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computerweekly.com 6-12 August 2013 1
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Is It tIme to retHINk desktop
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JoHN LewIs seeks INNovatIoN vIa
uk tecH startups
cHemIcaLs fIrm ceNtraLIses dIrectorIes
How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
googLe servIces
edItor’s commeNt
opINIoN
Buyer’s guIde to data
maNagemeNt
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Tech startups inspire retail innovation
john lewis gleans innovative ideas from tech startups to get the best multichannel retail it
6-12 August 2013 | ComputerWeekly.com
computerweekly.com 6-12 August 2013 2
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Is It tIme to retHINk desktop
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JoHN LewIs seeks INNovatIoN vIa
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How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
googLe servIces
edItor’s commeNt
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Buyer’s guIde to data
maNagemeNt
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the week in it
Financial servicesBarclays bank trials touchscreen devices in wireless branchesBarclays bank is to trial touchscreen devices in branches to add to its digital credentials following the recent deploy-ment of wireless in its branches. The bank said it would soon introduce multi-function touchscreen devices with the capabilities of behind-counter systems to serve customers.
Legislation & regulationSecurities and Exchange Commission investigates IBM cloud revenuesUS regulatory watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigat-ing how IBM reports cloud revenue, the company has disclosed in its quarterly filings. The mainframe and cloud provider said it found out in May that the SEC is investigating its cloud computing rev-enues and that it is co-operating with the commission on the matter.
Media & entertainmentMicrosoft concedes to BSkyB over cloud storage SkyDrive trademarkMicrosoft has backed down from its brawl with BSkyB over the trademark of the Sky name. The software business released a cloud storage service named SkyDrive in 2007, for which user numbers have since grown to more than 250 million. However, BSkyB claimed Microsoft’s brand name infringed on its copyright and petitioned Microsoft to change it.
Hailo taxi app maker takes up Netsuitetaxi cab app maker hailocab has chosen netsuite oneworld accounting software in a bid to speed up accounts reconciliation and improve cashflow.
previously the company sent an excel spread-sheet to the book-keepers for loading into sage.
“it took the team 10 or so days of manual spreadsheet entry to generate a month-end report which was far too slow – not to mention the worry of manual errors,” said nick lally, financial director at hailo.
access the latest it news via rss feed
OutsourcingSandwell Council poised to pull plug on multimillion BT contract over termsBT has been given 30 days to alter the terms of its contract with Sandwell Council or face losing its services contract worth £15m a year. BT provides a number of managed services to the West Midlands council under a 15-year contract signed in 2007.
Mobile networksO2 set for August 4G launchMobile operator O2 has confirmed its 4G network is set to go live on 29 August. London, Leeds and Bradford will be the first locations to get the faster mobile speeds on launch day, but the com-pany said it will hook up Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Sheffield, Manchester and Edinburgh to the network by the end of the year.
Networking hardwareSmart meters good for consumers but infrastructure unresolved, say MPsAn Energy and Climate Change Select Committee report has highlighted infra-structure risks in the UK smart meter roll-out. The Committee’s Smart Meter report, published on 27 July, warned: “There is a clear risk the projected £6.7bn net benefit may not be achieved if costs spiral or if consumers do not realise the expected energy and bill savings.”
computerweekly.com 6-12 August 2013 3
Home
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Is It tIme to retHINk desktop
strategIes?
JoHN LewIs seeks INNovatIoN vIa
uk tecH startups
cHemIcaLs fIrm ceNtraLIses dIrectorIes
How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
googLe servIces
edItor’s commeNt
opINIoN
Buyer’s guIde to data
maNagemeNt
wHy tHe NHs Is sLow to roLL
out wI-fI access
dowNtIme
the week in it
access the latest it news via rss feed
Networking hardwareBT forms business retail divisionTelecoms giant BT has confirmed it will split BT Retail to form separate busi-ness and consumer arms. The division is responsible for selling consumer services such as broadband and TV, as well as IT systems to small businesses and enter-prises, such as video-conferencing. It comprises four units – BT Consumer, BT Business, BT Enterprises and BT Ireland – under the BT Retail umbrella.
Risk managementCloud contracts let down users on security, says analyst firm GartnerBuyers of cloud services – especially software as a service (SaaS) – are getting inadequate security provisions, according to research firm Gartner. Contracts need more transparency to improve risk man-agement, analysts said, with SaaS con-tracts often containing ambiguous terms regarding data confidentiality, data integ-rity and recovery after a data breach.
Mobile hardwareSEC filing shows Surface costs blew $900m hole in Microsoft accountsMicrosoft’s latest filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), shows the supplier took a $900m hit associ-ated with the Surface tablet device. When Microsoft reported its quarter results in June, it said the $900m charge “related to Surface RT inventory adjustments”. Sales and marketing expenses increased $1.4bn.
Government & public sectorHMRC hires Vodafone CIO Mark Dearnley to drive digital strategyHM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has appointed Mark Dearnley, the present CIO of Vodafone, as its new chief digital and information officer. Mark Dearnley, who will join HMRC in October 2013, takes over from former CIO Phil Pavitt, who left at the start of 2013.
Privacy & data protectionMPs call for publication of list of companies using hackersThe Commons Home Affairs Committee has called for the publication of a list of companies employing private investiga-tors suspected of using hacking. The com-mittee has revealed that law firms, insur-ance companies, food service firms, an oil company and a pharmaceutical company are on a list compiled by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
Mobile softwareOffice 365 now available on AndroidFollowing the release of Office Mobile for iPhone, Microsoft has launched Office Mobile for Android. The cloud-based version of Office, available to users in the US, will be free to Office 365 subscribers, meaning they can now work on their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents using their Windows Phone, iPhone or Android handsets. n
uk satisfactioN witH outsourciNg coNtracts
Source: Whitelane Research
Very unsatisfiedUK organisations asked if they were satisfied with their IT outsourcing contracts with a total combined annual value of more than £15bn Satisfied
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Somewhat unsatisfied
Unsatisfied33%
40%
12%
10%4%
1%
computerweekly.com 6-12 August 2013 4
Home
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Is It tIme to retHINk desktop
strategIes?
JoHN LewIs seeks INNovatIoN vIa
uk tecH startups
cHemIcaLs fIrm ceNtraLIses dIrectorIes
How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
googLe servIces
edItor’s commeNt
opINIoN
Buyer’s guIde to data
maNagemeNt
wHy tHe NHs Is sLow to roLL
out wI-fI access
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analysis
The cost of PCs has remained stable over the past year, but there is still a big premium on hybrid devices. Cliff Saran reports
Is it time to rethink desktop IT?
PC market share data shows businesses are buying fewer laptops and desktops. PC shipments in Europe, Middle East
and Africa declined 16.8% in the second quarter of 2013, compared with the same quarter last year, according to Gartner. Apart from the immovable deadline of 8 April 2014, when Windows XP support ends, businesses have little incentive to buy new hardware.
Price comparisonIn June, Computer Weekly asked analyst Context to compare how prices of PCs had shifted in the past 12 months.
The perception was that prices of standard specification machines had skyrocketed since the introduction of Windows 8 in 2012, due to devices incorporating touchscreens and solid-state drives (SSD) – part of the Windows operating system (OS) requirements.
A standard specification was selected: Context looked at a laptop device running a 2.5GHz processor – chosen because it was
the most common standard specification for mainstream laptops at the time – and equipped with an integrated graphics card (see table on the next page).
In the enterprise sector, Windows 8 appears to be cheaper than equivalent consumer-grade PCs, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior PC analyst at Context.
In the notebook market, the Context analy-sis showed that Windows 8 notebooks are, on the whole, slightly cheaper than equiva-lent Windows 7 notebooks.
The situation is different in retail, however, when looking at the distributor selling price: “The take-up in retail is slow due to the poor take-up of Windows 8,” said Pygott.
There is a lot less functionality on tradi-tional notebooks, because they do not have touchscreens, but hybrid devices are fairly expensive.
Prices in retail are set to drop over the next month due to retailers discounting for the “back to school” season, said Pygott, but for
INTEL_D
E/FLICKR
CIO interview:
Mark Ridley, Reed.co.uk
Windows predictions for
2013: ‘Cloud OS’ adoption,
security focus
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How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
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business applications. This suggests that companies are willing to use non-Windows business software, paving the way to devices such as the Chromebook becoming part of the corporate desktop environment.
In fact, a Forrester report titled It’s time to reconsider Chromebooks urges IT departments to take a closer look at the Chromebook as an alternative to a PC running Windows.
Chromebooks offer a cheap alternative to Windows. HP’s Pavilion Chromebook costs around £250, but when Computer Weekly spoke to HP, the device was only available in retail. But this will change as more cor-porates see the benefit of such devices to provide low-cost computing with a low main-tenance requirement.
A browser-based user interface means no applications need to be installed on the desk-top and there is no need for IT administrators to patch machines. In theory, security can be handled at the internet gateway, so the IT environment becomes easier to manage.
According to the report’s author, Forrester analyst J P Gownder, Chromebooks require very little configuration: “Pilot users say any given device can be configured for a new user in under 15 minutes.” Perhaps this is why 20% of the IT decision-makers in large enterprises questioned by Forrester said they would consider deploying the Chromebook.
But organisations have a massive Windows legacy. Dale Vile, research director at Freeform Dynamics, recommends IT managers use the Windows XP migration as an opportunity to reassess their desktop IT strategy.
“Some users in the workforce may be classed as super-users who are depend-ent on Microsoft Office, but these may be a small minority. Others, like sales and market-ing, may have a dependency on PowerPoint. It is fairly easy to work around this and pro-vide alternatives,” Vile said. n
now, buyers can expect to pay around £800 for an Intel Core i5 hybrid device. A convert-ible device such as the Lenovo Yoga costs £780 on average, she added.
These figures illustrate the purchase price. PCs run Windows and Windows requires patching, anti-malware software and the hundreds of desktop applications that make up the corporate software image in a typical enterprise, so this must be taken into account when calculating the total cost of ownership.
But is there an alternative, especially given that many businesses will need to refresh desktop IT to migrate from Windows XP?
Rise of the ChromebookNow here is the crunch for corporate IT: the consumer does not care about the OS when they are buying a device. Why not consider a non-Windows enterprise desktop?
Pygott said cheap Android devices, such as the Google Nexus tablet, are doing quite well. For a full-size desktop or notebook device, Google offers Chromebook and its desktop cousin, the Chromebox, which provide a browser-centric user interface based around a Linux variant called Chrome OS.
The Chromebook (and Chromebox too) is an internet browsing and email PC. It repre-sents a new genre of non-Windows, pared down device. Pygott expects it will eventually replace the netbook.
Mark Ridley, CTO of Reed.co.uk, has rolled out Chromebox devices to the job site’s 100-strong sales team. They are using a desktop Chrome OS machine to access Salesforce.com and Google Apps. Ridley said these devices are considerably cheaper than Windows PCs.
At Grass Roots Group, CIO Danny Attias has deployed Google Enterprise across the company. He said third-party apps from the Google Play store are being used as core
cost of laptopsOperating system Q1 2012 Q2 2012 Q3 2012 Q4 2012 Q1 2013
windows 7/windows 8 - - - £486.72 £455.85windows 7 £480.44 £469.77 £468.56 £482.42 £428.52windows 8 - - - £435.89 £385.66
Source: Context
analysis
Review: HP Pavilion
Chromebook
Grass Roots Group
extends Google roll-out with
Play apps
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Is It tIme to retHINk desktop
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JoHN LewIs seeks INNovatIoN vIa
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How reed.co.uk swItcHed to
googLe servIces
edItor’s commeNt
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Buyer’s guIde to data
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analysis
John Lewis turns to tech startups for cutting-edge IT innovation
John Lewis has been investing in tech-nology innovation to keep ahead of the game in the changing landscape of the
UK high street.“The fundamental challenge for us is how
technology can support us being an omni-channel retailer,” said Sarah Venning, head of IT relationships at John Lewis. “We want to give customers the coherent and consist-ent John Lewis experience across whatever channel they’re shopping on.”
The retailer defines “omni-channel” as the seamless experience of customers changing between shopping online and in-store.
John Lewis IT director, Paul Coby said: “It is about creating a new way people will shop. It’s not just about being in a building or online, but joining these things up.”
One such omni-channel offering was the launch of a store in Exeter which was half the size of a conventional store, but heavily inte-grated with IT. Customers were encouraged to go to a JohnLewis.com terminal to choose a product and then collect it in store.
The retailer has experimented with large interactive screens with product information and augmented reality window displays.
Venning said the retailer is looking at wire-less technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) and technology to sup-port its popular click-and-collect service. But the company is always looking at how it can experiment with these technologies while making it cost-effective.
“We use the whole array of technology opportunities to deliver a brilliant customer experience which is cost-effective and effi-cient,” Venning said.
Innovation through startupsOne way the retailer finds innovation in a cost-effective way is by looking at technol-ogy startups (see panel on following page).
John Lewis works with a wide range of dif-ferent suppliers, from large traditional firms to early-stage startup companies.
Venning finds startups ideal to work with because they have fresh ideas and the speed to get things done quickly. She said she deals with fewer people at startups than she would at larger suppliers.
“There’s often a real can-do attitude,” she said. “They’re prepared to tear down walls.”
She said when she meets a very early-stage company – five people, no funding and all initial pitches – those conversations are of a very different nature from those she holds with the established players.
When it comes to working with start-ups, she said: “Generally, we tend to be the exception rather than norm.”
Venning said traditional suppliers are also committed to keeping up to date with the latest innovation, meaning they often recom-mend startups themselves.
Caroline Baldwin looks at how the department store gets the best multichannel retail IT in a series profiling how CIOs find technology startups
Where can CIOs find
startup technology companies?
UK startups:
Essential Guide
venning: “You never know whether innovation is going to be a success”
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“That’s a good way for small suppliers to get onto our radar,” she said.
“It’s a great thing for small businesses if they get a strong network themselves across the broader IT space.
“There are a range of different ways we find these startups. Sometimes they find us.”
Cold callsBut not all startups are smart enough to do their research. “We get a huge number of blanket cold calls, where organisations haven’t even bothered to find out job titles, or tailored their pitch differently to different retailers,” Venning said.
And if a startup manages to catch the retailer’s attention, Venning said it is not uncommon for success to overwhelm smaller companies.
“They need to make sure they don’t bite off more than they can chew,” she said.
Last year, John Lewis decided to take the search for innovation into its own hands, running the Great British Innovation Event. In the spirit of the Olympics and Jubilee cel-ebrations, John Lewis wanted to capitalise on small British startups to answer some of their technology business challenges.
“We had a big marketplace with well over 100 people from organisations across all sorts of different areas to really under-stand what these technology solutions are,” Venning said.
Pitching to the expertsThis was followed by a Dragons’ Den style pitch scenario, where a panel of experts in retail and online questioned the ideas.
One of the business chal-lenges set by John Lewis was to reduce the queuing
time in the children’s shoe department.Black Marble UK rose to the shoe queu-
ing challenge with their idea for advanced bookings using in-store tablets. The solution allows parents to book a time slot to return to the department later.
The retailer is currently working on a proof of concept to be trialled in front of customers in the near future.
“If successful, we will roll it out to the whole estate,” said Venning. “If not, we will learn from the experience and move swiftly on.”
While there was one winner, John Lewis has kept in contact with other companies from the event. “We found exciting new ideas with organisations we didn’t tend to typically work with,” said Venning.
John Lewis plans to run another event towards the end of this year with different business challenges.
“You never know whether innovation is going to be a success; you do it and do lots of innovation to find the one gem,” said Venning. “It’s not about every idea being the Holy Grail, there are new ideas all the time – thinking, thinking thinking.” n
› Why should CIOs look at tech startups?› Where can CIOs find tech startups?
› Special report: Tech startups and the CIO
analysis
uk startups: esseNtial guide
this article is part of a series in which computer weekly aims to connect cios with technology startup companies.
if you’re looking for technology from small innovative compa-
nies, but unsure where to look or how to approach them, take a look at computer weekly’s uK startup articles.
this guide provides you with all you need to know about startups in the uK, with news, business profiles and advice about starting relationships with uK startups.
click on the uK startup guide logo (above) to read the essential guide online.
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Case study
Manufacturer Johnson Matthey sent its migration team around the world to centralise a devolved server estate into a single infrastructure, writes Cliff Saran
How a chemicals business pulled over a hundred directories into one
Chemicals manufacturer Johnson Matthey has used tools from Dell to simplify a complex, multinational Win-
dows Active Directory infrastructure.The company evolved from autonomous
business units, each running Novell servers with Novell directory services across 120 sites. Each of these estates was administered by its own, separate IT team.
As part of a reorganisation of IT – from regional organisation to a centralised struc-ture – Johnson Matthey found it had over 30 Active Directories. Stephen Way, divisional IT director of Johnson Matthey, says: “We had a very devolved structure, with every site using its own Active Directory. We recog-nised we needed a single directory.
“We had plans to move off Novell and we wanted to deploy SharePoint across the whole company.”
He also wanted to prepare Johnson Matthey for using cloud services. The com-pany was also considering cloud email. A single Active Directory was a prerequisite to these intentions.
Migration toolsWay looked at the native Microsoft Active Directory migration manager tool, along
johnson matthey’s previous active directory infrastructure was spread over 120 autonomous estates
JOH
NSO
N M
ATTH
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Virtual desktop
administrator’s Windows Server
2012 guide
Server virtualisation
changes in Windows Server
2012 Hyper-V
with identity management software, but found the tools brought a heavy overhead. “We did not want to impose extra adminis-tration on the network,” he says.
Johnson Matthey selected Dell Migration Manager for Active Directory to move the regional systems into a single Active Directory (see panel on following page). The company used Dell’s Active Roles Server to support devolved administration rights.
Way explains: “We chose this solution as the benefits were threefold. It allowed us to deliver the Active Directory migration in our tight deadline without data loss and disrup-tion to the majority of users; improve secu-rity levels and comply with industry regula-tions; and provide ongoing management.
“The projecT Took eighT and a half monThs and a loT of air miles, because we had To Touch every machine”sTephen way,
johnson maTThey
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Winning hearts and mindsWay explains the biggest problem was with users who noticed their domain had changed and who would alter the settings to attempt to log into the old domain; and then call the helpdesk to say they could no longer login. All the work on the servers was done in the background but each needed reboot-ing to access the new Active Directory.
The team needed to ensure that domain name services (DNS) for each site had the correct entries. “Active Directory is very reliant on a clean DNS to work. We had 30 domains and over 100 DNS servers which needed to be cleaned up,” says Way.
As in any major project, preparation was key. Way says the biggest part of preparation lay in winning the hearts and minds of the administrators in the other Johnson Matthey offices, who had previously managed their own domains.
“We did not impose global naming stand-ards for user names and device naming, but the Dell tool enabled us bring in everything,” says Way. Any duplications or discrepancies were then cleared up. n
“Because it manages some of the admin-istration, Active Roles Server has also deliv-ered significant time savings for IT staff, giving them more time to focus on value-added activities. Support calls have dropped by 98%.”
The consolidation of Active Directories was relatively straightforward. “We needed to set two-way traffic between host and target Active Directory forests with full rights. We asked sites to clean up their Active Directory to remove users who had left the company,” says Way.
Air milesThe migration team had to visit every site to change the login domain of each PC and server, for users to access the new Active Directory domain when they next logged in.
“The project took eight and a half months and a lot of air miles, because we had to touch every machine,” Way says.
“A site would have a long list of machines on its Active Directory. Some of these machines were not being used and some
needed differ-ent configu-rations. In a well-run site we would need to visit 15% of
the machines, but in a less well-run site we would have to check 99% of the machines.”
In parallel to the Active Directory project, the firm upgraded its network to MPLS and deployed network acceleration appliances.
› Microsoft unveils Windows Server 2012 R2› Active Directory item recovery for VM
› Tips to improve Active Directory performance
dell active directory migratioN toolsdell migration manager for active directory was used to migrate multiple active directories across johnson matthey into a single active directory. the company migrated all email access for users without major data loss or business disruption.
dell active roles server was used to provide user and group account manage-ment. the administration tool enforces role-based security, day-to-day identity administration and built-in auditing and reporting. it is used at johnson matthey to regulate administrative privileges through security policies and protect critical active directory data by preventing unregulated access to resources.
johnson matthey has also implemented dell’s changeauditor for active directory. this is used to track and alert on configura-tion changes in real time. it is used to allow each local office to tailor their security and access rights to local requirements.
Case study
the migration team had to visit every site to change the login domain of each pc and server
JOH
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inteRView
The challenge of delivering all your corporate IT through a browser Director of technology at recruitment company Reed.co.uk switched to Google services but says the process came with several challenges. Cliff Saran reports
IT directors attack dire
software licensing schemes
Pearson integrates
Google Enterprise and
Office 365
CW500 interview
mark ridley: “we never set out thinking we could deliver corporate it through a browser”
the Microsoft Internet Information Server-based recruitment website.
Google choice not without challengesReed.co.uk recently moved to Google Enterprise, with Office 365 losing out to Google. One of the reasons behind this deci-sion was a Microsoft licensing clause that would have affected the company’s IT strat-egy, “Office 365 with E3 seemed attractive, but it did not cover Office on virtual desk-tops,” says Ridley.
At the time, virtualisation was part of his plans for desktop IT, so the company selected Google instead.
It is an interesting decision, as Reed.co.uk has acted as a Microsoft reference for SQL Server in the past, but Ridley’s decision illustrates a disconnect between the vari-ous Microsoft businesses. He recently told Computer Weekly: “It would be fantastic if, when you contacted Microsoft, you talked to one person, not a different person for Office and SQL Server.”
He uses the Google operating system himself, albeit on a Mac OS. “Chrome is my
His track record as director of tech-nology at Reed.
co.uk shows that Mark Ridley is not afraid to
take unconventional decisions.“Everything apart from Windows Active
Directory is run in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment,” he says.
The recruitment website uses Google Apps in the cloud for email and calendar function-ality, while the company’s intranet uses Jive, which is hosted externally. OneLogin provides cloud-based single sign-on (SSO) for the SaaS applications, while AirWatch is used for mobile device management (MDM).
“Instead of rolling out Windows, we are offering devices that people can use to connect to the internet,” says Ridley. The company has recently deployed 100 Google Chrome desktops for its sales staff to access Google Apps and Salesforce.com.
“We never set out thinking we could deliver corporate IT through a browser, but everyone here loves the internet. It’s our job, so there is a lot of familiarity with web-based systems.”
Specialising when neededRidley says the role of the team is to admin-ister cloud-based systems: “People in our internal team are not enterprise architects or heavyweight admins, [but] they can understand permissions management.”
His approach to specialist IT skills involves buying in a few days of consultancy a year. “You don’t need a disk I/O specialist all the time,” he says. “I learnt 15 years ago not to be in kicking distance of the servers because they always fall over.”
For deep technical expertise, such as when he needs Unix skills, Ridley uses IT services firm Attenda. The supplier has worked for Reed.co.uk since 2003, building and hosting
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primary machine at the moment and one of our guys has Chromium running on a PC at home,” he says.
Switching from Microsoft to Google is not easy, however, and Ridley warns that using Google presents a few hidden challenges.
“SQL Server reporting doesn’t work very well outside Internet Explorer,” he says.
Google Drive, which Reed.co.uk uses for enterprise-wide file sharing, has a few unique challenges that people need to be aware of, according to Ridley. “With Google Drive, if I drop a file in a certain location, I would be the owner and would then share ownership. But if I left the company, other users would lose access to the file.”
Its new SAP system also has a few compat-ibility niggles, which means active users in HR and finance will be using Microsoft Office on Windows PCs to access the system. For the sales team, who use Chrome-based PCs, a leader will need to enter holiday information via a Windows PC into the SAP system.
As part of building a new IT department, Reed.co.uk is rolling out SAP ByDesign, which replaces a legacy corporate system based on Lotus Notes and Oracle. One of the difficul-ties Ridley faces is that the user interface for SAP ByDesign uses Microsoft Silverlight – which is not supported in Chromium.
However, SAP is building a pure browser-based user interface written in HTML 5.0, so he hopes he will soon be back on track with browser-based enterprise IT by the end of the year.
Unique choices to fit the businessThe move away from Microsoft on the desktop shows that it is possible to provide a corporate desktop that does not rely on Windows or Office.
“We looked at Windows 7 devices, Chrome devices and Linux devices through Ubuntu Advantage. There was a
compelling argument to use Chrome due to its remote admin tools,” says Ridley.
The Google Chrome desktop was cheaper than an equivalent Windows desktop PC.
Ridley admits it was quite a foolhardy
decision to switch to ChromeOS and Google hardware. “Buying Windows would have been a bit like buying IBM [the natu-ral choice], but the Chrome boxes can be plugged into the network and work.” He says no extra configuration was needed.
This is not the only decision Ridley has taken that has run contrary to conventional wisdom. While there is a trend to virtualise server applications, Ridley has gone the other way. He says it was cheaper to run the Reed.co.uk website on 2U and 3U physical servers than to virtualise.
To maintain performance during the inevi-table spikes in traffic, Ridley says he simply ensures there is enough capacity to cope.
That said, he is keen to move to the cloud and use cloud services as a commodity for offloading work. “I would want to offload some work to Amazon Web Services and Azure, and select between them depending on the cost at the time,” he says. n
BuildiNg aN it departmeNtmark ridley started working at reed in 1997 as a web developer. at the time, the website was just a startup business in the recruit-ment firm. in 2007, following a consulta-tion with mcKinsey, reed.co.uk became a separate entity.
“we wanted to look at how to monetise our platform,” he says. initially, reed.co.uk used reed’s it systems. at the start of 2012, it decided to go its own way with it.
desktop it was based on a virtual desk-top using wyse terminals that have a heavy server requirement. there were two drawbacks: wyse required a windows cli-ent access licence to enable users to run a windows desktop on the terminal; and wyse needed internal it expertise.
as an alternative to desktop virtualisa-tion, ridley says reed.co.uk looked at remote desktops, provided through a hosting contract, but the cost per desktop per month was much higher than putting a physical pc on a desk. users have less flex-ibility with thin clients, since they cannot be used as standalone devices, he adds.
› Video review: HP Pavilion Chromebook› CIO interview: Mark Austin, Bedford Hospital
› Video interview: Kim Stevenson, CIO, Intel
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editoR’s Comment
In-house skills key to successful delivery of government services
Will we ever kill the idea that the private sector can do anything the public sector can do – only better and cheaper?
We’re in a strange spiral where the government is dogmatically attempting to contract out as many pub-lic services as it can before the 2015 general election, while at the same time we hear an increasing number of stories about private sector outsourcing failures.
It’s not just in IT, but the repeated inability of the pri-vate sector to adequately service the public sector has been felt most keenly in technology projects for years.
The public sector is not perfect, of course. Many pub-lic institutions are over-bureaucratic, slow to respond, and frankly a pain to deal with. But that’s not due to a lack of competition, nor to the lack of a market to drive improvements – it’s down to a simple lack of leadership.
The current government uses language to convey the impression that the public sector cannot provide the services needed in a time of austerity without handing those services to faster, better, cheaper outsourcing companies. But that just isn’t true.
There are some successful outsourcing initiatives, of course, and there will always be situations where out-sourcing certain public services is the best option – but it’s the knee-jerk assumption of “private sector good, public sector bad” that needs to end.
IT is, for once, showing the way. The biggest mistake the civil service made in its many IT outsourcing mega-deals was losing skills in-house. Now, there is a welcome focus on getting the best IT skills back into Whitehall – the Government Digital Service (GDS) has recruited some of the best web developers in the country.
GDS has shown that good leadership can deliver public services that are better quality and lower cost, without the need for magical private sector fairy dust sprinkled over it.
Leadership and skilled staff are the keys to successful, cost-effective public services. There are plenty of great public sector leaders that bear this out. If the govern-ment wants to show leadership, it needs better leaders, not better outsourcers. n
Bryan GlickEditor in chief
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Closed leadership looks like the blue pill to them. They will view with suspicion leaders who devise their strategies closeted away in the boardroom, tightly controlling informa-tion for fear of leakage. Instead they will seek out those leaders they consider influencers, and they will respect open leadership.
Open leadership is characterised by lead-ers who are authentic and transparent, who evolve strategies that engender commitment, who use networks to spread these strategies and who engage at all levels – outside as well as inside the organisation – while developing a culture of trusted information sharing.
The new normalPeter Hinssen, author of The New Normal, suggests future leaders might want to get ready to explain to such employees why the upgrade of your corporate website is going to cost half a million pounds when they built one for their nephew’s school in a weekend, using open source, for free.
Or why they can’t find anything in your state-of-the-art document management system – even though they put it there them-selves – when they can go to Google and find anything in less than three seconds. Or why they can book a flight online in two minutes, but they have to spend an hour inputting their expenses to your SAP screens.
Welcome to the rules for the new normal. Your future employees will have zero toler-ance for digital failure – not when their own kit is so much better than they get at work.
Perhaps it’s time for senior leaders to up their game, because when excellence is just a click away, average is over. n
opinion
Senior leaders can no longer expect to have absolute control. Emer Coleman reports
Prepare to embrace open leadership
Irecently gave a talk to senior leaders across the public and private sectors about technology and leadership. For
lots of C-suite executives that means just technology – how much of their stuff they can put in the cloud; how to make sure their IT department is keeping up to speed; and issues around data, privacy and security.
They often forget to think about the effect of ubiquitous technology adoption on their future employees and, consequently, the vastly different expectations they will have of organisational structure and leadership.
A scene from the 1999 movie The Matrix demonstrates this point. Morpheus offers Neo the blue pill or the red pill. If he takes the blue pill everything stays the same, and if he takes the red pill he will fall through the rab-bit hole and see things as they really are.
We are at a juncture in society and technol-ogy where the system, and government, keep taking the blue pill and are struggling to deal with a new generation who swallowed the red pill years ago. Referred to by the Polish author Piotr Czerski as “the web kids”, those born after 1980 have a fundamentally dif-ferent approach to their predecessors, and by definition their future leaders. They have grown up with the web; the internet to them is not something external to reality but an invisible and constantly present layer, inter-twined with the physical environment.
They are constantly connected, constantly conversing and have a completely different understanding of the nature of hierarchy. For them it is not hierarchy in itself that is impor-tant but hierarchy of contribution. Who you are is reflected not by your title or position, but by your standing in the conversation.
Loyal to the networkThese individuals will not be bound by loyalty to the values of your company – they know companies, even the biggest ones, are subject to rise and fall, to merger and acquisition – but by loyalty to the values of their network.
Sourcing strategies
must change to reflect
Generation Y
Social media: A security
challenge and opportunity
Emer Coleman is the founder of DSRPTN, a company that provides consultancy services on technology and change. She is also part of TransportAPI, a tech startup supporting innovation in transport.
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Astrong focus on data management enables organisations to ensure data flows are efficient and transparent. It can also be used for predictive data analytics to improve the speed of decision-making. The recent explosive surge in big data means predictive analytics is gaining wider acceptance for operational use.
James Fisher, vice-president of product marketing analytics at SAP, cites IDC figures of an advanced analytics market worth $3bn by 2016. He claims many SAP customers use Hana, the company’s predictive analytics platform, to drive profit and cut costs by applying the soft-ware to analyse their data in ways never previously thought possible.
Within the context of customer relationship management (CRM), however, predictive ana-lytics is more at the experimental stage rather than a de facto modus operandi. That said, it is no surprise that companies whose business model is built on technology are in the vanguard when it comes to applying predictive analytics to CRM.
A tactical gameGaming company Bigpoint, the creator of Battlestar Galactica, is using predictive analytics to monetise players and increase revenue by a projected 10% and 30% a year. Battlestar Galactica has nine million registered players and notches up 5,000 events per second.
Bigpoint’s predictive model is allowing it to intelligently make real-time decisions about a player’s actions. For example, if a player’s ship is destroyed, it acts as trigger for the predictive engine to analyse previous gaming behaviour. If appropriate, a personalised context-related message offers the player a new ship – for a small fee, of course.
Bigpoint is not there yet, but it is confident of growing annual revenues.
Guide to big data
analytics tools, trends
and best practices
Big data and analytics:
a large challenge
offering great opportunities
Data-driven innovationStill in the early adopter phase, some shining examples of predictive analytics demonstrate the potentially enormous benefits it can deliver. Steve Bell reports
Buyer’s guidedata management part 3 of 3
tesco has initiated a scheme which offers customers, in real time, products related to existing purchases through a loyalty card inserted into a device on the shopping trolley
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Adept at tax collectionHer Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has created a predictive analytics platform to improve debt collection and risk evaluation. Its platform, called Adept, integrates analytics into debt management and is designed to customise debt collection interventions for mil-lions of late tax payments each year.
Adept is integrated with HMRC’s collection systems and uses predictive modelling to inform more sophisticated risk and behaviour-based collection strategies. It identifies differ-ent types of debtor groups and targets its communications to these groups based on their specific attributes. To date, it has been so successful that HMRC estimates it will collect an additional £3bn of debt by March 2015.
The system uses “behavioural economics” predictive modelling to reveal whether SMS, lan-dline, mobile phone or printed letter is the most effective channel for communication. It also assesses the message content, or trigger. By mentioning the public services funded by taxes in one letter to late payers, for example, the payment rate increased by 20%.
HMRC is also learning from the financial services industry and using predictive modelling to identify customer behaviour that provides early warning signs of default on arrangements.
The question of data accuracy is an important one, however. If the data is skewed with errors, the models are going to be inaccurate. To ensure that data is accu-rate, HMRC conducts a quality check as data is shipped from the debt collection system into Adept and con-verted into analytical form.
The result is that HMRC has a flexible, easy-to-change approach to mass customisation, enabling it to assign the most appropriate sequence of collection actions to each debt. Events from a customer promising to pay or missing a payment deadline are used to trigger automatic re-evaluation of past decisions. The busi-ness actions cover the full range of debt collection interventions, including letters, phone calls, visits by field force agents, referral to a debt collection agency and, ultimately, court proceedings.
The groundwork for Adept was laid several years ago, when debt management systems were integrated to create a single system which provided the flexibility to create workflows that generate letters, drive predictive diallers in contact centres, manage door-to-door collec-tions and carry out legal proceedings.
HMRC created an analytical prototype on a standalone system with a monthly data feed from the integrated debt management system. It also created a new support model and technical mechanisms for sharing ownership of different parts of Adept between IT and the business.
Creating this system involved integrating four different Oracle databases and four differ-ent SAS tools into a seamless analytical environment. The most complex phase delivered a 12.5TB analytical database processing millions of new records each day, generating event
triggers for automated decision-making and updating analytical models based on billions of records.
Through Adept, HMRC is transforming the way it uses data. In fact, more data sources are being added, so new connections can be made. Its data-gathering powers means it is able to gather bulk data about businesses
accepting credit and debit cards. By using a big data system called Connect, provided by Detica, HMRC says it is able to cross-match more than one billion pieces of data to detect risky taxpayers to investigate.
hmrc has creaTed a predicTive analyTics plaTform To improve debT collecTion and risk evaluaTion
› The economic value of data› Financial services takes big data beyond pilot stage› Insurance industry can harness big data analytics
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Analysing data for retail rewardsIn the retail sector, a number of companies are moving forward with predictive analytics. One example is Tesco, which is building on its reputation for employing new technologies to enhance CRM.
Alys Woodward, research director at IDC, points to a scheme Tesco has initiated which offers customers, in real time, products related to existing purchases. A loyalty card is inserted into a device that is fixed to a shopping trolley, through which tailored offers are made to the shopper as they place items in their trolley. For example, a shopper may place a barbecue chicken in the trolley and then receive a 3-for-2 offer related to the item, such as charcoal for barbecues.
By recognising who the customer is and the purchases they have made, Tesco is attempting to predict what they are going to do next and intervene with relevant offers. It is a simple premise – and one that, if successful, could attract customers and lead to greater profits.
Clearly the prize is great, and to illustrate just how much some retailers are investing in this area Wal-Mart recently acquired predictive analytics firm Inkiru. The US retail giant says it will now accelerate big data capa-bilities, such as website personalisation, fraud preven-tion and marketing.
Richard Kellet, marketing director at SAS, is antici-pating a far greater upsurge in predictive analytics. “Knowledge and awareness is increasing and there is a greater openness to seeing predictive analytics as an operational tool rather than just a strategic tool,” he says. “[In the UK] we are lagging behind other coun-tries, but there are pockets of excellence.”
He cites Waitrose as one example. The company is applying predictive analytics in its supply chain to ensure it cuts down on waste and does not under-supply, so customers are not walking away to a rival. In short, it is mapping sales of individual stores and then factoring in components such as weather maps and forecasts to determine shipping quantities, locations and timings.
Life-saving potentialThe financial services industry is using predictive analytics to refine its debt collection methods. Some companies are recognising that a certain type of customer responds negatively to payment reminders – if left alone they will make the payment, but if nudged they will dig their heels in and delay payment. By identifying these behavioural trends, companies are able to optimise their operations and improve customer relations.
At a wider level, predictive analytics is mak-ing inroads into many areas of life. For example, a trucking company in the US is using the technology to predict fatigue levels in drivers, cutting serious accident rates by 80%.
And while still at an experimental level, it is also being used in some natal clinics to monitor the vital signs of babies before physical symptoms of something untoward appear.
This is fairly cutting-edge use of predictive analytics, and while many organisations are nudging their way towards CRM benefits, it is certainly not yet being widely adopted, says Kellet. But as HMRC illustrates, if the effort is put in, it can bring potentially enormous benefits. n
waiTrose is applying predicTive analyTics in iTs supply chain To cuT down on wasTe and avoid under-supplying
› Ocado delivers with in-house software development› Tesco uses supply chain analytics to save £100m a year
› Gathering retail intelligence
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Wi-Fi connections are becoming ubiquitous in the UK. From checking your email over a coffee in Costa to convincing colleagues you are still hard at work while watching the cricket at Lords, our need to be always connected is convincing venues across the country to soup up their technology and offer us speedy
Wi-Fi surfing, often for free.But there is one organisation that seems to be holding back where others are pushing for-
ward – the NHS. A recent freedom of information request by Enterasys Networks shows 64% of NHS Trusts
don’t offer Wi-Fi to their patients. Instead, systems from third-party suppliers – often in the form of bedside trolleys – give limited access to the internet at a substantial cost, sometimes up to £10 per day.
With the average length of stay in hospitals coming in at around one week and the aver-age cost of each bed being £400 per day, it seems like a missed opportunity to improve the patient experience.
THIN
KSTO
CK
NHS ‘missing a
trick’ with junior doctors
Case study: Horsley ITU
brings iPads to patients
What is stopping the NHS rolling out Wi-Fi access?With only a third of NHS Trusts offering Wi-Fi to their patients and visitors, Jennifer Scott finds out what is holding up the roll-out of Wi-Fi technology
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So why has the NHS failed to bring its connectivity in line with the private sector - and can we expect to see a change?
Those who do use Wi-Fi have had very positive experiences. Andy Evison, technical project manager at The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, has had great success with his Wi-Fi roll-out, enabling patients in intensive care to use tablets for communicating with loved ones and doctors, even if they are unable to speak.
“We have offered free Wi-Fi for quite a while and it is very good,” he says. “It is quite restrictive in its use, it is not very good for mail on the usual ports for example, but it can do webmail and things like that. Patients can use it, relatives can use it and now we have an opportunity to use it for the intensive therapy unit (ITU) and it has been really well worth it.”
But there is no national programme for the NHS as a whole to look into bringing Wi-Fi tech-nology to its hospitals.
A Department of Health (DoH) spokesman told Computer Weekly: “Hospitals make their own arrangements on Wi-Fi - there is no national contract. We would expect the local NHS to negotiate the best deal for patients.”
A report from the NHS Confederation makes vague reference to the issue, saying “the con-servative approach is changing” and more hospitals are rolling out Wi-Fi.
But is this good enough? As Evison suggested with the Walton’s ITU deployment, Wi-Fi technology could bring more than just a chance to check Facebook.
Harley Street psychotherapist Jennifer Dew believes connectivity could improve a patient’s recovery time.
“It’s important for patients to easily communicate with their loved ones from their hospital bed – and using their own device is by far the easiest option for them,” she says. “If access to Wi-Fi helps to make some patients get better sooner, what’s not to like?”
Security concernsThe main fear of many lies in security. Many still view wireless networks as less secure than wired and in an age where the NHS is coming under increasing scrutiny when it comes to data loss – and has the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ready to impose fines for any breach of the Data Protection Act – the idea of having an open network for anyone to use can scare even the technologically savvy.
Phil Martin, IT manager at the privately run Princess Alice Hospice, admits this was something the hos-pice had to strongly consider when rolling out its own Wi-Fi infrastructure.
“I think for us we had to have a really careful think about how we would provide it,” he says. “Given that our electronic patient system record system is online, we had to be very careful
about separating the networks out, so we could offer an effectively public access to relatives and visitors but, at the same time and using the same access points, being able to provide access for authorised users, such as medical staff to the patient record system.
“But the fear the NHS has could well be something around security and how the technology is actually implemented.”
Managerial and budget restrictionsAs budgets become tighter and tighter in the public sector, the idea of adding to the bur-den with new technology could put hospitals off.
“It is purely down to something else on the never-ending mountain of things that people have to manage,” says Evison.
“especially wiTh children, They can feel lonely, frighTened and isolaTed when admiTTed”john popham,
wi-fi campaigner
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But his own experience at the Walton showed these fears were unfounded.“We find it quite light for us in terms of management,” says Evison. “If we want to do something we go away and speak to our provider. It is self-explanatory in
some respects. I am a little confused as to why others don’t do this to be perfectly honest. It is a very simple thing to do.”
Wi-Fi provision campaignJohn Popham has been campaigning to get free Wi-Fi access in all hospitals for around four years after facing testing times with his own family.
“My step-daughter was in and out of hospital a lot when she was growing up, so I have personal experience of her missing out on school work, but there are more people that are affected,” he says.
“As well as access to school work if you are a child or your usual work as an adult, there is the isolation you experience. In the modern world, where we are used to com-municating all the time, not being con-nected makes you feel incredibly cut off from the real world.”
Popham also says there is a real pressure felt by parents, rela-tives and friends to be physically in the hospi-tal with the patient.
“Especially with chil-dren, they can feel lonely, frightened and isolated when admitted,” he says.
“Having Wi-Fi would take some of that burden away and enable them to be with the person without having to be physically there.”
Popham says most of the people he spoke to were already on his side, believing Wi-Fi should be installed across hospitals for free, but it isn’t these people he worries about.
“The problem is, talking to management is like talking to a brick wall,” he says. “Some of it is a lack of understanding, others think it is a ‘nice to have’ thing but not a
priority. Then of course you get the speech about the NHS being under-resourced and that’s another reason it isn’t a priority, or the fears around data security.
“But there are already hospitals that have Wi-Fi and the world hasn’t ended. If those places are doing it and there haven’t been any scandals, then there is no excuse.”
Popham admits that, since his campaign began, there have been some changes.
“The number of hospitals installing Wi-Fi has increased so there is progress, but it is slow and there is a lot of dead wood to clear,” he says.
“We need some senior people in the NHS to believe in it and push it forward. But also I always encourage the patients to complain about it if it is not there.”
So, the good news is more hospitals are embracing the technology and rolling out Wi-Fi, but the bad news is the change is not happening fast. It will take a lot more evangelists in the NHS and noise from its patients to make free hospital Wi-Fi finally ubiquitous. n
› NHS trust expands Wi-Fi for bedside care› What’s next for mobile IT?
› NHS trust uses Wi-Fi to for patient services
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Downtime is undecided as to which is funnier – the name of the new app, or the fact that Zynga is going to court over it – but wishes the company luck in drawing parallels between casual sex, word games and chess.
The Bang With Friends app was removed from the Apple app store a week after it was initially listed in May on the grounds that it was “offensive content”.
It is, however, still available to download on Google Play. n
Zynga draws the line at sex “with friends” link to chess and word gamesMakers of the euphemistically termed “casual sex matchmaking app” called Bang With Friends are facing legal action over its name from games studio Zynga.
But not for the reason most people would think. No, Zynga is not up in arms about the use of a vulgar slang term, but because it claims the name trades on its games called Words With Friends and Chess With Friends, according to the BBC.
BreakiNg up Has Never BeeN so easy to do
no-one likes to break up a relationship. the agonising over how best to say it – whether to break out the “it’s not you, it’s me” type clichés, or be brutally honest and risk scarring someone for life – is exhausting. even when the deed is done, the guilt afterwards while looking at a tear-soaked face can be hard to handle.
but who needs to go through all of that pain and anguish face-to-face when technology can step in and help us out? that’s right, a new mobile app has been launched for the iphone to take all the stress out of dumping someone.
breakup text costs just under $1, and by selecting a few options – namely if you are breaking up with a boy or girl, if the relationship was long-term or a fling, and whether you have met someone else or been attacked by a bear – it will create a message and send it to your no longer desired one, removing all need for your own brain power or typing skills.
so, if you have been thinking about moving on and don’t have the balls to do it yourself, you have an alternative to simply ignoring all their calls. or, you know, man up…
Read more on the
Downtime blog