IT education.

At the beginning of January, Hayley Mitchell joined what is a quite technicallyfocussed team at thinkbroadband.com, having previously worked in healthcare recruitment. Within a week of joining and being introduced to the infrastructure that powers the Internet, she was upgrading her own graphics card and was looking forward to building a server. Having worked with the team for the last ten weeks, she found it easy to reflect on the development opportunities she missed while in education.

Here I will examine both the challenges faced by Hayley Mitchell as a recent entrant into the IT industry, and some of the difficulties I experienced as co-founder of thinkbroadband. com in finding suitable candidates for roles in the organisation.

Hayley Mitchell’s perspective “The new job with Thinkbroadband was a huge change for me in terms of the skills I required,” remembers Mitchell. “I didn’t realise how wide reaching and varying the IT sector was and how it can affect every part of your life. The opportunities are endless and IT is no longer about just sitting in front of a computer. This job has opened my eyes to a world of possibilities I have never thought about before and is giving me valuable experience.

“Since joining, I have learnt about computer security, IP addresses and even how to convert between binary and decimal. Much of this is of course specific to the company I work for, however I have also discovered many basic skills such as HTML, the mark-up language used to make web pages which I feel I should have had some exposure to in my time in education. Had I been given more opportunities, I may well have taken a different career path from the beginning.

“Many of the web apps today make it easy to write blogs, produce videos and engage in social media without understanding how the underlying system really works. That’s great, and there is no reason why every car driver should be a qualified mechanic, but it would make sense to understand the basics of how an engine works in case you break down. www.vital-mag.net

“Since joining, I have learnt about computer security, IP addresses and even how to convert between binary and decimal. Much of this is of course specific to the company I work for, however I have also discovered many basic skills such as HTML, the mark-up language used to make web pages which I feel I should have had some exposure to in my time in education.

Had I been given more opportunities, I may well have taken a different career path from the beginning.

May / June 2012 : VitAL 11

cover story

In the same way, I was never taught to build basic web pages in HTML and when you want to do something a little bit non-standard, these types of skills are really helpful. Better IT skills mean you can not only be more productive, but also use the tools available to you in much more effective ways.

“IT is often seen as a geeky option for many kids at school, but if more students were given the opportunity to experiment with technology then we might have more people coming into the IT industry from different backgrounds, or using IT to solve new problems and set up their own businesses. I’ve found it so rewarding to be able to learn how to solve my own IT challenges, but I was never truly encouraged to do so before working in an IT company.

“I didn’t do very well in GCSE IT, not because I couldn’t excel (no pun intended) in the subject but I just wasn’t shown the potential of how this could be useful in later life,” concludes Mitchell. “Even though I’ve been working for many years now, I still have so much new to learn.”

skills can bring and help them to do their jobs more effectively.

The importance of tangible IT skills for young people moving into the workforce is really important. They are so integral to the world today in most office-based roles and increasingly outside of the office. Yet not enough focus is being put on basic skills, never mind developing more advanced ones.

This needs to begin in schools.

The domain of the geek IT is often seen as the domain of the geek; however IT skills don’t necessarily mean a career in an IT company. As technology has changed how we work, IT skills should be considered as important as English and Mathematics, as its use will become more and more prevalent across all industries.

There’s a lot of bad practice around, like formatting documents in word processors – too often people replicate offline ways of making texts larger to indicate a heading, rather than tagging it as a heading.

This means students often walk away without the skills needed to manage larger documents.

I remember being taught at university how to use pivot tables to analyse data, a basic yet powerful data analysis technique, most spreadsheet users have no idea of.

Many people will manually update large numbers of sections of documents rather than learn how to automate a process.

These types of skills should be considered basic requirements for students leaving secondary school.

When interviewing for this position, we were looking for people with an interest in technology and the willingness to learn new skills We have been very fortunate to find someone keen to learn and excited by the possibilities the new skills available can bring both for use at work and also in her personal life. As an employer, it is inspiring to be able to help develop these skills and see Hayley captivated in putting them into use. VitAL www.thinkbroadband.com

Sebastien Lahtinen’s perspective As a small technology company, we needed to make sure we found someone for a nontechnical role covering a wide range of skills, someone who would fit in with the relaxed IT culture of jeans and t-shirts rather than suits and ties. We were surprised by the sheer volume of applications we received and it took considerable time to narrow them down to a short list.

Small businesses often don’t have the same support infrastructures or processes in terms of dedicated IT departments which means that for a technical company to bring in someone less technical can be a challenge to ensure they have the right training and support. We also often work remotely, bringing with it additional challenges.

Having helped non-technical friends working in office jobs understand some of the tools available in common office application packages, I have seen the gleam in their eyes at the new world of opportunities the 12 VitAL : May / June 2012

Compare the broadband Thinkbroadband.com is the longest running independent UK broadband information website and has been running for over ten years. It started in the days when broadband services were bring trialled and its staff thus have some of the most comprehensive experience in this area.

The idea is that consumers can refer to this impartial website for independent advice and details on the services offered by broadband service providers, enabling them to make an informed decision as to who to use as a supplier as well as troubleshoot problems they may be having.

In part it provides a service like comparethemarket.com or Go Compare, but for broadband users, but the emphasis is on providing information and resolving issues rather than encouraging the switching of providers.It also offers news and views on the broad band market; a comprehensive range of ‘plain English’ consumer guides and advice; access to bespoke interactive tools including a broadband speed tester; hardware reviews and detailed product information; as well as a members’ forum where users can share their thoughts and broadband queries.

www.vital-mag.net

VitAL SIgnS: LIFe In THe wORLD wITH IT

Crisis learning Steve White, senior consultant at IT process improvement consultancy, Kepner-Tregoe, considers how warm pasties and jerry cans of petrol could be key learning opportunities… Or maybe not.

The importance of tangible IT skills for young people moving

I

n 1975 a serious fire at the Browns Ferry nuclear power Station in the United States

started when a worker using a candle to

into the workforce is

search for air leaks accidentally set a highly combustible temporary foam cable seal alight.

The regulations regarding fire measures were

really important. They are so integral to the world today in most office-based roles and increasingly outside of the office. yet not enough focus is being put on basic skills, never mind developing more advanced ones.

This needs to begin in schools.

www.vital-mag.net

changed as a result of this event, but the changes were narrowly directed at fire measures and did not extend to the thinking and culture that created the conditions for the event. This is a common failure of ‘Crisis Learning’ – it tends to be restricted to the presenting trouble – not to the thinking that brought on the presenting trouble.

The nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005 concluded that the Browns Ferry accident was the most likely ‘precursor’ to the partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in 1979.

Had a wider kind of crisis thinking been adopted after Browns Ferry, TMI may have been averted.

IT Ops tend to want to stay in a ‘business as usual’ mode and avoid official recognition that there is a crisis when one happens. Crises disrupt the normal flow of life and data, interrupt production and development and almost always result in unpleasant difficulties with business customers. Managers therefore delay the declaration of a crisis (this is not the declaration of a serious Incident, this is beyond that) until there is no other choice. experience suggests that when the business or customers believe that the IT support department “doesn’t get it”, they pile in, teeth bared and claws out, and will aggressively take over the management of a crisis.

The crucial characteristic of a crisis situation is that positive control has been lost by IT Ops, or the business in general. The loss of positive control is significant and is abundantly clear to all parties; IT Ops, Incident and Major Incident Management, Business Management, Marketing and the media.

Most crisis situations involving technology and support have been preceded by signs that, in retrospect, should have been clear

to all, masked by discounting, arguing away, minimising, rationalising and denying the precursors, and are characterised by internal and external conflict, both a loss of control and belief. Much effort is put into not understanding the critical nature of the crisis prone organisation and the unpleasant fact that major change will be needed for management to regain positive control. Management expresses confidence that performance improvement is around the corner and that already implemented plans will make it all better. sounds familiar? Time to take action. effective Crisis Learning is wider than Proactive Problem Management, it is the mapping of the precursor events and the thinking and strategic approach which allowed them to happen. It’s also about honesty, collaboration, a quicker root cause and corrective action cycle and evaluation of corrective action effectiveness.

If you see around you the internal tensions of a crisis prone organisation, someone, somewhere is hunting for an air leak with a candle, or stoking the next public panic. VitAL Contact steve white at: stevescolumn@vital-mag.net

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Choosing the right SaaS solution In this article, Ian McEwan, vp EMEA at Frontrange looks at how to decide whether an on-premise or Software as a Service (SaaS) solution is right for you, and the questions to ask if you decide to go to the cloud.

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OrE AnD more applications are being delivered in the Cloud. More and more vendors claim to have SaaS offerings. however, SaaS isn’t for everyone, and not all SaaS solutions are equal. Is SaaS right for your organisation and what do you need to consider when making your selection?

In this article, we will look at how to decide whether an on-premise or a software as a service (saas) solution is right for you, and the questions to ask if you decide to go to the cloud.

Business Drivers

Market Drivers

The benefits of rapid deployment and rapid ROI, less upfront capital investment, and a decreased reliance on limited implementation resources encourage saas deployments.

strong market growth within the sMB sector and increasing adoption of saas solutions by large enterprises exist within line-of-business applications and in regional locations.

with saas, responsibility for continuous operation, backups, updates and infrastructure maintenance shifts risk and resource requirements from internal IT to vendors or service providers.

Increasing familiarity with the Internet, improvements in security and broader acceptance of a service alter- native reduce earlier barriers to adoption.

An increase in the number of executives as buyers or influencers also drives growth.

Greater market competition and increased focus by the megavendors reinforce the legitimacy of ondemand solutions.

Where are we now?

According to Gartner, the total IT operations management (ITOM) market is set to grow by 8.5 percent CAGR by 2014 to reach a total of $21,409 million. Of this, service Desk will make up $1.2 billion, Asset Management $500 million and Desktop & server Management, $3 billion. saas as an ITOM deployment method is maturing to deliver core ITOM functions IT departments regardless of size are exploring and investigating saas deployment in addition to Premise. In fact, the number of Gartner clients choosing the saas model when purchasing IT service Desk grew by more than 30 percent between 2007 and 2010. what’s changed? well, there are so many more options for saas solutions on the market nowadays that we didn’t see before. However, some vendors have simply taken their legacy products and are just hosting them, rather than building a true saas solution from the ground 14 VitAL : May / June 2012

up. At their heart, all solutions share similar core features and functions. But the transition to saas has not been without its challenges.

The challenges More than a third of all organisations utilising saas cited issues with saas deployment. Most companies still do not have policies in place governing the evaluation and use of saas, 39 percent indicated that such a policy exists, up only one percent from 2008 figures. saas is sometimes a more expensive solution than businesses realise. while it is generally less expensive than on-premises solutions over the first two years, for a fiveyear total cost of ownership it may not be.

And due to growing process and integration

complexity, saas may not be as easy or as fast to implement as some businesses expect.

Your situation Dependent on your specific requirements, it may be that premise is more appropriate to your needs, or a hybrid solution of saas and premise. Premise remains dominant, but saas and hybrid offer powerful options. saas can be preferable if you have limited IT resources, operating capital and the need for flexible deployment and scalability options. Blended premise and saas models combine applications and deployment models to fit your needs.

Here are some aspects to consider to help guide your decision: www.vital-mag.net

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IT resource availability: The availability of internal IT resources is a key factor to consider when selecting a deployment model. SaaS deployments remove the need to install software locally or carry out hardware and software installation and configuration inhouse. SaaS therefore, is particularly suited to organisations with limited IT resource.

Customer data sensitivity: While on-premise deployments retain customer data in-house, SaaS externalises customer data to a third party facility. If customer data is perceived to be too sensitive to be hosted externally, then on-premise will generally offer the best fit. If the purpose-built third-party data centre with high levels of redundancy, backup, and monitoring delivers a level of security and protection that could not be achieved cost-effectively internally, then SaaS offers the best fit.

Budget availability: On-premise software deployments require upfront capital investment. SaaS, by contrast, involves fixed, periodic subscriptions over the solution’s life cycle. SaaS, therefore, can provide several advantages to companies with limited budgets, as it does not require the same upfront expenditure on software and hardware infrastructure. When viewed beyond the nearterm, however, SaaS solutions can result in higher costs when compared to their onpremise peers.

If intermediate or sophisticated, companies may be better served by selecting an onpremise solution. However, an increasing number of SaaS providers such as FrontRange are making it easier for their services to be integrated with other business applications, regardless of whether they are located inside or outside the company firewall.

Depth of integration: On-premise has traditionally lent itself to point-to-point application integration, so it is seen as the more integration-centric of the two deployment types. SaaS, by contrast, is generally seen as a standalone deployment.

Breadth of customisation: With onpremise deployments the customer owns the software and customisation is perceived as less restrictive than what is allowed by SaaS vendors. If your business processes are aligned to industry best practices or highly specialised for your company, SaaS is a definite fit. If a large percentage of the business processes are considered “one-offs,” then on-premise may be the better choice. www.vital-mag.net

What you need to ask your provider In order to adopt a SaaS based solution, there are a number of different questions you need to consider asking. While this is not exhaustive, it’s worth considering: • How quickly can they stand up an instance?

• How do I extend the application?

• Are configurations portable between environments and upgrades?

• Can I select a named user model vs. concurrent licensing?

• What kind of SLAs and up-time reports do you provide?

• What is the disaster recovery policy?

• What protection mechanisms and techniques are used in the data centre?

• How is my information stored and managed, and will all rights to it be maintained by me?

• How long can I evaluate the solution for?

• What are the hours and channels of support operations & SLAs. • How often are new features introduced?

How closely is customer feedback considered in upgrade plans?

• Will the solution work seamlessly with my existing on-premise applications?

• What kind of infrastructure does the vendor have: hosted environment, single-tenant or multi-tenant?

• Regarding the Licensing Model, is it flexible enough to save money as my requirements change?

• Am I forced to upgrade? Can I opt-in or opt-out? Can I preview / test upgrades? Can I control when the upgrade will happen? VitAL www.frontrange.com/how to choose

According to Gartner, the total IT operations management (ITOM) market is set to grow by 8.5 percent CAGR by 2014 to reach a total of $21,409 million. Of this, Service Desk will make up $1.2 billion, Asset Management $500 million and Desktop & Server Management, $3 billion. SaaS as an ITOM deployment method is

The IT SaaS Market Shows Continued Momentum…

maturing to deliver core

›2 012: about 85% of new software to the market will be delivered as a service

ITOM functions

›2 012: some two-thirds of new offerings from established vendors will be sold as SaaS › SaaS revenue numbers will jump up from US$13.1 billion in 2009 to $40.5 billion by 2014. Of this, 54% is anticipated to be in the Americas, 34% in EMEA and 12% in APAC.

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Service Desk says “no!�

Service Desk staff need to know their ABC. Marcus Harris, CEO of pink Elephant, pinpoints the attitudinal, behavioural and cultural problems preventing good performance of the IT Service Desk and how these can be addressed.

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IOS COnTInUE to be at the forefront of pressures facing the Service Desk. Organisations still fail to realise the expected benefits of best practice frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and with additional priorities of service and driving a customercentric culture, there is an increasing problem with the perceived value of the service delivered by ITSM, and its link to business objectives.

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IT service management is a key priority and a strategic asset for companies, but with budgets being slashed left right and centre, how do organisations ensure they are really getting to the heart of the cultural challenges? what industry issues preventing the service Desk from performing at its peak?

The Disconnect Does your service Desk have a reputation problem? There are too many service Desks www.vital-mag.net

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objective in itself, rather than the means to achieving an objective.

Over the20 years that ITIL has been in practice there have been significant changes in the business environment. The worldwide recession has resulted in many resource cut backs, so the IT Service Desk has to achieve more with less. Services are increasingly outsourced to larger ITSM organisations, the most competitive of which have thrived due to their cost effectiveness and experienced offering. Increased mergers and acquisitions have increased the varieties of business models, technical infrastructures and protocols to work within. In addition to this, Service Desk staff are often agency or contracted rather than permanently employed. All these challenges for ITSM, have impacted on the human side of the IT Service Desk, especially when contracted outsourced IT service support staff often have a lack of ownership and accountability; as a result seeming fatigued and disengaged from the processes they are undertaking.

This is often perceived as a lack of customer service skills, when in fact it is, essentially a lack of ownership and understanding. At a time when training and consultancy investment is scrutinised more closely by the business, the IT Service Desk is firmly in the firing line.

Added to these changes in the working environment is the fact that ITIL does not currently address any attitudinal, behavioural or cultural aspects of IT Service Management at present, aspects central to a successful IT service operation. saying ‘no’. Companies are consistently struggling to achieve resolution of IT issues and are often disappointed. IT support as a business function also often lacks credibility and the trust to be considered a strategic asset by the business.

There are a number of reasons why this is the case. ITIL has long been recognised – for 20 years in fact – as a strategic framework within which IT Service Management operates.

It’s a widely accepted and recognised framework and over the two decades it has been in practice, it has been adopted by thousands of organisations worldwide including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Walmart, Sony and Pzfizer to name a few.

However, it is important to remember that simply implementing ITIL is not the end goal to achieving good ITSM, it is a framework which is intended to help organisations achieve specific outcomes, solve specific problems, or add value. It is a management control capability and some ITSM organisations mistakenly perceive it as an www.vital-mag.net

Human side In today’s IT Service Management environment, there is an increasingly strong argument for a combined approach to Service Desk enhancement, one which addresses not only the technology and processes on the Service Desk, but the people too. When 52 percent of ITIL implementations fail because of resistance to change , and only six percent of ITSM people worldwide are aware of the ITIL definition of a service – “A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks” – it is clear there is a problem.

Service Desk staff are a critical success factor and as such it is vital to address the ABC of ITSM, Attitudes, Behaviour and Culture. These not only impact organisational performance, but also affect colleagues. Attitudes, behaviour and culture act very much like the tip of an iceberg, with much hidden beneath the surface of an organisation, and capable of inflicting a lot of damage.

Service Desk staff are a critical success factor and as such it is vital to address the ABC of ITSM, Attitudes, Behaviour and Culture. These not only impact organisational performance, but also affect colleagues.

Attitudes, behaviour and culture act very much like the tip of an iceberg, with much hidden beneath the surface of an organisation, and capable of inflicting a lot of damage.

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Assessing the people, processes and technology will inform the necessary steps that need to be taken at a strategic, tactical and operational level; coaching and mentoring for example, which will enable the IT service Desk to become one of a business’s greatest assets, repeatedly saying yes, and using its strengths to propel it to even greater success.

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Poor attitudes, behaviour and culture on the service Desk include a fatigued attitude to repeat calls; ie, “not them again, they have called four times today – perhaps if I ignore them they will go away!” or a dismissive attitude to management strategies and ITIL implementation. equally failing to adhere to ITIL protocol or effectively knowledge share or register enquiries properly are poor service Desk behaviours. These problems are often compounded by or result in a culture of protectionism over their own knowledge, believing that helping colleagues out will diminish their own value as employees, as well as a finger-pointing culture, which fosters blame and disharmony over issue resolution.

These problems occur in all manner of organisations at times of increased pressure, but it is vital that they are addressed. This in turn will help ensure that the IT service Desk moves from being a reactive support function to a proactive integrated part of the business. Often the behaviour cascades from the top of the organisation, with the CIO and CeO not seeing eye-to-eye, and a lack of shared vision between IT and the business resulting in a lack of understanding.

It is therefore important that ABC issues are tackled through leadership and knowledge sharing. Failure to do so will continue to result in lost business opportunities, higher IT and operating costs and increased business outages and risks – leading to threats to business security, continuity or availability.

All of these issues contribute to the negative perception of ITsM by business.

Problems at the root of these behaviours include a lack of understanding of the business impact and priority of the task at hand, a difficulty in distinguishing the importance of various calls, especially when every caller insists their call is top priority, and an overall disconnect between the business needs of users, and the strategic planning and development of the service Desk and its team.

The key to overcoming these problems and eradicating poor attitudes, behaviours and culture in ITsM is communication. If leaders within IT service Management can communicate with their users or customers about their aims and objectives, setting and

agreeing their key terms and role, gain context and set mutual expectations, this will help to improve the quality of service they provide.

In addition to this, it’s vital that communication is open within the team, cascading information from leaders to highlight user business objectives and explaining the impact that attitudes, behaviour and culture have on these objectives. Good communication not only enable the team to share valuable best practice knowledge but also helps remove duplication of work processes for more effective service Desk operations.

From these issues, it is clear that if the service Desk has increased ownership and understanding of the business impact of its work, and perhaps most importantly from a morale perspective, its value, it will work more successfully.

Transformation By working closely with service Desk operations to assess the root of these attitudinal, behavioural and cultural barriers to good ITsM, this information can in turn be used to inform process design of workflow management tools, which will enable monitoring and tracking of key tasks, improving the efficiency and success of the service Desk. In addition to this, implementing strong leadership strategies encourages a culture of personal ownership, accountability and provides a basis for key continual improvement initiatives. ensuring consistency of performance review and evaluation assists customer satisfaction, and reviewing accountability and career development paths for analysts as well as comprehensive induction processes and alignment of the correct level of skills with tasks will all help to ensure the best talent is attracted to, and stays within, the service Desk.

Assessing the people, processes and technology will inform the necessary steps that need to be taken at a strategic, tactical and operational level; coaching and mentoring for example, which will enable the IT service Desk to become one of a business’s greatest assets, repeatedly saying yes, and using its strengths to propel it to even greater success. VitAL www.pinkelephant.com www.vital-mag.net

Get the right blend of skills for the I.T. career you want APMG-International offers a range of service management qualifications to support and improve IT operations, and enhance organization and individual capability.

All our service management qualifications give candidates credits towards ITIL Expert.*

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www.apmg-international.com *Excluding ASL & BiSL

VitAL MAnAGeMenT

The risks and rewards of social media The commercial use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter brings its own potential risks and rewards.

Chris Hutchings, hamlins media litigation partner helps you to navigate the uncharted waters.

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usiness are increasingly learning to exploit the potential of social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing and growth. Information continues to shift from traditional media to the web. Print media continues to suffer as advertisers slant their budgets towards online campaigns, including through social media.

Use of the new media in the commercial context can be an effective and powerful business tool because it gives companies the opportunity to convey information, promote brands or products, or make a sales pitch in a more subtle manner than traditional marketing. Effective social media campaigns can result from a positive customer response and the viral spread by willing consumers of successful concepts and messages contained in campaigns. With the benefits come legal risks. Successful use of the new medium requires consideration of key www.vital-mag.net

underlying legal and regulatory principles.

Taking these into account will prevent or limit the risk of problems.

With the benefits come

Promotion through social media

legal risks. Successful

The recent ability to promote and grow business through social media is recognised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The regulator’s powers were extended in 2011 to cover online advertising, including use of social media, and the ASA has already upheld a number of complaints concerning misuse of social media in the contexts of advertising.

When planning such campaigns using social media, apply the same underlying principles arising from the ASA Code which you will already adhere to in your traditional advertising. This will ensure they are ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’ as well as ensuring for example that tweets used in advertising are ‘identifiable as marketing communications’.

Particular care is required when undertaking comparative advertising whether or not you explicitly name competitors. Claims made need to be based on data of acceptable quality. Comparison websites have already been the subject of negative ASA findings in this regard. At the same time, the extended remit of the ASA provides protection if your business has been unfairly compared in a competitor’s own social media campaign.

use of the new medium requires consideration of key underlying legal and regulatory principles. Taking these into account will prevent or limit the risk of problems.

Future regulation The extent to which social media is subject to the same broader regulation as print media continues to be fiercely contested. Given financial pressures faced by the print media and necessity to compete with the Internet to feed the appetite of its readers, there are strong arguments that any regulatory change should seek to cover Internet publication including by social media.

There are significant practical obstacles to compulsory regulation as any resistant website may simply move its servers overseas and out of reach of regulation. A popular proposal would see future regulation remaining voluntary but with financial and legal incentives to joining, for example kitemarks for participants, a new defence and reduced damages in claims. This may encourage larger sites to participate.

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Implementation of your policy can be more productive if explained in an effective manner to staff. The policy will then help to protect the company where an employee has been accused of posting a remark giving rise to complaint.

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Misuse at work Use by individual employees of social media during the working day gives rise to another aspect to be considered and legislated for by business. The nature of Twitter – quickfire, abbreviated and pithy personal remarks – makes it prone to misuse or complaint: An increasing number of libel claims result from defamatory remarks published on Twitter.

March 2012 saw a High Court libel trial stemming from allegations made on Twitter.

Personal comments posted on social media may be taken as being representative of the corporate view. Social media policies, which can be incorporated into terms of employment, need to lay down clear boundaries. Implementation of your policy can be more productive if explained in an effective manner to staff. The policy will then help to protect the company where an employee has been accused of posting a remark giving rise to complaint.

At the same time, if your business itself is faced with adverse and indefensible criticism on social media, stopping further publication and spread can be achieved by legal complaint.

Commercial value of ‘follower’ lists A separate risk to your business arises where an employee, who has built up through his company Twitter account a substantial list of followers, departs the business and seeks to take the followers to a new account. This issue is currently the subject of hardfought litigation in New York where an employee of a mobile phone company, who had gathered 17,000 followers on the work account, sought to take the list when he departed from the phone company.

The court is likely to find that the list of followers has intellectual property rights in it, which belong to the company. However, to avoid any dispute as to ownership, this should similarly be incorporated into your social media policy.

Social media is increasingly forming part of successful integrated marketing strategies.

The consequential risks should be identified and, if acted upon, can be minimised allowing business to safely exploit the new medium’s potential. VitAL www.hamlins.co.uk

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Your route to success For a smarter way to further your IT service management career, follow our new career path to:

Find out more at www.bcs.org/vital © BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, is the business name of The British Computer Society (Registered charity no. 292786) 2012

01319/PDS/AD/2012

• understand your options for progression • identify your training and development opportunities • make the right decisions in your service management career

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IT evolution: From manager to service broker Manoj Patel, director of nimsoft sees the role of IT in the business changing from one of managing the IT organisation to managing relationships with service providers.

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hE MIGrATIOn to a more agile, distributed, and service-oriented information technology infrastructure is underway. In recent years, innovations like smart phones, virtualisation, social networks, and the cloud have all had a staggering impact on the way we expect to consume IT-related services, and, even more critically, on how IT is expected to provide them.

For years now, there has been increased momentum towards outsourcing various functions to the cloud and to managed services providers, and for those offering these services, business is booming. This increasing reliance on external providers isn’t a singular event or a one-time deal for the enterprise IT group. There are quite a few reasons why this is the case. Fundamentally, technology is changing so quickly, it gets harder and more expensive to keep the necessary expertise in house. Cloud, virtualisation, and mobile device proliferation simultaneously raise the bar in terms of what’s possible, and present unprecedented fluidity and complexity. In today’s dynamic environments, relying on external resources

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and expertise just continues to make more sense – whether you’re focused on cost, agility, or competitive differentiation.

And what does this mean for the IT group?

It means that everyone in the IT organisation – from the CIO on down – must assume a new role. A few years ago, the IT team’s focus was on building and supporting in-house infrastructure. Today, these groups can select from a thriving market of internal and external service providers, all eager to compete for dwindling budgets. IT’s new focus is to ensure that the service providers they choose prove to be the most efficient, the most flexible, the most cost-effective, and the most responsive at each step in the IT service delivery chain. when this isn’t the case, IT needs to lead the way in moving to a model that does meet these charters. what follows are a few of the more significant implications this transformation represents.

overcoming the fear Make no mistake, this can be a scary transition.

There’s no denying the fact that an increased reliance on external resources can and will www.vital-mag.net

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lead to headcount reductions. That’s the reality, and it’s not an easy one, but if the remaining internal IT staff continue to look at it as “if we outsource, I’ll lose my job,” they’re simultaneously hurting your company and your job prospects. Put another way, if your competitors take advantage of these alternatives and your business resists the move, the company may not be viable for long.

Rethinking the role of IT When organisations first start moving to external providers, it’s not uncommon for some to question the role or even existence of internal IT. However, when business owners suddenly find themselves getting phone calls when issues arise, they quickly see the value and the need for IT’s service broker role.

Businesses who led the initial outsource decision quickly realise they don’t want to be in the position of assuming the responsibility for service levels, for holding providers accountable; managing those relationships, and all the other effort required.

Here’s the thing: a large enterprise won’t just hire one service provider, they may hire dozens. Negotiation and management won’t end when the contract’s signed, the process is just getting started. Managing relationships is a critical role.

Managing the cultural shift The biggest challenge in many IT organisations is making the cultural transformation that has to take place. In most traditional IT organisations, engineers and architects have been used to being able to do things themselves. Now, they are having to evolve into advisors and managers.

When you’ve been used to sitting at a keyboard, fixing issues or maintaining systems, it can be tough to take a step back and become a manager of an external www.vital-mag.net

service, to be looking at what may go wrong and managing relationships. In their service broker role, IT teams will have to become experts on vendor offerings available, and how changes or adding new services will affect existing processes.

Prioritising service levels The core responsibility of a service broker is to ensure that internal and external customers receive the service levels they expect. In the past, IT operators often focused on metricdriven service level agreements (SLAs) - the uptime of a database, the throughput of network devices, and so on.

The service broker will need to focus on the customer experience. For example, if the network is up, the application is running, and the database is available, but the application isn’t communicating correctly with the database, the customer may be experiencing issues. Service brokers need to establish business level SLAs using metrics that relate directly to the customer experience. This information becomes critical as IT works to continually find and adopt the most effective, and cost-effective, service providers.

The changing role of IT IT’s role may be changing, but it’s growing more critical. Internal IT organisations will continue to manage some services in house, either because the service isn’t cost effective to outsource or because there’s some specific investment or competitive differentiator associated with the service. For other services, rather than administering infrastructure, IT organisations will manage an increasingly dynamic, agile ecosystem of MSPs, hosting providers, cloud providers, and others. By embracing and excelling in this role, IT will be able to simultaneously boost business value and job security. VitAL www.nimsoft.com

In recent years, innovations like smart phones, virtualisation, social networks, and the cloud have all had a staggering impact on the way we expect to consume IT-related services, and, even more critically, on how IT is expected to provide them.

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Leveraging the power of social media for the Service Desk A growing trend to seek information and guidance through social collaboration has clear implications for the Service Desk. Chris Rixon, principal solutions manager at BMC Software considers how the IT Service Desk, together with social media, can optimise the customer experience of IT and support.

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resources include an interactive support portal, service request management capabilities, mobility, and social collaboration.

Service support tools have also been more widely integrated with other IT Service Management tools, including configuration management (CMDB or discovery repository), asset management, service catalogue, and event management, with a view to maximising end-user productivity. When these tools are combined with social media, they can help to improve the IT support experience by facilitating a rapid, efficient and customercentric service.

Social media and the Service Desk – A powerful combination

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tudies show that an increasing number of people are turning to social media as a source of information. If they are looking for opinions about restaurants, solving a medical issue, or just trying to figure out how to solve a technical problem with their mobile device or PC, they’ll often seek answers from social media. Like it or not, this growing preference to seek information and guidance through social collaboration has clear implications for the Service Desk.

With this perspective in mind, let’s consider how the IT service desk, together with social media, can optimise the customer experience of IT and support.

As organisations look to achieve the greatest alignment with the growing service expectations of their users, they are increasingly focusing their attention on the Service Desk. They are providing interfaces that are accessible and intuitive – just like every other service interaction end users have come to expect in their daily lives. These www.vital-mag.net

Social media tools used within an organisation allow more support specialists to be alerted to a problem, to contribute to the solution, and to be educated about the solution for future use.

For example, with BMC’s Remedyforce, help desk agents working on a trouble ticket can turn to Chatter, a collaboration tool created by SalesForce.com, to see if others are currently working on similar issues. Chatter is an integrated social media platform for proactive team collaboration and is embedded within the help desk tool. The agent can look for posts by other agents who are dealing with similar problems. The agent can then recognise related incidents and assign similar incidents to a single agent or group of agents who are already working on the problem, thereby improving efficiency.

Related incidents can be tied together, and the agent can then do a root cause analysis of these related incidents. Moreover, the agent can create broadcasts within the social media tool that communicate messages to both IT staff and employees companywide regarding service outages or other IT events.

As with other social media applications, you can ‘follow’ certain topics – other people,

Service support tools have also been more widely integrated with other IT Service Management tools, including configuration management (CMDB or discovery repository), asset management, service catalogue, and event management, with a view to maximising end-user productivity.

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As part of your help desk solution, social

incidents, changes, and even critical business services and assets. This allows you to be instantly alerted to any change in status for each topic followed.

Bridging the control gap

media has the potential to greatly lower costs and increase productivity and efficiency and most important, improve enduser satisfaction.

Social media promises to be a powerful tool for IT support teams and end users in the coordination of efforts and the sharing of information. But how do you bridge the control gap? In other words, how can you leverage the undoubted benefits offered through social collaboration in a way that allows you to preserve an appropriate level of stability, control, and measurement?

This is an emerging area of interest and research and the answer lies in the interface between process design, collaboration, and communication. This requires identifying appropriate points in your standard support processes – whether or not they are aligned with ITIL – where social collaboration and the sharing of information will enrich the quality and efficiency of the outcome, eg, in the planning, coordination, and notification phases of change management.

Metrics for gauging the effectiveness of social media for the Help Desk New service delivery models for IT Service Management, such as software as a service (SaaS), as well as emerging communications channels for support that include social media, will require changes in the way you traditionally measure the effectiveness of your services.

That’s why you should re-examine your service metrics as you begin to rely more heavily on SaaS, social media, and a more servicesoriented approach to IT delivery.

If social media are to be used as a corporate support tool, it may be useful to monitor how 28 VitAL : May / June 2012

employees are using them to solve problems and how social media impacts staff and end-user satisfaction. Some of the metrics to consider include the average speed to resolve problems, the reduction in email volume related to problem solving, and the increase in collaboration among agents and teams. In some cases, organisations might wish to measure the use and effectiveness of social media in addition to measuring its overall effect on IT Service Management performance.

Indications from early adopters of social collaboration technology in the context of the IT Service Desk are revealing some real and tangible benefits to the approach.

When used as part of a larger help-desk solution, social media can increase first-call resolution, reduce the mean time to resolution, significantly lower unplanned downtime, and increase call deflection.

Looking ahead If the saying is true that ‘two heads are better than one’, imagine harnessing the collective brain power of your entire IT help desk staff.

Therein lies the power of social media. As part of your help desk solution, social media has the potential to greatly lower costs and increase productivity and efficiency and most important, improve end-user satisfaction.

Like everything else in the business environment, the measurements and evaluations of IT services and IT service support are changing. Organisations need to ask themselves whether they are measuring for the sake of measuring, measuring the usual metrics out of habit, or measuring the new metrics - such as those related to social media - that correspond most closely to the technologies and business models that will determine success in the future. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

VitAL MAnAGeMenT

When governance gets Agile

James yoxall

James Thomas

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Can any control be imposed without losing the inherent flexibility of the Agile approach in large scale IT development projects? James yoxall, process director at IndigoBlue and James Thomas, CTO, IpL reveal how the dynamic management of uncertainty within a clearly defined framework has been successfully used to deliver effective control and manage complexity while ensuring the acknowledged benefits of an Agile approach.

www.vital-mag.net

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here is growing interest in exploiting Agile development across both the public and private sectors. But concerns about governance are either restricting its use to non-critical projects or resulting in its use for technical delivery only within more traditional waterfall-based projects.

Either way, the intended benefits of Agile are not being realised by many organisations.

Can any control be imposed without losing the inherent flexibility of the Agile approach in large scale IT development projects? In certain instances, the dynamic management of uncertainty within a clearly defined framework has been successfully used to deliver effective control and manage complexity while ensuring the acknowledged benefits of an Agile approach.

Governance challenge Agile development has moved into the mainstream, with even the government now encouraging its use. But there is a problem: organisations are keen to attain the benefits of incremental business delivery, rapid return on investment and speed to market, but they also want strong governance. And, in the view of many Agile coaches and practitioners, the variable scope and continuous change inherent within an Agile development are simply incompatible with the principles of traditional governance.

The result of the growing perception that Agile is not effectively governable has been a shift toward its use for non-critical rather than strategic projects. One alternative is to follow the model adopted by many organisations and apply Agile only at the delivery level, whilst using traditional techniques at the management level. The result, however, is effectively a waterfall project with iterations of technical delivery, which is not going to realise Agile’s full benefits.

So what is the way forward? Private and public sector organisations want the benefits of Agile; and these organisations need strong governance to ensure strong financial control and minimise the risks associated with larger, more complex developments. Are these two objectives mutually exclusive or is there some www.vital-mag.net

element of common ground that will enable organisations to explore the full benefits of Agile without compromise?

Common issues with Agile and governance In some ways, there are aspects of Agile that naturally support governance. It is inherently collaborative, so that key stakeholders have direct visibility of the status of a project at all times; it identifies a business owner with formal authority to make fast, effective decisions; and it emphasises real, tangible progress, rather than simply ticking off lines in a Gantt chart.

However, the way in which the majority of Agile projects are run today, there is no doubt that governance is a very valid concern.

Without the traditional upfront project specification there is a lack of defined baseline from which to affect governance. The Agile project team is typically focused on internal optimisation, which often results in a reluctance to interrupt progress in order to generate information for the benefit of others in the business. And the reality of complex business organisations is that a single individual cannot truly represent all authorities when making day-to-day decisions.

There are also more extreme interpretations of Agile which further undermine governance objectives, from the insistence on focusing on the near future only and avoiding any form of long-term forecasting, to the avoidance of all change management procedures.

Control vs uncertainty The key difference between Agile and non-Agile projects is the attitude to and management of uncertainty. On waterfall projects all uncertainty is, theoretically, removed before development starts; while uncertainty is intentionally carried into the development phase on Agile projects.

The traditional assumption that uncertainty is the opposite of control is flawed. With an approved specification there is an assumption that uncertainty has been resolved; yet this leads to unplanned problems late on in the project lifecycle and sub-optimal projects.

There are also more extreme interpretations of Agile which further undermine governance objectives, from the insistence on focusing on the near future only and avoiding any form of long-term forecasting, to the avoidance of all change management procedures.

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VitAL MAnAGeMenT

Managed uncertainty provides significant benefits. It reduces the up-front investment and time-to-market; ensures that effort is not expended on low-value deliverables ahead of completing high-value deliverables; allows more decisions to be made later when the project is better understood; and reduces the cost of any changes which may occur.

However, delaying some of the uncertainty resolution means the final solution is not definitive at the start. It therefore challenges traditional governance models that assume a clear endpoint, require accurate time estimates to reach that endpoint and recommend senior stakeholder involvement only when exceptions arise.

On the other hand, Agile projects that carry too much uncertainty can fail. Therefore an Agile project should be explicit about the design decisions that are being left until later; it should assess whether specific design work is required outside of the natural flow of work within iterations; and plan the significant design activities. The governance process is then in a position to validate the uncertainty management thinking, risk and planning, and to properly engage in the subsequent, ongoing process of uncertainty resolution.

Change management Agile is all about change: expecting change to happen, in fact making it more likely to happen through ongoing uncertainty management and reducing the cost of change. However, many implementations of Agile promote the idea that change control is a ‘bad thing’. This is clearly inappropriate where there are formal contractual relationships, but change control of internal implementations is equally essential in most large projects or complex organisations.

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The real debate is not whether change control should exist, but how to effect it without restricting the flow of work to the team. Two specific techniques can be used: formally define levels of decision that can be taken independently by specific roles within the project; and formally define levels of change that need to be decided in advance by appropriate authorities, against those that can be made immediately and logged and reviewed afterwards.

This approach has to be underpinned by highly effective management of an agile team that has been set goals that reflect the business needs – not simply the development of software, however innovative. strong engagement with the wider organisation is key – both on project goals and in providing the information required to support decision making related to significant changes. There is also a need for external agents to validate and confirm the quality of the delivered product, particularly compliance with legal or corporate standards. Projects can and should be explicit about measures of success, which can then be reviewed as part of governance procedures.

Meeting business objectives Agile is no longer the preserve of entrepreneurial organisations willing to accept higher levels of risk to achieve rapid innovation and competitive differentiation. Its proven delivery of fast turnaround, reduced cost and return on investment is compelling for any organisation.

Agile and governance are not mutually exclusive – with the right model, organisations can exploit the benefits of both to transform performance and meet business objectives while effectively controlling risk. VitAL

Agile is no longer the preserve of entrepreneurial organisations willing to accept higher levels of risk to achieve rapid innovation and competitive differentiation. Its proven delivery of fast turnaround, reduced cost and return on investment is compelling for any organisation.

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VitAL sUPPORT

Marrying ITIL with traditional management For an effective ITIL implementation, it usually needs adjustment to match the business environment. Noel Bruton* says that these rejigs are a clear indication that IT delivery is not all about ITIL.

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hErE IS no doubting the useful ideas that ITIL has brought to the IT party in the past few years. Its core principle, of using a certain clutch of processes in an IT department more closely aligned to business needs, has revolutionised service delivery in some companies. Its vocabulary has become the lingua franca of IT services. we universally acknowledge that ITIL is no more than a framework, populated with specifics to a greater extent in some areas than others. For a truly effective implementation, it almost always needs adjustment to match the business environment, with the detail of that adjustment increasing in line with its penetration into corporate IT. These rejigs are clear indication that IT delivery is not all about ITIL – for the process suite to function at its optimum, at least the dovetails to the business must be added.

Deeper dimension However, there is a deeper dimension where not only is it not all about ITIL, but at which there are certain areas ITIL does not even 34 VitAL : May / June 2012

begin to cover. Here we’re dealing with the universal idea of traditional ‘management’, which is and always has been vitally necessary wherever there is a production demand and a workforce deployed to meet it, and is the core of my IT consultancy and training for IT support teams.

The traditional use of the word ‘management’ both predates ITIL’s use of it and refers to a very different and much broader range of topics than that in the comparatively limited subset that is ITIL. At the heart of the ITIL framework lie the core processes. It is the ability to reflect these that is tested in service management software.

For better or worse, ITIL is defined in the popular consciousness by its processes.

The danger is it may appear to some as though ITIL is all there is to the management of IT services – for after all, ITIL is strongly marketed as ‘IT service Management best practice’. Of course it would be extremely naïve to presume that ITIL, despite its breadth, can possibly encompass all there is to know about the management of any

department, IT or otherwise. nevertheless, the risk is there. As evidence, have a look round the service Desk and IT support show or the ITsMF conference exhibition floor. It will be on the rarest of occasions where you will witness even a mention of traditional management issues. even in the tired triangle of ‘People, Process, Technology’, which has long been used as a basic description of management principles, the ITIL framework itself really only ticks the ‘process’ box, with perhaps the ‘technology’ box dealt with by software vendors attempting to reflect those processes. But from John Adair to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, elton Mayo to Max weber, the management gurus have long since given us to understand ‘management’ as being about the orchestration, not of our tools and bureaucracies, but of the efforts of people technicians, customers, allies or competitors - to produce an aggregate result on a corporate scale. Indeed if ITIL does not cover what the wisdom of centuries has shown us www.vital-mag.net

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ITIL doesn’t deal with ‘people’ in any depth, but the traditional manager knows that unless the IT people are present, skilled, motivated, resourced, contented, politically unimpeded and not interrupted by ungoverned demands, then the processes won’t work properly, no matter how good they are.

to be ‘management’ – then is it right to call it ‘IT Service Management’, let alone ‘Best Practice’ at all? There is an argument that, as ITIL in fact represents only a subset of ‘management’, so might it be more accurate to refer to it only as a form of ‘administration’.

Orchestration Personal experience will bear out the truth of the traditional management description, where the orchestration of people-based resources is key. Which is more likely to generate departmental success – a welldocumented bureaucracy or a powerful, engaging leader? The history of nations and corporations is replete with tales of success and prominence under strong leadership – and conversely, mediocrity and stagnation where leadership waned. The natural leader with developed management skills will overwhelmingly produce better results than a reliance on process alone. Of course said leader may choose, as many do, to deploy a process framework such as ITIL to automate the routine, but even as ITIL adopters must acknowledge, management and leadership came first, ITIL implementation followed.

All managers must be managers first, process adherents second. It doesn’t matter how well designed are your processes if the staff are not mentally ‘with the programme’ and the customer expectations not governed.

You may have built the best machine in the world, but if the people don’t use it properly, its effectiveness is lost. And as evidence from past Servicedesk awards ceremonies have shown, you don’t need ITIL to have industrybeating IT services.

Ideal Of course, the ideal would be to have both – the structured governance of ITIL and the charismatic, organisational dexterity of a positive and engaging manager or management team. One would fill in the gaps of the other. The leader would strategise where to lead the ITIL implementation; whereas the processes would mind the shop www.vital-mag.net

while the leader was otherwise occupied in fending off political impediments, formulating customer expectations, negotiating internal service levels or motivating his people.

For all its breadth and scope, ITIL cannot advise how to handle those countless, frequent occasions where the overlap between professionalism, politics and personality puts its own unique spin on customer relationships or team structure.

That is an experiential, not a procedural matter.

That’s a ‘people’ thing – the very essence of doing business. It’s not all about ITIL. It can’t be. Musical composition is not only about harmony. Winning the Champions’ League is not only about team formation.

Taking an example from ITIL itself, the Service Catalogue is an excellent idea – it publishes all the services so that customers can see what’s available and the business can see what it’s investing in. But the manager thinking beyond ITIL could and should go a lot further with it.

Beyond ITIL To whit – the Service Catalogue would be not just a list of my department’s products but effectively a list of the production lines in my IT services factory. Each of those production lines will have a definable level of demand, which I must benchmark regularly, in order to be sure that I can predict how fast to run the line, and how I must feed it in order to meet that benchmarked demand. So for each line, I must have a real understanding of quantities, because without that, I cannot know how much resource I need to commit to the line to meet demand.

Then there is the question of the quality of the products coming off the line – too high and I run up unnecessary costs, too low and I don’t meet business needs, so I have to negotiate the actual required quality level – are we talking economy or business class here? The difference matters. All production lines consist of four elements – raw materials, added value, process inter-relation and operator skills. All four have to be governed.

And all this has to be done for every line.

I should be able to look at every product in that catalogue and know exactly how many of them I can make, how fast or slow, to what level of quality, at what financial and resource cost, with each line in relation to the others and each product in relation to business needs, expectations and financial affordability.

Superset Clearly that example demonstrates far more complexity than just having a number of groups taking an unanticipated number of enquiries and ‘dealing with’ them. Traditional management – the superset in which ITIL can be deployed, takes care of those other issues. ITIL doesn’t deal with ‘people’ in any depth, but the traditional manager knows that unless the IT people are present, skilled, motivated, resourced, contented, politically unimpeded and not interrupted by ungoverned demands, then the processes won’t work properly, no matter how good they are. And unless the customers’ expectations are reasonable, affordable and in keeping with corporate mores, the service will be unable to meet them and so be judged to have failed.

With its ‘lifecycle approach’, ITIL v3 gets much closer to the traditional management of the services market than Version Two ever did, but at the cost of detailed practical guidance at the operational levels. So for now, IT service delivery cannot be seen to be fully covered by ITIL. But as traditional management conceived ITIL, we can be sure that they are not mutually exclusive. They go hand in hand. But where ITIL cannot complete the management picture alone, conversely, traditional management selfevidently can run IT without ITIL. VitAL *Noel Bruton is an independent consultant and trainer, who conducts client projects to improve IT service performance. He is the author of ‘How to Manage the IT Helpdesk – a guide for User Support and Call Centre Managers’ (second edition, ISBN 07506 49011) and of a Website at www.noelbruton.com. Contact him on 01559 370270 or noel@noelbruton.com.

May / June 2012 : VitAL 35

VitAL PROCesses

The mindset migration: Why moving to the cloud involves more than just technical change David McLeman McLeman, managing director of Ancoris, Google’s leading UK partner, argues the real benefit of migrating to the cloud is the innovative transformation of business operations as a whole

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here are two sides to cloud computing. From a technical point of view, it changes the way IT is provisioned.

From a business point of view, it changes the way users work. Much has been made of the technical changes, highlighting cost savings, scalability and agility. However, if you talk to early adopters, it’s clear real value for them has come from the business innovation and transformation enabled by new cloud collaboration applications.

According to Tom Austin, VP at Gartner Group, cloud email and collaboration services (CECS) have reached a ‘tipping point’ based on projected enterprise adoption by 2014. He states “ultimately, we expect CECS to become the dominant provisioning model for the next generation of communication and collaboration technologies used in enterprises”. Gartner’s position is a strong boost for cloud providers such as Google but it is interesting to see collaboration being marked out as a new standard alongside email.

As we have helped companies move to the cloud many have been surprised by the ease of the technical migration process and how quickly the users have adopted new ways of working. The real challenge for IT departments has been changing the mindset of the business as a whole and educating business executives about the strategic business benefits and opportunities presented by enabling a collaborative culture.

We are starting to see a trend, even in conservative organisation not actively considering cloud adoption, of the viral use of the free versions of Google Docs for group workspaces and collaboration. This suggests that the personal productivity tools of old are no longer meeting the needs of teams in our increasingly tech savvy workforce. Is this a problem for IT or is it an opportunity to demonstrate business value?

Real-time collaboration within the enterprise According to a report by the Future Foundation, there is an 81% correlation between innovation and collaboration, and employees who are given the opportunity to collaborate at work are more than twice as likely to contribute new ideas to their company.

Cloud collaboration applications, such as Google Apps for Business which enables real-time collaboration in multiple different ways (email, shared docs, video, chat etc), provide tools to support efficiently as a team working, which can directly support business innovation. www.vital-mag.net

The Imagination Group is an independent global brand communication agency with core staff of around 450 out of 14 fixed locations around the world. Imagination moved to Google Apps to improve collaboration between staff in different locations. “For a visual company, the ability for up to twenty people to be able to view and all sketch on the same online whiteboard is very exciting.”

Mobile working – access from anywhere The consumerisation of IT, the emergence of tablets, smartphones and the ubiquitous availability of mobile broadband are providing IT with the challenge of providing employees with the resources to work at any time, from any location and from any device. Get it right and this flexibility results in a happier, more productive workforce. Cloud applications are a key part of this solution to eliminate on-site working restrictions and enable access from anywhere, at anytime from any device, even for the mid-size business.

Edward Elgar Publishing is an international academic publisher with three offices in Cheltenham and Camberley in the UK and Northampton, MA in the USA. Email is key to the company’s operations. “We collaborate with authors and customers all over the world, and email is usually the best way to do that. A lot of our staff also work away from the office much of the time and may not have their laptops with them. Google Apps gives us a solution that means that as long as staff know their user name and password, they can access their email from anywhere at any time,” says the IT manager of Edward Elgar Publishing

The real challenge for IT departments has been changing the mindset of the business as a whole and educating business executives about the strategic business benefits and opportunities presented by enabling a collaborative culture.

IT staff and strategic projects With cloud computing, there is a clear opportunity for IT departments to fundamentally change their approach of delivering services. This includes a significant or total reduction in the number of operational tasks, such as server provisioning, patch management and capacity planning. By focusing on larger, more strategic projects rather than smaller time consuming tasks, the IT team becomes expert at exploiting technology to create business value.

Implementing Google Apps has helped the Imagination Group deliver on their objective of achieving maximum value for the business. Imagination estimates that using Google Apps compared to continuing to provide systems in house will save around £325,000 over the next three years, by cutting spend on hardware, software, and consultancy

from around £540,000 to just £125,000. “The cost story for the move to Google Apps has been compelling for us, even though it’s not been the main driver.”

Changing the mindset As the technical and financial benefits of moving to the cloud become better understood, the main barrier of migration is to change the mindset of those business executives with traditional views on business productivity. The true value of cloud email and collaboration applications comes from transforming the way organisations use technology to innovate. It is this message that heads of IT have to communicate to their business counterparts. The real benefits of the cloud will be realised by transforming not only the delivery of IT services but the corporate culture. VitAL May / June 2012 : VitAL 37

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VitAL PROCesses

Will Big Brother be watching you?

They know where you are and what you’re doing, but does the Government know what it’s doing? Rob Sheldon associate partner at law firm DWF assesses the implications of planned legislation to allow the authorities to monitor the online activity of everyone in the UK.

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hE GOvErnMEnT caused a stir recently when it announced plans to introduce legislation to allow authorities to monitor the online activity of everyone in the UK. It has been no surprise to see intensive lobbying from Mps, civil rights agencies and individuals whose rights would be affected by such ‘Big Brother’ proposals – but what do these developments tell us about the Government, its reactions to developments in technology, the way in which technology is used by society and the domestic legal system in general? when the proposed legislation was first announced, nobody had seen the detailed rights which the Government was seeking to introduce – which in itself, led to a negative reaction. It appeared from initial reports that law enforcement agencies would have the unfettered right to review content held by social media sites, but following clarification from Government officials, it seems that this would include, or constitute, the tracking of relationships between individuals by monitoring the flow, timing and location from which messages are sent and received through social media channels. This means that given the geolocation capability of smart phones and tablets, it could be determined where you are, when you’re there, who you are talking to and potentially (as this aspect is still unclear) what you’re saying.

A lack of clarity while the Government’s hastily presented clarifications are helpful in understanding the potential scope of the proposed rights, www.vital-mag.net

in practice, individuals and civil liberties groups, in particular, will remain concerned about the ability of law enforcement agencies to track this type of information which has the potential to be extremely intrusive and prejudicial to the rights of individuals. This is compounded by the lack of clarity as to whether or not the proposed rights would be subject to obtaining a warrant – this has important implications as the warrant requirement provides a further safeguard to the rights of individuals.

Again, this lack of clarity has further fuelled the growing and almost unanimous negative response to the Government’s proposals. similarly, the timing of such proposals in wake of the public outcry from the UK’s phone-hacking scandal (where private communications between individuals were intercepted and utilised by third parties) is regrettable.

For all of these reasons, it’s essential that the Government provides detailed proposals on the rights which it is seeking to enshrine into english law, as this will have a knock-on effect in terms of evaluating the adequacy of existing legislation which provides similar powers – such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – as well as those laws that are in place to protect individuals – for example, the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act.

This lack of clarity has further fuelled the growing and almost unanimous negative response to the Government’s proposals.

new legislation Before any new legislation can be successfully implemented, relevant bodies, such as the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO), would need to assess the potential impact of it on individuals and their statutory rights May / June 2012 : VitAL 39

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As we stand, it is likely that these proposals will take several years of drafting, reviews and consultation before they are enshrined into law – by which time, we will probably be looking at new uses of technology, in respect of which the current proposals may no longer be adequate.

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regarding the use of their personal data by third parties.

Similarly, those directly affected by the proposals will need to consider the implications of the proposals for their business and the commercial and technological challenges which they may present. Many of those businesses affected will be social media sites that do not charge for use of their services, but may be required to introduce new systems, processes and personnel in order to deal with these types of requests for information – adding further overheads to their business.

Despite the issues that the proposed legislation has raised, it does provide a good working example of how the checks and balances which are built into the Parliamentary system continue to work in the modern age.

While the Government will be left frustrated at not being able to push through the proposals in the name of national security, it is right and proper that proposals which may have far-reaching implications for the rights of individuals, are clearly articulated and subject to scrutiny by all interested parties before they become law.

Keeping pace Generally, however, this debate highlights the way in which the Government and legislators are struggling to keep pace not only with digital developments, but also with the way in which people now use technology as part of their everyday lives and how laws should be developed to deal with such developments.

What is clear from this episode is that attempts to rush through legislation in the name of national security will not go unnoticed or unopposed, particularly where the rights of individuals may be eroded as a result.

During the riots last year, much was made of the way in which social-media enabled the rioters to rapidly share information on both a local and national scale, and the Government’s proposals seem, in part, to be a reaction to this event.

Whilst not necessarily the most appropriate course of action, had the Government introduced the proposals in the immediate aftermath of the riots, they may have gained more immediate positive reactions from the public, or at least a slightly more sympathetic response. However, as we stand, it is likely that these proposals will take several years of drafting, reviews and consultation before they are enshrined into law – by which time, we will probably be looking at new uses of technology, in respect of which the current proposals may no longer be adequate. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

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VitAL PROCesses

Riding the wave of IT consumerisation Ewen Anderson at Centralis explains how organisations can manage consumerisation in an efficient and secure manner, boosting productivity and employee satisfaction while delivering on longer-term strategic objectives.

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new generation of computing devices and employees is driving a change in the way IT departments and organisations interface with their employees (and those devices). The need for a more flexible delivery model challenges traditional approaches to delivering corporate applications and securing data.

Much has been made of the wave of consumerisation sweeping across the corporate landscape. New devices and applications are being adopted irrespective of whether they have support from the IT department or the blessing of senior management. Social media and rich content (audio and video) are also crossing into the business space, as the new ‘echo’ generation of employees expect to be able to create and consume information and content on-demand using the most appropriate (or inappropriate) device they choose.

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Whether it be a smart phone (and iPhone in particular), tablet PC (namely an iPad) or laptop (or even a highly unfashionable netbook), employees are increasingly accessing both social media and business applications on the move, often connecting their devices to multiple screens when in the office to access desktop real estate for highperformance graphical or documentary work.

This blurring of their working and private lives means that consumerisation now embraces much more than simply the concept of bring your own (BYO) laptop devices in the work place.

Firms recognise the benefits of boosting productivity and satisfaction by providing employees with the tools to work more flexibly, but also see the inherent conflict between the freedom of enabling them to work where they want versus the IT department’s desire to lock everything down and control it. For firms looking to benefit from rather, than stifle or control, consumerisation, there is now much greater complexity in managing devices, securing corporate data and enforcing acceptable usage policies.

IT was acceptable in the ’80s Consumerisation has been around for some time, but the rising level of employee’ expectation has thrust it to the top of the corporate agenda. Today, it is not unusual for there to be three generations working within an organisation: the ‘Baby Boomers’ (1946 to 1964); ‘Generation X’ (1965 to 1979); and the ‘Echo Generation’ (1980 to 1990) – with the latter being the primary driver of consumerisation. Typically, they have a smart phone, a laptop and potentially a tablet PC and are using social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube at all times of day. When they enter the workplace, they expect this exact same level of ‘service’.

Similarly, there is a growing demand from C-level executives, marketing and training

In a survey of more than 2,600 information workers and 550 IT administrators in nine countries earlier this year, IDC found that 76 percent of IT staff said they had no plans over the next 12 months to modify internal business applications for tablets and smartphones.

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All of the above must be aligned with communications strategy that promotes employee understanding and buy-in and ensures their expectations and needs are being met.

The IT department will need to learn to market itself as the enabler of choice and change, rather being seen as a rather dull combination of plumber and traffic warden.

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professionals for the ability to deliver rich media to staff wherever they are. However, applications such as video conferencing have been confined to just a few rooms equipped with cameras and screens. Given that many people use Skype regularly at home, the growing gap between the expectations of staff and the ability of IT teams to deliver is apparent.

The majority of workplaces continue to be predicated on the 1980s concept of computing – ie there is a desktop computer, a keyboard, a monitor and telephone – and the employee is expected to sit there and do their job. Employee access to certain types of websites is often restricted and social media is most likely blocked altogether.

Furthermore, access to corporate applications and data has remained tethered to the PC. In a survey of more than 2,600 information workers and 550 IT administrators in nine countries earlier this year, IDC found that 76 percent of IT staff said they had no plans over the next 12 months to modify internal business applications for tablets and smartphones.

Striking a balance Firms are responding to the march of consumerisation by implementing security and usage policies designed to allow employees more freedom in moving between devices. Yet significant tensions remain because the level of security demanded by IT teams can often lock-down devices (particularly laptops) to the extent they are rendered barely usable.

If firms are overly restrictive, employees can react badly, refusing to work flexibly or by finding workarounds. A common scenario is where a user emails a file to a webmail account and saves the attachment back to their local drive if their corporate laptop has been locked to prevent them from saving files locally. In this scenario, potentially sensitive data is leaving the confines of corporate IT and becomes both a security risk and a potential breach in regulatory compliance.

By its very definition, an element of risk has to be introduced if users are to be given flexible access to information. Consumerisation therefore becomes a question of how organisations configure and manage the interface between the user and the device, as well as how much control it retains over the devices being used and the data being accessed. The solution lies in finding an appropriate way of managing the device

to ensure that all data is encrypted, that the device has an anti-virus solution and that there is an acceptable usage policy applied that also makes provisions for a certain amount of personal usage.

The delivery model varies from one end of the spectrum to the other depending on type of organisation and job function. For example, utilities currently equip engineers with laptops that are completely locked down and ‘cloned’ to create a standardised, highlyrugged build that can be mass produced and distributed in an efficient and secure manner. Conversely, a full consumerisation model allows knowledge-based workers to consume and create information on the move from any end-point device.

Rise of the virtual machines Desktop transformation using virtual computing in the broadest sense (as opposed to just VDI) provides firms with the flexibility to fit their IT delivery model to that of corporate strategy. As the name suggests, with virtual computing, a virtual machine can exist in complete isolation to the ‘client desktop’, allowing applications and data to be run locally on the device, centrally in the datacentre – or both. Each layer of ‘compute’ is separated – typically via a public, private or hybrid cloud – and then delivered to the device on demand. Once the user is authenticated, their virtual desktop interface comprising the mix of operating system, local and central applications and user personalisation is presented to the device.

Application data is then delivered from the cloud on the fly.

Any of these layers (interface, applications, data) can be stored completely separate of the device and all layers can be kept completely independent of each other to ensure that the applications and the data can be delivered from different places and onto different devices without conflicting with each other. In this way, the device can be passed from person to person without their ‘fingerprint’ being left on the device. In addition, any layer can also be stored locally on the device, depending on the type of data the user requires when they are offline (ie not connected to the Internet).

Here, the use of offline virtualisation computing environments will start to become more prevalent, whereby virtual machines run on a device with application data made available locally but then synchronised back to the corporate network when connected. Crucially, all data must be encrypted in this model. www.vital-mag.net

VitAL PROCesses

The major advantage with virtual computing is that a firm can create a ‘standard’ build without having to worry about the hardware build of the device itself (ie network card, graphics card, etc). This means that the firm can have a small number of builds linked to work types, rather than having a build for each work type and each laptop type, which is where all the complexity otherwise creeps in. Having a virtualised build allows firms to create a single image that can be deployed onto any laptop or other device. It is then possible to test against any application set, manage it centrally and, as soon as that virtualised build connects to the network, updates are applied automatically.

A question of strategy Virtual computing takes the concept of consumerisation to the level where an organisation is able to provide a new employee with a device and user ID on their first day at the office, and deliver them a complete desktop environment once they have entered

their authentication details and password. when the employee hands that device back, there is no trace of their identity or application data left on it. similarly, if the employee brings their own device into work, they can access corporate systems from that device and have all of their applications presented on it, rather than physically being stored on it. If the device is subsequently lost or stolen, the firm is assured that their corporate information remains safe.

Before embarking on a desktop transformation however, it is crucial that firms understand what it is they want to achieve.

They need to take a three to five year view of working patterns and how these might change, eg whether they are looking to support an increase in home or flexible working, or enable the use of rich media and hot-desking in the office.

It is crucial to link their application and desktop strategy to their operational and strategic plans to assess what is critical to

the organisation from an application, device and a security perspective – ie, what information has to be controlled and reported on from a compliance perspective and how this aligns with the operational needs of both end users and the business. Regarding the latter, the links between IT strategy and all aspects of business continuity, disaster recovery and the green agenda are all becoming more important.

Finally, all of the above must be aligned with communications strategy that promotes employee understanding and buy-in and ensures their expectations and needs are being met. The IT department will need to learn to market itself as the enabler of choice and change, rather being seen as a rather dull combination of plumber and traffic warden.

Using desktop virtualisation to get the underlying delivery technology right and providing it reliably may not make the IT department cool – but it will serve the changing needs of the organisation and its employees in the coming years... VitAL

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May / June 2012 : VitAL 45

VitAL PROCesses

The power of feedback FeeFo is an online customer feedback forum which acts for some of the biggest names in multi-channel selling. The company’s customer service director Ed Lennox believes that reacting quickly and decisively to customer experiences, both good and bad, can have an enormous impact on your business.

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S InTErACTIOn with the customer becomes more remote than ever – whether it’s a distant voice feeding into a call centre or a faceless online purchase – any semblance of customer service appears to have disappeared with it. With the advent of giant service desks and internet shopping, businesses have managed to hide behind the mystery to ensure that complaints often fall on deaf ears.

But times are changing. Indeed, many of the more progressive companies out there are actually harnessing their feedback and using 46 VitAL : May / June 2012

it as a force for good – regardless of whether the response is good or bad. while online retailers lead the way in sourcing feedback from customers, service desks and help desks are starting to follow suit.

Technology was always likely to get in the way of human interaction but it seems that the days when the customer was always right are far behind us. not only this, but many businesses actually don’t want to listen to the customer at all, even though their feedback can help you dramatically improve your service. www.vital-mag.net

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Those that do listen to the customer are reaping the rewards of their open-door policy, but Service Desk and Help Desk organisations are lagging behind retailers in using the feedback to streamline their operation.

Feedback in the call centre A lot of call centres have a fairly rudimentary approach to feedback, asking leading questions which never give a true picture of their service. They learn less and change nothing. Naturally, if you ask people to give their thoughts on the service they’ve received and you don’t limit what they say, you are far more likely to get an accurate picture of how an individual or a business has performed. And then, when you publish that – warts and all – on your website, customers will be able to make their minds up for themselves on what kind of business you are. However, many service desks still lag behind the retail and travel sectors.

We need to simplify the process of feedback.

I think Sky and Orange have both had a go at this but certainly Orange customers will now be familiar with the multi-text response you have to give if you want to participate in feedback. Again, the problem with this is it’s so completely and utterly laborious. Noone wants to send five texts back to say they liked Gavin in the call centre. It’s much simpler for them to send an email and get the survey completed in one go.

Burying the bad news But no-one likes criticism and there is a perception that bosses always want to ‘bury the bad news’ and while I am sure it is true in some cases it really is just more of an urban myth among established and reputable firms. www.vital-mag.net

Most bosses value complaints and often look forward to them more than a pat on the back particularly as it helps to head off a major problem before it does untold damage to a business. The only way a boss can retain a customer who is unhappy is if they know about it and are able to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Most businesses are realistic enough to realise an operation may not run seamlessly all the time. But they also know that a business is measured as much by how it deals with those problems as it is by the services it provides.

The issue for them now is not getting complaints but how to encourage responsible and transparent feedback that is beneficial to both the customer and the business. With the emergence of Twitter and other social media the way we complain has changed and bosses also want feedback to come straight to them rather than having to search it out. I would also encourage service desks to publish this feedback on their websites – showing the world what their customers think of them.

Those that do listen to the customer are reaping the rewards of their open-door policy, but Service Desk and Help Desk organisations are lagging behind

Optimising the search engine This honest and transparent approach has already been proven to have a massive uplift in consumer confidence but, thanks to Feefo’s partnership with Google in which service ratings are shown in search as gold stars, it also helps search engine optimisation.

Online retailers have cottoned on to this quickly. They are getting the best of both worlds – using the feedback to help streamline their business as well as give them a better Google ranking.

So how do you deal with customers?

Here are some tips for how to make the most of feedback: Interaction: Talk to people as if they were standing in front of you and make them realise that their feedback is important.

retailers in using the feedback to streamline their operation.

May / June 2012 : VitAL 47

VitAL PROCesses

Customers can’t be fobbed off just because they’re emailing from America and you’re in Tunbridge wells. Instead of seeing complaining customers as an annoyance, use them to create a positive message. If you win someone over with word and deed you’ll have a customer for life and a fervent supporter.

There could easily be a system where an email pops in to your inbox within two seconds of you putting down the call.

Be honest: A rumour that spreads on Facebook or Twitter about your business cannot be stopped by legal means – no one makes friends by suing their customers – and any response will be greeted with the thought that ‘they would say that, wouldn’t they’. There is only one way to respond to this, which is to be entirely open about any genuine mistake you have made, and be prepared to take action and make amends.

Then, when a false accusation is made, you can point to your record and maintain the dialogue. deal with it: People are much more interested in the customer service than they are the product. Products are generally good across most of the big names but it’s the service that can be defining, especially if the product is exactly the same. A poor customer interaction may not necessarily leave someone fuming but they may not return.

On the flip side, if something goes wrong and it’s corrected by great customer service then that person may return again and again. Don’t sweep bad reviews under the carpet, deal with them.

Bad reviews can be good: Most businesses are realistic enough to realise an operation may not run seamlessly all the time. But they also know that a business is measured as much by how it deals with those problems as it is by the services it provides.

The issue for them now is not getting complaints but how to encourage responsible 48 VitAL : May / June 2012

and transparent feedback that is beneficial to both the customer and the business. with the emergence of Twitter and other social media the way we complain has changed and bosses also want feedback to come straight to them rather than having to search it out. Good reviews are fabulous but bad reviews can help grow your business too – as long as you listen to your customers and do something about it.

Understand the power of the consumer: People always used to say word of mouth was the strongest marketing tool. now that word of mouth can spread across the globe in the click of a mouse, that saying is even more important. Customers can’t be fobbed off just because they’re emailing from America and you’re in Tunbridge wells.

Instead of seeing complaining customers as an annoyance, use them to create a positive message. If you win someone over with word and deed you’ll have a customer for life and a fervent supporter. make changes: There will always be companies which worry about feedback but the real pioneers are the ones using it to shape their business and evolve as a result.

If you have a number of feedbacks about poor facilities or products, do something about it. Don’t pretend they don’t exist. Feefo enables you to see the root of the problem straight away so you can tackle it instantly too. encouraging feedback from customers helps reduce barriers and enables businesses to react instantly and build that ‘High street’ rapport. It doesn’t matter if that feedback is good or bad – you can learn from it all. VitAL www.feefo.com www.vital-mag.net

VitAL PROCesses

Critical and cloudy There are many challenges when deploying business critical applications in the cloud, Clive Grayson, director of service strategy at Attenda, looks at some of the key ones.

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hILE CLOUD computing is now well established as a route to greater flexibility, efficiency and capital expenditure reduction, not all organisations yet feel ready to transition their business critical applications to a cloud environment.

Entrusting these applications to the cloud – those without which your business simply could not operate – means that availability, recoverability security and performance are all of paramount importance. For these applications, be they CrM, or Erp, off the shelf or custom built, a one-size-fits-all approach is not sufficient.

Here we explore the key factors involved in deploying business critical applications to the cloud. For example what questions should be asked of your provider; from the cloud infrastructure and service processes, and 50 VitAL : May / June 2012

issues such as application optimisation, to the service Level Agreement (sLAs) contract and the way that the account will be managed. with more variables to consider, do critical business applications require different and specialised infrastructure solutions and what skills and expertise are required from your provider?

What is ‘business critical’?

Firstly, it’s important to be clear what is meant by ‘business critical’. If an organisation needs an application to be highly available (during specified time periods not necessarily 24x7x365) then, by definition, it is business critical for that organisation, regardless of its purpose.

For such applications, the key factors that need to be addressed are availability, recoverability, security and performance. www.vital-mag.net

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Generally, recoverability will go hand-inhand with availability as will security, in order not to compromise the availability of the application or the data on which it relies, and these characteristics must be delivered with appropriate and acceptable performance to end users.

There are many definitions of the cloud, but here we focus on externally hosted, public clouds where management of capacity, patching, changes and releases, for the entire infrastructure stack below the application itself, is delivered by an external provider.

The characteristics which collectively characterise the cloud are: • Service-based delivery using internet techniques; • Shared infrastructure; • Elasticity and scalability; • ‘Metered’ consumption model and associated payment.

This is the scenario where organisations will have most concern regarding cloud deployment but many of the issues raised will also be relevant for an internally hosted private cloud environment, where the organisation itself performs the majority of the associated infrastructure management activities.

applications in mind, so ensure that the environment is fit for purpose.

Further, for business critical applications, a provider’s knowledge of, and experience in, running specific applications such as SAP, becomes more important, so that the infrastructure can be appropriately architected to satisfy the criticality requirements.

By its nature, the cloud infrastructure introduces unique challenges; it is more dynamic than traditional in house IT operations and so there is more potential for continual change in the underlying infrastructure allocated to your application to meet its varying demands. A cloud provider is likely to take full advantage of their virtualisation platform, adding further variables to the mix – for example, when an application’s virtual resources migrate dynamically across the provider’s underlying physical environment.

With more variables to consider, it’s also important to work with your provider to understand how application performance optimisation will be delivered, if at all, to ensure that the user experience is not compromised, and that the applications you need perform to the required standard when it most matters to your business.

Infrastructure

Service Level Agreements and contracts

The first key consideration is to choose your cloud carefully so that you work with a provider who is as transparent as possible concerning their infrastructure and service processes, so allowing you to determine a good understanding of the overall solution architecture for your applications.

For business critical applications, it may be important to select a provider who will allow a degree of customisation on how the cloud infrastructure is architected, and how their service ‘wrap’ is delivered to you, in order for you to be confident that the provider is able to deliver the service levels they claim.

From the outset, establishing a close relationship with a provider is important so that they fully understand the types of applications that will be running; cloud providers deliver environments for many different purposes, from test and development to those specifically designed with critical www.vital-mag.net

Essentially, the ‘cloud environment ‘ is another piece of your infrastructure and it needs to be given the same consideration as you would for any environment you run in-house.

This means having the assurance, through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and the contract with your provider, that the service you sign up to meets the levels of availability, recoverability and performance required.

For example, can your provider deliver the required security compliance for standards such as PCI DSS? This is where carrying out due diligence on all aspects of service provision comes in, and it’s important to think in terms of ‘worst case’ scenarios. For example, when it comes to disaster recovery, establish where your organisation’s applications fit in the ‘queue’ should the provider have a problem with their infrastructure. Ensure you know where

The key factors that need to be addressed are availability, recoverability, security and performance.

Generally, recoverability will go hand-in-hand with availability as will security, in order not to compromise the availability of the application or the data on which it relies, and these characteristics must be delivered with appropriate and acceptable performance to end users.

May / June 2012 : VitAL 51

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For business critical applications, a provider’s knowledge of, and experience in, running specific applications such as SAP, becomes more important, so that the infrastructure can be appropriately architected to satisfy the criticality requirements.

52 VitAL : May / June 2012

your organisation is prioritised, and how quickly you could be up and running again in the event of a service outage. Issues such as this can make a significant difference when you’re waiting for applications, on which your business and customers rely, to come back online.

In addition, think about the consumption model when agreeing the contract and, specifically, the level of fixed and variable capacity required; on-demand services are paid for at a premium price over predetermined, committed levels of consumption.

Similarly, consider the flexibility of the contract itself; requirements may change over time so be wary of getting locked into long contracts that don’t give you the option to move provider should you need to. Flexibility should also be considered in terms of ‘data portability’, for example, should you wish to change provider, could you get access to all the data that they hold?

Of course it’s not only how your data is managed, but also where it is stored that is increasingly important in today’s compliancedriven landscape. In terms of contracts, it is not enough to know the stored location of data, but also the location of the support and monitoring functions of the infrastructure.

In a wider context, this aspect of ‘data sovereignty’ is also important for all applications not only business critical ones. You should find out if the contract allows you to specify where data should go, either temporarily – such as for access – or permanently, in the course of fulfilling supporting and monitoring functions – for example, will your data pass through a geographic jurisdiction for ‘issue resolution’? This is of particular importance for government entities and for compliance with data protection legislation.

Finally, a word of caution about service credits; these are offered by providers as a refund should the service fall below a contractually agreed level. While it’s important to ensure that a provider has an attractive service credit regime, clients should be confident, through their own due diligence

(addressing issues highlighted earlier), that the circumstances triggering the need for service credits never arise.

Account relationships One of the less tangible, yet no less important, aspects of a providers’ service, is to ensure that clients are valued, and that the relationship is managed professionally. As anyone who has encountered issues with a third party supplier can testify, trust and confidence in a provider can be dented, on the basis of a poorly managed relationship or less than satisfactory service from staff, precisely at the point when it is most needed; when an issue arises.

Equally, no customer likes to feel that they’re just one of many, so it’s important to ask at the outset if there will be a dedicated account manager, so that if you have concerns or need more substantive advice on a particular aspect of your cloud deployed applications, that you have access to this. Ultimately, people do business with people they trust, and this factor cannot be underestimated when it comes to appointing a third party to manage your critical applications. Unfortunately, all too often, it’s not until you have an issue which requires resolving that you really understand exactly where you fit as a priority with your provider.

Cloud computing offers many advantages but also, as it’s still relatively new, there are no all encompassing ‘best practices’. Knowledge and good planning are both key and ‘one size’ does not fit all. This is true not only of the infrastructure itself, but also the definition of the managed service provided and associated SLAs, and even the way in which the relationship is managed by a provider.

All of these issues become magnified when it comes to entrusting business critical applications to a third party, however , by asking the right questions and understanding the way in which the cloud environment is designed and managed, you will be better equipped to make the most informed decisions about your most important resources. VitAL www.attenda.com www.vital-mag.net

VitAL PROCesses

Is the cloud right for your business?

Even though many IT service providers are still touting cloud services as a silver bullet that can solve every business challenge, that’s really not an accurate portrayal according to Robert Rutherford, managing director of QuoStar Solutions. Although cloud can do many things, he says, it definitely isn’t a one size fits all solution...

54 VitAL : May / June 2012

www.vital-mag.net

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s a company that regularly consults on traditional IT services as well as those based in the cloud, we can speak with some authority when it comes to cloud computing. Even though many IT service providers are still touting cloud services as a silver bullet that can solve every business challenge, that’s really not an accurate portrayal. Although cloud can do many things, it definitely isn’t a one size fits all solution, and so it isn’t right for every business.

Despite all the hype at the moment, cloud isn’t some jaw-dropping new technology. In fact, a lot of the hype around cloud is actually, well, just hype. We now seem to have every man and his dog trying to provide and resell cloud services to fill a demand, from phone system companies and printing machine firms – it’s just insane. Cloud certainly has its uses, but you shouldn’t be tempted to give in to a herd mentality that creates a sense of urgency in order to drum up sales.

It’s important to remember that cloud is just a tool, no different from say, a new server or some new software. For example, think about it this way: just because you’ve bought 30 new Apple Macs for your product design studio, does that mean you should roll them out to your entire business? Of course not. It’s the same with cloud services: they have their uses, but as with any other business decision, you need to have a clear idea about what your company’s plans and objectives are for the short, medium and long term.

Having said all that, there aren’t many businesses that we can think of where a cloud service of one type or another wouldn’t deliver a business gain – but some planning and forethought will go a long way towards gaining the maximum benefit from this model.

Some questions to ask yourself Before rushing into a solution that includes cloud-based services, you need to make sure that you clearly understand the benefits and drawbacks of all the different options available. So, for example, have your business and its operations been analysed in suitable depth by the provider in question? Has a clear www.vital-mag.net

business case been presented as a result?

This kind of in-depth analysis is vital before rushing into any decisions.

Likewise, you’ll need to think about whether there are likely to be any changes to your business in the foreseeable future, and consider how these might impact your chosen solution. For example, say that you are thinking about opening a second (or third, or fourth) office in a new location. What options do you have for sharing your IT systems with employees in this new location, both in and out of the cloud, and what are the pros and cons of each? And what will the true costs of these options be over the term of the contract or life of the solution?

In order to determine these figures accurately, you’ll need to consider any extra costs that may arise, such as the need for new network connections and/or additional internal resources – especially as some of these costs may be avoidable in some cases. If your business doesn’t need additional services such as maintenance support and hardware loan, for example, it might be worth considering your own ‘private cloud’, which you can manage yourself.

Last but not least, you’ll also need to think about what your exit costs are going to be if you choose to abandon your cloud solution for any reason – not just contractually, but also in terms of pulling off data and systems and migrating them to another vendor or back in-house. This scenario is not uncommon, and it will require some foresight and advanced planning in order to avoid unnecessary disruption and to achieve the best results.

Having said all that, there aren’t many businesses that we can think of where a cloud service of one type or another wouldn’t deliver a business gain – but some planning and forethought will go a long way towards gaining the maximum benefit from this model.

Questions to ask your cloud provider There are many different vendors offering cloud computing solutions at the moment, which means that it’s harder than ever to know what is best for your business. If you’re planning to host your most precious data and systems in the cloud, it’s important to know a bit about your provider. At the very least, you’ll need to make sure that the company is financially stable, and that it has a proven track record in delivering services May / June 2012 : VitAL 55

VitAL PROCesses

via the cloud. The most professional cloud vendors should be more than happy to show you what certifications and accreditations they hold, and so if they don’t offer this information, then ask for it.

Another important area to check is service Level Agreements (sLAs): what are they, and what happens if the provider doesn’t meet them? you should also ask about the provider’s business continuity plans: what if the provider’s central data centre experiences disaster or failure? Does the company have adequate measures in place to protect your data and business operations? All of these potential scenarios should be considered in advance, rather than waiting for any problems to occur.

Another good tip is to ask for a trial, or at least a fully functional demonstration. newer companies, in particular, may not fully understand their IT needs yet. Agreeing to a trial before signing a contract can often let you see the benefits of outsourcing elements of your IT operations and using the cloud and, if you decide it’s not benefitting your business as you’d hoped, you can decide against signing a contract.

Lastly, when talking to potential cloud providers, ask them for client testimonials or even to be put in touch with some of their clients so that you can ask questions and discuss any concerns with them directly.

in migrating any system or service to the cloud, and mistakes in this area tend to be the most costly. Likewise, the correct levels of security and resilience are also sometimes overlooked when choosing a cloud computing vendor or solution.

For example, it’s quite common for organisations to over-specify their cloud solutions, as if they were buying a server that will need to last for the next three years.

People often forget that the beauty of cloud is that it allows you to flex your operations and only to pay for what you are using at any given moment.

Vendor selection is critical in this regard, as there are many providers flooding into the market and simply chasing the cash at the moment. As such, you will need to undertake a rigorous selection process in order to determine whether a move to the cloud is the right solution for your business.

After all, the cloud isn’t the only option out there: traditional in-house server options can be just as suitable in many cases, and if it’s a ‘price per month’ you’re looking for, then there are always finance options available.

It’s very important to keep all these areas in clear focus, as it’s simpler and usually cheaper to address these issues at the beginning of any agreement, rather than having to re-engineer them at a later date.

Some hidden dangers to avoid

get the most out of your investment

Unfortunately, a move to the cloud takes more than just a click of the fingers, and so it is also important to ask about data migration, right from the start: will the supplier help you with your migration into the cloud – and back again, if necessary?

It’s not uncommon for companies to misjudge the complexity and/or time involved 56 VitAL : May / June 2012

The biggest selling point of cloud computing is that, in many cases, you can gain access to enterprise-class systems with fewer upfront capital costs, easier implementation requirements, and lower on-going maintenance costs compared with similar inhouse solutions.

However, if the cloud solution doesn’t interface with other vendors and solutions then you should definitely think twice before going ahead. Likewise, you should always know your exit strategy from your cloud service provider before you go in.

Cloud services are still a whole new entity for many service providers, so you’ll also need to make sure that your provider is proven and that its infrastructure and security is solid. Also, if buying from an international provider, you should check whether its support function is available (and adequate) during UK business hours.

The upside of increased competition in this area means that cloud providers are offering increasingly competitive prices for services like these, many now offer 24/7 support services and more advanced infrastructure options – including granular and continuous data back-up, disaster recovery options, high-availability, complex security solutions, as well as flexible resources – for a set cost. Individually, services like these can often be expensive and complicated to implement, especially for smaller companies that do not have the capital or internal capacity (expertise and resource) to handle this work themselves.

Again, even though cloud isn’t always the right solution for every business, that doesn’t mean that you should steer away from cloud altogether. Instead, make sure that you are clear on all of the options, and consider inhouse, your own private cloud and a hybrid solution, as well.

As with any IT system, as long as a cloudbased solution has been chosen through careful analysis and tailored to meet your company’s specific needs, the results can be both impressive and completely game-changing. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

VitAL EYES on

Data castles in the cloud – how safe?

Following on from the last Eyes On column about Safer Internet Day, Jonathan Westlake examines whether the cloud can help make the Internet safer.

As with any IT system, as long as a cloudbased solution has been chosen through careful analysis and tailored to meet your company’s specific needs, the results can be both impressive and completely game-changing.

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am resisting the temptation to define what ‘cloud’ means as I think enough has been written on the concept and the benefits of the cloud. Suffice to say the word cloud appears at all the IT shows at present and can be found in most magazines. I have been somewhat dissatisfied with the discussion to date however. For example, I read one article recently which didn’t actually tell me anything other than there is a thing called the cloud and everyone (individuals and firms) should be using it.

Interestingly, recent research shows that 35 percent of companies are intending on planning a cloud implementation in 201213. There is clear evidence that cloud computing technologies are now a serious option for business use. so adoption of cloud is on the increase and research shows that cost saving is one factor as well as access via the public WAn (the Internet). But I want to go into the detail of what I’m getting if I decide to adopt a cloud approach for my business. I need an example to assess the pitfalls as well as the good news. so I held a review of technologies that I currently use which can be counted as being in the cloud. Among the list I included Dropbox and here is one cloud offering that can be used as a model and to assess how safe it is. I’ve been a keen user of Dropbox for some time now. I use it to store and share documents via its cloudbased data storage system. Dropbox is well worth exploring and has proved to be very popular worldwide. It is also free! Security in the cloud is, of course, a major challenge. A balance has to be reached between access and security. From my point of view not all data needs the same level of protection and I evaluate data before I move it to the cloud.

For sensitive date there is one solution that stands out – cryptography, which can be the subject of a future Eyes-on column, but for now it is sufficient to say it makes data unreadable without an associated key.

Dropbox does provide security features but for sensitive data I tend to encrypt it before I drop it. BoxCryptor is a free (up to 2gb) solution worth a look at as it allows a way of combining fail-safe security with the advantages of cloud storage.

In conclusion if you are thinking of using the cloud for aspects of your business or for private use then adopt the same approach I took above. Ignore the hype and focus on a particular need coupled with satisfying yourself that security is as you would want it to be. I am confident that my data castles in the cloud are safe and I can rest easy. VitAL Useful references/resources: Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/ BoxCryptor: http://www.boxcryptor.com/ March / April 2012 : VitAL 57

VitAL PLAneT

Is flexible working the way of the future?

The current state of technology and the access to broadband services have made flexible/remote working achievable for most employers.

Taking in the environment, employee health and morale and compliance with European Working Time Directives, Emma Clark a senior associate at Fox Solicitors make the case for flexible working.

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n A recent speech to the Demos thinktank, UK Deputy prime Minister nick Clegg said that the Government wanted to examine the option of extending flexible working beyond mums and dads. he talked about extending flexible leave to grandparents or close family friends in order to make it “much more common – a cultural norm”.

The law currently restricts the right to request flexible working to parents with children under 17 (or 18 if the child is disabled) or to carers. sometimes such a request can stall or, at worst, end careers. It is often sensible for working parents to mention at interview stage that they want to work flexibly, 58 VitAL : May / June 2012

whether it is working four days a week, asking for a job share partner or leaving on a certain number of days to collect children from school. Refusing these requests can result in an unnecessary loss of talent. An employer is fully entitled to refuse such a request on the basis of a “genuine business ground” such as the negative effect on customer demand, quality or performance or due to the effect on existing staff.

Loyalty & morale As we have read many times before, flexible working can instil immense loyalty in workers and improve staff morale. This is often seen by www.vital-mag.net

vital planet

management as a ‘nice’ employee relations exercise and something that firmly falls within the remit of human resources. Yet, true change should come from management. There are many positive business advantages of flexible/ remote working and the real-life examples detailed below illustrate the benefits. Now is the time to consider extending the option of flexible working beyond the current legal remit.

Remote working does not mean working from a kitchen table surrounded by noisy children and builders. It means working anywhere that is not the firm’s physical office assisted by the use of skype, facetime and video conferencing to discuss matters with colleagues and clients.

Employers often argue that they cannot be certain their employees are working hard. There is an element of trust in every employment relationship. Unproductive people will find ways to procrastinate irrespective of whether they are remote working or gossiping with colleagues in the office. These issues should be managed through appropriate HR procedures.

Remote working provides an employer with access to new markets. If your employee wants to spend a couple of hours after school with their child to assist them with their homework or coach a sports team every Wednesday afternoon or pursue a passion for music by giving regular piano recitals, then why not let them take the afternoon off work and reach your American client market for four hours that evening? This will invariably deliver a better and extended service for clients in our age of amazing technological advancement.

The Olympian spirit Remote working can also have an enormous benefit in reducing sick days. According to a study of 24,000 IBM staff worldwide, employees who worked flexibly were able to work an additional 19 hours a week before they experienced the same levels of stress as those who did not work flexibly. Reducing current levels of sickness is key for any employer and the positive effects of flexible and remote working could therefore result in a win-win situation. www.vital-mag.net

The upcoming Olympics will bring passion and excitement to London and the whole of the UK as well as its own set of employment challenges. Client demands will not cease while Bolt runs the 100 metre race. The sensible option is to ask your employees what they want from the Olympics. Treat them as grown ups and reach an understanding that they can, for example, watch certain races if they would want to do so as long as clients, suppliers and colleagues are unaffected.

There are many positive side effects that can arise from the Olympics, such as client and supplier bonding events or a team building event with a communal screen at the office.

Employers are being encouraged by the Department for Transport to manage the impact of an extra one million passengers hitting our busy transport systems over the Olympics. Staggering hours and working from home are obvious solutions to enable your clients to be serviced when they need immediate assistance rather than making your clients wait for staff to travel an extra hour to reach a desk in an office.

Why stop when Britain’s athletes parade (we hope!) their gold medals at the closing ceremony? Instead of returning to business as usual, why not embrace the flexibility in the workplace that might have been inspired by the employment challenges brought about by the Olympics?

Office space and the environment Remote working can manage the increasing high percentage of office space that employers fail to utilise. Companies, like BT, allow its staff to vary their hours for a range of different reasons. This has resulted in the need for less office space and BT claims to have saved £500 million. Remote working frees up this space and reduces what is often considered to be ‘dead commuting time’ especially when individuals need to change their mode of transportation a number of times in one journey in order to reach their office.

How about the environmental impact?

22 percent of UK domestic carbon emissions are from traffic. The Government is currently

Remote working does not mean working from a kitchen table surrounded by noisy children and builders.

It means working anywhere that is not the firm’s physical office assisted by the use of skype, facetime and video conferencing to discuss matters with colleagues and clients.

May / June 2012 : VitAL 59

vital planet

Remote working can manage the increasing high percentage of office space that employers fail to utilise.

Companies, like BT, allow its staff to vary their hours for a range of different reasons. This has resulted in the need for less office space and BT claims to have saved £500 million.

60 VitAL : May / June 2012

considering legislation to reduce parking spaces at work with Nottingham leading the way and imposing a ‘Workplace Parking Levy’.

With the ongoing focus on reducing carbon emission, remote working is a pragmatic solution and is certain to impress employees and shareholders.

Working time The Government has re-commenced the fight to prevent Europe from making our employees work less than 48 hours per week.

Trade unions and employer organisations (collectively called ‘the social partners’) are trying to reach an agreement on ‘working time’ issues by September 2012.

Currently, the UK’s Working Time Regulations 1998 which implement the European Working Time Directive (the ‘Regulations’) set out permitted exceptions to the prohibition on working more than 48 hours per week.

Many employers rely on the commonly used exception that senior executives and senior employees work ‘autonomously’ and as a result they can work as many hours as they want. This exception is used throughout the EU, especially in France and Italy. It is likely that this exemption will be retained but many employment practitioners often query whether some of their clients’ senior employees really do work ‘autonomously’.

The main debate in Europe relating to the Regulations is whether or not it will still allow the UK to ask its middle management and junior staff to sign a document, often attached to an employment contract, in which they agree to ‘opt out’ of the 48 hour working week. Although it is often hard to exceed the 48 hour working

week (as it applies over a rolling 17 week reference period), the fundamental aim of the restriction is to protect workers from the health and safety consequences of overworking.

Even if a worker has agreed to opt out, he/ she cannot be required to work excessively long hours if this would create a risk to his/her own health and safety. Employers are under a duty to protect their workers’ health and safety and while many working time policies seek to place the onus on the employee stating that they should not put their own health and safety at risk, it is for the employer to monitor and manage this issue. Under the Regulations, if an employee agrees to opt out of the 48 hour working week then the law currently states that the employer need only retain updated records of the names of those employees.

Flexible & remote Rather than rely on this stringent 48 hour working week or lose sleep over the health and safety liabilities that might arise if these hours are exceeded, employers could start to focus less on potential loopholes and consider offering employees the right to work flexibly and remotely.

Meeting clients and colleagues face-toface is hard to beat and should always be encouraged. However, all employers, whether large or small, should think imaginatively.

A strategic business decision that is led by members of management who want to move out of the Victorian era and embrace the benefits of ever-changing technology could change the workforce of the future. Employees should be judged by the results they achieve and not by presenteeism. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

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DIReCTORy

hornBill sYsTems

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infraVision

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BMC software’s #1 partner for service Desk express and the Alignability Process Model, delivering rapid implementation of proven ITIL aligned processes, procedures, work instructions and tool settings, and transformation to service-led approach in only 12 weeks!

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62 VitAL : May / June 2012

iCCm soluTions

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One of the overriding directives of ICCM solutions is the simplification of complexity in service Management environments. ICCM provides a global client base with sophisticated ITIL aligned service Management solutions built on Business Process Management (BPM) Architecture, from Metastorm BPM®.

iCore

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T: f: w: e: C:

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iCore is the largest specialist IT service Management Consultancy in the UK. ICore has a long & impressive track record in delivering & embedding pragmatic IT service management, solutions, relying on the deep, real world experience of our mature & determined consultancy team.

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Kepner-Tregoe provides consulting and training services to organizations worldwide. we collaborate with clients to implement their strategies by embedding problem-solving, decision-making, and project execution methods through individual and team skill development and process improvement. Clients build competitive advantage by using our systematic processes to achieve rapid, targeted results and create lasting value.

T: +44 (0) 1778 382270 f: +44 (0) 1778 382280 w: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk C: Colette reed e: colette@netsupportsoftware.co.uk netsupport provides a range of complementary Remote support and service Management solutions that help organisations deliver a productive and cost effective IT support service. Products include multi-platform Remote Control solution netsupport Manager, IT Asset Management suite netsupport DnA and web based ITIL service Management tool netsupport serviceDesk.

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APMG

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T: +44 (0) 1483 744444 F: +44 (0) 1483 744401 W: www.landesk.com C: Sarah Lewis E: sarah.lewis@avocent.com Avocent delivers IT operations management solutions that reduce operating costs, simplify management and increase the availability of critical IT environments 24/7 via integrated, centralized software. This includes Systems Management, Security Management, Data Centre Management and IT Service Management.

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May / June 2012 : VitAL 63

seCReTs OF My sUCCess

Maff Rigby founder of IT SmartDesk

Vital: name, company and job title please? Married? Kids? maff rigby: Maff Rigby, Founder of IT smartDesk. Recently married.

Vital: what got you started in IT? mr: I dropped out of my Chemistry PhD after one year, and was trying to find a career path that would interest me. My housemate at the time was a Java programmer and that seemed interesting, so I learned HTML and Javascript and started to make basic web pages. I loved being able to create something out of nothing, and constantly learning new things!

Vital: was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration? mr: On Demand Distribution – a Bristolbased startup selling digital music online, before the days of iTunes! I worked there for five years before its acquisition by nokia, and it was an amazing place to work! Great vision, product, environment and people! every day was a new challenge and opportunity to make a real difference to the company and to our customers.

Vital: what was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph? mr: I was the IT support / website guy for a small stockbroker firm in Manchester. I’d spend my days doing a bit of everything from building and fixing PCs to maintaining the company website. My first major IT triumph was managing their office move, setting up a new windows nT network from scratch and overseeing the installation of their trading systems, which included links to the stock exchange, clearing banks, and an IBM As400 system (which was too heavy for the lift).

64 VitAL : May / Junes 2012

Vital: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? what did you learn from them? mr: I make lots of mistakes, but try not to get too embarrassed by them. If you’re genuine about what you’re trying to do and learn from your mistakes then there is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Vital: what do you like best about your job? mr: we’re building something that we believe in, making a difference to an industry that we care about! every day brings new challenges and opportunities to learn more and improve what we’re doing, whilst seeing progress towards our targets.

Vital: what is your biggest ambition? mr: In business it’s to always be working towards a goal that I’m passionate about, and enjoying the journey along the way.

Vital: what are your hobbies or interests? mr: I’ve played the drums since I was 12, and for the past five years I’ve been playing in a 13-piece party band. I enjoy running and regularly take part in 10k and half-marathons, and play chess online to keep my brain active when I’m not working!

Vital: what is the secret of your success? mr: A desire to learn new things, a firm belief in controlling my own destiny and overcoming any obstacles along the way, and a resolution to celebrate the small victories and achievements in life as and when they happen!

We’re building something that we believe in, making a difference to an industry that we care about! Every day brings new challenges and opportunities to learn more and improve what we’re doing, whilst seeing progress towards our targets.

Vital: Maff Rigby, thank you very much.

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