Where technology means business
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ISSUE 229 | february 2011 | www.computernewsme.com
Slicing through the Bahrain’s International Hospital goes filmless and nearly paperless
INSIDE: CIO roundtable
| IT training | SLAs in service provision
| Telemedicine
ISSUE
229
|
February
Slicing through the clutter
Bahrain’s International Hospital goes filmless and nearly paperless 6 CIOs name connectivity as biggest issue >> UAE’s IT managers joined CPI and eHDF to discuss the state of the data centre and what they would like to see from vendors and service providers going forward. 8 Getting onto the cloud >> How should a company phase its deployment in a public cloud environment in order to reduce risks? 12 Running out fast >> The current crop of internet addresses could start to disappear very soon if a regional internet registry makes one more request for two blocks of addresses. 14 Round-up >> A quick round-up of IT industry news in the MENA region. FEATURE 26 Putting IT on paper >> CNME puts together a list of tips on how enterprises in the region should go about forming service level agreements (SLAs) with their service providers – whether regional or international. 30 Digital diagnosis >> While remote medicine offers great potential advantages in the region, healthcare institutions are yet to experiment with it on a large scale, swamped as they are by challenges related to infrastructure, networks and trained medical staff. CNME finds out the current state of play in the concluding part of the healthcare series.
2011
20
36 Train them right >> If the average IT manager in the region wants to retain his staff he would need to invest in them with training. CNME gives a few points on putting together a comprehensive training programme for IT staff. INTERVIEW 42 A rewarding job >> When Ben Fried left his post as IT MD at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google’s CIO, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars. In a recent interview, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs. INSIGHT 46 Straight talk on the future >> New expectations and a changing economic landscape point to an evolved role for IT in 2011. Here’s how to avoid getting left behind. HOW TO 50 Let information guide IT >> Symantec CIO Dave Thompson shares his thoughts on the importance of information to an organisation and the disconnect between how much a company values information, yet also seems unwilling to do what is necessary to utilise and secure it. 52 GAGA OVER GADGETS >> CNME gets down in the dust with the latest in productivity solutions, and gives you the verdict. 54 WHAT WE’RE READING >> We select the best international technology blogs and books and bring them to you.
Publisher Dominic De Sousa
Bringing integrity into question
Sathya Mithra Ashok Senior Editor
Of all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, few have paralleled Egypt in its efforts to attract high tech industries to its borders in the last few years. The country opened its doors to multinational ICT organisations and built Smart Cities to host these companies as it saw in them a good way to develop the economy, bite into some of the global pie on outsourcing activities in the IT sector and an assured way of creating jobs for the local population. And then January 25th 2011 happened - a restive population seeking democracy rose up in arms against the incumbent Mubarak, taking inspiration from the popular uprising in Tunisia. And how did the government react? As it attempted to take back control of the streets and the cities, it cut the Internet and severely limited mobile phone use. The Egyptian rulers did this in an attempt to prevent news and information on the unrest from going out of the country. But what message did they send to all those multinational ICT firms that they had spent the best part of a decade convincing to come to their shores? That the country was politically unstable and that at the slightest hint of strife all connectivity will be cut. That all the promises of the country about infrastructure and capitalism are relevant only when circumstances favour such implementation. That when push comes to shove the government would rather obstruct not just economic freedoms, but even the sharing of information, as a panicky measure to control the situation. Egypt might have turned a switch and cut off the internet. International firms have their own switches in the form of well-developed disaster plans. They f lip a switch, transfer workloads to other locations near or offshore and shut operations in the country. This is exactly what many international firms did within the first week of the trouble, and especially after the Internet was shut down. As I write this Cairo is still in turmoil. Whatever the outcome of the riots, one thing is sure - the government has effectively raised doubts about the integrity of many regional governments and it might take the better half of another decade to settle those doubts in its favour, if it does. On a more positive note, however, nobody who watched events unfold in Cairo can any longer have any doubts about the power and the reach of social networking. The creators of Facebook and Twitter can never have imagined how their applications could be used to link millions to change societies, but that is the very nature of technology. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there's no putting it back and there's no predicting exactly which direction it will move in...
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analysis | month in view name > CIOs connectivity
as biggest issue
UAE’s IT managers joined CPI and eHosting DataFort (eHDF) to discuss the state of the enterprise data centre and what they would like to see from vendors and service providers going forward. CIOs and IT managers in the
UAE named connectivity and the lack of redundancy in their data centres as one of the biggest issues that they are facing in the country. They stated that connectivity issues will have to be rectified, and more of a free-market like environment created for service providers in order to improve the operational efficiency and productivity at an exclusive CIO roundtable conducted by eHosting DataFort (eHDF) and CPI. The IT decision makers had gathered at the roundtable to discuss some of the continuing challenges connected to their infrastructure. When asked to name the issues that confronted them with building and maintainig data centres in the country, many also stated that they
had to constantly tackle vendors and providers who often knew very little of the solutions that they were selling. “Compared to the situation in Europe or the United States, where there is a lot of evangelism on technologies, many companies here do not do enough on knowledge transfer. Their internal staff themselves often do not know a lot about the solutions they are selling, and they constantly have to check with their peers in developed markets. Many people in the UAE are still box pushers this way,” said Sacha Narinx, technical director for Bios ME. According to the CIOs, connectivity issues and the lack of redundancy was one of the main reasons that many did not consider managed data centre services seriously in the country. Many also stated that in truth there was not much choice when it comes to managed service provision within the country, especially when considering to local providers. “Many service providers in the market still do not provide proper detailed SLAs (service level agreements) to clients. Often, this leaves the customer with nothing to compare back to on service provision or to properly measure the quality of the services being provided,” said Saleem Ahmed, IT manager at Emirates Steel.
“From our part, we are constantly in conversation with entities in the UAE to enforce the idea that cheaper bandwidth and better connectivity is essential to the economic development of the country. That if these two factors exist then it is easier for industries to expand their bases in the country, bring in more people and therefore help the entire economy.” 6
COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
The audience also named the lack of experienced IT staff and the unavailability of quality training courses as other factors holding back the market. “It takes me an average of six to seven months sometimes to find the right resource for certain job titles. We get a lot of resumes when we put out an ad, but to find someone who is of quality and who is the right person it takes time and internal resources,” pointed our Tibor Loncsar, director of strategy and operations – IT at Dubai World Trade Centre. The group also mourned the lack of reliable international service providers and the inability to access and use the resources of international service providers in the country due to either connectivity or data integrity issues. “From our part, we are constantly in conversation with entities in the UAE to enforce the idea that cheaper bandwidth and better connectivity is essential to the economic development of the country. That if these two factors exist then it is easier for industries to expand their bases in the country, bring in more people and therefore help the entire economy. This is a constant discussion at our end and we will continue to push it,” said Yasser Zeineldin, CEO of eHDF. He also assured that, unlike some other service providers in the country, eHDF does operate with clients on SLAs and contracts across certain metrics. The CIOs also engaged in an involved discussion on virtualisation, its pros and cons and how they can get more from their investments. “We have a huge number of servers in our current infrastructure and in an effort to improve our utilisation on these servers we have started with virtualisation. We hope that the virtualisation initiative will help us get more from our server investments,” said Raj Patel, VP of IT at Majid Al Futtaim in the UAE. Other IT managers in the room who were experimenting with virtualisation stated that while the technologies had obvious benefits there were still major constraints against large-scale implementation. One of them is the large
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According to the CIOs, connectivity issues and the lack of redundancy was one of the main reasons that many did not consider managed data centre services seriously in the country.
capital investment that is necessary and secondly, the fact that many smaller apps that are necessary to the business might not always be capable of being migrated to a virtualised environment. Ahmed, said, “We have adopted standards to help us out with implementing and managing infrastructure elements. We have also been certified for ISO 27001, the security standard. Depending on the organisation, I think it is very important to benchmark themselves and get standards in place in order to manage infrastructure and security properly. They have to plan for the worst, and expect the best.” On the IT budget front, CIOs spoke heatedly about the increasing inf luence of the CFO in organisations and their involvement in every IT decision. “Often when it comes to solution or vendor selection, we go through detailed examination, POCs and research in the market to present a selection to the CFO. We also tell him very clearly that even if the solutions look similar, the one with a
higher price tag often comes with better solution and services. But almost all the time we get the solution that comes with the cheapest price tag selected off the cuff,” stated Narinx. Bassem Aboukhater, IT manager at UAE’s Leo Burnett offices countered by saying, “I would say that the way an IT manager talks to the business often determines the budgets he can get and the projects he can conduct. If he is talking to the business group in business language and emphasises ROI over the long term, most management would be willing to listen and implement. However, if he focuses only on the technology and the technical side of things, his argument will be lost to the higher management and he could face issues in getting his projects commissioned.” Agreed Lindsay D’Mello, IT manager at SALAMA – Islamic Arab Insurance, “It is important for the IT manager to work with the higher management and the CFO. They have to learn to discuss business issues and then suggest
february 2011
technology that can help with solving these issues.” Others piped in stating that the relationship has to work as a partnership where the management was as willing to listen as the IT manager had to talk business. Conversation also touched upon what they are looking for in their organisations for the new year and this included everything from improved training services to better presence of global cloud providers, improved performance and forensic capabilities along with better local managed services and providers.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
7
analysis | month in view
onto > Getting the cloud How should a company phase its deployment in a public cloud environment in order to reduce risks?
firms around the globe. What should they outsource first? We'll outline five deployment phases related to risk and information security. The five include network infrastructure, disaster recovery infrastructure, remote offices, core law applications, and critical sensitive data applications.
Where does a 500-million-dollar,
Phase One
mid-sized company go to implement cloud computing? Where should they begin? How should a company phase its deployment in order to reduce risks? Let’s take a global law firm as an example. Most law firms have similar business applications, so a public cloud provider could address this niche for law
Often the first deployment phase - network connectivity - is already outsourced to what could be called a cloud provider. The companies' network connectivity to the main data centre (where law Web applications are hosted on Web servers) is hosted by one network provider such as AT&T. Their
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
second backup provider may be Verizon. The network connectivity to all of the law offices is also provided by AT&T and/or Verizon.
Phase Two This should focus on outsourcing the functions that are critical for disaster recovery of the main data centre. This architecture could be deployed at a disaster recovery site in another major city where it can be tested to make sure it covers all business critical functions. The cloud provider needs to be checked to see if they support these functions so that you can be assured that a disaster is addressed well and that your phase three migration will go well.
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analysis | month in view The following components are needed to serve all of the future phases of recovery. The encryption host is currently housed on separate servers and is used to encrypt disaster recovery sensitive data on the main SAN and NAS storage subsystems. The LDAP host defines end user role-based access to systems and applications. Network management systems are used to monitor up-time of the various data centre systems. E-mail applications are needed for managing global e-mail. A firewall protects web traffic from Internet attack. Application software update tools enable corporations to update critical application features in a controlled fashion. Load balancers are needed to evenly distribute Web traffic to various Web servers that serve various Web applications. Web servers host critical business applications: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and law applications. A simple SAN and/ or NAS storage subsystem is needed to support only the critical phase two disaster recovery systems.
Phase Three This phase addresses functions that exist in branch law office. In order to see the benefits of cloud computing, the cloud providers must provide Web-based branch law office applications. If they are not, the cost associated with keeping branch office support personnel is necessary. Note, it is possible to perform remote desktop functions via a browser so that branch applications do not need to be rewritten. It is becoming more and more expensive to keep support staff in the various branches. Eventually, only browser based software on iPadlike hardware will be needed at remote locations with storage coming from the cloud. Only the branches wireless and LAN infrastructure will be needed at branch locations and it will likely be outsourced to a network provider. Phase three also addresses what is deployed within the data centre to support the branches. The addition of each office increases the demand
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
Phase two focuses on outsourcing the most critical portion of the infrastructure -that which is needed for disaster recovery. After this phase is complete, phase three addresses the infrastructure that is needed for the various remote offices. Phase four addresses non-critical applications within the data centre. Lastly, phase five separates applications with similar critical data using virtual firewall segments. for Web applications, Web servers, load balancers, database servers, virtualization infrastructure (virtual machines) and cloud storage. The cloud provider's data centre should be scaled up incrementally. New routers, switches, and dedicated centralised SAN and NAS storage subsystems (cloud storage) are also needed.
Phase Four The penultimate phase focuses on core business applications. These business applications are accessed by corporate users over the Web via a Web browser. These business applications are generally used by the corporate office and consume a chunk of various data centre resources.
in many corporations. Their network infrastructure to the data centre and the remote offices is outsourced to an internet provider. Phase two focuses on outsourcing the most critical portion of the infrastructure - that which is needed for disaster recovery. After this phase is complete, phase three addresses the infrastructure that is needed for the various remote offices. Phase four addresses non-critical applications within the data centre. Lastly, phase five separates applications with similar critical data using virtual firewall segments. This incremental phasing moves the law firm's applications into the cloud without putting the business at risk.
Phase Five Lastly, phase five addresses critical applications' HIPAA health care data, financial data, HR data, and other sensitive data. Like phase four, it takes advantage of second-tier virtual firewalls to protect the applications with similar data in various segments. In this design separate SANs or storage clouds can be used to isolate each type of data. One benefit of segmentation is that all of the sensitive data in a given segment can be encrypted using the same method. In summary, phase one already exists
February 2011
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analysis | month in view > Running out fast The current crop of Internet addresses could start to disappear very soon if a regional Internet registry makes one more request for two blocks of addresses. The current crop of Internet addresses could start to disappear shortly if a regional Internet registry makes one more request for two blocks of addresses. APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is eligible to request two large blocks of IPv4 (Internet Protocol, Version 4) addresses, because users have been snapping up its existing stock quickly enough, according to Leo Vegoda, manager of number resources at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Because there are only seven of these large blocks left, that allocation to APNIC would activate a policy for the IANA to hand out the last five blocks to the five regional registries, Vegoda said. Experts have been warning ISPs (Internet service providers) and enterprises for years that IPv4 addresses are destined to run out soon. Various technical fixes have staved off that day, but the assignment of those final blocks would leave the ultimate supply of those addresses tapped out. This would mark a milestone on the path to an Internet based totally on the latest protocol, IPv6. It typically takes about two business
days to fulfill a request by a regional Internet registry (RIR) such as APNIC for more address blocks, and it can be done more quickly if needed, Vegoda said. The IANA does not comment on address allocations until they are made, but "it would certainly be possible for us to process a request before the end of this week," he said. APNIC, based in Brisbane, Australia, was not immediately available to comment on a possible address request. The timing suggests that predictions that IPv4 addresses will be depleted very soon may be correct. Martin Levy, director of IPv6 strategy at ISP Hurricane Electric, predicted recently that the IANA's stockpile would be exhausted this week. At the same time, two online "clocks" that estimate the date of IPv4 depletion are showing that this event should have passed already or would occur very soon. Last month, the IPv4 depletion site showed the “IANA depletion date” has just arrived. A long-running IPv4 clock at Potaroo. net forecast the IANA running out earky February. The IANA is the part of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) that allocates IP addresses to the RIRs. The regional organisations, in turn, fulfill requests by ISPs and other customers in their regions for smaller blocks of addresses. After the IANA hands out the last of its so-called "/8" blocks, each of which contains about 16 million addresses, the RIRs will have
This won't mean that suddenly no user can get a new IPv4 address. In addition to the remaining numbers held by the RIRs, there are some addresses left in older blocks assigned before the RIRs were established, which the RIRs have split up among themselves. But given the fast adoption of new addresses in some parts of the world, those resources might be used up soon.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
no additional supply to turn to after they have fulfilled their customers' requests. This won't mean that suddenly no user can get a new IPv4 address, Vegoda noted. In addition to the remaining numbers held by the RIRs, there are some addresses left in older blocks assigned before the RIRs were established, which the RIRs have split up among themselves. But given the fast adoption of new addresses in some parts of the world, those resources might be used up soon. The rate of requests to RIRs for addresses is probably speeding up partly because applicants are worried that IPv4 addresses will run out, Vegoda said. However, he said he was confident that everyone requesting the addresses would use them. Some observers have expressed fear that private entities might stockpile addresses just to sell them on a heated market. IPv4, instituted in 1983, allows for only about 4.3 billion addresses, and from the beginning there have only been 256 of the /8 blocks. Most are already allocated, and many are reserved for special uses such as multicasting of video streams. IPv6 has a much larger address space, which allows for an almost limitless number of unique addresses. Google, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon Business and other major vendors and service providers will take part in World IPv6 Day in June, a global test of the new protocol organised by the Internet Society. For 24 hours, the participating companies will run their public Web sites on both IPv4 and IPv6.
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round-up | month in view Saud Univ joins > King SAP’s university programme
Abdul-Raheem Bawazeer, managing director, SAP KSA
King Saud University has signed
an agreement with global business software leader SAP to join the SAP University Alliance Program, providing students at the university with the skills to be prepared for the Kingdom’s growing modernisation and economic diversification, creating opportunities for IT services in a range of key industries. King Saud University becomes the fifth educational institute in the
pension and > UAE’s social security authority picks Oracle
Global Technology Services (GTS), the IT subsidiary of ENOC, has signed a contract with the General Pension and Social Security Authority (GPSSA) to implement Oracle’s E-Business Suite for pensionn administration and as a back office solution. The new solution integrates Pension and Social Security policies and procedures followed by GPSSA, which will enable them to provide better services for citizens who subscribe for pensions. The system also automates GPSSA’s internal business processes, including finance and accounting, procurements and monthly payroll processes. It also helps to maintain and track employee data and performance.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
Kingdom to become a member of the SAP University Alliance Program, joining Jubail Industrial College, Yanbu Industrial College, King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals, and Dammam College of Technology. The university will join approximately 150,000 students from 700 tertiary institutions located around the world already learning SAP solutions. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is recognised globally for its rapidly developing, and thriving economy, and SAP is dedicated to generating a base of highly-skilled workers capable of building an IT infrastructure to support this expanding economy,” commented Abdul-Raheem Bawazeer, managing director, SAP KSA. “Through the University Alliance Program, students from King Saud University will have the tools needed to support the rapidly developing technology sector in the Kingdom,” continued Bawazeer. The SAP University Alliance Program is a global endeavour that provides university faculty members with the tools and resources necessary to
teach students how technology can enable integrated business processes and strategic thinking, giving students the skills to add immediate value to the marketplace. “The progress of our nation has always been strongly associated with knowledge and learning,” commented Professor Abdullah A. Alothman, Rector, King Saud University. “We believe that the SAP University Alliance Program will greatly benefit our students and help develop expert IT professionals, with the competitive edge needed, to support the growth of our country’s technological infrastructure,” continued Professor Alothman. Members of the SAP University Alliance Program are given exclusive access to SAP’s business solutions to use in the classroom, enabling students to put theory into practice through demonstrations, problem-solving, case studies, and research programs. Upon graduation, students have a clear understanding of how technology can facilitate integrated business processes and strategic thinking, and graduates from the program will improve their opportunities to secure senior IT jobs.
GPSSA partnered with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a professional advisory services provider that assisted the authority in the selection process. PwC will also assist GPSSA during implementation by providing project management and quality assurance support. Muzafar Al-Haj, the Director General of GPSSA, said: “The objective of this new project is to help us achieve our vision of providing the best services to our citizens who have served the country for a long time and depend on us to be their safe haven. This project is considered as a quantum leap for GPSSA as we try to achieve performance excellence.” The year-long project will be executed in three tracks – Operational, Back-office and Investment & Treasury – and has already stated.
The Operational track consists of Oracle CRM for citizen services, Oracle Process Automation for management of pension contribution and distribution, and investment management solutions. The Back-Office track consists of the Oracle E-Business Suite implementation for finance, procurement and human resource automation, integrated with the operational systems. The Investment & Treasury track consists of C-Matics – Treasury & Investment Solutions integrated with Oracle Financials. Ayman Arafeh, GM of GTS, said: “The contract marks our contribution to the GPSSA’s initiative to have configurable solutions for their operations and to facilitate GPSSA to provide better services for citizens who subscribe for pension with the Authority.”
February 2011
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round up | month in view Borders > Northern deploys SunGard The Northern Borders University
(NBU), Saudi Arabia has selected SunGard Higher Education to support its mission for quality higher education in the remote areas of Arar, Raf ha and Turayf in the Kingdom. This is one in a series of initiatives planned to help ensure that students from these areas can obtain quality higher education without having to migrate to the major cities in the Kingdom. SunGard Higher Education, in collaboration with International Turnkey Systems (ITS), will help NBU deploy the Banner Digital Campus as part of a multi-phased project. The first phase of the project will involve the deployment of Banner Student and Banner Financial Aid with the associated Arabic Language User Interface support. These solutions are tailored to help institutions like NBU streamline their administrative processes and provide enhanced learning resources to students and faculty members. Specifically, the solutions will provide 24/7 online access to campus
uses RFID > Dulsco for ADNEC’s waste management
Dulsco Abu Dhabi, a certified waste management services provider in the UAE, announced the introduction of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for waste management at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC). Under the pilot project, all trucks, compactors, bins, and waste skips at ADNEC are embedded with RFID tags that provide complete data on the waste management activity. This data can be accessed online by the ADNEC and Dulsco team enabling better control and coordination in managing waste. The RFID tags are scanned with the help of NFC (Near Field Communication)
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
resources and information. Students will be able to search and register for classes by term or date, as well as retrieve relevant data online, while faculty members will be able to manage course information, rosters, grading, and advise students from remote locations. “This project will be a key turning point in our evolution as a new institution of higher education in Saudi Arabia. We have a responsibility to match and even surpass the quality of higher education offered in the best universities worldwide and we have looked to SunGard Higher Education for support because of its global reputation and strong local presence,” said Dr. Abdulrahman bin Ali Said Malawi, Vice Rector, NBU. SunGard Higher Education’s Banner Digital Campus is a widely used administrative system, or ERP solution, for higher education institutions in Saudi Arabia. NBU is the 12th institution in the Kingdom to have adopted Banner. The growing number of Banner customers in the country is supporting innovation and further development of a localised version for Saudi universities.
Commenting on the localised version, Mathew Boice, vice president, EMEA and India, SunGard Higher Education, said: “The growing community of Banner customers in Saudi provides new opportunities for institutions to share best practices and collaborate on new ideas. We are supporting this collaboration through our online Commons customer community and our Community Source initiatives. Both allow our customers to share experiences, ask questions, and find answers through a collaborative and informed network.”
mobile readers when the bins for general or recyclable waste are emptied or transported, allowing the client access to accurate information through the web about the volume, type of waste and, how this is being managed. “We took this initiative with ADNEC to embed RFID technology with the waste management process and designed and developed a system based on ADNEC’s requirements. Any transaction related to collection of general, recyclable waste, which were manually carried out earlier, are now electronically recorded through the mobile NFC readers and data via GPRS is sent to the central server. ADNEC can access this near real time information anytime anywhere as it is available through secured web access” explained Mohammed Bilal Hasan, GM Information Technology at Dulsco
Humaid Al Dhaheri, ADNEC’s director of finance and HR, said: “We are very pleased to launch this project during the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) being staged at ADNEC. This project, launched in partnership with Dulsco, underscores ADNEC’s ongoing environmental commitment. We will continue to invest in such initiatives in 2011 and beyond, and drive forward our sustainability agenda.” Prakash Parab, director of waste management services at Dulsco added “This new technology has taken the waste management process to the next level and ably demonstrates our commitment to our customers. We believe in continuous improvement and constantly strive to provide our customers additional value with the quality of our services and by investing in infrastructure and technology.
February 2011
Mathew Boice, vice president, EMEA and India, SunGard Higher Education
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round up | month in view HANCO chooses > KSA’s SonicWall HANCO (Al Tala’a International
Transportation Co Limited), one of the major car rentals, leasing and f leet management companies in the KSA recently deployed SonicWALL’s next generation firewall solutions in order to boost business performance, secure its network and increase network bandwidth. From its headquarters in Jeddah, the solution was deployed across HANCO’s extensive network connecting its four remote branch office locations together to ensure and secure critical data transfer at all times. With a large f leet to manage and an increasing number of branch offices and workshops, HANCO was looking for a comprehensive and cost-effective solution to face increasing spam threats that congested its corporate network and reduced bandwidth utility which eventually led to lower levels of business productivity. “We tested several known solutions but were not satisfied with the results. Given the explosive growth of the Internet, and its associated network threats, we decided to take preventative measure to bolster our network integrity. With SonicWALL, we could better capitalise on our legacy IT investment and increase our bandwidth utility and
Dubai Civil Defense > to deploy Avaya’s Flare
Avaya is to implement a collaboration
solution for Dubai Civil Defense (DCD) based on its Avaya Flare Experience, a family of next-gen, real-time enterprise video communications and collaboration products and services. The company is hailing the solution as a first amongst emergency services and armed forces across the region and has customised the solution to meet DCD’s specific requirements.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
(L to R): Bharat Singh Senwal, assistant GM - IT at HANCO and Shahnawaz Sheikh, SonicWALL Middle East and Africa (MEA) regional sales manager.
performance,” said Bharat Singh Senwal, assistant GM – IT at HANCO. The solution comprised SonicWALL’s Network Security Appliance (NSA) 4500, which was deployed at the Jeddah headquarters, NSA 2400 appliances rolled out at branch locations, and NSA 240 appliances at six additional workshop locations. HANCO deployed a SonicWALL Email Security Appliance (ESA) 500 to support 350 mailboxes across the organisation. The full deployment was completed over the course of a month. SonicWALL ESA 500 solution has
virtually eliminated all spam and virus attacks, ensuring network throughput and security. “Post implementation of SonicWALL’s Next Generation Firewall solution with the Application Intelligence and Control functionality, our bandwidth has increased by 80 percent, resulting in higher productivity. The solution enabled us to control the use of peer-to-peer applications and access to non-business related websites, such as YouTube and Facebook. This has resulted in maximising businessrelated applications with increased productivity,” added Senwal.
Due to go live by Q2, the plan is to deploy Avaya Flare desktop devices at its DCD’s HQ and its 15 centres across the Emirates. Put simply, the solution will allow voice. video and data sharing, allowing senior management to collaborate in the event of an emergency. With access to DCD’s central database, it can also ne used to communicate with 3G smartphones via a VPN, allowing realtime reporting from on-the-spot officers. According to Major General Rashid Al Matrooshi, Director of the General Department of DCD, “It will save time and costs, by allowing us to collaborate.
Face-to-face interaction will enhance control in crisis situations and eliminate unnecessary travel between centres for briefings and other updates. This is a strategic move for us.” DCD has been an Avaya customer for more than two years, explains Nidal Abou-Ltaif, VP – Emerging Markets, Avaya. “The true value of the Avaya Flare Experience is a breakthrough collaboration experience which will dramatically expand communications capabilities in times of crisis as well as enabling better and more cost-effective day-to-day communications.”
February 2011
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CASE study: International Hospital, Bahrain
The International Hospital of
Slicing through the clutter The International Hospital of Bahrain (IHB) gains in productivity and improves patient care by going entirely filmless and nearly paperless. Sathya Mithra Ashok finds out how.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
Bahrain (IHB) is the kingdom´s first private medical centre. From a small private clinic, it has evolved to a major community hospital over the past thirty years. The hospital prides itself in its some hundred well-trained and skilled physicians of different nationalities covering most of the major specialties. They are inturn supported by more than four hundred administrative and support personnel. “We have a 100-bed hospital and around 500 people on the staff rolls. The hospital has multiple specialities, supported by various services. We provide both in-patient and out-patient services under one roof. There are seven operating theatres and a separate maternity suite with up-to-date, fullyequipped birthing rooms,” says Salian Shrinivas, director of informatics at the hospital. The hospital sets high ideals of quality and patient care, and information technology has been helping support and achieve these goals since the inception of the facility. “Like any other organisation we had our own financials and payroll, and other elementary support systems in place. Sometime in the early, 90’s, we realised that keeping paper records was not helping us with transparency. We started to toy with the idea of going paperless. Keeping this in mind, we started working on the systems of the lab and the radiology departments in the late 90’s. We initially used FoxPro – a DOS based system that was fast and easy to programme,” says Shrinivas. Soon after the team began to consider a full-f ledged hospital management system, which was entirely GUI-based. The hospital went shopping for such a system, and even tried collaborating with a vendor to customise a solution. When these attempts failed, IHB’s IT team decided to build its own management system. “In 1999 we decided to develop our own software, and in 2002 we finished the first phase of the development. In February 2003, we took the big bang
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“Currently there are 23 modules running on the in-built system. We did the whole thing from scratch and it is still doing good. We constantly track user wishlist and try to satisfy them. These might be small changes but ones that benefit them. When people that their requirements are being fulfilled they are more willing to use the system and they are happy. This is a key to our continued success with the system.” approach and deployed all the modules that we had created till then – which was around nine. This included in-patient, out-patient, appointments, billing, payroll, operation theatre, ward management, financials and receivables in accounts. We deployed all of these in one day but we had a trial run for an entire year, where it was not mandatory but the system was available for practice,” says Shrinivas. “By 2003 most users were prepared. Guidance was provided to staff where they required the same. Around 85% of users were on board with the management system when we went live with it. There were some hitches, but nothing major,” adds Shrinivas. The IT team realised that change management would be the biggest problem with the system. People who have always been used to paper will be reluctant to change because they would not understand the necessity of such a change. Keeping this in mind, the interface and the entire system was made very simple in order to not intimidate users. As more users came on board and the system becamea clement familiar across the hospital, the IT team could do its own upgrades and additions in time, building more modules into the system. “Currently there are 23 modules running on the in-built system. We did the whole thing from scratch and it is still doing good. We constantly track a user wishlist and try to satisfy them.
These might be small changes but ones that benefit them. When people see that their requirements are being fulfilled they are more willing to use the system and they are happy. This is a key to our continued success with the system at IHB,” says Shrinivas. Shrinivas provides the example of how they simplified incident reporting in the hospital. Earlier the staff filled out a complicated paper-based form that demanded so much information that most people were not always willing to fill things out. The IT team found that they were more willing to talk about it, so they set to simplifying the process by making it an online form with just one box with the bare details to be filled out. This would be followed up with a more personalised conversation, which will lead to a solution being found for the incident.
Extending the paradigm The 12-member IT team is constantly working to improve the system. Except for housekeeping and maintenance, everyone in the hospital uses computers, and so there is a constant push to make everything electronic – which the IT team has been slowly working to enable. From leave requests, attendance and salary receipts, to incident reports most activities have been digitised, and an internal knowledge management (KM) framework has also been implemented over the last four months.
february 2011
Modules implemented by IHB 1. Appointments* 2. Doctors CPOE* 3. Electronic Medical Records* 4. Billing* 5. Laboratory* 6. Radiology* 7. Pharmacy* 8. Admissions, Discharge, & Transfers* 9. Community Relations 10. Operation Theatre* 11. Insurance Policy Management 12. Security Access & Masters management 13. Payroll 14. Human Resources 15. Leave Management 16. Duty Rota 17. Time & Attendance 18. Accommodation 19. Finance 20. Inventory 21. MIS 22. Coffee shop 23. Biomedical 24. Task Management 25. Policies & procedures 26. Minutes of Meeting 27. Commissioning Centre 28. Risk Management 29. Telephone Directory * Core modules • All modules are interconnected and use only one source of data • The modules were developed over a period of 10 years and are constantly evolving • All core modules simultaneously deployed on Feb 11, 2003 • HIS extensively uses biometric finger print readers to authenticate access to patient medical data • Usage of digital signatures (signature pads) has enabled HIS to go nearly paperless. These signatures are of forensic quality and can be proven in court of law for date and time
COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
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CASE study: International Hospital, Bahrain
Shrinivas says that the core areas of patient care and administrative elements, such as medical records, patient information, billing etc, were digitised. Over time, the hospital has also started extracting data from these procedures and using it for statistical analysis to help it with future needs. The hospital went entirely filmless in 2008. IHB bought an off the shelf PACS (picture archiving and communication system) and integrated it into its own system. Now, all the films produced by the hospital can be viewed with just the software. “Not only has this helped us with efficiency of operations, but it has also saved us a lot of cost on film and chemicals. The system has also enabled us to automate client billing and links to insurance, and so good is it that we have reduced our insurance rejections to just around1%,” says Shrinivas.
Involving the patient Apart from internal procedures, the hospital has worked to make more patient activities paperless as well. “The patient books an appointment to see a doctor on-line. In the hospital, the cashier checks on payment methods, generates an electronic record and gets an electronic signature from the patient. Vital signs are catalogued into the system at the clinic and then the patient visits the doctor. The doctor gets all this information, along with data from previous visits, on his system interface. He consults with the patient and fills information in to pre-determined templates for diagnosis. This makes the doctor’s job much easier. He just has to tweak the template to different elements, not do entire data fields for every consulting patient,” says Shrinivas. He adds, “The doctor might prescribe medicine or radiology and closes the visit with a diagnosis. The patient then heads to the pharmacy or the lab. At both points, information is already available on the system. They check for the payment status after which medicine is dispensed. Once done, the patient walks through the cashier’s desk,
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“We want to become more Web-enabled. For patients, this will mean appointments, feedback, and probably the can get a copy of their records through the Web site as well.”
collects claims document if there is one, gives feedback on the monitor and then heads out. If the patient says the visit was unsatisfactory on the feedback form, the cashier will hold them till someone can address the issue.” IHB has also implemented a fasttrack for patients, whereby the hospital holds a credit balance for them inhouse. The patient calls from home to make the appointment and then uses kiosks placed in key locations at the hospital when he/she comes in. At the kiosk, fingerprint readers are used to ascertain the patient’s identity, and an electronic record is generated. If there is enough credit on balance, the patient then can see the doctor directly instead of going through the cashier. “We have had this for about a year and it is a big success. Its popularity is growing among patients and we already have around 1,000 using this fast track process. We are also trying to work with banks, whereby patients can top up their hospital balance via their accounts directly,” says Shrinivas.
Looking ahead With all these efforts, IHB stands as an entirely filmless and almost paperless hospital. Though this year, the IT team will be working on improving services, adding elements and making existing options better. “We want to become more Webenabled. We want to provide more remote access to our patients as well as the doctors. The latter can then check on patient records from their home.
February 2011
23
is the number of modules currently used by IHB in its hospital management system
1%
is the number to which the hospital has reduced insurance rejections with its management system
1000
is the current number of patients using the hospital’s fast-track services and kiosks
500
is the total staff strength at IHB, which boasts around 100 beds
For patients, this will mean on-line appointments, on-line feedback, and probably they can get a copy of their records through the Web site as well. By enabling this we will be able to manage our software better and not depend on thick PCs all the time,” says Shrinivas. The IT team will also try to address two areas – adding to the pharmacy database and enabling barcoding on medicines and patients to ensure that the correct medicine and dosage is administered to the right patient all the time. With all these advances to come through, there is no doubt that IHB will continue to touch new heights and set new trends in healthcare and technology in the years to come.
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The future of document management Devices today are far more than they have ever been – speeds are faster, resolution is higher, functionality is enhanced and the devices themselves have the most dynamic designs they have ever had. Progress never slows down and the future will see constant developments in all these areas and others. So what should we expect from the future? What should users be looking for from manufacturers to ensure their needs are met in the long term, and their document management will not get left behind? The future will be colourful, advanced and evolutional. Let’s take a look at the future…
Colourful future The major shift we are starting to experience in the document management market is the move towards colour. According to IDC more colour MFPs (21 to 45 ppm) were sold than B/W MFPs for the first time in 2005 in Japan. This proves that people are beginning to understand the power of colour in their day-to-day work and the huge benefits it can offer. Colour is proven to increase readers’ attention, comprehension and the retention of information. In fact, colour can significantly improve the effectiveness of all hard copy communication. These benefits are relevant to anyone, but in the workplace colour is also recognised as giving a competitive, professional business edge to documents. Using colour in invoices has even been shown to speed up payments. One of the main factors restricting the growth of colour is the increased cost that is linked to its use. Colour can be expensive; users should make sure they are not attracted to buying cheap inkjet printers that will end up costing them a fortune in expensive cartridges. There are, however, low-cost colour devices on the market. Kyocera’s
colour laser printers offer low TCO, even in comparison to some manufacturers’ black-andwhite output. Kyocera’s ECOSYS technology, based on long-life components, means that devices only require the replacement of toner – making consumables inexpensive and offering a very low cost per page. Colour ECOSYS actually offers even more savings than its black-and-white equivalent. Comparing Kyocera’s FS-3820N to a similar speed competitor device, the black-and-white saving is €2.6 cent a page – a saving of €1,824 over 3 years (based on 2,000 pages per month, 72,000 in total). That is a significant saving by anyone’s standards. However, comparing Kyocera’s FS-C5030N with a similar speed competitor device, the colour saving is €4.2 cent a page – a saving of €3,024 over 3 years (based on 2,000 pages per month, 72,000 in total), which is a huge saving. The added benefit of this unique technology is an enormous reduction in the amount of waste that is produced – protecting the environment in the long term. Comparing Kyocera’s FS-C5030N with a similar standard device from another manufacturer, both producing 24,000 A4 pages with 5% coverage over a year, there is a vast difference in the amount of waste they produce. By investing in colour ECOSYS a user would have produced only 4.8kg or 0.05m³ of waste, compared to the competitor’s 28.6kg or 0.199m³ – six times the weight and forty times the volume of waste. The future will see users continuing to become more aware of the power of colour, and consequently the demand for colour devices will grow. It is important that users are aware that colour need not cost the earth, in either sense of the word. By choosing a colour device with low TCO you can enjoy all the benefits of colour without having to restrict its use because of costs.
believes in ECOSYS
Advanced future The increasing demands of future office environments will require advanced devices with advanced features. New applications and solutions need to offer increased productivity, functionality and ease of use. Users looking to purchase now need to be sure to invest in devices, and manufacturers, which stay ahead of the game and deliver the added value that will deliver benefits for a device’s entire life. As advanced technology becomes the norm so quickly for consumer products, the same will happen in the workplace. Manufacturers will be offering new controllers and colour scanning as standard to compete in the market place. It will be the extra features that users should look for to make sure they get the most for their money. A ‘future feature’ may be interactive colour operational panels – used to preview documents and customise icons, all in colour. Kyocera’s devices already offer many ‘future features’ such as the dual scan document processor. This particular feature has been incorporated into the design of the KM-8030 and recently received praise from internationally renowned independent analyst organisation BERTL – awarding the device ‘BERTL’s Best’ title in its 2006 awards. BERTL said of the advanced feature using single pass duplex scan technology: “The efficiency rates when handling doublesided originals are far superior to competitors that utilise reversing document scanners…The straight pass feed can reduce wear and tear on delicate originals and reduce the number of document jams.” Security features are becoming more advanced and users should make sure any devices they purchase will address their security needs into the future. Manufacturers will be
Advertorial
offering authentication features that can be adapted to individual users, whether used locally or operating over an entire network. Kyocera will also be looking at enhancing encryption methods for different security needs. It is important to purchase from a manufacturer that you trust is looking after your interests in the long term, and not just offering quick fix solutions that will encourage a hasty purchase. Take the time to think about how your business will develop in the future, and speak to resellers about what features and solutions you may need to make life easier and more efficient.
Evolutional future IT solutions will continue to evolve, and as such, document management devices are gradually becoming more than just part of the efficient day-to-day running of businesses. Using evolutionary solutions, networked devices can actually run processes within business, completely cutting out user-run time and labour-intensive jobs. For example, producing different documents from one set of data, on different paper for different departments and delivering them by hand would take a lot of time and resources. With evolutionary devices a complicated multipart job such as this can become just one operation – a simple ‘touch of a button’ initiated by just one user sending electronic versions of the data to devices at the right destinations, to be printed or stored in a way that suits the individual departments. Kyocera’s KYOeasyprint document management solution does all of that, and is available today – a truly evolutional technological advancement that can make a significant difference to working processes. The same principal applies to what evolutionary devices can do for security. Rather than answering users’ basic security needs, the future will see solutions that enable users to distinguish an original document from a copy, identify which user created the document and keep a record of when confidential documents have been copied. Evolutionary devices will have the intelligence to provide a user with information such as this at the touch of a button. Our ‘solution focus’ at the end of the column
will talk about one of Kyocera’s latest security developments. It is important for users to consider what they want from all of the elements of a device’s role – system management, document management, output management, and security. A manufacturer should be developing their devices in each of these areas so that they can grow with you into the future. The future of your purchases may be influenced by colour, advanced technology or the development of a truly evolutional device that can really change the way your business operates. What is important is that you choose a device from a manufacturer that looks ahead, and constantly invests in the technologies of the future so you can stay ahead of the game. Look forward to a colourful, advanced, and evolutional future, especially if you choose Kyocera.
Security solution focus Security solutions can be an essential part of a device’s features in many environments, and their development is essential. From banks and financial companies to government and police offices, the protection of information is vital. Information leakage can have serious consequences and yet it can be incredibly hard to trace. It is easy to see who created an electronic file by checking a document's 'properties'. However, when there is only a printout, how can anyone know who created it? Kyocera has developed the ‘Security Watermark’, which enables a user to distinguish a hard copy original from a copy, determine who created a document, and determine whether any illegal (hard) copies have been made from an original. The Security Watermark works by giving the original a grey background. When the original is copied, the name of the PC on which it was created or its IP address then appears on the copy, embedded as a Security Watermark. Some governmental offices work with a lot of sensitive information, such as defence-related or other political data. It is obviously important to protect this type of confidential information and check that any copies have been made
For further information, please contact KYOCERA MITA Middle East on +971 4 433 0412 or www.kyoceramita.ae
feature: Service provision
Putting it on paper CNME puts together a list of tips on how enterprises in the region should go about forming service level agreements (SLAs) with their service providers – whether regional or international. Service Level Agreements
(SLAs) are a vital part of any outsourcing engagements. Majority of the successful offshore outsourcing engagements today are SLA driven. SLAs help define your expectations clearly from the vendor and also provide you with a measurement system to evaluate the vendor performance and the health of your offshore outsourcing program. SLA defines the support functions that the vendor team will commit to throughout the engagement; assigns priorities to these functions; and establishes baseline service standards and commitments. It becomes the reporting vehicle for the performance measurement and provides the opportunity to identify service-level improvements throughout the engagement. The service-level commitments contained in the SLA are developed from estimates of current and desired service levels that are subject to f luctuation. Accordingly, the SLA should be viewed as a dynamic document and should be periodically reviewed and changed when the following events occur: • The environment has changed; • Clients’s expectations and/or needs have changed; and • Workloads have changed.
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• Better metrics and measurement tools and processes are evolved The service level agreement should: • specify the nature of the service provided – E.g. SAP application maintenance support • identify the provider of and the customer for the service – E.g. Vendor X would provide Web Application development and support for client’s ABC Division. • specify the level of the service provided – frequency, coverage, timescales, etc – E.g. the vendor shall provide 24X7 support services to client • incorporate limitations/may include details of the refunds/compensation if things do not go to plan – E.g. the Vendor shall refund the amount of US $ xxxx or x % of the total invoicable amount in case the successful project implementation is not completed on or before a certain date. • be indicators of quality – E.g. The vendor shall meet the delivery schedules 95% on time during the contract term • make expectations explicit – E.g. Client would need a dedicated communication link between the vendor and their office in New York with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% • assist communication – E.g.
February 2011
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SLA defines the support functions that the vendor team will commit to throughout the engagement; assigns priorities to these functions; and establishes baseline service standards and commitments. There would be weekly conference call between the client project managers and the vendor offshore team to review the progress and clarify doubts, if any • may help clarify the service which can be expected and what is not available – E.g. The vendor should provide a full time on site co-coordinator for client. Client should also get it clarified if the onsite co-coordinator would be billed or not billed directly to them • ensure that providers become accountable for delivering the service and its quality – E.g. The vendor also agrees to help client to improve its internal IT processes in line with the SEI CMM standards. • indicate personal responsibilities and accountabilities of both vendor and client – E.g. client would provide the existing documentation available for the various software used by the ABC. It would be the responsibility of vendor to build on the base version and deliver improved comprehensive versions of these documents. • ensure that customers / users at Client become aware of the costs of the service and any additional cost if they change their minds or their requirements – E.g. The vendor will migrate the existing COBOL database to Oracle 8i. However, in case the data is to be migrated from COBOL to Oracle 8i as well as MS SQL 2000, the vendor may charge additionally. Similarly the DBA may be available free once every week and any additional service by the DBA during the week would be billable @ US $ 100 per hour? • include exclusions to accommodate changes beyond the control of either
february 2011
party – E.g. Clause relating to force majeure like act of God, etc. Specifying the services to be provided puts f lesh on the bones of the SLA. Specifications for all types of support services could set out: • the precise nature of each function or service provided • the volumes and quality to be achieved for each of these services • whether optional services are on offer – and if so, what they are and what they cost • what procedure should be followed if it becomes necessary to vary the agreement or specification • where applicable, the response times to be achieved by the provider when receiving requests for assistance • sanctions for non supply or poor quality. If charges are to be applied three types are possible: • input-based charges such as an hourly rate, based on actual costs, for actual time spend • charges partially dependent on inputs, such as pre-determined (perhaps averaged) hourly rates, charged against actual time spent • charges wholly independent of inputs e.g. pre-set free scales, schedules of rates and lump sums. Possible charging methods could include: • unit charges, such as pre-set sum per person recruited or computer supplied or a per capital charge per training day for training course attendances • fixed price sums for undertaking projects – e.g. lump sum charges (as per conventional commercial consultancy
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feature: Service provision
practice) for undertaking a staffing or IT review • daily (or hourly) ‘consultancy’ rates, for work done on a day work basis • lump sum retainer fees (probably annual) for maintaining a general availability to provide advice and assistance. Charges should always: • be consistent and unambiguous – the user must at all times know what charges are being accrued • be understood by the users and be open to their inf luence (i.e. users should be able to inf luence their own costs by their decisions about the pattern of usage of the services on offer) • give users a choice of options (i.e. users should be able to choose between paying as they go on a direct usage basis, or selecting a lump sum or general retainer) • be easy to bill and keep accounts • be in a form which facilitates comparisons of the costs and charges for similar services in other departments or external suppliers. • All documents which have commercial implications (e.g. time sheets, QA report, project plan) should be signed by Client and vendor representative and always attached with invoices While framing the SLAs, the first and the most important point to be addressed is to define the incident classification for both all types of projects (e.g. new development as well as maintenance projects). An example of the same is given below:
• Failure of any significant part of a large business critical application • Data loss or data corruption in any part of the Application which is critical to the business.
Major: Failure deemed as having a high impact on the business – e.g.
For new development • Delay in delivering as per the agreed schedule beyond 1 week
For maintenance type of projects • Problem causing serious system degradation • Important service unable to run
Fatal:
Minor:
Failure deemed as having a critical / fatal impact on the business – e.g.
Failure deemed as having a medium impact on the business – e.g.
For new development
For new development
• Delay in delivering as per the agreed schedule beyond 2 weeks
• Delay in delivering as per the agreed schedule beyond 3 days
For maintenance type of projects
For maintenance type of projects
• Application not usable for any purpose • Time critical service will not run
• Problem causing significant Application degradation
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February 2011
Normal: Failure deemed as having a low impact on the business – e.g.
For new development • Delay in delivering as per the agreed schedule by 1 day but which can be covered up easily
For maintenance type of projects • Bespoke software problem causing minor Application degradation • Request for advice and guidance on product usage Client and the vendor should also mutually agree on the response time for each of the above category of the incident. Client should also define a metrics system to evaluate the performance of the vendor on a quarterly basis and link this performance with the vendor payment terms. Client and the vendor should also mutually agree on the response time for each of the above category of the incident. Client should also define a metrics system to evaluate the performance of the vendor on a quarterly basis and link this performance with the vendor payment terms. This can be done by agreeing to pay a base rate and then based on the performance metrics, pay incentive or deduct penalties.
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vertical focus: Healthcare Part II
Digital diagnosis While tele-medicine or remote medicine offers great potential advantages in the region, healthcare institutions are yet to experiment with it on a large scale, swamped as they are by challenges related to infrastructure, networks and trained medical staff. CNME finds out the current state of play in the concluding part of the healthcare series.
The Middle East is a vast
geographical region. Integrating multiple cultures spread across remote areas across national borders as it does, the region presents a challenge in providing healthcare services to all its various economic participants. Through the region, there are countries and specifically particular urban settlements that are f lourishing with healthcare choices. Healthcare institutions and their spend, in fact, contribute to growing economies across the region.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
The GCC healthcare sector is forecast to triple in worth over the next decade from $18bn currently to $55bn by 2020 according to a recent report by Kuwait Finance House Research Limited. An estimated $10bn worth of healthcare projects are planned or underway in the GCC. More than 200 new hospitals have been announced or are under construction, with a cumulative capacity of up to 27,009 beds most of which are due to be delivered in 2015.
February 2011
With this massive growth comes increased investment in information technology. Though most of the spend on technology is focused on stationary healthcare institutions situated in urban, densely-populated areas of the Middle East, around 5% of the spend is being directed to tele-medicine or remote medicine services. “For the healthcare sector, telemedicine is the next wave. It involves delivering remote healthcare services and access to general practitioners (GPs),
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Connected healthcare While hospitals and other medical institutions debate on the pros and cons linked to investing in full-fledged tele-medicine or remote medicines sites and projects, there are several solutions in the market, and supporting vendors, who are working to encourage more connected environments within institutions in the region. Wassim El-Mawas, enterprise e-health manager EAGM at GE Healthcare says, “GE’s eHealth system is about enabling imaging and clinical data exchange. About creating a connected healthcare community that can freely exchange data and where each community is trying to make this info available at the right place and right time. The patient is at the heart of this and information is available across the community without physically moving things around. Community includes hospitals, university hospitals, primary care, pharmacies, patient himself as well.” GE’s eHealth will itself tap into the growing digitisation of records and images by hospitals and other medical institutions across the Middle East. More and more of these organisations are using digital records internally and to provide their patients in order to cut costs, increase efficiency, improve data storage and recovery processes and get more in line with international regulations for healthcare. One of the prime examples of this is the International Hospital in Bahrain (IHB), which is using an integrated hospital management system to go filmless and entirely paperless. (You can read about them in the cover story starting page 20). While hospitals are adopting these systems individually, challenges in a connected environment remain in terms of data integrity, security and a general mindset that is suspicious of letting data out of controlled corporate networks. But with vendors like GE putting their strength behind it, it is likely that the Middle East will see more healthcare communities that share information in an open manner soon. And on the back of that might appear more tele-medicine projects reaching more of the remote areas of the region.
via teleconferencing technologies. The integration of technology in healthcare service delivery is, therefore, highly relevant,” says Mahesh Vaidya, CEO of ISIT Middle East. He adds, “Usual healthcare requirements and regulatory pressures result in the adoption of solutions such as picture archive systems (also called PACS). Tele-medicine is a lot more complex as healthcare providers may not have ready infrastructure for catering to the masses at remote sites.
Over and above the usual requirements associated with the healthcare sector, IT solutions for tele-medicine are more focussed on optimising patient-doctor communications via low-bandwidth network links that are perhaps relatively less reliable than those founds in urban areas. IT applications delivery and patient records access are also a constant challenge which such IT solutions are expected to address.” “Remote sites often do not provide ready access to healthcare for its
february 2011
inhabitants. As such healthcare solutions are delivered by urban healthcare providers remotely, via videoconferencing services. We, however, envisage access to patient records to be similar as in the case of urban inhabitants. Implementation of centralised patient records and archive systems (such as PACS) is often seen as a mature first-step for automating service delivery in the healthcare sector,” says ISIT’s Vaidya. “Thanks to ICT, doctors can share x-rays and data in real time, helping
COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
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vertical focus: Healthcare Part II
them make better, more informed diagnoses and decisions on treatment. Teleconferencing saves time and allows for virtual meetings with colleagues. A secure unified communications platform enables medical workers to discuss cases via a virtual private network. This means they can view findings and agree on treatment from any location,” states Frits Neyndorff, MD of NEC unified solutions for the Middle East and Africa.
Regional reality Tele-medicine or remote medicine in most parts of the world can be broadly divided into two areas. The first is where hospitals set up remote sites, with its own staffing, to provide diagnostic capabilities with basic linkage to the main healthcare facility. The second is where a remote set-up is highly networked and connected in order to provide regular consultations with doctors that are not physically present at the sites. However, tele-medicine in the region does not usually take this shape all the time. “We as a hospital are not currently offering any remote service that will be framed under tele-medicine. Telemedicine depends highly on Internet connection. Right now Emirates has one of the highest cost and lowest quality of
Ali Ahmar, regional sales manager for MENA at Brocade.
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“For the healthcare sector, tele-medicine is the next wave. It involves delivering remote healthcare services and access to general practitioners (GPs), via teleconferencing technologies. The integration of technology in healthcare service delivery is, therefore, highly relevant.” service in internet connectivity so this affects the decision at the moment of planning for this type of services, since it increases the costs and provides poor warranty,” points out Luis Perfetti, VP CIO of Oasis Hospital. Tele-medicine is yet to excite a huge following in the Middle East. One of the major reasons for this is the cost-revenue ratio involved in setting up tele-medicine activities. The capital cost and operational cost involved is too high and the revenue potential from the same is too unstable and too dispersed over time to merit investment for many an institution in the Middle East. “Remote medicine is still catching on. The virtual doctor is still coming to reality in the Middle East. People still like to see the doctor face-to-face. Having said that the growing needs of larger populations in geographically-vast countries – like KSA and Egypt – has made people look more closely into using the medical expertise present in major cities for the good of those residing in remoter regions. Tele-medicine has not caught on yet, but the process has started,” says K. S. Parag, regional director of FVC. “For modern healthcare professionals, better network-enabled communication and collaboration is a must-have. Healthcare professionals are starting to expect that they will be able to share expertise and information more widely and more easily than ever before. Web conferencing and patient video
February 2011
Mahesh Vaidya, CEO of ISIT Middle East
monitoring are the kinds of unified communications (UC) services that promise great advances in patient care and cost benefits, too, but these applications don't work where audio and visual quality is compromised by network problems,” points out Ali Ahmar, regional sales manager for MENA at Brocade. Parag states, “The main challenge with tele-medicine is the user’s mindset. A doctor is traditionally used to physically examining a patient and then giving a diagnosis. Getting them to change that concept and accept that it can be done remotely takes time and education. The patient might accept it when there is no choice but the bigger challenge is getting the doctor to accept
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vertical focus: Healthcare Part II
the change. This is the biggest challenge in the adoption of tele-medicine.” Despite the challenges though, there are some organisations that are looking into tele-medicine activities and tapping into specific remote services. “One of the promises of telemedicine is to provide a service where there’s a shortage: this is the case with the radiologist where there’s a worldwide and local shortage. We do have plans to use remote radiology doctors to give us imaging diagnosis: we send them the images, they give us back a soft copy of their diagnosis report. So instead of using the services of our own radiologist we will use the services of an organisation with qualified doctors which is located in the USA,” says Perfetti. He continues, “The management of the information with the remote radiology doctors is quite simple since our PACS solution has the features to work remotely inbuilt into it. All the information is stored in our own data centre. Also we can give our patients a web address on which they can use to see their images online, in case they want another doctor (not from our hospital) to view the images. This is not exactly what you call tele-medicine but it has to do with providing services to patients remotely.” Perfetti also points out, “Another shortage that is noticeable is with ICU doctors in which case there are examples in Saudi where a command centre has
been mounted where doctors in a central location can monitor patients in a remote ICU and recommend or give orders directly from the centre.” While hospitals slowly experiment with the benefits of remote services, many vendors believe that there will be more adoption of tele-medicine and the technologies to support the same in the near future. “Information technology spending in the UAE is expected to grow from
“Teleconferencing saves time and allows for virtual meetings with colleagues. A secure unified communications platform enables medical workers to discuss cases via a virtual private network. This means they can view findings and agree on treatment from any location.”
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February 2011
$55
billion is what GCC’s healthcare market will be worth in 2020
$4.7
billion is what the UAE’s IT sector spend from healthcare is expected to be by 2013
200
new hospitals have been announced or are under construction, with a cumulative capacity of up to 27,009 beds most of which are due to be delivered in 2015
around $3.1 billion in 2008 to nearly $4.7 billion by 2013, according to a report in 2009 by Business Monitor International and this is indicative of the trend in the Middle East as a whole. The modernisation of healthcare systems is seen as a hub for growth and a condition for the longterm sustainability of public health systems. IT investments are a fundamental part of these modernisation strategies,” concludes Ahmar.
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tech focus: training
Train them right If the average IT manager in the region wants to retain his staff he would need to invest in them with training. CNME gives a few points on putting together a comprehensive training programme for IT staff.
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February 2011
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Everybody bemoans the lack
of properly trained, efficient IT staff in the region. Every CIO finds it an absolutely troublesome, time-consuming, resource-draining task to add even one additional member to the IT personnel on his team. Consequently, they also struggle to retain the existing IT staff in a market that is highly competitive and constantly offers better options to the right IT staff. One effective way to retain existing IT personnel is to invest in them by offering cost effective training tailored to their roles. First, you have to create clear and concise job descriptions so employees understand what is expected of them. Job descriptions also serve as a basis for building a training programme. This has to be backed by best practices for developing and implementing a cost effective, but comprehensive training programme for your staff.
Sourcing the training There has been a lot of research put into learning methods. Training usually is delivered in the form of five methods: books, videos, in-person instructorled courses, eLearning, and webinars, or a hybrid of any of these forms. The learning methods can be a mix of internally and external developed material and tools. There are likely to be variations of the former in the market but it would be wise to keep things simple. The idea is to get some momentum in your organisation to start building a training program, not to overthink it or get caught up in the multitude of learning and development methods and practices. The least expensive and most sustainable delivery method is eLearning. Be assured that critics will argue that participants will retain more information using one method or the other. But we should agree that a good training programme should consider a variation of methods to satisfy the various learning styles of participants. For this reason, the phrase “learning tool” will be used to represent your preferred method.
Training in the Middle East Across the region, CIOs continue to struggle to find the right skill sets across various technology functions. While different organisations might lack in different skill sets many of them find the lack of business skills a universal problem. “We have always found it a problem to source software analysts with business skills. Most skills available are either fresher’s or pure technical personnel. In today’s environment - IT personnel need to speak of the value IT brings to business and hence need strong understanding of business along with technical skills,” says Mohammed Thameem Rizvon, group IT manager at one of the major UAE retailers Kamal Osman Jamjoom. In order to keep their staff on their toes, many CIOs in the region have internal measures to train them regularly or send them to external training programmes on a regular basis. “We hire people with minimum one year development experience and good academic skills. We then put them through a six month internal orientation programme, in which we train them on our systems and processes. We have been successful so far and I am honoured to lead such an exceptional team. We rarely send our team members for the generic IT training being offered. But I send my team for unique training programs like Oracle Retail training etc. Also the Learning & Development (L & D) department in our business, runs exceptional internal courses on management,” says Rizvon. Others tend to consider training needs more by way of a current needs perspective with the information. “We look for training progammmes as and when needed, when a new
Common learning tools – soft skills The first step is to analyse job descriptions across each of the technology functions, such as, infrastructure, development and business analysis,
february 2011
technology is introduced or when an employee is supposed to learn new skills. We invest in them and choose the one that we need based on the factors that would improve our operational efficiency,” says Abdualsalam Bastaki, the VP of IT at Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA). IT managers do not hesitate to spend on effective training to improve skill sets and retain staff. However, many of them believe that the general standards of training service providers in the region leave a lot to be desired. In a recent CIO roundtable conducted by CPI, IT managers stated that service providers in the region often do not provide the courses that are necessary and even if they do, they are not internally capable of delivering the training at the levels required by these organisations. As Bastaki points out, “We have not been totally happy with any training providers in the region. Most trainers in these facilities are not trained enough to deliver educational courses to other people. Their own technical and theoretical foundations are extremely weak.” Moreover, all training in the region is still very classroom-style. As in, IT folk are put into rooms and courses are delivered on a screen. This method is too static for most IT managers. What they desire is more people who have on the floor experience in day-to-day handling of IT issues and believe that this lack of focus in the training arena is only making matters worse. With most CIOs in the region still either having to send their IT folk out of the region for proper training, or resorting to internal measures, recruiting the right staff looks like it will continue to an issue and challenge.
and identify learning tools that satisfy the common soft skill requirements. Typically, these soft skills can be applied across a variety of functional roles and are also the basis of the performance review process. Using a common set of
COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
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tech focus: training
competencies, for example, customer driven, managing conf lict, listening, action orientation, etc, can be applied to a variety of roles, in a similar direction. Keep in mind that a level 1 employee (say, business analyst) will have different expectations for the same competency than a director of that function. For example, you would want an analyst to have the ability to be action oriented on tasks, whereas a director, you would want to be action oriented towards people and projects. As such, you will need to find successive learning tools for each soft skill (eg beginner, intermediate and advanced action orientation eLearning courses).
Common learning tools – functional skills After identifying the competencies and tools for common soft skills, look to identify courses for common functional skills that are necessary across the various technology functions. A good place to start would include testing skills, project management, risk management, budgeting, etc. Again, these are not “soft” skills, but rather job specific skills that are common throughout the IT function or company. In other words, if an employee in infrastructure requires the skill, so does an employee in software development. Ideally, these skills should already be clearly defined in the standard job descriptions.
Function specific learning tools Functional skills are where learning paths will start to deviate from the other common skills. They are typically specific to each area, but there is can
Invest without breaking the bank Standardise job descriptions
Don’t get geeky
Before you can even think about building a training programme, you need to consider standardizing job descriptions within technology functions, such as infrastructure, development, and business analysis.
A best practice when developing standardised job descriptions is that they should be technically agnostic. Meaning, the descriptions should be free of any reference to a specific technology, such as SAP, Citrix, Java, etc.
Soft skills
Side by side comparisons
You will find that many soft skills are shared across the functions (eg drive for results, dealing with conflict), so add these requirements across each job description.
Employees like to understand not only what is required of them in their current role, but what is expected of them in the next rung on the proverbial ladder. For that reason, a good practice is to build a job matrix that clearly lays out each job across the page and the requirements (e.g., soft skills, functional skills, etc) down the page. Once you spell out the requirements for each job in the matrix, employees will clearly understand the career path and what it takes to maximise their contributions in their current role, and the skills they need to develop to get promoted.
Functional skills After you have standardised the soft skills, determine which functional skills are required for each job role with each function. These functional skills are typically specific to each area, but there is usually some overlap. What is important is that everyone in a function (eg business analysis) shares the same basic job requirements.
be some overlap. What is important is that everyone in a function (eg business analysis) shares the same basic job requirements. For instance, a business systems analyst in the IT sales area should have the basic requirements as a similar role in IT purchasing area (eg relationship management, requirement gathering, testing, project management, etc). If the standardised job descriptions are well
The first step is to analyse job descriptions across each of the technology functions, such as, infrastructure, development and business analysis, and identify learning tools that satisfy the common soft skill requirements.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
written, the task of identifying learning tools is made more clear and simplified. Some pitfalls of designing a learning curriculum for your staff can include trying to identify learning methods for each technology in your department; this amount of customisation is not sustainable, nor a good use of resources to do well. Don’t try and find an individual learning tool for the one or two employees in your organisation that manages a specific piece of software. If you try and identify these learning tools, you will go down the proverbial rabbit hole and never get out. As a best practice, contract with a third party provider or vendor that offers training for a wide array of technologies and empower your staff to search the library for the technology specific courses.
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tech focus: training
Recognition and reward Finally, identify methods of reward or recognition to build excitement for the training programme. Communicate successes frequently to your staff by creating a development communication plan and recognition system. Some methods can include establishing a system whereby employees that take a set number of courses achieve a membership level (bronze, silver, gold, etc). With such a system in place, you can consider hosting periodic luncheons to celebrate employees that have achieved membership in the programme. As part of the celebration, you can hand out plaques that memorialise the accomplishment. Tangibles help to substantiate the claim of learning and development are important and rewarded by the company. Once employees learn of their peers earning the awards and investing in their careers, they will at least be inspired take a course or two for themselves.
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
Tangibles help to substantiate the claim of learning and development are important and rewarded by the company. Once employees learn of their peers earning the awards and investing in their careers, they will at least be inspired take a course or two for themselves. Mandatory or not Companies have different policies and practices on training, but from my experience most do not make training mandatory except for ethics type training. I think it’s best to leave the learning opportunities described above as optional but encouraged. Let your
February 2011
employees decide for themselves whether they want to take on the initiative to be better. Forcing training just creates resentment and resistance. Refrain from the words “retrain” or “re-develop”. It’s to best make the training available and encourage your staff to invest their careers by continuing to learn and grow.
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q&a with Google
Ben Fried, CIO, Google
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
February 2011
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A rewarding job When Ben Fried left his post as IT managing director at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google's CIO in May 2008, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars, like co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and vice president Vint Cerf. In a recent interview, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs, including the urgent need for tablet device strategies. Q: What are the challenges and satisfactions of being CIO of a company with thousands of computer engineers, as opposed to being CIO of, say, a fast-food or retail store chain? A: Some things about it are really hard because many brilliant technologists are my customers. You have to have a thick skin. That's also true for people in engineering who build Google products, because we test the products internally. What's different about Google is that we produce astoundingly high-quality products and we have an ability to use technology to shape the organisation
that you don't necessarily have in other companies. We have leadership that fundamentally and deeply understands what me and my people do, which is awesome. So it's incredibly hard because I have the most demanding users in the world but there's no better way to be great than by having demanding customers. The results are incredibly rewarding. When I see the work that my people produce, I'm just awed by it.
Q: What have been your biggest accomplishments as Google CIO? A: Every manager I know hesitates to answer that type of question because it's
“You have to have a thick skin. That's also true for people in engineering who build Google products, because we test the products internally. What's different about Google is that we produce astoundingly high-quality products and we have an ability to use technology to shape the organisation that you don't necessarily have in other companies.”
february 2011
the things you don't put in the answer that will cause you problems and I'd risk offending a lot of people. At a high level, there's this really neat value at Google that we don't create the processes that our technology allows, but rather we decide what we want Google to be and we create technology to enable that. I'm proudest of things where we've allowed Google to be different. Google hires people, promotes people and rewards people in ways that are unique. All of those things and many other things that [Google does] that are unique are also supported by software that my organisation does, builds and writes. I'm also proud that we give our users choice in personal technology and that we've built an astoundingly good customer support organisation: The first responder to your problem will solve it about 90% of the time. I'm also proud that we did a very successful financial systems upgrade last year with a ton of planning and that it went f lawlessly. There are many other things my organisation accomplished that I'm very proud of.
Q: How do Google's marketing and business strategies and principles limit or expand
COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
43
q&a with Google
your technology choices? For example, what happens if in a particular scenario you think that the right approach from the IT perspective is at odds with what Google is advocating through its product marketing? A: There is a very specific answer about our philosophy regarding what the role of IT needs to be at Google. Obviously, we're part of Google and making sure that Google tries out its products and that its users make those products better is incredibly important. That's clearly part of our job. But my mission, writ large, is to make this an incredibly productive organisation. A way to do that is through a philosophy of choice. We allow users, within certain constraints, to choose the toolset with which they can be more productive. That produces the best overall environment. Of course, over the course of time we may change our minds over what the scope or spectrum of those choices are. But we, for example, support three operating systems for laptops and desktops: MacOS, Windows and Linux. People who work at Google and people in general entering the workforce today tend to have strong opinions about how they work best. We can do our job best by supporting them in those opinions. Obviously, with all these things, you have to apply some judgment, but that's what we do.
Q: Are you standardised on Google Apps and Docs or do you also use Microsoft Office? A: We definitely use Microsoft Office inside the company, as well as OpenOffice. What we've found is that, in an environment of choice, people use Google Apps for a majority of their work. Apps was designed around observations of the way we work here. In some sense, it's almost a false comparison with other office suites. Apps is optimised around a workforce and style of work where collaboration is
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
“We definitely use Microsoft Office inside the company, as well as OpenOffice. What we've found is that, in an environment of choice, people use Google Apps for a majority of their work. Apps was designed around observations of the way we work here. In some sense, it's almost a false comparison with other office suites.” at the core. That's the most important thing. There are lots of things that Apps doesn't do and the Apps team would be the first to tell you that, but what it does do and the style of work it does enable is how Google works as a company.
Q: But Gmail is your enterprise e-mail system, right? A: Yes. Everyone gets and uses Gmail, and we let people use a variety of e-mail clients inside the company, which is good because it exercises the non-Web interfaces of the app. Without a top-down mandate to use Google Apps [within Google], it was recognised that Apps was a success when years ago, before I got here, more than 50% of the documents were passed around in the company as links to Docs, not as attachments. That was a measurement of people's behaviour given choice.
Q: How much input do you and your team get asked for regarding product development decisions? A: We have very strong relationships with the enterprise team and other related areas. It depends a lot on the particular area. There are a bunch of products on which we spend a lot of time talking to product managers and product teams about what our needs are. We do a lot of it. It's an important part of what we do.
February 2011
Q: You mentioned earlier that the changing landscape of tablets is something CIOs need to pay attention to. Why? A: There's going to be a ton of tablets out there and people will bring them to work. It will follow the path of BlackBerrys in the enterprise years ago. Road warriors brought in their BlackBerrys and demanded service and pretty soon some were dropping their laptops and going BlackBerry only. CIOs needed to figure out what services they were going to provide on top of this. My advice to CIOs now is to look at tablets and think hard about what your strategy is. Some people already feel that they're behind on the game on this. But if you look at the variety of Android tablets coming out, it's clear that it will be a diverse landscape and you have a chance to get in ahead of this. CIOs are going to have to think about software delivery. Are we going to buy software for these tablets? Do we have to think about training for our development organisations to learn how to build for these things? Do we have to think about optimizing Web browser experiences to work for this stuff ? CIOs need to have a strategy and opinions about tablets because it will be the next personal computing platform that we're expected to provide at the enterprise, and very quickly. It will be this year.
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INSIGHT
Straight talk on the future New expectations and a new economic landscape point to a new role for IT in 2011. Here's how to avoid getting left behind Make no mistake: 2011
represents a sea change for IT strategy. Those IT leaders who view the upward trend in IT spend as welcome relief to return to pre-recession priorities will quickly find themselves in trouble. The simple truth is that the focus on the back office - IT's traditional domain - is over. Companies are tired of paying for what they view as plumbing. Any consideration in the executive suite about the back office and infrastructure is all about making do and cost-cutting. Virtualisation and private clouds are investments meant to accomplish this reduction - they're not new gold mines to enrich IT's importance. If your back office and infrastructure don't work by now, its game over. You'll be outsourced to India or China, domestic service providers, or the cloud. Even if they do work, owning these aspects of IT is of no importance to your company. The new reality is that the back office and infrastructure have been demoted to a sort of IT facilities function - whether internally or externally managed and provisioned. This includes security, for which spending patience is running out. The recession motivated companies to cut
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COMPUTER NEWS MIDDLE EAST
back on the cost of security; overall, the risks didn't visibly increase. That's a green light to be looser on acceptable risk. Vendors may push technologies such as DLP (data loss prevention) and SEIM (security event and information management) and warn of advanced persistent threats, but don't expect buy-in for budget. IT must adapt to this new reality. The more executives, vendors, and analysts we talk with, the more convinced we become that new skills, new conversations, and new dilemmas are on the docket for the new year. Here is a look at what to expect and how to evolve your IT organisation to meet the challenges to come.
Mobile management: Bellwether of the new IT Last year's shift in mobile management is proof enough of this new IT reality. After all, when the director of IT infrastructure at Crédit Suisse heralds the bringyour-own-device approach to endpoint management, you see the new attitude on risk and infrastructure avoidance writ large. It helps that the mobile security technology came of age in 2010 for
February 2011
the major platforms. At a recent CIO conference I attended, the consensus was that the era of the corporate BlackBerry is over; employees will bring their own devices, and if they meet the basic policy requirements, they're in. Defense contractors tell me the same thing, as do hospitals and other highly regulated entities, although their parameters are more stringent. Every survey we have seen backs this up. What do companies expect from IT going forward? As usual, several notalways-compatible things. The contradictions are evident:
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Be open and safe. Don't get geeky but stay on top of the new tech trends. Be business-focused and tech-savvy. Let the new generation own more of the tech, but make sure it all works. Learn to take risks but don't threaten the core. Do more with less.
Get used to it Although every company has a different reality in the engine room, the focus is what it can do to propel the ship forward, not how the engine is built. You're Scotty on the Enterprise, tasked with figuring it out when under attack and everything is breaking.
Data analytics: Pure opportunity Before you succumb to pessimism, remember that with change comes opportunity. Take analytics, one of the major areas of new IT investment. To date, IT's focus has been predominantly internal - how the business or supply chain is running. That's essential, of course, but a decade after ERP and MRP, the time is right to set your sights beyond the company walls. Understanding the external world the market, the customer, the trends – is where competitive advantage is achieved. Here, analytics, especially around
february 2011
decision support, Big Data and fuzzy data, predictions, and inline adjustments (so-called operational BI), are key. Despite the money being poured into these areas, they remain poorly understood. Here's where businessand-tech-savvy IT can help like no one else. Data management, large information systems - the knowledge IT has accumulated in the past two decades dealing with data is essential to navigating the huge info pools, complex relationships, and high rate of change at the centre of these problems. As InfoWorld columnist Bill Snyder recently reported, analytics encompasses the best of IT’s legacy and its new frontoffice mission. The business guys just don't understand how Hadoop and MapReduce can make them smarter but you can. Mobile is another area rife with opportunity. Look beyond the issue of control to see how mobile devices and apps can help employees achieve better business results and how your infrastructure can best serve its increasingly mobile-oriented customer base. Ditto on social networking, HTML 5, and related technologies – cloud services, too. Working together, you can try out ideas through collaborative pilots. That approach is working well for the CIOs of Disney Interactive, GE Healthcare, and DuPont. PwC calls them value-creating CIOs because they see the expanse beyond the protected core where they can innovate and experiment. Of course, CIOs don't create value without an IT staff to execute the plan. Looking beyond the firewall is paramount for business analysts; software, systems, and data architects; CSOs; infrastructure managers; database designers; and so on.
Embrace the tech savvy outside of IT Deputising tech-savvy business colleagues as part of a shadow IT organisation that works with you, rather than around you, is a great way to expand
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INSIGHT
your operations while loosening your workload. Project managers, product managers, and solutions architects - not just business analysts - are strong candidates for these roles. Rather than wait for them to work around restrictions they see as being unreasonable, embrace them and set limits they will respect. In an environment where teamwork is emphasised over red lines, everyone learns, and the chances of meaningful business gains are much greater. These days, product designers are increasingly using the same technologies that IT does, as well as specialty ones IT doesn't. As these technologies become more powerful, they are more likely to interact with back-office systems, such as customer support, sales management, CRM, SCM, and so on. A modern Web site is a great example of this conf luence, one in which IT usually has minimal involvement; even the servers are often handled by an outsourcer. For example, automakers whose cars track driver locations and habits to provide them with fuel-efficiency tips will need to tap into back-end information systems. Single-serve coffee makers with social networking hooks to share coffee trends will require customer data be accessible - introducing performance, access, and security issues that the product designers probably aren't aware of. In such cases, does IT have a role other than to deal with the consequences
after the fact? Can IT participate in product development in product design departments, much as IT business analysts work in business units to help understand and shape activities that depend so much on IT? Maybe product designers take over the innovative, frontoffice IT work - designing and deploying the cool stuff, from social networking to mobile apps - and leave the back end of ERP, backup, and networking for an unloved "IT facilities" department or, worse, an outsourcer to manage?
IT's new mantra: "Think different" I cringe when I hear that IT needs to align to the business, implying that IT is not part of the business in the first place. In fact, IT is essential to the business and
Take analytics, one of the major areas of new IT investment. To date, IT's focus has been predominantly internal - how the business or supply chain is running. That's essential, of course, but a decade after ERP and MRP, the time is right to set your sights beyond the company walls.
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should be as much a part of the strategy, development, and execution teams as any other group. Think of it this way: As long as IT thinks of "the business" as "not IT," IT will never be valued. IT has a stereotype to overcome. More important, it must relinquish the stereotypes it holds of other entities in the organisation - sales and marketing, for example - a practice that inhibits IT's ability to form advantageous interdepartmental partnerships. If you look at where the technology jobs are these days, according to Dice. com, it's in these areas of architecture, design, solutions engineering, innovation, project leadership (not just management), and emerging technologies. Businesses are making their priorities clear. Can you adjust, or do you want to retreat into the engine room? Don't get me wrong, the engine room is critical. But it needs fewer engineers to keep it running - or should - than in the early days. If the engine room is your passion, become a Scotty. But don't stay an ensign, because not many will be needed in the years to come. Otherwise, join the larger ship, whether as an engineer partner or a player in another business unit, such as product design. Whatever you do, the future of IT is in helping make the business more successful in its own terms. Think different and be part of that future.
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How To
Let information guide IT Symantec CIO Dave Thompson shares his thoughts on the importance of information to an organisation and the disconnect between how much a company values information yet also seems unwilling to do what is necessary to utilse and secure it. The Harvard Business Review
recently did a survey of top business executives worldwide. The results clearly show a disconnect between what leaders believe and what they do in terms of their information. According to that survey, 85% of executives say information is a critical strategic asset. At the same time, only 36% say their organisations are in a good position to use information in growing their businesses. In addition, 54% of the CEOs surveyed said information is a key asset, but only 21% strongly agree that investing in IT is critical to the growth of their business. Another startling contrast is illustrated by 64% of CEOs responding that one of the most important things they can do to close the gap between where their business is today and where they want to be in the future is to improve processes relating to the f low of information, yet only 29% said integrating data through IT is strategically important.
What's missing? For some reason, organisations aren't seeing the critical relationship between
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IT and success. IT is the means whereby information is handled. Why aren't organisations seeing this? Part of it could be technology fatigue—executives struggle to maximise the technology they already have. While businesses say that focusing on existing technology and information is a priority for them, the study found that 67% of the surveyed executives struggle to make the best use of the information they already have. Part of the disconnect could also stem from the dramatically changing IT landscape. Fortunately, technology trends like virtualisation, cloud computing and mobility are becoming more of a priority for organisations and consumers. The result is that companies are now being forced to think more carefully about how they secure and manage the large amount of information they handle. Reorganising IT to fix this is often a foreboding task.But how can executives be sure it's worth it? The truth of the matter is that organisations don't need to invest in an entirely new IT infrastructure to close this gap. They will, however, need to
February 2011
shift their thinking to ensure they are focused on information management, security and overall strategic investments.
Eliminating information islands Today, most companies are not organised around information, but around infrastructure. This results in information islands - an inability to secure and manage information consistently. Such islands lead to duplication, inefficiency and an inability to use information for competitive advantage. Every organisation is capable of eliminating such islands. The following steps will enable companies to better manage information, and ensure it is easily available for recovery and discovery. First, companies need to back up information, archive it for the long term and stop data loss. Next, deduplicate closer to information sources to eliminate redundancy. Third, reduce storage and risk by deleting everything, not keeping it, forever, and finally, deliver a compliance- and litigation-ready information infrastructure.
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These actions will help organisations reduce storage costs and move away from information islands to an information management strategy that is architectureand infrastructure-agnostic, while also managing the massive amount of unstructured data. Additionally, from an information delivery standpoint, properly adopting models such as virtualisation and cloud computing will be important. For virtualisation, ensuring that there is one backup solution to protect both physical and virtual servers is key to streamlining. Information is also being moved to the cloud. It's important for organisations to adopt cloud-ready storage infrastructure so they are ready and set to accelerate the benefits of the virtualisation and cloud computing models.
Security is not sufficient Over the next few years, one of the greatest challenges organisations will face is balancing increased openness with greater security to extract maximum value from their information — all while managing it at a rapidly growing pace. While it's puzzling that companies don't always adequately secure their information, four main points can be identified as reasons for laxity: 1. IT policies that are not enforced leave businesses exposed to broken processes that hinder protection. Businesses can address this vulnerability by prioritising risks and enforcing strong IT policies that span across their various locations. 2. Poorly protected information leaves organisations vulnerable to security breaches and data loss because they do not know where their information assets are at any given time or who has access to this information. Businesses need to take a more content-aware approach to protecting information so they know where sensitive data resides, who is accessing it and how it is entering or leaving the company. 3. Businesses with poorly managed systems are vulnerable to security breaches and attacks because they cannot efficiently manage their IT infrastructure
through its lifecycle. This can be addressed by leveraging various toolsets that provide integrated capabilities for managing security. 4. Infrastructure that is not protected lead to increased vulnerability because they do not have the visibility across the infrastructure that is required to identify gaps for protection and offer recommendations for remediation. Businesses can address this with integrated security technologies that provide insight into their infrastructure, proactive protection across the entire environment and rapid response to emerging attacks. In general, organisations need to employ a policy-driven and wellprotected IT strategy that focuses on securing and managing their information, not their infrastructure.
Investing strategically According to the Harvard Business Review study, a large gap exists between the third highest-scoring threat — the inability to leverage technological innovation to drive new business and greater efficiency — and the effectiveness with which companies are acting. While budget constraints may be a factor, it can also be a result of organisations' desire to make better use of the tools they already have. This points to the importance of making wise and strategic technological investments. The high level of demand for IT services coming out of the recession will make it difficult for even companies in good financial standing to focus on new projects, even if they have high potential for payback. Importantly, the silos within organisations must come down. Only 44% of companies currently have a cross-functional governance structure for making decisions about IT investments. CEOs must pay attention to what CIOs are saying about the lack of alignment between business and IT priorities. Given how deeply IT is involved with all aspects of business, CEOs also need to make sure the alignment between business and IT is a focus for the entire executive team.
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What's ahead In order to make sure information is making the greatest possible contribution to the bottom line, organisations need to address some important informational challenges. Companies are increasing the rate at which they gather and create new information, so they need to assess the following: • Information growth, management and delivery — The amount of information an organisation produces and collects continues to grow. Protecting this information through the efficient and effective management of security and storage technologies such as virtualisation and the cloud will be key to their success. Also, the ability to back up and recover information is crucial, as is categorising what information is most important. • Information risk — Organisations need to take an information-centric approach to IT security, enabling them to understand where their important information assets are and control who has access to them. The disconnect between organisations' value of information and their unwillingness to do what is necessary to utilise and secure that information needs to be reconciled. Overcoming that disconnect will allow companies to eliminate customer problems and develop a more effective IT operation. Boiled down, IT should facilitate the company with its information. If the organisation's people can maximise its information, then IT is on track. Technology changes and businesses evolve, so CIOs need to keep their focus on the information, and the core tasks of managing and securing that information. That way, IT won't be a headache, it'll be an enabler. About the Author: Mark Settle, CIO for BMC Software, joined the company in 2008. He has served as the CIO of four Fortune 300 companies: Corporate Express, Arrow Electronics, Visa International, and Occidental Petroleum.
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Gaga over gadgets CNME gets down in the dust with the latest in productivity solutions and gadgets, and gives you the verdict.
Microsoft Office 365 Microsoft Office 365, a suite of business-focused, cloud-based applications that was recently released in beta, is actually a repackaging and updating of various Microsoft offerings -- optimised for the cloud. The intent is to give small businesses the kind of benefits that up until now only large companies have been able to get. Office 365 is an upgrade of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS). Office 365 offers an excellent set of tools for companies that want the power of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync but don't want to host them. It will be especially welcomed by small and midsize businesses that can't afford data centers and sizable IT staffs. But the product, at least in its current form, has enough rough edges that it feels more like a series of applications bolted together than a well-thought-out, integrated whole. When you first log in (Office 365 supports Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not Chrome), you're greeted by a simple, straightforward page that lets you navigate to the Web-based version of Outlook for reading e-mail, head to SharePoint to use its services, install or use the Lync communications server, install connector software that links your local Outlook client to Office 365, or install Microsoft Office Professional if it's not already installed. The heart of the suite, and the feature that can provide the greatest benefit for small and midsize businesses, is Exchange hosted in the cloud. This offers the benefits of Exchange without the headaches of hosting. The biggest advantage is getting access to corporate e-mail via client-based Outlook, Outlook on the Web, and on most popular mobile devices, including Windows Phone 7 devices, Android devices, BlackBerries and Apple's iPhone. For mobile devices, Office 365 provides true Exchange support, not merely POP3 access. More important, when you take any action on your e-mail on any device, that action automatically f lows to any other devices accessing e-mail. Even though Exchange 365 is hosted in the cloud, rather than on your company's server, you still get a full suite of administrative tools. However, there is poor overall integration
in the beta. When you're on the pages for managing Exchange, there's no navigation to any other part of Office 365 -- essentially you're in a silo that appears to be a dead end. You have to navigate back to Outlook, and from there use site-wide navigation. This is a problem that appears time and again throughout the suite. Office 365's f lawed integration is especially evident in SharePoint. Once you enter SharePoint, you frequently lose navigation to the rest of Office 365 -- you appear to be in SharePoint alone. Even navigating to different parts of SharePoint itself is confusing, because you'll often have to use your browser's back button rather than SharePoint-specific navigation. Office 365 includes tools for building Web sites, and this is very clearly the weak link in the chain. If you use Office 365 for e-mail, SharePoint and other services, you also have to use Office 365's built-in tools for building and managing your Web site. Why? Because when you port your domain over to Office 365, Microsoft hosts both your Web site and your e-mail. Office 365 doesn't include a feature that simply lets you post your own HTML and Web-based applications to a Web server. So if you've built a Web site with other tools, have a Web development team, or have hired an outside firm to build a site for you, you're out of luck -- you can't build your own site and then have it hosted on Office 365. Microsoft says that you may eventually be able to use a work-around in which only your mail is hosted on Office 365 and your Web site can remain elsewhere, but there are no details yet. Office 365's biggest problem is how easily it is to become lost while navigating and not be able to get back to a different part of the suite. Depending on where you are at the moment, there may or may not be sitewide navigation. This gives Office 365 the feel of a group of separate apps and services that are only partially integrated; the suite is essentially a collection of existing services with only some common navigation. Keep in mind, however, that Office 365 is still in beta; the navigation and other issues may be fixed when the final version is released.Office 365 is certainly more powerful than its chief competitor, Google Apps, but more difficult and confusing to use as well. And Office 365 would likely be overkill for some businesses, especially smaller ones. Verdict:
Aye, but only if you are willing to use the limited web-site building capabilities
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RHEL 6 The good news in RHEL 6 is a wealth of new features. These include very significant enhancements, long-awaited updates, and items that have been in place on other nominally less-stable distributions for months. The net result is that RHEL 6 is easily the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux release yet. First up are the enhancements to the core system. RHEL 6 defaults to the CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) process scheduler and the usual CFQ (Completely Fair Queueing) I/O scheduler. For x86_64 CPUs, RHEL 6 can natively support up to 128 cores and 2TB of RAM. Using other kernel extensions, those limits can be stretched to 4,096 cores and 64TB of RAM, if you're really pushing big iron. Red Hat has also done plenty of work in optimising memory management with NUMA, which can produce significant performance increases on larger systems. In addition, RHEL 6 can take advantage of RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability) features found in newer CPUs such as the Intel Nehalem-EX, which allow it to handle hot-swap CPU and RAM events and deal with bad memory pages marked by hardware. On the IP storage networking front, booting from iSCSI LUNs is now supported and easily managed at install time. There's now embedded support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet. Note there is no Itanium version of RHEL 6. On the software side, you'll find a plethora of updates and new frameworks, such as the new System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) that offers a pluggable interface for authentication, supporting PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), NSS (Network Security Services), and offline credential caching. Quite a few of the new features revolve around virtualisation, not the least of which are WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs)certified drivers that usher in official Microsoft support for Windows virtual servers. The KVM hypervisor has also been bumped up a notch or two, with features like guest CPU affinity; CPU masking, in which all VMs see the same CPU type no matter what's actually in the box; and KSM (Kernel Samepage Merging), which reduces RAM usage by allowing virtual machines to share memory pages. The new limits for virtual servers are 64 virtual CPUs and 256GB of RAM. On the virtualisation security front, sVirt is included. Based
on SELinux, sVirt uses mandatory access controls to isolate virtual machines and prevent them from interfering with each other. The default Gnome desktop is roughly identical to the previous version and is respectably Spartan, as befits a server operating system. The Red Hat Network (RHN) options remain the same as the previous version. One last significant change in RHEL 6 is the pricing. The base pricing is similar to that of RHEL 5, but as you move up the chain, it gets much more expensive. The RHEL 5 entry-level server was $349, but that price included up to four virtual guests. RHEL 6 allows only a single virtual guest for the same money. As you move up the support tier, prices increase. A single x86_64 license allowing four virtual guests with standard five-nines support will run $1,199, with 24/7 support hitting $1,949. For unlimited guests at the premium support level, expect to pay $3,249. RHEL 5 offered unlimited guest instances for a single price at the Advanced Server level. In short, it'll cost much more to run RHEL 6 as a virtualisation platform. In addition to being the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux release to date, RHEL 6 is also the most expensive. As the pricing climbs, Red Hat may find that many customers have been using the OS long enough to seek out other alternatives -- or to turn to self-support, where they may have purchased support in the past. RHEL 6 is an attractive upgrade, but smaller shops especially will have to weigh the costs. Verdict: Aye (if you are willing to fork out on the higher costs).
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What we’re reading.. Business confidential
Exsecutus
Peter Earnest and Maryann Karinch
Jim Haughwout
Book Earnest, the executive director of the International Spy Museum, says up front that he's not advocating corporate espionage, but after 36 years in the CIA, he has a thing or two to teach the business world. He covers recruiting and retaining the very best talent, finding and fixing organizational weaknesses and, of course, legally gathering and analyzing information. The tips are practical, and in between them are interesting anecdotes from Earnest's years as a spy.
Blog A few times a month, Haughwout, a former CIO, shares his 18 years' worth of hands-on technological knowledge in detailed blog posts. The site's best feature is its collection of multi-post drill-downs focused on one complicated topic--including the importance of software as a service, best practices for program dashboards, and a recently begun series about the pros and cons of master data management.
www.exsecutus.com
Business Confidential Lessons for Corporate Success from Inside the CIA (Amacom)
Overconnected
William H. Davidow
Undercover boss
Stephen Lambert, Eli Holzman and Mark Levine Book This book shares insight from the CBS reality show (of the same name) where high-level execs do entry-level jobs at their companies. The show's producers discuss various episodes, share behind-the-scenes tidbits and offer follow-up interviews explaining what bosses learned and now do differently after their appearances on the show. If you want to see for yourself how things run without everyone on their best, the-boss-ishere behavior, the book includes a guide to creating your own undercover experience.
Book Some risks created by the Internet are obvious--anything on the Web can be attacked from anywhere in the world, for example. But it poses subtler threats too, says Davidow: It can create positive-feedback loops that drive irrational behavior, like the dotcom bubble and bust, and it's what made the subprime mortgage crisis and Iceland's banking crash possible. The book explains how such disasters happen, and argues that to prevent them, we have to start prioritizing preventing harm over creating opportunity.
Overconnected - The Promise and Threat of the Internet (Delphinium Books)
Undercover Boss: Inside the TV Phenomenon that Is Changing Bosses and Employees Everywhere (Jossey-Bass)
IT savvy
Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross Book Companies that use IT well earn 20 percent higher profits than their competitors, according to MIT's Center for Information Systems Research. Weill and Ross are the center's chairman and director, respectively. Using examples from international companies including UPS and Procter aanndd Gamble, the authors seek to get your department to live up to its full potential as a strategic asset by helping you fix what's wrong with IT, find the right way to fund it and assess how IT-savvy your colleagues already are.
IT Savvy - What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain (Harvard Business Press)
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