IT Transformation

IT

transformation

The power behind decisions

APRIL 2014

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Business Technology April 2014

2 | IT transformation

Opening shots Shane Richmond

A

SK ANYONE who doesn’t work in IT what they think of their company’s IT department and you are likely to get a roll of the eyes and a long list of complaints. The first complaint is usually that the computers are too old and too slow, followed by a criticism of IT’s reluctance to adopt new technology and a tendency to stifle change. However, when IT does embrace change and deliver new technology, it is usually criticised for that too.

I once spoke to a CIO who had successfully moved the business over to Google Apps, saving money on the costs of running Microsoft Office and delivering a cloud service before Microsoft even had one of its own. The response was outcry.

The staff hated using Google’s word processor and spreadsheet programs and they missed the familiar email interface from Outlook. The chief exec, meanwhile, hated Gmail because his PA couldn’t manage his email on his behalf.

In the end, of course, everyone got used to it and I imagine there would be similar outrage at the loss of Google Apps if the CIO tried to move them to a new system today. It’s easy to understand why a CIO would stop pushing for changes and instead try to concentrate on maintaining the status quo.

However, that is a bad strategy and it’s getting worse. Technology is becoming increasingly important across businesses, with the growing reliance on cloud services, the developing

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The best CIOs will be advocates for new technology throughout the business… possibilities of big data in more fields and the fact that “bring your own device” is now the norm.

A good IT department will see the opportunity these trends present for the business and be a responsible advocate for change. Last month, Andrew Wilson, the CIO at Accenture, said his department acts as “consultants to the consultants” and plays a role in the governance of each function of the business. In the future, he says, CIOs need to play a more active role in identifying new technologies and bringing them into the business at the right time.

The pace of change in business technology has accelerated hugely over the last two decades. From the widespread availability of email, smartphones, tablets and mobile broadband to software-as-aservice, cloud computing, big data and on to the arrival of wearables, there has been a constant

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Shane Richmond travels the world advising businesses on changing technologies, and was head of technology (editorial) at Telegraph Media Group Twitter: @ shanerichmond

stream of game-changing devices and technologies available for companies to draw on. It’s unlikely that things will slow down in the near future.

Fortunately, new entrants to the workforce are no strangers to this change. The students who will graduate from university this summer are younger than the worldwide web. The iPhone was released before they began their A-levels. They will be more willing to adapt to new technologies at work than any generation before them. And those that start their own businesses will, in all likelihood, be technologically agile and a threat to any company that cannot move as quickly.

The best CIOs will seize the chance to be advocates for new technology throughout the business. They will give their businesses a vital edge. But the staff will probably still moan about them. Not everything changes.

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IT Transformation | 3

New tech will change lives for the better – mostly…

TECHNOLOGY is changing the world and how we experience the environment, enhancing our emotions and reactions to the way we perceive events, according to experts.

Wearable devices such as Google Glass – which allows the wearer to not only be online all the time but also capture what is happening in their surroundings and upload it to the web – are considered to be potentially disruptive technologies.

G oogle Glass is cer ta i n ly not without controversy – there have been reports of wearers being attacked for wearing the device, over concerns

that it could be an invasion of people’s privacy.

Volker Buscher, UKMEA IT and communications systems practice leader at Arup, thinks this could be because people do not properly understand the technology yet. He says: “About 15 years ago I was stopped for talking on a mobile phone while walking on a public square back home in Germany.

“I a m not su re i f t hat w o u l d h a p p e n t o d a y, I think there is a bit of a newness of it [Google Glass). People will either react and will not

buy these products because they are not socially acceptable, or society will find a mechanism, a conduct that works.”

Arup is looking into how Google Glass could be used in the sporting environment. He says: “Football for example – where if you were in a private lounge in a stadium people could hand these out. You could see slow-motion and zoom into the play, get players stats and all the geeky stuff football fans like.”

Johann Siau (inset), who runs the Smart Laboratory at the University of Hertfordshire, believes wearable devices will not only be useful for consumers but will also help people

Businesses transformed by increased data speeds

By Joanne Frearson

AS THE speed of the internet has developed it has disrupted the way corporations do business. Their business models are changing to make their services quicker, helping them to become more economical and agile.

Joseph Norton, senior vice president, deputy CIO and head of infrastructure and operations at Royal Philips Electronics, says: “What is transforming businesses, if you look at it from an IT perspective, is the predominant availability of networking bandwidth and connectivity. That is really what has changed everything.

“It is the speed, connectivity and the intimacy of it all. How it brings all parts of businesses together. The disruption is basically bandwidth connectivity.

Everything else followed that – without it nothing else works.

“All of these disruptive tools that we in the IT industry use are all enabled and envisioned only because we had the connectivity to be able to connect everything together today. Pervasive

network and connectivity with our business partners, employees, and customers allows us to apply today’s advance IT tools.

“We have and will continue to disrupt our ways of working with information and knowledge, decision making, time cycles, customer engagement and experience. I believe we, business and IT, are only now learning how to take advantage of true real-time business capabilities.”

Norton continues: “We are applying technologies [at Philips] in ways that are disruptive to our old ways of doing business.

If you look at what is going on in IT today in corporations’ supplier bases, you have to question why we are doing IT the way we were 15 to 20 years ago.”

Cloud technology which connects computers through a network such as the internet is enabling companies not to have to use traditional software which you purchase on a fixed term contract and install on your system. Philips is presently transforming its IT processes and is simplifying the way it does business by moving to a core common business platform and putting everything possible on the cloud.

He says: “Once it is completed, what

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we wind up with is a common IT set of capabilities and support, not only for our internal corporate IT, but also our commercial IT, which includes all our business sectors, to our consumers, users and buyers. That gives up significantly more leverage and economies of scale to apply to our IT supply chain, our contracting, negotiations and pricing.

“This gives us dramatically reduced costs. It helps us to improve our quality of services to the right suppliers. It gives us infinite responsiveness to our business needs and business conditions, whereas before it might be an annualised process to go through starting up a project for new capabilities. Dramatically reducing our IT costs makes us more competitive.”

with disabilities. “The Google devices are now providing developers with the opportunity to build smaller and nicer devices with additional features that are not currently available – say, in traditional watches.

“Rather than just telling the time, [watches using the new technology] will also capture your pattern in what you do, how you walk, and everything else.

“It actually allows you to build a profi le of yourself. A device that can provide additional information about location could be used in a good way, to support a person with certain disabilities.”

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology April 2014

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Increasing business productivity with mobile collaboration Q&A with Yorgen Edholm (below), CEO, Accellion INDUSTRY VIEW

What is mobile collaboration?

Some will say it’s viewing a piece of enterprise content on a smartphone, and sharing it with others. However, that is not collaboration, that’s file access and sharing. True mobile collaboration is when a user can combine content from different enterprise sources in a shared folder, from any device, and work wherever. They can assign tasks for internal or external members to review, and those members can add their own comments and edit documents. When the content is complete, it can be saved back to its original source. This is true end-to-end mobile collaboration, which can increase the efficiency of your business processes.

“Accellion allows us to securely mobilise our most important content and make BYOD a reality” – Ian Lawrence, London Borough of Camden What are the benefits to mobile collaboration?

Many of our customers find that once mobile collaboration tools are provided, business units and individuals innovate on their own business processes as they find more productive ways to get their work done.

Companies are also seeing real cost-savings.

Accellion helped social workers at the London Borough of Camden file their reports remotely and work entirely out of the office. This saved on desk space, as well as the cost of physical hardware like PCs and phones. The South Devon NHS Foundation Trust used Accellion in part to move board-meeting administration from paper to digital, saving hundreds of pounds per meeting in printing costs by making the board meeting information accessible on iPads. Now, board members review content in a shared folder where they comment and annotate the board materials, knowing with certainty that they’re working on the most up-to-date versions.

What departments see the most value from mobile collaboration?

Collaboration occurs in different ways within and between departments. Marketing and sales teams are often the most obvious starting points, as collaboration is so central to their daily activities. However, departments that deal with sensitive data, including HR, legal and finance are also hotbeds for collaborative exchanges.

Teams or projects where members are distributed across different sites or even countries are often the fastest to see value from collaborative technology. Take legal contracts – the process can involve multiple stakeholders, frequently involving legal counsel, clients, sales teams and external auditors.

The ability to have a central point for content, comments and edits has huge productivity benefits compared to email, which is the usual alternative.

The truth is, most organisations are too reliant on email for collaboration, and it is holding back productivity. All departments and teams follow some form of a collaborative process – the question is how effective are they? Something I recommend is asking department heads to map out their collaboration processes – it can be eye-opening to identify the areas or tools that are delaying deadlines or project completion.

“Our use of Accellion is spreading through our organisation – creating instant collaboration networks with independent providers, health care professionals, and other third parties” – David Hayes, South Devon NHS Foundation Trust

How important is the design and user experience in mobile collaboration?

One of the challenges facing mobile users is when solution providers try to replicate the PC experience on a mobile device – it just doesn’t work.

So companies tend to create different interfaces for each form factor and the user has to learn three of four differing systems. Accellion took a mobile-first approach to the design of its mobile collaboration solution kiteworks, and committed to making its user experience consistent across all devices. This means a shorter learning curve for users when they can use the same interface on any laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone.

Where is the data stored?

Mobile collaboration requires access to enterprise content both inside and outside the walls of an organisation. To accomplish this there are a number of choices, all of which involve cloud storage. Either your content is stored in the public cloud with the collaboration solution provider, or your content is stored in your data centre under your management and control. If your organisation has concerns of

data privacy and data protection rules, content should be stored in your own data centre. Providers like Accellion can offer this option – in fact today 80 per cent of our customer base prefers this on-premise model. Finally, you may choose to divide your content and put non-sensitive files in the cloud and store your most confidential data on-premise.

Whatever model you choose, make sure that you own the encryption keys to your data rather than a third-party vendor or solution provider, and that you have an option to store the data incountry for enhanced security and compliance.

How do I know mobile collaboration won’t create more content chaos?

If you treat mobile collaboration as one more box to check off on a list of new technologies, you could end up with even less control of your data. This is why it’s critical to choose a mobile collaboration solution that lets you securely access content, as well as control and store data. This will increase the productivity of your employees, without increasing the risk of data loss in your business. +44 (0)20 3608 1321 www.accellion.com

PRODUCTIVITY GAINS USING MOBILE DEVICES 400 users were asked how many extra hours per day they worked using smartphones and tablets

FOUR HOURS OR MORE PER DAY

UP TO FOUR HOURS PER DAY

UP TO THREE HOURS PER DAY

UP TO ONE HOUR PER DAY UP TO TWO HOURS PER DAY

Based on research commissioned by Accellion in 2013 involving 400 UK & European users

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GLOBALLY SPEAKING A transatlantic network of laser-linked airships could provide the fastest-ever data transfer solution… Joanne Frearson reports

L

ASER technology could be used to provide communications between New York and London at the speed of light, Mike Persico, CEO at Anova Technologies, explains to me in a transatlantic telephone call.

Persico says: “I could hook up New York to London without any fibre-optic cables by installing a series of airships across the Atlantic – each of these would have a laser fixed to it that would connect all the blimps together to form a communication system between the two cities.

“I would need 30 of them. The blimps would be suspended 70,000 feet in the air in the stratosphere. They would be geostationary so they stay in the same spot and would have about a 30-day supply of helium.

“You would need two fleets to do this, because when the first fleet would start to lose its helium you would need to fly it down via remote control and fly up your second fleet. You would do that on a maintenance window and you could connect New York and London via laser technology.

We could do that today – the only thing that is stopping us is the half-billion dollar price tag.”

That scenario is still a little way off in the future, but Anova Technologies has managed to develop, in a joint venture with innovation firm AOptix, a method to use lasers to link both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq data centres in New Jersey.

Persico says: “We formed a joint venture with a company called AOptix. They were working very heavily with the Department of Defence in the US government. They had a laser beam that was mounted underneath military craft which would keep them aligned at distances of up to 200 kilometres at speeds of up to Mach1.

“We have taken the technology out of the Department of Defence and have commercialised it. It is an infrared laser beam, the size of the human hair and is what is in the remote control for your TV. You cannot see it, it is not harmful and it is eye safe.

“We have come up with a way to take this laser the size of a human hair and shoot it 15 kilometres at a time. We then put another set of radios and repeat the signals and

Right: industries that could benefit include finance, MRI scanning and oil drilling; inset: Mike Persico of Anova Technologies

go from point to point in a succession of hops creating a path that is as the crow flies.

“With fibre on the ground you need to avoid Aunt Sarah’s rose garden, a nature reserve… you cannot build in a straight line, there are public rights of way and, by and large, tollways and roads. Those thoroughfares are what you need to abide by, but not so when you go through the air. What we have done is created a path to operate at the speed of light.

“This will never be any faster because the path is straight and the laser runs at the speed of light. This is what we like to call the end game.

People have been trying to build faster networks for a long time, and there will be nothing faster than this.”

The technology has managed to halve the trading time between the two centres in New Jersey. The technology is presently in betatesting and is expected to go live in the second quarter. The results so far from the testing have exceeded expectations.

Persico says: “What it does is it keeps markets efficient – basically, here in the US there are disparate stock exchanges. The stock exchanges list the same products on each exchange and sometimes there exists a pricing inefficiency.

Our network allows those to be corrected at the speed of light. Any user, anywhere across the globe is getting the same price on any exchange.

“We like the market efficiency we are providing and actually because of the capacity we have with this network, we see this maturing, in the nottoo-distant future, to give access to the retail trading public. The retail public can trade at the same speed as the professionals. We really like that. We call that levelling the playing field.”

Anova Technologies plans for the laser technology are much more widespread than just the financial industry. “This has a myriad of applications outside the financial community,” Persico says. “For example, one thing that is still in the low-latency realm is the oil and gas industry. You cannot run fibre out to all of their oil rigs. They need to monitor these from land, they rely on wireless solutions.

“We would mount these from the oil platforms and beam the lasers back to land, so people could monitor critical statistics about the health

of the platform. That is kind of cool, but what I think is even cooler is taking this technology to a Third World country. Not in terms of economics, but in terms of infrastructure. Places like that are very difficult to build fibre-optic cables in.

“We think going to a place like India and mounting these would upgrade an entire country’s backbone communication grid and allow them to completely skip fibre-optics. It is a lot easier to put stuff on the top of the building than in a trench in the ground, and it is a lot cheaper.

“For a fraction of the cost and for a fraction of the time, we could bring these entire countries, entire populations, into a modern-day communication grid that would vastly improve their quality of life.”

Another possible use for the laser technology is in the medical industry in Third World countries.

He says: “Another one we have talked about is what I will call medical campuses. MRIs are very big files, and in underdeveloped nations those files just go from building to building over legacy networks – copper-based networks, not even fibre – and it takes a very long time to transmit.

“We see an opportunity to take a medical campus which has a few buildings and interlink them with this technology to allow for the highspeed transfer of patient data from one speciality building to another, thus improving customer care and information flow within that centre.”

Although blimps are not as yet being flown over the Atlantic to connect communications between New York and London at the speed of light, this new laser technology is already making trading systems faster in the US. In the not-so-distant future, it is likely it will have many other uses as well.

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology April 2014

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How to become a Transformer Optimising your network and application infrastructure is critical INDUSTRY VIEW

T

he speed of change in enterprise technologies over the last five years has been astonishing. Trends such as social, mobility, cloud, and big data have disrupted existing business models.

These new technologies represent a significant opportunity for businesses to innovate, improve efficiency and provide differentiated customer experiences in highly competitive marketplaces. The challenge, however, is to ensure that repeated adoption of the next big thing and next-generation applications delivers maximum benefit and optimal value to the business.

The promise of improved business performance and other such benefits is being undermined by infrastructures unable to support leading-edge technology. As a result, expensive applications that are being deployed across the business are often failing to maximise their potential. When

application performance suffers, so does business performance.

With high expectations surrounding what can be achieved through transformational IT projects, how can CIOs transform their IT infrastructure amid the fast-paced change of the technology landscape?

Infrastructure and optimisation is imperative As more diverse and varied applications are added to the network, IT infrastructures are becoming increasingly convoluted. This churn can cause issues if your infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle leading-edge applications. This disparity becomes even more prevalent outside IT, where business executives are demanding new technologies but aren’t tuned into the underlying infrastructure concerns.

Having the right infrastructure and optimising your network and application infrastructure is critical to improving application performance. Our recent Transformers research found that Transformer organisations – those that drive strong IT/business results – are more likely to have reviewed various aspects of network provisioning in the last 12 months over non-Transformer organisations. Transformers are also more likely to have already completed,

or are currently implementing, a data centre consolidation or optimisation project (77 per cent) compared with non-Transformers (49 per cent).

Don’t “leak” value Our Transformers research also showed that new technology deployments now account for 25 per cent of technology spend. Yet, while the importance of maximising technology spends is evident, in practice new technologies introduced are falling short of their expectations. To address this, learn to calculate the value of

technology including focusing on agility (responsiveness), customer satisfaction, and employee productivity to connect technology to business innovation.

In addition, leverage network and application management tools to ensure efficiency of applications, and to locate problems before end users even notice.

Embrace locationindependent computing Today, applications can be located anywhere – data centres, local offices, the cloud – and employees and customers are located everywhere.

Location-independent computing is the ability to turn distance and location into a competitive advantage by giving IT organisations the flexibility to host applications and data in optimal locations while ensuring flawless application performance and the best user experience. Organisations that embrace location-independent computing are able to better leverage global resources, radically reduce the cost of running their business, and maximise employee productivity.

Willem Hendrickx is senior vice president EMEA at Riverbed Technology +44 (0)1344 401046 www.riverbed.com

Implementing security to protect against advanced cyber threats Q&A with Udi Mokady (below), founder, president & CEO of CyberArk INDUSTRY VIEW What is privileged account security and why is it important?

Privileged accounts act as the keys to the IT kingdom. In the hands of an external attacker or malicious insider, privileged accounts are a means to take control of any part of the IT infrastructure, including industrial control systems, and open a door to steal confidential information and commit financial fraud. Privileged account security solutions proactively secure and manage privileged credentials, monitor privileged account activity, and detect abnormal user behavior. This enables organisations to protect against, detect and respond to in-progress cyber attacks before they strike vital systems and compromise sensitive data.

What technologies are available to help companies identify and stop attacks targeted at privileged credentials after they have breached the perimeter?

Many organisations still rely on traditional enterprise security solutions, such as anti-virus and perimeter-based technologies, to protect their critical data. However, these tools have been proven to be

ineffective against advanced external cyber attackers. With this in mind, organisations should employ a privileged account security solution that provides proactive protection and monitoring of these accounts and credentials. New tools are available that analyse privileged account behaviour in real-time, allowing organisations to identify abnormal privileged access or activity and provide immediately actionable intelligence to IT teams. For instance, if a systems administrator typically accesses the network during the week between 9am-6pm, and their credentials are used in the early hours of the morning, this is a potential attack indicator.

What recommendations do you have for companies beginning to look at protecting privileged accounts?

First, organisations should ensure that they are managing all privileged credentials, whether associated with users, applications or network devices. Discovering, auditing and understanding vulnerabilities in privileged accounts across the network can address challenges associated with security and risk management as well as audit and compliance.

This can be more complicated than it sounds. A CyberArk survey of IT security professionals revealed that more than 86 percent of large enterprises either do not know, or have grossly underestimated, the magnitude of their privileged account security

problem. To address this, CyberArk offers a free tool to help organisations get a complete list of all privileged accounts on the network, as well as a status report on whether the accounts are in compliance with company policy.

What are some privileged account security best practices to maximise protection while minimising burden to the business?

Organisations should be looking for scalable and layered solutions that address several key areas.

First, discovery of all privileged accounts across the organisation is essential. The ability to protect, manage and audit privileged account credentials is also a must. CyberArk also advocates the use of real-time analytics to detect in-progress attacks.

How does CyberArk help organisations protect against advanced threats?

One of the most critical layers of an effective advanced threat protection strategy is the implementation of a privileged account security solution. CyberArk enables our customers to proactively protect against, detect and respond to in-progress cyber attacks before they strike vital systems and compromise sensitive data.

For further information, visit CyberArk at Infosecurity Europe 2014 (April 29 – May 1) at stand E55, or contact Leeanne Baard on +44 (0)20 3728 7040 leeanne.baard@cyberark.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

April 2014

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The inner geek Moz & Bradders

Better productivity for free with BYOD… Bring your own devices to work can give your company a boost. By Joanne Frearson

O

UR WORKING life is being more and more influenced by how we use technology at home. Personal devices that we use in our everyday lives, such as smartphones and tablets, are increasingly being brought in the office to use. The popularity of bringing your own device (BYOD) to work is increasing, and helping companies to improve productivity and cut costs.

Margaret Franco, executive director of Client Solutions at Dell, says: “Business leaders are putting a lot more pressure on IT to quickly adopt technology that delivers benefits to their business users. A business leader is also a consumer at home. They are starting to ask their IT leaders why they shouldn’t be able to deploy these devices in the office.

“IT has always been a support organisation focused on developing simplified standards that reduces cost.

But now IT managers are considering a new value equation, which is, how can I generate return on investment for my business? How can I generate more revenue for the business with the IT infrastructure decisions that I am making?

“IT departments are looking for us to help them innovate, to be able to streamline management tasks in a secure fashion.

One practical example is the deployment of tablets. The vice president of a support organisation is wondering, how do I reduce paperwork? How do I automate my processes? How do I get more customers visited every single day? They are seeing tablet deployment as the fastest way to start increasing the customer experience.”

More and more companies are implementing BYOD. Software firm LANDesk conducted research with 1,000 office workers across the UK, looking at how BYOD is changing the workplace. The survey showed 83 per cent of organisations permitting BYOD – 39 per cent of employees had purchased their own device for work purposes. The research also suggested that a mediumsized organisation of 500 people could be

saving up to £150,000 over five years if they have a BYOD approach.

Nigel Seddon, area director at LANDesk, says: “That is interesting, as it is a huge increase. Two or three years ago organisations were slightly concerned about allowing devices into their networks. They did not have programs in place in order to make sure the devices were secure and there was no leakage of data.”

According to LANDesk, if companies are to benefit from the potential cost savings involved, they must be structured in a way that incorporates security. Seddon says: “You have to be able to protect against data leakage – if a device gets lost, you have to be able to shut that device down; you have to look at password enforcements, remote wiping and data back-up as well. You’ve got to put in place a policy that allows certain access to company data, or if it is personal data, how you keep that on your phone.”

Workers are also likely to have more than one device. “The issue is around controlling these multiple devices,” says Seddon. “The issues are making sure, even though there are BYOD policies, that IT people within organisations know what is coming into their network, and allowing access to parts of the business based on your own device.”

He explains it is important to have a consistent security policy in place for all devices. “If someone left a device on a train, the same could be true for a company device. The policy they’ve got to put in place would be the same as that put in place for a business device. It is no different. If it is a personal device and you bring it to the company, the IT department has got to know about it.

“The IT department should have a policy that if there is anyone new starting and they bring their own device, that the IT department will have information on that device and have access to it. The process of managing devices is exactly the same.” This practice of having a BYOD policy in place should also be extended

to public cloud-based applications such as Dropbox, which allows you to share photos, documents and videos easily, as well as social media such as Twitter.

John Delaney, associate VP of mobility at research firm IDC, says: “The experience in our own lives is also useful in our working lives. Sending something in Dropbox can be more efficient, but it can put corporate content in a public domain.

It is important to control what employee applications are put in Dropbox and use a business-focused account.”

He also warns that social networking accounts such as Twitter carry a “risk of people saying things explicitly”, which could cause potential “brand damage”.

It is important for the IT department to have policies in place for how their employees use social media.

Although there are concerns about BYOD, it is also is a big driver of employee productivity in companies. Franco says: “Research has been conducted that says that just by allowing an employee access to the applications that they need on a personal device or a device they can take from home, can add up to 240 hours of productivity a year. If you think about it that is real business return on investment.”

Business can also sidestep training programmes for new employees through BYOD. “By allowing me to take my device into a new environment, I am up to speed,” Seddon says. “I do not have to worry about the technology in-house.

I can focus on the job at hand. I think that is allowing people to integrate quicker as they move into different working environments.”

By employees using their own devices, companies can cut costs and increase productivity – as long as IT departments are aware of the security concerns.

Business Technology

IT Transformation transformation | 7

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After Gravity led the way at the Oscars, Joanne Frearson reports on how technology is changing the film industry LFONSO Cuarón, director of the Oscar 1-winning film Gravity, was asked by a journalist at a Mexican press conference about what it was like shooting the movie in outer space. He played along with the joke and told the reporter how the team was filming in orbit for three and a half months.

I am at Prime Focus World talking to Matthew Bristowe, senior vice president of production, and Richard Baker, senior stereographer, the pair behind the jaw-dropping 3D imagery in Gravity, which also won the Best 2D to 3D Conversion at the International 3D & Advanced Imaging Society Creative Arts Awards for the movie.

Gravity was not really made in space, but its stunning visual effects and 3D imaging certainly make it look like it could have been possible. The movie, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, won seven Academy awards, including Best Director for Cuarón and Best Visual Effects, the latter won by UK-based post-production house Framestore, which Prime Focus World worked alongside.

Bristowe and Baker were brought into the film by producer Nikki Penny, who they had previously worked with on other movies, to solve some problems they were having with shooting the lengthy capsule scenes in stereo. Bristowe explains that when Gravity started to go into pre-production shooting, they discovered they were not able to achieve the fluid movements they wanted in the tight capsule sets due to the bulky stereo camera rigs. Penny approached them to find a solution.

“They came to us to convert a single eye from the stereo test shoot,” Baker says. “Conversion was still fairly new in the industry, and we had just finished the 3D conversion of The Chronicles Of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.”

After converting the test shots into 3D, the producers liked what they saw and Prime Focus World was brought in to convert all the live action shots in the film. Baker says: “Every shot was well planned. How the shot was going to work. How the visual effects were going to work. I was able to sit down with Tim Webber [visual effects supervisor at Framestore] and Chris Parks [Gravity’s stereo supervisor] to plan how we would approach the movie, and how we would realise Alfonso Cuarón’s vision for the film.

“We worked alongside Framestore’s visual effects pipeline.

As the jaw-dropping visual effects are such a huge part of the film, we gave them stereo cameras that we had created in conversion to ensure that their VFX assets fitted perfectly into our converted scenes.

“I think that on Gravity we were able to take stereo conversion to a level that has not been realised before.”

After they were invited to see an early version of the film, they “came out blown away”, according to Baker. “We knew it was something special.”

Bristowe adds: “It was an early cut with pre-viz CGI, but we already knew it was going to be incredible. Our job then was to communicate that to the whole team, who in turn raised their game considerably as well.

“This is probably the most technically advanced fi lm ever in terms of its execution, visual effects and stereo conversion. You do marvel at the technicalities of it, but I think that quickly falls away and you are pulled into this emotional story.”

According to Baker, emotionally it is a roller-coaster.

“I remember during a couple of parts I was struggling not to shed a tear. Towards the end, when Bullock is battening down the hatches and everything is getting really shaky.

Portrait: Andrew Crowley

That was a super-powerful moment for me. You really feel Clockwise from above: Richard what she is feeling – it is very powerful.”

Baker and Mat-

dials in the background of the capsules, needed to be as perfect and accurate in 3D as Sandra’s face.

“IMAX is very unforgiving if things are wrong, particularly thew Bristowe of Prime Focus; with 3D, as any slight discrepancies between the left eye ne of the big technological challenges in the stereo conversion of the movie was the length of Sandra Bullock and right eye will jump out at you. Add to this the length as astronaut the shots, some of which were more than 10 minutes long. Dr Ryan Stone; of the shots, and the time that the audience had available to look around the scenes, and every detail had to be more Bristowe says: “You have to break these long sequences Clooney and down into multiple shots, and then you have different artists Bullock at the polished than anything done before.” working on different aspects of the same shot – but in the US premiere; The challenges of Gravity have dragged the technology the Framestore used for 3D filmmaking to a new level – and it is constantly end it all needs to be brought together perfectly. team pick up “The joins need to be seamless – even a subliminal jarring the Oscar. Inset: changing and developing as filmmakers try to inject different could potentially take you out of the scene. For example, in director Alfonso moods and atmospheres into their movies. the dream sequence, where Bullock sees Clooney coming Cuarõn Baker says: “We are always pushing boundaries. You back into the capsule, you see the way the camera tracks cannot let yourself believe as a company that you have around her as she experiences the loss of oxygen. worked everything out, or that the techniques you used on It is very emotional. the last show are going to make the next one easier.

“The 3D is played very specifically in that “Every new project you take on should push you to scene, to draw you into the experience. To reinvent how you do things, so that you almost manage the technical challenges and keep feel like you are rebuilding the pipeline every the audience there emotionally is a huge time. We can never stand still.” challenge and takes a lot of time to get right.”

The 3D conversion work that Bristowe and Another barrier the team faced was getting Baker supervised at Prime Focus World for Gravity helped the tiny background details right, which had Cuarón create a fi lm that is as close to fi lming in outer to be digitally re-created in some scenes. space as we can get today, without actually going there.

Bristowe says: “All those tiny little details – not Technological advances are taking the industry to a new just the foreground and characters, but all the knobs and level – who knows where they could be filming next?

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

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“This is probably the most technically advanced film ever in terms of its execution, visual effects and stereo conversion” – Matthew Bristowe

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Adopting unified communications means better business INDUSTRY VIEW

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hese days, having the option of working flexibly is almost taken for granted when taking a new job.

Your average Generation Y employee expects to be able to hammer out emails and tinker with presentations while sipping a coffee at a high street Starbucks.

But it’s not just the twentysomethings who are getting more flexible. Whether it’s working from home, taking conference calls on the move or sharing a document, while you’re eating sushi and your colleague’s in another city eating a sandwich, we all need the tools to do our jobs differently.

So what’s holding CIOs back from investing? The challenge isn’t around understanding the needs and benefits of enabling flexible working, it’s getting the rest of the organisation on board to drive change across the business.

So, for the CIO who is facing an uphill struggle, painting a clear picture of what can be gained from adopting this new approach will help convince the rest of the workforce – from the CFO to the shop floor.

Whether it’s finding the right supplier, meeting the needs of every individual around the boardroom table or driving new ways of working across the business, by focusing on those nuggets of opportunity, what was once a complex problem for the CIO can become a shared vision for the business.

The simple fact is that the technology is already out there, and using it to its full advantage can change the way we live and work for good. Seizing these opportunities will transform your organisation, whether that’s driving greater productivity and a stronger bottom line or creating a more collaborative, positive working environment.

As today’s workforce moves towards a culture

that enables them to fit the working day around their needs, the premium of fast, efficient and flawless communications has never been higher.

Duncan Higgins is marketing director at Virgin Media Business

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology April 2014

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How cloud computing is evolving to help the mid-market Smaller businesses can focus on what they want to do INDUSTRY VIEW

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t Phoenix we are taking a different approach to cloud services. We have many years of experience in delivering services remotely to our customers and have a well-established estate of UK data centres on our own high speed network.

By its very nature, the IT industry is great at confusing the world with new technologies and even more new ways of describing them. The fact is that cloud is a fundamental shift in the way IT is delivered, but the technology behind it is nothing new. Wide-area networks have existed for many years, as have data centres. What really is new is the level of innovation and improvements applied to these technologies that give cloud the potential to change IT service delivery forever.

The advent of cloud-based delivery of IT services, as is often the case in IT, has quickly been adopted in enterprise businesses – businesses that generally have teams of highly skilled IT staff. The demand for these services has driven a global race to provide high availability, low-cost commoditised services which have now become commonplace in large enterprise business.

The challenge for many smaller businesses is that without the necessary skills internally most of these services remain inaccessible. With CloudSure UK, Phoenix has brought enterprise class cloud services to

the mid-market. What makes CloudSure UK different is that you don’t need to be a highly skilled technician in order to access the full range of cloud delivered packages and services. Phoenix has packaged them up into a range of easily understandable, off-the-shelf packages that still give the benefits of low-cost and high availability, but without the need for a degree in computer science!

Small to medium-sized businesses can now fulfil their IT requirements without having any specialist skills in-house, or indeed any complex equipment.

Not only that, companies no longer have to have the vast resources of an enterprise in order to enjoy the reliability of service that large-scale highly resilient data centres provide. CloudSure UK can be delivered with guaranteed service levels and availability levels, giving smaller businesses the peace of mind they need, allowing them to focus on what they want to rather than what they have had to.

As for the costs, CloudSure UK means that companies only pay for what they want and use.

A utility-based pricing model means that our customers can flex up and down naturally as their business does, without the worry of long-term financial commitments.

At Phoenix we want to help businesses be more successful in what they do, using their staff and resources to drive their business forward. IT should be there to help with that, and like any other utility service be there when it’s needed, reliably and efficiently enabling business productivity.

0844 863 3000 www.phoenix.co.uk/cloudsureuk

Data security: the top three questions to ask INDUSTRY VIEW

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he number of first-time users of cloud computing services in the UK has increased by 27 per cent from 2012, according to research from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF). Although companies are migrating onto the cloud, the question still remains: is my data safe?

When looking at cloud security, you want to make sure that your data is protected, and that the risk of data loss is eliminated.

As businesses move more information and data into the cloud, the concern of security is important.

Commensus takes your data protection seriously and it is a priority to ensure that you are fully protected and that you can access your data quickly and safely.

“Over the last year we are seeing more questions being asked about risk of migrating to the cloud, and data protection. Compared to 2012 and last year we are finding that more organisations are moving to the cloud,” says Alex Parker, CIO of Commensus.

Commensus is often asked about platform and cloud services. Here are its answers to the top three questions asked about data security.

How much access can Commensus get to my data?

Getting access to your data and network quickly and securely is important to you and us. Organisations are more cautious about whom they share their data, and it’s important to understand what a third party can see.

By understanding that your data is highly confidential, here at Commensus we give you the ability to lock down your data and chose what we can see and you can control the access rights.

This gives you a full understanding of what others can see, and gives you the control of your data access.

What are the risks involved with my data?

Data loss is a big risk to any organisation, and it’s imperative that you understand the architecture of any vendor.

Commensus has an architecture that minimises risk; we’re more risk averse because we spread our servers across different hosts, therefore if one server goes down another server will instantly pick up your data.

This means that you will experience 100 per cent uptime, and minimal element of risk.

How well is my data protected?

Data protection is at the top of the list of questions when choosing an IT-managed services provider. Commensus has data centres across the world which allows you to access your data quickly and securely, anywhere you want.

We’re compliant with the highest level of data security. Commensus has ISO 27001 and can therefore be formally audited and certified compliant with the standards. The PCI Security Standards Council offers robust and comprehensive standards, with which we are compliant.

We acknowledge all legislations

and compliances within the financial services for your IT requirements, so you can rest assured that the security for your data is fully protected with high industry standard compliances.

Data security is the most important and protected part of our cloud platform architecture. We understand that businesses of all sizes need a high level of security for their data. We will answer all questions you may have on Twitter @WhatistheCloud.

020 8661 4655 ITTransformation@Commensus.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

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Dogberry likes to go on long runs to relax in the countryside, and recently discovered a new technological device called Wello which can help measure vitals while exercising.

Wello fits onto a smartphone and measures key vitals such as blood pressure, electrocardiog-

Dogberry cannot wait to get Sony Computer Entertainment’s new virtual reality system, “Project Morpheus,” which will make players feel as if they are physically inside the virtual world of a game.

The game system will be a visor style headmounted display that will deliver a unique virtual reality experience right before the player’s eyes.

Morpheus adopts 3D audio technology uniquely developed by Sony. In addition to sounds coming from front, behind, left and right, Morpheus re-creates stereoscopic sounds heard from below and above the players, such as footsteps climbing up stairs, or engine noises of helicopters flying overhead.

Sounds that players hear change in real time depending on their head orientation, creating a highly realistic audio environment within an immersive 360-degree virtual world.

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Twitter: @dogberryTweets

ics and design, that we hope will make a big difference in helping the world become a healthier place,” says Hamish Patel, founder and CEO at Azoi.

“All too often, health problems go undetected until they are too late to address. We believe that through improved selfawareness of key vitals, technology could very easily reduce the incidence and impact of a wide range of illnesses and diseases.

Not only could this help ensure healthier, happier lives, but it could also ease the growing burden on healthcare services.”

After snatching first prize on US quiz show Jeopardy, Watson, IBM’s artificial intelligent computer capable of answering questions posed in natural language, has been reinvented to help oncologists deliver a more personalised care to cancer patients.

Clinicians lack the tools and time required to bring DNAbased treatment options to patients, and to do so, they must correlate data from genome sequencing to reams of medical journals.

The New York Genome Center (NYCG) will use Watson to speed up this complex process, identifying patterns in genome sequencing and medical data that will help clinicians bring genomic medicine to their patients.

Motorola has launched a smart watch, the Moto 360, that not only tells you the time, but with just a twist of the wrist enables you to see who’s emailing or calling, what time your next meeting is or a friend’s latest social post.

The smart watch can also respond to your voice. The wearer can ask the Moto 360 questions by saying “OK Google”, on anything from what time a flight leaves to scheduling an appointment, sending a text, setting an alarm or taking a note.

Moto 360 is powered by Android Wear. Android Wear works by showing you information and suggestions you need, right when you need them as well as letting you access and control other devices from your wrist.

By Matt Smith, web editor

u Editor’s pick HP Transforming IT Blog bit.ly/1hrOvYX HP’s IT transformation blog covers the reinvention of business IT systems, including choosing solutions, safeguarding against disaster, and managing supplier relationships. Contributors include experts from all areas of HP’s business. Be sure to read the article on the differences between IT security and data privacy.

Digital Transformation digitalbusinesstransformation. co.uk If you’re seeking a blog focusing specifically on how businesses can use IT to become more efficient and effective, look no further than Digital Transformation. Articles touch upon all areas of business’ digital future and how to ensure yours isn’t left behind. It also has its own paper.li newsletter.

Watch this space

Business Technology

IT Transformation | 11

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Inspector Dogberry raphy (ECG), heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature and lung functions, with a high level of accuracy.

The device empowers people to track key data, improve awareness of their body’s state, and make more informed lifestyle choices. It also connects with other health and fitness devices such as pedometers and sleep trackers to help identify how different behaviours can affect one’s bodily state.

“A not-so-small engineering feat in microelectronics, nanosensors, imaging, data analyt-

April 2014

GOV.UK Digital transformation blog digitaltransformation.blog.gov.uk This blog details steps the government is taking to capitalise on the efficiency of digital systems. It features projects across all departments, from the Home Office to the DVLA. As well as providing examples the blog gives more general times on the management of smooth transformation schemes.

Forrester Blogs BYOD blogs.forrester.com/ category/byod

Divide (FREE – Android)

Cloud (FREE – Android)

Do you use your smartphone as part of a BYOD programme?

Keep your work and personal lives in separate areas of your device with Divide.

An interesting way to transfer apps downloaded from any marketplace. Simply send the app you wish to install to your friends and colleagues via Cloud.

Research firm Forrester has a blog category dedicated to BYOD within business, covering the practicalities, security concerns, and the legal implications of employees using their own smartphones and tablets at the office, as well as taking a look at what the future holds for the trend.

Why it’s time to free the CIO Real value comes from the technological expertise the right partner can offer INDUSTRY VIEW

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IOs are too shackled by firefighting and the fear of downtime to focus on business transformation and strategic growth, according to Steve Clark (right), CEO at Calyx.

Technology sits at the heart of practically every business and is increasingly shaping the way that businesses engage, win and interact with their customers.

So it would be logical to assume that CIOs and IT directors are playing a central role in shaping business strategy.

Not so, according to our recent survey. Despite the majority of respondents sitting on the company

board, just 16 per cent spend their day “driving the development of the business through IT”.

Why? Because the impact of downtime is too damaging to risk. Rather than driving IT, CIOs are spending their time keeping the lights on – indeed,

downtime is so prevalent that nearly 46 per cent of respondents described firefighting as an everyday task.

Of course, even the shortest outage can be financially ruinous, so it isn’t surprising that uptime is a top priority for CIOs. What is surprising is that – with the breadth of skills needed to meet today’s maintenance and support challenges – they are trying to do the job in-house.

At Calyx, we believe outsourcing is the obvious solution – and it offers more than time-saving and SLAs. The real value comes from the depth and breadth of technological expertise that the right partner can offer. By outsourcing, companies gain access to a team of specialists who can bring added value to their business directly through sharing their expertise.

The in-house IT team is then free to refocus its time and talent on more innovative thinking around using technology to mould, transform and drive strategic growth – and gain a tangible competitive advantage.

0844 855 4924 www.calyxms.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology April 2014

12 | IT transformation

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Big ideas for small firms Alex Hudson, CTO of Qinec, on how small companies can punch above their weight with big data

By Joanne Frearson

ExpertInsight

A CHILDHOOD interest in computing led Alex Hudson to want to know how computers worked and how to design operating systems for them.

Hudson now works as CTO at clinical outpatient software company Qinec, overseeing the development of products, from the initial discussion of what the company does internally, to discussions with clients about their needs, the writing of the code, testing and deployment.

He says: “My role is to make the soft ware come together from the point of view of the clients and the expectations they have. We are trying to keep our own internal roadmap pointing in

a direction which is a little bit more innovative than our customers need on a day to day basis.”

Qinec, a start-up company, has undergone a transformation as it has grown. Although only a small firm, its patient base has grown so significantly it is starting to evolve technologically and use big data to analyse all the information on its client base.

Hudson (below) says: “We have got to the point where we have that data where you can start doing interesting analysis of what people are using. There is a lot of analysis and tools from the big data area which people have developed that we are using. Although we are not using it in a traditional big data sense – we do not have these masses of server farms – we are consuming those types of tools and ideas. It has been very useful for us just to be able to reuse the tools, the concepts, the processes that people are using on really big data sets, but use them for much more detailed analysis.

“We are currently undertaking a capacity analysis for one of our biggest clients. We have put in place a mechanism to allow their customers to book with

them online. Instead of having a call centre trying to book them over the phone, they now email a link. When the customer goes into the booking system, we record what they look for and the results they come back for until they get to the point where they do the booking.

“We are now doing analysis on that to try to figure out how long it takes for someone to find a suitable booking – are there any underlying things people are looking for, such as Friday afternoon appointments? We’re in the process of gathering that data set.

“We want to look at demand in different ways. We want to divide it up by where the patient was and where they ended up booking into, and look at it in terms of the types of appointments people are looking for. Do they want a thorough health screen? Are they going to be more specific and demanding in terms of what their availability is?”

Through analysing the data Qinec is able to generate a useful view of what people want in terms of their healthcare service, constantly

BizTech’s

C-Suite spo t

reformatting itself to handle bigger clients. “As we take on larger clients with more sophisticated requirements,” Hudson says, “one of the things we are finding is we have to be a lot more flexible than we were in the past. Each one of our clients has its own security processes and expectations of what you can and can’t do.

“We are in the process of moving ourselves out of the cloud. We use a number of different systems at the moment – for the most part we use cloud-based hosting. We are now going into our own data centre, doing it all on our own hardware.

“The reasons for that are partly because we struggle to get the consistent performance out of these cloud systems. There’s also the demands customers are making in terms of security. The network the NHS runs is like a kind of private internet, and there are very specific requirements about being able to connect into it.

“We are putting together a private infrastructure which will give our customers the ability to access systems like the NHS over the internet. I think our future is going to be a more hybrid approach. The question is about proportion.”

Adopt converged infrastructure for faster transformation INDUSTRY VIEW

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here is immense pressure on enterprise IT to transform, and to provide a platform for business growth and innovation. But with more than 70 per cent of current IT budgets spent on maintaining legacy systems, shifting the focus to meet the demands of the business can seem like an impossible task. As many businesses look to modernise their infrastructure to ease the journey of these transformational projects, converged infrastructure is being identified by many independent experts as an innovative approach which will simplify and speed up the process, while delivering many additional benefits.

Five aspects of convergence There are five aspects of a converged cloud infrastructure to consider: compute, storage, network, virtualisation and applications. Each of these has to work seamlessly together as one system to deliver real savings in time and operating expense.

Converged reduces risks By deploying a converged cloud infrastructure, organisations can significantly reduce their deployment and operational

risks. As they replace legacy infrastructure and migrate applications, converged systems bring significantly higher levels of standardisation in the technology stack along with a greater degree of operational automation. Organisations can move to a next-generation infrastructure at their own pace – convergence is a journey, not a destination. Thus, it is possible to tactically maintain legacy applications and systems to complement the technology stack where this remains a requirement.

Time-to-market reduced These business benefits are backed up by research and analyst firm IDC, which reported in September 2013 that the market-leading converged infrastructure system, Vblock Systems from technology company VCE, can deliver four times faster deployment than traditional IT infrastructure, cutting time to market down from 160 days to just 40 and with 79 per cent less effort being required from staff to get it all operational.

New services can be running within the space of five days when it would usually take 25 days. VCE Vblock Systems also offer a 96 per cent reduction in downtime and a 50 per cent reduction of the annual datacentre costs.

Competitive edge VCE’s platform is built for scale in a virtual compute context, and it can quickly adapt to business demands.

Forward-thinking CIOs should therefore consider the benefits of adopting a converged cloud infrastructure as many companies are already deploying VCE Vblock Systems today. As a result, they are transforming their IT operations

to deliver an agile computing environment that is allowing their businesses to transform and take advantage of new market opportunities more quickly and with less associated risk than ever before.

Nigel Moulton is CTO for EMEA at VCE 020 7330 4300 www.vce.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

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By Keil Hubert

ExpertInsight

THE IT WORLD is shifting around us, much the way the world changed back in the 16th century when empires began to require control of the high seas to protect their economic interests. Go back ten years, and a CIO could reasonably expect to protect a vulnerable tech resource by trudging down to the data centre and unplugging it.

Nowadays, there’s no telling where in the world our critical resources and information might be at any given time. Our operating environment has changed, and so too must our mental model for how we provide support and security to our business.

The old fortress model of IT service delivery worked well for years: our critical components were safely ensconced in a physical data centre that we protected with sentries, locks, and the occasional policy moat. If you brought a Roman legatus forward in time and appointed him CIO, he’d have very little difficulty picking up the core concepts of 2000s-era systems protection.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that model is mostly done for. Today, we shift our servers all around the globe to meet instant demand, usually without ever being quite sure which country they’re operating in at any given moment.

Instead of dumb terminals and dumber apps, we arm our workers with laptops, tablets, smart phones, and (soon) wearable processors that meander anywhere the employee’s whims might take them. We can never be sure at any given time where our critical resources are, other than “somewhere on or reasonably near Earth”. That means we have to change our model of how to

April 2014

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IT Transformation | 13

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Today’s CIOs must prepare their people for life on the high seas

go about protecting our people and our assets.

The fortress model needs to give way for a more nautical one. Back in the Golden Age of Sail, empires had to give great leeway to ship captains to figure out how best to protect their vessels, crews and cargo while operating largely

outside the support of (or interference from!) the Admiralty. That need for independent action and the demand for sound judgment meant that naval officers were expected to be highly trained, well-rounded in all aspects of operating their ships, and eternally conscious of the need to pay attention to everything that happened within their sphere of influence.

We need to apply that same mental model to training and equipping our distributed team members. There’s still a need for a strong CIO, CTO, and CISO in the enterprise, just as the Navy always needed strategic admirals and planners. Our line of battle, however, must operate independently from the CIO. As part of our transformation to a work anywhere/work whenever culture, we need to greatly strengthen cyber-security education for all users, and change our policies to put significantly more legal and operational responsibility directly on each line employee as an independent officer.

It’s not corporate HQ’s responsibility to secure, monitor, defend and troubleshoot IT kit in the wild anymore – it’s the operator’s job, and the operator must understand that they’re individually accountable for their every lapse in professional judgment. We still need to arm our cyber defence teams with all the latest detection kit and countermeasures; that’s not in dispute.

What needs to change is our assumption that

our central security departments are sufficient protection on their own.

We need to think of the central intrusion prevention systems and anti-virus servers as coastal artillery guarding a safe harbour; we can protect our mobile fleet only so long as they’re safely moored within a protected corporate enclave. The moment the user disconnects from the enterprise network, they’re sailing into pirate-infested waters – and every user needs to understand that.

These security operations metaphors aren’t excuses by which to absolve the CIO’s team from blame for a breach; rather, they’re conceptual maps for reimaging the new business world, so as to better define for all involved what we realistically can and cannot do to support our distributed users.

If your CIO runs their operation like it was still 1999 – with draconian access policies, inflexible standards, and an insistence on conventional wired networks – then it may be time to replace your CIO. The BlackBerry and iPhone irrevocably changed our world, and we have to change our support tactics to accommodate how business is now being done. We have to accept and embrace the fact that we’ve lost a great deal of control over our resources. We have to arm up our people to take care of themselves wherever their job happens to take them.

The CIO challenge: building a holistic cloud architecture INDUSTRY VIEW

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IOs don’t have it easy. Traditionally, the CIO was the person responsible for the information technology department and making sure IT supported the enterprise. The IT department was viewed as a cost centre tasked with installing software, deploying new systems, maintaining the on-site servers, hardware, email and telephones, while keeping IT costs under control. No longer is the CIO’s role limited to these responsibilities.

The advent of game-changing technology The IT landscape is changing faster than ever and the impact on CIOs and the IT department are profound. Major game-changers such as the explosive growth of big data, mobility, cloud computing, collaboration and virtualisation are redefining the roles and responsibilities of the CIO. The skills required for today’s CIO needs to be far greater than just having technical skills and knowing how to manage and maintain systems. CIOs need to create business value by being a strategic visionary who helps the enterprise reach its revenue goals, and attract and retain customers. According to a Gartner survey of CIOs, “More CIOs find themselves leading in areas outside of traditional IT. They are starting to assume responsibility for hunting digital opportunities and harvesting value.”

A visionary chief integration officer By integrating cloud networking and cloud services, the CIO can lead the way in finding new technologies that result in a leaner, more agile and cost-effective approach to driving business results. To achieve that goal, CIOs need to be the architects behind networking and service decisions and drive end-to-end integration throughout the organisation. Building holistic cloud architecture that combines network and IT infrastructure is the only way to deliver an integrated, secure, reliable and performance-guarantee service.

The network plays a big role Often, CIOs are challenged with finding the right mix of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions and selecting the best cloud applications for the enterprise. Although these are critically important, a CIO cannot overlook the importance of the network. Without a fast, reliable and secure network the performance of cloud-based solutions and applications are diminished directly impacting the company’s ability to achieve its business goals.

As an example, a leading interactive gaming company found its development cycle hampered by the time it took to upload and transfer files to other development servers using the public internet. By switching to a private, secure ethernet network, the transfer time changed from eight hours to a mere 40 minutes, improving the productivity and efficiency of delivering games to the marketplace.

Selecting the right network partner is key GTT can provide enterprises with a complete cloud architecture solution built on its ubiquitous global network infrastructure. GTT operates over 200 PoPs in 54 of the world’s major metropolitan centres, providing direct connectivity to leading cloud applications over a private, secure ethernet network. GTT delivers end-to-end ethernet services anywhere in the world, providing enterprises with a fully integrated cloud solution for computing and communicating, enabling them to reach their full potential. +44 (0)20 7489 7200 www.gtt.net

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

Business Technology April 2014

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Providing a clearer vision for all Client-driven innovation is at the heart of everything INDUSTRY VIEW

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anagers of risk in all walks of life endeavour to interpret previous behaviour and use it to try and help see into the future. With the benefit of hindsight many of us would happily assert that we could have seen the global economic crisis coming.

Much of our business is built on helping credit risk managers in the consumer lending sector.

Traditionally credit data has been compiled by the credit reference industry on a monthly basis and provided to lenders to help make lending decisions. However, the world is changing.

New alternative lenders, with agile minds and minus the shackles of legacy technology, have created a new landscape; on-line, built on speed and convenience, with the added complexity of consumers borrowing while on their mobile phone or tablet. The established

routines of only updating credit reference data on a monthly basis need to be expanded and adapted to meet the needs of the sector.

Real-time is not only a business imperative, it is also mandated by regulators keen to ensure that responsible lending principles are not compromised in the areas of assessing a consumer’s affordability, their ability to pay and their vulnerability to fraud.

Our focus is to help our clients crystallise the vision, and delivering a solution is increasingly an iterative process of listening, analysis, creativity and sweat. Client-driven innovation is at the heart of everything we have achieved over the last dozen years. Thankfully, this is our clients’ view of us rather than an aspiration on our part.

Big data technologies have an increasing part to play in that delivery, not least because the data pool that risk managers could use to help them make the smarter decisions is expanding so rapidly. Collectively our industry is adapting to the impact digital devices are having on consumer lifestyles.

Our job is to simplify and rationalise, giving our clients the insight they want while making it easy to deploy from a technology perspective.

As ever there is a balance between risk and reward, but increasingly the acid test is: does the consumer accessing our client services enjoy a smooth and secure user experience?

The perspective that does come from the last few years is that everything does change and the cycle of innovation is getting shorter. This is particularly the case in the areas of fraud detection, where the agility of the fraudster needs to be met by equally agile counter-measures.

Maintaining our record of growth has a direct link to our ability to deliver a value-added solution to our clients. Increasingly, success is a function of ensuring that we can deliver operationally.

However, a head of risk may have a different view of what success looks like compared, let’s say, with their commercial director or the IT team building a mobile app. Understanding those differences is fundamental to that success, ours and our clients.

We’re not claiming 20/20 vision into the future, but definitely a clearer view for all.

Peter Mansfield (right) is MD, credit solutions, Callcredit Information Group 0113 388 4300 peter.mansfield @callcreditgroup.com

Turning the corporate network inside out Business in today’s internet-enabled economy needs frictionless connection INDUSTRY VIEW

I

n the battle to protect corporate networks from internet threats, it’s time for a change of tactics.

Traditional weapons that CIOs used to secure their network are powerful and mature, but today they are in the wrong place to provide security for the mobile workforce.

Enterprises rely on arrays of firewalls and secure gateways to protect their intellectual property within the network.

For this line of defence to work, every user must access the internet through a protected, centralised pathway.

This made sense a decade ago, when business use of the web was in its infancy and most applications ran in the corporate data centre. However, today‘s vulnerability is not an attack on the data centre, it is infected mobile devices that infiltrate malware into the network.

Professionals routinely access the internet to look up business resources or use social media as part of their work. Many enterprises have adopted cloud applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, Box and Amazon Web Services. A new generation of tablets

and smartphones, together with the prevalence of Wi-Fi and 3G networks, have made mobile working commonplace.

Security tactics need to change to meet the requirements of the new working patterns. The level of traffic connecting to the internet from a typical enterprise has gradually crept up from less than 10 per cent in the early days to 50 per cent or more. Huge bottlenecks build up as the traffic converges on the narrow pathway that leads to the protected data centre. This constricting hub-and-spoke model has a devastating impact on bandwidth costs and user productivity.

Bandwidth costs are inflated as internet-bound traffic surges over MPLS lines from branch offices and VPN connections from mobile users, only to wash back again with the requested content. This backhauling was never envisaged in the original architectures, which would solve it only by installing batteries of expensive, fixed defences at every location.

Users accessing cloud applications on the road find response times slow to a crawl. As a consequence they are bypassing the official pathways accessing the internet unprotected on their smartphones and laptops. The very infrastructure that’s designed to protect employees is delivering such poor performance that they are evading it.

Business in today’s internet-enabled economy requires frictionless connection as employees interact from wherever they are with customers. Online resources and applications are part of their working routine. Users have to be able to connect directly to those resources. The Direct-to-Cloud Network form Zscaler was invented to enable

enterprises to safely conduct business beyond the corporate network.

The foundation is a globally-distributed secure cloud network with more than 100 data centres. All internet-bound traffic goes through it, enabling businesses to enforce business policies, regardless of the device or location. As employees travel, their policies move with them, making re-routing of traffic obsolete.

Check the health of your network with the Zscaler Web Security Evaluation tool to see how effective your current security infrastructure is: http://www.zscaler.com/ evaluate-web-security.php?src=telegraph. +44 (0)20 7849 3105 www.zscaler.com

an independent report from lyonsdown, distributed with the sunday telegraph

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April 2014

Business Technology

IT transformation – Industry view | 15

Find us online: business-technology.co.uk

The debate

What is the future of the CIO? Stuart Edwards Head of IT transformation Company85

Tim Bodill Director Phoenix

Willem Hendrickx Senior vice president EMEA Riverbed Technology

Peter Kelly Managing director Virgin Media Business

Andy Johnson Managing Director EMEA/APAC GTT

In my 15 years assisting FTSE and public sector CIOs with IT transformation programmes, their role has shifted from technology visionary – now the preserve of CTOs and chief architects – to leading business-aligned change.

As organisations harvest more insight from customers, some wonder if they need a separate CDO. But we think CIOs are best-placed to bring disparate functions together. A good CIO is already a CDO, transforming the enterprise by turning raw data into actionable information, guiding outcomes and preventing unwanted consequences. How does an organisation’s CMO know how and where to direct investment, and for what outcome and what risk? Ask the CIO. Our view is reflected by influential clients like Ian Cohen, CIO of JLT: “The best CIOs are painters and storytellers that help an organisation understand where and what it actually is, define a vision of a new future, and build the capabilities to get them there. There’s never been a better time to be a CIO.”

I believe that the role of the CIO has had to evolve at a much faster rate than that of many of its peers.

If anything, the CIO has become more important to businesses by helping them adapt and keep pace with the technological developments and satisfy an ever-demanding tech-savvy customer.

The CIO is not just about keeping the lights on anymore, it’s more about keeping the business moving forwards using the technologies required to meet customers’ expectations in this digital age.

I also believe that cloud computing and its evolution is helping CIOs deliver a more responsive business-led infrastructure. The flexibility inherent in cloud means that it’s more cost effective, allowing businesses to control IT demand.

With CloudSure UK, Phoenix has helped organisations move from a traditional IT environment to the cloud. This cloud computing solution is now delivering new possibilities for our customers and is helping the CIO use IT as an enabler and a catalyst for progress.

The speed of change in the technologies available to organisations over the last five years has been astonishing. Today, there is widespread recognition that IT has become an enabler of business and a key force driving innovation and new ways of working. As a result, the role of the CIO has fundamentally shifted; IT now has a seat at the executive table, advising on strategic business investments.

However, while the CIO should, in theory, rejoice at the CEO’s new-found interest in cloud, or the CFO’s desire to know how exploiting big data and analytics will drive process improvement, the expectations surrounding what can be achieved through transformational IT projects are high. Consequently, CIOs are under pressure to repeatedly deploy the next big thing while delivering maximum benefit and optimal value to the business. And, with the expectation that applications perform as expected, wherever they reside, CIOs must now pay close attention to their application performance infrastructure.

Generation Y is influencing how the technology we use every day makes its way into our working lives and, with enough mobile devices for every human being on the planet, IT is becoming ever more mobilised. New ways of working are having a fundamental impact on the way businesses operate and the role of the CIO. The CIO’s role is no longer one of simply keeping the lights on – if it were, then technology would never truly reach its full potential and neither would the organisation it supports. And the CIO may well find board-level colleagues taking technology investment initiatives into their own hands.

Instead, today’s CIO is rapidly becoming the chief change officer for their organisation, with the licence to drive transformational programmes across their business.

Programmes that bring people, process and property together, while driving value into all areas of an organisation, have to be the CIO’s number one focus.

The role of the CIO is evolving quickly and dramatically, elevating them to the forefront of strategic business decision making. The advent of transformational and innovative technologies such as big data, mobility, cloud computing, collaboration and virtualisation are forcing IT organisations to be more involved in defining future business plans.

Technological shifts are providing business with opportunities that can fundamentally change cost models, enhance capabilities and speed workflows. This means that the role of the CIO must morph from supportive services to technological thought leadership, allowing business to embrace the benefits of these new paradigms. For example, enabling global workforce collaboration or enhancing the use and sharing of data and analytics bring enormous strategic benefit.

GTT partners with enterprises in deploying and managing cloud networking solutions that provides them with agile and flexible network infrastructures to reach their full potential and better compete in today’s world.

0844 863 3000 www.phoenix.co.uk/ cloudsureuk

+44 (0)1344 401 046 www.riverbed.com

ExpertInsight

0845 468 0085 www.company85.com

0800 953 0180 www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk

+44 (0)20 7489 7200 www.gtt.net

Keeping on top of things so you don’t have to A s a Managed Service Provider (MSP) Wirebird stays ahead of the curve, keeping on top of the next big thing and being proactive rather than reactive when it comes to delivering services.

There are countless benefits of managed services – however, the following are key, reflecting the goals of the majority of organisations: efficiency and profitability.

Infrastructure+ from Wirebird is a managed service cloud offering which can be deployed on an infrastructure-asa-service and software-as-a-service basis.

With Infrastructure+ Wirebird is able to provide an always-on service with full

resilience. The solution is tailored completely to clients’ needs and can be offered as a public, private or hybrid cloud service, offering flexibility, agility and choice.

There is no need to worry about upfront capital expenditure. A fully flexible and scalable managed service, Infrastructure+ runs on an operational expenditure model – think pay-as-you-grow. Whether your business is always-on or has peaks and troughs depending on the time of year, a managed service platform could be crucial to maintaining performance.

Infrastructure+ is built on a highly resilient and secure infrastructure.

Companies want peace of mind that their data is safe and secure. All data is held

in GS2, a hosted environment certified as secure by government.

The MSP adopts the risk of performance and efficiency, constantly gaining new certifications and technical knowledge with support of key vendors such as NetApp and Cisco. Wirebird keeps on top of things so you don’t have to, alleviating risks of technology going wrong or becoming obsolete.

Managed services have always been crucial to business, but in a world of rapid technological advances and growing lists of compliance requirements, it is apt to consider an MSP not as extra cost but to

consider how it can make your organisation better, more productive and, above all else, more competitive in your market.

Terry Storrar is MD of Wirebird.

Wirebird has been a Managed Service Provider since 1998, holding key industry accreditations with several key vendors including NetApp Gold Partner status, FlexPod Premium NetApp and Cisco status.

020 7650 6400 www.wirebird.co.uk