7-13 February 2012 | computerweekly.com

IT spending prioritiesOur exclusive research reveals which technOlOgies it leaders plan tO invest in this year page 4

IT fit for a busy broadcasterthe BBc’s it chief, JOhn linwOOd, On mOdernising it tO drive efficiency and reduce cOsts page 7

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the week onlineHighlights from

premium content

> Overcoming the insight deficit: Big judgement in an era of big dataLearn how you can empower your employees to make the most of big data and data analytics in this executive guide from the Corporate Executive Board. Click to download the report.

> Global disaster recovery indexThe Acronis Global Disaster Recovery (DR) Index 2012, produced in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, is the industry’s largest back-up and disaster recovery benchmark. Businesses can look to this report to under-stand what it takes to be a leader in disaster recovery. Click to download the report.

> Building consumerised end user servicesThis report extract from the Corporate Executive Board presents key facts and figures on the take-up of consumer technol-ogy in the workplace, and offers pointers to IT leaders on the best approaches to the growth of consumerisation in the workforce. Click to download the report.

> The future of innovation management: The next 10 yearsWhat can we expect in the next 10 years? What key trends do we see in the way companies are managing innovation? Learn more in this survey of CTOs and CIOs from around the world. Click to download the report.

videos

> Computer Weekly and FT video debates: IT and the customerIn this video on how IT is changing customer relations, Mark Goldman, divisional director of central retail at Nationwide Building Society, and John Clarke, former Nokia CIO and now a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, join Computer Weekly editor in chief Bryan Glick and FT technology correspondent Maija Palmer to discuss how technologies such as the web and social media are improving the ways companies engage with their customers – and the pitfalls they should avoid.

cW500 videos blogs

> Adrian Bridgwater: Microsoft launches Office 15 technical previewMicrosoft has pushed the next iteration of its Office productivity suite of software applications to what it calls its “technical preview” stage. At this point in the product’s development, customers, dedicated testing professionals and partners get to “play with” the product and provide feedback to the MSDN developers who will ultimately take the product on to “release candidate” stage.

> Warwick Ashford: New EU data protection rules will help get board’s attentionThe proposed new European Union data protection rules will impose onerous burdens on information security professionals, but they may also help get the board’s proper attention. Company boards have traditionally viewed security as a grudge purchase, much like insurance, but the threat of significant fines for data breaches could change all that.

> Philip Virgo: Has BDUK retained Pinsent Masons to do the impossible, as well as unnecessary? I am told that BDUK engaged Pinsent Masons to write an umbrella state aid exemption for the entire UK. This is unlikely to be in place (assuming it is approved, which is unlikely) before the summer. Each county-by-county procurement must then seek individual state aid approval. No wonder several counties are said to be about to tell DCMS ministers where they can put their funding.

> Cliff Saran: Trustworthy Computing has made Microsoft a better companyOn 15 January 2002, Bill Gates announced to the world that Microsoft would completely change how it developed software, putting quality as the main priority. Trustworthy Computing, or TwC, the term Gates coined to describe the company’s strategy on IT security and software quality, would have a profound effect on Microsoft products.

> Computer Weekly and FT video debates: ComplianceIn this video on IT and regulation, Stewart Room, partner at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse, and Keith Wallington, chief customer officer at e-mail archiving firm Mimecast, join Computer Weekly editor in chief Bryan Glick and FT technology correspondent Maija Palmer to discuss the growing burden of legislation and regulation and how it affects IT leaders.

> CW500: Tom McEwan of PA Consulting on the economic environment for 2012In this video, Tom McEwan, head of the global technology consultancy group at PA Consulting, talks to Computer Weekly editor in chief Bryan Glick about the economic environment for 2012 and how it affects IT leaders.

> CW500: Albert Ellis of Harvey Nash talks about career developmentThe business environment in 2012 remains challenging, and IT leaders have experienced significant change during the protracted downturn. While cost containment and hesitation about the future of the economy remain, organisations are increasingly realising the need for smart IT management to ensure competitiveness.

2 | 7-13 FEBRUARy 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

O2 apologises for security breach

Neelie Kroes calls for speedy EU uptake of cloud computing

CIOs can’t stop staff using unapproved devices

Apple sees record growth in profits

One-third of English councils set for broadband

Businesses should disable pcAnywhere, says Symantec

CIO interview: John Linwood, chief technology officer, BBC

Nokia smartphones bomb as sales drop 27%

Facebook IPO speculation mounts

UK government opens up IT procurement

get the latest it news via rss feed computerweekly.com/rssFeeds.htm

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the week in IT

3 | 7-13 february 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

mobile networking

IT departments primed for mobile device initiatives in 2012About 30% of UK IT departments are incorporating smartphone and tablet initiatives in their strategies for 2012 as workers increasingly use the de-vices for work. A Computer Weekly and TechTarget survey of more than 2,500 IT professionals worldwide re-vealed that 28.9% plan to introduce initiatives to use smartphones in the business, while 30.3% will enable the use of tablet PCs.

network hardware

Cisco debuts consolidation in bid to revive flagging fortunesCisco has unveiled details of the product line consolidation it hopes will turn the company around after its struggles with poor financial per-formance. Chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior told delegates at the Cisco Live Europe 2012 confer-ence the supplier has consolidated into five key areas of business: col-laboration, datacentre, enterprise, security and service provider.

pc hardware

HMRC says public sector could save £500m on user devicesThe public sector could save £500m per year by standardising the costs of user devices, as some departments are currently spending 10 times more than others on similar devices, ac-cording to HMRC’s end user device programme director Nigel Green.

mobile software

Office 365 customers get Exchange Online on BlackberrysBusinesses running Microsoft Office 365 can now access Exchange Online on their Blackberry smartphones. The service is available at no ad-ditional charge to current medium-sized or enterprise subscribers of the Office 365 suite or standalone Exchange Online and works with Blackberry smartphones on business or consumer data plans.

outsourcing

Department of Health signs Atos for integrated desktop servicesThe Department of Health has signed a £74m five-year contract with Atos for integrated IT desktop services. The department said the contract will result in 40% savings. Under the contract Atos will provide service support for the department and some of its agencies such as the Care Qual-ity Commission, through a shared services arrangement. The services provider said it will use open source software and work with SMEs to provide the government with a value-for-money service.

technical skills

Skills base lags behind business technology investment projectsOver 80% of CIOs say it is becoming increasingly difficult to find people with the right skills as over half of businesses plan to invest in the latest technologies this year, according to research. The survey of 600 execu-tives, from recruitment firm Robert Half, revealed most demand for skills related to big data initiatives as well as mobile technology.

outsourcing

Indian services provider to create 10,000 jobs in Europe and USIndian IT services firm HCL Technol-ogies is aiming to create 10,000 jobs in the US and Europe over five years, establishing regional centres with re-cruitment and training programmes to support them. Early pilots of HCL’s Global Centres of Excellence in Dub-lin, Helsinki and Krakow in Europe and Seattle and Cary North in the US are being run.

e-commerce technology

G20 internet economy set to double to £2.7tn by 2016The G20’s internet economy is set to nearly double by 2016 reaching $4.2tn (£2.7tn), up from $2.3tn in 2010, according to research. The big-gest driver will be the number of in-ternet users around the globe, rising from 1.9 billion in 2010 to 3 billion in 2016, about 45% of the world’s population, research from the Boston Consulting Group found.

smartphone technology

Nokia reports revenues drop of €2.7bn with net losses of €1bnNokia reported a spectacular drop in net sales of €2.7bn for Q4 2011, compared to the same period last year, and posted a net loss of just over €1bn. Sales of Nokia’s smart-phones dropped 27%, down from €14.8bn for the same quarter in 2010 to €10.8bn in the latest quarter. Non-smartphone sales fared slightly better, with a 13% drop to €11.9bn, down from €13.7bn in 2010.

government & public sector

Select committee urges public safety education programme MPs on the House of Commons Sci-ence and Technology Select Com-mittee say the government must do more to help the public understand how to stay safe online. According to the committee’s latest Malware and Cyber Crime Report, malicious soft-ware that steals identity and banking details poses a growing threat in the UK as more people use the internet and an increasing amount of eco-nomic activity takes place online.

Government wastes ERP budget Some Whitehall departments are spending up to three times more than others for the use of near-identical software, a Computer Weekly investiga-tion into IT spending across government has revealed. IT spending on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has seen wildly inconsistent figures paid across government, according to Freedom of Information requests sent to 20 departments.

Computer Weekly’s research found the Department for International Devel-opment pays £127 per user on ERP licences, but the Department for Communities and Local Government pays just £38 per user. The Department for Work and Pensions has ERP software licenced for 130,000 users, despite only employing 120,000 people.

“Government departments need to realise better public information about computer safety could save people having their personal details stolen”

Andrew Miller MP, Technology Select Committee

government & public sector

UK firms’ security initiatives in 2012

Source: TechTarget

news analysis

Virtualisation, Windows 7 and security identified as top areas for investment

4 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Research reveals which technologies will attract investment this year, despite flat IT budgets. Bill Goodwin reports

UK IT budgets will remain flat in 2012, a worldwide survey of more than 2,500 IT pro-fessionals has revealed.

The Computer Weekly and Tech Target survey, which gathered re-sponses from more than 200 UK sen-ior IT professionals, showed that IT spending in Europe has been hit harder by the recession than spend-ing in the US and Asia.

In the UK, 50% of IT profession-als said their IT spending would either decrease or remain the same in 2012.

Nearly 40% of UK IT professionals said their organisations are recover-ing slowly from the downturn, and 30% said they are still struggling.

IT investmentDespite the tough economic condi-tions, some 38% of IT professionals

expected their IT budgets to increase in 2012, with 21% expecting an increase of 5% or more.

“I think what you are seeing now is the realisation from some IT de-partments that they can’t delay spending any more,” said Ovum an-alyst Roy Illsley, commenting on the research findings.

“Some people have really cut back too far, and others realise if they make investments now, that would make them more agile when the up-turn comes,” he added.

IT supports business growthThe focus for 29% of UK IT depart-ments in 2012 will be to expand IT to support the growth of the business, with business analytics featuring strongly in many organisa-tions’ plans.

Around a quarter will concentrate their spending in a few key areas of IT, while 19% aim to reduce busi-ness costs by automating business processes.

Some 15% of IT departments have the more modest ambition of main-taining their service levels despite a flat budget, while 14% will focus on reducing their IT spending.

Windows 7The research showed that migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 will feature prominently in IT depart-ments’ plans this year, as Microsoft winds down support of XP.

Businesses are expected to take

IT budgeTs

IT budgets worldwide in 2012

Source: Computer Weekly/TechTarget

Global budget growth in 2012

Source: Computer Weekly/TechTarget

Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 will feature prominently in IT departments’ plans this year

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news analysis

advantage of the move to Windows 7 to replace traditional desktops with virtual desktops and virtual applications.

The move will make it easier to manage the growing number of mobile and consumer devices used at work.

Server virtualisation, business intel-ligence (BI), disaster recovery and data protection also feature strongly in UK IT departments’ plans this year.

Businesses are investing in analytics technology to mine data, helping them grow the business and build stronger relationships with their customers, despite difficult trading conditions.

“People are looking at how they can use all the information they have got to glean the nuggets that will allow them to grow and survive in this difficult time,” said Illsley.

Business continuity planning and disaster recovery has assumed a higher profile for many organisa-tions following natural disasters in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and the US in 2011.

Cloud is a lower priorityAlthough the popularity of cloud computing is growing, it was only a high priority for 30% of the IT pro-fessionals surveyed, and a medium priority for 50%.

Commenting on the results, Gartner analyst Dave Aron said CIOs’ attitudes towards cloud had changed over the past year and they no longer regard cloud as supplier hype. ■

5 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Initiatives being adopted by IT departments in 2012

Source: Computer Weekly/TechTarget

more online› In-depth coverage of TechTarget’s 2012 IT priorities research

› Creative destruction should drive your 2012 IT budget, says Gartner

› Chief financial officers rule the IT budget, survey finds

Our survey of IT professionals revealed that data protection would be the top security initiative for most UK organisations in 2012, writes Warwick Ashford.

Media focus on the topic is driving public awareness as increasing powers of the Information Commission-er’s Office (ICO) draw the board’s attention to the risks. This is reflected in the fact that 43% of the UK organ-isations polled said they plan to implement data protection initiatives in the coming year. Similarly, 21.6% plan to invest in identity and access manage-ment and 23.9% in threat management, including anti-malware systems.

Analysts say the focus on data protection may also be linked to the fact that the ICO is increasingly exercising its power to impose monetary penalties of up to £500,000 for serious data breaches.

In a difficult economic climate, limited financial resources play a guiding principle in many of the information security spending decisions for the coming year.

A more data-centric approach to security has been advocated for quite some time, yet 40.9% of the UK companies polled plan to invest in network-based security in 2012.

In reality, data-centric security remains out of reach for most organisations as their information security strategy and operational readiness remain immature.

In these current times of austerity, businesses often consider it imperative to maximise the spread of protection and to concentrate on the basics, according to Mark Brown, chief information security officer at SAB Miller. Consequently, businesses are concentrating on network security to establish a baseline maturity before tackling more focused security issues, he said.

According to the survey, the third highest area of security investment in 2012 for UK companies is application security, yet it remains relatively low at only 26.1% of businesses polled.

The constant need for agility in software development has left most businesses with badly developed application source code vulnerable to exploitation by hackers. But many businesses have not invested sufficiently in perimeter security controls for years and are now having to catch up.

“With limited budgets, it is often a case of providing security protection in alignment with a maturity model,

starting with the basics and then advancing up the capability curve,” said Brown.

Mobilisation is another hot topic in business IT, but according to the survey only 28.4% of respondents plan to implement mobile security initiatives in 2012. While this appears relatively low, despite the hype, the actual figures of adoption throughout enterprises of smart mobile endpoints remains dwarfed by traditional IT deployments.

Another reason that mobile device security implemen-tations are relatively low – despite IT security managers ranking mobile device security as a top pain point – is that security solutions have not caught up to the problem at hand, according to Daniel Kennedy, research director at 451 Research, a division of The 451 Group.

Piers Wilson, senior manager in the information security practice at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, said only around a third of companies are actively looking for security around mobile devices, because the front runners have already implemented such systems and the remaining third are not yet ready.

Cloud and virtualisation security are fairly low on the priority list at 9.1%, but according to SAB Miller’s Brown, many firms have already virtualised environments and answered the security queries this rationalisation poses.

Cloud security, he said, is not a topic that has gained widespread adoption across multinational corporations, often hamstrung because of the legacy legislation and compliance burdens which have not kept pace with advances in technology and working practices.

According to 451 Research, most adopters of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) are going with whatever the cloud provider offers. This approach, said Kennedy, suggests a fairly nascent space.

“However, the majority of cloud implementations we are seeing would be termed private cloud or in-house/in-datacentre implementations of a cloud capability, such as rapid or automated provisioning, and when it comes to private cloud, security managers revert to the ‘hopefully my existing products will work’ approach,” he said.

The trends in security initiatives to be implemented in 2012 roughly follow the adoption patterns of new and emerging technologies, tempered by the difficult economic climate and relative immaturity of appropriate security products, services, skills and knowledge.

Budgeting for security: All eyes on data protection

Virtualisation, BI, disaster recovery and data protection feature strongly in UK IT departments’ plans this year

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interview

The IT fit to broadcast the Olympics, the diamond Jubilee and UEFA 2012

7 | 7-13 february 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

The BBC has a busy year ahead which CTO John Linwood has been painstakingly preparing for, writes Angelica Mari

The BBC plans to cover every sport from every venue dur-ing the London 2012 Olym-pic Games. With over 2,000

hours of live sport, that means enor-mous pressure on the IT department to ensure everything works.

With only a few months to go, the top IT man at the BBC, chief technol-ogy officer (CTO) John Linwood, has a lot on his plate.

There are multiple projects under-way that are related to the Olympic Games, but Linwood is also busy driving a major modernisation of the BBC’s IT estate to bring in efficiency and deliver at least 16% of savings over the current licensing period – the corporation’s revenue is flat, due to the licence fee freeze, until 2016.

Availability during the Games is a major area of focus for Linwood’s 1,200-strong IT team. Data feeds and broadcasting will run on the BBC’s own infrastructure. The exception is the web, where content distribution networks will support delivery.

“We looked across all of our con-nectivity and broadcast infrastructure for video and audio to ensure that it is fully resilient and has all the moni-toring systems in place to handle peaks of demand,” Linwood told Computer Weekly.

“Our network infrastructure around the online environment has also been upgraded to provide addi-tional resilience for our web and in-ternet streaming services and we are also looking at a number of addition-al communication links between us and the Olympic video feeds and our own camera crews.”

Many challenges that are not strict-ly technology-related, but have an IT angle, have been considered for the Olympics. For example, BBC staff may encounter difficulties in getting to Olympic locations, so work was carried out to ensure connectivity.

“We beefed up our remote access infrastructure, so people can log on

“We beefed up our remote access infrastructure, so people can log on from home and work” John Linwood, BBC CTO

it leadership

from home and work, and to support staff to ensure they are on duty and available,” he says.

Linwood says the BBC will spend some of its £400m IT budget on addi-tional technology services for the Olympics over the coming months.

“A lot of it will be related to web services - buying additional circuitry, support services, additional band-width to support the additional video feeds and so on.”

Supplier accountabilityLinwood is ensuring the BBC’s out-sourcing providers are strengthening their support teams. Whereas Games-specific services have particular service level agreements (SLAs) as-sociated with them, the IT chief says normal rules of engagement apply.

“Our normal rules and standards are the ones we hold suppliers to. The BBC has a very high bar in SLAs and nothing really changes from that point of view – our goal is to stay on air during the Games but there is nothing special about the contracts.”

However, the CTO is keeping a close watch on what the BBC’s IT partners are delivering. A key area of focus is the 10-year, £2bn technology

framework contract, previously un-dertaken by Siemens IT Services and now carried out by French IT firm Atos, which bought SIS last year.

The relationship between the broadcaster and Siemens was not without difficulties. In March last year, the BBC blamed the contractor for a faulty switch which took all the BBC website network offline, with a number of internal services affected.

Since July 2011, the BBC has had its systems delivered by Atos. Lin-wood says Atos has worked hard to deliver against the BBC’s require-ments, adding that the new incum-bent is making good progress.

“Just as with any outsourcing pro-vider, there are areas where we would like to continue to improve the service, but there are other areas where they meet all our needs. But generally, we are in a good place when it comes to our outsourced technology delivery,” Linwood says.

To ensure thare are no further blunders, Linwood has strengthened the broadcaster’s supplier manage-ment organisation to ensure partners are held accountable and deliver the services that have been contracted.

“It is about becoming a smarter

customer. One thing I did was roll out more technology skill in the BBC, so we are better at helping suppliers understand what we need to make the organisation successful,” Lin-wood says. “This pays big dividends in service effectiveness and generates value for money.”

Behind the scenesAs well as preparing for the Olympic Games, the BBC has a significant agenda of internal IT-led transforma-tion. As well as moving more than 2,000 staff to Manchester, the BBC will transfer 3,000 people to a hugely refurbished Broadcasting House, near Oxford Circus in central London, where units such as the World Ser-vice will be based.

“For the first time, the BBC is bringing much of its editorial teams together. It means we will have a great newsroom and fantastic tech-nology, but it is challenging because we are have the Olympics going on at the same time,” says Linwood.

“In 2012 you have the European football finals, the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics, so there is a huge amount of focus around ensuring the technology works when people move to the new locations, as well as resil-ience for all our services to stay on air, particularly during these major events,” he adds.

“At the same time we are continu-ing to drive our IT forward and up-grading it. It’s a major year for us, both in terms of resource and the huge roll-outs that are going on.”

This is an edited extract of the original article. To read the full interview online, click on the link below

more online❯ CIO interview: John Linwood, chief technology officer, BBC

❯ CIO interview: Steve Townsend, CIO, Transport for London

❯ CIO interview: Gerry Pennell, CIO, London 2012 Olympics

news analysis

Google’s prospects for cracking the 2012 enterprise applications market

8 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

As Eric Schmidt steps down as CEO, Cliff Saran finds out how Google's ambitions for its enterprise IT are shaping up

While Google’s advertis-ing revenue continues to grow, how well is the company doing selling

enterprise software? Google reported net income of

$2.71bn in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with $2.54bn in the fourth quarter of 2010. Revenues from the UK totalled $1.06bn, repre-senting 10% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2011. Larry Page, CEO of Google, said he was “super excited about the growth of An-droid, Gmail and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally”.

However, the firm’s online adver-tising revenue per click fell in the quarter. Without the income generat-ed from advertising, Google may be less likely to continue building a via-ble enterprise business, particularly given the strength of the established suppliers in the enterprise market.

Analysts say such a risk is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, as the online advertising market is cur-rently weak. In particular, Google will face increased competition from Facebook’s use of social media to tar-get advertising. Microsoft is spending a lot of money pushing Bing, which could eventually provide an alterna-tive to Google’s own search.

Ad revenue under pressureWriting on financial blog Seeking Alpha, Brett Jensen, chief investment strategist at Simplified Asset Man-agement, said pressure on Google’s advertising revenue will increase: “The company faces increasing com-petition in mobile and cloud comput-ing from Apple and Amazon, both of which have better and more effective management, in my opinion.”

Jensen said Google’s acquisition of Motorola, which gives it a foothold in the smartphone handset market, is flawed. “In addition to increasing operating costs and lowering mar-gins, the acquisition of Motorola Mobility has opened the door for Microsoft in the smartphone busi-ness. Microsoft’s first phone product with Nokia, the Lumia 710, is gener-ally getting good reviews.”

Analyst Ovum predicts Android will replace Apple’s iOS in impor-

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail and Google+, which now has 90 million users” Larry Page, Google CEO

“Google faces increasing competition in mobile and cloud computing from Apple and Amazon”

business applications

more online❯ Google enterprise apps gaining as supplements – not substitutes

❯ Google Android growth threatens Blackberry enterprise dominance

❯ Can Google’s Chromebook change enterprise desktop IT?

tance to developers in the next year. But Microsoft, too, will become in-creasingly important. “The growing momentum behind Windows Phone indicates Microsoft has managed to convince developers its platform is worthy of investment; its challenge now is to persuade consumers,” said Adam Leach, devices and platforms practice leader at Ovum.

Enterprise marketIn its profile report of Google, Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) states that, while the long-term strategy regard-ing Google’s enterprise services is not yet clear, it is growing its user base as well as its partnership. The report says this is a good sign Google will

keep pushing its enterprise activities. “Consistently released updates,

along with additional services, lead PAC to believe Google is vested in its enterprise solutions for the long-haul, though the extent of its growth will not be certain until Larry Page’s strat-egies are in place,” said the report.

However, PAC noted that Google Apps still faces significant challeng-es. Productivity tool giants Microsoft (Office) and IBM (Lotus) hold the li-on’s share of the market and are desk-top-based applications. Google Apps, through its cloud computing model, is innovative, but traction with the enterprise remains to be seen.

Another facet of Google Apps ser-vices includes data migration and

connection capabilities for users of Microsoft Office (Google Cloud for Microsoft Office). By allowing inte-gration between Google Apps and this productivity suite, Google hopes to draw more customers. However, Microsoft’s own cloud computing productivity suite, Office 365, will pose direct competition for Google.

Long road to cloud successWith Eric Schmidt taking a back seat by stepping down as Google’s CEO, experts have said it no longer has the appetite to drive its enterprise business and enterprise efforts will remain a small part of its business.

“Enterprise IT buyers represent less than 3% of Google’s revenue. Google is more appropriate for organ-isations than it has been, but recent management changes could bode ill for the enterprise business,” stated analyst Gartner in its Google vendor rating, published in June 2011.

Gartner said enterprises are mov-ing slowly to cloud-based e-mail and collaboration services in a 15-year migration. “Google’s enterprise pene-tration in 2010 roughly matched Mi-crosoft’s cloud e-mail uptake. Gmail is good enough to serve as a corporate e-mail system. Docs is not a replace-ment for Microsoft Office but it may be good enough for some users,” stat-ed the report.

CIOs could deploy Google as an al-ternative to Microsoft Exchange, and run Google Enterprise Search. They may even pilot devices such as the Google Chromebook as an alternative to traditional desktop and laptop PCs. But Google still has a long way to go to become a viable enterprise software provider. ■

community

M-commerce: Why CIOs need to manage the risk

Simplicity is key in future of IT

9 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

The age of mobile com-merce is upon us. Almost two-thirds of global busi-nesses in financial services,

technology, telecoms and retail are already operating a mobile payments strategy, with US mobile payments totalling around $100bn (£63bn) last year, according to our recent KPMG Consumer and Convergence Survey.

M-commerce is a significant oppor-tunity for business. It not only influ-ences a consumer at the point of sale, it also brings the point of sale to the consumer. The proportion of consum-ers buying goods and services via a mobile device has also soared global-ly, from 10% in 2008 to 28% in 2010.

Yet consumers have concerns. Of the 10,000 we spoke to, 90% are wor-ried about the security of their per-sonal identifiable information (PII), although they are largely happy to allow their online usage and personal profile to be tracked, providing this leads to lower costs and more tai-lored services.

This means that for m-commerce to truly fulfil its potential, CIOs will need to balance technology with a more holistic view of risk for their en-tire business. KPMG sees four main challenges, which we refer to as the “m-risks”:

Culture: building partnershipsIT departments and the businesses they serve need new skills to deliver goods and services via mobile de-vices. Some will already have more experience in direct selling and global markets, others in technology and IT security.

Leveraging the right kinds of expe-rience to fill the gaps required to de-liver m-commerce is already leading

to joint ventures and may even in-volve partnering with potential rivals from other sectors.

Security: fraud detectionAccording to our survey, 92% of information security officers think

IT departments need new skills to deliver goods and services via mobile devices

Bryan GlIck leader STeve WaTmouGh opinion

m-commerce will drive an increase in e-crime. Current security meas-ures risk being overwhelmed unless corporate thinking keeps pace. Exist-ing control frameworks provide an illusion of assurance, but their main focus is on catching errors, frauds and data breaches after the event.

Security in the m-commerce era will be more highly automated, backed by more sophisticated tools to support employee compliance and decision making. Data analytics is set to move centre stage to help spot fraud trends and security awareness generally will need to penetrate all aspects of a company’s business.

Technology: Trusting suppliersM-commerce demands vital tech-nology choices. For instance, most mobile technologies require some form of “enabler” to transform the device into a secure payment meth-od. Each has its own benefits, risks and customer appeal. It is important to establish trusted advisors and vendors, recognising the difference between those that come with a pre-defined package and those offering a range of options, tailored to your specific needs.

Regulation: self-policingM-commerce is already caught in the web of legislation and regulation. Its transnational character makes it easy for firms to fall foul of measures such as the EU’s Distance Selling Direc-tive, as well as national regulators such as the UK’s Advertising Stand-ards Authority. Detailed and timely counsel on the legal regimes in indi-vidual markets, and the connections between them, is essential.

In due course, governments will work together to devise specific reg-ulations for this new form of busi-ness. In the meantime, CIOs have a choice: wait for external action, or start policing their own businesses, thereby setting a framework for sub-sequent national and international rule making.

M-commerce poses real challenges but offers immense opportunities. The revolution is accelerating rapid-ly: the question is not whether to join in, but how and to what level? ■

Steve Watmough is CIO advisory partner at KPMG

A re we experiencing the beginning of the end for IT complexity? ask most CIOs what is their biggest headache, and they will tell you

about the restrictions caused by the com-plexity of their legacy IT – inherited from their predecessor, of course.

Complexity underlies so many of the prob-lems facing IT leaders. It leads directly to skills shortages, as complexity demands specialised and often hard-to-find resourc-es. It prevents IT from innovating and improving business, as the majority of budg-ets go into keeping the lights on. and com-plexity is the cause of breakdowns between users and IT departments, as those users compare the apparent simplicity of the tech-nology they use at home with the difficulties they experience at work.

For many years, complexity provided job security for IT professionals. as long as the infrastructure was complex, and needed their expertise, jobs were safe. but there are no end of examples now of companies which employ more IT people as a direct result of the fact that reducing IT complexity gives more opportunity for innovation, and allows IT to play a more strategic role in the organisation.

aside from history, there are no more excuses for maintaining IT complexity – either from IT departments or from IT suppliers.

The government has become an unlikely exemplar of the benefits of simplicity. The release of the beta version of Gov.uk, the planned single domain for all online public ser-vices, has been widely welcomed and praised around the world. The Government Digital Service team that is developing the site has used open source, amazon cloud computing, agile development and prototyping, eschew-ing the big project-oriented developments typical of Whitehall. It also came in under its relatively modest budget and on time.

Facebook announced its plans to enter the stock market last week, revealing previously unpublished information about its inner workings. The world’s biggest social net-work, supporting 800 million users world-wide, employs just 3,200 people. That’s IT simplicity at its peak.

It will, of course, take time to shake off the legacy of the past in enterprise IT, but sim-plicity should now be the driving factor in decision-making for IT leaders. ■

editor’s blogcomputerweekly.com/editor

All names, manufacturer names, brand and product designations are subject to special trademark rights and are manufacturer‘s trademarks and/or registered brands of their respective owners. All indications are non-binding. Technical data is subject to change without prior notifi cation.

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buyer’s guide

11 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

The landscape of computing is changing rapidly, largely driven by the move towards virtual servers, and that is

bringing change to storage too.Perhaps mere use of the word

“change” understates what is happen-ing. The advent of server virtualisa-tion, led by the juggernaut that is VM-ware, has really stirred up the entire IT environment and could bring seis-mic shifts for storage. In a relatively short space of time – say, four or five years – the needs of virtualisation have helped consolidate the tradition-al storage array and then moved swift-ly on to sow the seeds of its downfall.

Once upon a time, the world was a simple server-centric one. Applica-

physical surroundings, and many servers could run in a single physical machine.

This development drove the up-take of shared storage. While putting many virtual servers in one place greatly improved the utilisation of server compute resources, it also

Managing storage on virtual serversAntony Adshead explores alternative storage options as virtualisation drives a move away from traditional arrays

pushed existing direct-attached stor-age (DAS) beyond practical limits. Having many virtual servers in a few machines meant a shared pool of storage (usually a storage area net-work, or SAN) was needed to serve data with the required I/O, through-put and scalability.

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tions ran on physical servers, and if they were important applications, they had their own dedicated com-pute resources. Storage was directly attached and all lived in one tin box. Then came server virtualisation. The logical business of a server applica-tion was liberated from its former

Traditional forms of storage arrays work well for single-application servers, but with virtualisation generating more I/O per physical machine, access has become increasingly random. That has made it harder for storage to match server performance.

Storage managers can buy more spindles to improve I/O, but this option brings with it cost, space, heat and power issues. Effectively, host performance has out-stripped that of the array because the storage perfor-mance increase curve is less steep than Moore’s Law.

Bringing storage closer to the server alleviates the problems of expensive shared storage. It also means the

storage system’s resources, including the network, are dedicated to a single machine, which then enjoys better performance. This means a single virtual machine (VM) host can now ensure that its storage runs at full utilisa-tion, so why share that system and add to its workload?

Use cases for the new generation of direct-attached storage include highly dense installations such as private clouds and virtual desktop infrastructures, as well as those requiring access to large volumes of storage, such as images and video. It is used mostly by companies not yet ready to buy in to the locked-in costs entailed in a traditional storage area network.

The storage performance gap

»

CW Buyer’s guidevirtualisation

part 2 of 3

buyer’s guide

Oracle’s Database Machine is a more extreme example of clustered direct-attached storage in a box, and it is an application-specific example of the company’s Exalogic-branded systems, which integrate servers and storage. Consisting of 14 Linux or Solaris servers with 128 CPU cores, the 42U system is attached directly over InfiniBand to 5.3TB of flash and up to 150TB of disk storage. The system uses a flash cache for faster access to data and speeds up log writes using a battery-backed DRAM cache in the disk controller.

Dedicated to database serving, the aim of the design is to boost perfor-mance of both SQL queries and storage I/O. Oracle claims its parallel storage access architecture can deliver up to 75Gbps of I/O bandwidth and up to 75,000 database IOPS. The machine can be expanded by adding InfiniBand links and switches.

Oracle: Clustered DAS in a boxBut as the implementation and use of virtual machines, and latterly vir-tual desktops, have taken root, short-comings have become apparent in existing approaches to delivering shared storage. The cause: the ex-tremely random I/O profile that re-sults from placing multiple virtual machines in a few physical servers. In particular, write requests can real-ly pile up and deal a blow to hard drive seek times if nothing is done about them.

Input/output performanceThe I/O issue is a big thing for stor-age, and we are seeing a range of responses, from throwing solid-state media at the problem to new stor-age architectures that go beyond the traditional controller/disk array approach. These responses show the potential for the SAN/network-attached storage array as we know it to become a thing of the past.

Server-side flash, for example, is one way in which the array is side-

A number of storage hardware architectures are arising that break the traditional mould

stepped to provide better perfor-mance for virtual machine and desk-top I/O. Here, a wedge of solid-state media is located at the server, and in cases such as Fusion IO’s ioMemory Virtual Storage Layer software, inte-grates the added flash with the serv-er’s own memory. Of course, it is also possible to put flash into a traditional array – and most suppliers now allow that – or even to have an entire array of solid-state drives (SSDs). These ap-proaches pose no real threat to the traditional array architecture.

There are, however, a number of storage hardware architectures aris-ing that do break the traditional mould. Perhaps the most radical is Nutanix and its Complete Cluster, which provides compute resources for VMware hypervisors along with a Google-style mass, distributed ap-proach to storage.

What you get are discrete applianc-es that include server, storage soft-ware controller, solid-state drives and hard drives in a 4U unit that can be clustered to create a grid-style file system. It’s like a turn full circle back to direct-attached storage, but this time with clustering that allows for huge scalability and ditches tradi-tional shared storage and its associat-ed fabric and cost.

Another approach is from Nimble Storage, which combines solid-state and SATA drives with data dedupli-cation. The company claims to solve I/O issues and back-up all in one box. Flash caching allows for super-rapid read I/O, non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) buffers random writes that

are then written sequentially and striped to SATA drives, and dedupli-cation provides for extremely effi-cient use of spinning disk capacity.

Meanwhile, Nexenta tackles the vir-tual machine/desktop random I/O challenge by its use of Sun’s ZFS file system. ZFS allows for three levels of cache – memory, SSD and spinning disk – and sequentialises random writes to spinning disk from the first two. True, Nexenta is a storage array, but it is a software product that will work with commodity hard drives. That could pose a great threat to the tra-ditional storage array supplier model.

Impact of hypervisorsThe traditional storage array is also under attack from the virtualisation hypervisor. Virsto, for example, pro-vides a virtual storage appliance that lives in the hypervisor and controls storage on vanilla RAID arrays. Its software also tackles the random I/O challenge and creates a log in front of physical storage that smoothes out the write process. It is an example of the intelligence in the job of provid-ing storage moving from the array to the server.

Perhaps the largest slew of such examples comes from VMware, which introduced a range of new storage management features in its vSphere 5 environment. These en-hancements include application pro-gramming interfaces (APIs) that can detect, read the characteristics of and manage storage devices from the server; the ability to move virtual servers automatically according to (among other things) storage I/O and disk capacity; the ability to lock vir-tual machines (VMs) to specific stor-age; the ability to set logical unit numbers (LUNs) from the hypervisor; and the ability to reclaim disk space from deleted VMs.

While the likes of Nutanix and Nexenta demonstrate radical alterna-tive approaches to the way storage hardware is configured and sold,

they are up against mighty and well-entrenched products and mar-keting machines from leading array makers such as EMC, NetApp, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems and Dell.

The major storage companies can soak up these kinds of punches with ease for the time being. Perhaps the bigger threat in the medium term is from the migration of storage intelli-gence to the hypervisor. The brain of the virtual server infrastructure is in some ways the ideal location from which to control storage functions. If VMware’s efforts to date are anything to go by, we could see more storage functions taken over by the hypervi-sor in years to come, especially as other virtual server suppliers such as Microsoft and Red Hat gain traction in the market. ■

antony adshead is bureau chief for SearchStorage.co.uk, where this article first appeared

12 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Another method of bringing storage closer to the virtual machine (VM) host is a virtual storage appliance (VSA), an example of which is Hewlett-Packard’s LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance Software.

Run atop a hypervisor, a VSA can provide features more commonly found in controller hardware, including snapshots and replication, which can replace traditional back-ups. This is a big advantage when data volumes are so huge that backing up in the traditional manner would take days.

Today, software-based controllers cannot deliver the performance of dedicated hardware, but Moore’s Law guarantees this will change as host processing power increases. As such appliances become able to handle larger volumes of data, host servers will share their storage between VMs.

With improved performance levels and no additional, expensive hardware to buy, VSAs coupled to high-performance direct-attached storage (DAS) could start to mark the decline of the traditional storage array. Instead of sharing storage between physical servers, the DAS will be shared by VMs running on networked hosts. This brings advantages of easier management and resilience. VMware’s vSphere Storage Appliance does this (as does HP’s P4000), allowing the benefits of server virtualisation to be used across two or three servers.

This will not be an overnight shift, but the growth of server virtualisation and its storage demands, even in SME environments, seem likely to provide a growing market for the new breed of DAS.

Virtual storage appliances to replace controller hardware?

more online› Five best practices to optimise server infrastructure costs with virtualisation

› Top 5 server virtualisation problems

› Buyer’s Guide part one: What next for virtualisation?

»

More storage functions could be taken over by the hypervisor in years to come

shared services

13 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

a t Liberty Diversified Inter-national, every IT resource that can be virtualised is, to enable the company to

share systems. The global company specialises in paper manufacturing and office supplies to advertising.

“The goal is to share as many of the systems as we can,” says Alla John-son, CIO since June 2010 at the US-based holding company.

A multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) wide area network (WAN) connects most of Liberty Diversified’s company locations. ERP systems are delivered primarily via tools from Ci-trix Systems. Windows and Linux servers are on VMware. Johnson uses IBM BladeCenter technology to sup-port that environment, and has a Dell Compellent SAN for storage.

Johnson does not use a traditional service catalogue in her shared servic-es offering. “There was an attempt at a catalogue about five years ago. The business didn’t buy into it,” she says.

links that create services can be even trickier, according to IT service man-agement experts. The business-facing service catalogue, however, remains the same.

The services menu“A catalogue is a catalogue. No mat-ter how your services are provided, the way you present services should be transparent to the business,” says Pierre Bernard, manager at US-based consultancy Pink Elephant, and formerly chief examiner for the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) frame-work, which is widely adopted for the delivery of IT services.

Choosing a menu of shared servicesAn IT service catalogue is not always necessary in a shared IT environment. Linda Tucci reports

Unfortunately, the mistakes that IT inevitably makes with service cata-logues remain the same, according to Bernard. “People make it overcom-plicated. They try to cover everything to excess. They try to identify each service individually and pretend they are different services, when they are simply a different flavour of that service,” he says. “When you go to McDonald’s, can you order a hot dog? No, because it doesn’t sell it.”

Bernard advises CIOs to consider the services they use all the time – from restaurant menus to online air-line reservations – when they devel-op their IT service catalogues. If 10 people go to a restaurant, they are un-likely to order the same dishes, but they order from the same menu. The ingredients required and processes involved in delivering the dish have been worked out in advance and are largely invisible to the diner.

The same holds true for IT service catalogues, whether the catalogue is

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Instead, she is developing a strate-gic plan that lays out the services that will be available over the next three years and when they will be imple-mented. These services are based on extensive discussions with each of the businesses.

Certainly it’s challenging to build a service catalogue for a shared servic-es environment that relies on virtual-ised IT systems and perhaps a private cloud. Delivering pooled IT resources requires some fancy footwork on the back end for tracking usage and costs. In shared services environments that use a combination of internal and public cloud computing, tracing the

»

“People make IT service catalogues overcomplicated. They try to cover everything to excess”

shared servicesdeveloped for traditional IT environ-ments serving a local business unit, for a centralised internal virtual en-vironment providing services glob-ally, or for a hybrid cloud environ-ment, he says.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, CIOs should start with their compa-ny’s own website. Most lay out what the company does – its various lines of business, products and services. “We take that and map it to the busi-ness processes and then list the IT services that support those business processes,” Bernard says.

Bundled servicesThe purpose of a service catalogue “doesn’t really change”, whether it’s in a shared services environment or not, agrees Sharon Taylor, formerly ITIL chief architect and now ITIL chief examiner. “The purpose is to depict to the customer what is avail-able. Whether the services are shared for economies of scale, or whether they are virtualised, or if storage is done across a series of server farms – the customer doesn’t care about that, nor should they,” she says.

That said, in cloud computing envi-ronments, where it is less clear which IT assets are owned by the company and which aren’t, it’s difficult to track service consumption in a transaction-al or asset fashion. “What we have had to do is take a step back from thinking about things in terms of bits and bytes and transactions,” Taylor says.

Instead, many IT providers are of-fering packaged services that accom-modate different business needs, such as the bundled services offered by cell phone service providers, Tay-lor says. An example is e-mail. A business division pays a certain amount per year for the “vanilla” ser-vice that is shared, but can buy pack-aged services that are enhanced with more storage or multiple e-mail ac-counts, for example. “These are of-fered at different price points to cus-tomers willing to pay a premium for them,” she says.

The approach is not an exact sci-ence, but is perhaps the easiest way to get the most accurate information, Taylor says: “You don’t want to spend more money and time deter-mining the cost of services than it ac-tually costs to use them.”

Mark Cybulski, a regional CIO at German-owned global automotive supplier ZF Group, which has 121 plants in 27 countries, says his IT de-partment offers some of the more standard IT services, such as help-desk and networks, as well as end de-vices, such as smartphone services, on a consumption basis to its plants. Asked if he uses a service catalogue, the answer is “yes and no”.

“We have very tightly defined ser-vice definitions. Our auditors are sticklers to make sure that we are charging for services that have a clear definition,” Cybulski says. “We also have a lot of conversations with our controller about what the pricing models are going to be and the type of metering we are going to have. We regenerate our prices on an annual basis to tell our individual plant con-trollers what to expect. And we work collaboratively with them to budget the coming year for service volumes.”

All that exists. “But I have to tell you that once they are in place, they are rarely referred to. It is like one of those procedural manuals that sits on the desk and collects dust,” Cybulski adds.

Business needsLiberty Diversified’s Johnson prices services based on each business’s historical use of IT services, as well as on industry norms for IT spending as a percentage of company revenue. Hard as it is to price services, the ben-efits outweigh the pain, she says.

The holding company’s divisions include companies with fewer than 150 employees. With shared services, Johnson can negotiate deals that any one company in the Liberty stable couldn’t pull off, and hire subject ex-perts the businesses couldn’t afford on their own.

One danger of a centralised ap-proach is that IT will become locked into certain services that don’t really reflect the organisation’s needs.

Building her strategic plan for the business is akin to developing a ser-vice catalogue, Johnson says, only this time, her shared services strate-gic plan, aka catalogue, is starting with business buy-in, as opposed to opening up the IT toolbox and offer-ing as a service whatever happens to be in it – or, as she put it, using the “I

have a hammer; now show me where the nails are” approach.

“We are trying to step away from that mentality and ask, what it is we really need to build for the business, how do we need to build it, and what are the tools that we need to have,” she says. ■

Linda tucci is senior news writer for computer Weekly’s sister title searchcio.com, where this article first appeared

14 | 7-13 February 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

more online› Guide to IT services in the UK: outsourcing, managed service providers and cloud services

› Wipro widens its services delivery options

› Establishing the profession of IT service management

› IT executives putting their own stamp on shared services model

› The fundamentals of launching an IT service catalogue

› Don’t let your IT service catalogue go to waste: Six maintenance tips

»

“Whether the services are shared for economies of scale, or whether they are virtualised, the customer doesn’t care about that – and nor should they”

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When choosing IT services, first consider the company’s lines of business, products and services, then map that to the business

processes, and then list the IT services that support those processes

databases

16 | 7-13 february 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

O ld approaches to data sur-vive because structured data makes IT leaders feel they’re in control.

But new approaches to managing unstructured data provide a whole new notion of control – the ability to turn data into new streams of value. Successfully rebalancing the data ar-chitecture portfolio and blending the structured with the unstructured are key to unlocking that value.

In 2011, even a casual reading of the technology media indicated that big changes were starting to sweep through the IT department – whether IT leaders recognised it or not. Big data – the catch-all term for the ex-plosion in volumes and types of data and the technologies emerging to support it – was already making big headlines. Conference speeches and trade press articles had begun the conversation about the importance of distributed data and the idea of data as a service.

New technologies such as Apache Hadoop – a software framework that

cause it just couldn’t be done. (Don’t misunderstand the “big” in big data – for most enterprises it’s not about finding ways to handle massive amounts of Facebook or e-mail data.)

But that does not imply “rip and replace”; in no way does it render tra-ditional databases obsolete. The truth is that now that we have technologies that can deal with different types of data, there is enormous value in max-imising the value of the data in exist-ing systems – in hybridising it with many forms of unstructured data.

Three changes that matterThere are three fundamental data architecture technology changes that, individually and collectively, have significant implications for IT leaders. We foresee a rebalancing of the database landscape as data archi-tects embrace the fact that relational databases are no longer the only tool in the box. Bridge technologies will mix old and new database forms, and advances from the new will re-invigorate the old. In short, tomor-

Converging data architecturesIn the age of big data, organisations must combine relational and unstructured data architectures, says Gavin Michael

row’s conversations about data archi-tectures will centre on rebalancing, co-existence and cross-pollination.

IT leaders should be evaluating their data portfolios for opportunities to rebalance the use of relational and non-relational databases. Today’s data architects now have more choic-es for solving unstructured data prob-lems than simply jury-rigging rela-tional databases to do so. Where today the data landscape is almost entirely relational, we expect that-landscape to change significantly.

Over the next decade, the propor-tion that is non-relational will rise. It has been estimated that between 15% and 40% of all relational database management system (RDBMS) imple-mentations would be better suited to non-relational platforms. But that shift does not imply that relational is some-how inferior. IT leaders will need to make choices based not on ideology but on the forms of data they are using and for what purposes. The worlds of structured and unstructured data are rapidly converging. Leading IT

supports data-intensive distributed applications – were already gathering momentum. Accenture’s Technology Vision 2011 report pointed out that companies needed to start conceiv-ing of data platforms in ways that bet-ter encompass the idea of data as the strategic IT asset.

Some enterprises are experiment-ing with data platform approaches, but it hasn’t been easy. In fact, there has been something of a polarisation, with many of those steeped in tradi-tional relational database approaches defending the status quo, facing off against a maverick camp that is en-thusiastically – perhaps overenthusi-astically – seeing unstructured ap-proaches to data as a panacea for all that ails IT today.

Neither stance is appropriate. Yes, what’s emerging is a new world of horizontally scaling, unstructured databases that are better at solving some old problems. More important-ly, they’re prompting us to think of new problems to solve whose resolu-tion was never attempted before, be- »

databases

A new breed of CIO – the iconoclast who, for example, scrapes data from websites, wikis and Twitter feeds to help them discover business advantage – is very much in touch with the web-scale companies that are already big names in the consumer realm, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. Iconoclasts are often plugged into the open-source movement and the academic and other research communities that surround these. For them, the unstructured data milieu is something rich and new and fun and cool that they want to play with – and that can deliver real business results.

At JPMorgan Chase, for example, many lines of business now use a Hadoop shared service for jobs ranging from extract, transform, and load (ETL) process-ing and fraud investigation to social media sentiment analysis. The service also provides low-cost storage for

varied types of data; for instance, it stores traditional financial records and semi-structured web logs as well as unstructured text and social comment feeds.

Oil and gas companies use SAP’s Hana in-memory appliance to review large amounts of raw exploration data. Utilities are using it to analyse large volumes of data from smart meters and to optimise energy generation based on predictive patterns of consumption.

To a large extent, the maverick groups that are quite comfortable with all things web-scale are working in fields such as marketing, new product development and customer relations, but as they derive new data and new scraps of insight, they are increasingly recognising the need to work with IT to get actionable outputs from what they’re producing. Forward-looking CIOs will want to hire those mavericks.

The rise of the iconoclast CIOpractitioners must find ways to con-structively manage the convergence and enable all forms of data manage-ment to coexist, sometimes using bridge technologies.

That’s the case at one large high-tech company that is using Hadoop to process and import data into tradi-tional systems in ways that wouldn’t be possible with just the RDBMS ap-proach. In essence, the Hadoop framework becomes a pre-processing engine for analysing raw data to ex-tract important events before feeding the other systems. It is abstracted and integrated with existing reporting in such a way that it minimises the im-pact on the rest of the enterprise.

Over the long term, the high-per-forming organisations will be those whose IT groups recognise the need for co-existence and effectively marry the two worlds to get the most from their data. IT leaders must still be re-alistic about what can be achieved via bridge technologies, sometimes waiting for the next generation of data technologies where cross-polli-nation between the structured and unstructured worlds will fill gaps. This cross-pollination is already hap-pening at the vendor level.

Non-relational databases were the first to integrate horizontal scaling technologies into the core; now rela-tional databases are starting to do the same. There is no shortage of start-up activity in the arena, meaning invest-ment capital is betting on cross-polli-nation; newcomers include Xeround, Scalr, Akiban, and Schooner.

As these technologies reach matu-rity, enterprises should re-evaluate their readiness to tackle more com-plex data problems. Established ven-dors don’t plan to be left out of the new world. Just a few glimpses: Ora-

cle has marched into the unstruc-tured world by announcing its Ha-doop-framework-based Big Data Appliance. IBM has built a new ver-sion of InfoSphere BigInsights for its smart cloud infrastructure that uses Hadoop to analyse structured and unstructured data. And Microsoft re-cently announced plans to deliver enterprise-class Hadoop-based distri-butions on both Windows Server and Windows Azure.

The shifts in vendors’ thinking are also seen in consolidation moves as established players acknowledge that they must move into these realms – for example, with Teradata’s acquisi-tion of Aster Data Systems, a leader in big data analytics. The acquisition was designed to expand Teradata’s portfolio and bring businesses greater depth of analytic insight and faster time to value as they unlock the full potential of their big data.

What’s complicating changeUnfortunately, old IT habits die hard.

Legacy thinking prevails. Exist-ing views of data architec-

ture stem from the appli-cation lens applied to

system development for several decades.

Approaches to structuring information, gathering data requirements, storing data, and even solv-ing data prob-lems, are driven by a view of the

world adopted from structured

design approaches and the trusty rela-

tional database. This structured view of

the world is entrenched in or-

ganisations. Many CIOs still see themselves not as stewards of data, but owners. And to a worrying ex-tent, many senior IT managers re-main convinced that all forms of data can still be dealt with using conven-tional relational databases, and are unwilling to try other options.

In many cases, resistance is pas-sive: stay the present course, ignore big data, and it will go away. In other cases, the pushback is that the new technologies are not considered en-terprise grade.

The traditional relational database has been misused for decades, as it was seen as the only tool in the box – and because IT departments haven’t had the vision and skills to use it in any other way. Yet we’re seeing the rapid rise of another group – the iconoclasts who are scraping un-structured data off websites, wikis and Twitter feeds to find insights that can help them discover customer seg-ments, identify product directions and more (see panel above).

Rebalancing the booksAccenture predicts that, increasingly, the effectiveness of IT leaders will be gauged by their ability to bridge the gap between the structured and unstructured worlds. Again, the im-portant thing is that this must not be an exercise in “rip and replace.” CIOs who are serious about enabling the co-existence of all forms of data will almost certainly have to evaluate and implement bridge technologies.

For instance, Aster Data’s SQL-MapReduce helps IT departments deal with their lack of skills in non-traditional database management until they have built up that capabili-ty. Bridge technologies leverage exist-ing investments; they will not imme-diately disrupt existing IT operations and are unlikely to unsettle the rela-tional database adherents.

Deeper conversations with the soft-ware vendor community can help to accelerate the introduction of bridge technologies. We expect that the re-balancing will happen as a slow evo-lution as IT departments retire appli-cations and start to re-platform in the cloud, on mobile devices, and using bridge approaches.

Rebalancing is likely to achieve strong momentum where there are most gains to be made – in customer-facing business processes, for exam-ple. Forward-thinking CIOs will make strong business cases for in-vestment in select systems to hasten the retirement of existing software.

They will need to identify “burn-ing platforms” that they can use as spurs for their new initiatives; a prime example would be a business process that can benefit from being able to concurrently and rapidly ac-cess multiple forms of data from a host of sources, both external and in-ternal to the organisation. But over time, the balance between relational and non-relational will eventually become a tactical detail. ■

Gavin Michael is accenture’s chief technology innovation officer.

This article is an extract from accenture’s Technology Vision 2012 paper, which can be downloaded on the link below

17 | 7-13 february 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

more online❯ The Technology Vision 2012 report from Accenture

❯ Seven steps to securing unstructured data

❯ The role of data governance in unstructured data

»

18 | 7-13 february 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

When the going gets nerdy, the nerdy get goingVictorinox has unveiled a Solid State Drive and USB add-on for everyone’s favourite survival tool, the Swiss Army knife.

The stick-style devices, which are USB 3.0-ready, simply clip into the housing, between the usual knife, scissor and nail file combination. They are available in memory sizes ranging from 15GB to 1TB.

In theory, this is quite a clever idea but just ask yourself this: When you’re next out walking or camping, cutting down twigs, rabbit watching, identifying nettles and doing all sorts of other outdoorsy things, just how useful will a USB/SSD stick be?

Even the graphic display can’t help you when it comes to building a raft to cross a river.

Social networking site rises to the occasion on Saint Valentine’s DayBreaking up is hard to do. But these days, as a result of technology, it’s even harder than ever.

This is because of the decisions a person has to make. Will it be Skype, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, text, tel-ephone or, as a last resort, face to face.

Now there is an alternative. Grou-pon in the United Arab Emirates is

offering half-price tests for sexually transmitted diseases as part of its Saint Valentine’s Day promotion.

So if you give your partner a dose of something they didn’t want on Saint Valentine’s Day, they will have the equipment to find out what. And at half price.

Cisco Wi-Fi debacle bodes ill for London Olympic GamesWith Cisco due to be providing Wi-Fi

access for the Olympic and Paralym-pics Games this summer, it’s slightly concerning that the vendor struggled to provide Wi-Fi for the attendees of its very own Cisco Live Europe event this week.

During the games the supplier is contracted to provide several net-working services to 6,000 staff and 70,000 volunteers at 100 venues around the country. There were 5,000 people at Cisco Live, taking place at

the Excel Centre only a stone’s throw from the Olympic Park – and itself an Olympic venue – yet attendees were left unable to Tweet or access e-mails.

Recently Stuart Hill, BT’s vice-president and director of the Olym-pic Games 2012, revealed that he was in “sensitive discussions” with Cisco to provide Wi-Fi within the Olympic Park for the use of the general pub-lic too. Downtime isn’t holding its breath just yet. ■

Heard something amusing or exasperating on the industry grapevine? e-mail cw-downtime@computerweekly.com

US Homeland Security gets literal with TwitterAmericans have a sense of humour, that’s obvious from the television they produce. But if you even joke about hurting the great nation that is the US of A, you will be crushed. Or at least refused entry.

Something the US Department of Homeland Security don’t get is British slang. Two young Brits, Emily Bunting and Leigh Van “Jihadi” Bryan, found this out the hard way.

A couple of weeks before visiting the states, Leigh Van Bryan tweeted the following: “@MelissaxWalton Free this week for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.”

Yep. “Destroy”. Now of course what Leigh “three-wheel” Van Bryan actually meant was that he was going to get drunk and party in America to a level of wreckage to his body akin to destruction.

However, the Department of Homeland Security saw the Tweet, tracked it back to Leigh Van Bryan and refused him and innocent Emily Bunting entry. That is, after detaining them for 12 hours, questioning and torturing them (possibly).

“The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist. I kept saying they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they

just told me ‘You’ve really f***ed up with that tweet, boy’,” Bryan told The Sun.

Questioning went along the lines of, “Why do you hate America?” For, not only had Leigh Van “Life of” Bryan

given the impression of threatening the safety of millions of US citizens, he had openly expressed his intention to desecrate one of America’s most beloved dead celebrities: “Three weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”

Bunting told The Daily Mail: “The officials told us we were not allowed in to the country because of Leigh’s tweet.

“They wanted to know what we were going to do. They asked why we wanted to destroy America and

we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party. I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was

going to be Leigh’s look-out while he dug up Marilyn Monroe.”Emily Bunting and Leigh “failed MOT” Van Bryan were

deported and taught an invaluable lesson.Don’t mess with America.

downtime

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