Cloud computing Software Big data WebOS Smartphones & tablets PCs and laptops 6-12 September 2011 | computerweekly.com HP reaches a crossroads COMPUTER WEEKLY LOOKS AT WHY THE IT GIANT IS OVERHAULING ITS STRATEGY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR CUSTOMERS AND THE UK IT INDUSTRY PAGE 4 Why IT projects fail A STUDY REVEALS MAJOR IT PROJECTS ARE 20 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO FAIL THAN OTHER BUSINESS INITIATIVES DUE TO A LACK OF PLANNING PAGE 6 IT’s no gamble IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, LADBROKES CIO MITTU SRIDHARA TALKS ABOUT BUILDING A MULTI-CHANNEL BUSINESS AND CUSTOMER-DRIVEN INNOVATION PAGE 7 THINKSTOCK Making use of BI IN THE FIRST OF THIS MONTH’S BUYER’S GUIDE ARTICLES, WE LOOK AT HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE OPTION FOR YOUR ORGANISATION PAGE 11 Green IT’s business value WE EXAMINE HOW SUSTAINABILITY CAN NOT ONLY BOOST AN ORGANISATION’S BOTTOM LINE BUT ALSO ENHANCE ITS REPUTATION PAGE 13
Transcript
Cloud computing
Software
Big data
WebOSSmartphones & tabletsPCs and laptops
6-12 September 2011 | computerweekly.com
HP reaches a crossroadscomputer weekly looks at why the It gIant Is overhaulIng Its strategy and what It means for customers and the uk It Industry page 4
Why IT projects faila study reveals major It projects are 20 tImes more lIkely to faIl than other busIness InItIatIves due to a lack of plannIng page 6
IT’s no gambleIn an exclusIve IntervIew, ladbrokes cIo mIttu srIdhara talks about buIldIng a multI-channel busIness and customer-drIven InnovatIon page 7
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Making use of BIIn the fIrst of thIs month’s buyer’s guIde artIcles, we look at how to choose the rIght busIness IntellIgence optIon for your organIsatIon page 11
Green IT’s business valuewe examIne how sustaInabIlIty can not only boost an organIsatIon’s bottom lIne but also enhance Its reputatIon page 13
RBS pay leak reveals that contractors paid £2k a day
computerweekly.com/247707.htm
HP reassures customers over PC and Touchpad future
computerweekly.com/247723.htm
Nokia launches three Symbian Belle OS smartphones
computerweekly.com/247715.htm
Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO, Tim Cook is successor
computerweekly.com/247716.htm
Why major IT projects are more likely to fail than others
computerweekly.com/247702.htm
HP addresses customer support concerns
computerweekly.com/247703.htm
Tata Steel moves to Microsoft Office 365
computerweekly.com/247719.htm
One third of employees seek flexible working
computerweekly.com/247698.htm
Raytheon sues UK gov over Border Agency IT contract
computerweekly.com/247727.htm
Bristol website highlights limitations of SME policy
computerweekly.com/247678.htm
Get the latest it news via rSS feed computerweekly.com/rSSFeeds.htm
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> The case for utility-like trade management systemsIn the pre-crisis era, capital market firms focused on excellence in trade execution and raising their returns through novel investment strategies that focused on generating greater alpha (“active return” on an investment). Middle and back office activities were largely seen as routine tasks, with little or no effort made to optimise these processes.computerweekly.com/247659.htm
> Death of personal service – the trade-off between efficiency and customer experienceFinancial services self-service is an area of high activity – and uncer-tainty. There has been a big shift towards self-service, creating much higher levels of customer empower-ment, but there are problems of trust, as well as studies that show how self-service consumers often make poor choices . computerweekly.com/247628.htm
> The mobile workforce: 24 hour workshifting is upon usThe latest iPass Mobile Workforce Report examines the trend of workshifting – the ability for employ-ees to work remotely. Workshifting has become the expectation of nearly all business employees. Although 95% of 3,100 employees surveyed worldwide stated employers encouraged or tolerated workshifting, 40% would like to have a more flexible work environment.computerweekly.com/247697.htm
photo Story
> The Steve Jobs storySteve Jobs (right) has stepped down as Apple CEO and will be replaced by Tim Cook (left), previously Apple’s chief operating officer. Jobs is the genius behind the products that have made Apple the world’s most valuable computer company.computerweekly.com/galleries/247717.htm
opinion bloGS
> Matt Scott: Review – HTC Sensation. Sensational, superb or just standard?After reviewing the HTC Flyer, I’ve got my hands on the HTC Sensation. I wouldn’t say Sense 3.0 is one of the stand-out features of this phone because it has a lot more to offer – it’s the trusty sort of smartphone we’re used to from HTC, but with a few extra twists. computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget
> David Bicknell: Using IT to focus on reducing excess inventory and improving sustainability A blog post on the Harvard Business Review has raised the issue of inventory, its impact on sustain-ability, and what IT can do about it. It highlighted organisations’ previous inability to do much about their estimation processes, and what the consequent excess inventory’s impact is on sustainability.computerweekly.com/blogs/greentech
> Adrian Bridgwater: Philanthropy and altruism in software programming For some reason I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time looking at instances of software deprecation recently. As readers will know, this is the process by which certain features are left in software even though they have been superseded and become redundant. computerweekly.com/blogs/open-source-insider
> Mark Ballard: Police ICT reforms evade detectionHome Office plans to make police more accountable will make police IT less accountable, and at a time when IT is becoming in the words of Lord Wasserman, the man behind the reforms, “the key to fighting crime”. computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector
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> From launch to loser – the 14 fastest-failing tech productsThe demise of the HP Touchpad – which was axed after just 55 days on sale – and other WebOS devices prompted Computer Weekly to compile a list of other notable gadget failures. computerweekly.com/galleries/247701.htm
> The downfall of Nokia – 11 reasons why it is doing so badlyNokia has been in trouble for some time now – even before Stephen Elop’s leaked memo – and so far things have not improved. Computer Weekly lists 10 reasons why.computerweekly.com/galleries/247685.htm
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> Google enters the fray in battle for smartphone technology patentsPatents equal real strategic value, right? It was only last month that Google, one of the world’s largest technology companies, purchased Motorola Mobility in a deal worth $12.5bn, writes Haydn Evans, vice-president of IP outsourcing (Europe) at IP management specialist CPA Global. computerweekly.com/247724.htm
> Case study: Co-operative Group cuts costs with desktop virtualisation ahead of office moveAs the Co-operative Group (Co-op) prepares to move into its new head office in September 2012, the firm’s IT team is on track to virtualise up to 3,500 desktops and merge some departments to drive cost savings.computerweekly.com/247601.htm
2 | 6-12 SEPTEMBER 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
3 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
DECC invites smart meter IT bidsThe Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has called on IT suppliers to build the data and communications infrastructure that will enable information to be sent between smart meters in homes and businesses and the yet-to-be-established Central Data and Communications Company which will manage the data. The deal could be worth up to £4.5bn.
The contracts are part of the Smart Metering Implementation Programme which will help customers manage their energy consumption and reduce carbon emissions. The government wants 30 million smart meters in home and businesses in the UK.
In May, DECC put out a notice to IT suppliers informing them to be ready to bid for work in its plan to introduce smart meters. The DECC tender is looking for suppliers to bid for contracts to supply a wide area network; telephone and data transmission services; data transmission services; and IT services - including consulting, software development, internet and support.computerweekly.com/247742.htm
“I’ve always said if there came a day when I could no longer meet my duties as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. That day has come.”
Steve Jobs, Apple chairman
apple
staffing & training
Women pull into the lead for salaries in junior IT jobsWomen in junior roles in the IT sec-tor are being paid more than men in the same job for the first time. Research from the Chartered Man-agement Institute shows a female junior IT executive in the UK earns an average £20,730pa compared with £20,686 for men at the same level. In 2010, men working at junior levels in IT received an average of £1,119 more than women.computerweekly.com/247759.htm
risk management
Cyber threats top business security concernsCyber security is the top risk for busi-nesses for the second year, ahead of traditional crime, natural disasters and terrorism, according to Syman-tec’s 2011 State of Security survey. The top three concerns are related to data and network security, with 3,000 respondents ranking cyber attack as the top risk.computerweekly.com/247753.htm
datacentre management
Dell launches scalable VMware infrastructure serviceDell has introduced a datacentre infrastructure-as-a-service with pub-lic, private and hybrid cloud options built on VMware. The company is of-fering three versions – a public cloud service, a private cloud service and a hybrid service. Dell will offer a pub-lic cloud service using the VMware vCloud Datacenter Service, which will provide access to vCPUs, mem-ory, storage networks, IP addresses, firewalls and catalogue capabilities. computerweekly.com/247744.htm
enterprise software
VMware soups up virtualisation for centralised managementIn a bid to entice users to switch from desktop PCs to thin clients, VMware has optimised its View 5 virtualisa-tion software to support 3D graphics and centralised management. It has also previewed Project AppBlast, which it claims offers universal de-livery of any application, including Windows-based applications, to any device supporting HTML 5.computerweekly.com/247743.htm
it services & outsourcing
Raytheon sues government over cancelled Border Agency contractRaytheon is suing the UK govern-ment for £500m for terminating an IT contract with the UK Border Agency. Last year the government sacked Raytheon, which had been signed to deliver the £750m e-Borders contract. computerweekly.com/247727.htm
enterprise software
Tesco signs CA Technologies to manage global IT estateTesco is using software from CA Technologies for its global IT. Through a $45m deal, Tesco will de-ploy CA Service Operations Insight, CA Sysview Performance Manage-ment and CA Process Automation to manage its IT. The products will monitor Tesco’s mainframe, desktop computers, servers, networks, credit card transactions, suppliers and sup-ply orders. computerweekly.com/247733.htm
it services & outsourcing
IBM offers cloud monitoring to allay security concernsIBM is tackling business reservations about deploying applications in the public cloud with a hybrid approach that monitors access and manages deployments of applications on both public and private cloud systems. Building on its acquisition of Cast Iron, IBM is providing integration to gain greater visibility, control and automation into IT assets. computerweekly.com/247721.htm
enterprise software
Tata Steel moves into cloud with Microsoft Office 365Indian giant Tata Steel is moving two legacy e-mail systems to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 system across its European business. Tata Steel’s first major shift into the cloud is one of the biggest deployments of Micro-soft Office 365 in Europe. Tata’s main operations in Europe are based in the UK and Holland. The migration work has been outsourced to Capgemini.computerweekly.com/247719.htm
risk management
IBM plans to acquire data analytics software suppliersIBM has announced plans to acquire two data analytics firms. Cambridge-based crime and fraud prevention software maker i2 has more than 4,500 customers in 150 countries. Algorithmics provides risk analytics software and services used by bank-ing, investment and insurance busi-nesses to help assess risk and address regulatory requirements.computerweekly.com/247763.htm
enterprise software
Department of Health invites developers to create NHS appsThe Department of Health is calling on software developers to create apps for use by the NHS. Health secretary Andrew Lansley wants software developers to come up with ideas to help patients make informed deci-sions about their care.computerweekly.com/247692.htm
What does HP’s change in direction mean for the UK technology sector?
4 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
HP's decision to buy Autonomy and ditch its PC division has a number of repercussions for UK IT, writes Kathleen Hall
In a major strategic shake-up, HP announced last month it is to ditch its Touchpad tablet range, seek a buyer for its PC division
and buy UK software publisher Au-tonomy for £7.1bn. The move repre-sents the company’s boldest step yet toward software and away from PCs.
In an announcement that took the IT industry by surprise, HP revealed:l Autonomy has accepted a bid of £25.50 per share, worth £7.1bn - a 64% premium on the software firm’s share price at the time. Autonomy founder and CEO Mike Lynch will make about £500m from the sale.l HP will discontinue its WebOS de-vices, including its smartphone and tablet ranges. HP released its Touch-pad tablet device in the UK in July, making the product one of the most short-lived in IT history.l HP will examine strategic alterna-tives for its PC business, which could lead to the division being spun-off or sold. HP is the world’s leading PC supplier, generating $41bn in rev-enue in 2010.
The announcements suggest an end to two of HP’s biggest previous acquisitions, sold off in favour of buying one of the UK’s most success-ful independent software companies. HP bought PC specialist Compaq for $25bn in 2001, and WebOS develop-er Palm for $1.2bn in 2010.
Strategic shiftIn statements to accompany the an-nouncements, HP CEO Léo Apoth-eker made clear that the latest devel-opments are part of a strategic shift to focus on higher margin businesses such as cloud computing, software, and what he called “the next-genera-tion information platform”.
He said Autonomy will remain in the UK but, although the news was well received by the UK tech com-munity, Richard Holway, co-founder
“Autonomy brings business solutions that will help HP customers manage the explosion of information” Léo Apotheker, HP CEO
“I think Léo Apotheker has lost the plot. I find it difficult to see how this fits in with HP’s other software initiatives”
software
of analyst firm TechMarketView, had his doubts.
“Mike Lynch has said he will stay on to head up HP’s software division in Cambridge, but Lynch is an entre-preneur rather than a corporate guy, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he moves on in six months and an American takes charge and moves operations to the US,” he said.
“This means talent will go over-seas. It also means we will lose all those entry-level jobs for bright Brit-ish tech graduates, which Lynch was great at attracting to Autonomy.”
Holway said a geographical move would be bad news for the UK tech-nology industry. “If Autonomy moved, that would undoubtedly im-pact the Cambridge cluster, which Autonomy was the white heat be-hind. We need companies that are
prepared to stay the course and be-come the next HPs, Microsofts and Googles - we’ve never been able to do that, and that is why this acquisition is so sad,” he said.
HP’s long game“I think Léo Apotheker has lost the plot. I find it difficult to see how this fits in with HP’s other software initia-tive,” said Holway.
Quocirca analyst Clive Longbot-tom agreed. “Apotheker has come in from a software company [SAP] and has consequently looked at HP as a software company. I don’t think that is something HP is, has been or ever will be. Its history in this particular area has been abysmal. To then sud-denly hand big chunks of its core market to competitors seems ludi-crous. Dell in particular must be kill-ing itself laughing,” he said.
“HP needs to look at the type of or-ganisation it wants to be. It couldn’t have gone forward as it has been, but opting for continually big change in-stead of building on what works is its mistake. And these announcements will really hack off most of its chan-nel,” Longbottom said.
Ovum analyst Tim Jennings be-lieved the shock announcements could impact HP’s credibility as a predictable strategic IT supplier. “This is potentially very bad for HP, as enterprise and public sector IT ex-ecutives feel that predictability is a critical trait for major technology suppliers, and HP continues to rein-force the impression that it is unpre-dictable,” he said.
He suggested enterprise and public sector IT managers should use this period of disruption at HP as an op-portunity to drive bargains in prod-uct and service procurement projects.
More acquisitions are likely if HP is to make this change in direction work, Jennings said. “If HP is looking to Autonomy as an engine for growth, it will need further acquisitions to broaden its coverage. It will need to be on an aggressive acquisition trail and will have to plough ahead with its software growth. This is a massive change management exercise. One can compare it to IBM’s, which took about 10 years,” he added.
The deal will bring strong search and analytics capabilities, and a deep and broad portfolio of e-discovery, »
more onlineNews: HP third quarter results show 20% software sales growthcomputerweekly.com/247672.htm
Premium content: Read Computer Weekly’s special report on HPcomputerweekly.com/245274.htm
News: Retailers slash Touchpad prices to empty HP inventorycomputerweekly.com/247684.htm
news analysis
5 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
archiving and records management offerings to HP, said Brian Hill, secu-rity and risk analyst at Forrester.
But he predicted the transition for both HP and its customers is unlikely to be smooth.
“While this purchase holds prom-ise, I am sceptical about how it will translate to near-term and mid-term advantage for enterprise customers focused on information risk manage-ment. HP’s CEO said bringing Auton-omy into the HP world will be seam-less and highly complementary. I’m not so sure,” he said.
But Ovum analyst Mike Davis said the acquisition could be a good move for HP. “From a business perspective there were dozens of reasons for HP to acquire Autonomy. We believe this is a great strategic move by HP. Au-tonomy is top of the league in enter-prise search and getting there in e-discovery, content management and, latterly, structured information.
“Buying Autonomy moves HP into the big league of enterprise software suppliers alongside IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP,” he said.
What next for UK IT?Quocirca’s Longbottom said it is important not to overstate the impact this acquisition will have on the British technology sector. “The UK is still as dynamic as ever in terms of the ideas coming out. We have a good enough infrastructure to allow or-ganisations to get off the ground, but we generally don’t have the capacity to allow them to flourish. The only direction they can feasibly go to build the market is west,” he said.
But Ovum’s Jennings said we shouldn’t overlook smaller players which are very innovative in the soft-ware market.
“The software industry has tradi-tionally been US-centric. I think over time we will see China and Asia-Pa-cific become increasingly stronger players. It is important for the UK economy to make sure it supports in-novation in software, even if we don’t
grow major companies,” he said.So where does this leave ARM and
Sage, the last two globally significant UK-based technology companies?
“Both are vulnerable - ARM in par-ticular, because it has so many pat-ents and we have always thought a
Analysts warn many IT managers might think twice about HP contracts as a result of uncertainty surround-ing its PC business. The company has said it will examine strategic alternatives for its PC business over a 12- to 18-month period, which could lead to the division being separated, spun-off or sold, writes Jenny Williams.
Ranjit Atwal, Gartner research director, said from a business perspective, the separation of the PC division from the enterprise business could create reluctance among IT leaders to sign up to long-term deals with HP. This is because of uncertainties surrounding the longevity of products and software.
“Customers will be reluctant to go down the HP path unless it resolves what it’s doing with its PC business. The changes create uncertainty in an environment that is already uncertain. Any business looking for stability will think twice about HP,” said Atwal.
He added that HP had decided to focus attention away from the low-margin, commodity PC business.
“Enterprise is where they’re looking to focus. HP tried to build PCs into that but found it difficult to build a complete end-to-end solution. HP maybe thought the PC could be sacrificed. It tried to move into devices, tablets and smartphones and it’s given up on it,” he said.
In the face of HP halting the production of hardware that uses its operating system WebOS, Atwal said HP had fallen “flat on its face”. He said it lacks a strong ecosystem of mobile applications, which failed to provide differentiation in the market.
“It’s like a TV without programmes. They launched the Touchpad but didn’t have the content,” said Atwal.
Other analysts predict Lenovo could be a potential candidate to buy HP’s PC division.
Eszter Morvay, research manager in IDC’s European personal computing team, said Lenovo looks like a strong possibility for a purchaser.
“Lenovo has been on the global rise for the past five years, especially with acquisitions. It has the know-how and experience in incorporating a business model like they did with IBM’s ThinkPad.”
Morvay added that Lenovo and Dell could gain from
HP’s transformation plans in the short-term. “HP has to reassure the market, channel and customer because short-term turmoil could be a major advantage for Dell and Lenovo,” she said.
Morvay said HP will have to work with any buyer of its PC business on large future and existing deals.
Ovum analyst Nick Dillon said HP is unlikely to find licensees for WebOS, but the platform could offer a tempting purchase for handset-makers looking to move away from reliance on Google or Microsoft, such as HTC.
Dillon said HP had made an opposite move to Google - which announced plans to buy Motorola’s handset division, Motorola Mobility last month - in moving out of hardware into services and software.
“In doing so, HP will no longer be able to control the access to its services, leaving itself at the mercy of other platform and hardware providers, many of whom also have competitive services and software,” he warned.
Clarence Villanueva, analyst at Forrester, advises senior IT leaders:l If you’re crafting a PC refresh request for proposal, ask HP how contracts will be maintained. The spin-off brings new risk to your HP contracts. Though there is no official word yet on how contracts will be handled, your HP enterprise purchasing contracts may or may not remain the same. You may also want to understand how spare parts will be made available for your HP devices, after the spin-off will that be through HP? The new spin-off? You should also understand any changes to warranties and after-sale services through the refresh request process.l If you’re a current (or soon-to-be) Autonomy customer, get your licences in check. From an audit perspective, ensure you’re in compliance with your licences before HP targets you. Though HP may not be as proactive in auditing its customers as others, acquisitions make it likely HP will capitalise on implementing new licensing schemes, challenging your existing licence ownership.l Ask your resellers for discounted HP WebOS tablets. HP will discontinue its Touchpad operations. But beware – don’t expect they’ll be able to service them (or provide any software updates) if you have any issues.
What HP’s plans hold in store for CIOs
CEO Léo Apotheker issued a number of statements to accompany HP’s announcements.
“The exploration of alternatives for Personal Systems Group (PSG) demonstrates our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and sharpening our strategic and financial focus,” said Apotheker.
“In March we outlined a strategy for HP, built on cloud, solutions and software to address the changing requirements of our customers.
“Since then, we have observed the acceleration of these market trends, which has led us to evaluate
additional steps to transform HP to meet emerging opportunities.
“We believe the acquisition of Autonomy, combined with the exploration of alternatives for PSG, would allow HP to more effectively compete and better execute its focused strategy,” he said.
“Autonomy presents an opportunity to accelerate our strategic vision to decisively and profitably lead a large and growing space. Autonomy brings to HP higher value business solutions that will help customers manage the explosion of information.”
The CEO’s view: How Apotheker broke the news
company such as Microsoft or SAP might buy Sage,” said TechMar-ketView’s Holway.
Although the jury is still out about the wisdom of its overall strategy, there is no denying that Autonomy is
a successful company and has the potential to help HP move into enter-prise software. Which is also the rea-son why Autonomy’s change in own-ership is a shame from the UK tech industry’s perspective. ■
more onlineNews: Failed IT projects demolish big businesses and careerscomputerweekly.com/247681.htm
News: FireControl project failed because of EADS contractcomputerweekly.com/247202.htm
News: Large government IT projects subject to new controlscomputerweekly.com/246168.htm
news analysis
Just say ‘no’: How to save your IT project – and career – from failure
6 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
IT projects are 20 times more likely to fail than others, due to unpredictable changes in scope, writes Karl Flinders
Major IT projects are 20 times more likely to fail than other business ini-tiatives because project
managers are ignoring unpredictable events by focusing on the average performance of previous IT projects when planning.
A study from Oxford University’s Said Business School found IT project leaders are risking the future of their organisations – as well as their own careers – by neglecting to take into account the variability in the success of previous projects.
The research analysed 1,500 global projects worth a total of $245bn, with an average cost of $170m. It found large IT projects are, on average, 27% over budget and take 55% longer to complete than originally planned.
But Alexander Budzier, a PhD stu-dent and one of the Oxford Universi-ty researchers, said such statistics are not as bad as they seem: “If you com-pare the spectacular IT project fail-ures, these figures are very small.”
He said analysis of major projects in the construction industry, such as road and bridge building, shows sim-ilar results. But IT planners are focus-ing on the average performance of previous IT projects and ignoring po-tential disasters.
Ignoring the unpredictableAs a result, IT projects are 20 times more likely than other projects to spin out of control. Troubled projects are putting an early end to the careers of senior executives and could put companies out of business, say re-searchers. The study found such IT projects have high-impact outlying events which cannot be predicted. Budzier said the cost over-runs come at the end of these projects and catch project managers by surprise.
He said these projects, which are impossible to predict, go 197% over budget on average, and take 68% more time than expected.
He said the research did not reveal major disparities in industry sectors but there were some in the project types. For example, the risk of cost over-runs in hardware infrastructure projects is low, whereas in bespoke software projects it is high.
Late changes to a project can have unpredictable consequences and should be subjected to critical analysis before being accepted
“If you have a weak project manager, they will give in to changes and this will lead to over-runs”
it strategic planning
Budzier said the problems arise in high-risk projects because the re-quirements change. “These scope changes are introduced after the con-tract is signed,” he said.
How to manage project riskTo avoid risky projects, Budzier said companies must ensure the scope of projects remains stable and that every decision in the project is based on business benefits. He said only 20% of the projects analysed the business benefits of decisions.
Budzier said project managers or project owners have four opportuni-ties to reduce risk:l Carry out a benchmarking study;l Projects should not be under-priced at the start, which often hap-pens as project leaders seek approval or suppliers try to win contracts;l Project lengths and complexity should be reduced; andl The right experience must be brought in to run projects.
He said the IT industry could take
a leaf out of the construction indus-try’s book: “In construction they have identified who the master builders are and they need to do this in IT projects.” Budzier adds that the re-search showed similar results for UK public and private sector IT projects.
Critical analysis of changeRobert Morgan, director at sourc-ing broker Burnt-Oak Partners, said almost all IT projects experience changes in scope: “This is what caus-es projects to fail. To prevent this you need good project management that will say no to changes unless a busi-ness case is given for a change.”
He said scope changes are inevita-ble as projects move forward. “As they go along, the business becomes more and more educated about the system’s functionality. As a result, pressure is put on project managers to make changes,” said Morgan.
The problem is that IT projects are extremely complex and business users do not understand how a
change will impact on other parts of the business or systems, multiplying costs and introducing delays. “If you have a weak project manager, they will give in to changes and this will lead to over-runs,” said Morgan.
He said it is often difficult for a project manager to refuse a request from an executive such as the CFO, particularly as many project manag-ers are contractors.
Changes in scope add costs direct-ly and have knock-on effects. A con-tract signed between EDS and the In-land Revenue saw costs rise 135% from about £1bn to £2.4bn between 1994-2000. These increases in costs were partly due to new work and projects (£533m). ■
CIO interview: Billy Waters, IT manager, Yo! Sushicomputerweekly.com/247433.htm
interview
Taking no chances on Ladbroke’s IT
7 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
With expanding digital products spanning web and mobile platforms and a retail estate the size of Tesco's, Ladbrokes CIO Mittu Sridhara tells Angelica Mari he is the last one to take a punt on the company's IT infrastructure
M ittu Sridhara is no gam-bler when it comes to IT strategy. The global CIO of betting group Ladbro-
kes leads the technology supporting an operation that takes over £15bn in stakes a year across a retail estate comparable to Tesco, with over 2,000 outlets in the UK alone.
Since joining Ladbrokes in 2008, Sridhara has focused on creating a joined-up team and operation that operates across in-store, web and mo-bile channels. That required a signifi-cant effort around underlying proc-esses such as portfolio management, development and delivery to provide a better foundation for a multi-chan-nel business.
A complex portfolioApart from its shops, Ladbrokes also has a significant web and mobile presence – and everything happens in real time.
“Our customer-facing platforms are a combination of multi-channel retail combined with a trading platform and a content delivery platform all synchronised together, in real time,” Sridhara told Computer Weekly.
“Our product range is about four times that of an average multi-chan-nel retailer.”
As well as a real-time games, Lad-brokes streams live sports coverage across platforms with live betting odds for each event, which are traded and managed across various chan-nels and geographies.
Underpinning the company’s round-the-clock activity lies a plat-form stack of about 360 applications and a wide range of third-party pro-viders. Some of the company’s key suppliers are GlobalDraw, Sapient, OpenBet, Aditi, HCL, HP, IBM, Ende-ca, Hybris, Oracle and BT.
The retail system at Ladbrokes is a combination of in-house and out-sourced applications, largely based on Microsoft technologies. Its web and mobile platforms are mostly based on open-source software.
The latest addition to the gambling
Sridhara has concentrated on rolling out a digital platform across Ladbroke’s estate
it leadership
this is an edited version of the interview. to read the full text, click on the link below.
company’s IT portfolio is a trading platform based on off-the-shelf mid-dleware provided by Tibco, with the front-end and trading algorithms de-livered on a system based on Micro-soft Silverlight.
Key areas of focusIn illustrating the breadth of IT projects rolled out across Ladbrokes in recent months, Sridhara points to the gaming platform introduced across the entire retail estate in under four months. Another example is the sector-leading search capability using tools provided by information man-agement specialist Endeca.
“Over the last 12 months, the focus has been around improving our web, mobile and retail platforms while im-proving usability and our customer experience,” the CIO says.
“In parallel, we have been building several components of our multi-channel platform and working on our trading platform to improve the de-livery of our sports betting products.”
The company’s new core trading platform was delivered earlier this year and Ladbrokes has handled transactions around the Wimbledon tennis championships on the new set-up. Additional sports are now being introduced to the system.
The mobile offering has also been improved in the number of applica-tions and the range of devices, in-cluding support for Android, iPhone and Blackberry handsets.
In the next two years, Ladbrokes plans to extend the range of products on the new platforms.
“A lot of that is about focus and doing one thing at a time. We will up-date all our platforms and work with our partners and in-house team to de-liver as we have over the last 24 months,” says Sridhara.
Customer-driven choicesAs new platforms are introduced, Sridhara’s team is also retiring some systems, but the company has opted against a “big-bang” consolidation and prefers to concentrate on cus-tomer requirements.
“We prioritise what the customers need to see and what we need to do to make that happen,” says Sridhara.
“As a result of that focus, we ended up consolidating or retiring applica-tions as part of that drive to deliver a multi-channel offering and increase revenue. We do not have time to just do consolidation for its own sake.”
Ladbrokes buys off-the-shelf soft-ware when possible and changes sys-tems according to needs, but this de-
pends on the business application. For example, the IT chief mentioned that while the firm’s trading system is unique, back-end systems such as ERP are not customised at all.
Strong partnershipsAs with applications, Ladbrokes em-ploys a blended model for IT infra-structure which entails in-house and outsourced services. Systems are run in-house while hosting and some of the underlying infrastructure devel-opment and support is outsourced.
The company uses HP, BT, Open-Bet, Ardenta and other companies for these activities as well as offshore provider HCL, which Ladbrokes has been testing more recently.
Systems that don’t require high-level security, such as videoconfer-encing, sit on a private cloud provid-ed by Google. Within the private cloud set-up, the firm benefits from greater scalability and uses this for some other applications that are de-mand-heavy.
Ladbrokes works on innovative processes in close proximity with its partners. According to Sridhara, a lot of innovation - which is also guided by a strong customer-centric thinking - has taken place around the web, particularly on contextual navigation and search.
“Very few websites have a strong search capability that lets users navi-gate very effectively. And we are looking at each of these areas and looking to deliver results in a short, sharp and efficient manner over the next year,” Sridhara says. ■
8 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
Corporate social responsi-bility (CSR) was, before the economic downturn, the buzzword of the moment.
For many companies it was simply a glossy marketing term to be spewed out. For others, it was at the heart of their business and a great way of showing they cared. However today, as the recession continues, CSR has pretty much fallen off the agenda for most businesses.
Nevertheless, I’ve come to realise CSR doesn’t need to come at a cost; rather it should be a benefit. The ad-vantages CSR offers are clear - and not just for large enterprises but to smaller companies too. As well as providing a feel-good factor, it is a great way to develop a good reputa-tion among peers and attract new re-cruits. CSR provides invaluable PR and great networking opportunities for business within their industry.
This is not to say that CSR should be seen purely as a means to benefit business; ultimately, it is about phi-lanthropy and being able to give something back.
A few years ago I found myself sleeping under the stars in the open air on a winter night in London. Far from romantic, it was cold, wet and miserable, despite our sleeping bags, umbrellas and cups of tea. My col-leagues and I were pledging our sup-
port for Byte Night, the IT industry’s sleep-out event which raises money for Action for Children, a charity that works with the UK’s most vulnerable children. The event involves more than 700 people sleeping out across the country and this year aims to smash last year’s total of £550,000.
Byte Night is an example of the genuine appetite for active participa-tion in charity in the IT community. Even during the economic downturn, support for the event has grown every year.
However, you may ask how one person in a start-up company can have the time or the manpower to get
If Byte Night prevents one teenager from sleeping rough, that’s good enough for me
BryaN GlIck leader MIke Barrett opinion
their business involved in charity? I asked myself the same thing when I launched my own company, but I was determined to maintain support for Byte Night and started to look at how others incorporated charity into their professional work.
It appeared that it was easy enough to give something back once you had made your money or were part of a large well-known corpora-tion. However, I wanted to get in-volved straight away.
So I set about giving myself the tar-get of one day per month, the equiva-lent to 5% of my working time, to be spent on charitable projects. Byte Night provided the perfect opportu-nity to help fulfil this new goal. I con-tacted James Bennet, co-founder of the event, and asked if I could be-come a member of the Byte Night board, which he kindly accepted.
At first I was unsure of what I had to offer Byte Night but it soon became apparent that everyone can contrib-ute. Charities are crying out for the business skills we use every day at work, from people management and supply chain management to com-munications. And, as a member of the technology profession, it struck me early on that as both individuals and as a professional community, we could make a real difference.
Most of us who take part in Byte Night have regular access to emerg-ing technology and mature IT servic-es; but there are many within the UK who don’t even have access to basic services. As a result, they are suffer-ing academically, financially, profes-sionally and socially.
Through Byte Night, IT is empow-ering people to make a difference. Byte Night allows the IT industry not only to prevent youth homelessness through fundraising and financial do-nation, but also to discuss how the IT industry as a whole can make long-term changes to those who need it most. The reality is every company, no matter how small, can do their bit and make a significant difference; it’s just a matter of making the time.
If sleeping out for one night pre-vents one teenager from sleeping rough every night, then that’s good enough for me. ■
mike barrett is a director at Compound media and a member of the byte Night board
Steve Jobs, who moved from CeO to chairman of Apple last month, is one of the very few technology leaders who can genuinely be
described as a visionary, a much over-used word in the industry.
A visionary is someone who can visualise a future and work out how to get there, regard-less of the doubters, distractions and failures along the way, remaining convinced, essen-tially, that they are right all along – and who then delivers that vision.
there are plenty of people in It described all too quickly as visionary. At any one time, you can find dozens of creative company executives with a vision. but the visionaries are the ones who, years later, are proved right. being a visionary is a long-distance race, not a beauty contest.
the visionary that Jobs has most in com-mon with is not a modern technologist, but Henry Ford, the giant of the early 20th centu-ry car industry. Ford once famously said: “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse’.”
Jobs is the same; driven by the belief that his vision of the future was right - it’s only in the last 10 years that he has really been proved correct. Apple will continue to flour-ish because Jobs has yet to achieve the entirety of his vision, and as chairman he will still be there, health permitting, to continue that direction.
Compare and contrast with microsoft.the seattle giant was driven from incep-
tion by bill Gates’ vision of a pC on every desk and in every home, and of software becoming a revolutionary force. He was right, he achieved his vision, despite doubt-ers, distractions and failures along the way.
today though, microsoft has become a collection of very good products, supported by a world-class global marketing and prod-uct distribution network. but what is its vision of the future?
Given the decades of bad feeling between Apple and its great rival, perhaps one of Jobs’ legacies will be the perspective that it brings to the post-visionary microsoft. ■
9 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
British companies all too ready to sell out to Silicon Valleymike bThere is an apparent ongoing trend whereby the founders of British com-puter and software companies are all too ready to sell out to the big boys of Silicon Valley, in order to become
CW readers give their views on HP’s £7bn acquisition of Autonomy and plans to divest its PC business. Read the full story online
robert morgan, burnt-Oak partnersHow little the US stock market understands about what most European pundits call “the world’s hottest technology company”. Autonomy’s acquisi-tion by HP deserves to be hailed as the best decision ever made by Leo Apotheker and the HP board. The second best decision ever was the announcement that this transaction, combined with the sale of the PC business, should insulate HP investors from the worst of the current economic and technological downturn for at least a couple of years to come.
I applaud the Autonomy acquisition even though ownership will leave the UK (which saddens me greatly) but the 50% premium paid by HP is not unreasonable in light of the extreme “intelligence” of the Autonomy solutions and the fact that HP will have an absolute imperative to drive value to justify the dilution. While Leo Apotheker carefully predicts difficult quarters, Autonomy will provide an absolutely unique, tested and strategic solution which will allow HP to generate substantial value at the business level with many private and public clients on a worldwide basis. It remains to be seen as to whether HP has the wherewithal to fully capitalise on Autonomy’s under-exploited market. There are literally billions of sales possible if HP swiftly uses its muscle and client knowledge to forge new markets, uses and products around the world.
Last and not least the success of Mike Lynch and his team shows that British universities and firms can succeed at the highest levels. Rather than sulk we should be elated and hope that such a success will fuel interest in British and European intelligence and demonstrate once more why London can compete with the best of Route 128 in Boston and the Bay area.
multi-millionaires in the process. The main problem is that we Brits were too slow in getting any sort of technology industries off the ground and, as a result, the Americans and Japanese now totally dominate this sector. If British institutions fail to invest in this sector, those people
working in Cambridge, Reading and other technology parks will all be employed by foreign companies such as HP, Microsoft, Sony etc.
Mixed messages for UK government policy makersphilip VirgoHP/EDS as the world’s largest and most mature open source/cloud op-eration after IBM, adds Autonomy as the provider of engines that are transforming not just information processing operations but also the business models of its largest and most profitable customers, and now spins-off the PC hardware operations as a distraction. The strategic vision makes very good sense.
Whether that vision will be suc-cessfully implemented is to do with culture, leadership and implementa-tion. The new management teams of Ferranti and GEC had similar “vi-sion” when they made the “terminal take-overs” that destroyed both. Lou Gerstner’s “vision” was, however, implemented and transformed IBM, making it fit for the 21st century.
It is sad for those of my generation that nothing is left of the old Hewlett-Packard other than the initials. But I doubt it could have survived the competition as China’s education, economic and engineering infrastruc-tures recover from a hundred years of anarchy and those of the West spiral into recession because we have for-gotten how to earn a living.
The messages for those who wish to see government policies turn round the UK are very mixed.
HP will simply fail to compete with the likes of Google or Amazonrichard stephensThe recent announcements to drop out of the handheld, mobile and PC sector, and the eye watering $11bn offer for the UK software company Autonomy, saw HP’s shares fall 20% on the US stock market. It all points to a deep, unnatural desire by successive CEOs at HP to be “cool” – perhaps to be cool like Apple. Yet the world’s largest IT corporation has never been a pioneer in anything cool and no matter what its marketing ad-visers say, it will always fail at being what it simply has not got in its DNA. HP is brilliant at corporate IT services (dull but solid) and both commercial and domestic print technology where for decades the company has enjoyed amazingly successful results from inkjet sales and of course sales of consumables - yes, those amazingly pricey ink cartridges and paper.
I watch with shock and frustration when I see HP stretching too far and trying to lead the market in areas the organisation can neither manage well nor really fully control.
HP keeps going into markets it can-not win or lead in and it struggles to compete with dynamic and stylish brands that will always attract the leading trend-setting buyers. Person-al products in IT and telecommuni-cations today are entirely a numbers game and getting into cloud-based data services in the end will become another price-led war where HP will simply fail to compete with the likes of Google or Amazon. And all this time, while HP has been pouring cash into lost causes, it is taking its eye off its natural and easy business. Solid, corporate but profitable busi-ness may not be very cool – but HP’s shareholders will prefer it that way.
IT staff of the future will only work for one of three companiesmark WrightI think there are going to be only a few large companies running the show in the future. So many buy-outs these days means only a few domi-nate the market.
MessageLabs went to Symantec; Sun went to Oracle; EDS went to HP. I can see a world when if you are an IT worker, you will only work for one of three companies. ■
How to make business intelligence tools work for your organisation
11 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
BI tools can report essential, timely data but care must be taken to select the right system, writes Clive Longbottom
The last few years have seen a flurry of activity in the business intelligence (BI) market. Firstly, the old-style
approach of reporting against data in a relatively static manner was put under pressure by users demand-ing something a lot more flexible, where they did not need to approach the IT department every time they needed to create a report. Then, the big suppliers decided they needed BI tools they could control, rather than
JasperSoft and Pentaho both have community editions of their BI software free to download and implement
enterprise software
embedding a copy of a standard en-gine (generally Crystal Reports) into their systems. IBM acquired Cognos and SPSS, Oracle bought Hyperion and SAP took over Business Objects. Some smaller suppliers got in on the act - relative newcomer Spotfire went to Tibco, the middleware supplier.
This flurry of activity presented is-sues to many users - if they were run-ning a heterogeneous environment, how rich would the functionality of one supplier’s BI engine be against another, competitive supplier’s sys-tems? Would bringing Cognos into an Oracle environment be a foot in the door for IBM to try and move the or-ganisation over to DB2?
The market for independent BI providers soon began to fill up - sup-
pliers such as Information Builders, Panorama Software and Tableau Soft-ware have all let users know there are alternatives available to whatever they may be using to date. The largest remaining independent supplier, SAS Institute, continues to dominate as a specialist BI supplier.
Cloud-based computing is giving greater reach to many of these suppli-ers. Spotfire has provided a hosted
version of its software for many years and Panorama - through a partner-ship with Google - offers its capabili-ties as a BI software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.
Open-source BI toolsBut the biggest problem remains the cost of BI. If a business’s main asset is its information - its intellectual property - BI needs to be widespread
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buyer’s guide
12 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
Cheyne Capital , a hedge fund management company, has replaced SAS with Tableau business intelligence, to speed up reports for its traders, writes Cliff Saran.
Over the last three years the IT team at Cheyne Capital needed to provide reporting across multiple systems to provide traders with greater business insight. However, due to the nature of its business, producing reports needs to be done quickly and efficiently.
Jan Uygur, CTO of Cheyne Capital, said the company wanted to hand over reporting to the business, rather than leaving reporting as a purely IT function. “Since the downturn we have strived to be more efficient. We were using SAS previously, but it is a big heavy tool.”
This meant the company had to use the SAS environ-ment and extract data into a SQL Server database. “We wanted to make reporting much lighter,” says Uygur.
SAS needed a lot of developers, with three to five people involved in developing reports. The downturn led to a reduced IT team, forcing the department to rethink how to produce reports more cost-effectively.
Faster reports were necessary as the trading desk
asked IT for applications. As an interim step, Uygur says: “We gave traders reports. When traders need some-thing, we have to give them a solution quickly.”
Cheyne Capital has realised portfolio managers need to interact with instant data and up to date analysis, rather than being presented with static reports that can’t answer questions. The hedge fund company is using Tableau Software to deliver reports in a way that it can work with the numbers, delve deeper and see the information in the way staff want - grids, graphs and in the form of an infographic illustration.
Sheel Bhatiani, deputy head of IT at Cheyne Capital, said the department had previously used wireframes to develop reports, which were then presented to users. Tableau is more interactive. It provides a graphical designer, allowing an IT person to sit on the trading desk and collaborate with a trader to build the report, making changes on the fly.
Cheyne Capital plans to adopt Tableau Software’s 6.1 version with potential use on tablet devices, making the data accessible for portfolio managers on the go.
Business intelligence case study: Cheyne Capitalacross its employee base, so everyone can add value to the data at their disposal. By providing BI tools only to those deemed at a sufficiently high level, BI ceases to deliver what it promises - and becomes a niche tool.
Open source could provide the an-swer here. There is a broad open source BI project, known as BIRT, the business intelligence and reporting tools project. Actuate has the best known distribution of this, but others provide alternatives under open source banners that may offer greater overall functionality.
The main players here are Jasper-Soft and Pentaho, both of which have “community editions” of their soft-ware that are free to download and implement, with support being com-munity-based.
Their commercial editions are en-terprise subscription licences based on the number of CPUs, so broad adoption can be made without the need to deal with per-user issues.
Others not using open source but having low-cost approaches (and often a free usage version or at least free evaluation version) include Qlik-Tech and Panopticon.
Buyers must understand there is a cost to everything. Free, open source software is not free - even when you take the community version. It is free of licence, but has implementation and support costs. Subscription soft-ware has on-going, predictable costs,
and commercial, off-the-shelf soft-ware may have up-front licence costs along with on-going maintenance charges. The final choice comes down to other issues - as detailed above - and applying suitable busi-ness wisdom in the search for mean-ingful intelligence.
Choose the right BI systemWhen it comes to choosing the right
BI direction for your organisation, Quocirca recommends the following as basic pointers:l Is a single supplier solution im-portant to you? If so, look to the tools from the incumbent (e.g. IBM, Ora-cle, SAP), but negotiate hard around existing contracts. On the whole, this will tend to restrict you to a smaller number of active BI users, with the capability to distribute the reports from the analysis.l Do you want an independent BI system that can work across a more heterogeneous system? Look to the remaining independents or semi-independents such as SAS Institute and Tibco Spotfire. These may still be expensive at a per-seat level, but will often come with tools to manage deep domain expertise areas, such as oil and gas, pharmaceutical and finance data analysis.l Can you provide your own systems support, and are you in a position to enable a suitable number of support staff to build up their own knowledge of the chosen system? If so, then com-munity editions of BI tools may meet your requirements. This would pro-vide the most scalable BI system - but you need to watch out for any lack of functionality that may be in some community editions.l Do you want a fully supported system, but also want broad adoption capabilities? Then look for supported versions of open source tools, or for commercial systems that do not charge on a per-user basis.
For many, it will come down to a hybrid solution - but certain key areas must be borne in mind:l Everyone must be analysing the same information. Different BI tools
looking at different information silos do not provide business intelligence - it gives chaos.l One person’s great BI tool is an-other’s incapability to see the results. Bar and pie charts may be pretty easy for everyone to understand, but not all data is well suited to bar or pie charts. Heat maps, spider charts, geo-data representations, bubble charts and all other media may have mean-ings for certain people, but do not assume that any one way of viewing data will suit everyone.
Look for tools that enable the user to change the visualisation method to one that suits them best. If multiple BI tools are chosen to give different viewing capabilities - see the point above regarding information silos.l “Live” reports have pros and cons. Web-based output which allows users to see the analysis of the live data is great, unless what was re-quired was a snapshot in time. Make sure that the differences are under-stood, and the right reports can be run against the right data. ■
13 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
Opinion remains divided over the economic re-covery but many or-ganisations are seeking
growth – whether aggressively or opportunistically – while others remain cautious on investments. A common goal must be to review and potentially re-allocate resources and investment, either to cut costs or re-lease funds for new priorities. From an IT perspective, that translates into making sure IT investments are made in the right places and realising that sometimes elusive goal of measuring tangible value from IT.
Business expectations of ITResearch among business and IT ex-ecutives in 2011 reveals high expec-tations of IT and some clear impera-tives (see panel, the role of IT in the business, page 14).
New technologies are rated almost side by side with budget and cost-re-duction as the leading drivers of
Sustainability has a key role to play in the economic recovery and the future, not simply in response to global or national regulations but also to revenue opportunities and cus-tomer demand, and to be competitive in emerging and developing markets.
Bringing sustainability and IT to-gether via green IT has already achieved some notable successes. One example is that of the search for significant and immediate cost sav-ings during the recession. This ac-celerated the adoption of new tech-nologies to enable virtual meetings and collaboration, to reduce large travel costs. Many organisations cap-
A primary focus for IT is to ensure a clear and consistent understanding of sustainability and its business value
Green IT: How to deliver valueSheila Upton examines how sustainability can boost a business's bottom line – and enhance its reputation
tured tangible and measurable busi-ness value delivered by those invest-ments in cost savings and contribution to sustainability targets. And these benefits resulted directly from collaboration between business and IT on sustainable IT-enabled business processes.
Those organisations which have already recognised the business po-tential and imperative of climate change and sustainability, and have a programme in place, should revisit their plans now to take stock, review the business drivers and objectives, and set objectives and tar-gets. Those who have only targeted
changing demand for IT. Were further evidence needed, investing in IT is seen as the third highest opportunity for 2011, while risks relating to new technologies has risen to fifth posi-tion in 2011.
The message and demand is clear - IT is needed, but it needs to develop its skills in some very specific areas and new technologies are expected to be part of that response.
Develop the right areasIn 2010, a global survey of business leaders revealed that, despite a chal-lenging economic environment, organisations were continuing and increasing activity on climate change and sustainability (see panel, climate change programmes, page 14).
Yet it was clear from comments and responses from survey partici-pants that, despite clear business drivers, increasing budgets and planned initiatives, organisations were struggling with execution.
l Over 50% of respondents see IT as playing a very important role in managing future economic and business trends - yet:l 81% say IT needs to develop skills in understanding what the business
needs from IT;l 71% say IT needs to improve its skills in communicating with the business; andl Only two in five have measures in place to quantify ROI on IT.
The role of IT in the businesseasily obtainable goals, siloed activi-ties or who have not even started a programme, should seize the opportu-nity to establish one or progress their current project as a clear opportunity to reduce costs, enhance reputation and exploit growth opportunities.
IT’s role in this is not only to meet sustainability targets where it has di-rect control but, more importantly, to enable and accelerate the business re-sponse to meet its targets.
Managing green expectationsThere remain a number of miscon-ceptions about sustainability, some of the more common being:l It is expensive to implementl It relates simply to saving the plan-et and is not a business issuel It is driven by compliancel It is just about energy savingsl It is just about the datacentrel It is just about what goes on in IT
So a primary focus for business and IT is to jointly ensure a clear and consistent understanding of sustaina-bility and its business value.
This means an integrated ap-proach, and a framework to bring IT and business together to assess the current state, agree a realistic target state, and a plan to achieve that with measures. However, sustainability is still a relatively new, evolving and complex subject, and for many the journey and route are unclear, so awareness and communication plans are key to success.
What IT brings to sustainabilityFirstly, IT has the opportunity to lead by example in demonstrating its understanding of the subject and the opportunities to apply new tech-nologies. It can deliver against the or-
ganisation’s sustainability objectives in its own IT lifecycle activities and articulate benefits in terms of busi-ness value.
Secondly, IT can bring a structured process, language and framework to bring IT and business together. The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) from the Innovation Value Institute provides this structure. The framework achieves this by provid-ing the structure to jointly assess the maturity of current capability and what is important, to set improve-ment targets and the roadmaps to get there and measure success.
The IT-CMF is based on recognis-ing the capability building blocks that exist for an individual IT process to deliver value. Maturity levels - from 1 (initial) through to 5 (optimis-ing) - are described for each building block, allowing an organisation to set targets relevant to them and deliver-ing value specific to them.
There are nine capability building blocks for green IT under four catego-ries of:l strategy and planning;l process management; l people and culture;l governance.
Importantly for green IT, the IT-CMF recognises that the scope and value of increasing maturity has to be defined specifically for green IT as a relatively new and evolving ca-pability. However, it also recognises that corporate sustainability and green IT goals influence other core IT processes and capabilities - sourc-ing, innovation, and portfolio man-agement to name just a few - and that ultimately success means em-bedding sustainability into other business and IT practices.
Using the IT-CMF to assess the ma-turity of green IT in organisations re-vealed the category that receives most focus and activity initially is process management. In process management, IT operations and life-cycle, which includes procurement, design, run and disposal, is typically the first to be addressed.
IT-enabled business processes is typically the second priority, with the implementation of technologies to enable virtual meetings being the most frequently cited example. Business and IT stakeholders typi-cally agreed that, while significant progress had been made in both those areas, much more remained to be done, as well as a need for a significant increase in awareness and communication.
They also found recognition of achievement was often less than ex-pected, because of insufficient atten-tion paid to other building blocks of objectives, people and culture. This resulted in organisations missing out on valuable support because of this lack of awareness and understanding, and tangible objectives and meas-ures. An unexpected benefit of as-sessing green IT using the IT-CMF was that discussing the green IT building blocks of alignment, objec-tives, measurement and governance, prompted a wider discussion of IT and resulted in additional insights on priorities, and the focus for invest-ment and action.
In summary, the contributions of IT and sustainability to economic re-covery and competitive advantage provide an excellent opportunity for CIOs to use green IT as an enabler to engage in dialogue and respond to business expectations of IT to play that significant role in managing fu-ture economic and business trends. ■
sheila Upton is a director with ernst & Young Advisory services
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Whitepaper: Green IT – read the Computer Weekly Buyer’s Guidecomputerweekly.com/246518.htm
14 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
l Over two thirds of organisations already had a climate change programme in place.l The top driver of these pro-grammes was energy costs, closely followed by changes in customer demand and new revenue opportunities.
l 70% of organisations planned to increase their spend on climate change and sustainability between 2010 and 2012; top investments listed were investing in energy efficiency, development of new products and services, and transparency in corporate reporting.
15 | 6-12 september 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
adobe Systems is the dark horse of the software sup-pliers. Its product portfolio stretches way beyond the
ubiquitous portable document format (PDF) standard, popularised by its Acrobat software.
Adobe generated an eyebrow-rais-ing $3.6bn of revenues in 2008, and $2.9bn in 2009. It has an enviable market position that covers consumer and business web technologies, web design and application development, business process management (BPM), collaboration tools, web ana-lytics, online marketing and security.
The company stands as a possible takeover target for Microsoft. Apple – once a long-term friend – has turned enemy, and it has trudged through a decade of patching products that have become a target for hackers.
Business segmentsNevertheless, Adobe has a large and loyal base of users, particularly in the creative design industry. Half its rev-enues come from Apple Mac users, many of whom work in this sector. Adobe also has a long list of well-known brands which include Adobe Reader and Acrobat, Flash Player, Dreamweaver, Creative Suite, Flex, PostScript, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects and ColdFusion.
Adobe has six business segments it describes as Creative Solutions (such as Photoshop and InDesign), Enter-prise (web conferencing, BPM and analysis tools), Knowledge Worker (content creation and collaboration), Omniture (online marketing), Plat-form, and Print and Publishing.
The Creative Solutions segment contributes the largest proportion of revenues to the company, 58% of total revenues in 2009. Adobe is un-derstandably keen to expand it.
But there are also other promising areas of the business. These include rich internet application (RIA) devel-opment platforms for creating anima-tions, interactive web experiences, rich mobile content and enterprise-centric RIAs designed for clients or employees to use. Key Adobe tech-nologies here include Flash, LiveCy-cle Mosaic (which helps create com-
However, the Omniture purchase is more profound, according to For-rester Research analyst Suresh Vittal, because it enables Adobe to offer users content creation tools as well as the ability to measure the commercial impact of that content. Vittal says: “We think this acquisition will launch permanent changes to the on-line marketing world: customer intel-ligence and optimisation will move to the head of the class.”
Vittal says the deal creates a closed loop process of development, meas-urement and optimisation which will make the process of online content creation and marketing far easier and more lucrative for enterprises. Conse-quently, content publishers and ad-vertisers will benefit from more tar-geted media campaigns.
“Delivering tools and workflows to track, measure and optimise content at the point of creation, Adobe could ensure marketers exploit content to its highest potential, and empower advertisers and publishers to value
Dark horse Adobe charges into BPM, collaboration and online marketingAdobe has built a strong portfolio of rich web design and business applications, spanning consumer and enterprise. If it can stay on top of standards and licensing, CIOs would do well to explore its product range. Arif Mohamed reports
and target media consistently.”Vittal adds that, as Adobe exploits
this new area and becomes a game-changer, rival content management suppliers such as Autonomy, EMC and Open Text will themselves ac-quire marketing automation, web an-alytics, or social media monitoring firms to improve their analytics, opti-misation and execution capabilities.
Enterprise focusWhile the Omniture acquisition has taken Adobe into the area of online marketing and analytics, the com-pany is also working to establish it-self as a market leader in high-quality user experience technology for enter-prise applications. Adobe’s LiveCycle product family is the bedrock of this strategy, which covers enterprise col-laboration, content and BPM.
Adobe has built up its collabora-tion technologies, for example with its acquisition of Macromedia, which gave it the technology for Adobe Con-nect for web conferencing. This has proved popular in education, train-ing departments and government sec-tors, including military and defence.
Its acquisition of voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology firm Antepo in 2007 provided a presence platform.
This supports a range of leading communications protocols such as Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and SIP for Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extension (SIMPLE). Consequently, Adobe is positioned to lead in collaboration, a highly competitive area with major suppliers such as Microsoft, IBM and Google carving out territory.
Adobe has developed LiveCycle Collaboration Service (LCCS), “an in-novative and promising platform for embedding Adobe-hosted real-time collaboration and communication in other applications”, according to Gartner’s Austin.
LCCS is strategic for Adobe be-cause it simplifies the development of multi-user, real-time collaboration applications, and offers service-pro-viders the ability to offer their cus-tomers a transaction-priced collabo-ration service, without having to
posite user interfaces, or customer portals), and Adobe Integrated Run-time (AIR), an out-of-browser envi-ronment for running RIAs that use Flex or JavaScript. (The Twitter desk-top app, TweetDeck, runs on the Adobe AIR platform, for example.)
Tom Austin, Gartner vice-presi-dent and lead Adobe analyst, says: “Adobe is a broader, more diverse and more capable supplier than most IT leaders realise, but it needs to restore its creative solutions busi-ness to its former growth profile to fully fund the growth of its enter-prise strategy.”
Acquisition growth strategyIn 2009, Adobe bought online mar-keting and web analytics specialist Omniture for $1.8bn.
It bought Day Software Holding – a provider of enterprise web content management software – for $240m in October 2010. It intends to integrate Day’s software as a product line in its Enterprise segment.
“Adobe needs to sharpen its licensing efforts to make it easier for enterprises to achieve licence compliance”
»
Adobe’s creative software contributes the largest proportion of its revenues
One area where Adobe is experiencing some friction with users is in licensing, specifically the complexity of its licensing models.
“Adobe’s software licensing models are complex and often enterprises find it challenging to comply with its software contracts,” says Vincent Smyth, UK general manager at Flexera Software.
Smyth says there is an inventory and asset recognition issue, because it is difficult to collect and analyse inventory for all computers with Adobe products. For example, Adobe suites, such as Adobe Creative Suite 5, cost much less than the total cost of the individual components bought separately.
There are also management concerns, because the “Product Use Rights” for each Adobe product can differ from product to product and version to version.
To complicate matters further, says Smyth, “Adobe often grants limited use rights to prior versions after upgrades, so customers may have an almost unlimited range of installation footprints that can be extremely difficult to accurately interpret manually.” This can create
cost and compliance problems, he says.One global manufacturer that uses Adobe software
was faced with an Adobe licence liability of more than $15m. However, the company applied Product Use Rights (second use and multiple version rights) and successfully reduced its licence consumption across 35,000 devices.
This shrank the company’s audit liability by more than $5m, because “right of second use” allows the same application to be installed on desktop and laptop computers and consume a single licence, while the “multiple versions right” allows multiple versions of the same application to be installed on the same machine and consume only one licence.
Gartner’s Tom Austin says: “Adobe needs to sharpen its enterprise licensing efforts to make it easier for enterprises to buy and achieve licence compliance.”
However, he adds that Adobe is currently working to improve its licensing models, to increase revenue per user, and improve licence compliance, as the supplier depends on new licence revenue.
Licensing complexities CIOs must watch out forprovide the code and infrastructure themselves, which can be costly.
Adobe has produced a BPM suite, which is proving a growth area for the supplier. Adobe’s BPM suite com-prises LiveCycle Process Manage-ment ES2, which can be combined with LiveCycle Content Services ES2, or a content management server from another supplier.
According to Austin, this suite is a-simple-to-use development platform for building composite BPM applica-tions, which provide rich, intuitive customer experiences for employees. Adobe has around 700 users of Live-Cycle Process Management ES2, and has developed pre-built process tem-plates and support for industry-spe-cific processes in government, life sciences, financial services and man-ufacturing sectors.
User collaboration One of Adobe’s strengths is the way it works closely with product users to incorporate feedback. It also has a reputation for involving customers in the design process, says Forrester Re-search analyst Andrew McInnes.
He says that, rather than collecting customer feedback and going behind closed doors to craft solutions, Adobe uses a “voice of the customer” ap-proach to invite customers to partici-pate in development. Adobe uses its SyncDev development process, which includes formal design review sessions with customers. Adobe anal-yses factors such as the relationship between customer engagement and satisfaction to identify the most im-portant and most problematic areas.
Adobe has also launched an initia-tive to develop products by incorpo-rating user feedback from its online developer community, Adobe Labs, says Pooja Prasad, social media mar-keter at Adobe.
The company’s Adobe Labs Ideas website uses multiple interfaces to enable developers to contribute to specific Adobe products, including Adobe AIR, Flash Builder, Flash Cat-alyst, Adobe Flash Professional, Flex, LiveCycle ES and WorkflowLab.
“The ability to collect and priori-tise feature suggestions and feedback has the potential to dramatically im-prove workflow and increase the pro-ductivity of product managers. At the same time it provides real-time cus-tomer and developer feedback, in-depth customer insights for im-proved marketing, and further refines features through community collabo-ration among peers,” says Prasad.
“For developers and users of Adobe products, Adobe Labs Ideas is an incredible opportunity to influ-ence the development of your favour-ite applications,” he adds. “Popular
suggestions collected so far include requests to streamline user interfaces to make programming more intuitive, improved integration of product lines and tips for improved hardware.”
In the one month following the programme’s launch, Adobe Labs Ideas saw more than 20,000 unique visitors, 1,200 registered users and generated upwards of 450 feature and usability recommendations on participating product lines.
Standards warsAdobe says the risks it faces include making long-term investments and committing significant resources in anticipation of customer de-mand for its products and services. Meanwhile, web design standards continue to develop, with competi-tive technologies vying for attention. Similarly, mobile devices continue to develop apace, which means Adobe must stay at the cutting edge of web and mobile technologies.
Staying ahead of the curve is one issue for Adobe, but another more pressing one is driving existing web technologies. One hot topic in the web apps world is which web tech-nology to opt for. The developer and user communities’ answer could di-rectly affect Adobe’s bottom line.
Adobe’s Flash is currently in a bat-tle with HTML5, which is progress-ing towards a de facto standard for modern consumer websites.
At the same time, Apple until re-cently locked Flash out of its iPhone and iPad devices, in favour of other technologies. This is noteworthy, considering a huge proportion of Adobe’s creative design users work on Apple Macs. Adobe and Apple
have a long history of collaboration. Microsoft Silverlight is starting to
grow in popularity as an interactive web technology. Its integration with the Visual Studio development plat-form is certain to boost its adoption.
However, Google seems to favour Adobe at the moment, with Google’s popular Android operating system supporting HTML5 and Flash, but not Microsoft Silverlight.
Gartner’s Austin says: “Adobe con-tinues to have ‘friends’ in IBM, SAP and Oracle, although these are casual commitments. Nevertheless, Flash faces certain long-term threats.”
Good news came for Adobe in Sep-tember 2010 when Apple changed its development policy for iPad and iPhone applications, allowing Adobe software to work on its platforms. Apple changed its iPhone operating system (iOS) developer agreement to remove a restriction forbidding de-velopers from using programming languages other than Objective-C, C++ or JavaScript, and from using ab-straction layers for translation or compatibility with other languages.
Forrester analyst Mark Driver says: “While the restriction had affected a range of tools, it banned Adobe’s Flash CS5 compiler for Apple’s iOS platform. This prompted a public debate be-tween Apple and Adobe over the mer-its and qualities of Flash, which even-tually led Adobe to mention the issue as a risk factor in an informational briefing to the US Securities and Ex-change Commission in April 2010.”
The changes to Apple’s iOS devel-oper restrictions will clear the way for locally-installed Adobe AIR ap-plications to use Flash on Apple de-vices. “This is a clear win for Adobe
and numerous other tool providers that rely on interpreted and cross-platform toolsets,” says Driver.
However, he says Apple remains steadfast in its opposition to Flash on its iOS platform and Forrester be-lieves Apple is pinning its expecta-tions on the growth of HTML5 tech-nologies to render Flash less critical in coming years.
The upshot for enterprise IT users, says Gartner analyst Ray Valdes, is that, although HTML5 and other technologies pose a threat to Adobe Flash, the timeframes are longer than one might expect. “Millions of web-sites use Flash, and some high-growth, high-traffic sites depend on Flash in a business-critical context,” says Valdes. But he adds: “Enterpris-es should try to avoid becoming de-pendent on any one browser or cli-ent-side technology, especially for internet-facing applications. ■
more onlineNews: Adobe updates security for Flash, Shockwave and Photoshopcomputerweekly.com/247578.htm
News: Most Adobe Reader users running vulnerable versionscomputerweekly.com/247283.htm
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18 | 6-12 September 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com
Diggers and social media: A match made in heaven More than one million Finns have been unable to resist watching four strangers live in diggers.
Over the past two months, four men have been constantly streaming live video and interacting with their viewers while sleeping, eating and drinking in the diggers. They are only allowed 30 minutes per day for bath-room breaks.
They are not just doing this for the fun of it, oh no; the last man standing wins the £28,000 digger they have been temporarily living in.
One of the contestants, Kimmo Frisk, said: “One guy contacted me through the internet and suggested I come to his house and have fun with a naked cow and a chicken. I didn’t take him up on his invitation.”
Another contestant, Arto Kojonen, said: “Being online constantly, I’ve made a lot of new friends so I don’t feel lonely. I’m having lots of fun – and it’s a great way to meet women.”
This is not the first digger and so-cial media mash-up that has been successful in Finland. Last year, Jukka Mutanen drove a mini digger, with a top speed of 4km/hour,
1,000km across Finland while broad-casting the whole thing live online.
Don’t be surprised if you see a ce-lebrity version of this commissioned for Channel Five next year.
Samsung says Stanley Kubrick invented the tabletThe, erm, gripping legal battle be-tween Samsung and Apple has taken a new twist. The Galaxy S II creator is
planning to use Kubrick’s renowned 2001: A Space Odyssey to prove that Apple is not the originator of the tab-let computer.
The film, which is over 40 years old, features a tablet-like device, and Samsung is using this as a “prior-art” defence. If Samsung’s claims are taken seriously as firm evidence, proving that the idea existed before Apple’s patent, then Steve Jobs could see his corporation’s patent deemed invalid.
Apple must have been expecting some form of retaliation, albeit proba-bly not classic film related, from Sam-sung after gaining an injunction that prohibited the Korean firm from sell-ing its Galaxy 10.1 tablet in Europe. This has since been overturned and Samsung is fighting back, sci-fi style.
Social media – don’t moral panic, Captain MainwaringDo you remember when England used to be a quiet, uneventful place where nothing ever happened? Then came the scourge of social media, causing our delinquent youth to take to the streets in a collective act of violence. At least that’s the impres-sion you’d get from listening to David Cameron and certain MPs calling for a social media ban.
But it is not just the PM who is de-termined to stamp out rioters using the internet. A judge has sentenced two men in north-west England to four years in prison for creating a Facebook page calling for a riot that no one, apart from the police, turned up for.
Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Marston, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, each received four-year sentences for using Face-book to “organise and orchestrate” disorder in the early hours of 9 Au-gust. Sutcliffe apparently woke up the following morning with a hango-ver and removed the page and apolo-gised, saying it had been a joke.
Needless to say, no “massive North-
wich lootin’” actually took place.The disproportionate jail time for
these clowns is reminiscent of the no-torious Robin Hood Airport tweeter who received a £3,000 fine for tweet-ing as a joke that he would bomb the airport after it was closed due to snow. Although the authorities could be for-given for taking the Facebook riot “joke” more literally – and a punish-ment in this case, albeit less draconian, would be just – there are similarities.
Both of these examples display an extreme anxiety in our criminal jus-tice system about the dangers of so-cial networks – and a pending Daily Mail-style moral panic in general.
Lucky then that MPs didn’t swap expense-fiddling claims on Twitter; phone hacking didn’t occur on Skype; and the bankers didn’t use Fa-cebook to trade sub-prime mortgages – otherwise our society would be in really big trouble.
Oh, wait a minute…
France uses technology to destroy trade unionsRather than create a Gallic version of Maggie Thatcher to destroy trade un-ions, the French are experimenting with virtual boarding agents at air-ports. According to one report, these avatars always smile, don’t need breaks and never go on strike.
Yes an airport in France is trying out a system where avatars are pro-jected onto human shaped silhou-ettes, which then help customers. Low-cost airlines are creating their own versions. They are programmed to be as unhelpful as possible to re-mind people how little they are pay-ing for their flights.
Downtime thinks TUPE legislation should be tweaked to ensure that avatars get the same rewards as the workers they replace. ■
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Read more on the Downtime blogcomputerweekly.com/downtime
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Will lawsuits become iLawsuits to reflect Apple’s frequent usage?The past few months have seen Apple suing companies like it’s going out of fashion. Proceedings against HTC and Samsung, for apparent infringements on their design patents, have been major talking points of late, but now Apple has filed trademark infringement lawsuits against two stores in New York.
The shops, which Apple representatives have visited on “multiple occasions over several weeks”, are allegedly selling unauthorised cases, headphones and other accessories for the iPhone, iPad and iPod.
The billion-dollar company is claiming that the products in question were emblazoned with its familiar fruit-shaped logo, as well as the phrase, “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”.
US district judge Kiyo Matsumoto must have put a smile on Steve Jobs’ face when he granted an injunction, preventing the stores from selling the alleged knock-offs. However, the judge has not yet decided whether one of the stores, which is called Apple Story, will have to change its name.
Apple, which certainly isn’t short of a bob or two, is also seeking an undisclosed sum for damages and asking that all existing counterfeit goods be destroyed.
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