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BYOD policies to keep your business safe

as companies roll out Bring-Your-own-device programmes across tHe continent, How will You secure Your data?

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EuropEan nEws

EC opens public consultation on cloud computing research

The European commission (Ec) launched a consultation on cloud computing to collect views to define future research priorities in cloud services. The Ec called on interested bodies – including cloud service providers, research centres, aca-demics, enterprise users, end users and small and medium-sized businesses – to contribute to the web-based initiative.

Microsoft refuses to hand Dublin data to US government

A Us judge found Microsoft in contempt of court for refusing to hand over email data stored on a server in Dublin. Microsoft refused to hand over the data, stored in ireland, to the Us government by the 5 september 2014 deadline and Us District Judge Loretta Preska made the judgement after Microsoft requested to be found in contempt.

Spanish bank spends €500m on building contactless ATMs

spain’s caixaBank has commissioned Fujitsu to build 8,500 ATMs with contact-less capabilities. The 10-year agreement, worth €500m, will remove the need for customers to insert their cards, opening the possibilities of using mobile phones and wearable devices for ATMs.

Financial Times boosts cloud business intelligence resource

The Financial Times is using cloud-based business intelligence (Bi) from Birst. John kundert, head of Bi delivery for the Financial Times, said the paper is migrating its Bi capability to an in-house service based on a cloud-based data warehousing system, with Birst running on top and handling its main reporting needs.

GooGle faces fresh eU pressUre over advertisinG

the european Commission (eC) is calling for “new solutions” to address complaints from Google’s rivals that its online search advertising is anti-competitive. Despite the eC agreeing to new commitments from Google in february 2014, competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia has called for fresh concessions on how Google displays search results.

UK lags behind France and Germany in big data analytics

Uk organisations are falling behind their French and German peers in big data analytics, but see themselves as being ahead. Research among 300 senior iT executives carried out by onePoll and sponsored by data warehouse technology and services supplier Teradata has revealed that British firms are less crea-tive in the application of data analytics techniques, less innovative in business conception and more siloed in technology mentality than in continental Europe.

Salesforce builds datacentre in France for European users

cloud cRM provider salesforce is collabo-rating with datacentre provider interxion to launch a facility in France for European users. The datacentre – 100% powered by renewable energy sources – is the second of its three planned facilities in Europe. The cloud software company’s European investment comes as European cios cite data sovereignty as one of the top barriers to using public cloud applications. n

additional resoUrces

› acHieving diversitY in it

› tHe digital cio

› roYal HollowaY infosecuritY tHesis

› a guide to iscsi san storage

› a guide to Hr tecHnologY

› a guide to disaster recoverY planning

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Editor’s commEnt

Security strategies for European mobility in a threatening landscape

As more companies across Europe embrace bring-your-own-device (BYoD) pro-grammes, too few are backing up the move

with the right controls and policies. As cyber attacks increase and hackers exploit

vulnerabilities in mobile computing to access cor-porate networks and data, many organisations find themselves lacking the necessary safeguards to keep up with the continuing tide of cyber threat.

Exacerbating the situation are the organisations that have pursued a mobility or BYoD programme but are reluctant to admit when their corporate systems have been compromised as a result.

As European iT departments come to terms with the notion of BYoD, cW Europe takes a look at the policies your organisation can implement to keep security under control.

While companies may be bombarded with warn-ings about mobile security threats, they are often dismissed as scare tactics so security suppliers can sell more of their products. however, the threat is real to European businesses and increasing.

cW Europe’s security editor looks into the vary-ing levels of security controls across Europe, which can depend on location, sector, company and the range of employee-owned devices being used. For example, mobile security controls are more com-mon in companies based in Germany, because of the country’s strict data protection laws.

cW Europe also looks at a common dilemma among growing iT services suppliers – having to choose between adding more resources or risk deteriorating service levels as the operation expands. in this issue discover how scandinavian iT services company cygate grew its business with-out needing to recruit more staff, through its use of automation software from iPsoft. n

Kayleigh Bateman Editor of CW Europe Special projects editor for Computer Weekly

CW Europe, 1st Floor, 3-4a Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JB

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risk managEmEnt

Cyber attackers are increasingly exploit-ing vulnerabilities in mobile computing to infiltrate corporate networks, and

too many European organisations’ security controls and policies are failing to keep up with the threat.

Too few organisations embracing mobility are backing it up with the right controls, particularly for employee-owned devices.

Many that have pursued mobility and bring-your-own-device (BYoD) programmes are reluctant to admit their corporate sys-tems have been compromised as a result.

Although companies are continually bom-barded with warnings about mobile security threats, in the absence of any mobile security incident reports, these are all too easily dismissed as scare tactics used by security suppliers to sell products and services.

But these attacks are real and they are increasing in volume as more organisa-tions embrace mobile computing, says charlie McMurdie, senior cyber-crime advisor at Pricewaterhousecoopers (Pwc) and former head of the Uk police force’s central e-crime unit.

The consultancy says many organisations hit with cyber attacks struggle to identify the point of compromise. increasingly these are linked to mobile devices, such as laptops, tablets and smartphones – but this is seldom reported in public.

With the significant productivity and customer service improvements achieved by allowing employees and partners to access corporate data on the move, mobile comput-ing is inevitable and unstoppable – even in law enforcement.

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As European IT departments roll out bring-your-own-device (BYOD) schemes, Warwick Ashford considers the policies to secure corporate networks and data

How to implement a comprehensive BYOD security policy in your firm

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The survey found that, while 58% of enterprises are already re-assessing business processes and activities to exploit develop-ments in mobility, 23% are either adopting a wait-and-see approach, or have no plans. But this is proving increasingly risky, as employ-ees use mobile devices to access sensitive company data across a growing spectrum of systems and applications.

“it is a really mixed bag,” says McMurdie. While some organisations are seeking security guidance on how to enable employ-ees to do more with mobile devices, many other organisations are failing to go through the full risk-assessment process.

“Poorly prepared businesses typically tackle one aspect – like encrypting all mobile communications – but they fail to identify and address all the other vulnerabilities.”

organisations typically block specific apps on company-owned devices and restrict browsing to whitelisted sites. But only in rare cases do companies restrict mobile function-ality to email, phone and limited browsing.

Vulnerabilities in smaller companiesin smaller, less well-resourced organisa-tions, however, McMurdie says mobile security strategies and policies are almost completely lacking. “smaller businesses generally have weak or non-existent policies and processes to safeguard mobile data communications,” she says. “We see them struggling to do this on their own.”

McMurdie advises smaller organisations to follow government or industry best practice guidelines wherever possible.

in August 2014, Uk government intelli-gence agency GchQ published guidance for private and public sector organisations that want to allow employees to use personal devices at work.

Most organisations allow employees to access corporate data from devices, but with varying levels of controls on a variety of company- and employee-owned devices.

Varying security measuresThis fluctuates between sectors and coun-tries. The public sector and highly regulated industries – such as finance – typically have more controls. Mobile security controls are more common in countries that have strict data protection laws, such as Germany.

however, a recent Us survey, conducted by security firm Webroot, found the number of employees using personal devices for work more than double the number of those using company-owned devices. This suggests a security gap – especially with 60% of those using a personal mobile device for business saying they either have no security or just the default manufacturer’s features.

Another survey, conducted by security firm Eset, found 44% of European respondents planned to take their work-enabled mobile device on holiday in 2014. over a fifth will check work emails on a daily basis. But over a third also said they do not check if hotel Wi-Fi networks are secure and private.

“Mobile computing has an important role in the business, but it is also incredibly risky if it is not supported by a properly thought-out security strategy,” says McMurdie.

Security weaknesses in the enterpriseWhile many large, well-resourced organisa-tions do have the necessary security poli-cies and strategies in place, not all do.

A recent survey conducted by ovum and Dimension Data found 70% of the Uk organisations polled did not have a formal BYoD strategy, leading employees to adopt a do-it-yourself approach to iT.

risk managEmEnt

secUrity failinGs in orGanisations of all sizes

Common problems across all organisations include their failure to:n educate staff about the importance of mobile security and their responsibilities;n use policies to highlight how secure mobile computing can improve business processes;n Introduce measures to confirm that mobile policies are being followed;n limit user access to only the networks and systems they need to do their jobs;n review access permissions regularly, to ensure they remain relevant as users change roles.

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risk managEmEnt

The challenge of shadow ITAlthough many MDM suppliers are now expanding into application management, Pelino says not all organisations develop an understanding of the importance of manag-ing applications, content and services.

A common problem is that iT organisations and security teams fail to understand the broad demand for mobile computing across the different lines of business. “This typically results in employees going around iT and security by using cloud-based services such as Dropbox to ensure they have online access to the data they need,” says Pelino.

she says iT and security teams have to understand the needs of business decision-makers, to ensure these needs are addressed within the boundaries of the organisation’s strategy for managing devices and apps.

“At the same time, it is vital to educate business decision-makers about how impor-tant it is to be part of that, rather than going around iT and security,” says Pelino.

Framework for comprehensive policyTypically, mobility initiatives involve only smaller groups of people but, as organisa-tions roll out these programmes for the whole organisation and across several countries, a single policy becomes critical.

“As organisations move down the policy path, it is crucial to involve the legal team to take care of the legal implications in different countries; and the finance department to look at tax implications, payment plans and employee re-imbursements,” says Pelino.

Failure to involve all relevant parts of the business is one of the most common failings.

McMurdie advises small businesses to set up security forums in their sectors and other communities. “security forums for sharing information on security threats in small, trusted communities can be invaluable in helping small businesses understand the threats and how to deal with them,” she says.

And dealing with the threats by taking preventative measures to secure mobile environments is a far better approach than reacting after a breach, says Min-Pyo hong, chief executive and founder of south korean mobile security firm seworks.

Application-level mobile securityBut, hong – an advisor to various govern-ment and corporate organisations in Asia – believes many organisations overlook an important approach to mobile security.

While most secure the mobile device and screen data communications for malware, too few focus on protecting the security of the mobile application. hong says mobile app security is the Achilles’ heel of many corporations because applications are often the point of entry into a developer’s server or database. Most malware attacks target the mobile application to gain entry to a device.

“client-side mobile apps are a vulnerable entry point to access the server. Repackaged apps containing malware or DDos attack clients can bring down servers, infect devices with malware and install backdoors into devices,” says hong. “sooner or later there will be a disguised malicious app hiding a Trojan that will infect the organisation.”

one of the main reasons application security is overlooked is, when developers are pressed for time, they fail to take the necessary security measures. “Developers typically secure the server and back end first before turning their attention to the front-end client. simply put, the technologies around mobile application security have been woe-fully sparse until now,” says hong.

Most organisations that embrace mobile computing typically start with securing the device, says Michele Pelino, principal analyst of enterprise mobility at Forrester Research.

“The device becomes the initial pain point, with many organisations turning to mobile device management (MDM) technologies to deal with all new devices,” she says.

“The organisaTion needs To educaTe employees abouT whaT They will sign up To” michele pelino,

ForresTer research

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“Policies cannot be created in silos – as much as iT and security are critical players, this cannot be done without looping in the broader organisation to ensure business, legal, regulatory, financial and hR needs are being addressed.”

An increasingly common approach in multinational companies is to define a policy vision and then create a checklist framework of things that need to be considered in each country to ensure BYoD policies are consist-ent with local laws and regulations. This enables each country to create its own BYoD policy based on what the overall organisation is trying to achieve.

“The frameworks are broader than just security or iT issues,” says Pelino.

Frameworks typically include considera-tions such as: the devices supported; which groups of employees will be covered by the policy; what type of services the company will re-imburse employees for; which groups will be supported by a helpdesk; what will be included in a self-service portal; and whether or not the company will provide its own app store for approved applications.

Focus on departmental needsPelino says a good initial step is to segment the workforce based on the roles of indi-viduals and then decide what devices, applications, support services and networks are appropriate for each group.

“once you have a framework around those key areas, relative to your industry and your organisation, then you can put together a policy, which needs to include legal, finance, and hR as well as iT and security,” she says.

Education is another important element, says Pelino. “The organisation needs to educate employees about what they will be asked to sign up to, which devices to choose for the work environment and why it is important to secure mobile devices at home and at work,” she says.

Finally, organisations and employees need to understand that these policies cannot be static and must evolve as technology and regulations change. “For example, some Us states are starting to introduce legislation that requires companies to re-imburse employees who use personal devices for work purposes,” says Pelino.

Learning from othersAdopting mobile computing and BYoD programmes comprises a strategic initiative for many organisations, because of the perceived and real cost and productivity benefits, even in the private sector and highly-regulated industries.

But what this will mean for individual organisations varies dramatically. Pelino says there are signs that some companies are starting their BYoD initiatives by looking at what others have done, to learn from their successes and failings.

“The more mature organisations under-stand all the issues and are moving into application and content management, but these organisations account for only about 15% to 20% of those moving in this direc-tion,” says Pelino.

“By far the most are in the early stages and are still focusing on devices or are starting to move one step beyond by trying to figure out how to manage apps and content.”

Building on basics to evolve strategyAccording to Pelino, even the most mature organisations are still “living the chal-lenge”. While these companies have moved beyond dealing with the security of devices and applications and have put together a policy framework, many are still trying to resolve questions around provid-ing user support and improving helpdesk services for mobile and BYoD.

“nobody has all the answers yet, and the questions and concerns they have change as they evolve their strategy along the maturity curve,” she says.

clearly we are not out of the woods yet when it comes to security for mobile com-puting and BYoD programmes, but some organisations are making progress, having navigated the basics successfully.

As these mature organisations continue to push the boundaries in areas such as sup-port, less mature organisations can look to them to fast-track their own progress.

Above all, less mature organisations have to recognise that the threat of cyber attack through mobile platforms is real, and failing to act is no longer an option. n

Warwick Ashford is Computer Weekly’s security editor

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casE study

Scandinavian services firm expands business with automation software

Scandinavian iT services firm cygate has expanded its business without needing to recruit more staff, using

automation software from iPsoft.in 2010, the company – which serves

more than 1,000 customers, including some of the biggest corporations in scandinavia – was experiencing 20% growth in sales. This meant the company needed to add resources or risk deteriorating service levels – but just adding manpower would have reduced its margins.

This is a common problem among iT services providers that traditionally grow in a linear way – typically, they win more busi-ness, then have to add more staff to support it. But service providers are now trying to reach the holy grail of non-linear growth. This means adding business without needing to expand the workforce to support it, reducing the proportional increase in the cost of providing additional service.

At the same time, increased use of cloud-based iT is forcing services providers to add higher-level support services. Mats Mägiste, cTo at cygate, says: “We were concerned about how to continue to prosper as a sys-tem integrator in the future with everything put in the cloud. The software suppliers are moving up the business model, so we need to focus our services at a higher level.”

cygate opted to address this with automa-tion and began working with automation software supplier iPsoft. cygate integrated iPsoft’s iPcenter software with its customer-support iT infrastructure and automated many customer processes that, traditionally, would have had to be manually undertaken by employees.

Mägiste says many of the iT transactions between cygate and its customers and their iT were time-consuming and repetitive, and automation achieved savings without reduc-ing the company’s service levels.

IT services supplier Cygate found a way to grow its customer base and revenues without reducing margins or compromising service levels, writes Karl Flinders

Cygate’s revenues rose 56% and profits grew 118% after it deployed automation software

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Added benefits of automationhe says iT support processes – such as those triggered by users forgetting their passwords or detecting network router problems – could largely be automated before a human gets involved.

The savings are clear, he says, but surpris-ing improvements to service quality can also be made. “if an engineer repairs a system, when they are finished, the engineer does not normally ask if the customer is happy – they just move on to their next job. Automation has enabled us to change this by building a user questionnaire into the process when a case is closed.”

since cygate deployed iPcenter, its rev-enues have increased 56% and its pre-tax profits have grown 118%. The technology has also enabled engineers to move to higher-level services, which add more value.

Scope for European expansionResearch from analyst company Quocirca last year found iT staff spend 30% of their time carrying out basic tasks and are frus-trated with the lack of time left to focus on transformational work.

The research found the average iT worker is using only half the skills they possess because of the time they spend on straight-forward manual tasks.

The iT industry trade association intellect has been raising awareness of the benefits automation software can bring to businesses (see panel below). it says automation soft-ware is underused across Europe, much of which is still only in the early adopter phase.

Mobile network company Telefónica deployed software from Blue Prism in 2012 to automate business processes in its sub-sidiary operator 02, which saved millions of pounds in back-office operations and cut its reliance on offshore recruitment to cope with spikes in workload.

other iT services firms using iPsoft tech-nology in their service delivery include service providers Accenture and infosys. Businesses can work directly with iPsoft or receive services via an iT services supplier. n

casE study

“02 will save millions oF pounds in back-oFFice operaTions and oFFshore recruiTmenT”

White collar aUtomation – an alternative to offshorinG

It industry body Intellect wants to raise awareness of the benefits of automation software to european businesses, which are missing out on what it describes as “white-collar automation”.

“blue-collar automation” is already established, with robots carrying out a sizable proportion of manufacturing processes. but Intellect says white-collar automation – software carrying out businesses processes for back offices – has substantial market potential.

“Intellect wants to focus on this type of technology, which is usually in the background,” says marco pisano, head of the Automate campaign at Intellect.

Automation software is often spoken of as a replacement for offshoring It and back-office roles. for example, when Apple decided to change the size of the sIms in the iphone with less than six weeks’ warning, mobile operator 02 had to create a business process to deal with changing customer sIms. o2 managed this with automation software from blue prism, without which there would have been a three-month spike in demand for 60 full-time staff in India.

Intellect hopes to raise awareness of what today’s automation technology and how it can increase european business productivity and economic growth.

And it doesn’t mean just more jobs lost to robots rather than offshore workers, says Intellect. pisano says automating back-office processes will create higher-level jobs: “Automation creates jobs in the end, because you need people to create the software and work with it,” says pisano.

Karl Flinders is Computer Weekly’s services editor

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cloud computing sErvicEs

Public cloud services arouse suspicion in Poland. The thinking persists that your own servers or datacentre are the best places to store your data. But that picture is slowly changing and some are coming to recognise cloud storage as a method that can cut costs and improve customer service.

More than half (55%) of the largest Polish companies do not process data in the cloud and 40% of them do not plan to migrate to the cloud, according to research by analyst company Audytel. The dominant concerns are that the move to cloud storage is a big step that surrenders control and security of data to a third party.

“caution is often a far stronger motivation than the desire to make changes, even with the promise of reducing investment costs,” says Grzegorz Bernatek, head of analytical projects at Audytel.

Piotr Pietrzak, chief technology officer at iBM Poland, agrees: “companies are particu-larly worried about the security of their data, including personal data. They are afraid of big risks lurking in the contract, dependence on the service provider and the lack of control over data transferred outside their organisation.”

Cloud takes off in Poland despite security concernsThe benefits of cloud have accelerated its take-up in Polish organisations despite anxieties about losing control of the data, writes Krzysztof Polak

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cloud computing sErvicEs

The use of the public cloud is very limited in Poland, according to Audytel’s report, Data processing in the cloud in the largest Polish organisations. The predominant model is private cloud, with 75% of respondents saying they use it in their organisations. This is because, unlike public cloud, with private infrastructure the user organisation remains responsible for the operation of all key aspects of infrastructure, hardware, server room, implementa-tion and integration services, the administration and management.

however, despite widespread concerns, the number of companies transferring data outside their organisation is increasing every month, according to the Audytel report. in many cases, the motivation arises from a need to serve customers more effectively.

it was a desire to serve customers better that prompted Fotosik.pl, an image-hosting website owned by Warsaw-based Digital Avenue, to transfer all data and iT infrastruc-ture to the cloud. The migration project was a joint endeavour between Fotosik.pl and oktawave, an infrastructure as a service (iaas) platform provider and part of the k2 Group, a Polish media agency.

Fotosik.pl is a service for uploading, storing and sharing image and video files on the inter-net, with hundreds of thousands of users. Maintaining smooth web operations with a large in-house infrastructure and high volumes of data – primarily customers’ data – requires large financial outlays. The company sought to reduce costs, but maintaining its own iT archi-tecture became increasingly difficult as the infrastructure continually required investment with the systematic addition of file servers to meet demand.

“it became obvious that we needed to make the change to public cloud,” says Piotr Bochenczak, cEo of Digital Avenue.

“Further investment in more scattered small data servers does not make sense for financial reasons. We had no hesitation in deciding to migrate to the cloud.” To store all Fotosik.pl’s original data, the organisation used oktawave cloud storage. currently that totals about 65 million files, but there is capacity for several times that amount if it is needed. As in most cases, the two biggest benefits of migration are cost savings and increased speed of service to the user.

With the ability to run any size of infrastructure on demand and a setup that allows employees more time for conceptual work, Digital Avenue is now working on improving the existing functionality of Fotosik.pl while preparing to launch a cloud storage website for professional photographers, as well as those who use hosting services for business purposes, such as auctions.

“With the old solutions we were forced to pay fixed rates for servers. now we pay for the resources we actually use, so at night, when our users are asleep and don’t use our infrastructure, we pay less,” says Bochenczak.

Cloud archive at InsErtinsErt is the largest Polish producer of management software for small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of the number of licences sold (more than 460,000). its offer includes systems that provide insight into a company’s sales, warehouse, accounting/finance and hR systems.

Until recently its products ran at customer premises on their own servers, desktops and local network and insErt software was updated via cDs sent to customers as a part of a paid subscription. The migration to an upgrade process through the cloud occurred in 2013, says Aleksander Greinert, insErt deputy director of sales.

“aT nighT, when our users are asleep and don’T use our inFrasTrucTure, we pay less” pioTr bochenczak,

digiTal avenue

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CW Europe October 2014 12

“We decided to make this step because the existing form of update was inadequate for some of our customers, and expensive. our main goal was to streamline the process of distributing updates to our customers and facilitate access to changes immediately after new versions were released,” he says.

insErt used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to create the system. it was a challenge because Azure was a new to insErt and the company had a lot to learn. But now, more than 20,000 insErt customers receive automatic updates from the cloud. The next step was for insErt to extend its use of the cloud to offer customers remote backup and archiving services.

“When introducing the automatic update tool, we got to know cloud technology, its features and the payment model. Through this experience, we learned that the cloud platform improves our business,” says insErt’s Aleksander Greinert.

“We decided, as a producer of programs in which data is collected, that we should provide our customers with a solution that, on the one hand, ensures a high level of data security, and on the other gives them a quick way to restore archived data, ensuring business continuity.”

in partnership with Microsoft, the company developed e–Archiving, an archiving cloud service. it is also a method of protecting against data loss through hardware failure, accidental deletion of files, theft or unauthorised access. The cloud service also provides data protection against internet threats, such as viruses and spyware.

“There is considerable interest from our customers in cloud storage services. it con-firms the decision to use cloud computing in backup and archiving was correct. currently, a project to create our own cloud would not have any business justification. in contrast, the pricing model and scalability of the cloud services available on external platforms enable us to develop our business,” says Greinert.

BP uses cloud for backupBP is one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world. in Poland, it operates more than 450 fuel stations and shops with more than 3,000 employees. in 2010 BP in Poland began to use cloud–based services for backup and to exchange and share data.

The data processed – names, addresses, products bought and sold, point of sale loca-tion, invoice and receipt data – is collected at BP petrol stations and held in iBard24’s system Backup online provided by icomarch24, a subsidiary of comarch, one of the largest iT integrators in Poland, based in krakow.

Data management, exchange and archiving in the cloud was launched after deploy-ment of a special application on the Pcs of BP Poland employees, says slawomir Przybyl, application manager at BP Europa sE. now BP employees can quickly send and receive files in any format, with the cloud–based service accelerating the exchange of informa-tion between BP Poland headquarter, dealers and points of sale.

“The iBard24 technology makes the flow of information in the BP network possible on a 24/7/365 basis. it is also a fast, secure and automated process,” says Przybyl.

in 2013 BP co-operation with the provider went a stage further. The original cloud service was expanded by adding comarch’s Business intelligence Master Data Management. This is a cloud service that includes data cleansing. it ensures data stand-ards and quality, prevents excessive proliferation of the cloud database and analyses data according to criteria chosen by authorised users. The new system integrates the data of 65,000 customers with their 93,000 registered vehicles and supports more than 450 BP fuel stations in Poland.

“We achieved centralised access to our structured data and that meant it could be easily analysed to obtain business advantage. An additional benefit is the elimination of unnecessary input of customer data during daily work at each location. information entered once at any BP fuel station is available to all units of BP Poland, which results in better customer service,” says Przybyl. n

cloud computing sErvicEs

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BusinEss intElligEncE softwarE

Business intelligence (Bi) is a field in fast transformation, but it is essential to have the right skills in the organisation to exploit the possibilities the technology offers. Verisure, a swedish provider of home security systems, began building its Bi capabilities after the company split off from securitas in 2006.

it started when managers from the countries in Verisure’s northern European region flew to copenhagen for an important budget meeting, according to Peter Lagergren, senior business controller at Verisure: “We soon realised we interpreted things in differ-ent ways. For example, it could be that my definition of a cancelled customer wasn’t the same as that of my colleagues. The same thing with the numbers – we all included different things. We had to cancel the meeting at lunchtime, when we realised we couldn’t get any further.”

The answer the company arrived at had a number of components: restructuring the data and implementing a common Bi platform across the countries in the northern European region; taking responsibility for the structure of the organisation; imposing common terms and definitions; implementing multi-country systems; and setting up a centralised structure for charts of accounts and cost centres.

Business intelligence brings clarity to Swedish enterpriseVerisure and Höganäs have expanded across several European territories and rely on centralised BI to maintain their commercial focus, writes Jenny Stadigs

Go

RAn

DJo

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metal powder manufacturer Höganäs is named after the small fishing village in which it was founded, and

where its business intelligence operation remains

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BusinEss intElligEncE softwarE

Standardising business intelligenceThe company set up a five-strong Bi team in sweden, which has had much the same structure since its inception – comprising three data warehouse specialists, one report developer and one team leader.

“Every time we start working on something new, such as our data-mining project, we get outside help from experts. They work for us for a few weeks each time, and then we handle the implementation ourselves,” says Lagergren.

Verisure also has user groups, comprising business owners in the different countries, working and experimenting with the information given to them. “They do their own analyses to drive their businesses. Requests regarding business development come to us through the management team, user groups or single users,” says Lagergren.

The industry jargon for Verisure’s Bi organisation is a business intelligence competency centre (Bicc) – namely, a cross-functional organisational team that has defined tasks, roles, responsibilities and processes for supporting and promoting the effective use of Bi across the organisation. But when Verisure built its Bi organisation back in 2007, Lagergren hadn’t yet heard the term Bicc.

“A Bicc can be almost as deep or as broad as you want it to be, and we tick all of the criteria boxes when we look at the definition of a Bicc,” he says.

“Biccs have become much more common in recent years. What was most important to us when we built our Bi organisation was to have it business-driven and not placed under iT, since we are doing this for the business.”

Expanding business intelligence capacityVerisure built its Bi on a solid platform, which has made it possible to add new European countries to the system without growing the team. But now Verisure is looking at taking Bi to the next level which, says Lagergren, will need at least one more person.

“i think it will be hard to find the new compe-tence we need. one of the people in our Bi team recently left, and it wasn’t easy to recruit a new person for that position. Bi has devel-oped and grown faster than the competence – it takes a while to get the new knowledge into the workforce.”

But Lagergren is confident the organisation will be able to find the right competence. “The next step for us is to use Bi more proactively. Until now we have mostly looked at what has already happened. For example, we want to be able to predict when a customer might be about to cancel his contract. We are already working with data mining, but we have to get the results into Microstrategy, our Bi tool,” he says.

since Bi is a field in fast transformation, it is important to keep the level of competence up to date in the Bi organisation through continuous training, says Lagergren: “it’s also important to look at how other companies are doing Bi. Through comparing, we can see what we are doing well and what we are doing badly.”

Lagergren notes some Bi traits typical of companies in scandinavia: “We often tend to work harder on pushing out information to several different levels of the company. if you compare us with, for example, a company in the Us, they are often more focused on getting the information to top management.” But when it comes to the organisational design side of business intelligence, Lagergren says the structure depends more on the type of company than on the geography.

“bi has developed and grown FasTer Than The compeTence – iT Takes a while To geT The new knowledge inTo The workForce” peTer lagergren, verisure

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Metal powder company Höganäs gains business intelligence precisionAnna henriksson, Bi manager at swedish metal powder producer höganäs, has the same impression, and she can’t see anything typically scandinavian with the way höganäs has chosen to organise its Bi team.

höganäs, which develops and markets powders for customers in mainly component manufacturing industries, was founded in 1797. it began working with Bi in 1997. “it has become more specific over time. in the beginning, the Bi work was a bit fussy,” she says.

The Bi team comprises three employees, located in the small swedish fishing village of höganäs, from which the company gets its name. The company has expanded over the years, and with it the Bi system has advanced, but it has always kept the Bi team and operation centralised in sweden. “This way of working gives us better control over the numbers and means everybody uses the same terminology,” says henriksson. “if every country had its own Bi we might, for example, be calculating profit in different ways. keeping Bi centralised also keeps costs down.”

Business intelligence and governanceThe Bi team has always been organised under iT. The reason is simply that the team works with iT tools, says henriksson: “But it is the business side that prioritises what we do, not iT. We have a governance board, which we use for both Bi and the enterprise resource plan-ning system.”

höganäs’s organisation is divided in different processes – for example, sales, maintenance and finance – and one person from each pro-cess sits on the governance board. since the company is dispersed around the globe, each region also has a representative on the board, according to henriksson.

“We also have users acting as co-ordinators, pulling in and aggregating requests from around the organisation. This structure was created in 2011. Before that, the prioritising process wasn’t that well defined – we tended to focus on the parts of the organisation that were the loudest,” she says.

The difficulties of hiring BI specialistshöganäs recently hired a data scientist. henriksson says it proved difficult to find someone with the right combination of statistical analysis, business analysis and coding to solve business problems. “Too few are educated in this field and, even when they are, that’s not enough. Bi is tricky – you have to have some knowledge of companies also, and straight out of university you don’t have that. if it’s hard to recruit Bi people in stockholm or London, it’s even harder in a small town like höganäs,” she says.

The company wanted to hire a local person who wouldn’t have to commute very far. it contracted a recruitment firm, but wasn’t happy with the candidates it found. “Then we ran an ad in the regional newspaper, and that got us the right person,” she says.

höganäs is not planning to recruit any additional Bi competence in the near future.“We could always make use of more people, and more work hours, but it is a matter of

cost. our focus now is to work our way through the list of prioritised issues – we have an extensive backlog. We will continue development at the same time, of course,” she says.

The most important thing the Bi team has accomplished so far is to enable users to report faster, according to henriksson. “We have made it possible for users to get a better insight into their numbers. For example, they can see the total stock value. This enables them to follow up and discuss the business in a much better way,” she says. n

BusinEss intElligEncE softwarE

“iF iT’s hard To recruiT bi people in sTockholm, iT’s even harder in a small Town like höganäs” anna henriksson,

höganäs

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cloud computing

When easyJet’s reservation system did not have the ability to provision new services such as allocated seating, the low-cost airline simply added the new features in the cloud rather than ripping out its internal iT system and building a new one in the cloud.

The airline’s research on the boarding process and customer satisfaction showed that its passengers across Europe preferred allocated seating. “our passengers used to refer to our boarding process as the scrum. When people are using rugby terms to describe travel, you know you have a problem,” said easyJet enterprise architecture manager Bert craven.

But easyJet’s existing reservation system, which it had built over the years with huge capital investment, did not have the ability to provision this new feature. To make its internal iT capable of handling allocated seating, the airline would have to invest in additional datacen-tre facilities and tweak its infrastructure – at great expense.

so the airline’s iT department decided to segregate the seat allocation service from the central reservation system and host it on a scalable, resilient cloud service, then integrate it to deliver the project quickly and cheaply.

The iT team selected Microsoft’s Azure cloud service because it had used it in the past. EasyJet tried other public cloud platforms but, as it wanted a combination of on-premises and cloud systems, Microsoft offered higher integration features, according to craven.

EasyJet is one of Microsoft’s flagship references for its Azure cloud service.

Hybrid IT preserves investmentBut easyJet did not adopt an all-iT-in-the-cloud strategy when its internal iT was incapa-ble only in specific areas. “We spent years building our reservation system. if it doesn’t do something we want it to, we add a new feature in the cloud and we get more value out of the investment we have already made,” said craven.

EasyJet raises customer satisfaction with hybrid ITThe low-cost airline, which serves hundreds of European destinations, uses a hybrid cloud strategy to optimise business value, writes Archana Venkatraman

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easyJet has streamlined the boarding process by running its online seat allocation service on the microsoft Azure cloud

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cloud computing

“The cloud investment is never a discussion around ‘we need to burn this down and build a new one in the cloud’. it is more about how we can extend this one and get more value out of the existing investment with a low-cost option.”

instead of dumping on-premises iT while it still delivered value, easyJet ran the new feature in the cloud and mashed it with the existing infrastructure. “This strategy of focusing cloud investments in areas that make a real difference to the bottom line is key to cloud’s success,” said Maurice Martin, director of cloud business at Microsoft.

speaking at the Westminster eForum seminar on cloud computing, Martin said easyJet has revolutionised the airline sector and that it is able to offer aggressive pricing to customers because it keeps its operating expenses low.

“on average, airlines spend 2% of their revenue on iT infrastructure. But easyJet spends only 0.5% of its revenue on iT,” he said.

Allocated seating service in the cloudToday, easyJet’s flight booking page is an integration of three different technologies, Martin explained. “The first bit, where customers feed in their desired dates and destinations for flight bookings, is powered by easyJet’s web servers,” he said.

The second layer, where the website presents data on the timings and cheapest alterna-tives for users to choose from, is powered by its reservation systems sitting in a different datacentre. The last application, which is the aircraft diagram where users can select their seats, is fully hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

“But for the users, it is all a seamless experience,” said Martin.EasyJet first trialled the allocated seating project on the Azure cloud in early 2013. cloud

enabled easyJet’s iT developers to write their own code and spin infrastructure up and down as needed to test out the service. But, most importantly, it was faster and more cost-effective to deploy the new service on the public cloud than on its internal infrastructure.

“EasyJet’s iT team knew the value of cloud services, but they had also already spent mil-lions on their own iT infrastructure,” said Martin. “so, instead of writing off the investment made on internal iT, they opted for a hybrid solution.”

The allocated seating project improved cus-tomer satisfaction by 5% and directly contributed 7% to easyJet’s revenue growth, its annual earn-ings for 2013 showed.

But had the project failed, and had it not yielded the improvements in customer satisfaction the airline had hoped for, it would have been easy for the airline to turn off the cloud serving the reserve seating application.

“it is much easier to turn off a cloud system than to tear out all the functionality from the reservation system,” said craven.

“EasyJet’s smart hybrid cloud strategy helped it to deliver real value to the business while still yielding benefits of the iT investment it made in its on-premises infrastructure,” said Martin.

The success, cost savings and ease of implementation has made easyJet adopt a cloud-first strategy. “People from the business come to me and say, ‘We have this idea and we would really like to do it in the cloud because the last project we launched on the cloud was really quick and smooth’,” said craven.

“our boarding process is much more pleasant today and we are seeing a huge increase in customer satisfaction,” he concluded. n

“Focusing cloud invesTmenTs in areas ThaT make a real diFFerence To The boTTom line is key To cloud’s success”maurice marTin, microsoFT

Archana Venkatraman is Computer Weekly’s datacentre editor

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BusinEss applications

There is much talk about big data these days, but many organisations still don’t know how to use it. swedish companies klarna and spotify are among those that do make good use of the new possibilities.

klarna, an e-commerce business founded in sweden in 2005, provides cus-tomer payment services for online stores. The idea is to simplify buying and one aspect of the model is to eliminate risk for seller and buyer – making it essential to accurately assess a buyer’s trustworthiness.

“To increase precision of risk assessment, we have invested in a big data infrastructure. We began a year and a half ago and went into production this spring,” says Erik Zeitler, klarna’s technology lead in data infrastructure, who holds a PhD in database technology.

The infrastructure makes it possible to use several different sources at the same time when making a risk assessment, compared with the previous single database.

“This of course means we can take into account more kinds of data when doing risk assessment, and it also means we can try out new risk models by maintaining several alternative transformations at the same time,” says Zeitler.

“We have implemented a continuous delivery pipeline on top of hadoop that makes it easy to deploy new transformations in production in a traceable fashion. The single database used to be considered as the source of the truth, so to speak, and that’s not the case anymore.”

Swedish firms hone their edge exploiting big data analysisKlarna and Spotify are two very different enterprises that have transformed their business models using data-crunching technology. Jenny Stadigs reports

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BusinEss applications

klarna won’t reveal exactly which data is used, but it comes from three main sources: internal customer history data; data specific to the purchase; and external supplier data.

“Each risk assessment is based on a pretty limited amount of data – it‘s not many megabytes. But this data is derived from nightly batch transformations, and they are pretty big,” says Zeitler. This means that klarna prepares preliminary variables every night on all customers who have previously made purchases.

“And when a person wants to make a new purchase, we use those variables. There are a number of factors that can stop a transaction, and one of those is if you are buying unexpected products. For example, are you expected to suddenly buy a hundred UsB sticks? if not, it might be a fraud.”

Using big data to improve the oddsWhile it is easy to measure how many transac-tions klarna fails to stop – it‘s just a matter of counting how many purchases don‘t get paid – it is harder to assess how many purchases are denied on false grounds. “it’s an ongoing project to try to estimate the loss we make from our false negatives. We continually tweak our models to try to minimise both the false posi-tives and false negatives. And the more data we use, the better our chances are of making a good estimate,” says Zeitler.

if the customer does not pay, klarna takes the hit. The e-stores are charged a fixed price, combined with a fee for each transaction.

“The online stores that begin using klarna usually increase their sales by about 30%. one of the reasons is that we eliminate friction for the customer by separating buying from paying. customers buy first, and then decide how they want to pay,” he says.

To complete a purchase, klarna only asks for information the customer can easily provide, says Zeitler: “We ask for things like email address, and postcode or social secu-rity number, until we have enough information to identify the person and make the risk assessment. if we accept the purchase we send the customer an invoice. That means the customer does not have to part with money before they get the product.”

The data used to identify the customer, and the data used to make the risk assessment, varies from country to country, mainly because of differences between public registers. This – combined with differences in payment cultures – means there is a lot of work for klarna to enter new markets.

klarna recently stepped into the Uk market, and its system is now offered by around 45,000 e-stores in 15 European countries. With the growing number of customers, the total amount of data handled also grows.

“But the amount of data is still not enormous. in our nightly batch transformation we go through somewhere between 10 terabytes and one petabyte of data. When you talk about big data you look at volume, variety and velocity – the “three Vs” – and our chal-lenge is not the volume; the big challenge is to handle the variety of the data,” he says.

Klarna’s database stackTo meet the challenge of the big number of data sources and their complexity, it is not enough to deploy ordinary relational databases. The company’s front-end systems are built on the nosQL database Riak from supplier Basho. The risk assessment is made in the next layer, which comprises a cluster of relational databases.

“Those are the two online systems. Back office – where the nightly batches are made – we have a system built on Apache hadoop. And hadoop is two things: it is scalable

“The online sTores ThaT begin using klarna usually increase Their sales by abouT 30%” erik zeiTler,

klarna

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storage in the form of hadoop Distributed File system, hDFs; and scalable execution in the form of the programming model MapReduce,” says Zeitler.

one of the big advantages with this setup is the ability to use an sQL-like language called hiveQL on hadoop, then feed the result of the batch transformation into the front-end system every morning, says Zeitler.

“Another pro is that the front-end sQL stays up to date with a steady stream of new transactions from the online system. That is, the information from the online system simmers down to hadoop for offline analysing, but some of the information also goes directly into the cluster of relational databases. And then we write over the information in the online databases every morning with the outcome from hadoop.”

This architecture, called Lambda, is a way to eliminate complexity and gives klarna great flexibility, according to Zeitler.

“it took a great deal of reading and discussing before we settled for this solution,” says Zeitler, who took the initiative to invest in big data infrastructure at klarna.

“i proposed it to the upper management two years ago, when i was relatively new at klarna, and they listened to me. i don‘t know if this is something that is more common in swedish organisations, which are usually pretty non-hierarchical, but i think it‘s pretty cool that you get listened to as a newcomer.”

Spotify and big data technologiesMusic streaming service spotify, founded in 2006, is another swedish company that has invested in a big data infrastructure. it uses a 690-node hadoop cluster in the back office, and on top of that clusters of the open-source nosQL database Apache cassandra.

“We have 40 million monthly active users, and they generate a lot of data. We process that data to generate new data to hand back to the users. For example, we give song and playlist recommendations,” says Jimmy Mårdell, technology product owner at spotify, and responsible for delivering the data back to users.

The first big data infrastructure was built when the company started eight years ago, and much has happened since. in the beginning, spotify ran a small hadoop cluster with 35 nodes, and data was imported into hadoop using a store-and-forward approach. Today data is imported through a streaming system using the messaging system kafka.

“All user activity generates a lot of logs and data, and then we have to ship that from all over the world to our hadoop cluster – that is what we use kafka for,” says Mårdell.

The main processing language used to be Python, but now spotify is moving into Apache crunch and scalding instead. The company has also built its own workflow manager, called Luigi, which is used to synchronise all its data analysis. “We need Luigi to stay away from total chaos. We have open-sourced Luigi, so other companies can use it as well; we like open source and use it a lot at spotify. You get help from the commu-nity to develop the open-source software – it’s a win-win situation,” says Mårdell.

spotify has recently started using spark, which is a different way of doing big data processing from MapReduce. When it’s time to send the processed data back to the user, the data is first transported from hadoop to cassandra, using tools spotify has written in-house. cassandra is then used to serve data back to the user. since it is important the data is geographically close to the user, spotify has several cassandra clusters around the world. “We can’t have the cassandra clusters in one single place, like the hadoop cluster. if we had the data in sweden, and an Australian user asked for it, the user experi-ence wouldn’t be that good – it would be too slow,” says Mårdell.

spotify has also chosen to have many instances of sQL and cassandra databases, to secure the stability of the system, according to Mårdell.

“For example, the data that delivers your playlists and the data that delivers the discov-ery page are separated in totally different database clusters. This means that, if the playlist databases get sick for some reason, everything else in spotify will still work perfectly. Decoupling is the key to scalability,” says Mårdell. n

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