TED SHELTON
The digital transformation p.22
KEVIN COCHRANE
The changing CMO-CIO relationship p.15
February/ March 2014 VOLUME 5 NUMBER 1
INSIGHTS FOR TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS
CIOs CIO s TRANSFORMATION AND THE
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Contents
22
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Vol 5 No 1 February/March 2014
Technospective on social media
Features 4 Editorial 8 Case Study: Microsoft and AtmanCo A Montreal company leverages Windows Azure for cost savings and success 10 Case Study: Telus and Arrow Transportation Systems Telus offered an affordable mobility solution to a B.C.-based logistics firm 11 Case Study: IBM and the Toronto Waterfront Ontario’s capital is about to become a Smarter City, thanks to IBM 15 We’re on the same team: the CIO-CMO relationship OpenText’s Kevin Cochrane counsels CIOs and CMOs to work together 18 VMware: defining the next decade of IT The virtualization giant offered its vision at its recent partner conference 20 Of Facebook, Google and the Grateful Dead 28 Northern Perspectives You can go home again after all
15 Cover Story : CIOs and the Transformation of Technology Departments 6 News Our roundup of news stories 12 Technospective: Security Are companies and consumers safe after the recent Target breach? 22 Technospective: Social Media Ted Shelton urges the enterprise to embrace the digital transformation
26 Technospective: Mobility HP releases new products to make businesses more mobile 29 Product review IT in Canada reviews the Surface 2
Online Extras: www.itincanadaonline.ca Missed an issue? Misplaced an article? Visit www.itincanadaonline.ca for a full archive of past IT in Canada Online issues, as well as online extras from our many contributors. February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 3
EDITORIAL INSIGHTS FOR TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS
Rachel Levy Sarfin
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CIOs and the Transformation of Technology
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inston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” CIOs understand change better than anyone. Their role has been drastically transformed in the past decade. And given the rapid pace at which technology is developing, the job will continue to change. This month’s issue of IT in Canada is devoted to CIOs. How has their role changed? How will their duties continue to evolve as time goes on? We attempted to answer those questions by turning to thought leaders. Ted Shelton, VP, customer services, Cognizant, discusses the technological transformation businesses must undergo in order to not only survive but succeed. That shift will be one for which the CIO is responsible. Kevin Cochrane, CMO, OpenText, offers his take on the CMO and CIO relationship. He urges CMOs and CIOs to work together in order to drive the company’s success. His advice will help mend the rift between these two C-suite members. In addition, this issue includes case studies about real-life deployments. Read about how Canadian companies implemented mobility, cloud and social business solutions. These technologies meet the needs of businesses of every size, and provide valuable lessons and best practices for those considering deploying such solutions. This issue also contains articles about up and coming technologies. HP has released several solutions for the mobile workforce, including a wireless printing solution and updated tablets. VMware’s recent partner conference offered some food for thought for CIOs. We’ve also rounded up the latest news items, which we believe will impact the Canadian CIO community. Canadian IT writers Robert Parkins and Vic Pakalnis contributed to this issue as well. They share their unique viewpoints about technology and how it affects Canada. No one will ever achieve perfection. We’re human - it’s just not possible. However, as CIOs, you can come very close, as you and the field of IT change often. Rachel Levy Sarfin Managing editor
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product news
Cisco predicts leap in mobile data traffic by 2018 Cisco’s Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2013-18 has predicted an 11-fold surge of growth in global mobile data traffic over the next four years. The company expects that by 2018, it will reach an annual run rate of 190 exabytes. Projected growth will be fueled by continuing sales in the mobile market, resulting in a greater number of mobile Internet connections. VNI foresees that by 2018, the number of mobile Internet connections will be greater in number than the global population. The increase in mobile growth can be attributed to a number of trends, including the increasing number of users turning to mobile connections over traditional desktop PCs. More than ever, people are using devices that support 3G connections, and 4G is becoming ever more widespread. The growing prevalence of M2M connections, such as GPS, will also help spur the growth, as will new technologies such as wearables. Indeed, Cisco predicts that by 2018, almost 20 per cent of mobile-connected devices will be M2M. Video is a significant contributor to mobile traffic as well. Cisco believes that by 2018, 69 per cent of global mobile traffic will be video-related, as compared to 53 per cent in 2013. Meanwhile, access to other types of media, such as file sharing, streaming audio, and web applications, will decrease between 2013 and 2018. “Global mobile data traffic will continue its truly remarkable growth, to reach an amount in 2018 that is more than 57 times the total amount of mobile data traffic just a few years ago in 2010,” said Doug Webster, VP, Products and Solutions Marketing, Cisco. “Such growth is not only indicative of mobility becoming a critical characteristic of almost every network experience and the value consumers and businesses alike place on it, but it also represents the immense opportunities ahead for service providers who sit at the center of the Internet of Everything.” In terms of regional growth, the Middle East and Africa are expected to see the greatest leap in mobile connectivity by a multiple of 14. North America, meanwhile, will experience growth by a multiple of eight.
Kaspersky lifts the curtain on threat actor called “The Mask” A research team at Kaspersky Lab announced this week that it has uncovered a new threat actor called Careto, or “The Mask.” The Spanish-language group has allegedly been involved in a number of cyber-espionage campaigns since 2007, and was first discovered in 2013 when it tried to exploit a vulnerability in Kaspersky’s own products. 6 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
According to Kaspersky, The Mask is especially dangerous because of the toolkit it uses in its operations. It has access to sophisticated malware, a rootkit, a bootkit, and versions for Mac OS X and Linux. Kaspersky says it may also have versions for Android and iOS. The Mask has primarily targeted public sector organizations, such as government institutions, diplomatic offices, and embassies; energy, oil, and gas companies; and research groups and activists. So far, Kaspersky has identified 380 victims of The Mask in 31 countries around the world. The attackers have primarily taken office documents, encryption keys, VPN configurations, SSH keys, and RDP files. The Mask uses spear-phishing to direct victims via email – using lures such as YouTube or a news site – to a malicious page that contains a number of exploits. After successful infection, the user is then re-directed to the benign website named in the email. “Several reasons make us believe this could be a nation-state sponsored campaign,” said Costin Raiu, director, Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), Kaspersky Lab, in a release. “First of all, we observed a very high degree of professionalism in the operational procedures of the group behind this attack. From infrastructure management, shutdown of the operation, avoiding curious eyes through access rules and using wiping instead of deletion of log files. This level of operational security is not normal for cyber-criminal groups.”
product news From SkyDrive to OneDrive: Microsoft revamps cloud storage Microsoft has taken its next step in the world of cloud-based file-sharing. The company today launched OneDrive, formerly known as SkyDrive, and announced that the first 100,000 people to sign into their accounts will get an extra 100 GB of free storage. Though subscribers already get 7 GB of storage for free when they sign up for an account, Microsoft said users who refer their friends to the service will “receive up to 5 GB (in 500 MB increments)” of free storage for each one that signs up. It is also offering an additional 3 GB for those who use OneDrive’s camera backup feature. OneDrive is available, naturally, on all of Microsoft’s devices – Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox – but it is also compatible with iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and Macs. “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to get all of your favorite stuff in one place—one place that is accessible via all of the devices you use every day, at home and
at work,” wrote Chris Jones, corporate VP, Windows Services, on the OneDrive blog. “Because let’s face it, until now, cloud storage services have been pretty hard to use, and the vast majority of us still have our stuff spread out everywhere.” OneDrive facilitates the sharing of media across different platforms. For example, users can record and share their gameplay on their Xbox Ones, or share photos on Facebook or via email with a single click. And since documents are automatically saved on OneDrive, work can be halted on one device and resumed on another. This capability also enables better collaboration in the workplace, since people can see what their colleagues are doing with a document in real-time.
Royal Canadian Mint and SecureKey team up for secure mobile transactions When it comes to quick, secure payment methods, the Royal Canadian Mint has been busy innovating. In January, it demoed the first proof-of-concept for MintChip, a product it has been developing to enable tap-and-go mobile transactions. Recently, it announced that it is moving forward with this innovation by selecting SecureKey, a provider of trusted identity networks, to support MintChip with its briidge.net Connect Platform. “SecureKey offered us a robust multi-platform solution that delivers a very high level of device security while providing MintChip consumers with a convenient, familiar payment
experience,” said Marc Brule, chief emerging payments officer, Royal Canadian Mint, in a release. The briidge.net Connect Platform will provide “device-based multi-factor user authentication” for MintChip. By building briidge.net Connect Mobile SDK into the MintChip mobile app, SecureKey will enable users to make secure transactions using their smartphones and tablets. To complete a transaction with MintChip, the user will need only a four-digit QuickCode PIN, which is used for authentication purposes and can be extended across all of the user’s preferred devices. The briidge.net Connect service is flexible, and can be adapted to a number of devices, including laptops, desktop PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and even wearables. This means users will have a greater range of choice when they pay for their purchases, whether in-store or online. “We are excited to be supporting the Royal Canadian Mint on this innovative digital currency initiative. It offers an excellent example of how our briidge.net Connect service can make the benefits of strong multi-factor authentication available in an extremely friendly way for consumer-facing mobile apps,” said Walton. February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 7
cAse study
By rachel Levy sarfin
case study: Atmanco About the company
website. Poirier credits Microsoft’s technical support team for helping the company deploy Azure. “We have been assisted with a Windows Azure architect that guided us in our early steps,” he said.
AtmanCo is a Montreal-based company specializing in personality tests to help businesses select qualified personnel who will fit in with the firm’s culture. It was founded in 2003 and employs 15 people.
Lessons Learned and Best practices
the Business problem Recently, AtmanCo began entering markets outside of Canada. Stephane Poirier, VP, business development and technology, AtmanCo, explained that the increase in the number of markets meant the amount of downtime the company could afford was drastically reduced. “We had to find a way for our website to remain available at all hours and seamlessly transit into a new version,” he said. In addition, legal requirements of these new markets forced the company to host its data in more than one location. Poirier and his colleagues realized that the single .NET version 2.0 IIS7 2008 SQL server would no longer be adequate for the company’s needs. The single server and the lack of data replication led to shortages and hardware failures. However, the cost of implementing a multi-server architecture was much higher than the budget for porting data. “With a quickly increasing demand, we needed to find a platform that could easily scale our website on demand,” Poirier commented.
the solution Poirier chose to implement Windows Azure. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform that allows users to build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres. AtmanCo’s executive noted that Azure offered an affordable solution to solve the company’s business problem. Poirier added that it was 8 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
stephane poirier, VP, business development, AtmanCo
a standalone solution, and not deployed in concert with another technology.
implementation AtmanCo implemented Windows Azure in stages. The total implementation process lasted approximately three months. Poirier described the first phase as “playing around with Azure” in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the product would fit AtmanCo’s needs. The second stage was converting AtmanCo’s database to an Azure SQL database. “Our team was impressed with the ease we had porting our data,” Poirier noted. The third stage was converting the website to a cloud service. Next, AtmanCo converted its shelves application to cloud services. After the fourth phase, the team responsible for deploying Azure realized there were problems with the old cache implementation. “We started converting our caching and storage tools to use Azure cache and blob storage,” Poirier remarked. Then, AtmanCo split its deployment into multiple environments. Afterwards, it seamlessly integrated the upgraded version of its
Poirier admitted that the implementation of Windows Azure was a learning experience. “Our website was not planned with replication of servers. We had to change our cache management and some systems to accommodate Windows Azure,” he commented. AtmanCo’s IT department also realized that implementing Azure means keeping up to date with technology. “We should have kept our servers up-to-date with the latest .NET framework versions; the latest changes really accelerate development,” Poirier remarked. He advised other companies planning to implement Azure to take advantage of all of its features. “Windows Azure offers many integrated tools,” Poirier noted. “I would advise others to try them and use them; they will save you a few headaches.” Windows Azure offers a number of features that keep sites up and running. “With on-the-fly modifications, there is no reason for your website to ever go down for maintenance or suffer during heavy traffic periods,” Poirier added.
Benefits AtmanCo has benefited greatly from deploying Azure. The company has reduced IT costs by approximately $60,000 per year. Furthermore, deploying Azure has given the firm a new sense of confidence. “No market is out of reach, as we are well equipped to compete against the biggest companies out there,” Poirier remarked. “Because of Azure, we are now capable of ensuring the scalability and performance of our platform.”
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cAse study
By Amy Allen
case study:
Arrow Transportation Systems
About the company Arrow Transportation Systems is a familyowned trucking, distribution, and materials handling company that was founded in 1919. The corporate head office is in Vancouver, B.C. and the operations head office is located in Kamloops, B.C. The company operates a fleet of over 350 tractors and 600 trailers and has operations in more than 30 locations across Canada and the United States.
the Business problem At the time Arrow was looking to implement Telus technologies, the company was seeking to upgrade its communication platform that supported its on-board truck computer and back office systems. The company needed a cellular system that was cost-effective and could be used in more of its locations. “Transportation is a business with high variable costs, well in excess of 70 per cent in most cases,” said Mitchell Zulinick, COO, Arrow Transportation. “The only way to minimize variable cost is through direct and detailed measurements that give you specific, correct information on a consistent basis and allows you to put downward pressure on your long-term total cost curve.” Though Arrow was able to collect data from its trucks and drivers, the method it used was time-consuming and inefficient. Using a system of PCMCIA cards and nonlive satellites, they could only retrieve the data once their drivers had arrived back at the office. The company knew it had to 10 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
invest in on-board technology, and, with this in mind, started to look at cellular packet data solutions.
the solution Arrow chose Telus to provide the mobile data connectivity it needed to upgrade its fleet. “We’ve implemented a solution where each of the tractors has a mobile SIM card, enabled with mobile data tracking, which allows them to transfer all sorts of critical data with respect to mechanical and driver safety,” said Michael McCarthy, VP, Business Solutions, Telus. Telus’s solution helped Arrow reduce its costs while increasing its scope and providing it access to its trucks on a more consistent basis.
implementation The implementation process was no small task. Over 300 trucks had to be moved to a synchronous system, and all of the company’s computers had to be changed to accommodate the new technology. Telus helped Arrow get all of their vehicles onto the new network within a year’s time. The process itself was relatively straightforward. SIM technology is well-understood, said McCarthy, but the challenge for Arrow lay in putting the technologies together in a way that works.
Lessons Learned and Best practices The key to success, said Andre Larouche, CIO, Arrow Transportation, is a strong re-
lationship with one’s technology partners. “You need to be with partners who have a similar mindset that you do,” he said. “And it’s important to involve them early in the process.” “Pre-planning is very important to successful implementations,” added Zulinick. “You need to figure out your implementation time beforehand, and then you need very strong support once it hits the ground.” Larouche and Zulinick also noted that having the right support tools and training regimens in place is crucial to the success of any project. This ensures that hardware provisioning, installation time, and connectivity can all be synchronized with as few hitches as possible.
Benefits With the implementation of Telus’s wireless technology, Arrow realized a number of benefits, particularly in its ability to compete in new markets. “We can now depend on technology to find our way in this world,” said Zulinick. With its newfound ability to collect data more efficiently, Arrow has more control of safety within its operations; by taking stock of its fleet performance and optimizing staff resources, Arrow is able to provide better service to its customers. The system also has enough direct benefits to completely pay for itself, added Zulinick. “When we originally installed on-board technology, we saved on average eight per cent on fuel costs alone,” he said. “Better speed control and tractor optimization led to these savings. Also, in lease operator fleets we virtually eliminated spike brake applications, reducing brake costs substantially. The electronic log book function eliminates the needs for paper log books, which can easily cost $20 per month per tractor, and the benefit of direct two-way communication using the Telus cards has had a significant impact on the cost of cellular communication. These are just a few of the most obvious savings.”
By daniela Fisher
cAse study
case study:
Developing a Smarter City on the water’s edge Background Waterfront Toronto is leading one of the largest urban building projects in the world. It is creating a Smarter City on the waterfront, with the aim of putting Toronto on the map as one of the leading global cities of the 21st century. The corporation was brought into being in 2001, by the governments of Canada and Ontario, as well as the City of Toronto. Its mandate is to oversee and lead the renewal of Toronto’s waterfront. This means transforming 800 hectares of largely commercial or industrial land into sustainable, dynamic mixed-use communities and public spaces. It also means creating a technology infrastructure that can accommodate all the residents and businesses set to move into this community. Tasked with creating this infrastructure with a limited IT budget and no in-house IT department, the corporation turned to IBM and IBM’s business partner Element Blue. Through these companies, Waterfront Toronto developed a foundational platform which can be scaled out and used by other businesses. As the director of Intelligent Communities at Waterfront Toronto, Kristina Verner is helping to create a Smarter City on the water’s edge. It’s a task that’s not for the faint of heart: the initiative is one of the largest waterfront revitalization projects ever to be undertaken.
“It really is one of those once in a generation opportunities, to build a new waterfront for the city of Toronto that will have long-lasting impact both in terms of a social impact and an economic impact,” said Verner. The Waterfront project is also earning Toronto many accolades. The initiative was instrumental in Toronto’s selection to the Top 7 most intelligent communities of 2013 and 2014, by New York-based think tank, Intelligent Community Forum.
scaling out a secure, connected platform The approach that Waterfront Toronto is taking for this project is different: it’s looking at it from a revitalization standpoint, instead of a simple development initiative. The corporation has gathered some of the world’s best design minds to create memorable places on the water’s edge. Another important pillar of the project is creating an Intelligent Community or a Smarter City. To do this, it used a combination of IBM’s cloud-based technology and social business software. “Working strategically with IBM to create this intelligent platform was really key. It’s the next layer up in our intelligent community infrastructure,” said Verner. “It’s a combination of the Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), a robust analytics package,
also the social collaboration and social business tools [we’re using] to bring the neighbourhood to life.” The flexibility these solutions afforded was crucial. Waterfront Toronto was able to deploy its platform at low cost, and is now well-positioned to scale out its platform for other businesses. “So as young entrepreneurial companies want to come forward and try things in this sandbox we have, we have a platform that can accept those in a very secure and very scalable manner,” said Verner.
Advantages of the cloud and analytics For cities or companies with limited budgets and IT resources, using a cloud platform can help address these business challenges. Waterfront Toronto’s example can serve as a model for other communities and companies that don’t have the resources or skillsets needed to build a technology platform in-house. In Waterfront Toronto’s case, using IBM’s Smart Cloud platform and its IOC cloud and social business software is helping the organization roll out its community portal and platform, the newblueedge.ca. Through the Intelligent Operations Centre in particular, Waterfront Toronto is able to integrate multiple data sources and create real time visualizations, for operational insight. In the future, big data capabilities in the platform are expected to help generate insight for some of the corporation’s key issues. “We see this as a very effective and engaging tool to make people aware of the waterfront and what’s happening,” said Verner. “Things like public safety and security, transportation monitoring, events and activities, bringing the neighborhood to life, and using collaboration tools for project planning, within our corporation and beyond.” To see a video recording of this case study, visit the IT in Canada Online Library, or go to: http:// itincanadaonline.hs-sites.com/waterfronttoronto-ibm-webinar. February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 11
Technospective on Security
By Amy Allen
Lessons learned: Why retail security is more important than ever
The beginning of 2014 has been rough for enterprise security. The public is on high alert after data for up to 110 million customers was stolen from Target, and millions more from Neiman Marcus. Customers are upset, wondering why Target’s security wasn’t enough to block the attack, but this type of situation is one that businesses, too, dread. Security experts have come forward to ask: How secure is your data? And, perhaps more to the point: Are you devoting enough attention to the security in your enterprise? These are not easy questions to answer. Several security research organizations, such as Websense, have pointed out that most anti-virus and anti-malware programs can only catch exploits that are already known, and that, in the case of Target, the software did not recognize the malware used by the attackers.
12 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
The Target breach Often, the methods attackers use to get into a system are above and beyond what any security software could hope to catch. Jeff Debrosse, director at Websense Security Labs, speculated that the attack was enabled by RAM-scraping malware, which skimmed Target’s point-of-sale (POS) terminals during a momentary decryption of data as it traveled between two systems. “In a nutshell, it’s a specific family of malware that looks for processes and reads the clear text data that the process has decrypted for a very short period of time,” said Debrosse. But details later emerged suggesting that those responsible for the attack had an even easier time of it than that. The news, first reported by security blogger Brian Krebs in early February, came just days after a Target spokesperson confirmed – without naming names – that credentials
had been stolen from one of their third-party vendors. But as Krebs revealed, the vendor in question, Pennsylvania-based Fazio Mechanical Services, had been contracted in the past by Target to deliver heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) services at a number of its locations. The hackers used the credentials they stole to break into Target’s network. As Krebs pointed out, it is “not immediately clear why Target would have given an HVAC company external network access, or why that access would not be cordoned off from Target’s payment system network.” Other sources have speculated that Fazio was given credentials to remotely monitor and fix glitches in the refrigeration system. So it seems sometimes that attackers are always two steps ahead. What’s a business to do? Continued on page 14
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Technospective
on Security
Continued from page 12
A C-level perspective Akshay Kalle, CTO, Pathway Communications, says a holistic approach is the best way to combat cyber crime. He believes that too many businesses use security as insurance rather than deploy it as an integral part of their operations. “A lot of businesses only seriously look at security after they’ve been hurt,” he said. “This must change.” For best practice, businesses should maintain regular audit processes of their security systems. This ensures they stay abreast of any vulnerabilities in their security and enables them to solve the problem before it snowballs into something more serious. Moreover, businesses should consider moving away from traditional security models, such as backups; there is nothing wrong with these practices, in theory, but as Kalle points out, more must be done to counter the increasing sophistication of cyber criminals. And above all, businesses must think about the three P’s of security: people, processes, and parts. Unless all three are working in tandem, businesses might be leaving themselves open to exploits. “Hackers will prey on the human aspect,” Kalle said, adding that data handling practices, as well as issues of security and privacy, must be discussed with everyone in the enterprise. If everyone understands how social engineering works, they’ll be less likely to click the link in a fake LinkedIn invitation that takes them to a site full of malware. “It’s not a matter of ‘if’ in today’s world,” Kalle warned. “It’s a matter of ‘when.’” But how can retailers and consumers prepare for ‘when’?
A security expert weighs in “Any half-decent anti-virus can detect malware that happened in the past; it’s the unknown attacks that are the problematic ones,” said Debrosse, adding that PCI compliance is not always a guarantee of safety. PCI compliance, otherwise known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, is a standard to which organizations 14 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
Retailers pointed the finger at banks, saying the Target breach could have been avoided if only the banks had moved to the chip and PIN system like most western nations. Banks, meanwhile, fired back with the assertion that it is the responsibility of retailers to protect any and all data they collect from their customers.
that handle cardholder information for major credit and debit cards must adhere. “That particular checkmark in the PCI DSS checklist…can give you a false sense of security, thinking the box has been checked. But the unknown malware continues to infect organizations.” Meanwhile, retailers and banks have been playing the blame game. At the end of January, reports emerged that retailers and banks have been fighting over who bears the responsibility for protecting customer data. Retailers pointed the finger at banks, saying the Target breach could have been avoided if only the banks had moved to the chip and PIN system like most western nations. Banks, meanwhile, fired back with the assertion that it is the responsibility of retailers to protect any and all data they collect from their customers. Ultimately, says Debrosse, it is the responsibility of everyone to minimize the occurrence or impact of data theft. “In a closed ecosystem – like point of sale systems – nothing should be running except exactly what was deployed to run. In this particular case, white listing is tremendous-
ly effective because anything new would be viewed as unauthorized,” said Debrosse. “Solutions such as data loss prevention would also be helpful. There should only be certain communication channels occurring internally between systems…and externally from, for example, Target servers to public servers on the Internet.” Consumers, too, can alter their spending habits to minimize the collection of their data by retailers. Customers could opt to pay with cash and gift cards instead of debit or credit, or – if they feel uncomfortable carrying around large amounts of cash – they could mix and match their payment methods to minimize their exposure. Debrosse says that consumers can also monitor their own credit reports to catch any problems as soon as they arise. “Any time a retailer has been breached, they provide credit monitoring services, but I don’t just rely on the credit monitoring service,” he said. “I want to actually see the report. I don’t wait for someone to actually notify me that there’s something anomalous.”
By rachel Levy sarfin
networKinG And coMMunicAtions
FeAture
we’re on the same team: the cio-cMo relationship Allies, not enemies
American president Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” President Roosevelt’s words, although uttered in wartime, still ring true today. And they have applications in the business world as well. For example, the CIO and CMO of many corporations view each other as opponents rather than teammates. They believe they must compete against each other for scarce resources and the approval of the CEO. Kevin Cochrane, CMO, OpenText, argued that the era of competition between CMOs and CIOs must
“as a cmo, we have two fundamental things that we do: we build bRands and we dRive demand,” cochRane explained. “when we’Re building bRands, we’Re Really focused on the oveRall customeR expeRience. we want to suRpRise and delight ouR customeRs, and we want to deliveR against ouR bRand pRomise each and eveRy time a customeR inteRacts with us.” — kevin cochrane come to an end, and he offered advice on how they can work together. In an op-ed he wrote for CMO.com in June 2013, Cochrane noted, “It can be subtle, but I’m seeing competition escalate between CMOs and CIOs.” He attributed this rivalry to the ways in which technology has changed the fields of marketing and IT. “These executives have had a complete rewrite of their jobs in recent years,” Cochrane wrote. The field of marketing has been transformed by technology, especially by the Internet. Social media has given marketers
greater insight than ever into their customers. This medium also allows them to influence consumers. Software is the key
Kevin cochrane, CMO, OpenText
to maintaining this influence. As a result, CMOs have become technology buyers. That role previously belonged solely to the CIO and the IT department. Meanwhile, CIOs must contend with the consumerization of technology. This change has been driven by cloud-delivered services, including software and data. Instead of focusing on software design and installation as they did in days of yore, CIOs need to balance business needs against the torrent of opportunities available to line departments. CIOs also must keep security, systems availability and responsiveness at the forefront. As a result of how technology has changed both of their roles, CIOs and CMOs believe they must fight for budgetary resources and authority. “Some CIO-CMO pairs see these authority and budget issues as a zerosum game,” Cochrane wrote in his op-ed for CMO.com. However, in their struggle against each other, CMOs and CIOs forget February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 15
FEATURE
NETWORKING AND COMMUNICATIONS
they are on the same team and are working towards the same goal. Cochrane advocated the creation of an alliance between the CIO and CMO.
Overcoming the rivalry Why is such an alliance important? CIOs help CMOs deliver the brand promise. “As a CMO, we have two fundamental things that we do: we build brands and we drive demand,” Cochrane explained. “When we’re building brands, we’re really focused on the overall customer experience. We want to surprise and delight our customers, and we want to deliver against our brand promise each and every time a customer interacts with us.” The second fundamental responsibility, driving demand, relies upon the ability to fulfill that demand as well. “As a CMO, the one thing that we don’t want to get stuck with is the inability to fulfill goods and services to our customers,” Cochrane noted. “So if we are absolutely successful in doing our jobs – driving demand, running great campaigns, building brands and getting customers, in turn, to be our advocates and drive further demand for us – we need to make sure that the entire organization is operationally excellent at fulfilling our customers’ requests.” One of the executives responsible for fulfilling customer requests is the CIO. “CIOs partner with CMOs so that CMOs can deliver against the brand promise, so that CMOs don’t get stuck going to market without being able to fulfill customer expectations,” Cochrane remarked. “CIOs help transform the marketing organization.” This partnership enables CMOs to perform their jobs properly and increase their businesses’ profits.
Building the bond How can CIOs and CMOs overcome the adversarial nature of their relationship? Cochrane sees communication as a starting point for improvement. “There’s a lot of talk in the industry that CIOs and CMOs don’t really speak each other’s languages, and they need to learn how to better communicate with one another, even if they oftentimes use different terms,” he commented.
“There’s a lot of talk in the industry that CIOs and CMOs don’t really speak each other’s languages, and they need to learn how to better communicate with one another.”
In addition, CMOs and CIOs must understand that they work at different speeds. “There’s also the challenge that CMOs generally need to move very, very fast, because of the urgency to compete in the marketplace,” Cochrane observed. “And CIOs oftentimes need to be more considerate of the speed in which they do things, because they have to worry about compliance risks, security, and operational availability on a 24/7 basis.” Trust is a crucial part of forging this relationship, Cochrane asserted. “One of the most important things that CIOs and CMOs need to do is to build a bond of trust with one another,” he said. Part of building that bond of trust is assuring one another that the other person is a source of support, not an opponent. “CIOs need to confirm that they don’t want to hold CMOs back, but they want to arm them with the appropriate technologies so that CMOs can react with laser-like efficiencies on a real-time basis to fine tune all of their demand-gen efforts on a worldwide basis,” Cochrane remarked.
Talk is cheap, though. Actions must affirm the bond of trust. CIOs cannot merely say they wish to give CIOs with the appropriate technologies; they need to follow through with their promises. Without the corresponding actions, CMOs will continue to believe that CIOs are their adversaries and will treat them accordingly. It is not only the CIO that should work to forge the relationship. Cochrane explained that CMOs have their own role to play. “CMOs need to build a bond of trust with IT,” he noted. This bond of trust starts with changing their attitudes towards the CIO. “They need to understand that the CIO is actually there to help them,” Cochrane commented. “The CIO is ultimately responsible for making certain that the entire enterprise runs efficiently so that the CMO can actually fulfill products and services and meet the brand promise.” Part of that mindset shift involves believing the CIO when he or she makes a commitment to change. “CMOs need to trust that the IT organization, in order to do the hard and necessary work of retooling the business to be more customer-centric and to optimize the supply chain, needs to be more considered in their approach,” Cochrane remarked. When the CMO and CIO forge a relationship, the entire company benefits. “Working together, several great things can happen,” Cochrane asserted in his CMO.com op-ed. “When two masters of their own disciplines are in intense discussion–the CMO bringing market insight and opportunities and the CIO bringing tech insight and opportunities–that’s where the big ‘aha’ moment comes from,” he explained. “That’s when the big growth opportunities show up.” “As CMOs race to be transformational by building a responsive experience, and CIOs aim to be more strategic by building a responsive enterprise, the two can and should be each other’s greatest allies,” Cochrane added. “The bottom line is, CMOs and CIOs must be able to work together to merge market vision and technology opportunity to deliver innovation and growth. Once they recognize they need each other, they can find that sweet spot exponentially faster,” he concluded.
16 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
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Technospective
ON VIRTUALIZATION
By Daniela Fisher
VMware: defining the next decade of IT The concept of a softwaredefined future was front and centre at the VMware Partner Exchange 2014, held in San Francisco this month. ‘Mastering the new reality’ was a phrase oft-repeated, as VMware’s leaders advised businesses to prepare for the software-defined decade of IT.
D
uring the keynotes, VMware’s top executives spoke about the future of the industry, and what companies should be doing to stay ahead of the curve. There were two main trends the conference highlighted: the software-defined enterprise and the mobile cloud era. These, according to VMware, are the future of technology. In his keynote speech, Carl Eschenbach, president and COO of VMware, discussed the rise of the software-defined enterprise, and how virtualization can help IT keep up with the increasing demand for service. “As we enter this new mobile cloud era, things are radically changing,” said Eschenbach. “In fact, what we’re seeing is more friction than ever between the consumers and producers of IT. That
18 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
Carl Eschenbach, president and COO, VMware, at the Partner Exchange 2014
friction is only accelerated – budgets are flat, there’s more demand – there’s more friction. IT now has the responsibility of supporting if you will millions of applications and billions of users.” In the next ten years, VMware predicts that the sector will go through a transformation, from the client server to the mobile cloud era. Driving this change is the software-defined data centre, the underlying architecture of the softwaredefined enterprise. Through virtualizing their data centres, businesses can liberate resources and dollars to run IT. “Virtualization is fundamentally one of, if not the only technology that allows you to liberate those resources and free up dollars from what you’re paying in maintenance costs, free up dollars for capital spending and allow you to move
to this new world of mobile cloud,” said Eschenbach. “As you do that, you take your CIOs from being chief information officers to being chief innovation officers.” Along with the changing role of the CIO, the industry itself is also evolving. Topics such as mobility, cloud and security are not just strategic priorities for the CIO. They are now boardroom discussions, relevant to the entire C-level suite. For Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, changes to the industry are nothing new. In his keynote, he looked back at some of the major shifts in the technology industry, including the move from the mainframe era to the client server era of computing, and now the mobile cloud. “Once again, the technological ground is shifting beneath our very feet, as we go from this era of the client server computing
Technospective
ON VIRTUALIZATION
Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware, at the Partner Exchange 2014
to the mobile cloud era,” said Gelsinger. “We think of this as just becoming a dramatic transformational period of IT. And because it’s changing consumer IT as well as enterprise IT, the most disruptive period of IT is that that we’re entering right now. Where every one of our customers, partners, and the CIO has to be delivering is IT-as-a-Service. IT must operate at a
much, much higher velocity, at the velocity of business and only the fastest will win.” For the next decade, Gelsinger says the main focus is the software-defined enterprise, and the trend towards everything mobile. “PCs are being replaced in front of our very eyes by mobile devices, as the future of how people will access all of the ser-
“We think of this as just becoming a dramatic transformational period of IT. And because it’s changing consumer IT as well as enterprise IT, the most disruptive period of IT is that that we’re entering right now. Where every one of our customers, partners, and the CIO has to be delivering is IT as Service. IT must operate at a much, much higher velocity, at the velocity of business and only the fastest will win.”
vices that we’re delivering to them,” said Gelsinger. “Many firms with their roots in the client server era are going to hold onto that past, as it’s the only thing they can do. They’re going to be holding back their customers and their partners from moving aggressively to that future. That isn’t where innovation or disruption is coming from; it will come from software, virtualization, cloud and mobility.” On the topic of disruptive innovation, Gelsinger stressed the need to be on the right side of technology, or else risk being left behind. “You have got to bet on the right side of the technology curve,” said Gelsinger. “It’s like a rising tide and if you’re not on the right side of technology, you’re just swimming hard to stay in place. You’ve got to bet on the right side of the technology curves, because they are more powerful than any company in the industry or any player.” VMware is also learning what Gelsinger calls a ‘second DNA.’ As the company has built software products for the past 15 years, it now aims to excel at delivering cloud services. “We need to master this new reality. This isn’t how we worked for the last 15 years, this is a very different set of products and technologies,” said Gelsinger. “We have to embrace the services model – it’s where the puck is going.” February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 19
industry spotLiGht
By robert parkins
, K o o B e
c A F oF
e L G o Go
And the GrAteFuL deAd
O
ur text today is taken from the agile mind of Marc Andreesen, inventor, investor and all-round tech deep thinker. Andreesen, famed for gung-ho optimism, among other intangibles, observed at a recent conference in San Francisco (well, why not?) that “(t)ech is recovering from the depression.” Now, Andreesen was talking about 2008, 20 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
not, say, 1933, and he quickly clarified his way back to a positive place of remarkably low price-to-earnings ratios for public tech. But: It was Andreeson, after all, and the d-word, and memories of 2008. Not to mention the legendary crash and burn of the dot-com bubble in the early oughts. It’s like your mother might have phrased it: In tech spec, as in so much else, if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
All of which affords a useful backdrop to some of the numbers that have been rocketing around cyberia lately. F’rinstance, 19 billion. That, of course, is how many dollars, in cash and stock, Facebook has agreed to pay for the mobile messaging service WhatsApp. The deal has generated a ton of buzz among the tech commentariat, pro and con, and it will doubtless continue to do so.
industry spotLiGht
“theRe is a talent waR going on foR the futuRe. you’Re not only getting someone who knows how to put devices togetheR betteR, but you’Re also getting a cReative, talented team that knows how to design an inteRface that can be attRactive.”
Then there are the numbers associated with Google in a recent overview by the CBC’s Victoria Stunt. They include 144, which is where an acquisitions list that started in 2001 has arrived so far, and 17 billion, which is how many dollars the company has spent on acquisitions in the past two years. “That’s more than (Google’s) competitors - Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Yahoo - have spent combined, according to a report by Bloomberg,” Stunt notes. On one level, there is of course nothing remarkable about any of this. Depression be damned, it’s saying; there’s a chance to make big bucks here, and I’m not Warren Buffett (noted tech skeptic), and I’m going for it. Same old same old. More than that, it’s not like all this activity is a consequence of mere whimsy. Facebook’s deal for WhatsApp, for example, can be considered as yet another restatement of the aphorism that mobile is king. Facebook, as analyst Peter Yared put it for TechCrunch, “has realized that users’ true social network is the contact list on their smartphones. Mobile contacts are usually limited to people a user knows well and actually communicates with, a veritable treasure trove when compared to the copious list of Facebook friends that many users have accumulated over the years.”
Yared sums it up: “Facebook had already acquired the ability to have a unilateral, aspirational follow capability akin to Twitter with its Instagram acquisition. WhatsApp offers a social network of 450 million users that are intimately connected with each other by phone numbers. “With this acquisition, Facebook now controls the intersection of all three kinds of social graphs: casual acquaintances, aspirational following, and intimate relationships. And that’s worth quite a premium.” The deal, put that way, is anything but whimsical. It is, rather, strategic and hardheaded – the stuff of MBAs everywhere. Same with Google. Acquisitions specialist George Geis told the CBC’s Stunt that the company is really interested in “acquiring the developers and creative talent behind the companies.” “There is a talent war going on for the future,” Stunt quotes Geis. “You’re not only getting someone who knows how to put devices together better, but you’re also getting a creative, talented team that knows how to design an interface that can be attractive.” Again – strategic, hard-headed business decision making. The numbers may be big, but they’re not inexplicable. All that having been said, though, there’s more than a little irony in all this activity.
The aforementioned buzz among the commentariat, for example, includes an argument from leftish political economist Robert Reich that the Facebook/WhatsApp deal, for all its size and swagger, creates no jobs. “In the emerging economy,” Reich writes for Salon, “there’s no longer any correlation between the size of a customer base and the number of employees necessary to serve them. In fact, the combination of digital technologies with huge network effects is pushing the ratio of employees to customers to new lows (WhatsApp’s 55 employees are all its 450 million customers need).” Okay, that’s perhaps less ironic than contrarian. But consider this: The roots of all this buying and selling lie not in MBA classes or even pure computer science but in the lefty hippie havens of the 1960s. “We owe it all to the hippies,” Time magazine headlined in 1995. The accompanying article by counterculture guru Stewart Brand was nothing if not succinct: “Newcomers to the Internet are often startled to discover themselves not so much in some soulless colony of technocrats as in a kind of cultural Brigadoon - a flowering remnant of the ‘60s, when hippie communalism and libertarian politics formed the roots of the modern cyberrevolution.” The Grateful Dead were right. What a long strange trip it’s been. February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 21
Technospective on social media By Rachel Levy Sarfin
Mastering the digital transformation with social tools
The digital transformation If you were to name a driving force in the global economy over the past 30 years, what would it be? Ted Shelton, VP, EAS CBC customer solutions, Cognizant Business Consulting, would respond, “Technology.” “In the past our institutions, whether political or economic, were influenced by a set of environmental factors. Their stability and health determined by access to raw materials, the weather, and competing interests. Today though the most important
22 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
forcing function for change in our institutions has become technology,” he said. Recently, Shelton has begun writing about the digital transformation and how the enterprise can successfully navigate it with social tools. “We live at a moment of transformation, and I have become a student of this change, looking not just at its impact but also at its potential,” he commented. “I can¹t imagine a more interesting topic at this moment of history.”
Shelton defines the digital transformation as the process of how organizations are re-evaluating their activities due to the capabilities of information technology. As a result of changes in technology, businesses are eliminating non-digital elements of those activities and shifting them to the digital realm. Shelton predicts that this transformation will lead to the rise of a new type of corporation: the connected enterprise.
Techno spective on social media “The point of ‘outside in’ is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer (or potential customer) and to ask the question, ‘what would I want if I were buying something from this company? What experience? What value? What qualities? What support?’ Most companies consider their processes from their own perspective and efficiency and not from their customer’s perspective.”
The connected enterprise The connected enterprise places a high degree of importance on engaging with its customers, Shelton explained. In fact, he believes that the future belongs to companies that put their customers first and adopt an “outside in” approach. “The point of ‘outside in’ is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer (or potential customer) and to ask the question, ‘what would I want if I were buying something from this company? What experience? What value? What qualities? What support?’” he remarked.
“Most companies consider their processes from their own perspective and efficiency and not from their customer’s perspective.” Cognizant’s VP of customer services cited the example of boarding an airplane: airlines want passengers to disembark and board a plane as quickly as possible to maximize their profits. However, the emphasis on speedy boarding makes the experience unpleasant for passengers. Creating a pleasant pre-boarding experience will make passengers want to travel with that airline again. Shelton sees social technology tools as having a significant role to play in the “outside in” approach. Connecting to employees, partners and customers will create a more successful business. He places an especial emphasis on creating a deep relationship with customers through social tools. Although social media technologies have existed for the better part of a decade, businesses are still not leveraging them effectively to connect with customers. He described the mindset that keeps the enterprise from success in this area: “There is an operating model, developed over the twentieth century, that companies still mostly follow which defines the customer as an outsider, whose perceptions should be carefully managed,” he said. Social media renders that model invalid. “[It] creates a level of transparency and interaction that voids this bifurcation and enables a fluid conversation between employees and customers,” Shelton remarked. Any paradigm shift requires cooperation from all employees. Attaining collaboration can be difficult, especially from executives. It is not impossible, though. “The most important way to insure ‘buy-in’ from all levels of an organization is to demonstrate
the return on investment achieved by investing in these technologies,” Shelton suggested. “Companies can be scientific in defining a set of experiments that will guide them in making the right investments and this is the core methodology for a successful transformation agenda.”
Collaborating with ecosystem partners Shelton also places high value on collaboration between partners, suppliers, distributors and service providers. “Businesses already have many avenues of collaboration with their partners,” he said. Admittedly, those avenues come with a high financial price tag. “The cost of collaboration can be very high,” Shelton acknowledged. Therefore, companies and their partners in the ecosystem must work together in a cost effective way. Yet cost effective does not always translate into the best possible way of doing things. “As a result of certain limits to collaboration and process/structure around collaboration, many opportunities are lost,” he commented. Cognizant’s VP of customer services cited the example of product development as a possible missed opportunity for businesses and their ecosystem partners. “New product development has a high variability in outcomes -- sometimes the result may be a very valuable new product and sometimes no viable product ideas will be developed,” Shelton remarked. An affordable solution to collaboration exists, though. “This is a great example of where social collaboration can make a big difference,” he asserted. “By reducing the cost of collaboration to almost zero, much more speculative interactions -- such as new product development -- can begin to take place with partners.” February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 23
Technospective on social media
Ted Shelton, VP EAS CBC customer solutions, Cognizant
He acknowledged that proprietary information is an important consideration when collaborating. However, Shelton believes that the enterprise’s criteria for what information should be confidential are skewed. “Our thinking is upside down -- too often we assume that everything should be secret unless there is a reason to make it public,” he stated. Instead, companies should adopt greater transparency. “We should be thinking about how nothing should be a secret unless there is a reason to make it a secret,” Shelton urged.
24 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
“Change is hard and we have a natural human tendency to deny that it is happening, especially deny that it is happening to ourselves. The only way to get out ahead of change is to engage in making the change happen - don’t wait for the ‘aha’ moment or it may be too late.” The necessity of change Businesses that do not change their mindsets and adopt the principles that will allow them to undergo a digital transformation will be left behind. The necessity of change will only dawn on them too late. “Unfortunately for many companies the ‘aha moment’ will be bankruptcy,” Shelton warned. He sees that a large number of businesses are in the early stages of bankruptcy. “For many companies the end is coming so slowly at the moment that they can exist in a perpetual state of denial, until all at once the game is up and their business comes to an end,” he commented.
Companies that have undergone a digital transformation experience a trajectory which also starts off slowly, then leads to rapid results. The difference is that the direction of the trajectory is upwards, not downwards. “New market entrants have a similar but reverse phenomenon at work they start out slowly but once they prove out their market value, the Internet creates a set of growth dynamics that will suddenly propel that new entrant into an amazing success,” Shelton explained. “Change is hard and we have a natural human tendency to deny that it is happening, especially deny that it is happening to ourselves,” Shelton admitted. Transformation is inevitable; Cognizant’s VP of customer services advised embracing it rather than fighting or denying it. “The only way to get out ahead of change is to engage in making the change happen -- don’t wait for the ‘aha’ moment or it may be too late,” he recommended. Shelton expressed confidence that the digital transformation will affect every single business on the planet. “Every industry will be disrupted,” he predicted. “Every vertical will be caught up in the torrent of change.” In the short term, the harbingers of change will be mobile, social, analytics and cloud; in the long term, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, robotization and artificial intelligence will herald the transformation. Advances in technology will mean that consumers and business will not be able to remember a time before those developments existed. The firms that survive will be those who understood the value of a digital transformation and underwent a shift before it was too late.
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Technospective on mobility
By Amy Allen
HP brings businesses more choice in a mobile world
A
s any CIO knows, dealing with mobility in the workplace can be a tall order. A trend toward BYOD arrangements translates more often than not into compromised security. And while many employees swear that mobility provides a significant boost to their productivity, there remain some roadblocks – like how to print from mobile devices, for example. HP has been coming out with some innovations in recent weeks that are meant to address these issues. And it’s not just enterprises that are benefiting from these new products – SMBs are getting in on the action too. One product targeted specifically at SMBs is HP’s new Mopria-certified printer, which allows users to print directly from their mobile devices. What is Mopria, you may ask? Mopria stands for “mobile printing alliance” and is a consortium of technology companies founded by HP, Canon, Samsung, and Xerox. The alliance’s goal is to deliver simple, wireless printing solutions to companies operating in the mobile workplace. Since its formation, the alliance has been joined by industry heavyweights such as Brother, Lexmark, and Epson. “There are security concerns surrounding mobility,” said Brian Sahr, manager, 26 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
Future Product Marketing, HP. “The future is that paper will be the exception, but we’re trapped between these two things. We want to address this from a printing and customer standpoint.” Designed for use in SMBs, the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M476 features singlepass, two-sided scanning capabilities, network security for remote or branch offices, and HP ePrint and Apple AirPrint for more efficient mobile printing. Provided the mobile devices being used are also Mopria-certified, the printer requires no additional software or applications for setup. Users need only tap their devices to the printer to upload their files for print. Devices that are not yet Mopria-certified will need a firmware update before they can be used with the M476. To further simplify matters, the M476 can also access certain business applications,
such as Flow CM, Box, and Google Drive, directly from the device. “The expectation of today’s business customer is to print securely from any location or device,” said George Brasher, VP and GM, Worldwide Laser Printer Business, HP, in a release. “HP remains committed to delivering simple, secured mobile print solutions aimed to help customers solve the mobility challenge of working while in the office or on the go. With the addition of these new enterprise-grade mobility offerings, HP is helping SMBs increase productivity and workflow solutions, allowing them to be more productive in their businesses.” Pricing for the device starts at $529, and additional support, such as installation tools and training, are available to customers who purchase the M476. As for devices themselves, HP has some new tablets up its sleeve. The new products
Technospective are geared toward giving enterprises more choice in the technologies they deploy and enabling round-the-clock connectivity for employees. “The balance between personal life and work life is gone. This is a smartphone and tablet phenomenon,” said Derek Everett, director, worldwide product management, commercial Windows tablets, HP. “The new normal is this blending of work life and personal life. What we’re trying to do is look at that and ask how we can embrace that.” The first of these, the ElitePad 1000 G2, is an improvement on the company’s ElitePad 900. With the 1000, HP sought to make advancements in three areas: display, communication, and performance. At 9.2 mm in width, the ElitePad 1000 is more durable than it lets on. It features a 10.1-inch WUXGA display that is impervi-
ous to smudges and scratches. It is built to withstand MIL-STD-810g testing – a process that is also used to test the durability of U.S. military equipment – and has endured a further 115,000 hours of reliability testing through HP’s Total Test Process. Apart from durability, the ElitePad 1000 brings some nifty upgrades to the table, notably ones that customers asked HP to introduce to the product line. “We had positive feedback from customers for the 900, but they also said where they wanted changes,” said Everett. “They told us that 64-bit was necessary, because the 900 was 32-bit only. We leveraged Intel’s latest Atom technology to get 64bit in this product, so that businesses can have unification of 64-bit across all their devices.” It boasts enterprise-class security that includes drive encryption, secure NFC, and HP’s Security SmartJacket. It is also fully serviceable: users will have full access to the device’s parts, such as the battery, to carry out their
on mobility
own repairs. This negates the need for businesses that store sensitive data on their devices to send those devices out to a third party for servicing. At the same time, HP announced the ProPad 600, a tablet that is similar to the ElitePad in many respects, but is more mainstream and lacks the serviceability that is inherent to the ElitePad. Nevertheless, it offers businesses Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Office, as well as a collection of HP apps that come preinstalled on the device. It includes Bluetooth 4.0 and HP’s ePrint software, so that users can print on the fly without having to go through the cumbersome process of installing additional drivers. The third innovation HP introduced is the TX1 point-of-sale (POS) solution, a tablet that allows retailers to do mobile POS transactions. Though it can also be used for fixed POS transactions, it gives retailers the freedom to do what Everett calls “line-busting” – in other words, to pull a customer out of a traditional cash lineup and speed along the checkout process. It comes with a stand that holds the tablet upright when it is not being carried around the store. The ProPad 600 also comes with a standard cash drawer and printer, and can be tilted to capture a customer’s signature for credit transactions. Mobile security is at the top of most people’s minds, and HP is quick to address those concerns. The device comes pre-installed with Microsoft Defender to protect the device from viruses, as well as HP’s Trusted Platform Module for the secure storage of customer data. The product will be available in select countries – including Canada – in May 2014. These devices, with their differing specs and capabilities, are about giving HP customers more choice in how they carry out their operations. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’,” said Everett. “Different people have different needs. It’s clear that we really need to centre everything around our project strategy on the customer’s needs – and HP is starting to deliver against that kind of strategy.” February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 27
cAnAdiAn spotLiGht
By vic pakalnis
canadian malartic, quebec osisko mining corporation
northern perspectives
I
t’s all about perspective: whether the cup is half full or half empty, whether you’re happy or sad. Richard Florida wrote in “Who’s Your City” that where you live makes a difference and why you choose to live where you live is important. I was born a northerner – in Malartic, Que. to be exact. This town was once the gold mining capital of the world, with over 30 mines in the vicinity. And since my father was a mining engineer, we travelled to various mining communities in Quebec, Ontario and B.C. Mining is a very cyclical industry: ore runs out, you move; commodity prices go down, you move. After a stint at McGill University in the 60’s, I went to work at Falconbridge Mine in Sudbury. Sudbury was the largest mining camp in Canada and certainly a lot more cosmopolitan than the northern towns I had lived in. I switched over to work with the Ontario government, first in mining, and then more generally as an executive in Toronto and Ottawa. Every move changed 28 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
dome mine open pit
my perspective. Like the “little guy from Shawinigan,” some part of me never changed, even after a 30-year career in public service, a stint at Queen’s University teaching in public policy, and then in mining engineering. It is one of Canada’s jewels: not too big and not too small - it’s just right. So now I’ve come back to Sudbury and the north, and to my first love: mining. They say you can never go back... baloney! The air is cleaner than I remember; cleaner than Toronto, Ottawa and Kingston. The food’s better. The top three restaurants in Sudbury are better than the top three in Kingston, for about the same population: 150,000. There are over 300 lakes in Sudbury – it should be known as the City of Lakes, but unfortunately, unlike myself, people that saw Sudbury 30 years ago have not come back. If they did, they would be charmed. It has always been one of Canada’s workshops, an economic powerhouse grinding out wealth and prosperity for everyone else in Ontario and Canada. But now it has grown into a
diversified economy – Science North is a first class science centre; go underground at Dynamic Earth, or send your kids to a first rate smaller university, Laurentian. It just opened the first Canadian School of Architecture in over 40 years. And boy does that change a city’s perspective. It brings in speakers such as Raymond Moriyama and Douglas Cardinal, both Canadian legends in architecture. And so, dear reader, in the months and perhaps years to come, I’ll be providing a view from my perspective, my experience and my vision of the future. Perhaps we might change our perspectives together as we explore leadership, technology, an evolutionary view of management, public service, and Canada’s north. Hope you enjoy the ride! Vic Pakalnis is President and CEO of MIRARCOMining Innovation. He is the author of a number of papers on subjects such as: mine safety, public policy, training and organizational design. He has appeared on radio and television: CNN, BNN, CBC and CTV as a commentator on health and safety issues, in particular the Chilean Mine Rescue Operation in 2010. He writes for and serves on the editorial board of Canadian Government Executive magazine.
Product review
By Christopher Rogers
Surface 2:
How does it compare to standard computing devices?
Microsoft has delivered a high-quality tablet with the Surface 2. The hardware can hold its own against any other device at this price on the market. But it’s the software that will be the deciding factor for buyers.
M
icrosoft offers two versions of the Surface 2: a version with Windows RT (simply called Surface 2 – that’s what we’re reviewing here) and the Surface 2 Pro, which runs the full version of Windows 8.1. The Windows RT version is based on an ARM CPU, specifically an Nvidia Tegra quad-core CPU at 1.7GHz; the Pro version is equipped with an Intel Core i5 CPU, which lets it run a very typical Windows 8.1 setup where you can install and run any normal Windows-based applications. The regular Surface 2, with its Tegra processor, can’t run applications that aren’t specifically built for it, which limits it mostly to applications from the Windows Store. The other main difference is the cost. The Surface 2 starts at $449 for the 32GB model, while the Pro version starts at $899 for a 64GB version. That breakdown should make it clear that the Surface 2 is priced to go after the tablet market, while the Surface 2 Pro is priced and equipped to compete in the Ultrabook space. The question for me has become not whether the Surface 2 Pro can be a fulltime productivity device (I think that’s an unquestionable, “yes”), but can the Surface 2, equipped with a Type Cover, Microsoft Office Suite, and access to the Windows Store,
be a viable full-time computing machine? If you can find apps in the Windows store that can do what you need, the Surface 2 is a great piece of hardware.
Changes over the original Surface For the new Surface 2, Microsoft added a full HD 1920x1080 pixel display, backlighting for both the Type Cover and Touch Cover, an upgraded ARM processor, a new USB 3.0 port, improved battery life, and a 64GB internal storage option. The hardware itself received a new silver colour (officially dubbed Magnesium) and a kickstand with two stopping points for resting the device at different angles. The display is crisp and bright, and while its 11-inch form factor can seem cramped at first, the 1,920 horizontal pixels provide adequate room for multitasking using Windows 8.1’s split screens. As for the Typer Cover, I can’t overstate
what a remarkable piece of hardware it is. It’s one of the very few accessories out there I would classify as “required.” It completely changes the experience on the Surface 2 and this review would be dramatically different were it not an available option. The Type Cover has a standard QWERTY keyboard layout with individual buttons, but remains millimetres thin. This is perhaps the best compact, thin keyboard I’ve ever used. The travel on the buttons means each tap gives satisfying feedback, while the layout does not sacrifice usability by including a bunch of useless buttons. The new backlighting on the Surface 2 keyboard is good and can be controlled using two keys in the F1 and F2 slots along the top. Those buttons are actually my biggest problem with the keyboard. I wish Microsoft hadn’t removed the volume control buttons from the top row for these brightness keys. There is a hardware volume control along the February/March 2014 IT in Canada Online / 29
Product review Pros: *Fantastic display. *Good battery life. *Outstanding design and build quality. *Type Cover is an excellent accessory.
left side of the Surface 2, so hardware control is not far away, but the convenience of having volume adjustment directly on the keyboard is simply a time saver I’ve gotten used to.
Still a great design The Surface 2 hasn’t changed all that much since the original design. There is the twostation kickstand and the new display, but beyond the silver colour, you probably couldn’t tell a Surface from a Surface 2. It’s apparently slightly lighter, but probably not recognizably so (a mere five grams lighter). But that shouldn’t be taken as a knock against the Surface 2. This is still a very well designed machine with clean lines and an extremely solid feel. The overall quality of the device is right up there with other high-end tablets. I feel like the Surface 2 is a device that begs to be used. It doesn’t need a fancy case to keep it safe, and the overall package is compact, portable, and good-looking, making you constantly want to keep it open and on your desk.
Display brilliance I found the most difficult part of using the Surface 2 was getting used to its dimension. It’s unapologetically widescreen and the 16:9 format is just a bit awkward at first, but I mostly used the device in a landscape mode with the kickstand. Holding it in portrait orientation feels top-heavy and there aren’t many apps that take advantage of that orientation. Thankfully, the Surface 2’s display is fantastic no matter how you’re looking at it. The screen retains its colours from almost 30 / IT in Canada Online February/March 2014
any angle, making it perfect for portable use or in meetings. You don’t have to constantly turn the display so others can see what’s on the screen. The original Surface has a 1376x768 display and the benefits to the Surface 2’s higher resolution are more than ascetic. The higher horizontal pixel count makes multitasking on Windows 8.1 much easier, with more space to devote to each app. I frequently had both my writing or research tools open with my email or Twitter feed running in the window beside. It’s part of why I was able to use the Surface 2 in my day-to-day work so easily. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of designing a device that really takes advantage of the touch integration on Windows 8.1. When it comes to touch navigation and controls, the display is highly accurate.
Other hardware considerations Battery life on the Surface 2 is not a problem, which I’d say is high praise for a Windows device. I used the device as my main machine from 9am to 5pm without charging. The Surface 2 will last longer if you’re using it as a secondary device and its idle holds a charge with very little overall drain on the battery. No matter how much I praise the hardware, whether or not you purchase a Surface 2 will inevitably still come down to software,
Cons: *Limited to Windows Store apps. *Desktop has limited functionality.
and the story there is not quite as strong. Perhaps the best move Microsoft made with the Surface 2 was including a full version of Office 2013 along with each new device. As I’ve mentioned before, I primarily spend most of my time writing using Markdown syntax, so Office is not my first choice for typing. However, as I looked into various Markdown editors in the Windows Store, testing and evaluating, I found myself coming back to Office – specifically Word. While I spent most of my time using productivity aplications on the Surface 2, I did take a deep dive into the Windows Store to see what I could find. The results were definitely better than I had expected. My favourites were Code Writer and Readiy, a syntax editor and Feedly client respectively. I also enjoyed the Netflix application, Wikipedia app, Kindle, and Flipboard. The most obvious ones missing to me are official apps for third party music streaming services like Rdio, Pandora and Spotify.
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