IT in Canada January/February 2013

aNDReW DILLaNe

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On the strategic relevance of IT p.7

Wireless data becoming a viable option for many SMBs p.21

January/ February 2013 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1 www.itincanada.ca

CANADA’S TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AUTHORITY

FORECAST 2013: NEW VIEWS ON TECH TRENDS

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Contents

www.itincanada.ca

Jan-Feb 2013

29 Personal Technology Features 4 Editor’s Note 9 Technospective on Cloud Infrastructure Cloud in 3D 13 Technospective on SaaS SaaS goes mainstream 16 In the Middle Predictions and possibilities

6 Cover Story: Diverging paths in IT management

Departments 20 Technospective on Networking and Communications Connectivity parry and thrust 24 Technospective on Collaboration Collaboration en marche

28 Technospective on Personal Technology Diversity and management are key to mobile success 30 Book Review Seizing our destiny

26 Technospective on Security Get security smart

Online Extras: www.itincanada.ca Missed an issue? Misplaced an article? Visit www.itincanada.ca for a full archive of past It in Canada issues, as well as online extras from our many contributors.

22 Networking January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 3

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t

ihis year, IT in Canada offers a view of prospects for IT from the height of the hype. Our Forecast issue, which long-time readers of our magazines will note has been moved up to correspond more closely with turn of the calendar year, serves up a veritable feast of opinion from industry leaders across the technology spectrum. Over 40 Canadian experts have provided commentary on what’s to come in cloud, collaboration, mobility, devices, the channel, security and communications. If response to IT in Canada’s invitation to comment on trends is any indication, 2013 promises to be a heady year, characterized by marketing jostle to rise above the noise in a marketscape that, in theory at least, is primed by pent up demand for lift off – and increasingly crowded. And if our trend watchers are correct, we should see in 2013 an acceleration of cloud adoption and the beginnings of cloud market consolidation, better tools to access the value in Big Data, more mobility supported by technologies such as MDM, and renewed efforts to simplify and integrate customers’ information and communication needs.

But this issue also features the view from the shop floor. A 2013 ITMD survey of Canadian IT leaders on the benefits of various types of information sources has confirmed the importance of learning by example – case study and research reports ranked highest on a list of eight sources – and true to our mandate to encourage technology adoption by showing the way, we have included here a look at IT management trends for 2013 from the user perspective. In Michael O’Neil’s feature article, Diverging paths in IT management, Leaders Beyond program director Craigg Ballance discusses the subordination of mainstream IT management to the needs of business management, a view that is balanced by the perspectives of two extraordinary CIOs, Andrew Dillane of Randstad Canada and Mike Capone of ADP, who handily demonstrate the impact that effective technology leadership can have on overall corporate success. In addition, the article includes input from Dillane and RBC’s Barney Baldwin which illustrates the ways in which analytics, Big Data and consumerization are impacting IT management and business opportunity. This kind of end user view provides a valuable counterpoint to the important, but different outlook on IT innovation delivered by the vendor community: a fact that is sometimes neglected in buzz around new technologies (which Dillane reminds us of here) is that staffing continues to consume the majority of IT budgets. As a result, adoption of technology will be influenced by its ability to address all important staffing issues.

Our end user output has been assisted by a new relationship formed in 2012 between IT Market Dynamics and Leaders Beyond, Canada’s premier training and development source for IT leaders, which we expect to continue to draw on throughout 2013 in case study and other presentations designed to delve into the meat of the matter – decision making around implementation at the organizational level.

We bookend this issue of our Forecast magazine with the ultimate in case study, a review by Canadian IT veteran and guest contributor, Paul Kennedy, of a new publication outlining best practice in the use of IT by seven global cities. Published by The Intelligent Communities Forum, Seizing Our Destiny – 2012’s best communities to live, work, grow and prosper in – and how they got that way, profiles top ranking cities in the Forum’s annual competition. As Kennedy notes, Canadian cities have managed to win a disproportional share of the top rankings, though it would be difficult to argue with the merits of the case presented by Stratford (or Quebec City or Saint John, NB). The key to these success stories was connectivity, an area that will command more of IT in Canada’s attention through the next year.

We’re looking forward to it.

Mary Allen Editor, IT in Canada 4 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

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Research Feature

By Michael O’Neil

Diverging paths in IT management Constant cost pressure through tough economic times has forced CIOs – and the businesses they serve – to evaluate the strategic role of IT.

F

or many years – until the Great Recession of the late 2000s – it was assumed that IT spending would increase much faster than overall GDP: after all, IT offered the ability to automate tasks in ways that increase efficiency, reduce overall costs and expand market reach and opportunity.

Since the economic downturn four years ago, though, we have seen greatlyincreased pressure on IT budgets, and on IT management. The financial stress is easy to understand. According to IT Market Dynamics, IT spending by public and private sector organizations in Canada will be roughly $100 billion in 2013, representing more than 6% of revenue in most industry sectors, and more than 5% of Canada’s entire national GDP. At this level, IT is a significant line item in most corporate budgets. Senior management needs to keep a handle on overall costs, while at the same time exploiting the competitive and customerservice potential of IT-enabled processes.

How does this tension affect IT management strategies? According to leading members of the Canadian IT management community, it has created two different paths: one in which IT acts as a support organization, delivering services required by business leadership, and one in which IT itself plays a central role at the executive table, defining corporate strategy.

Craigg Ballance, program director for Leaders Beyond, Canada’s premier training 6 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

and development source for IT leaders (and a strategic partner of IT in Canada), believes that most Canadian IT leaders are taking the first path. When asked to categorize the extent to which IT management is successful in using scarce budget resources to initiate innovation, Ballance replied, “The short answer…is, “very little.” If anything – and this is not a condemnation of the profession, but a tendency – [IT leaders] have moved from some of that innovation back in the late 1990s and early 2000s to a relative subservience behaviour pattern. ‘We’re here to serve,’ says IT management, ‘we’ll manage the infrastructure; you tell us what you need, and we’ll build it for you. And we need spec, and we need user and vendor participation.’”

Ballance believes that “aside from infrastructure, which is a constant need, IT is less in charge of itself – less responsible for new money and new budgets – as responsibility is pushed back to the business.” Many IT leaders, he says, are hindered by a “fear of failure” which leads them to respond to delivery difficulties by demanding better specs, more time for testing, and more caution when evaluating potential project issues. This approach, categorized by Ballance as being focused on inputs (money, resources, technology, time) rather than outputs (increased customer engagement/satisfaction, reduced process time/expense, new revenue) has led to a reduction in the strategic importance of IT and the CIO in many organizations.

Barney Baldwin, head of risk technology for RBC, believes that in most cases, IT needs to be an active participant at the executive table. “IT businesses (infrastructure, software, etc.) depend explicitly on the IT strategy,” he said in an IT in Canada interview, and many other businesses – such as finance and biotech – “aren’t IT per se, but depend on IT to such an extent that the business strategy can’t be executed without IT.” As a result, Baldwin believes that “IT management should participate actively in the business strategy.

Otherwise, decisions might be made that can’t be supported by the platform.”

How, though, can IT leaders establish a viable strategic presence within their o rg a n i z a t i o n s ?

We turned to two leading CIOs – Andrew Dillane, CIO, Andrew Dillane, Randstad Canada CIO of Randstad Canada (and past president of the CIO Association of Canada) and Mike Capone, U.S.-based CIO of ADP – for insight into how IT builds credible C-level presence.

Mike Capone, CIO, ADP

Research Feature Dillane believes that the CIO should “absolutely [be] defining strategy.” Asked if the CIO role is and should be a legitimate participant in corporate strategy discussions, Dillane states that he is “constantly bringing things to the table as to how we can be much more effective in our business, whether it’s from a productivity standpoint, or how we should change the way that we operate to be more effective for our customers, more effective in delivery, more efficient on the front end. I would say that I’m not just happy to be at the table – I want to be driving things forward.”

In part, Dillane’s perspective is informed by the approach that he has taken to Randstad’s technology. Dillane has consolidated operations into two groups: infrastructure and support, and business solutions, which works with third-party solutions like back-office ERP and with Randstad’s front office and web systems, “which are one in the same.” This streamlined, centralized approach has made it possible for Randstad to effectively amalgamate a dozen different operating companies over the past several years, and to build an approach that is both scalable (from an infrastructure perspective) and differentiated (in terms of its front-end business systems). Despite exercising a high degree of control over Randstad’s IT operations – “no one in the organization has an IT budget outside of IT” – Dillane works closely with other members of the management team, noting that “increasingly, the business leaders in all areas have more technology experience. As a result – anyone who is very ego-centric about IT being owned by IT is going to have challenges moving forward. It’s a collaborative effort now. You need to have a strong voice, but you need to check your ego at the door, and focus on what’s most important to the business.”

Capone, too, is emphatic about the need for IT to be a strategic business leader. He says that he tells his fellow CIOs that “the way you’re going to be relevant is not going to be by how big your budget is, or how many people work for you, or how many servers you have in your data centre. It’s really going to be about how you generate outcomes that enable your business to

succeed. Your collateral with the organization doesn’t become keeping the lights on any more, because a lot of people know how to do that now – it’s going to become how did you generate the right outcomes to help the business grow, and make others in your organization successful.” Interestingly, Capone is looking to build this presence within a distributed IT environment. “More and more,” he says, “statistics point to the fact that spend in IT is increasingly controlled by people outside of IT…every function is finding ways to leverage IT.” His advice? “Make yourself relevant – which to me, is partnering with those business leaders, understanding where they’re trying to get to, and then delivering those outcomes, which [is often driven] by partnering with a cloud provider to provide agility, time to market and better TCO – this will raise your profile inside the organization, and make you much more strategic than if you’re just spending your time building servers and networks.”

What’s coming in 2013?

Regardless of whether or not IT is positioned as a source of business strategy, it needs to support new technologies as they enter the corporate environment. Which are likely to be important in 2013?

Most of the IT leaders polled for this article believe that analytics – potentially tied to Big Data – will be an important area of focus in 2013. RBC’s Baldwin says that “analytics and Big Data play a very significant role in my [capital markets] space… we need a lot of data to be available quickly and globally.”

Both Capone and Dillane are finding significant business application for analytics today – interestingly, in both cases, as a result of having cross-process data. Dillane states that through systems that “capture every activity in the process,” Randstad can “do valuable analysis around business activities and behaviours, more analysis about what really works for delivery, what’s most effective…and really take a more scientific

Barney Baldwin, head of risk technology, RBC Where will you focus your 2013 IT investment? More budget for high-performance storage solutions and in-house development, less for 3rd-party business applications. We will likely invest in technology to manage compute grids, as well as data distribution.

What are the key IT skills for 2013? Big Data knowledge is certainly a priority. Developers with business domain knowledge are always in demand.

IT approach – distributed or centralized? It depends on the nature of the business. Finance involves a lot of unit-specific technology. I support a partially decentralized model - business units are closest to the problems at hand.

Mike Capone, CIO, ADP How do you move to the cloud? Pick the most important business challenges and deal with them – don’t do cloud just for the sake of doing cloud, do cloud because you’ve got a real business problem you need to solve – those are going to be the CIOs who stand out.

Which skills are becoming more important, and which are fading? Job titles like cloud partner engagement manager and business relationship manager are going to be the IT jobs that become more relevant over time. I think storage engineer is going to fade [as a requirement within IT departments]. I think database administrator is going to fade – the good ones are going to be working for ADP and Amazon, and the bad ones aren’t going to be working all all because cloud providers are going to deliver scale to the market.

Where do you find ROI in the cloud? You can generally make TCO on cloud. Obviously, there are hard dollar costs…but it always starts out with what’s the ROI of focusing on your business, vs. not focusing on your business. How do you put ROI on being strategic, and focused on the right things?

From there – unless a company is absolutely doing things on a shoestring – which means no security, no disaster recovery, no resiliency in their business...the ROI on cloud, the TCO is always going to be better.

January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 7

Research Feature approach to things.” Capone sees analytics as an increasingly-important component of ADP’s business offerings, observing that “analytics in the old world used to mean ‘your information back to you’, but more and more, the market is demanding, ‘better than that’ – and better than that means aggregating data [from multiple customers] in a very secure, non-threatening way, anonymizing it, and being able to extrapolate and add value…[by providing] predictive information to clients.” He added that this is “going to be a big differentiator” for companies that have traditionally acted as transaction processors.

Mobility is another key area that our experts believe will be important to IT management in 2013. Ballance sees IT management needing to focus on melding security and information delivery: “handsets or tablets, coupled with secure access to data, has to be [addressed] by organizations… it’s coming. It’s a great opportunity, even if it’s awkward or difficult” to deploy effective strategies. Randstad’s Dillane sees this opportunity, and believes that his organization is “just scratching the surface” of the benefit that mobility can provide.

However, he raises an interesting perspective on mobility-related costs, using the example of “an account manager who has a seat in an office [with] a computer, a phone, a mobile phone with data services, and an iPad.” According to Dillane, “the cost of the redundant services and hardware is still too much”; an architecture in which the telephony requirements are met by a cloudbased VoIP system that can deliver the same functionality with a low-cost desktop and an iPad can result in elimination of both the laptop and (because the iPad can connect to the VoIP system) the phone as well.

And finally, no examination of tech trends in 2013 would be complete without a discussion of cloud. IT Market Dynamics, the research arm of IT in Canada, has observed that there is no longer a single cloud market – that cloud is morphing into a range of discrete solutions which address many different business issues. Responses gathered for this article support this position. Cloud, for example, has limited current impact on Baldwin’s business 8 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

activity – he is starting to look at “cloud-ish technologies” to support grid computation, adding that his unit is “pretty traditional” in its overall approach to IT. Dillane is actively working with cloud to support DR within Randstad; he will save 10%-15% on on related infrastructure in the first year of deployment, and adds that cloud is “an evolution not a revolution – especially because we can’t just abandon all of our existing hardware and snap our fingers and move everything. So it will happen over time,” with production services eventually joining DR in the cloud. In other environments, cloud achieves other

ends as well: Ballance reports that Leaders Beyond is “seeing reliability and expertise [driving demand for cloud]…there are just not enough skills to go around, so in many cases, [delivery is] going to third party services. Cloud, SaaS and outsourcing have become a way of executing on projects that can’t be delivered internally.” Capone adds the observation that “a lot of people get hung up on what I would call the ‘false reasons’ to not do cloud: I don’t know where my data is, security, not understanding the total cost of ownership model. Those things are all ‘overcomable’…[but] it definitely takes leadership and courage.”

Craigg Ballance, program director, Leaders Beyond What changes do you see in IT budgeting practices?

Spending in the IT field is driven by projects that are driven by business initiatives. Aside from infrastructure, which is a constant need, the IT is less responsible for new money and new budgets as responsibility is pushed back to the business.

In an industry that is growing, like financial services, business management is driving new projects, which creates demand for infrastructure…but the budgets overall are tracking to business growth.

What’s the key constraint to IT management success?

Fear of failure. The media talks about how IT projects do not meet business requirements or user expectations. And people in IT say, “okay, then we need better specs, we need to buckle down and be more cautious, we need to think of more of the potential issues, we need to test beyond belief.” And what that has done over the past 8-9 years is it has bred this mentality of fear of failure. Now, if you meet a marketing or sales guy or a CEO who has been successful in an industry, failure is part of their option set. In fact, in some organizations, they expect a certain ratio of failure, to prove that you’re pushing the envelope.

That is not the mentality in IT. And in fact…many IT leaders are so afraid of failure, they will do nothing rather than something, in order to avoid having failed.

Andrew Dillane, CIO, Randstad Canada How are your IT budget priorities changing in 2013? We’re certainly allocating more funding to our client-facing business solutions. We’re not really scaling back on infrastructure, but we’re leveraging alternatives that put us in a position where don’t have to focus on them as much. So we save money, and can focus more on what runs on the infrastructure: business and customer solutions.

How do you move funding from operations to innovation? It’s difficult to slice that out exactly. The biggest portion of our IT spend is people – and one of the reasons for that is that our front end system, our web presence, is developed [internally]…when you’re on the same platform as your competitors, you can’t differentiate, you’re tied to traditional models, you don’t have the flexibility to adapt the solution to your business. We spend money on our people who are constantly improving our solutions in ways that are most important for our business, instead of paying for the past.

Words of advice for IT in Canada readers? Being close to customers is number one and being close to business solutions for customers is where the value is for IT. And just being at the executive table isn’t enough – are you driving initiatives that are of strategic value to the organization? Are you a leader in the executive team, helping to define how the business will change for the better, and differentiate vs. competitors in the long term? These are some of the questions today’s IT leaders need to continually ask themselves.

Technospective

ON Cloud Infrastructure

By Mary Allen

Cloud in 3D

Cloud adoption is growing in Canada, but will accelerate through better definition, differentiation and distribution.

I

f 2012 was marked by a growing acceptance of cloud computing by Canadian businesses, 2013 will be shaped by cloud in three ‘D’ – definition, differentiation and distribution to drive further implementation. While a majority of end user organizations have now experimented with cloud in one form another, in the infrastructure realm, the gap between adoption rates in Canada and other regions has simply narrowed. With the perspective of a multinational provider, Aldo Gallone, cloud lead for IBM Canada, noted, “Canada is still behind the curve in terms of

world cloud adoption... Though the inertia is over with, we need to move a little faster.”

Implementation has also been diffuse.

‘Cloud’ has functioned as a many splendored thing, referencing server virtualization, outsourcing of IT infrastructure, private/ public/hybrid hosting and everything in between. The accelerated adoption of multiple cloud models has had two consequences. Cloud discussions now centre more squarely on the nuts and bolts of service delivery, with better SLA definitions and pricing enabling what Chris Willis, global senior director, HDS cloud

service provider program, called “true cloud financial procurement (i.e., pay by the drink) as opposed to leases and other financial instruments that are currently being camouflaged as cloud.” A second outcome is renewed need for more education on cloud to help organizations determine the best delivery option for particular applications, and to inform user procurement with details on vendor competencies.

Sharpening the outline of vendor capabilities is in many ways a function of increasing competition in the cloud arena. Virtually all infrastructure providers

With the expansive build-out of public cloud services across the industry in the past couple of years, a challenge for many Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in 2013 will be filling that capacity in efforts to recoup the significant capital investments they have made. Competition and supply continue to increase in the market which is causing further commoditization. MSPs will need sound strategy and sizable marketing budgets to differentiate and eventually become profitable.

Another challenge in 2013 and beyond for many MSPs will be clearly defining their positions in the market. In my opinion, and largely accelerated by virtualization and cloud, the general “everything to everyone” providers will have trouble surviving in the near future. We have learned this lesson at Tenzing and continually focus tighter on specific markets and segments where we believe we can differentiate and do it better than anyone else.

Randy Fougere, senior VP, sales & marketing, Tenzing Managed IT Services Continued on page 10 IT is still too cautious. I also see a gap between IT and line of business. Line of business wants to get on with cloud, and IT is lagging. Everybody’s growth forecasts are appropriately high, but we still need to see IT embrace IaaS more – private, hosted and public and build your own. They need to get on with it or become irrelevant. They need to retain leadership by becoming the cloud service providers for LoB, they have got to become aggregators, they have to frame up and govern adoption of SaaS applications where appropriate, and they have to accelerate their own internal transformations, leveraging IaaS and PaaS.... Price wars are going to make public cloud extremely compelling. IT folks are now being asked to fully justify any new projects and requests for services against cloud alternatives. And they aren’t going to be able to ignore it anymore because it’s just too compelling.

Aldo Gallone, cloud lead, IBM Canada 9 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

Technospective

ON Cloud Infrastructure

have developed a cloud offering, but winning in this space will depend on welldefined solution messaging. As Randy Fougere, senior VP, sales & marketing, Tenzing Managed IT Services, explained, “a challenge for many Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in 2013 will be filling capacity in efforts to recoup the significant [cloud] capital investments they have made.

Competition and supply continue to increase in the market which is causing further commoditization.” Over 2013, Gallone expects to see the onset of “reconciliation” where “organizations that don’t have great financing or are not prepared for the pricing wars or cannot innovate over the long term are in for some pain.” In his view, this first stage of consolidation will benefit the tier one providers.

But what constitutes top tier in the

coming year? For many users, reliability is the key attribute, as outages in what is arguably the largest public cloud – Amazon Web Services – reinforced this past December. For providers, reliability may serve as a key differentiator: BLACKIRON Data president A.J. Byers looks forward to the “increased validation of security in a public platform” which certification bodies are beginning to advance and to “greater guarantees around performance and control” enabled by technology advance and better management tools. For other providers, ensuring reliability can entail building one’s own systems. According to RackForce Networks VP, Brian Fry, infrastructure vendors typically design for the enterprise customer, through “product development which just doesn’t work in a high volume service environment.”

Consequently, RackForce Networks developed its own storage model this year in order to “affordably provide multiple tiers of reliability and performance in 2013.”

Other means of differentiation include focus on a particular segment (ex. Tenzing offerings for eCommerce and SaaS providers), or in storage, incorporating state-of-the art software capabilities to serve the new demands of the cloud and social media age: Hadoop solutions, for example, or an “intelligence-driven security model,” explained EMC Canada managing director Michael Sharun, that relies on “an understanding of risk, the use of pattern recognition and predictive analytics” to help build the security needed to drive further cloud adoption.

An ongoing question in the cloud discourse is the debate over public vs.

The underlying considerations for public versus private are really related to appropriate levels of security and privacy being available (which they are) and whether the application or service is deemed a differentiator for the organization in terms of realization of their value proposition. Where the requirement does not differentiate, the enterprise will default to where greater value for money can be delivered. This is typically found in the public cloud due to scale, related efficiencies and expertise.

An additional and important benefit of the public cloud is the variable nature of the deliverable – I can pay for what I need, when I need it – versus building capacity that will sit idle for much of the time. Most customers will end up in a hybrid world, accessing the scale and efficiency of public cloud offers where appropriate, private where the need or deliverable is unique and always having the ability to augment one with the other.

Paul Cooper, Dell Canada country manager

Private clouds continue to be an enormous challenge as the enterprise has to not only figure out cloud technology but also how to build the infrastructure and software to support it. Most private cloud initiatives will fail, pushing users towards the public cloud. Many do not like the public cloud model but a new door is opening called hosted private clouds which is dedicated hardware hosted inside of a service provider. This combination of public and hosted private clouds will meet everyone’s needs allowing for the ultimate hybrid model.

Brian Fry, senior VP, RackForce Networks Inc.

If you consider that virtualization is a ramp to cloud, then it is fair to say many customers are well along the way with 50 per cent+ of their x86 servers virtualized. Virtualization has saved companies millions in CAPEX, but only through automation and self-service delivery (private cloud) can they attack the larger bucket of dollars that flow on the operations side (OPEX)... this is the biggest challenge for this coming year for many companies. We are only at the beginning of the journey to realize the benefits of the Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC) which extends the virtualization paradigm to storage and networking. The SDDC extends characteristics such as elasticity, fault tolerance, efficiency and self service that many customers are familiar with to the complete infrastructure layer. This approach will yield significant capital and OPEX savings over time.

Grant Aitken, area VP, VMware Canada

www.itincanada.ca Continued on page 12 10 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

B

“wh

You...

Canadian cloud providers “how can I increase visibility for our offerings?”

Business managers “how can I automate my business processes?”

“what are my options for reducing costs and increasing agility?”

Investors “who are the innovators in the Canadian economy?”

IT managers

All threads lead to

cloudfingr

http://www.cloudfingr.ca/ THE DEFINITIVE DIRECTORY OF CANADIAN CLOUD RESOURCES

Technospective

ON Cloud Infrastructure

Continued from page 10

private cloud deployment. A strong case can certainly be made that there are substantial new benefits to be realized in both realms.

While additional applications will continue to move to public cloud as confidence in the model grows, as VMware Canada area VP Grant Aitken explained, Canadian users typically have yet to reap the CAPEX and OPEX savings offered through automation and the software defined data centre which extends the “virtualization paradigm to networking and storage.” Consensus has developed over the past year, however, that a hybrid model is likely to predominate for some time – even if examples of integrated working environments are still rare in Canada. Dell country manager Paul Cooper

offered a neat summary of the public/private conundrum: “Over time the distinction will diminish, customers will simply provision from assets that they own/manage and from others they simply rent when required, and the end user will not see any difference.”

As vendors work to enable this outcome in the near term, expect to see additional efforts in the area of application integration in particular.

A final ‘D’ for the coming year is distribution. “Build it and they will come” has proved as elusive in cloud as it has in baseball. As a result, a number of infrastructure vendors are finding the need to partner – either through the creation of SaaS app stores that will add content

value, or through new relationships with service provider partners that can offer complimentary or niche services. While this approach has some history with established vendors – VMware, for example, has a well established partner ecosystem for its cloud offerings, and IBM announced a strategy around MSPs this fall to service the infrastructure needs of distribution partners – it has also begun to permeate the next level. RackForce, for example, anticipates that 50% of new growth in the coming year will hail from “virtual service providers” who can offer “full support for the end user.” In the growing maturity of the cloud model, it seems, there is a place for the channel after all.

Certification bodies are now recognizing that shared cloud platforms can be as secure as physically separated environments – PCI, for example, will now certify shared cloud platforms for use in the payment card industry. Confusion in this area has been extensive of the past few years, but with clarity from some of these certification bodies, greater adoption will definitely occur.

Early shared cloud technology could not provide the guaranteed performance and control that was required to meet the needs of many production applications. Recent advancements now provide for stronger service level agreements around the performance of cloud resources in shared environments and hypervisor management tools like vCloud Director now allow direct access to resources in a public cloud environment.

With over 30% of IT departments currently utilizing or testing shared cloud environments, and IT budgets under continued pressure from the CFO, we believe that 2013 will be an explosive year for cloud growth in Canada.

A.J. Byers, president, BLACKIRON Data Inc.

Cloud is all about paying for what you consume, and not over-provisioning. Due to financial and revenue pressures, many companies will have a hard time moving to a true cloud procurement model which enables both their channel and direct partners to participate.

All customers require some form of analytics but have contented themselves with standard OLAP service levels. [But] In-Memory databases will become the standard. The number of iterations and powerful “what-if” analysis are [greatly] facilitated by memory speed computation. Future In-Memory database usage will become more and more accessible both technologically and financially, which should drive adoption. All workloads can benefit from this; the question is which workloads warrant the additional costs?

Chris Willis, global senior director, cloud service provider program, HDS Canada

The amount of digital data society generates continues to grow exponentially, so there will always be new opportunities for growth in information management.

Big Data will be a growth area for 2013 and beyond. The proliferation of digital data means there are more opportunities than ever to collect and analyze unstructured data to gain new insights and create new revenue opportunities for businesses. For example, a company could use Big Data analytics to collect social media information from multiple platforms and gauge public sentiment about a particular product or issue.

Big Data is still in its infancy, but as companies begin to identify more areas where Big Data can create value and more people are trained as Data Scientists, Big Data is really going to take off.

Michael Sharun, managing director, EMC Canada

12 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

Technospective

on Software-as-a-Service

By Joe Greene

SaaS Goes Mainstream 2013 will bring increased adoption, but questions and issues remain

A

ll markets mature at different rates and Software-as-a-Service is no different.

While the jury may still be out on when SaaS will be considered a mature market (2014, 2015...), there is no question that it is now mainstream. It’s hard to pick up a newspaper, go to a general news website or catch the latest business news on TV without seeing something related to cloud computing. The outlook for cloud is bright indeed. However, as with all markets that progress from mainstream to mature, there are potential pitfalls and 2013 will see continued reluctance on the part of some organizations to adopt due to these issues.

In conducting research for cloudfingr, the definitive directory of cloud in Canada, IT Market Dynamics has developed a list of over 250 Canadian headquartered providers of cloud services. Of these, approximately 170 offer SaaS. When cloudfingr launched in late November 2012, 125 SaaS providers had been identified, and two months later, additional research has uncovered 45 more.

ITMD anticipates the number will grow before it shrinks, either through acquisition or bankruptcy, outcomes that will occur over time, and that end users need to be cognizant of when contracting for SaaS services. Buyers should have data ownership

and smooth transition plans in place to cover these eventualities.

These plans entail having SLAs in place that are as air-tight as possible. Many SMBs, unaccustomed to dealing with pay-as-you-go IT services, will unfortunately throw caution to the wind and sign up for cloud services assuming the provider has their best interests at heart. In the majority of cases, this will be true, but in others, due to circumstances beyond the provider’s control, this trust will be misplaced. SMBs need to pay particular attention to the contracts they sign. While large organizations often have outsourcing experience where SLAs are a critical piece of the engagement, they too need to take proper precautions to ensure they are getting the most from their cloud services.

Contracting aside, SaaS has become an indispensable tool for SMBs and will presumably become so for large enterprises in the future. Cloud, and SaaS in particular, has allowed SMBs to compete with much larger organizations from almost every angle.

For SMBs, SaaS has achieved what ebusiness was meant to do at the turn of the century – it has leveled the playing field. SaaS will not, however, replace sound business acumen and judgement. Those cannot be purchased on a monthly basis.

Larger organizations, both government and enterprise, are often criticized for their slow adoption of cloud services. “You will be left behind and at a competitive disadvantage” is the mantra. They have, however, invested huge sums of money in infrastructure, maintenance and license agreements that cannot be easily terminated.

Nor should they be. Adoption by larger organizations has been more strategic, with greater focus on building private cloud infrastructure, and will no doubt remain that way in 2013.

As SMBs and large enterprises deploy cloud services, a question arises. Has SaaS become the next BYOD in terms of the headache it is causing IT? Part of the problem, at least from the perspective of business leaders, is the rigid hold IT has on all things technology. At the same time, IT views itself as guardian of the data that is being sent into the cloud. Both sides will need to work this out in 2013.

2013 will see the continued adoption of cloud services, and increasingly, all aspects of cloud will come together, including SaaS, IaaS/PaaS and services to form the ecosystem needed to support business productivity and agility.

January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 13

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2013 will be the year that SaaS—and related PaaS— becomes ubiquitous. Last year, everyone brought the ir own device to work, driving the BYOD trend. Next year, we’ll see many enterprise leaders shifting companies and taking not only their own dev ice hardware, but their Saa S application access with the m. That will force IT leadershi p to manage not just multiple hardware models, but data across multiple clouds as well. That in turn will drive investment in and comme rcial adoption of application portability technologies.

In 2013, leading IaaS and hypervisor providers will move up the stack to integra te PaaS technology into the ir ser vice and product offering s. Infrastructure providers know they risk commoditizat ion where the lowestprice provider wins. Integra ting the technology and/ or partnering with PaaS tec hnologies will enable those infrastructure companies to differentiate their ser vice s in a noisy cloud market.

2013 will also be a year of uptake for us. We just signed an OEM partnership deal with HP. The HP Cloud will soo n offer the HP Cloud Application PaaS powered by Stackato from ActiveState, and as a result, we’ll see significant uptake in Stackato customer usage.

Bart Copeland, CEO, Active State

Cloud BI to ols alternative are much more affo rdable tha s, so the te n tr ch to organiz ations of a nology has become aditional ll accessible sizes, not BI software just o as reduce ffers much greater b large enterprises. d complexi usiness ag ty a ilit we’re able to innovate nd time to deploy. [W y, as well and roll ou it customer base t new featu h cloud], res to our Incidee wil much faster than w a l continue to focus o s possible pre-cloud analytics n the socia market th . is year. Th purely tha is technolo l business nks to the g y e m m arket exis as cloud a ts doption gro ergence of cloud te chn w turn, reali ze the valu s and many more en ology. So, e of terprises, improve th in e way they social tools to tran sform and d business, we’ll conti o nue to see signif icant upta ke in our services.

SMB to drive gro s will continue wth in clou d computing in 2013.

Mark Cunn ingham, C EO, Indicee

CO 14 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

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We see IT relationships differently

CONNECTING CANADIAN IT www.itincanada.ca

INSIGHTFUL THOUGHT LEADERSHIP http://itmarketdynamics.itincanada.ca

IN the MIDDLe

By kevin Priddle

From left to right: trent Dilkie, vP and chief security officer, access infrastructure solutions, Gibraltar tim Lomax, president, smartPrint sylvain tremblay, executive vP, cPu Dave White, ceO, trinus technologies Rick Reid, president, tech Data canada Mitchell Martin, president, syNNeX canada

Predictions and possibilities

I

n IT in Canada’s Forecast edition last year, our experts focused on the themes of cloud, mobility and security. But their key message was that these trends don’t operate as separate entities within the IT space, and they emphasized in conversation just how closely interconnected these technology areas really are.

Our experts hit the nail on the head and 2012 witnessed the emergence of Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5 smartphones, the iPad mini and Windows tablets supported by cloud computing. 2012 can perhaps best be summarized as ‘a year of IT consumerization in the business realm.’

This year’s In the Middle discussion features many of these same themes, with emphasis on the continued blurring of the lines between corporate and consumer IT usage.

Our reseller experts see more companies adopting BYOD mobile strategies, as well as growth in mobile device management and security as a result. They predict even greater growth in the tablet and Ultrabook/ convertible market, though some disagreement has emerged around the future of the desktop.

Managed services and SaaS revenue models are also expected to become more

16 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

prevalent as cloud continues to gather steam in the coming year. But some of our panel members warned that the cost of cloud may spike as smaller cloud providers, who are unable to compete with the big players, become the target of acquisition activity.

Q: What new/innovative technologies or solutions will make an impact on the market in 2013? and what will drive mainstream acceptance?

Trent Dilkie, Gibraltar: 2012 was a BYOD breakout year with about 70% of Canadian corporations allowing employees to use their own personal mobile devices for work purposes. The popularity and growth of BYOD meant incremental complexities and administrative burdens for many overtaxed IT departments. We expect IT to respond in 2013 with an array of new MDM projects and initiatives. Solutions built on the capabilities of Citrix CloudGateway and/ or VMware Horizon will do well in 2013.

Seeing that we are less than 14 months from Windows XP end of life, we are also expecting companies to double down on their migration efforts. This will accelerate many corporations’ Windows transition

plans, leading to higher adoption of application and desktop virtualization, and movement to the cloud (SaaS).

Tim Lomax, SmartPrint: We will see document capture and workflow solutions streamline business process and document flow to create savings and productivity gains in the mid-market. Proven enterprise-level hardware and software solutions will also move down into the mid-market. Once captured, documents will be stored in the cloud and acceptance will be driven by MPS (managed print service) solutions companies’ ability to ease document movement into and out of cloud, and by the capability to search and support cloud documents with mobile devices. Simplified storage and retrieval at the desktop level and device security will also drive acceptance.

Rick Reid, Tech Data Canada: Consumerization will continue to drive mobility and BYOD crossing over into the enterprise market. Corporate IT spending will continue to move from data centres and software licenses to cloud services. In the channel, we’ve seen the number of server workloads done in virtualized environments grow from 25% to 60%.

IN the MIDDLe

Sales of Ultrabooks, convertible notebooks and tablets will keep growing in 2013.

And integration, security and manageability will become more critical as we see demand grow for cross-platform and multi-environment applications. I predict we’ll see more packaging of software and services. SAP and others will speed up delivery of apps to influence In-Memory capability.

Sylvain Tremblay, CPU: 2013 will see mobility make a great impact on the market, and SaaS model solutions will take off in government, as this sector is focusing on budgets (particularly in Québec) and must be more effective with fewer people and less money.

Twenty years ago we switched from running after everyday revenue to recurrent revenue based on three-to-five-year contracts. Now we need to secure this recurrent revenue base and add a SaaS revenue model without decreasing our total company revenue. This is a very challenging goal because what we are seeing is cheaper businesses offering SaaS solutions.

Dave White, Trinus: The industry is abuzz with cloud computing in all its various formats. Early adopters have blazed the

trail and now it’s time for mainstream SMBs to move in. But the road will not be easy.

Look for SMBs to implement hybrid and private cloud models as the least painful way to transition from their client-server applications. Opportunities abound for savvy support specialists and integrators to offer value-add services as they coach their SMB clients in cloud services, but you have to be smart.

Mitchell Martin, SYNNEX Canada: Cloud, mobility and Windows 8 all represent quite a bit of change in how the channel goes to market with new solutions. The willingness of the channel to shift its focus and add real value around each of these things is what will drive mainstream acceptance.

Q: are there any technologies that will begin to fade or become obsolete in 2013, and if so, why?

Trent Dilkie: Traditional desktops as we know them today will start to fade in 2013.

I believe this started a while ago with the introduction of the Apple iPad, but what will be different in 2013 is the acceleration of this decline. We foresee companies accelerating their adoption of virtualization

and cloud technologies to increase security capabilities and platform flexibility.

Tim Lomax: Large, expensive, centralized A3 (11 x 17) copiers are in fast decline and will continue to lose market share as smaller, less expensive devices offering better document management capabilities are placed closer to the users.

Rick Reid: The concept of a single, corporate data warehouse will die. Multiple systems need to be tied together. We’ll also see traditional clamshell notebooks continue to decline as convertibles increase.

Sylvain Tremblay: It’s hard to predict. We thought that the desktop would die fast and be replaced by laptops and tablets, but we will still have customers buying desktop at least for the next three to five years.

Dave White: News of the demise of the desktop computer is greatly exaggerated.

Anyone who has ever visited a professional office sees the explosion of multi-monitor desktop workstations with high-horsepower graphics and computing power. Try connecting two 27” high-res monitors to your tablet…

January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 17

In the Middle I’ve also heard that the keyboard and mouse are dead – long live the touch screen! This industry has spent 20-plus years training people to use these triedand-true devices to the point where they are ubiquitous and natural. There are hundreds-of-thousands of applications used by tens-of-millions of users that do NOT lend themselves well to touch screen use, especially on a desktop and I think the wholesale move to touch screens is a decade away.

Mitchell Martin: Packaged software will begin to fade as the market shifts toward electronic distribution via web-based cloud applications.

Q: What’s one bad habit channel leaders should kick in 2013?

Trent Dilkie: Heavy reliance on backend dollars (volume rebates and deal registration incentives) for profitability. These types of incentives are diminishing in dollars and are harder to secure. Channel partners will do well to transition from relying on backend incentives to make deals “whole.”

Tim Lomax: A bad habit is not protecting partners who have invested in developing an opportunity then get into an open bid with little to no margin. Channel leaders should partner with fewer, more capable partners and protect them to win profitable business.

Rick Reid: Channel leaders have been making changes to their processes and programs in response to the needs of resellers. They need to continue to be receptive to the voice of the resellers if they want to support partner recruitment and enablement.

The channel leaders should meet and talk together regularly to be less dependent on the manufacturers and the distributors (they are working together to face the channel).

Mitchell Martin: Resellers should get out of the habit of selling product as opposed to selling solutions. They need to be much more focused on creating and wrapping services around selling hardware and software.

18 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

Cloud solutions, for example, are services by nature. On the flip side, resellers should focus on going narrow and deep as opposed to being generalists.

Q: What business practices within the channel will be important to growth in 2013 and how is this changing?

that will take places as the industry matures (and smaller providers are gobbled up by the big players) price increases seem inevitable to me. I also suspect there are cloud providers who really shouldn’t be in this game; they don’t have the deep pockets or experience to provide mission-critical computing services to unsuspecting clients.

Trent Dilkie: Employee retention, especially technical associates, should be a key initiative in 2013. With the continued erosion of hardware margins and the emergence of virtualization and cloud computing, many channel partners are looking to build or increase their service capabilities. This makes talent management (acquisition and retention) a high priority for 2013.

Mitchell Martin: Fundamentally, resellers have to change their business models to encompass managed services as opposed to selling on product only. The cloud is a good example of this. Additionally, resellers are going to specialize more on a particular technology focus versus being generalists.

Tim Lomax: As print focused manufacturers broaden their portfolios and increase their solution offerings, they’re looking to work closer with fewer VARs who have made a commitment to bringing those managed services to the mid-market. Fewer, more capable partners can deliver end-toend solutions and differentiate from price and device features.

Trent Dilkie: There will be more press about communal cloud initiatives and adoption; there will be a major security breach from a bad BYOD implementation; and we will finally come to a consensual understanding and definition for “Big Data”.

Rick Reid: It’s never been more important to attract and retain the right talent to support your business. Resellers should focus on services and value-add. In a hypercompetitive market, low margins make it more difficult to compete on price. Service will be the difference that makes or breaks a deal.

Technology vendors need to listen to their resellers’ pain points if they want to grow their reseller share. Vendors need to make their processes and programs easier for resellers to do business with them. We’ll see more focus on delivering new functionality and new experiences to both end users and end customers.

Dave White: The cost of cloud computing is going to rise in 2013. I suspect that cloud providers have been buying business lately in an effort to build market share and once the players are hooked, prices will go up.

When added to the natural consolidation

Q: Any other predictions for 2013?

Tim Lomax: 2013 will see more market consolidation. Basic Managed Services are now mainstream – true partners now need to lead their clients with business process improvements to stay ahead of the curve.

Rick Reid: We’re seeing the line between corporate and individual IT usage blurring.

BYOD has influenced the shift from business applications to new apps and the Big Data delivered behind them. The channel will become more efficient about using existing IT to respond to end-user and end-customer demand for new functionality and new experiences. I also predict 2013 will be the year for acquisitions and mergers within the reseller community.

Sylvain Tremblay: I believe that we are adding more intelligence and building our knowledge base through social networks and this is going to become a very powerful tool for enterprise productivity. Security in mobile solutions will also be an interesting growth market.

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Technospective

on Networking & Communications

By Mary Allen

Connectivity parry and thrust What good is a cloud that drifts into view but just out of reach?

N

etworking and communications have served as the backbone of IT operations since the advent of distributed computing and the Internet, but new trends are reinforcing the critical role of communications. While the anytime, anywhere demands of the mobile revolution are marching from the consumer realm into virtually all business applications, cloud computing is aggregating content to drive further need for new levels of dynamic, remote access. These demands are drawing

the more creative connectivity players into new territory – new technology, products and services and a new way of thinking about markets.

Arguably, the most dynamic shifts are occurring within the service provider community. If “cutting the cord” through a shift to IP communications means cost and productivity savings for the end user, declining wireline service revenues have required new business models of the provider, which is simultaneously

barraged by massive increases in data traffic, changing user mode preferences, ongoing need for investment in bigger, more reliable networks and growing price competition introduced by recent CRTC decisions that allow foreign investment.

How is this group responding?

As our expert commentators have outlined, providers are taking full advantage of the growing convergence of IT and telecom to launch multiple products that can service increasing access/collaboration

Big data will be a growth area in the short and long term. Whether it’s a machine-to-machine (M2M), enterprise voice or managed WiFi service, our growth opportunity lies in our ability to layer value added services on top of data networks.

This means that we will not solely provide ‘connectivity’ – we will with customers collect and analyze data that they can use to make strategic decisions to improve business operations and customer engagement.

Increased access to more reliable, resilient, faster networks across the country will inspire our business customers to think about new ways to leverage wireless technology. Previously, customers would have had to install infrastructure to support business productivity applications. Access to better networks means business productivity applications and data securely store stored in the ‘cloud’ can be accessed on tablets and smartphones quickly, anytime, anywhere. Whether it’s an M2M application or an in-store system, better networks present an opportunity for cost savings and more efficient operations.

Larry Baldachin, senior VP, business segment, Rogers Communications

Many communications service providers are focusing on collecting data on individual consumer behavior (usage habits) vs. household. There will be much more emphasis on data collection and use of advanced analytics in order to more effectively respond to individual customers’ needs. With product marketing, this may involve activities such as location-based advertising, targeted advertising and contextual advertising.

Small and medium business is traditionally the most difficult market to serve from the perspective of product development, and sales and support. New technologies are opening powerful opportunities for this segment. As an example, Unified Communications is becoming a must-have product. Business customers expect to be connected, with full access to their office-like applications and information wherever they may be – at home, on a business trip, or on vacation. Enabling this level of connectivity requires comprehensive solutions often involving multiple technologies such as connected devices and cloud solutions.

Zoran Stakic, CIO, Shaw Communications Inc. 20 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

Networking & Communications

expectations. While TELUS expects to invest in cloud and network security as well as new 3G, 4G and WiFi services to manage M2M communications, Rogers senior business VP Larry Baldachin also sees good growth opportunity in the Big Data explosion (including enterprise voice, M2M and managed WiFi) and the “layer of value added services on top of data networks,” such as data analysis or mobile device management.

According to Shaw Communications CIO, Zoran Stakic, segmenting and marketing mobile data app services to the individual

consumer (rather than household) through advanced analytics, and the continued development of UC and collaboration solutions for the SMB will be key, while Primus intends to continue building next gen business solutions that provide low latency bandwidth, support BYOD, and offer improved accessibility as well as hosted cloud solutions.

If the service provider segment is moving beyond delivery of the ‘pipe’, networking equipment providers are undergoing similar transformation to respond to the

Technospective

demands of cloud and mobility. A major shift into network virtualization, which automates the allocation of bandwidth channels to different servers/devices in real time, has been a critical piece in the operation of cloud environments. Many vendors, including the organizations represented here, have developed or are working on the concept of software-defined networking, where data traffic is ‘shaped’ – prioritized, blocked or channeled – from a centralized control console that allows administrators very granular control and

While no one expects the economy to recover suddenly, the real challenge many network equipment vendors will face is increasingly sceptical customers who are unconvinced that continuing to do things in the traditional way when it comes to their network needs will help them move their businesses forward. Customers are actually more willing to try new technologies, but anyone who fails to prove the claims they are making, or who thinks customers will continue to purchase and deploy network technology in the same way they used to, is going to find 2013 a very tough year.

Regan McGrath, VP, worldwide sales, Brocade

I do want to add that users will use their mobile devices increasingly for “smart” applications involving data transfer, social networking, video, and other forms of collaboration. They’ll need advanced devices and data plans to support such usage.

Conversely, wired voice telephony dropped in status over the past 5-10 years as mobility overtook it in importance to enterprise customers. It’s not going away, however, since nearly all office workers continue to require a desk phone or IP (virtual) equivalent. Still, in terms of productivity, the IP phone has “cut the cord” from the office desk – employees can use their IP or virtual IP phones from any location. This facilitates flexible work arrangements and more efficient use of corporate real estate such as TELUS Workstyles.

David Weiss, VP, solutions development and enterprise marketing, TELUS

Recent [CRTC] decisions regarding foreign ownership in Canada will open the door to a rapid rate of investment in the telecom sector. These investments will produce a very different landscape in the next 12-24 months through the development and proliferation of new technology that was in the past not previously available, or out of reach from a pricing perspective, to many Canadian businesses. Solutions that enterprises have been taking advantage of for years will become more ubiquitous in the SMB space, such as MPLS, Ethernet Services, and more rapid adoption of hosted and cloud based solutions. Customers have more choice, and potentially see more value from better pricing and customization, which in turn could drive higher bandwidth demands. In addition, wireless data will become a viable option for many small businesses, allowing them to operate in a fully mobile environment.

Nilpa Srivastava, VP, Primus Business Services

January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 21

Technospective

on Networking & Communications

the ability to dynamically change switch rules when necessary. According to Cisco Canada president, Nitin Kawale, “SDN is still in a very embryonic stage of development,” and while service providers may be ahead of the game, “realistically, enterprises are approximately three to seven years away from adoption of SDN.” By adopting “an incremental approach,” however, that ultimately integrates SDN solutions at the infrastructure, control plane and application layers, HP Canada VP, networking, Ron Fuller believes companies can use SDN to begin to build the new flexibility needed to manage networking in

multi-tenanted cloud architectures.

These kinds of advances in networking technology, combined with enhanced connectivity in next-generation cell and WiFi networks, is stimulating new definitions of the ‘networked community’.

Extending beyond the LAN or WAN of yesteryear, this community could encompass, as Doug Lindner, director, systems engineering, Juniper Canada, describes it, the mobile subscription user – both human and machine – or a more tightly defined, campus concept.

As Kawale noted: “It’s time to rethink the purpose of our communities” and

take advantage of enhanced broadband and IT-enabled connectivity to provide new levels of group services. A leader in visioning the technology use case, Cisco has demonstrated initiatives to connect specific communities – municipal infrastructure systems, for example, for better energy management, eGovernment digital kiosks for more citizen services, collaboration systems to push training and healthcare benefits to remote locations, and connected buildings to create more productive workspaces – while simultaneously defining new market opportunities for the network and networking providers.

Many enterprises are unable to create business innovation because of aging networking environments. Network design and architectures have remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. While applications and systems have evolved to meet the demands of a world where real time rules, the underlying network infrastructure has not kept pace.

As companies move to cloud and other computing environments, manual configuration of networks through command-line interface (CLI) coding has proven to be error prone, as well as time and resource intensive. Softwaredefined networks (SDN) point products offer a centralized control plane, but fall short by not enabling automated configuration of network infrastructure or providing SDN applications to roll out new services for campus and branch networks. This incomplete approach creates complexity and unnecessary manual coding requirements.

Ron Fuller, Vice President, networking, HP Canada

Frankly, the technology is available to build what we can dream. We are working on real implementation that will transform citizen engagement through interactive signage and kiosks, enhancing life’s experiences. We are working on innovative Remote Government Services Kiosks that will deliver government services through a network of distributed user-friendly technology-enabled kiosks, eliminating the need to travel to dedicated government buildings that consume too many resources and are inefficient to operate. We are working on the delivery of education and healthcare in the farthest corners of our country, serving remote and underserved communities through advanced video and collaboration technologies in remote and mobile service centers.

Nitin Kawale, president, Cisco Canada

If we agree that the freedom that mobility brings to the network user has fueled the growth in network subscriber attachment, it would not seem a stretch to consider that any service that improves upon this freedom will be adopted in fast fashion. Perhaps the most obvious service would be the expansion of entertainment services over mobile infrastructures where consumer interests in the immediate access to entertainment sources remain very high. Perhaps a not so obvious service is in the machine-to-machine (M2M) space where the very devices themselves will require information, exchange telemetry and enact control from other machine-based sources.

Several examples of M2M application are in-car information centers, fleet management systems, home automation solutions, security and surveillance systems, not to forget about some very common systems we’re already familiar with like e-Readers and tablet computers that leverage 3G and LTE technologies. When the possibilities of these applications are considered, the sheer potential of M2M to influence our day-to-day life experiences is tremendous.

Doug Lindner, director, systems engineering, Juniper Canada

22 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

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Technospective

Collaboration

By Rachel Levy Sarfin

Collaboration en marche

Look for more video, more mobile and more integration of UC and social work platforms in the year to come.

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omentum in the UC and social work spheres built over 2012 as innovations such as enhanced video collaboration and cloud-based deployment made their way to market. The coming year promises to bring more exciting news to both of these platforms. To understand more about what’s to come in the field of collaborative business technology in 2013, IT in Canada canvassed providers in the UC and social arenas. Though our commentators agreed that this market will undergo some pretty significant change, not surprisingly, our expert panel offered some divergent

opinions on the shape of trends we will likely see.

Activity in the UC field will accelerate in the next year through the introduction of new features that will make it easier for users to work from anywhere, on any mobile device and with anyone else. Video communication will also increase. And being in constant contact may no longer drain productivity, as UC solutions will emerge that enable better monitoring of users’ activities.

Amir Hameed, VP, Americas techical sales, Avaya, believes that customers will see “user interfaces that are optimized to the device ca-

pability, network and location; collaboration capabilities that are integrated into desktop and mobile computing environments; and the increased use of video as a regular, everyday tool.” He added that “businesses and employees will begin to resist the negative effects that some UC capabilities have (i.e. the impact instant messaging can have on productivity) and look to solutions that are more sensitive or aware of what the recipient is doing.”

While many users may be using a UC solution to stay in contact with colleagues and others, this may not entail collaboration

Many organizations are realizing that to collaborate, they can’t just deploy collaboration software and expect changes in how work is done. Just because you build it, they won’t necessarily come. There is a lot of debate right now about the relationship between collaboration and organizational culture, but that’s often just looking for an excuse for why a particular deployment failed. In reality, collaboration needs to happen with a purpose and recognition that leads directly to the notion of an embedded collaboration. The application provides the purpose – opening an account or paying an invoice – and embedded collaboration makes that easier to do.

Lubor Ptacek, SVP, strategic marketing, OpenText

Customer and end user demand will drive change. In many ways UC & C is still very cumbersome. There are too many options to communicate that are still siloed applications and require the user to jump from one mode to another. We know that current trends like BYOD, mobile enterprise, and consumerization have taken hold in the enterprise and there’s no going back, so vendors need to do what UC has promised to do: tightly integrate multi-modal applications and make them easily available from any device at any time.

Amir Hameed, VP, Americas technical sales, Avaya

24 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

Collaboration through a social work platform. In 2013, industry leaders are confident that that will change through greater adoption of such social software.

Stephen Rahal, marketing and communications manager, Igloo Software, commented that he expects to see deployments of his company’s products and those of its counterparts “continue to accelerate.” Why will collaborative platforms become even more popular in 2013? Because they let employees connect to each other just as they would on a social network like Facebook. Unlike Facebook, the items appearing in an employee’s newsfeed will help him or her get their work done. Rahal believes that this technology “has moved beyond a trend to something that has transformative power for business.”

Due to its enormous potential, expect leadingsoftware firms to invest heavily in this space. “It’s a big market,” Rahal said.

As with UC solutions, collaborative platforms will receive new updates to help users complete their assignments quickly and efficiently. Customers might even see enterprise software gain social capabilities to make

the sharing of important information easier.

Lubor Ptacek, SVP, strategic marketing, OpenText, predicted that such platforms will “become features rather than independent solutions.” He commented, “We will be seeing more and more collaborative technology embedded into CRM, ERP, ECM, BPM and other enterprise software.”

Although social technology might integrate with CRM systems in 2013, when are we likely to see a solution that combines UC with a collaborative business platform?

That depends on whom you ask. Hameed expressed confidence that UC will be integrated into social work platforms as well as consumer-oriented networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. “Federation exchanges will allow application vendors such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google to federate their functions to increase reach while allowing their subscriber base to maintain security and access,” he stated.

While Ptacek anticipates the integration of collaborative business platforms into enterprise software, he remained pessimistic that 2013 will be the year for the debut of

Technospective

a merged UC and social work solution. He has been waiting for this type of integration for several years, to no avail. “Most of the leading unified communication technologies ended up with vendors who didn’t pursue this unification, at least not seriously,” he explained. Ptacek believes that an integration of UC and social work platforms should take place, but won’t in the near term.

Judging by the predictions of industry leaders, the collaboration space is set for a period of transition. While UC platforms will evolve to become what Microsoft’s Jacky Magee calls “something that’s as central to routine business communications as the phone was a generation ago,” commentators such as Igloo’s Dixon see social technologies moving beyond internal collaboration into outward-facing, marketdriving activities. This will only be possible, however, through development of the purpose-built collaboration systems described

by IBM’s Greg Schiltroth, and the “tight integration of multi-modal applications” that, as Hameed so rightly noted, “UC has promised to do” for some time now.

Companies that are emerging as leaders in this social business space are not only promoting and using tools internally, to improve collaboration between their employees and generate new products and business ideas, but these businesses are applying social technologies to drive customer-facing activities such as lead generation, drive new sales and provide post-sales service.

Socially enabling these workers to be effective, collaborate and innovate is a major requirement for organizations. But organizations will want to deliver more than just email and calendars on mobile devices. Executives view this move to mobility to be a way to allow their employees to collaborate and generate new ideas and be more efficient anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Greg Schiltroth, business unit executive and regional brand leader, IBM social business & collaboration solutions

To stay relevant and competitive in this space, it comes down to how tools are integrated. You have to know your audience – what tools are they accustomed to using? If you tell them not to use certain tools, they’ll get upset. Culture is critical. You must know your audience. Embrace the behaviours your audience exhibits. You can’t turn existing workflow on its side. You need to understand how people do their job and put tools in there.

Andrew Dixon, SVP, sales and marketing, Igloo Software

Unified communications is going to evolve well beyond simply sending and receiving a message. That’s yesterday’s thinking.

We’ll see a stronger push toward adopting tools that make messaging come alive to the point that it drives the way we connect, the way we work and the way we succeed.

Expect 2013 to be the year when UC becomes not just something we talk about, but something that’s as central to routine business communications as the phone was a generation ago.

Jacky Magee, senior product manager, Lync, Microsoft Canada

January/February 20132 ITinCanada.ca / 25

Technospective

Security

By Kevin Priddle

Get security smart “Better security practices” is one resolution that should be kept in 2013 as new vulnerabilities emerge from mobile devices, advanced persistent threats and the cloud.

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s businesses from SMB to enterprise have welcomed mobile and cloudbased computing in recent years, hackers and cybercriminal have adapted the way they work to exploit vulnerabilities in new technologies that are now becoming mainstream.

The BYOD explosion has brought organizations and their employees to a new level of productivity and efficiency that previously was only dreamed of, but smart devices are challenging the “IT norm.” But as Doug Cooke, McAfee Canada’s director of sales engineering, pointed out, smart devices are challenging the “IT norm: most businesses can’t keep up with the number of mobile devices entering the organization, let alone focus on closing all of the security gaps that come with them.

MDM (Mobile Device Management) will no doubt become a more widely adopted ‘weapon of choice’ in 2013 to battle the increasingly complex problems associated with the proliferation of consumer gadgets, but as the tools workers use on a daily basis change, the security policies that govern them must also transform in order to keep pace.

“Any security policy that was inherently developed with the assumption that the physical network is secure simply falls apart and is not effective in the cloud,” Paul Comessotti, Canadian regional director, Check Point Software Technologies, noted.

Administrators need agile security to counter all of yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s threats.”

26 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

But CTOs and IT managers cannot operate in a silo – they need the entire company on board, according to Kevin Krempulec, head of North America-East regional corporate sales, Kaspersky Labs. “The new trend of BYOD should be countered with the creation of a corporate wide policy for mobile device use in which stakeholders from functional departments across the company – human resources, IT, line of business and legal – are involved,” he said.

Educating everyone – from the front line customer service rep or warehouse worker right up to the boardroom executives – about the risks and goals surrounding your organization’s IT security is a MUST. That education will not only help employees use mobile devices in a safer way, it will increase their awareness of another security concern that will flourish in 2013 – advanced persistent threats (APTs).

Highly sophisticated and precise attacks that gain access to networks and steal information silently are an increasing threat that is beginning to target a diverse range of verticals and business segments.

“Security attacks on organizations have become increasingly well-planned and executed,” McAfee’s Doug Cooke said. “Attackers are well-versed in the acts of cyber espionage and data breaching, and are leveraging zero-day and customized malware. Of greater concern is the fact that the proliferation of rootkits continues to escalate.”

All IT users need to be aware of the threats posed by social engineering (convincing-

looking profiles, websites or emails used by cybercriminals to phish for information) and should be careful about what they share on social media.

Check Point’s Paul Comessotti said one of the biggest mistakes companies can make (usually SMBs) is to think that no one is interested in their organization or their information, and that they are therefore safe from attacks.

“If this is you, think again!” he said. “By

Hackers continue to target social network sites as distribution hubs for malicious code. Examples of common approaches include inserting enticing status updates in news feeds to induce users to click on links. These links provide an avenue for malware attacks to gain access to protected systems and information.

Devices that have access to the enterprise need to be routinely updated with the latest security programs.

Enterprises need to understand what is running on their network in order to protect their digital assets.

Shawn MacCormack, regional sales manager, eastern Canada, Sourcefire

Security

virtue of being in the same geography, industry or another unintended affiliation as an intended target, any organization may be collateral damage.”

If you have to make one resolution for the coming year, commit to not being passive about security. Too often spending on security is slashed when it comes time to find ways to tighten the budget-belt and build profits.

Make sure your organization has the tools needed to properly manage the network and the devices residing on it, and more importantly, make sure you invest the time required to understand the current threat landscape and educate your staff on proper IT practices.

Cybercriminals constantly transform and new threats will always emerge, but if you take the time and effort to prepare your organization, you’ll be glad you made the investment.

Great care must be taken when working with HTML5 components because if they are not securely coded, they introduce a number of new attack vectors. Large websites coded in HTML5 can often have many of the same traits and capabilities of a small operating system! HTML5’s local storage API capabilities, webSQL, and DOM based XSS features require great care in their implementation because within this complexity lies the ability for a hacker to craft potential stealth attacks using exploits like cache poisoning, local SQL injection or XSS vulnerabilities.

Paul Comessotti, Canadian regional director, Check Point Software Technologies

Technospective

Don’t assume that ‘latest and greatest’ application you are downloading to your smartphone and/or tablet is secure. Mobile malware is growing at an exponential rate, especially for Android users. Since the Android app market is not locked down, any application can appear legitimate, only to leave you vulnerable to theft of your personal information, banking data and contacts.

A good habit to remember is – patch, patch, patch. This will minimize your risk exposure as many security updates incorporate your operating system updates, whether it be Windows, Mac, Android or iOS. Kevin Krempulec, head of east NA regional corporate sales, Kaspersky Labs

Symantec predicts there will be a significant increase in cloud outages in 2013, yet companies will continue to pour resources into cloud offerings. The need to manage and protect data that SMBs put in the cloud will lead to more adoption of backup and disaster recovery appliances, and cloud service providers will begin to innovate more secure and efficient recovery of data and applications.

Companies of all sizes will need to adopt better cloud management tools to protect their data because cloud outage problems will get worse before they get better – infrastructures that have scaled quickly with hand-written code and that utilize inefficient shared resources will result in major outages and some black eyes for the cloud computing market.

Malicious emails are making a comeback. Timed and targeted spearphishing email attacks, along with an increase in malicious email attachments, are providing new opportunities for cybercrime. Domain generation algorithms will also bypass current security to increase the effectiveness of targeted attacks.

2013 will also see legitimate mobile app stores host more malware. Malicious apps will increasingly slip through validation processes and will continue to pose risks to organizations enabling BYOD policies. In addition, jail-broken/ rooted devices and non-sanctioned app stores will pose significant risk to enterprises as more allow BYOD.

IT management needs be proactive in reaching out to business unit leads to discuss evolving business needs and the risks that various computing mechanisms may introduce.

By keeping the discussion focused on business issues and asking a few simple questions, IT professionals can gain a better understanding of what security strategy to take. Questions to business leaders can include the following: - What computing “riches” within the organization need to be protected?

- What actions could be taken by malicious intruders that would “ruin” the organization?

- What regulations need to be addressed to keep auditors and regulators happy?

The more IT management can engage with business leaders, the better the chance they will be involved in the decision-making process

Sean Forkan, country manager, Canada, Symantec Corporation

Fiaaz Walji, country manager, Canada, Websense

Doug Cooke, director of Sales Engineering, McAfee Canada

January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 27

Technospective on Personal Technology

By Rachel Levy Sarfin

Diversity and management are key to mobile success Thought leaders in the mobile device field share their predictions for 2013.

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ook around your office and ask yourself how many of your coworkers use smartphones. The number is probably quite high. Well over half of Canadian wireless customers now use smartphones. You might also notice that more and more of your colleagues are using tablets. Tablets will soon become a workplace fixture, and according to Gartner analyst David Willis, 90% of those devices are purchased by employees. The role of smartphones and tablets in the workspace will only grow in prominence in 2013.

As smartphone and tablet use continues to rise, Eric Nicolaisen, senior director, enterprise product communication, RIM, believes that businesses will increase their focus on ensuring the security of corporate data being accessed by these devices. And as more employees gain access to important information through their smartphones, Nicolaisen foresees “faster decision making,” which will result in “a flatter organization” with fewer employees because companies will eliminate extraneous workers.

Which operating system or platform will employees use in 2013 to access corporate and personal data? Paul Brannen, VP, enterprise business solutions, Samsung, does not see one particular OS emerging as a victor in the platform wars. For smartphone manufacturers to stay relevant in this space, Brannen believes that offering a “diverse line up of products,” including both Android and Windows 8 phones, is the key to success. He added that “Android is an important part of this market,” but that Windows 8 will become another big

28 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

player in the coming year.

The Windows 8 operating system will also play a prominent role in the tablet space, according to Tina Walker, VP, PC category, printing and personal systems, HP Canada. “This trend will be driven by the business tablets that are geared toward enterprise customers looking for the mobility of a tablet and the familiarity of Windows to support their custom apps, corporate infrastructure and security requirements,” she said. Walker cited the “user interface advances Microsoft has made with Windows 8” as one of the drivers of tablet success in 2013.

Does the rise in tablet popularity mean that laptops will lose market share? Peter Mockler, president, Lenovo Canada, does not think so. “The flexibility offered by convertible laptops is mitigating the challenge from tablets,” he commented.

“Convertibles” are laptops with screens that swivel or detach. Mockler disagrees with the notion that a “post-PC revolution” is taking place, and predicted that “the PC will remain central to the digital lives of millions of people and businesses, stay at the heart of an ecosystem of tablets, and include all major operating systems, chipsets, apps and cloud-delivered services.” Mockler added, “Innovation in PCs, regardless of the form factor (laptops or desktops), will generate demand based on consumer and commercial needs.”

As the number of smartphones and tablets rise, will businesses get a better handle on mobile device management? Elizabeth Cholawsky, VP and GM, IT support line of

business, Citrix, expressed confidence that companies will be able to manage the flood of disparate devices and platforms their employees bring as the BYOD trend becomes a fact of life. “There is little doubt that all companies are quickly becoming educated about the management of employee-owned devices and are making savvy decisions on the tools need to manage these devices,” she said.

Businesses will need to “provision and protect the company’s data yet still allow the end user freedom of choice for personal apps, while supporting the user in realtime,” Cholawsky remarked. MDM (Mobile Device Management) customers will pressure manufacturers to deliver these capabilities “in a single, integrated, easy-to-use package,” she added. Cholawsky expects that smaller companies facing the complexities of BYOD will also begin investing in MDM solutions that fit their needs. On the mobile OEM side, Cholawsky believes that manufacturers “will see that partnering with mobile management providers to develop integrated solutions will create an opportunity to offer advance capabilities and improved usability.”

Effective MDM might just be the most important task for companies in the coming year. With employees empowered to choose their own devices, businesses need to find a way to keep enterprise data safe on a variety of platforms and operating systems. If they can find a way to successfully manage the profusion of mobile devices making their way into workspaces everywhere, 2013 should be a good year indeed.

Personal Technology

Technospective

Use of smartphones in the workplace, both personal and corporate provisioned, will continue to increase. Companies will be looking to extend functionality beyond access to email, calendars and contact information so that employees have access to corporate data allowing them to make decisions on the go. That in turn, will mean an increased focus on security, to help ensure confidential corporate information is protected.

A combination of advancements in smartphone technology and organizations looking to improve productivity will drive the trend. Smartphones are becoming more powerful and more accessible to the consumer which will allow for increased adoption.

This adoption will allow device owners to be more collaborative and more productive than ever before and will drive continued desire to bring devices into the workplace (BYOD).

Eric Nicolaisen, senior director, enterprise product communication, RIM

As the demand for mobile devices is increasing in the enterprise and consumer spaces, we expect the tablet market to continue soaring throughout 2013. The tablet is an important part of the PC+ era, which emphasizes an expansion of the number and types of devices that will plug in to a core PC ecosystem. Windows 8’s touch optimization and Intel’s Ultrabook technology have enabled new experiences on a tablet alone and/or on a convertible device. It’s about giving choices to consumers and meeting their every need.

The trend is driven by the growing demand for powerful mobile devices with built-in security that meets the needs of productive employees and entertainment consumers. It’s essential to offer solutions that work in a unique way that strike a chord with consumers and professionals.

Peter Mockler, president, Lenovo Canada

Management of mobile devices will go from a “sometimes needed” to an “always necessary” application in the IT toolkit for companies of all sizes. The new management tools of choice, however, will look very different from the MDM applications of the past. As IT’s adoption of “bring your own device” policies hit the mainstream – Forrester claims 81% of CIOs will have a BYOD policy in 2013 – MDM applications that focus on device centric lock-down will become obsolete.

The new generation of mobile management applications will secure enterprise data and assets, allow user-owned mobile apps and provide support to the device, ensuring user productivity. Helpdesks in large and small companies are seeing an increased demand for support of mobile devices. As with other corporate productivity assets, users of fully managed devices still have usability and configuration issues that require ad-hoc assistance.

Elizabeth Cholawsky, VP and GM, IT support line of business, Citrix

Quality, innovation and design will drive the smartphone space forward. That really resonates with Canadian consumers.

It’s not only about business performance, but also about consumers’ mindshare.

Paul Brannen, VP, enterprise business solutions, Samsung

Driven by the consumerization of IT trend and the emergence of Windows 8, we expect to see a rise in popularity of tablets in the enterprise space. Businesses want tablets designed for their employees, who now have jobs that frequently take them away from the traditional office environment. These employees need to stay connected and productive from anywhere and everywhere they choose to work.

This trend will be driven by business tablets that are geared toward enterprise customers looking for the mobility of a tablet and the familiarity of Windows to support their custom apps, corporate infrastructure and security requirements.

Tina Walker, VP, PC category, printing and personal systems, HP Canada January/February 2013 ITinCanada.ca / 29

Book Review

By Paul Kennedy

Building intelligent communities The ICF offers an inspiring take on civic resurrection achieved through broadband connectivity and local leadership.

S

e eizing our Destiny authors are three co-founders of The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), a non-profit focused on the “broadband economy,” which is defined as, the positive impact that high-speed communications technologies can have on mostly urban communities and their citizens.

Besides research papers on best practices for community economic development, the Forum’s key deliverable is the annual Intelligent Community Awards competition.

This book celebrates the seven communities ranked highest for 2012, including Austin, Texas; Oulu, Finland; Quebec City; Riverside, California; Saint John, New Brunswick; Stratford, Ontario; and Taichung City, Taiwan.

Analytical readers will be interested in the criteria for evaluation, weightings and their impact on ultimate rankings. The Forum will say only that of hundreds of applicant communities, 21 made a long list, seven made it to the short list and Riverside was declared The Intelligent Community of the Year 2012. The criteria are as follows: Broadband Connectivity – measured as the percent of broadband penetration; Knowledge Workforce – indicated by the number of degrees awarded by educational institutions in the community; Digital Inclusion – policies and funding programs to provide the “have-nots” with access to digital technologies and training; Innovation – incubation and other public-private initiatives to support new businesses; Marketing and Advocacy – communication to market products and services beyond the community and to attract new businesses and jobs to the area.

The book consists of profiles on each of the 2012 winners celebrating the process and the institutions involved in bringing the community to a better place in economic and other terms. Individuals who led each community’s resurgence (usually mayors,

30 / IT in Canada.ca January/February 2013

economic development, industrial or academic leaders) are singled out for honourable mention. But to fill out the book, there are also shorter profiles of past winners.

Let’s take a quick look at one of this year’s selectees – Stratford, Ontario. The stage was set for civic action in 1958, when CN Railway announced that CN would be closing its maintenance yard in the city, putting thousands of local people out of work. The city’s leadership responded by trying to build manufacturing capability – notably furniture and auto parts – but neither initiative had long-term strength.

What did work was creating and executing a plan called Vision 2012. Initiated by City Council and led by the then Deputy Mayor, the plan was based on a smart decision re communications technology – having the municipally-owned electrical utility lay parallel optical fiber.

This nourished a healthy ISP industry to support both residential and commercial activity. This broadband network also served as the basis for building a medical testing facility serving the four partner hospitals in the Stratford area. And it enabled the city to win a competition to host a regional datacenter for Canada’s largest bank.

Drafters of the plan also learned from the experience of Waterloo, Ontario, just down the road. ICF winner for 2007, that city had done a lot of the right things, including emphasize the importance of having a post-secondary education facility in the city. So Stratford approached the University of Waterloo and convinced them to locate a satellite campus in the smaller city – one that will exploit the city’s long suit in performance art – and that will bring 500 students when fully operational. These are only a few elements in a fascinating story of civic resurrection that illustrates how cities can help each other to succeed.

Seizing Our Destiny – 2012’s best communities to live, work, grow and prosper in – and how they got that way, Robert Bell, John Jung and Louis Zacharilla, The Intelligent Community Forum, 150 pages, U.S. $14.95

It’s interesting to speculate on why so many Canadian communities have been elected. A competitive (but not inexpensive) telecom market may be part of the answer.

And it’s reassuring as a Canadian to read about municipal leaders exhibiting wisdom, commitment and leadership (a.k.a. “vision”) when we’ve heard so much recently about this country’s mayors behaving badly (a.k.a. “di-vision” of the spoils). Another interesting speculation is whether and when a critical mass of communities in the Southern Hemisphere will act on this message.

Each community featured in the book faced a unique challenge (e.g. plant closing, demographic shift) but the set of steps taken by the visionary local leadership begins to sound repetitive after a dozen case studies.

Nevertheless, if one wants inspiration and guidance on how to begin a technologybased, economic development campaign, this book has a hundred valuable ideas.

The book’s title is taken from the name of the website used by Riverside’s leadership to report the progress of their campaign. It is an apt description of the essential message of the ICF and its book, which the authors summarize as: “A community’s destiny is indeed in the hands of those with the heads and hearts to seize it”.

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