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WHERE TECHNOLOGY MEANS BUSINESS

WWW.COMPUTERNEWSME.COM ISSUE 234 | JULY 2011

COURTING SUCCESS Abdulrahim Ahmad Al-Mudhareb, IT MANAGER, DUBAI COURTS

Dr. Ahmed Saeed Bin Hazeem, COO, DUBAI COURTS

Dubai Courts invests in technology to expand and improve service levels NETTING PROFITS Retail organisations are buying best-of-breed solutions

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I’m going global, that’s

my business plan

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Contents ISSUE 234 | JULY 2011

A congress for software

The second annual GCC Software Congress 2011 brought together multiple stakeholders from the IT industry to discuss the interlinking nature of business and IT strategy, and the future of software creation, delivery and adoption.

Partner up

Top notch speakers at the Reseller Conference 2011 covered a wide gamut of channel topics including upcoming technology trends, value addition, vendor-partner relationships, cash flow and social marketing.

Starting a conversation

Unlike virtually every other IT company, Genesys’ recent G-Force EMEA conference in Prague stayed resolutely away from technology, despite the recent release of a major upgrade to its core technology. Customers, benefits and industry trends were to the fore, Dave Reeder discovered.

Visualising IT

In a world abuzz with virtualisation technology, Intergence Systems’ first spin off Real Status has developed a technology called HyperGlance that enables effective visualisation of IT resources on a virtual platform. Intergence CEO Peter Job tells Pallavi Sharma how this technology came to be and what is yet to come.

IBM’s new future: quantum computing

Although quantum computing is seen as the distant future of computing, developers like IBM are already making significant strides in the development of this technology and discovering the challenges that will soon come to be associated with it.

Round-up

Fernand Rasetti, COO, Sage, a software development company serving the global financial industry to streamline processes for core banking operations, was in the UAE to attend the MEFTEC conference. In a chat with CNME, he discusses the company’s strategy in the coming months and how economic shocks are actually blessings in disguise.

FEATURES

Inevitable innovations As organisations across the world invest in a variety of applications to differentiate themselves from competitors, developers of these applications must stay one step ahead of technology trends to create solutions tailored for the task. CNME discovers the challenges that developers face when absorbing business and technology changes to adapt to new realities.

Structuring data

Comprehensive data management – bringing together structured and unstructured information – within an organisation is popularly touted as the next big frontier for companies. Sathya Mithra Ashok looks at how end users can choose and implement better with these solutions.

Netting profits

Retail organisations across the globe are investing in best of breed technologies to understand their customers’ preferences. This could potentially change the game Pallavi Sharma finds out.

Dubai Courts continues to invest in and grow its online presence as it works to expand and improve the services it offers to citizens and expats.

INTERVIEW 46 Banking on Sage

We bring you a quick round-up of IT industry news.

Courting success

INSIGHT 50 Ask the right questions

CNME presents some recommendations on the questions that customers should be asking potential cloud vendors before they put their names to the dotted line.

What we’re reading

We select from the best international technology blogs and books, and bring them to you.

EDITORIAL Publisher Dominic De Sousa

Not that quiet

Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor Talk to us: E-mail: sathya@cpidubai.com Twitter: @computernewsme Facebook: www.facebook.com/ computernewsme

COO Nadeem Hood Managing Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 4 4490126

It is the end of June, and if the heat is any indicator, we are back in the middle of summer in the Middle East. This is the time that most people in the industry take their vacations. Either they have already flown or are currently counting the days down to their holiday (like me). These are supposedly the quiet months of the year, when businesses wind down and take a breather from the hectic pace of the first quarter and gear up for what awaits them in the last two quarters. We, at CNME, are definitely enjoying the quiet that the next two months promise (we don’t have a single event), but we are also preparing for the activities that we have planned for the next phase. What are these activities exactly, you might ask. Well, there is our mega event on the cloud – Cloud Congress 2011 – which will take place between the 19th and the 21st of September. The Congress will bring together all stakeholders in the cloud industry – from vendors to end-users, consultants to partners and service providers – in an intensive three-day discussion on the technologies that support the cloud, its feasibility in Middle East enterprises and the challenges that end-users have to struggle with. The event will also include workshops by entrepreneurs that have implemented the cloud in their environments; they will discuss in detail the real-time issues of dealing with the cloud, in the cloud. Go to www.cloudcongressme.com for more details on the event and an updated agenda. Then, we have our second annual ICT Achievement Awards 2011. To be held on the 9th of October 2011, the first day of GITEX Technology Week, the Awards will honour the crème-de-la-crème of the industry across individuals, vendors and products, and deployments. The Awards, which brought together regional participants in the industry at a gala function last year, will achieve the same this year. We are inviting nominations for the Awards right now. The categories, details on the nomination process and the form itself can be downloaded from www.computernewsme.com/ ictachievementawards2011. We will also soon be launching our CIO Council – an online platform specially made for CIOs to get together and share ideas, experiences, knowledge and best practices. Besides this we have a couple of roundtables planned for September (one on security and the other pertaining to the retail sector). More details on all of those will be coming along real soon. So, as you can see, we are busy even through the purported quiet months. But it is all in the name of a good cause – the faster propagation of the Middle East along the IT industry’s maturity curve.

Sales Director Raz Islam raz@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9129 Editorial Dave Reeder dave@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409106 Senior Editor Sathya Mithra Ashok sathya@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409111 Sub-Editor Pallavi Sharma pallavi@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409103

Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409147 Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409146 Art Director Kamil Roxas kamil@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409112 Designer Analou Balbero analou@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409104 Photographer Cris Mejorada cris@cpidubai.com +971 4 4409108 DIGITAL SERVICES Digital Services Manager Tristan Troy P Maagma Web Developers Jerus King Bation Erik Briones Jefferson de Joya Louie Alma online@cpidubai.com +971 4 440 9100 Published by

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WHERE TECHNOLOGY MEANS BUSINESS

WWW.COMPUTERNEWSME.COM ISSUE 234 | JULY 2011

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COURTING SUCCESS AbdulrAhim AhmAd Al-mudhAreb, IT MANAGER, DUBAI COURTS

dr. Ahmed SAeed bin hAzeem, COO, DUBAI COURTS

DUbAI COURTS INvESTS IN TEChNOLOGY TO ExPAND AND IMPROvE SERvICE LEvELS NETTING PROfITS RETAIL ORGANISATIONS ARE bUYING bEST-Of-bREED SOLUTIONS

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INSIDE

STRUCTURING DATA

NEW-AGE APPLICATIONS

SOFTWARE CONGRESS 2011

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ANALYSIS month in view

A congress for software The second annual GCC Software Congress 2011 brought together multiple stakeholders from the IT industry to discuss the interlinking nature of business and IT strategy, and the future of software creation, delivery and adoption.

ast month, CNME conducted the second annual GCC Software Congress 2011. Following the success of the first Software Congress, the event brought together eminent speakers from large organisations to talk to a gathering of CIOs and senior IT decision makers from the region to discuss information technology and business strategy today and going forward.

Dr Hazem Turki El Khatib, CIO of the Department of Finance in Abu Dhabi

Dr Hazem Turki El Khatib, CIO of the Department of Finance in Abu Dhabi delivered the first keynote of the day, focusing on the ways to communicate the business value of IT. “The mission, vision and value of an IT department plays an important role in expressing the business value of IT. IT objectives have to support the business and IT risks have to be controlled. You can no longer just be a technology provider, and have to evolve into a strategic partner. IT has to play a dual role of strategy management and service management,” said El Khatib during his presentation. “Business priority and business value are oppositely directed. Use the IT services catalogue to start connecting IT processes to business processes; process knowledge is key to agility and business transformation. The Department of Finance has an integrated strategy, combining business and IT strategy,” said El Khatib. El Khatib was followed on stage by Deepak Kalra, group IT manager of Safeer Group who spoke at length on how IT managers stand to win from intelligent technology choices.

The mission, vision and value of an IT department plays an important role in expressing the business value of IT. IT objectives have to support the business and IT risks have to be controlled. You can no longer just be a technology provider, and must evolve into a strategic partner.” 6

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Deepak Kalra, Group IT manager of Safeer Group

“IT decision makers should follow their own methodologies about technology – they know their business best. Choose mature, tested technologies over new ones. When implementing a technology it is important that one is practical and realistic. You have to implement only as much as you can digest; phase one of all implementations must involve as little customisation as possible,” said Kalra. Kalra also suggested that enterprises choose vendor partners who can logically defy them, and warned them from falling for a big bang approach with deployments. Carel Badenhorst, head of the technology practice at SAS ME followed Kalra on stage to discuss data management and ways to efficiently manage the information lifecycle in enterprises.

Carel Badenhorst, head of the technology practice at SAS ME

The panel discussion, which was the concluding session of the day, brought together all the speakers of the morning, along with Rolf Eleveld, director of information and software development at the Jumeirah Group and Arun Tewary, CIO of Emirates Flight Catering to discuss the changing nature of software, and how regional organisations can recognise and respond to these changes with better investments to achieve higher profits. Most of the panellists agreed that many of the major changes in the next few years will be visible in the form of changing patterns of software delivery. In other words, most of the discussion centred around cloud computing, and brought together conflicting views on how and whether the cloud can live up to all the promises that it makes.

Our journey to the cloud and big data has been supported by big investment. Across the last eight years since 2003, we have spent over $10.5 billion in research and development (R&D) and another $14 billion on mergers and acquisitions related to technology. In 2011 we expect a revenue of $19.6 billion and expect to spend more than $2 billion on R&D this year as well.”

“Derivation of intelligence from data is a never-ending saga. Organisations will need to standardise on a data management platform, since data silos are one of the biggest potential barriers to co-ordinating multiple data management practices. Organisations are sitting on data gold mines, and must approach intelligence intelligently,” said Badenhorst. Virtualisation and application compatibility was the topic of choice for Ahmed Al Hammadi, manager of product marketing, eHosting at Etisalat. He spoke at length on the advantages that virtualisation technology brings to the table for enterprises, and how Etisalat, as a major service provider in the UAE, can help companies benefit with the effective implementation and use of their technology.

“Organisations in the region are trying to leverage software as a commodity model. To do the same, organisations have to achieve a clear understanding of the underlying enterprise architecture to ensure that the software functions effeciently. We have taken a similar initiative at the Jumeirah Group,” said Eleveld. Talking specifically about the cloud as a way to achieve IT optimisation and lower capex, El Khatib and Tewary expressed their doubts about the usability of the cloud for Middle East enterprises at the current maturity level. The CIOs on the panel also generally agreed that the cloud is feasible only at the infrastructure layer, but not at the application layer. www.computernewsme.com

Ramesh Krishna Bhandari, business development specialist – business solutions, central marketing at Etisalat

Ramesh Krishna Bhandari, business development specialist – business solutions, central marketing at Etisalat countered, “SMBs are more likely to be the early adopters of cloud solutions. Enterprises will get there eventually. Like any new technology, the maturity for cloud will build up over time, and the application stack for the set of technologies will also increase. This will enable more enterprises to adopt cloud more easily, but this will happen over time.” Bhandari assured the audience that Etisalat is constantly working on improving its services, and can already offer cloud services assuring many parameters from data transfer and security for most organisations in the UAE. He also stated that customers should form SLAs with service providers after understanding full well what their needs are and which parts of the network or the applications they need contractual agreements on. Software Congress 2011 brought together several IT decision makers and CIOs from the UAE, who participated throughout the event and contributed with their thoughts on everything from IT strategy to cloud adoption. The event was sponsored by Etisalat, SAS, SonicWall and helpAG. JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

ANALYSIS month in view

Partner up Top notch speakers at the Reseller Conference 2011 covered a wide gamut of channel topics including upcoming technology trends, value addition, vendor-partner relationships, cash flow and social marketing.

The Reseller Conference 2011 included a vigorous question and answer session directed at a panel made up of the industry who’s who.

n 12 June, Reseller Middle East kicked off its first conference directed at the partner community. The conference was a day-long, single track event, held at Westin Dubai, UAE. The highlights of the conference were intended to be the wide range of channel issues tackled by a high-level team of experienced industry leaders selected from vendors, distributors and consultants. The presentation content of each topic was set to appeal at an operational level rather than at a conceptual level. The conference was kicked off by a short welcome address by Reseller’s senior editor Arun Shankar, after which the key note speaker was invited to the stage. The keynote address for the conference was presented by Nassir Nauthoa, general manager, GCC, Intel Corporation. Nauthoa drew the attention of the audience to the 8

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increasing purchasing power of the emerging markets. The index used to track the changes in purchasing power of the markets is the number of weeks of income required to buy an average priced consumer laptop. “In 1994, it required 151 weeks of income to buy a laptop in the emerging markers versus 6 weeks of income in developed markets. In 2010, the same comparison has changed to 12 weeks of income in emerging markets versus 1 week of income for developed markets. This shows that a vast segment of population in the emerging markets is moving towards affordable ownership of a PC or a laptop. Today, one billion people own a PC device, but 2.2 billion people can afford a PC and have not invested in such a device. A further 3.5 billion people still cannot afford a PC device. The engine of the emerging markets is so compelling that by end 2011 and early 2012, the total number of PCs shipped to www.computernewsme.com

the emerging markets will overtake the developed markets,” said Nauthoa. He also pointed out the changing nature of the personal computing device. It is not just PCs and laptops which the growing segment of population will use for computing. By 2015, only 56% of mobile traffic will be generated by laptops. Rest of the traffic will be generated from smart phones, home gateways and others. The forms of computing devices are changing and the all-in-one PC screen, ultra-book, smart TV, tablet and netbook are all possible variants of today’s desktop PC. However, according to him, this does not indicate a death knell for the PC. “Intel envisions that by 2020 there will be four billion connected people, 31 billion connected devices and 25 million applications. The key drivers for computing devices will remain performance, security and connectivity,” he stated.

The round table discussion that followed the keynote discussed the growth dynamics across the Middle East. The participants were jointly made up of speakers from the Reseller Conference and some special invitees. The speakers of the conference who sat on the panel included Nassir Nauthoa, Intel Corporation; Meera Kaul, Optimus Technology and Telecommunications and Hesham Tantawi, Asbis. The special invitees included Sukant Mishra, managing director, Octagon International; Prateek Dayal, channels & alliances director, Xerox Emirates; KS Parag, managing director, FVC; Parag Saxena, head of sales, Redington Value; Patrick Mulligan, general manager, Emitac Distribution. Reseller Middle East’s senior editor Arun Shankar, moderated the discussions. The next pair of speakers after the panel discussion were Vasudevan KS, managing director, Satvik and Amir Sohrabi, regional alliances and partner development manager Middle East, SAS. Both addressed the issue of analysis to aid in channel sales. This was followed by Meera Kaul, MD at Optimus Technology and Telecommunications. Her theme was around possible value addition by a distributor in the channel market. With channel sales accounting for 60%-80% of IT vendor sales, the role of a channel player is vital in today’s market. A channel player is faced with the task of differentiation from other players

and the increasing demand from customers, but is probably the only one who has a deep understanding of a customer’s complex ecosystem. Kaul presented how a channel player can leverage on this fact and be better prepared to address tomorrow today. An important topic before lunch was counterfeit products in channels by Ernest Azzam, business manager, Laser and Enterprise Solutions, HP. Azzam pointed out that the current market size for counterfeit products is $775 billion and will cross a trillion dollars n in 2015. The number of jobs lost because of this illegal trade in G20 countries alone is two and half million. According to Azzam, a starting point for corrective measures is an end-user corporate policy that avoids purchase of counterfeit products. Around 70% of UAE companies have no such anti-counterfeit policy in place. After lunch, the audience was presented with a business focussed and well directed presentation by Hemayun Bazaz, channel manager, HP Networking. Bazaz explored in straight-forward language disconnects that sometimes exist between vendors and reseller partners in the channel space. Partners complain that vendor programs are complicated in terms of rebates, available marketing support and specialisation training programs. Vendors complain that partners do not make an effort

to understand their programs and miss out on financial returns. Bazaz stressed that the solution lay at the half-way mark, both sides making an effort to meet mid-way. Continuing on the economical perspective of the market, one of the other topics discussed was the dynamics of exports out of UAE. Dr Ashraf Ali Mahate, head of export market intelligence talked about the need to export out of UAE in the face of growing entry of low cost players and development of production scale. The next topic addressed by Hesham Tantawi, vice president, Asbis was on bottlenecks in the channel. Tantawi chose to focus on explaining the drivers of sales in the current market, types of pricing, the relation between value and price, and some key parameters of profits. An interesting numerical example showed that a 10% improvement in lead generation and conversion process actually yields 46% increase in sales and 61% increase in profits. The last session of the day was addressed by John Andrews, director of marketing MEA and APAC, Computerlinks, on the subject of zero cost marketing and the power of social communications. The Reseller Conference concluded with a vigorous question and answer session directed at a panel made up of speakers again. Speakers participating in the end of day session included Meera Kaul, Hesham Tantawi and John Andrews.

RME AWARDS Winners PRESTIGE WINNERS Readers’ Choice, Vendor: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Reader’s Choice, Distributor: ASBIS Middle East Best Partner Excellence, Vendor: Microsoft Gulf Best Partner Excellence, Distributor: Redington Gulf Outstanding Executive, IT Channel: Madhav Narayan Outstanding Executive, IT Channel: Lee Reynolds Editor’s Choice: Kaspersky Lab n

VENDOR WINNERS Networking Vendor: Cisco Software & Security Vendor: Blue Coat Systems Storage Vendor: Western Digital Peripherals Vendor: Genius Components Vendor: Intel Corporation Printing Vendor: HP IPG Middle East Systems & Hardware Vendor: Dell ME n

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Specialised Distributor: FVC, Inc Value Added Distributor: Optimus Technology and Telecommunications Software & Security Distributor: Computerlinks Peripherals distributor: Logicom

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RESELLER WINNERS Enterprise Reseller: help AG SMB & Consumer Reseller: Accent Office Supplies Trading Super Retailer: X-cite by Alghanim Electronics Systems Integrator: Gulf Business Machines

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DISTRIBUTOR WINNERS IT Distributor: Aptec Holding Components Distributor: FDC International Networking Distributor: Westcon Middle East

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Computer News Middle East

ANALYSIS month in view

Starting a conversation Unlike virtually every other IT company, Genesys’ recent G-Force EMEA conference in Prague stayed resolutely away from technology, despite the recent release of a major upgrade to its core technology. Customers, benefits and industry trends were to the fore, as Dave Reeder discovered.

wo decades in and one decade from the launch of its European customer event in Prague the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Applications company Genesys returned to the city. More than 1,000 customers of the provider in customer service applications met partners and experts along with samples of global quality customer implementations the BT, Emirates Airlines, Orange, T-Mobile UK and Swedbank forming the heart of the general sessions. For once, despite a number of technology sponsors and the availability of the innovative Genesys Conversation Manager, technology discussions were sidelined in favour of customer experience and a timeline of how far the call centre space has evolved over the last 20 years.

Paul Segre, President of Alcalel-Lucent Applications Group

The game changer, as keynote speaker Tom Eggemeier, GM of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise EMEA, explained was that “service centres now talk to thousands of millions of people in real time.” Social networking, he explained, is changing the relationship of customer or potential customer to company. “We now trust our peers more than we trust companies. There’s a ‘loyalty loop’ that companies need to be aware of.” Take as an example, he suggested the event hotel, the Hilton Prague. On Tripadvisor.com, the hotel has received 500 reviews – some good, some not so good. “But each one has had a response on-line by a Milton manager – that’s an excellent example of responding to what we call crowd sourcing.” So social media is changing the way people do business. Most of us get that. But what does it mean to the call centre? “You have to catch up to where your customers are, to how involved they are in it. The problem you face is that you don’t hold the history of social media customers and all the advances to the call centre industry over the last decade need to be carried forward right into the call centre space.” Those advanced have been matched by the major releases of Genesys’ main product – in the 1990s when the industry was focused

In effect, the contact centre is merely facing the same issues that other parts of the business are facing coping with so-called ‘big data’ – the largely unstructured information that modern forms of communication and interaction are throwing up. Business analysis – and therefore better response to customers – means that we need to fully understand customers.” 10

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Tom Eggemeier, GM of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise EMEA

on phone calls, Genesys 6 (G6) focused on that; in the 2000s, G7 moved to interaction; and now, in the 2010s, G8 is all about ‘the conversation’. That is, the combination of interactions between customer and business through social networking, call centre activity, personal contact, the Internet, back office operations and mobile contact. “The reality is that with social media, our ability to be proactive has really increased,” stressed Paul Segre, President of AlcalelLucent Applications Group. “The issue we’re facing is that a customer’s experience may be by voice, text, chat, Web, scanned documents and so on, but the links between a company’s departments such as back office or marketing and the contact centre are not always clear.” So the problem is simple: modern forms of customer interaction are not being recorded by contact centre staff and so valueable customer data is lost. “We need to track individual interactions across communications channels and time.” In effect, the contact centre is merely facing the same issues that other parts of the business are facing coping with so-called ‘big data’ – the largely unstructured information that modern forms of communication and

ANALYSIS month in view interaction are throwing up. Business analysis – and therefore better response to customers – means that we need to fully understand customers. It’s not rocket science, but for many businesses it still seems a step too far. The reality of creating, recording and then analysing an end-to-end view of customer interaction over time is daunting. “But it’s important,” stresses Segre. “In contact centres, people represent 60-70% of the cost but 100% of customer satisfaction. They need the right tools to deliver.” This is important because there seems to be decreasing correlation between customers’ experience and loyalty, according to recent research. Does this mean that we should stop trying to delight our customers, asks Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, CMO of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise? “No, but we need to understand the changing nature of loyalty. Good service is now expected whilst bad service is increasingly being punished and the word on that going out through social media – the notion of social vitriol. The truth is that the notion of customer service has dramatically improved over the last two decades but the bar of expectation has been significantly raised.” If excellence is a given, then we need to understand what it is that customers want,

Can we talk? Paul Segre is President and CEO of Genesys, leading a worldwide team responsible for the innovation, development and marketing of software products for enterprise and carrier customers. He found time at G-Force Prague to discuss some issues raised at the event. On a typical Genesys implementation, what sort of ROI can a customer expect? In many sectors we can deliver 30-40%. And, at the same time, improve customer satisfaction which helps the business. What single thing makes an implementation successful? Without a doubt, it’s virtualisation. It is absolutely key to success. The call centre business has historically been very siloed and we need to break that down.

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de Kouchkovsky believes. “They expect you to be reachable through multiple channels. They expect you to be responsive – the right resource with the right knowledge. They expect your response to be relevant to them. And, finally, they expect you to know who they are. All this means you need to personalise the interaction based on historical context and shift from a multichannel approach to customers to a crosschannel one.” As an example of the new way that customers expect to be dealt with, he spoke of the US-based Zipcar, a fully digital car hire service. Based solely on mobile phone usage, the service finds the nearest location of a suitable car, sends GPS directions to the site, unlocks the remotely when you arrive and does the opposite at the end of the flexible rental period. The whole operation is mobile – there is no human interaction at all. “What we’re understanding now is that the smartphone is a hub – voice, text, video, Internet and, increasingly, a notification channel and directory. So the challenge we face is scaling customer service across new channels.” And feedback on the interaction at any of those points or the business’ inability to link

If we agree that customer information should be consolidated, how are companies to approach their historical data? Cleaning and importing that into a new system could be a massive operation, with no guarantee that old customer data would need to be accessed in future. Yes, that’s an issue. I think the measure is one of stickiness – how many interactions a company has had with a customer over time. We’re not advocating a complete overhaul and clearly some industry sectors will get more value from linking to old customer data than others. What issues do you think call centre professionals face, apart from siloed information? I think the outside perception of what call centres do is wrong – they tend to be seen as dealing with problems rather than helping to develop new business.

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Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, CMO of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise

e-mail queries with an agent conversation, for example, make ideal fodder for potentially helpful or harmful Twitter conversations. “What this means is that we need to virtualise access to all parts of the customerfacing experience. A customer sees a seamless conversation but it’s not easy to deliver. A recent project with United Airlines, for instance, meant combining 35 different apps in order to make customer context universally accessible. The shift we need to make is from an interaction-driven business to a conversation-linked one.” Judging from the animated discussion between sessions, it seemed to me that the conversation had begun already.

There’s a lack of structure, notably in the way that activity is not managed by SLAs. There needs to be more management information. And processes need to be looked at much more carefully. Of course, we’re able to help with much of this! What’s a typical implementation process for Genesys? Well, we don’t believe in rip and replace for a start. What we’re offering is a combination of innovation and speed of operation so the process needs to be carefully worked through. Stage one: establish existing business processes, automate and improve them. Next, in real time, we can automate adjustments to the system. With Version 8, of course, we’re able to deliver cross-channel visibility – that’s a good basis for SLAs. What’s the next stage for customers? Deep analytics. We can do the broad stuff, but we need the ability to go deep.

ANALYSIS month in view

Visualising IT In a world abuzz with virtualisation technology, Intergence Systems’ first spin off Real Status has developed a technology called HyperGlance that enables effective visualisation of IT resources on a virtual platform. Intergence CEO Peter Job tells Pallavi Sharma how this technology came to be and what is yet to come.

he fact that infrastructure in the UAE is most favourably developed to suit complex ICT investments combined with an easily adaptable culture predefined the need for Intergence Systems, the IT optimisation consultancy with existing operations in Cambridge and New York to set up an operational base in Dubai back in 2008. Says Peter Job, CEO at Intergence Systems, “An advanced ICT infrastructure combined with the existing base of corporate clients, who needed a standardised set of services and skills meant that setting up a base in the heart of the Middle East provided an opportunity for expansion and development. And so far, the region has not let us down: we have witnessed approximately 30% year on year growth since we moved here.” The fact that today more devices are IP enabled and technologies like virtualisation and cloud are going mainstream, combined with the exploding volumes of data, increases complexities and makes capacity management absolutely necessary. According to Job, in such an environment the ability to visualise an organisation’s infrastructure aids quicker and more efficient decision making. In order to provide for these requirements, Intergence Systems partnered with Stace Hipperson, who originally came up with the idea of combining IT infrastructure with a revolutionary way of visualising complex data in 3D, and Geomerics, a Cambridge based company 14

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that specialises in developing computer games to bring the idea of IT visualisation to life. Job says, “The issue with technologies like virtualisation is that organisations have to understand where resources actually sit. The idea then was to study how visualising an organisation’s infrastructure could aid efficient management of these resources and the resulting infrastructure.”” In early 2011, Intergence Systems spun out Real-Status – a company solely focused on IT visualisation and announced the launch of what the company says is the world’s first 3D modelling software called www.computernewsme.com

HyperGlance. According to the company, the technology produces dynamic and real-time models enabling an organisation to see the entire ICT infrastructure in one single comprehensive view. “HyperGlance software uses sophisticated computer games modelling and graphics techniques, including 3D visualisation and navigation, to create a real-time model of the complete physical and virtual infrastructure. HyperGlance also overlays performance and business metrics; enabling faster decision making about infrastructure control, security and productivity,” explains Job.

“The issue with technologies like virtualisation is that organisations have to understand where resources actually sit. The idea then was to study how visualising an organisation’s infrastructure could aid efficient management of these resources and the resulting infrastructure.”

Peter Job, CEO, Intergence Systems

According to Job, HyperGlance’s 3D visualisation techniques address many of the key security and performance concerns around cloud migration, and can be used to mitigate risks in areas such as data governance, performance monitoring, security, capacity management, agility, costs and budget, optimising infrastructure and process tracking. “Real-Status is the first spin off by Intergence and we are already working on other projects in collaboration with private sector companies and academia. The successful preview at Gitex 2010 along with the completion of customer trials that include a number of organisations in the Middle East means that we are ready to roll HyperGlance out across the region. Given the rapidly strengthening regional economy, the timing is just right,” he elaborates.

Intergence Systems provides consulting, implementation, training and support services for HyperGlance in the Middle East. Intergence Systems also leverages its strong links with the academic and entrepreneurial communities within Cambridge, to develop software and services that help organisations reduce their ICT based power consumption. The company also recently joined the Green Grid, an influential consortium established to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data centre energy efficiency. “In 2008, we embarked on a programme to develop software and solutions that are focused on advanced energy monitoring across global networks and virtualisation. HyperGlance is one such solution, tailored to contribute to the green movement by looking at both the physical and virtual elements in an organisation’s infrastructure and combing it with the respective power metrics to give decision makers a 3D picture of the overall power an organisation’s ICT infrastructure consumes. The drive to invest in the Green Grid is to design energy efficeint processes that reduce both power consumption and the costs associated with it,” Job points out. Job has optimistic plans for the local talent pools at universities in the region; he believes that working with universities in the region will provide opportunities to balance out the skills gap in the region, “We are in the process of welcoming a bigger pool of talent here. So far, we have been very good at sourcing talent and skill personnel www.computernewsme.com

from outside the region. For instance, we work with Universities in the UK to further develop local talent pools. We have much the same plan for the UAE. There are some fantastic universities here and I think the general idea is to make it more appealing for the nationals and other skilled expats to stay in the region for career growth and economic development,” he says. Addressing the company’s internal IT infrastructure, Job explains, “We are currently working on using cloud computing to enhance and improve application performance. We use our own HyperGlance technology within the cloud infrastructure to help us place our assets where usage will be most efficient based on this visualisation and we are partnering with VMware for the same. The most obvious benefit of these investments has been the reduction in costs, better time management and efficiency.” Job predicts that in the coming years, technologies like virtualisation and cloud computing will drive more efficient data centre designs more attuned to managing increasing volumes of data. He also believes, “The future will see a significant amount of investment from organisations in switching fabrics within their data centres to address the sheer volume of data. These technologies will require better management techniques and will be driven by compliance. That’s why we feel that products such as HyperGlance will really make a big difference to the data centre and to cloud computing.” Intergence Systems was founded in 2003 to address the growing requirements of clients demanding high-level impartial expertise in networks. “Although vendors use us to complement their own skills sets, products and services, we have tried to be fair and not tie ourselves down to a particular vendor, We leave the vendor choice to a customer. In the past, we have worked with vendors to help their customers optimise deployment of a solution. JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

ANALYSIS month in view

IBM’s new future: quantum computing Although quantum computing is seen as the distant future of computing, developers like IBM are already making significant strides in the development of this technology and discovering the challenges that will soon come to be associated with it.

BM is marking its 100th anniversary by celebrating its record in technology innovation. The company counts DRAM, the disk drive and even the magnetic strips used on credit cards, among its many inventions and is considered one of the most innovative companies in the world. But the computing industry is moving to a new future as disruptive and as radical as that brought by the introduction of silicon chips, and that’s quantum computing. These are systems that use the behaviour of subatomic particles to conduct calculations now performed with transistors on a chip. This is a future that may be anywhere from 10 to 20 or more years away. But if the potential of quantum computing is fully realised, it may trigger a development rush in chip and hardware design reminiscent of what Silicon Valley experienced decades ago. “Think about the game changer we’re now approaching,” said Bernard Meyerson, IBM ‘s VP of innovation and a fellow at the company. It’s Meyerson’s job to help make sure that IBM’s last 100 years aren’t remembered as its best ones. That’s one of the reasons he talks about the changes in the chip world. “Following Moore’s Law, and then shrunk by another factor of 10 from the leading edge processors of today, these transistors become so small that you cross into a quantum mechanical regime of operation - there’s no precedent for that,” Meyerson said. “But even once this shrink limit is 16

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reached, in about 10 years, progress will continue as engineers build tightly coupled systems with massive levels of integration on blocks of chips, as well as make improvements in memory, caching and speed processing,” Meyerson said. “These continuous advances will extend the time frame to 20 years, but after that you better have a hell of a trick up your sleeve,” said Meyerson. One of those tricks may be quantum computing. “IBM researchers have studied the theory and potential of quantum computing for years, and more recently they have been been experimenting with the concepts,” said Bill www.computernewsme.com

Gallagher, the senior manager of quantum computing at IBM Research. “It’s one of our most significant fundamental research projects now, and maybe one of the largest fundamental ones,” said Gallagher, “There’s been good progress, but ther’s still a long way to go,” he said. An ordinary computer is a collection of bits that can either be a 0 or a 1. But quantum bits can hold those states, 0 and 1, simultaneously. Instead of doing a calculation one after the other, the processing power in a quantum computer can increase exponentially. Two quantum bits, or qubits, can hold four distinct states,

Even once this shrink limit is reached, in about 10 years, progress will continue as engineers build tightly coupled systems with massive levels of integration on blocks of chips, as well as make improvements in memory, caching and speed processing.”

which can be processed simultaneously, three qubits can hold eight and 10 qubits can hold 1,024 states. In time, researchers expect machines with thousands of qubits. But the subatomic world of quantum computing is daunting. Approaches to maintaining “quantum coherence,” a stable state for the interaction of atoms and electrons running calculations, include processing at temperatures near absolute zero, or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, to reduce thermal interference, as well as by using superconducting metals. Lengthening the amount of time that a coherent state can be maintained is one of the challenges facing researchers. While research continues, a quantum computing market is emerging. One of the concerns is that quantum computers will eventually be able to break cryptographic protections. One company, Security Innovations, has already been thinking about the problem and has developed a public key algorithm, NTRUSign, that it says is resistant to quantum computing attacks. It recently received a patent. “Anyone who is building systems that need to be secure in 10 years’ time and are hard to upgrade should be thinking seriously about what happens if quantum computing comes around,” said William Whyte, the chief scientist at Security Innovation. Whyte’s company is in the earliest wave of firms focused on the implications of quantum computing and as Whyte watches the quantum computing market develop, he sees an industry exploring a wide range of ideas and materials

for building these systems. “I think you are going to see a very creative outburst of ideas,” said Whyte, with new companies sprouting up with the potential of leapfrogging existing vendors. One company that is building quantum computing systems is Canadian comapny D-Wave Systems. D-Wave announced last month that it had sold its first full system to Lockheed Martin. The company’s research was also published last month in the scientific journal Nature. “The company, has been in business for 12 years, and is working on a 128-qubit processor that is in its 23rd generation”, said Geordie Rose, the co-founder and chief technology officer. Quantum systems are intended to solve a class of problems that don’t do well on conventional computers, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and logistics. These are problems that require the checking of an enormous number of possibilities in order to find the best answer, Rose said. In the initial development phase, Rose believes start-ups have an advantage. “There’s a lot less bureaucracy and so the role of the visionary is a lot more important,” he promptly added. D-Wave is also evidence that even in the new frontier of quantum computing, startups will emerge to pose new challenges to the established companies. IBM’s Myerson has inventor credentials, www.computernewsme.com

having earned numerous patents and made contributions to the development of silicon germanium technology. Today, in his role of fostering innovation at IBM, Meyerson and his team are focused on providing the holistic, interdisciplinary integration that can lead to breakthroughs in new areas, but also ensuring that there is a process at IBM for continuous improvement of existing technologies. Both approaches, the search for new breakthroughs and continuous improvement, are critical, according to Meyerson. “What’s unique about IBM is we have a culture that values both equally, because we recognised that the companies that haven’t done so aren’t with us any longer,” he said. JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

ROUND-UP month in view

Saudi’s AlMajdouie Group to deploy Oracle ERP AlMajdouie Group, a Saudi based company, operating in diverse industries all over KSA, GCC and through associate offices in North America, Europe, Far East, Middle East and Africa, with over 5,000 employees, today announced that it would rely on the Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to drive and sustain the growth of the Group’s portfolio of operations. “As our Group portfolio and operations grow steadily, the need for consolidating out IT systems to accommodate the expansion strategies and goals becomes imperative. Hence, we were keen to make sure that whatever IT applications and solutions we opt for should transcend our expectations and Oracle’s ERP applications have provided us with the tailor-made solutions that best work for our strategy as a major group of companies operating in variety of fields and industries,” said Ihab Hawari, corporate IT manager, Al Majdoui Group. Acting as an organisation-wide control centre, the Oracle ERP Suite will help AlMajdouie Group’s management control information, make timely decisions and streamline work processes, thanks to its

ability to collect status information and progress reports from different divisions and make them available to management and other departments. The Oracle solution will enable users to update information in realtime and access it any time According to the company, the ERP solution has been designed and improved to facilitate the flow of information between all divisions as in today’s business environment, organisations need to demonstrate ability to handle and coordinate a great deal of information to help every division, from materials management, production and finance, to HR, sales and marketing, take the right decision on time. “The innovative idea behind Oracle ERP Suite is to provide businesses of all sizes with an unprecedented single integrated computer-based application across all functional areas to optimise control of information and decision-making processes and drive sustainable growth. Hence, businesses in Saudi Arabia and the region have found in Oracle’s ERP a panacea for their IT management. AlMajdouie Group has now joined the long list of premium customers in the region that rely on Oracle

IT solutions to meet their business objectives and drive profits to their investments,” Abdul Rahman Al Thehaiban, VP, Oracle Middle East & Africa Dudi Hermanto, corporate procurements manager, AlMajdouie Group, “During our selection of the system and the business partners, we took serious consideration of the experience, possible growth and support, for our best practices system, we chose Oracle because we found it fits well for our business and overall outcome. The system will help AlMajdouie in making critical decision in very timely manners; it will help in tracking and analysing our business transactions which will assist to set the business strategy, focus, and direction.”

ICT Fund to dedicate AED 22m towards R&D in UAE The ICT Fund, an initiative by the TRA to promote the culture of entrepreneurship in the UAE ICT sector, announced that it would dedicate AED 22 million towards research and development for 2011. “The ICT Fund’s initiative will promote growth for the industry in the UAE, which will continue to contribute to the local economy and create a competitive advantage in the global market associated with ICT. This is a testament to our perseverance in bringing about positive 18

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growth in the economy with immediate results,” said Dr.Abdulqader Al Khayat, Chairman for the ICT Fund. “Our investments are in line with the core objectives of the ICT Fund. Research and development, education and the incubation of start ups form the three focus areas of the Fund. Our aim is to create an ICT ecosystem that is a self reliant knowledge based industry. ‘Made in UAE, sold globally’ is our vision over the next five years,” added Dr. Eesa Bastaki, CEO, ICT Fund. www.computernewsme.com

The Fund plans to enable this ICT development via funding research and development centres in partnership with universities and research organisations as well as individual research projects , the idea is to ultimately establish stable links between the ICT industry and academia. The fund, also supports the commercialisation of applied research and development, leading to the establishment of start ups in the ICT sector in the UAE.

ROUND-UP month in view

NBAD deploys solutions from SAS and Teradata The National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), will leverage technologies from Teradata, a company focused on data warehousing, and SAS, the business analytics software and services provider, to gain a single enterprise view across the organisation. This will help the bank maintain market leadership in corporate banking and expand its retail segment by speeding insight and decision making through rapid analysis of its customer behavior. “With the help of SAS and Teradata, we will be able to better analyse customer behaviour trends, as well as evaluate the profitability of our corporate and consumer banking divisions with drill-down capabilities to customer, channel, relationship and product profitability,” said Saher Arar, the Deputy CIO at NBAD. Enhanced information on product costs and profitability levels will lead to better marketing of the bank’s products to the proper customer segments. The SAS and Teradata solution will allow NBAD to better focus resources on the right customers, while nurturing growth of relationships with influential clients. NBAD selected components of the SAS

and Teradata Business Insight Advantage Program to better manage and extend analytical intelligence across the enterprise. Those elements include SAS Enterprise BI Server, SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server, SAS Profitability Management and SAS Activity-Based Management – all executed within the Teradata data warehouse. Users will benefit from greater information visibility, accelerated analytical processes, and quicker insight anytime, anywhere it is needed.

“In today’s post-crisis environment, businesses are realising the growing importance of getting closer to their customers. NBAD is harnessing its data to gain a reliable, comprehensive view of all business units and branches. Rapidly identifying opportunities and risks across the organisation will help the bank address customer needs and enable customers to make smart decisions,” said Mikael Hagstrom, Executive VP of SAS Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. “This underscores the growing strength of the Teradata and SAS partnership globally,” said Hermann Wimmer, President, Teradata EMEA. “Pairing both companies’ integrated technology solutions with our respective global industry experience will help NBAD and other financial institutions grow stronger, deriving new insight and foresight through the power of business analytics.” The announcement was made at The Premier Business Leadership Series event in Antwerp, Belgium, a business conference presented by SAS that brings together more than 600 attendees from the public and private sectors to share ideas on critical business issues.

KNPC automates IT operations using HP tools Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) is using HP Business Service Management to transform its technology environment, streamline operations and run its business more efficiently. With more than 7,500 users, KNPC was determined to continue providing superior service while their information and IT projects rapidly increased. Historically, KNPC managed information and IT projects through manual change processes. To address this, HP and its local partner Tawasul Services implemented HP Business Availability Center Software to provide KNPC advanced warning of service disruptions and isolation of their root causes before they impact the business. 20

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“KNPC is striving to improve our ability to respond to market changes to supply gas to businesses more efficiently,” said Khaled Al-Asousi, IT Manager, KNPC. “With HP software, we can be more agile in order to adjust to dynamic market and customer demands for fast, innovative services.” “IT needs to be the innovation engine for the business. “By eliminating manual practices and providing better change processes, HP Software will help KNPC accelerate business transformation without increasing risk,” said Tayfun Topkoc, HP Software Director for the Middle East. With HP software, KNPC IT will receive alerts when exceptions occur; eliminating duplicate error alerts and www.computernewsme.com

minimising the time spent reacting to these alerts. The HP solution includes HP Network and Operations Management Center, HP Business Availability Centre and HP Storage Essentials. By automating IT operations, KNPC will have increased visibility over its entire IT infrastructure and services, ensuring increased responsiveness to the changing needs of customers and the marketplace. According to the company, in a world of continuous connectivity, the InstantOn Enterprise embeds technology in everything it does to serve customers, employees, partners and citizens with everything they need, instantly.

ROUND-UP month in view

Federal Foods deploys SAP ERP In order to drive significant competitive advantage and ensure best practice across the organisation, Federal Foods has announced it will implement SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business solutions software. As a leading food products marketing and distribution company in the GCC, Federal Foods with head office based in Dubai, caters to the full spectrum of retail, food services and wholesale sectors. To compete with the fast moving landscape of the food and beverage industry, the implementation of SAP ERP will optimise the business in seven key areas: financial accounting, cost controlling, human resources, plant maintenance, sales and distribution, materials management and business warehousing. Federal Foods is a subsidiary of Al Nowais Investments, a large holding group in the UAE with diverse business interests covering a wide range of industries including food and consumer goods, healthcare and medical, and technology and telecommunication. Al Nowais Investments operates widely throughout the Gulf region and partners across the world employing almost 6,000 personnel, with its head office in Abu Dhabi, UAE. “As part of its vision for future growth,

Federal Foods recognises the need for the optimisation of business. Implementing SAP ERP will be the largest information technology program that Al Nowais Investments has undertaken in any of its companies, aimed at supporting our vision of best run business practices and world-class provision of products and services,” said Adel Al Nowais, Vice Chairman of Al Nowais Investments and MD of Federal Foods LLC. SAP ERP redefines enterprise resource planning, delivering role-based access to crucial data, applications and analytical tools. Business challenges for the food and beverage industry within areas such as supply chain management, business intelligence, HR and customer relationship management can be dealt with effectively and efficiently.

“Food and beverage companies must respond to increasingly knowledgeable consumers in order to develop and deliver more innovative and creative routes to market, all the while supporting ever increased channel demands for more flexible business models,” said Kevin Scott, Head of MENA Growth Markets, SAP. “SAP has over 30 years of consumer products experience, and offers industry leading solutions that are now standard across the entire food and beverage value chain. Our comprehensive business processes are based on proven best practices for food and beverage distribution, enabling Federal Foods to fully optimise their business based on solutions tailor made to stay ahead of the competition,” Scott added.

Al Fahim Group deploys SunGard Al Fahim Group, a large conglomerate with diversified businesses across the UAE, has selected SunGard’s AvantGard Treasury to help further optimise the management of its treasury operations. AvantGard Treasury will help AI Fahim Group automate its cash management processes, according to representatives of the Al Fahim Group. According to the company, AvantGard Treasury will interface with Al Fahim Group’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. In addition to treasury and cash management, it will help foster bank connectivity for such functions as uploading 22

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MT940 customer statement messages, as well as help automate the reconciliation process and improve cash forecasting. Al Fahim Group’s decision to select SunGard was largely influenced by SunGard’s local expertise and presence in the region, as well as AvantGard Treasury’s ability to establish controls for best practices, which will aid the company in its long-term sustainable growth strategy. “We selected AvantGard Treasury because the application offers the tools we require to help us automate processes within our Treasury group. Additionally, SunGard’s presence in Abu Dhabi provides the security www.computernewsme.com

of knowing we are working with a local partner. We expect that the combination of technology and local support from SunGard will aid in the growth of business,” said Ahmad Nassar, group treasurer, Al Fahim Group. “Many organisations in the UAE are taking notice of the value and cost savings that treasury technology can bring in helping support growth and global expansion. The Al Fahim Group project demonstrates SunGard’s success and commitment to this region across our various liquidity management solutions,” said Wissam Khoury, MD, Middle East, SunGard Financial Systems.

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CASE STUDY Dubai Courts

Courting Success Dubai Courts continues to invest in and grow its online presence as it works to expand and improve the services it offers citizens and expats. By Pallavi Sharma | Photography Cris Mejorada 24

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ubai Courts, the state’s premier judiciary body strives to achieve public satisfaction by investing in the latest technology to provide speedy judiciary and notary services for the benefit of all. Established in 1970, Dubai Courts offers services including civil and labour oriented judiciary services, legal and civil authentication, execution of judgements and accreditation of lawyers among many others. Spurred on by the government’s initiative to boost the use of e-services in the state, Dubai Courts has consistently invested in IT platforms to keep customers updated on initiatives, legal procedures and other services, as well as to encourage cross communication between the judicial entity and the users of its services. At Dubai Courts, the necessity to maintain a robust back end infrastructure that enables increased information sharing across departments and business operations, and the ensuring the usability and availability of on-line channels, makes information technology an integral function. “IT plays a major role here. Today we are very dependent on IT; all of our internal processes have been fully automated specially for the core business like case management, family attestation and notary services. Employees of Dubai Courts cannot function without their PCs and IT is needed to make sure departments and employees are always connected. To expedite the provision of services and aid operational efficiency we have invested in applications that enable intelligent decision making and case management that make IT’s role that much more significant within our organisation,” says Dr. Ahmed Saeed Bin Hezeem, director general of Dubai Courts. Keeping in mind the essential role that IT plays within Dubai Courts, the key decision makers within the organisation are exceptionally particular about their

IT plays a major role here. Today we are very dependent on IT: all of our internal processes have been fully automated specially for the core business like case management, family attestation and notary services.”

choice of partners and developers of technology, says Abdulrahim Almudhareb, director of the IT department, Dubai Courts. “When choosing partners or developers we take into consideration elements like their capability to support the technology and deliver the standards of service we expect, and the expertise and resources that the company has. Most importantly, we choose partners who can share knowledge and add value to the technology and its functionality. Of course, factors like their commitment, reputation and the strength of their presence in the region are also essential.” Driven by its leadership in the region, Dubai Courts, over the last two years has focused on pushing a portion of its services to an on-line platform. In a continuation of these efforts, the judicial body recently launched an e-notary service, to provide family attestation, notary and case management services via an on-line platform that will enable greater customer satisfaction and increased convenience through 24/7 availability of services. “We provide many notary services over the counter. Last year alone we served over 168,000 notary applications and you can multiply that by two or three based on the parties involved in each application (specially in the case of family attestations). We have noticed a 10-15% growth in the use and demand of the notary services. We decided that these services could be offered via an on-line channel, as opposed to opening new sites to cater to the increasing demand. The implementation of the e-notary service is www.computernewsme.com

also supported by the strategic goal of the Dubai government to promote e-services in the public sector,” explains Dr. Hezeem. The deployment of the e-notary service began with the process of picking the right developer and partner for the project. In this case Dubai Courts chose AlTaqnyah Business Solutions, a business IT solutions provider and a subsidiary of the ARMS Group of Companies. Says Almudhareb, “AlTaqnyah was chosen for this project because they not only understood the requirements of the project, but were also capable of supporting the infrastructure and providing the skills required for the undertaking.” Rocky road Once the developer was chosen, the next task was to study the infrastructure requirements and design an effective platform to deploy the e-notary service. This was followed by integrating the relevant legislation and data via other platforms. Once the initial platform was developed, considerable time was spent testing and monitoring the e-notary service for usability, based on which areas for improvements and errors were noted. According to Almudhareb, the entire process took nearly 18 months. The e-notary platform developers, Al Taqnyah, helped in integrating the platform, using Adobe Lifecycle and Flex software, with Oracle Database and Portal and Java J2EE PL/SQL. They also integrated the project with the larger Emirates ID and e-payment gateways developed by the Dubai government, so as to optimise JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

CASE STUDY Dubai Courts

resource and document sharing. As simple as the process sounds, the IT department within Dubai Courts had to tackle a number of challenges when deploying the e-notary service. “The first challenge was to source the right service because an e-notary application did not exist. The second challenge was then deciding on the right product or platform, one with a dynamic format that is certified to deliver results. In this case we chose Adobe,” he adds. He also points out, “Knowledge sharing with AlTaqnyah was another challenge. As mentioned earlier this was a one-of-itskind-requirement and designing the right platform for efficient functioning of the system took quite some time.” Most importantly, according to him, the e-notary service needed to be pushed back to the customer as far as possible, and securing the documents in such a situation was quite a task. “We had to make sure that the notarised document could be authenticated – traditionally done by posting a sticker of authenticity – and then had to ensure that this document could not be forged. Besides we had to make sure that the security solution we chose would work with the Adobe platform,” he explains. According to Almudhareb, the relevant files and documents are auto archived in secure portals that may be accessed only by authorised users. Additionally, attested documents and applications are then protected using HD barcode and Watermark forensics technology, to protect the copyright of digital contents and to confirm ownership in the case of conflicts.

Dr. Ahmed Saeed Bin Hezeem, Director General, Dubai Courts

“Other challenges associated with the project were related to the pecularities of the legal process such as the need for the users to come in and sign the document or application for certification or the notary service. We have introduced electronic signing devices to ensure that there is only minimal effort involved for our customers. We have developed an intelligent system that changes or updates the content of an application based on any gender or third party additions made to an existing document or application, especially when translating from English to Arabic. This allows for editing or updating of content in an easier manner,” adds Almudhareb. According to Dr. Hezeem, “The automation of this process has enabled

The first challenge was to source the right service because an enotary application did not exist. The second challenge was then deciding on the right product or platform, one with a dynamic format that is certified to deliver results.” 26

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elimination of human errors and subjectivity. We have been able to serve more customers and optimise time management. We have also been able to save on the costs involved in setting up sites to serve customers. We have also able to automate archiving facilities to save documents, reduce redundancy and repeated trips for customers between the notary branch and their homes or offices where they keep their documents.” He also points out that although the e-notary service does not support other languages due to legal requirements, Dubai Courts is working on providing an approved guidance template for legal translation from English to Arabic. “We are trying to provide our users with a value add through this service and will launch it soon,” he adds. Dubai Courts has also invested in what they call the Nibras (meaning North Star in Arabic) system which serves as a kind of information portal to help customers or visitors to navigate around the courts and brief them on court procedures, notary, case management and family attestation in a 3D animation format. The system also

provides users with directions to reach other notary branches across Dubai. Most importantly, the technology maintains an updated case tracking system, where visitors and users can check exactly what is happening with their case or application. “Nibras not only speeds up the queues and processes, but serves customers faster and more efficiently through multimedia and visual information channels,” says Almudhareb. “We will be introducing some new features to the Nibras, like enhanced navigation and a survey feature that includes details of what counters and services are being used most often and how efficiently users are being serviced,” he adds. Another significant IT investment has been devoted to developing Barza or the chamber screens that hold the case roll for each court chamber, which is automatically updated to display case timings, the details of the judicial authority, plaintiff and defendant details and case status, among others. “The screen also allows live video streaming of proceedings inside the chamber to reduce movement to and from the room that often disrupt proceedings. The technology has also enabled reduction in paper consumption, and greater transparency between the court and the people it serves among other benefits,” he says. Dubai Courts as an entity invests in technology for internal productivity measures and external service provision, and in this matrix interacts with multiple vendors and service providers in the region. Almudhareb feels that integration across platforms and hardware belonging to a variety of vendors is a challenge most users in the region face. He believes that there needs to be more collaboration between vendors and developers to offer technologies that work across manufacturing labels. He also points out, “Vendors need to ensure that they support the solutions they have developed or sold to us, and help us maintain and administer the technology. This initiative needs to

Abdulrahim Almudhareb, ITD Director, Dubai Courts

come from the vendor even when not communicated by the end user.” On the subject of security, Dr. Hezeem says, “We have invested in layered security beginning with basic firewalls, antivirus and malware protection, topped with state of the art network and application security measures. On our part, we ensure that these measures and security applications are monitored and checked to ensure that they are effectively performing the functions they should.” According to him, organisations should understand that the concept of 100% security is theoretical, and must therefore invest in back up and disaster recovery. They should also ensure that effective contingency plans are put in place to ensure minimum recovery time and damage to the organisation and all those associated with it. Going forward Empowered by the higher management that is pro IT and understands the need to invest in the latest technology to establish a collaborative system, Dubai Courts is in the process of revising its IT strategy. www.computernewsme.com

Dubai Courts now plans to develop an on-line Case Registration System and the Case Finance Scorecard, an application that will capture all the financial transactions associated with cases to maintain records and enable effective communication of proceeding costs across the court and participants of a case to boost the use of e-services across other core operations. According to AlMudhareb, “This technology will be integrated with the case management and case accounting systems, and will thus require massive reengineering. This technology will increase transparency and the ability to track movement of funds across all parties involved in a case proceeding. It will also ensure minimum errors in case payment, especially in situations where the amount to be paid must be distributed between a number of plaintiffs. This will also enable faster decision making and better customer services.” The plan ahead is to invest in technologies that benefit users and optimise internal processes and core operations. In essence Dubai courts has got it all planned out. JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

FEATURE Applications

he consumerisation of the Internet has lead to a convergence of customers and businesses from all corners of the world. Faced with globalisation and the increased competition organisations are investing in strategic IT applications that enable efficient liaising with customers as well as the managing of burgeoning internal operations in a bid to gain significant competitive edge. These applications are used on the personal as well as corporate ends to help make managing everything from accounts to relationships easier. “Today, decision makers within organisations are increasingly adopting new business practices that enable working smarter rather than harder to derive a significant competitive advantage. In this day and age, businesses find themselves at a confluence of several trends, like the spread of cloud computing, the mobile workforce and the use of social networking tools in business applications. Collectively these ubiquitous technologies are termed Web 2.0. These technologies facilitate both multilateral communication in real time, and the collation and sharing of information across the Internet,” says Fadi Abdulkhalek, VP, Cluster Leader, Oracle - Gulf States. According to Abdulkhalek, the most exciting aspect of these developments is the encouragement it has given software vendors to create “next generation applications”, built around common industry standards using the tools within Web 2.0 to provide flexibility and reduce complexities at a significantly lower cost to organisations. 28

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

The growth in the cloud computing platform revolutionises business automation by changing the balance between capital and operational expenditures. The growth in the mobile workforce in turn enables access to corporate data and IT services regardless of time and location. This, many anticipate, will transform the way an organisation’s sales force interacts with its customers. Finally, many believe that the introduction of social networking tools to enterprise resource management will be just as revolutionary. www.computernewsme.com

Not only do organisations have access to mountains of unstructured data through the social networking channels but social media also presents an opportunity to market and build relationships across wider distribution and consumer channels. Atiq Rahman, chief solution architect at AlTaqnyah believes that these trends have also created an opportunity to develop new middleware, like service-oriented architectures and business process orchestration, to provide better insights into performance in organisations and increase

engagement across external and internal stakeholders. “There is an increased demand for applications that are utilities and complement existing services while making interaction and communication flexible and borderless,” agrees Alexander Rauser, CEO, Prototype Interactive.

Credible challenges From the disbursement of IT teams, to multi device functionality and ensuring data security, there are many places along the development path where developers can run into challenges. Tarek Hamdan, chief marketing officer at Sage says, “Faced with a variety of programming options in terms of coding languages, developers have to determine which languages are compatible with multiple devices based on technical and operator specific device variants, based on the each device’s technical capabitlities in terms of memory, network connectivity, operating systems etc. This is especially the case when developing applications for mobile devices that range from tablets to smartphones and everything in between.” Even when the developers have ensured that the coding languages and programs are integrated, there exists the potential for these integrations to be weak and incomplete. According to Hamdan, newer

Alexander Rauser, CEO, Prototype Interactive

Although there is a seemingly insatiable appetite for ever-smarter handheld mobile devices and the applications these enable, developers have to decide which subset of the available mobile market they want to write applications for, in order to get a worthwhile and profitable return for their effort.”

programming options, supported by cloud computing services, are addressing these challenges by offering improved coding options that run smoothly, reducing design and performance complexities and issues. Rauser agrees, “Devices render differently and not all have the same features, resolution. But this is only the start. Looking at the detailed design of an application you also have to account for the user input capabilities of a device or the native behaviour of the common device applications. What this means is that the app design for one platform may not work for another platform due to the distinct user design of the global navigation elements.” He recommends, a very detailed design phase, that involves analysis of the design requirements and capabilities, which can then be tested for functionality before going into production. Application development typically requires a well established infrastructure and IT support for effective functionality. Smaller companies that require custom applications but do not have the extra IT support, can run into the challenge of devoting personnel to application development. According to Rahman, for some organisations, devoting part of their IT personnel and infrastructure to application development can be a costly venture. IT professionals also believe that traditional approaches towards development often involved accounting for the failure of an application or the inclusion of add ons once the application was actually developed and tested by live users, which was seen as both a hindrance to live consumers and an additional strain on the developers resources. To counter this challenge, some www.computernewsme.com

Atiq Rahman, Chief Solution Architect, AlTaqnyah

services allow developers to test their applications without affecting live users. Rahman says, “Often, customers broadly define the application they require and we spend considerable time developing these and when we take it back to the customer for approval they most often add more functionalities to the application or solution. This strains costs associated with development, while increasing the time and effort spent on the particular application.” According to Rahman, AlTaqnyah tackles this challenge using the Agile Scrum methodology, where the project is divided into smaller projects managed by smaller teams to enable effective communication between the vendor and the client. Through this development methodology the company has been able to optimise time management and ensure that the application meets the customer’s exact requirements. The Agile Scrum methodology JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

FEATURE Applications

recommends three essential changes when developing applications, including using smaller teams with more decision-making authority; involvement of customers at the beginning of the development cycle instead of the end; as well as the regular junctures normally lasting a couple of weeks. Companies like SAP and AccuRev point to the benefits of Agile application development as giving developers the ability to locate changes between two different dates and the ability to audit planned and actual content, providing fast-paced Agile teams time-saving capabilities. According to Hamdan, new changes in application development, are seeking to address the challenges developers face and make the process more seamless for those involved. “With high demand for application development, finding solutions to the challenges is a way to make everyone involved in the development process happier, and the process itself more efficient,” he says.

Novel concepts Rob Bamforth, principal analyst, Quocirca believes that mobile application development is full of hard choices. “Although there is a seemingly insatiable appetite for eversmarter handheld mobile devices and the applications these enable, developers have to decide which subset of the available mobile market they want to write applications for, in order to get a worthwhile and profitable return for their effort.” According to him, even if the requirements from the current set of

Tarek Hamdan, CMO, Sage

target platform editions and devices can all be included and implemented in the application, future platform editions and devices may bring new restrictions - as well as new possibilities. Due to this complexity, he believes that developing and managing a wide variety of application variants demands extra effort in mobile application development environment. IT professionals point to two main approaches when developing mobile applications. One is developing an application that is scalable and adjustable from the very beginning. The drawback of this approach can be that the initial development effort is more significant but decision makers say that this effort will pay off sooner or later and is a good investment in the future.

The second approach is to develop the application so that it is targeted to a narrow number of similar target devices. While the initial development time may be shorter, the drawback is that the post production phases and variant creation is typically more difficult. This approach can be beneficial in cases where the device portfolio is easily controlled and limited within an enterprise, making the need for creating variants lower or even unnecessary. According to decision makers, while there are no standard tools for managing application variants, certain principles make the challenge less difficult, such as making planning and prioritisation an early part of the development process. When deciding on application design, IT professionals point out that developers must ensure they understand the device restrictions and capabilities and analyse how best to tackle these early on in the project. They should follow this up with a proper maintenance and a post production phase to enable making changes to the application based on user reactions following the initial product launch. When it comes to integrating security with the application development process, developers say that the task requires an awareness of how different environments demand different security. For example, the security for running a mainframe application that is not accessible by anything except the mainframe would be considerably different from the security for a Web based application that anyone on the Internet has access to.

BY THE NUMBERS

Source: IDC

10 billion

25 billion

was the number of mobile applications that were downloaded in 2010

is the number of mobile applications expected to be downloaded by the end of 2011

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

300,000 31.4 % apps are currently available via the iPhone App Store, which dominates the app market

www.computernewsme.com

of Americans aged 13 and older used mobile apps in 2010

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FEATURE Applications

Other important elements that impact the application’s security include complexity of the application, the data types, formats and lengths and the database management system that is being used among others. Bashar Kilani, territory manager, Middle East, IBM says “The design of any application should take security into consideration. This is a basic requirement and should cover access to data and information, protection of data and assets in addition to intrusion detection and access control.” Rahman agrees, “Security is a priority. Our security standards for the applications that involve financial transactions meet the PCI standard requirements, printing technology is secured using HDS security and documents are secured using DRM.” In the case of mobile applications, developers say that running a vulnerability scan against the code is most essential. Also, patch management, which according to developers is relatively easy, is often over looked. Developers must make sure that both the operating system and the database that the application is running on is both current and patched. Kilani predicts, “As the number of people and devices on the net increases, the world will witness more applications with focused functionality rather than

This is not future ware. This is here and now and many of the world’s most successful companies have already taken on board applications based on Web 2.0 and are already using them to improve communications throughout their workforce.”

Fadi Abdulkhalek, VP, Cluster Leader, Oracle - Gulf states

large complex applications with wide functionality.” “The Web is moving towards apps that run on many screens, therefore standards such as HTML5 will become more and more popular. For example, the recently announced Windows 8 will allow

developers to build applications using HTML and JavaScript for Windows PCs. This means a new market for developers that come from a web background, and there are many of them,” adds Rauser. AbdulKhalek says, “We may be talking about next generation applications, but this is not future ware. This is here and now and many of the world’s most successful companies have already taken on board applications based on Web 2.0 and are already using them to improve communications throughout their workforce with better information access and increased data sharing that fosters team work and collaboration.” This much is clear, while the demand for businesses to go mobile increases and the volumes of data required for informed analysis and effective decision making simultaneously grows, application development will continue to evolve to provide for the need for increased connectivity, flexibility and business analytics.

Embracing app development Forrester recommends the following lean and mean changes to embrace application development: 1. Embrace the cloud to amplify the speed of custom applications. The cloud not only allows scaling up or down of subscriptions but is well suited to big data and many Web apps as noted by analysts. 2. Find you inner start up by turning on a project when it’s not working and focusing on what’s most important. This is because start ups have little 32

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room for missteps and limited resources meaning every line of the written code must be linked to their ability to obtain revenue. 3. Most importantly, Forrester suggests that organisations choose flexibility and cost over platform loyalty and beware of over buying in the name of standardisation. They should also place a lot of importance on performance. 4. Obsessing over the customer experience and learning how to www.computernewsme.com

wow customers is imperative for all enterprises. 5. Organisations should look for employees that have more than just develo pment skills they should know how to devour business requirements, break down problems, find creative solutions and write a clean code. Forrester points out that empowering business people with tools to build and run applications can help alleviate IT resources and strengthen the enterprise.

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FEATURE Data management

Structuring data Comprehensive data management – bringing together structured and unstructured information – within an organisation is popularly touted as the next big frontier for companies. Sathya Mithra Ashok looks at how end-users can choose and implement better with these solutions.

ata management is the new frontier when it comes to IT investment. And while good old traditional, structured data management continues to be of importance to most organisations, the rising spectre of unstructured data is the one that is garnering most of the headlines. “It is understood that most of the knowledge and key information that exists within an organisation occurs in the email and documents that are written and exchanged on a daily basis. These are not stored in data bases, nor indexed in document management systems. This information is usually sitting on individual PCs and desktop devices. Significant knowledge is stored in this mass of unstructured material. There are good reasons to include the unstructured information in an enterprise data management solution. The structured data stores contain mostly raw data, such as facts, figures and financial data. One could say that the unstructured data stores hold the intellectual capital and the structured data stores hold the valuable basic factual

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

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data,” says Steve Bailey, regional operations director at CommVault Systems. “Many organisations are realising that structured data represents only a small portion of the data residing in their enterprises. The logical conclusion is that decision support could be improved considerably if there were a way to readily collect, integrate, and query the remaining 80% of data. What’s needed is a way to tease critical business information out of unstructured data that resides in a variety of formats, including Word documents, PDF files, e-mail messages, SMS text messages, media files, customer service surveys, transcribed comments recorded by call centres in open-ended fields for freeform text, PowerPoint presentations, and virtually every other type of (non-numeric) corporate document,” says Yves Khoneisser, GM professional services for Sybase products. While basic storage and storage mechanisms – including data classification, data tiering and lifecycle monitoring – remains critical, managing information has become much bigger than simple silos or even data transfer.

“Storage will always play a vital role in an organisation’s data management strategy as the storage ultimately underpins the infrastructure requirement, i.e. the physical layer. However, there has been a significant paradigm shift over the last few years moving away from the physical storage layer to the software layer being the key solution enabler in an organisations data management strategy,” says Bailey. Bashar Kilani, territory manager for the Middle East (Gulf countries and Levant) at IBM Middle East says, “Information management is key in linking IT and business requirements for oganisations. In many cases, efforts are under estimated or it is found to be easier to invest in point solutions than having a comprehensive approach.” Getting your data to flex Talking about data management is easy, getting it to work in your organisation is another matter altogether. “There are several challenges related to consistent information management. Organic growth of storage systems has led to massive disconnects in many organisations.

There are several challenges related to consistent information management. Organic growth of storage systems has led to massive disconnects in many organisations. Silos of data and of data management tools have grown as multiple solutions within organisations have grown. However, as organisations have attempted to rationalise and integrate the applications, the data has often been left in a chaotic state.” Silos of data and of data management tools have grown as multiple solutions within organisations have grown. However, as organisations have attempted to rationalise and integrate the applications, the data has often been left in a chaotic state. Currently worldwide we are facing over 60% yearon-year data growth, 40% of data stored in organisations are non-business related or obsolete, more than 80% of files have not been accessed for six months, 70% of all content is duplicated in addition to which, every dollar spent on hardware equals seven spent on admin,” points out Mahesh Vaidya, CEO at ISIT Middle East. www.computernewsme.com

“One of the major challenges involved in data management is the time it takes to build a solution. Bad practice over decades has lead to the establishment of useless data warehouses or disparate silos of information. The fix does not come overnight, despite the fact that IT seemingly has been working on a ‘solution’ for years, even decades. Besides, IT should be considered part of a single team and not the enemy. Infighting and differences between business needs and IT capabilities, resources and budgets required helps no one,” says Carel Badenhorst, head of technology practice at SAS ME. JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

FEATURE Data management

Khoneisser points out, “There are specific challenges across the data management arena that are putting a lot of pressure on data systems. These challenges are driven by exploding data growth, increased business complexity and the user expectations to obtain responses to any query in virtually real time - the so-called ‘Google’ effect. Another factor adding to the complexity of the data management systems is with the addition of more enterprise applications, holding data in silos, IT ends up making copies of the same basic sets of data. This in turn creates huge amounts of duplicate data within the organisation. Growing data volumes, scarcity of qualified database administration personnel, and difficulties in managing large, complex databases are pressures experienced by IT departments across the board.” While many of these challenges are likely to haunt end-users well into the next year,

Steve Bailey, Regional Operations Director at CommVault

there are some that can be easily sorted out by selecting the right solution and partner, and by implementing it in an optimum manner. “When selecting data management solutions, organisations need to ensure that the solutions of choice can evolve in order to keep pace with the modern trends in the data centre. The legacy method of choosing separate ’Silos’ of products (backup, archive, replication, search, reporting) in order to address an organisations specific data management challenges are no longer scalable and viable in the enterprise data centre of today let alone, tomorrow. Endusers should be looking at vendors that can deliver a truly unified and singular recovery management solution that unified traditional backup, replication, snapshot, archive and search products,” states Bailey. “Customers should look for features around cost reduction, storage optimisation, data integrity and protection, and finally performance and scalability. Customers need to ask how the solution is integrated to their entire IT stack. Ideally, solutions should be pre-integrated and tested at the engineering phase, or there should be reference architectures and templates on how to build the solution. This will help them save costs, reduce risks and increase operational efficiency,” says Marc Heger, hardware senior director at Oracle MENA. Badenhorst adds, “Ensure that irrespective of the solution chosen, the following items are in place -technology catering for all aspects of data management in a pre-integrated platform data access of structured and unstructured data, data quality, and extraction transformation and

Yves Khoneisser, GM professional services for Sybase products

loading elements. Solutions should include structured and market leading mathematical intelligence to augment the technology capability; it should include a robust strategy and a recognised methodology not just software. It should also ultimately look beyond the data management aspects only, and make sure that the end goal, the business value – will be attained within a logical time span.” Vaidya adds, “Any effective data management technology solution would need to overcome three very difficult technical challenges. Volume complexity - the architecture would need to scale to handle petabytes of data; location complexity – the approach and accompanying architecture must handle data in disparate locations– without the need to move the data to analyse or manage it, and format complexity – the technology must deal with and discern data in various formats, and use language-neutral algorithms for analysis.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Source: Gartner

$3 billion

66%

10%

15%

will be the annual worldwide sales of MDM (master data management) software by 2014

of Fortune 1000 organisations will have deployed two or more MDM solutions to support their enterprise MDM strategies by 2014

of packaged MDM implementations will be delivered as SaaS in the public cloud by 2015

of organisations will have added social media data about their customers to the customer master data attributes by 2015

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

www.computernewsme.com

FEATURE Data management

Bailey adds, “With the shift to virtualised data centres, tighter, business driven SLAs and increasing data growth demands, endusers need to rethink their traditional data protection techniques. Brute processing power to move data from one place to another will no longer suffice. Also, the traditional practice of restoring to the previous night’s backup is simply no longer sufficient to meet many SLAs. With round the clock operations, data protection, data recovery, data management and reporting operations must have minimal impact on the production systems and require minimal administrative intervention. The winning solution for endusers needs to address existing issues in the traditional data centres, but more importantly, ease the transition to a virtualised and eventually a cloud-based data centre.” Looking to the future Challenges as they might exist, the data management market in the region is all set to explode, according to most of the experts. “More organisations will have further demand and requirements (compliance or business needs) that will change the way they were treating the data separately – between real-time data operations and archived data and history. We will see the needs for dynamic archived data, available for quick analysis combining current and historical reporting from a single physical or a logically single data source,” says Khoneisser.

Marc Heger, hardware senior director at Oracle MENA

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

Badenhorst states, “The local data management environment is ready for adopting the new generation of data management capabilities like data quality (especially for the Arabic and Anglo based data), and master data management processes assisting organisations in building up their ‘golden standard’ single, trusted version of the truth quicker.” Kilani adds, “This market segment will continue to gain importance and become more relevant to businesses in the region. It is one of the fastest growing segments.” Bailey says, “The traditional approach to data management is now set to change with the introduction of information governance. Information governance is a concept that pulls together key capabilities that organisations need in order to manage risk, improve efficiency and ultimately improve the value of their information. It’s about revolutionising the way organisations build and implement an overall information management strategy, one that addresses both compliance and legal risk by focusing on delivering incremental benefit without compromising end-user productivity and access.”

Carel Badenhorst, Head of Technology practice at SAS ME

classifying and aligning them seamlessly to retention policies. Records are consequently managed from a single source across all locations, media and public or private clouds in an organisation from the cradle to grave,” he adds. Bailey states, “RLM is revolutionising and defining the way organisations quickly and efficiently adopt better information governance. Organisations typically have

“Information management is key in linking IT and business requirements for organisations. In many cases, efforts are under estimated or it is found easier to invest in point solutions than having a comprehensive approach.” “A new ‘bottom up’ approach is now emerging, which is based on the consolidation of acquired data as an end point strategy. A place where information can lifecycle to until its death. This is the world of retention lifecycle management (RLM). RLM is a modern development of the traditional values of the earlier information lifecycle management concept, but with a core focus on the understanding that long term retention and seamless business access are the primary drivers. RLM is a policy driven approach to the granular de-duplicated retention of records. In other words, enabling the preservation of business records by de-duplicating them from the source, whilst www.computernewsme.com

many projects on the go that relate to information governance, but many of these projects are managed and delivered in isolation from each other even though they have common goals in mind. Unifying the way you classify and retain information for the long term, irrespective of storage media and how you adapt it, whilst providing seamless business access, changes all this.” As data volumes grow and the need of data change, data management will also change. Unless enterprises adapt, implement and take on new solutions, they may find that they are left behind in a competitive scenario. And that is a chance, the Middle East as a whole cannot afford to take.

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VERTICAL FOCUS Retail

Netting profits Based on the popular belief that customers are constantly shopping for better experiences, retail organisations across the globe are investing in best of breed technologies to understand their customers’ preferences. This could potentially change the retail game in both the short and long terms, Pallavi Sharma finds out.

etail technology is not what it used to be. The widespread use of wireless technology across the consumer arena, coupled with the increased adoption of advanced technology to automate business processes and reduce human effort and errors has transformed the way business is done. “Retail owners can make use of channels like the internet to launch online shopping experiences saving on costs associated with setting up and managing a new store or branch. This way they can expand business and cater to a larger audience. Retail businesses are also heavily investing in smart digital advertisements on social networks and through their own Web pages,” explains David Catania, CEO, Philip Toledo Limited (PTL). The retail sector has garnered both advantages and challenges from the growth of this technology; the Internet has led to a convergence of worlds bringing both the customers and the competitors much closer. Combined with the increased use of 40

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

social networks and mobile applications to promote business, the IT teams within the retail organisations find themselves at the very centre of all the action. Shadi Al-Fraijat, retail solutions business manager at HP Middle East believes that external trends like the use of credit cards for payment-instead of cash payments- has also led to increased demand on IT to provide the necessary security applications to store and protect the customer’s financial information.” Naturally, the changing nature of business and the constantly changing technology places IT teams at the crux of the matter both to select the right applications to enhance business processes and manage these applications to guarantee their functioning. Deepak Kalra, group IT manager at Al Safeer Group says, “The retail sector requires a very strong infrastructure that enables the 24/7 functionality of operations because retail managers require a minute by minute visibility on transactions, to align sales with stock purchases and account for daily turnover and profitability. This also means that we need effective IT teams that are www.computernewsme.com

available all through the day and all round the year.” Madhav Rao, CIO of EMKE group, which operates the hugely popular hypermarket chain Lulu, agrees on the subject of the dynamic infrastructure demands within the retail sector, “The continuous customer movement across branches and sub offices necessitates the need to share information regarding offers, stock availability among other elements across store locations. Therefore, the retail industries require an infrastructure that provides applications embedded with mobility which also means we need teams skilled enough to manage and operate these dynamic applications.” Decision makers believe that the merging of business processes and technology makes IT an essential strategic business operation within retail industries. An intelligent IT infrastructure in the retail environment gives managers a better view of operations and a better grip on management, they know the popularity of products, the availability of stock, procurement and merchandising options and the minute to minute sales across stores and branches. For the effective deployment of the latest technologies, IT decision makers believe that IT professionals and senior management must evolve into a combination of business analysts, project managers, contract negotiators with a business intelligence mindset and a keen knowledge of the business. They must understand how the

technology would operate separately and how it would operate when integrated to benefit the organisation. “Once the right infrastructure and application is selected based on durability and strength of the vendor, the solutions that measure KPIs must be interfaced with other integral functions like accounting, sales/ purchase ordering, management systems, customer relations etc,” explains Catania. Breaking barriers Most IT professionals in the retail sector feel that the most notable challenge when deploying the latest technology is associated with change management. “Many technologies come with a steep learning curve and most often users don’t understand the need to unlearn knowledge acquired on legacy systems that seemed to be doing the job,” he adds. According to Kalra, the best way to address this challenge is through detailed and intensive training sessions, “When deploying the ERP system at our organisation, the entire company was transformed into a training house and we spent about two to three training

sessions on a single module of the ERP application. This was done in collaboration with the vendor Oracle and helped us educate the workforce such that they realise the benefits of the implementation from a business perspective.” David Watt, IT director, Sifico Group agrees, “The deployment of the ERP system was heavily challenged by the users who had to unlearn their knowledge of the previous system and change the way they operate right down to the way information is captured by the system. It took us about 12 months to get users accustomed to the system and I would say we are still learning.” Rao believes that the best way to handle change management is through reiteration training, where business users are encouraged to educate and train employees. “This gives IT implementations a business viewpoint, which most users find easier to understand, especially when you explain to them the ways it in which it will make their job easier or how it may help them achieve their targets.” www.computernewsme.com

The Al Safeer Group also faced a challenge when developing a centralised employee time and attendance monitoring application associated with collating different hardware platforms needed for the effective functioning of the application. “We faced a hurdle in terms of sharing knowledge with the vendors when bringing together different hardware elements to work with the Oracle database system,” says Kalra. According to him, this challenge can only be addressed through proper communication with the vendor and then thoroughly testing the application in stages before rolling it out to encompass the entire organisation. Kalra and his team are also working on deploying a GPS system to manage the movement of transport vehicles for each of their seven verticals. “The challenge associated with developing this application is associated with the cost of hiring and managing a separate department required for monitoring the system and so the costbenefit analysis of this implementation doesn’t make much sense,” he adds. The Sifico Group faced a credible challenge when developing their online store JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

VERTICAL FOCUS Retail

using Magento technology, which basically tracks the movement of stocks across stores/branches. “We had to outsource the development of the online store, because finding people with the expertise to ensure that the platform is effectively interfaced with our ERP system through the SQL database was a task,” says Watt. According to him, this is a challenge that most retail organisations face when investing in technology. “There exists a lack in terms of skills availability in the region and so we have to outsource the deployment and management of applications, which in turn leads to delays in responding to queries or errors due to time differences and travel time,” explains Watt. Many IT professionals believe that this skills gap must be addressed at a national level by encouraging the growth and development of local talent pools within universities and schools in the region. Personally, from media conferences and other events held over the last few months, I can see that this issue is now being addressed at the grass root level by encouraging ICT education in schools, through the initiatives of organisations like the ICT Fund and BCS- the Chartered Institute of IT in the UAE. It is a matter of time before we see abounding IT talent in the region. Decision makers also feel that vendors in the region concentrate on a transaction based approach and don’t understand the dynamic requirements of the retail segment. “I am disappointed with the service

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

Madhav Rao, CIO, EMKE Group

“At this point, we are witnessing generic solutions that require considerable time and effort on the part of the IT teams to customise to suit the business operations. Vendors need to work on developing solutions that are easily adaptable to varying operations within the retail sector. For instance, a warehouse management solution will vary across supermarket chains and fashion stores, where one will have to be divided based on durable and non-durable goods the other may need to be segregated based on seasons, colours, sizes etc,” explains Watt. Undeterred investments

The retail sector requires a very strong infrastructure that enables the 24/7 functionality of operations because retail managers require a minute by minute visibility on transactions to align sales with stock purchases and account for daily turnover and profitability. This also means that we need IT teams that are available all through the day, all round the year.”

providers in the region because their ability to provide after sales support is limited. We need to see more solutions based initiatives from the vendor, where they guide and support the deployment of their solution,” says Kalra. Catania agrees, “Customers in the region are asking for more support from their vendors to give them more value from their investment. End users don’t just want a technical solution, they also want a vendor who can share industry knowledge and support them through the implementation and initial testing phase.” In particular to the retail industry, decision makers feel that vendors need to spend considerable time understanding the retail business and how the IT infrastructure requirements within this sector differ from those of other sectors so as to be able to develop solution to meet their unique needs.

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Despite the hurdles, retail organisations are heavily investing in the latest ICT platforms to enhance business performance and information sharing across branches especially in retail chains that encompass two or more countries. The Al Safeer Group has invested in a private cloud platform where the organisation’s servers are hosted by Etisalat to provision the sharing of MIS reports across their stores located in Oman, Qatar and the UAE. “We have also deployed a mobile MIS application to enable the real time updation of information from POS and the shop floor,” adds Kalra. The EMKE group has invested in a retail POS system that has visibly increased efficiency and provides the decision makers with a comprehensive sales view that includes the most minute details including the movement of products across various

VERTICAL FOCUS Retail

store locations, “The software gives us a segregated analysis of what products move off the shelf the fastest, what products sell the fastest across different stores and cash counter movement as well.” Retail organisations are also investing in fully mobile POS stations and barcode scanning technologies that can be set up using handheld devices to provision better customer service, especially during high volume sales periods. According to Catania, another notable investment across retail businesses is in traditional cash registers and desktop scanners that are attached to back-end systems via wireless LAN benefitting retailers through reduced cabling costs and increased flexibility in store reconfiguration. This wireless technology in the form of barcode scanners and entry terminals linked to the back-end systems via WLAN are used in warehousing areas and shipping and receiving areas to update stock logs from the warehouse locations and are

Deepak Kalra, Group IT Manager, Al Safeer Group

Customers in the region are asking for more support from their vendors to give them more value from their investment. End users don’t just want a technical solution, they also want a vendor who can share industry knowledge and support them through the implementation and initial testing phase”

often also used to input invoices into a store’s accounting system, simplifying the process of billing, accounting and inventory management tasks. Price verification kiosks have also become very popular within retail organisations, customers can now take merchandise, scan the barcode and determine the actual price instead of waiting on store staff to manually check price lists. This greatly improves customer service and leaves store staff to concentrate on more tedious store operations. Many retail enterprises now routinely connect remote offices, branch offices, and retail outlets with broadband DSL or cable modem Internet connections, and then attach VPN hardware to the connection to establish secure links to a central or regional corporate location. The acceleration of smart phone penetration and the increasing propensity for consumers to use their mobiles phones for in store activities gives retail chains an incentive to invest in developing usable mobile retail applications. On the whole, IT executives share an optimistic outlook for the retail industry and the opportunity that technology provides to

David Catania, CEO, PTL

garner a significant competitive advantage. Decision makers believe that IT needs to “at the table” now more than ever and therefore investing in IT is a key priority. Growing customer centricity is driving the need to invest in the latest technologies and this bodes well for the IT industry which is today considered an enabler and not just a support function, the question that decision makers are asking today no longer centre around why an IT investment be made but explores the definition of a wise IT investment.

BY THE NUMBERS

41%

of retailers plan to have a transactional mobile site by 2012

44 Computer News Middle East

Source: IAB UK study

59%

of retailers expect mobile revenues to increase over the next 12 months

JULY 2011

94%

of retailers see the mobile market as a real opportunity

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74%

retailers want training related to mobile commerce

$119

billion expected value of mobile commerce by 2015

Q&A Ernesto Baca Fernand Rasetti

Banking on Sage Fernand Rasetti, COO, Sage, a software development company serving the global financial industry in streamlining processes for core banking operations, was in the UAE to attend the MEFTEC conference. In a chat with Pallavi Sharma, he discusses the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategy in the coming months and how economic shocks are actually good for everybody.

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s this your first visit to the UAE? What is the reason for your visit now? I have made regular visits to the UAE over the last two years, although this time round I am here for the MEFTEC event because it is one of the best events for the banking and finance industry in the Middle East, focused on middle and upper management, who go to the event in a search for solutions catered for their organisation’s specific requirements. At this point, Sage wants to be seen in this market and missing an opportunity like the one MEFTEC presents, to exhibit ourselves, understand the market and customer needs cannot be justified. As vendors, it is also an opportunity to demonstrate solutions and meet new business prospects. What sets Sage apart from its competition across the globe? Sages’s solution is based on a core CRM model which is then split into modules that cover specific market segments. So we can scale the system up and down to deliver the customer’s requirements. So in a bank, that has different activities like asset management, portfolio management, fund management, independent investors with each having a specific relationship with all the actors and interfaces that relate to the core activities, and if the solution can’t be adapted to their way of thinking, it won’t suit their needs. So our ability to change the system and accommodate specific requirements of the customer is definitely our USP.

What are the company’s strengths, and where lies its weaknesses? Where our core strength is our flexibility, our weakness would be the ability to demonstrate our capabilities to customers This is especially one in market with a lot well known players

Suddenly, everybody realises that excesses create redundancy and incompetence and so you rethink strategies based on what was earlier ignored or missed out.” who have been there longer, specially because not only are we younger we are also a much smaller organisation.

The hot topics in IT these days seem to centre around virtualisation, cloud computing and data analytics. We don’t hear much about Sage in these technology discussions. How are you tapping into these trends gobally? I don’t like to use the term cloud computing, I believe that the banking and finance institutions, because of the sensitivity of their data are hesitant about cloud computing because they need this data to be hosted in a known location within a secure vault. So I would term it a hosted solution, where we provide the customer a service to host their data in a location that is external but well known. We can guarantee the protection of this data or information within our servers and our secure vault. The industry that invests in this solution the most is the investment banking sector, wealth and asset management because they deal with a smaller number of customers and don’t have the infrastructure to support the IT required to meet their standards of service. We provide them a service that can be customised to suit their needs and may be scaled down to fit their budgets as well. IT becomes easy for them; the deployment is also more effective. What are the major technology trends that you think will affect global IT decisions and effectiveness in the next 18 months? The future of technology is definitely cloud www.computernewsme.com

computing. With companies such as Amazon and Google offering the cloud, the way people see data, manage data along with how they store the data has changed. In the past data needed to be enclosed and safe. People are accepting the constraint of hosting the data in an external space that is publicly accessible and shared between companies. It is a challenge and the scenario is much the same as when the Internet was first introduced and people said they wouldn’t need it and now they can’t live without it. Cloud computing will definitely change the IT world, the way that organisations function and the role that IT departments play within their respective organisations. I think vendors need to educate the public about data security in the cloud to encourage more investment in this area. Once organisations know that their data is encrypted and secure from any attacks the cloud will gain momentum. At the moment, we’re witnessing many organisations experimenting with the idea of cloud computing by placing their non critical data onto the cloud, but given time and knowledge, this will change. The security concern needs to be addressed at a national level to encourage users; laws and regulations must also be put in place to better the security ecosystem surrounding cloud computing. Do needs for software solutions vary very largely between SMEs and enterprises? How is Sage targeting both? I don’t think the requirements are any JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

Q&A Fernand Rasetti

different. I think the capacity to service and manage the infrastructure and application requirements is what varies. While the larger organisations have the budgets to invest in the latest technoglogies, they don’t have the appetite for risk that SMEs do.

What do you believe are the challenges Sage is likely to encounter on a global scale as it works towards the next stage of growth? I see a dramatic change in the banking sector, which is now recovering from a slowdown in investments due to the financial crisis. Banks are also experiencing growth in operations and therefore, want to invest in scalable solutions based not only on what is applicable today but also based on what the future of the industry and its operations will be.

How important is the Middle East as a market to Sage? Not disclosing any numbers, the region represents over 30% of our revenue today. We believe this is a fast growing market with immense opportunities and growing competition. It is a young market with a lot of needs where vendors with flexible solutions can harness great leads. Most importantly, I believe that shocks are good for business. We have learnt from the past that shocks make an organisation or nation take notice of areas for improvement, what they’ve been doing wrong and optimise excesses. Suddenly, everybody realises that excesses create redundancy and incompetence and so you rethink strategies based on what was earlier ignored or entirely missed out. I also think this region is very young; companies are not mature enough to capture the scope of banking in the region. When you sell something to them you realise that although they want a particular solution or product they don’t understand the scope and extent of change the solution may trigger. So like every young country in the world, it takes time to create the knowledge base and skills that an industry requires. It is worthwhile investment and is only a matter of time. How does Sage’s strategy vary when it comes to emerging regions? What are

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JULY 2011

I believe that shocks are good for business. We have learnt from the past that shocks make an organisation or nation take notice of areas for improvement, what they’ve been doing wrong and optimise excesses.” the specific challenges you face in these emerging markets and how do you work to overcome them? They may vary around cultural aspects. For instance, we have invested a lot in Islamic banking but the objective is to develop a single solution that may be adapted and customised to suit the customer’s requirement regardless of regional divides. How do you collect feedback from customers and how is this incorporated back into your solutions? First, we visit the region, at least twice a year, to meet customers to get feedback and take note of opportunities for improvement. We provide comprehensive support from feedback to service, measure how we have responded to customer requests, and document these. We are also working on regular calls and follow up from sales staff and are in the process of formalising this project.

How does the feedback loop work in emerging regions like the Middle East? Do

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you have an R&D base in the region or is it primarily a sales setup? No, we don’t have an R&D base in the region. We work on a factual model, a centralised process for software development, where we follow a specific work flow from assessment and design to acceptance test and delivery. The process is rigid and at no stage can it be jumped. Our core development operations are based in Switzerland because we have good rapport with banking organisations and universities there. These contribute to the existing knowledge base. We know that there currently exists a gap in knowledge sharing across developers and end users and are working on a detailed certification process for both developers and end users , so that eventually both parties know what is being talked about and fully understand all the elements and interfaces. For the next few months, our strategy is customer acquisition. We are fighting to build a loyal customer base in the region, to let others know that we are here offering them highly customisable solutions.

STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

INSIGHT Ernesto Baca Cloud computing

Ask the right questions CNME presents some recommendations on the questions that customers should be asking potential cloud vendors before they sign contracts.

Computer News Middle East

JULY 2011

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STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

hen you’re on an airliner and fly through layers of clouds, you see first-hand that they come in many forms - sometimes hazy, sometimes translucent and sometimes so dense that you can’t see through them. In many ways, cloud computing is similar there are lots of gray areas, and it’s hard to know exactly what you might get from each cloud offering. The decision to pursue a cloud computing strategy is checkered with questions: What cloud vendor do you hire? What apps do you put in the cloud? Do you use a public cloud or a private cloud? Then there are the issues of security, availability and disaster recovery to consider. Taking the time to address those considerations is critical. The more information gathering you do at the start, he says, the better your results will be when you finally implement the cloud strategy that best fits your needs. Here, we share a list of the top eight recommended questions that CIOs should ask prospective cloud vendors. 1. Can I see your data centre? To know how secure your data and applications are going to be with a vendor, CIOs are recommended to hit the road. “If I ran a data centre, I’d want to visit any prospective cloud vendor’s facilities and ask them to show me what kind of environment they have, what their security controls are, and let me see what they’ve got,” says Bill Claybrook, principal of New River Marketing Research. “They’d have to undoubtedly convince me that it would all work efficiently.” 2. How do I move my apps to the cloud? CIOs often neglect to ask how they can actually move their apps and data to the cloud. Usually you send it over some kind of trusted network connection [such as a VPN], but IT managers need to know how it’s done with each vendor. 3. How are my apps and data likely to be protected from other users on the same

The decision to pursue a cloud computing strategy is checkered with questions: What cloud vendor do you hire? What apps do you put in the cloud? Do you use a public cloud or a private cloud? Then there are the issues of security, availability and disaster recovery to consider.” cloud servers? Don’t make any assumptions about how vendors handle multiple users, also known as multi-tenants, on the same cloud servers. Ask detailed questions about the extent to which your data and apps will be protected when running with those of other cloud customers. Experts recommend having each vendor show you how they segregate their customers’ data and applications. 4. Can I speak with some of your customers? Potential customers should ask for customer references. Speaking with customers will give you the opportunity to compare what the vendor has told you with actual customer experiences.

5. Can I move an existing app from my private cloud to your public cloud without massive reconfiguration? This question is critical because your cloud vendor’s infrastructure is likely completely different from yours. Consequently, if you want to move an app out of your data centre, there will likely be some conflicts.The application might have been built assuming the use of particular storage technologies, specific network configurations and specific management tools. CIOs need to know if it’s moved to a public cloud, where all of those things are probably different, how vendors can make it work. The vendor may provide tools that can make the migration go more smoothly. It also helps to find a vendor whose technology ecosystem is similar to yours. Some cloud vendors support multiple databases and various forms of networking. “You’ll want your applications to perform at least as well in the cloud after it’s moved as it ran in your data centre,” says Claybrook. www.computernewsme.com

6. How do I get my data back? In the event you need to move your applications and data back into your data centre (or to another cloud vendor), you need to know exactly where your data is stored and how to get it back. You also need to be clear on your contractual obligations should you ever decide to terminate the relationship with the cloud vendor. “For instance, you may owe the cloud vendor money if you terminate the contract,” he adds. Getting the data back is not always easy. IT manager should always talk about this beforehand. That should be part of the contract negotiations.

7. How do you address government regulations? Many businesses have to comply with state or federal regulations regarding consumer privacy and data. With that in mind, it’s critical to know how your cloud vendor is handling your data so you can be sure you are complying with all of the regulations that affect your business. There are cases, due to regulations, where organisations may want their data stored outside of some particular area, maybe a specific state and certainly not outside your country. What kind of guarantee can they get from your the cloud provider that the data stays within a certain place? Claybrook emphasises that it’s the customer’s responsibility to comply with government regulations. “You have to be sure you are still in compliance once you move to the cloud,” he says. “Make sure that this is part of your contract.” 8. What will I really pay? When Amazon EC2 and other public clouds came along, the assumption was that running your JULY 2011

Computer News Middle East

STRATEGIC ICT PARTNER

INSIGHT Ernesto Cloud computing Baca

applications on a public cloud was going to be cheaper. Now some people are finding out that it’s more expensive than they thought, and some are trying to move back and build out their own data centres. So you need to have really good cost estimates for running apps on the cloud versus running them on your own premises.

Customers can get misled on price when cloud vendors leave details out of their cost estimates. Be sure to ask about everything you need. Don’t assume anything. For example, ask if there are charges for transferring data over networks to the cloud. Ask a lot of questions. Ask the questions that you’re hesitant to ask.

Steps for data centre capacity planning In the coming years, the flexibility and cost alternatives provided by new technologies such as virtualisation, internal and external cloud computing, and different types of cloud-based solutions will offer IT infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals a choice of platforms for running an application or business service. This changes the scope of capacity planning and consequently the process of planning capacities The traditional capacity planning process was a four-phased affair. Step 1: Create a baseline to understand how your server, storage, or network infrastructure are used by capturing secondary indicators such as CPU load or global network traffic. Steps 2 and 3: Evaluate changes from new applications that are going to run on the infrastructure and the “drift” or workload due to increased activity in a given business services. And step 4: Analyse the data from the previous steps to forecast future infrastructure requirements and decide how to satisfy these requirements. The traditional approach is no longer acceptable because it is component and not business serviceoriented, it doesn’t take costs and value into consideration, and it doesn’t place enough emphasis on emerging data centre costs and constraints. The simple fact that a choice of placements exists for a given business service implies that we must consider all the elements that support the decision, especially from a cost and value standpoint, before making an informed decision on where a specific service should run. The capacity planning of tomorrow supports internal as well as external choices, 52

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virtual as well as physical alternatives. Furthermore, the new capacity planning organisation is no longer part of the I&O department -- it has to be part of an overall management group reporting to the CIO. To offer competitive IT services into the future, Forrester recommends that I&O professionals update today’s capacity planning process with three new steps to account for cost-value analysis, governance, and global planning.

1. Cost-value analysis to evaluate where the service should be located This is a decision support step with a foundation in activity-based costing (ABC), which takes all the real costs into consideration in its analysis. For example, a business process may have a critical value yet have a total capital and operating cost that is far superior to what it should, considering the number of users or the frequency at which it is used. Such a service is a clear candidate for an alternative placement with a lower cost overhead. Going forward, it’s critical for I&O professionals to understand the cost-value of business services, especially as facilities and energy costs consume a more significant portion of total IT capital and operating costs. 2. Governance to keep recommendations in line This is a modifier that could override the cost-value analysis. Governance is needed to keep any decision in line with the enterprise policies regarding security, outsourcing, or audit and confidentiality. Thus, while a lower-cost solution such as public cloud www.computernewsme.com

computing may be more profitable for some low-volume applications such as personnel files, I&O professionals have to include security and data privacy requirements in their platform selection, clouds or internal.

3. An ITIL-defined capacity plan becomes the end result Unlike the old method, the new capacity planning process concerns all technologies across the data centre and is crossreferenced with critical business service and technology type. The new capacity planning process still has a network plan, a storage plan, a compute plan, and so on, but it also shows the relationship between these technology silos, facilities, and critical business services on a global scale. As a result, it is now aligned with the notion of business capacity management, service capacity management, and technology capacity management found in ITIL. IT leaders place a lot of emphasis on the capital-saving benefits of cloud computing -- but they’re missing the point. What’s important in cloud technologies is that it gives IT a choice of delivery platforms that didn’t exist before. Software-as-aservice (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), internal clouds, and virtualised infrastructures offer a variety of capabilities and costs. As with all choices, we need a rationale to exercise it -- and this is what capacity planning is all about. Capacity planning will let IT leaders make the most of their cloud investments by understanding how much or how little they need to source to deliver the quality-ofservice expected by the business users.

What we’re reading

On the edge Steve Sashihara > Book The economy may be on the upswing, but everyone is still looking to do more with less. Sashihara says cutting staff and services isn’t the answer. Instead, the most successful businesses use software that crunches huge quantities of data to decide how best to use their resources. These programs can manage supply chains, handle dynamic pricing and schedule production years in advance. The Optimization Edge: Reinventing Decision Making to Maximize All Your Company’s Asssets (McGraw-Hill)

Rocking business Bill Roedy > Book Roedy spent 22 years with MTV, building its networks around the world. He imparts a number of business lessons learned from his successes and mistakes during his years in cable TV, reinforcing the importance of prioritising and the need to delegate. Of course, the real highlights of the book are Roedy’s many anecdotes, including deflecting P. Diddy’s more outrageous demands, wearing sneakers to meet the Dalai Lama and soothing the Duchess of York’s hurt feelings when rockers swore at her on TV. What Makes Business Rock: Building the World’s Largest Global Networks (Wiley)

Better under pressure Justin Menkes > Book Why do some people produce their best results when times are hard while others collapse under the pressure? Menkes says there are three key traits that allow a leader to succeed in tough situations: realistic optimism, unswerving dedication to a goal, and the ability to make sense of multidimensional problems. What’s more, all

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JULY 2011

three traits can be learned, says Menkes, a psychologist who works with CEOs at major companies. He offers tips and warns of pitfalls he’s uncovered from reviewing the résumés of hundreds of CEOs and interviewing dozens more. Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others (Harvard Business Review Press)

Bare knuckle people management Sean O’Neil and John Kulisek > Book If you’re sick of touchy-feely leadership books, give this one a try. The writers sort employees—good and bad—into 16 categories, including Steady Eddie and Mr. Inappropriate, and explain how to get the most from each. The book is peppered with sample dialogues, irreverent anecdotes and enough swears to make it read more like a casual chat with a peer than a high-minded lecture from HR. Bare Knuckle People Management: Creating Success With the Team You Have – Winners, Losers, Misfits and All (BenBella Books)

@MiamiCIO Debra Allison > Blog The VP of IT and CIO of Miami University in Ohio maintains this Twitter feed, where she mostly posts links to interesting IT news stories and adds a bit of her own commentary. Of Microsoft’s plan to acquire Internet phone and video chat company Skype, she says, “Can’t help but think this is the start of Skype’s demise. But watch the debt:earnings ratio.” She mixes in some leadership tips and lighter fare, such as this retweet of @FalseSteveJobs, who weighs in on the iPhone tracking scandal: “You get ‘Find my iPhone.’ We get ‘Find my Apple customer.’ Fair trade.” @MiamiCIO

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