26 June - 2 July 2012 | computerweekly.com

Prices up, popularity downcustomers react negatively to microsoft’s impending price increases page 4

Funding rural broadbandcommunities are deploying their own infrastructure as lack of investment stalls wider broadband roll-out page 6

HTML5: shaping the future of appswill the platform-agnostic common language force applications from the device to the web? page 14

the week onlineHighlights from

premium content

> Maximising the value of cloud for SMEsCloud computing models are promising significant cost, scalability and agility benefits, but is there a business case for small businesses to move from traditional IT provisioning to a cloud-based solution? And, if so, how can small business owners adopt the cloud? This guide is designed to help small business owners navigate through cloud services and identify those that will best meet their needs. Download the report here.

> Data protection masterclass: Global privacyInternational law firm Morrison and Foerster offers help to companies attempting to navigate privacy regulations in multiple jurisdictions. Experts give advice on how to evaluate privacy risk in different jurisdictions, and advise on minimum IT and physical security requirements and employee awareness and training pro-grammes. Download the report here.

> The western European datacentre marketThere are many drivers behind the Western European datacentre market. Many of these are global, for example the Cisco forecast that global IP traffic will quadruple from 2009 to 2014. The growth of big data and cloud computing, as well as e-commerce and social networking, are all clearly important. Download the report here.

video

> Interview with Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows AzureMicrosoft now supports Linux on its Azure cloud platform. Hilf describes the update as the biggest release of new Azure features since its inception two years ago.

in depth blogs

> Cliff Saran: The risk of using big suppliersAccording to Forrester, the major systems integrators (SIs) focus on helping clients lower the cost of IT. This may be fine if your job is to run IT services cheaply. But what happens when the SIs are asked to innovate? Experts discuss the need to build new businesses empowered by IT. Forrester calls this “digital disruption”, which involves mobile development, social media and IT consumerisation.

> Adrian Bridgwater: Application virtualisation simulation calms developer frustrationHow many challenges do software application developers face today? It’s an impossible question to answer, and if anything the challenges are becoming more complex all the time. Shridar Mittal, general manager of the iTKO customer solutions unit at CA Technologies, summarises some of the main challenges facing developers into seven categories.

> Mark Ballard: Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-upThe US Army has started pinning down wayward data to prevent a new payroll system joining a gargantuan pile-up of military IT disasters. The effort is part of an emergency reform of IT projects using agile methods, on orders issued by the Department of Defense last year after 11 major computer systems went $6bn over budget and 31 years behind schedule.

> Karl Flinders: How is technology changing BPO?Business process outsourcing (BPO) has been providing businesses with a way to cut costs for years, but current IT trends are shaking up the sector, putting CIOs at the forefront of planning. A perfect storm is in progress as customers seek to cut additional back-office costs due to continued budget pressure, while suppliers are trying to create additional services and the revenues that go with them.

photo stories

> Royal Signals Unsung Heroes Awards at Mansion HouseIT experts from the Royal Signals were rewarded for their support and commitment to keeping up communications in the field during the conflict in Afghanistan.

> How high-performance computing could make Marussia an F1 championMarussia F1 has a 72 teraflop supercomputer to run simulations. It is the 10th largest supercomputer in the UK, 230th largest in the world and by far superior to any rival F1 team.

> A guide to reporting carbon emissions for ITAs the UK government announces mandatory carbon reporting for listed companies, how should IT managers interpret guidelines on indirect emissions?

> Delivering social change through crowdsourcingFree and open source tools such as CrowdMap and Open Street Map now mean anyone can quickly create an online map to visualise the issue they most care about and use it to build a compelling case for action, writes Computer Aid founder Tony Roberts.

2 | 26 JUnE - 2 JULy 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Review of the HTC One X: Quad-core monster phone

Vote now: The most influential women in UK IT

Five of the world’s most expensive mobile phones

BlackBerry preserves fruits of new GUI enhancements

In pictures: Intel’s first smartphone

Microsoft customers react to July licence fee hike

Nokia slashes some 10,000 jobs

How to comply with the EU cookie law

SMEs up in arms over cookie law

Will this be the year TPM finally comes of age?

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the week in IT

3 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

financial services iT

RBS and NatWest IT failure affects customers for a second dayRoyal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest customers faced technical issues for a second day last week, as an IT failure caused havoc for the banking group. Bank customers first found their RBS and NatWest ser-vices were unavailable at lunchtime on Thursday, when online banking users were unable to access their ac-counts. RBS released a statement on Friday confirming account balances had not updated overnight and, as a result, customers were having trouble accessing their funds. Public secTor iT

Staffordshire Council saves £1.5m with PSN deploymentStaffordshire County Council claims it has managed to save £1.5m by adopting the Cabinet Office frame-work for a public sector network (PSN). The council was one of the first to embrace the PSN notion of shared infrastructure when it started the project two years ago.

iT jobs

RIM cuts more jobs to save $1bn as ex-chief execs pocket $12mResearch in Motion (RIM) has con-firmed it will axe a significant num-ber of jobs across the company to cut $1bn (£641m) in operating costs. The announcement came just days after the Financial Times revealed the ex-chief executives of the Black-Berry manufacturer, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, will receive a joint package of $12m in exit payments.

Mobile sofTware

Co-operative Bank launches UK mobile banking servicesThe Co-operative is the latest bank to launch a mobile banking service after signing a three-year deal with mo-bile banking supplier Monitise. The smartphone app, which is available to all the bank’s registered internet customers and those with Smile ac-counts, allows customers to check their balance, access mini statements, find cashpoints and branches, and set up high and low balance alerts, as well as weekly SMS balance updates.

business aPPlicaTions

Aston Martin adopts Microsoft ERP system for accountsCar manufacturer Aston Martin implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from Microsoft when it required a new accounting system. The company has implemented Microsoft Dynamics AX to work across its accounts and replace spreadsheets and unconnected databases.

business aPPlicaTions

Post Office launches external review of Horizon systemThe Post Office has launched an external review into the Horizon computer system at the centre of its legal dispute with sub-postmasters. Thousands of Post Offices use the Horizon IT system for their accounts. Postmasters claim faults with the technology could be generating un-explained losses. The Post Office has consistently denied this.

Public secTor iT

NHS Trusts tender for £300m clinical information systemsSome 29 NHS Trusts across London and the South of England have issued a framework tender worth £300m for clinical information systems. Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust will lead the four-year frame-work, which is valued between £50m and £300m. The tender, which has been divided into three lots, comes as IT commissioning is devolved from the National Programme for IT to in-dividual trusts.

inTerneT infrasTrucTure

Lancashire MP questions priority of rural broadbandLancashire County Council’s invest-ment of £32m to get superfast broad-band to rural areas is being brought into question by a local MP who claims other, more pressing social issues should take priority. Graham Jones, Labour MP for Haslingden and Hyndburn, found himself at the cen-tre of the rural broadband debate after posting a blog claiming rural areas set to benefit from the large investment were “a playground for the wealthy”.

cloud coMPuTing

EU to fund cloud-based supercomputers for SMEsSmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will have access to cloud-based supercomputers to run com-plex engineering simulations, under a €16m (£10m) project backed by the European Commission. The project aims to build a Europe-wide super-computer cloud that will give small companies access to expertise and resources previously only available to multinationals.

daTacenTre hardware

Airbus looks north to reduce datacentre energy costsAirbus is considering moving its high-performance computing centre to a colder climate to combat rising power and cooling costs in France and Germany. Airbus CIO Guus Dek-kers said the company needs to take action to offset rising energy costs in its supercomputer facilities.

Microsoft unveils Surface tablet computer running Windows 8 Microsoft has launched a tablet computer – dubbed Surface – running on its Windows 8 operating system (OS), in a bid to take on rival tablet manufactur-ers Apple, Samsung and Google’s Android.

Users will have a choice of an ARM processor-based device running Windows RT or an Intel core i5 processor with Windows 8 Pro.

The ARM tablet will weigh 676g – slightly more than the Apple iPad – with a depth of 9.3mm – 0.1mm less than the iPad. It will come with either 32GB or 64GB of internal memory. Unlike the iPad, it will feature an additional microSD slot as well as a USB 2.0 port.

The Intel version of the Microsoft Surface tablet is a more heavy-duty device, aimed at the ultrabook market. It will weigh 903g, with a depth of 13.5mm. It will come with either 64GB or 128GB internal memory, a microSD slot, a USB 3.0 port and a mini displayport video connection.

“If we don’t [deliver fast mobile broadband]…we’ll fail…our citizens, strangle online innovation, and strangle economic growth”

Neelie Kroes, vice-president, European Commission

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CIOs face pay freezes in 2012

Source: Harvey Nash

20122011

Increased pay

31%

39%

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6% 5%

Stayed the same Decreased pay

news analysis

Microsoft licence fee hikes hit hard

4 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Karl Flinders garners customer reaction – largely negative – to the software provider's impending price increases

M icrosoft’s decision to increase the costs of volume licensing agree-ments demonstrates the

power software suppliers wield over their customers.

In May, Microsoft announced that volume licensing would see price hikes of between 7.5% and 33.5% from July, to bring UK prices in line with the Euro region.

Or as the supplier put it: “From July, these moves will establish and maintain price consistency in Eu-rope as a single market and, in gen-eral, Microsoft’s global foreign ex-change policy is to maintain stable local prices.”

But at the beginning of June, Mi-crosoft amended the increases, so businesses now face paying up to 25.5% more for their software.

Slight reductions on the original plan mean small businesses, with fewer than 250 users, that buy an Open Agreement will see an increase of 1.7%. This compares with the 7.5% announced originally.

Enterprise Agreement licensing costs, which were originally planned to increase by 25.7%, will rise 18.7%. Select Agreement prices will be 17.7% higher, compared with the 24.6% originally planned.

Businesses have until the end of June to buy at current prices and se-cure those for three years, before the increases come into force on 1 July.

Unhappy customersBusinesses using volume licensing agreements are some of the biggest in

the world, so Microsoft risks causing angst among its best customers.

David Roberts, executive director at The Corporate IT Forum, has 100 members representing businesses that employ more than six million people in the UK. He called the changes “expensive, heavy and an in-tensely irritating waste of valuable corporate energy”.

“One can’t help but be in awe of the approach taken by certain suppliers of licensed software over their determination to increase revenue at any cost and by whatever means,” he said.

Roberts revealed members are al-ready suffering stress as a result of Oracle increasing prices for slight variations in already licensed usage.

“Now it seems that Microsoft is up to its old tricks again – creating new reasons to extort money from loyal customers,” he said.

Roberts is aware of problems faced by 10 member organisations follow-ing a private meeting among member organisations and senior licensing and legal experts.

One head of IT told Computer Weekly it had renewed its Enterprise Agreement for three years prior to the announcement.

“Had we not done this, which was a coincidence, I would not be best pleased,” he said. “We have not got much choice in this area, and for li-cence [costs] to go up is like being held to ransom.”

Mark Lewis, head of outsourcing at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, has corporate customers

with Microsoft licences running into the tens of thousands.

“Any company in the current eco-nomic climate would feel an increase of about 10%,” Lewis said.

Careful software spendingBusinesses will be paying extra at-tention to their licensing needs as the July deadline for fixing prices at their current rate approaches, he said, and will look closely before they commit to three years.

Lewis said mid-sized companies could be hit hardest and piracy might increase as a result.

Nick Kirkland, CEO at user group CIO Connect, said the changes were not a major shock and agreed that businesses will look very closely at where they spend their money.

“Within CIO Connect, nobody is surprised [and] it will drive a very tight audit on licence needs,” said Kirkland. “As costs go up, businesses will make sure they do not have more licences than they need.”

Software asset management (SAM) will become a more pressing require-ment as software companies increase prices and businesses seek to cut un-necessary costs.

Unilever is a case in point. It auto-mated the processes it uses to man-age its software globally through a

service and saved millions of pounds. Since 2008, Unilever has been using software and services from SAM service provider Business Continuity Services (BCS).

Unilever has about 100,000 desk-tops and 10,000 servers, and uses SAM software known as Software Organiser. This takes audit data gleaned from scanning tools and matches it up to the company’s soft-ware licences.

When Unilever ran an audit using BCS, it found 60,000 different soft-ware products. Using the SAM ser-vices, it rationalised this to 4,500 commercially licensable products and 800 that do not require licences but need to be managed.

Antony Attfield, practice lead in the software procurement consultan-cy at reseller Trustmarque, said some customers could look at renewing li-cences earlier to take advantage of lower costs now.

“But before you make a knee-jerk reaction, do the analysis on how you use the software, what entitlements you have and assess the options available. There may be 10-15 ways of buying Microsoft licences,” he said. ■

Microsoft risks causing angst among its best customers

software licensing

Microsoft’s price changes

Select Agreement Cost now Cost from 1 July 2012

Office Professional Plus £250 £295

Windows 7 OEM upgrade £92 £108

Windows 7 to Windows 8 Software Assurance upgrade

£172 £202

Windows Server £350 £420

Exchange Server (per server instance) £1,972 £2,317

SQL Server £6,700 £7,872

Cost of Windows 7 to Windows 8 Software Assurance upgrade will rise from £172 to £202 on 1 July

more online› Microsoft softens July licence blow

› CIOs slam Microsoft and Oracle for milking the licence-fee cash cow

› Identifying the business value of SAM best practice

1 The cumulative number of unique malware samples in the McAfee* collection exceeded the 75 million mark at the end of 2011. Source: “McAfee Threats Report: Fourth Quarter 2011,” available at www.mcafee.com (http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-quarterly-threat-q4-2011.pdf).

2 No system can provide absolute security under all conditions. Requires an Intel Identity Protection Technology–enabled system, including a 2nd or 3rd Gen Intel Core™ processor, enabled chipset, Àrmware, software, and participating website. Consult your system manufacturer. Intel assumes no

liability for lost or stolen data and/or systems or any resulting damages. For more information, visit http://ipt.intel.com. 3 Intel AES-NI requires a computer system with an AES-NI-enabled processor, as well as non-Intel software to execute the instructions in the correct sequence. AES-NI is available on

select Intel Core processors. For availability, consult your system manufacturer. For more information, see http:///software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-advanced-encryption-standard-instructions-aes-ni. 4 No computer system can provide absolute security under all conditions. Built-in security features

available on select Intel Core processors may require additional software, hardware, services, and/or an Internet connection. Results may vary depending upon conÀguration. Consult your PC manufacturer for more details. Copyright © 2012 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel

Core, and Intel vPro are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

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news analysis

Broadband infrastructure deadlock drives rural campaigners to action

6 | 26 June-2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Communities deploy their own infrastructure as funding issue stalls rural broadband roll-out, writes Jennifer Scott

Jeremy Hunt’s promise in 2010 that the UK would lead Europe with its broadband infrastructure in five years

raised a few eyebrows.No-one was against the sentiment

of rolling out broadband to every home in the UK by 2015 – even if the minimum speed was 2Mbps – but it seemed a mammoth task for the gov-ernment to achieve alone.

Culture secretary Hunt expected the private sector to get on board but, while BT and Virgin Media were happy to continue deploying fibre in-frastructure across profitable urban areas, rural locations were left want-ing for internet connections.

Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith and the Borders, has been one of the cheerleaders of rural broadband. He has worked with a number of com-munities to find the best answer for connecting remote areas.

Government schemes have focused on a central procurement process by local councils from large telecoms companies which costs millions of pounds. However, Stewart has been involved in trials which cost much less, using more innovative technolo-gy and getting residents to invest in their own infrastructure.

“It costs between £10bn and £40bn for centralised procurement to deliv-er fibre to every home,” he said.

“Communities such as Great Asby [a village in Cumbria running its own broadband scheme] have dropped this cost dramatically to £60,000.

“The very sad thing is, while enor-mous progress has been made to get broadband that was unimaginable for these communities a few years ago, it is still a problem getting this tiny sum from government to fund it.”

Funding rural broadbandThe only way these schemes got off the ground was with residents dig-ging their hands in their own pockets to pay for the infrastructure. But is it right for them to pay their own way when it comes to broadband, or should both public and private sec-tors fund rural broadband?

Chris Conder, founding member of B4RN (Broadband 4 Rural North), ad-mitted there was little money left in

“It is still a problem getting this tiny sum from government” Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith and the Borders

BroadBand communications

more online› Rural broadband going nowhere, says Countryside Alliance

› Virgin Media criticises UK rural broadband subsidy policy

› Communities need to contribute to rural broadband fund

government coffers to increase its contribution and these areas were not commercially viable for companies such as BT.

However, rather than residents paying up front for broadband, she took up Stewart’s idea of a public sec-tor “soft loan” to get the ball rolling.

The idea is for government to lend the money to communities to get set up. Each household signing up to the scheme pays the loan back over a long period, with little interest.

This removes the risk of spending taxpayers’ money on unproven tech-nology, but enables rural areas to go ahead with plans that could other-wise be delayed indefinitely.

“There would have to be some community participation to keep the costs down to an affordable level,” Conder told Computer Weekly.

“Communities will do it if they be-lieve in the project; they don’t expect anything for nothing and they will contribute, but there is a limit.

“Soft loans that spread the load

over many years would be a great in-centive and very ‘big society’. Some members of rural society wouldn’t be able to contribute but others will, and it gives a great feeling of satisfaction to help each other.”

Equal rights to accessFellow B4RN member Martyn Dews staunchly believed it should not be down to citizens to pay.

“People in rural areas should have the same right of access as the rest of the population,” he said.

However, he accepted that, with the lack of commercial viability and the relatively small amount of gov-ernment funding, it was a case of people putting up with what is pro-vided or doing it themselves.

“If it’s done right and there is enough support, the community will get the payback in the medium to long term,” said Dews.

“Imagine a deeply rural communi-ty with a 1,000Mbps connection – one of the best in the world. That is

what B4RN is delivering now. Think of the possibilities that will open up.”

Unsurprisingly, BT is keen on communities going ahead with their own deployments, but believes they should be more active in extracting the set-up costs from government.

“We’ve always been very clear that we believe local communities can make a substantial contribution to bring fibre to their area,” a BT spokes-man told Computer Weekly.

“We have publicly encouraged them to engage with their local au-thority and central government in lobbying for funds.”

BT admitted, however, that the funds on offer from private and pub-lic sector contributors would only cover 90% of the population, leaving the final 10% on their own.

BT insists the only way it will put up more of its own investment is if it is the chosen provider for govern-ment schemes.

“We have indicated we would be willing to invest further funds – of up to £1bn – should we win many of the public funds on offer,” said the firm.

A number of residents from Alston, another Cumbrian village which has taken on its own broad-band infrastructure, have contacted Computer Weekly to pledge their support for paying their own way.

However, both residents and cam-paigners made it clear this would not be their first choice. All believed, as Dews stated, that they should have the same provisions as the rest of the country. But rather than waiting for more money from government and the private sector, they say it is better to get on with the task at hand and put in their own money. ■

news analysis

Microsoft repackages Azure as cloud infrastructure on demand

7 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Moving away from its traditional position in the market, the software giant is offering Windows Azure as on-demand cloud infrastucture to support both Windows and Linux workloads, writes Cliff Saran

M icrosoft’s most signifi-cant update to Windows Azure takes the cloud platform to a different

level. Rather than focus on Windows applications and bridging the gap between in-house and cloud-based IT, Microsoft is offering Azure as on-demand cloud infrastructure. It is analogous to Amazon EC2, sup-porting both Windows and Linux workloads.

Forrester principal analyst James Staten said the changes to Azure point to Microsoft finally joining the mainstream by adding full infrastruc-ture-as-a-service (IaaS), enabling cus-tomers to deploy just about anything.

“The new IaaS service is clearly designed with at least surface knowl-edge of the market leaders – Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and others – and leverages a more mature Hyper-V as the virtualisation layer,” he said.

With Azure now available as cloud-based infrastructure, Microsoft is providing persistent virtual ma-chines, enabling businesses to run their existing Windows and Linux-based applications in the cloud.

Building an open platformBill Hilf, general manager of the Win-dows Azure platform at Microsoft, described the update to Azure as the biggest release of new Azure features since its inception two years ago.

“Our strategy is to provide an open platform for any developer, whether they are in open source or a commer-cial software developer,” he said.

Open source support is not limited to Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, the Linux distributions that run in the Micro-soft cloud. The company has extend-ed database support from its own Windows Azure SQL database to

support MySQL. Microsoft is sup-porting the Hadoop big data platform and is providing a plug-in for Mon-goDB, the NoSQL database.

Microsoft is contributing directly to the open source Hadoop commu-nity. Hilf said the technology in Ha-doop will be significant with the adoption of big data.

Traditionally, Microsoft has of-fered Azure as a platform-as-a-ser-vice (PaaS) cloud. “Platform-as-a-service represents high-level APIs,” said Hilf. “Developers want choices, from the highest-level of-a-platform service, to taking full control of the operating system.”

He claimed Microsoft’s approach was about giving developers choice so they understand the economics of cloud computing.

Microsoft’s support of open source goes further. It is providing libraries for Java and Python, in

addition to support for .Net, PHP and Node.js. Updated language libraries are made available under open source licences.

Microsoft said it is also supporting Eclipse, the open source develop-ment framework. The updated Windows Azure software develop-er’s kit includes new command-line tools that work on Mac or Linux operating systems.

Microsoft’s decision to offer Linux virtual machines on Azure could bridge academic research, where open source tools are favoured, with commercial organisations, where Windows is dominant.

Linking Linux and WindowsNick Trigg, CEO of Constellation Technologies, a bioinformatics com-pany which provides data analysis tools to support research in life sci-ences, said historically there has been a chasm between Linux and Windows, and in academia Linux is used by command-line experts and PhD students.

There is a substantial amount of scientific data in academia, such as the research to understand the human genome. A lot of this data sits in a Linux environment. “To enable industry to use this data, you need to link Windows and Linux,” said Trigg.

He said the fact that Azure provides a way to host Linux virtual machines represents a big step forward in bridging the largely Linux-based academic domain with industry.

Driving cloud adoptionYefim Natis, principal analyst at Gartner, said the Azure cloud infra-structure would drive traditional Windows users to the cloud.

“Microsoft is trying to get back all the business Amazon has been winning,” he said. “Once Microsoft proves its environment works well, I expect people will move to Azure. But it will depend on pricing.”

Although Microsoft is prepackag-ing Ubuntu and OpenSUSE to run on Azure cloud infrastructure, Natis said Azure is able to run anything that currently runs on Windows.

“People will be able to deploy applications on Windows, the Oracle database, Hadoop, middleware software and platform software,” he said.

Previously, users had to rewrite Windows .Net applications if they wanted to deploy on the Azure cloud. With Azure IaaS, he said, businesses will be able to run their existing .Net applications on Azure without modification.

To take full advantage of cloud computing, however, he said IT de-partments would need to redevelop code on the Azure platform. ■

Microsoft is providing persistent virtual machines, enabling businesses to run their existing Windows and Linux-based applications in the cloud

cloud computing

more online› A complete guide to Windows Azure and the cloud

› Microsoft makes Azure open source friendly

› Interview with Bill Hilf, general manager of Windows Azure

› Test your Windows Azure IQ

› Windows Azure tutorial

Microsoft has updated Windows Azure to include support for open source applications

interview

Migrating Confused.com’s platform to open the way for apps and cloud

8 | 26 June-2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

IT director Rex Johnson tells Kathleen Hall about his ambitions for the price comparison site and how to realise them

Insurance comparison site Con-fused.com moved to a single Microsoft platform to accelerate the development of its products

and reduce time to market.IT director Rex Johnson has been

with the company since its inception. He wrote the original code for the site and has seen its IT team expand from five to 75 over the past 10 years. Pre-viously he headed up the architect team as development manager.

The firm’s web platform started on Java, but recently switched to .Net.

“We had a Java platform on the front end, on the back end it was Vis-ual Basic and Microsoft, so it was a double platform,” he told Computer Weekly at The IT Directors Forum.

“We started to rationalise it, but we had a lot of changes at the time and didn’t really finish the job, so we were left with IBM WebSphere, Mi-crosoft, different languages and a large hardware platform,” he says.

“We decided a year and half ago to look at the whole platform. It was get-ting harder for the company to get its ideas to market and IT wasn’t sup-porting the business properly.

“It was taking three months to get products to market, when we wanted it to take one month and see a return on investment quicker. We felt it would be easier to do things with a common platform and our resources would be put to better use.”

The move to a single .Net platform helped to speed development and re-duce hardware requirements.

“By choosing the correct software, we are reducing that hardware foot-print enormously and significantly

“Pre-written software that’s been around a while is robust” Rex Johnson, Confused.com

“It was getting harder for the company to get its ideas to market and IT wasn’t supporting the business properly”

IT leadershIp

reducing costs with our service pro-vider,” says Johnson.

The proof of the new platform came with the recent release of Con-fused.com’s Quick Quote tool. This lets customers text their vehicle regis-tration number to get an instant in-surance quote.

“Before the redesign that would have been really hard, but under the new system it took one or two devel-opers to develop and a couple of months to bring to market,” he says.

“We developed it quickly, then re-fined it to get it to production. That is a tangible achievement for IT, but re-ally a success for business.”

Choosing robust softwareOne of the tenets of the re-architec-ture project was to choose pre-writ-ten software where possible, accord-ing to Johnson.

“We wanted less code to maintain and more pre-written software that does the job it was built for, as it’s all been tested,” he says.

“Previously, a lot of it was written in-house, but pre-written software that’s been around a while is robust.”

Johnson says an open-source solu-tion was considered as a good alter-native, but the company decided it would rather have the back-up of a supplier for support than the open-source community.

“With the hardware on our back-end systems, we take the data a cus-tomer sends to us and send it off to a number of business and insurance partners, so on the business-to-busi-ness side, we decided to use Biztalk, which is a heavyweight piece of Mi-crosoft software,” he says.

“That gives great efficiencies in the way it can handle code and, because of that, it requires far less hardware. So that’s how we’ve reduced our hardware platform.”

He says it is now a matter of getting all the programmes converted to the Biztalk environment: “For our main product, the migration will be com-pleted in the next three months, for the rest it will be by early next year.”

Future optionsJohnson will be looking at the cloud in the second half of the year to see what advantages it could bring to the company, but is waiting until the mi-gration is complete.

“There’s no point in putting things in the cloud when we don’t yet have a simplified picture,” he says.

The company will also be looking at mobile app development.

Roughly half of Confused.com’s staff work in IT, which Johnson says has helped create a culture of collab-oration, as everyone sits together and discusses problems.

“The whole reason for doing the re-architecture is to support the busi-ness – it’s an enabler to allow the business to innovate,” says Johnson.

Not surprisingly, the skills current-ly being developed in the team in-clude .Net, C# and Biztalk.

“Having a strong in-house team is important,” he says.

“We have no problem working with contractors, but it is important they work onsite. That way you can train them in the quality of the things you want to do.

“That is very much at the heart of what we do and it is paying off huge dividends.” ■

more online› CIO interview: James Lomas, CIO, Comparethemarket.com

› CIO interview: Matt Peers, chief information officer, Deloitte

› CIO interview: Cathryn Riley, chief information officer, Aviva

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Beware what you ask of big data – it might deliver

Microsoft’s fate lies with users, not managers

10 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

about 20 years ago, we were running our first data min-ing pilot at the large insur-er I was working for at the

time. I’m reminded of this project whenever I listen to the advice given in connection with big data projects.

“Know what questions you actual-ly want answered before starting out” is cited by many as a best prac-tice you ignore at your peril. And that is sound advice, even in the context of projects whose main pur-pose is “discovery”. But it should be accompanied by a health warning: some answers will give you a lot more than you bargained for.

Let me go back to that data mining pilot. We discovered a bunch of things about our data. For example, that we needed to put in place better foundations for data mining – our data was just too “dirty”, the sys-tems weren’t designed to capture much of the information the busi-ness people actually wanted, and so on. That was all worthwhile insight, and we knew what to do with that.

But the most valuable insight also turned out to be a showstopper. A key question the business had been asking was: is it possible to

figure out which policyholders are likely to lapse their contract in the first year?

We were able to identify the fac-tors that made it probable (very probable, in fact) that a customer would stop paying their premiums or pension contributions within 12 months of taking out the product. But that was the easy part, as it turned out.

To cut a long story short: we ended up doing nothing. Nobody could agree what was an acceptable level of business to reject to reduce churn rates; how to deal with sales-people who were likely to complain about loss of commission; who would have the final decision whether to accept or reject; how to deal with any potential reputational

Knowing the answers to particular questions can have far-reaching implications

Bryan GlicK leader Martha Bennett opinion

issues (and that’s in the days before social media) – the list goes on and on. All told, it was much easier just to leave things as they were.

Acting on big data resultsWhat we experienced is exactly the kind of situation many organisations embarking upon “big data” projects are facing today. Knowing the an-swers to particular questions can have far-reaching implications for a company’s processes and decision-making structures, as well as prod-uct portfolio and merchandising strategies, sales incentives, commis-sion structures, and so on.

But it’s likely that very few will have put in place any plans for how to deal with the consequences arising from the insights that have been gained. Aside from the waste of resources and potential missed opportunities, depending on the question that was asked, this lack of preparedness can also have a destabilising effect on the entire organisation.

It is not realistic to expect every scenario to be catered for, and there’s no point in making detailed plans for eventualities which may never arise. Nevertheless, every time somebody says “if only we knew…”, the question “what will we do if we get the answer?” should follow im-mediately. Or indeed “what can we do?”, as it may not actually be legal or ethical to exploit certain data.

The range of issues thrown up by the ensuing discussion is wide and varied, and it’s essential not to get bogged down in too much detail at this stage. What matters is agree-ment in principle on the degree to which the organisation is prepared to make changes or take risks.

Putting in place a framework that allows decision-makers to assess the “what if” scenarios that arise from obtaining answers to particular questions puts in place the founda-tion for ensuring that organisations focus resources on the most impor-tant questions. It also means that ex-ecutives as well as the specialists tasked with data work are in a posi-tion to take appropriate action when those answers do come in. ■

Martha Bennett is vice-president and head of strategy at Freeform Dynamics.

Microsoft’s release of its first own-brand tablet computer, Surface, is an example of the dilemma the software giant is facing.

Reactions can best be described as agree-ing that Surface is shiny and new and some will buy it. But it’s the analysis of IT managers that Microsoft hopes will ultimately test whether it “gets” the tablet market or not.

Apple’s iPad and the many Android tablets were all designed with consumers in mind. As many IT managers have found, attempt-ing to satisfy users (and CeOs) who want to use their tablets to access work applications is an integration and security headache - but one that more companies are working out.

For Microsoft, however, the challenge is how to convince corporate IT buyers to con-tinue their lucrative commitment to Windows and Office in a mobile, tablet-using world. That is perhaps far more important for Micro-soft in the short term than how many con-sumers will buy Surface.

But herein lies the rub.Microsoft wants IT managers to decide

that Surface is the corporate-friendly tablet to give to users, with easy integration to Win-dows and other Microsoft software. Those users, however, want to use their own choice of device for work. And that’s rarely (yet) going to be Surface, not without the sort of apps-and-entertainment ecosystem that surrounds the iPad and Android.

IT managers know consumerisation has changed the basis of their users’ decisions on what technology they want to use. Micro-soft, however, wants to change the point of decision back to the corporate IT decision-maker and away from the user.

If that is so, Microsoft Surface will fail.The balance of power in corporate IT has

irrevocably swung away from the old com-mand-and-control style IT department to its users. IT managers are becoming service providers - and the service their customers want is freedom to choose the device.

Microsoft will still have to convince con-sumers that Surface is “cool” if it wants to protect Windows. This time, appealing to IT managers alone will not be enough. ■

editor’s blogcomputerweekly.com/editor

buyer’s guide

11 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Clear goals for a virtual desk-top infrastructure (VDI) project allow the service providers to craft a propos-

al that aligns with your strategy. According to leading virtualisation

service providers, a common prob-lem of request for proposals (RFPs) is the lack of defined success criteria for the project. This becomes a client challenge because without it, neither clients nor service providers can gauge the success of their initiatives. Not only is it a challenge for the cli-ent, but without a documented goal, the suppliers won’t know how to propose an appropriate solution; or worse, they may provide an ill- advised proposal.

Forrester’s interviews of service providers which have received more than 100 desktop virtualisation pro-posals indicate that not enough infor-mation is shared about a client’s envi-ronment in the RFPs.

The lack of information presents a challenge to service providers at-tempting to propose a suitable solu-tion for your environment. By pack-aging up the correct information on your environment in the RFP, you can help reduce cycle times on infor-mation requests and minimise the amount of time these suppliers must take to retrieve this information so they can respond quickly within your timeframe. Sourcing profession-als who want to plan for this process – and eliminate some headaches – should collaborate with their internal stakeholders.

There are five pieces of informa-tion that are key to any VDI project.

The user environmentTo capture this information, many companies conduct a user profile survey. The user survey needs to include form factors that are used and desktop applications, enterprise applications and enterprise data that users need to access. This survey will allow service providers to un-derstand the desktop environment

tualised desktops and delivery of a superior user experience hinges on the quality of the network.

Service providers will need to assess the WAN and may recommend changes in order to meet project objectives. This is important to IT professionals because it represents a potential cost component and internal and/or external service level agreements (SLAs) will be affected.

Depending on your company’s WAN environment, an upgrade could lead to operational savings.

Desktop virtualisation demands detailed request for proposalsClarence Villanueva and Chris Andrews provide tips on how to build a successful RFP for desktop virtualisation

and propose the number of images to be managed.

All of the service providers sur-veyed agreed that this was the most important piece of information that you need to include in the RFP. The higher the number of images that need to be managed, the higher the operational costs. Also, the higher the number of enterprise apps for each image, the costlier the solution.

Networking environmentThe second factor is the wide area network (WAN). The support of vir-

CW Buyer’s guidevirtual desktops

part 2 of 3

The most important piece of information that you need to include in the RFP is the user environment

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buyer’s guideSecurity Next is security. To find out about the security impact of VDI, collaborate with your security professionals.

Companies vary in the amount of flexibility and control they give users with respect to what they load on their desktops. Will this change as you migrate to a virtualised environ-ment? Providing this information to RFP respondents will allow them to help build and configure the solution accordingly.

Storage infrastructureStorage is another potential invest-ment area for your company, depend-ing on what storage resources are currently available and what your roadmap looks like for the future.

Providing an assessment of the overall health of your network, that includes saturation, latency and availability, is a critical compo-nent for the service providers to understand.

Licensing informationFinally, it is necessary to assess how you manage your Microsoft licences and the type of Microsoft agree-ments you have in place, as well as a description of the virtual desktop access (VDA) licences you own (if applicable). This information will help bidding suppliers advise you on the appropriate actions to take on top of your licensing in a virtualised environment.

Selecting a supplierBeyond these five areas, Forrester has developed a number of questions to use in the supplier selection process.

Partner selection for both product and services (combined or separate) can be daunting. When soliciting proposals from suppliers, targeted questions on key differentiators can help you identify the partner of choice.

Many RFPs miss the mark when questions to suppliers cover just the basics (vendor financials, general implementation experience, and company history). Vendors’ answers to such questions are not enough for you to make an informed decision. You must ask for more specific information on product and service differentiation.

Product differentiation is another factor. How is/are your (proposed)

Many request for proposals miss the mark when questions to suppliers cover just the basics

product/s more suitable for this pro-ject compared with the alternatives? Questions such as this draw out an-swers from respondents that should inform you on why certain features in specific products would be best suited to your organisation.

Other questions should focus on service differentiation. How many implementations have you complet-ed? What experience do you have working on projects similar to ours? Do you have special expertise in this industry? Questions such as these allow the suppliers to describe their capabilities in a way that helps you filter the numerous implementation partners in the marketplace to find the most suitable to partner with.

Assessing proposalsAs service providers review your information, they may begin craft-ing a proposal requiring changes in

your environment to support the new solution. For example, your current WAN infrastructure may call for additional investments for a high-definition user experience for your employees. Highlighting the changes allows you to visualise the transfor-mation to the future state. It will also help you plan for the change.

Soliciting this information during the RFP stage can help build out the project plan for the statement of work (SOW) and prepare you for internal discussions on what you need to do (or invest in) before, during and after the implementation.

Another benefit includes defining any SLAs and operational savings. Some examples include:l People – how will your proposal

affect users? To support the envi-ronment, what resources/skills will be required? How would the solution increase manageability from what we currently do?

l Infrastructure – what technologies and/or investments will be needed to support the future state?

l Process – how will desktop man-agement be affected? Provide a workflow proposal for various use case scenarios.

l Service level agreements – will in-

ternal SLAs improve? If so, which ones and how? If applicable, what are the service provider SLAs? ■

this is an extract from the Forrester paper: Building a successful RFP for desktop virtualization (December, 2011) by clarence Villanueva with chris andrews

12 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

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more online› Delivering value from desktop virtualisation

› VDI assessment guide: Is VDI technology right for your firm?

› The VDI model doesn’t have to break the bank

› Five ways your VDI implementa-tion can fail

› Best practices in virtualisation

› Expert considerations for deploying VDI

› Desktop virtualisation insights for IT strategic planning

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web app development

14 | 26 June-2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

The future of web program-ming is moving towards a common, cross-platform language with HTML5. But

will software developers meet CIO demands for new web technologies?

HTML5 is an emerging standard for developing cross-platform web and mobile apps. Many IT chiefs fa-vour web and mobile applications using HTML5 and developers are under pressure to build up-to-date apps using the latest cross-platform web technologies.

How should developers use HTML5 and balance the pros and cons of using emerging web technol-

knowing that project managers don’t have to re-write a lot of code or create complex database migration scripts just to change or add a few fields,” says Zambonini.

“On the front end there are lots of useful frameworks such as dynamic stylesheet Less and Blueprint that help new apps get a first iteration up and running more quickly, so you can collect those invaluable first few pieces of user feedback as soon as possible,” he says.

Zambonini believes the real tech-nologies driving change on the web are browsers.

“Since the start of 2012, we’ve just

HTML5: The end of native apps?Jenny Williams considers whether the platform-agnostic common language will force apps from the device to the web

reached a point where the major browsers are now auto-updating, which is a huge boon for app devel-opers and should give organisations the confidence to use HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript features,” he says.

A survey by Evans Data of 1,200 developers showed 75% are using HTML5 for app development. Fur-thermore, HTML5 was 20% higher on average than Microsoft’s Silver-light or Adobe’s Flash in importance to the development cycle.

Some firms, such as Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Financial Times (FT), have started using HTML5 web apps rather than creat-

ogies? Is it time to cast off the shack-les of native apps for good?

Dan Zambonini, co-founder of web app company Apparus and author of A Practical Guide to Web App Suc-cess, says CIOs can no longer count on known timeframes, budgets or even features as a rapidly evolving environment demands project man-agers exercise greater flexibility.

Zambonini believes back-end soft-ware, such as databases MongoDB, CouchDB and ZeroMQ are helping to make app platforms more generalised and less supplier-specific.

“Technologies like these really help developers to embrace change,

web app development

An iterative process relies on our ability to successfully focus on something for a short period of time and takes into account our inability to accurately visualise and predict how theory becomes reality. By taking short, iterative steps, we can focus on creating brilliance one move at a time, and can evolve our app as we get a better feel for the features that succeed and those that don’t turn out as we hoped.

The iterative process happens on two levels. At the higher level, new app features are developed incremen-tally. For each release these approximate stages are followed: some research, then interface design, coding, a working release and marketing. Check the customer reactions, learn and repeat.

On the lower level, each of the stages is a mini set of iterations in itself, punctuated by testing that informs us whether or not further cycles are required. This holds especially true at the interface and development stages, where a skeleton design or chunk of code can gradually be refined with more detail as it undergoes testing.

If your app development project has a deadline (and unless you’re working on an informal side project, it will), each high-level iteration should be allotted a specific number of days, to ensure a number of full iterations and the learning that comes from them, over the lifetime of the project.

Each iteration should last a fixed length of time, so that your team can develop a rhythm; you will quickly adapt to the recurring deadlines and become adept at estimating how much functionality can be produced in each.

The exact length of an iteration can range from a week to a month. Your team will need to decide on the best length for them based on a number of factors:l The complexity of the app: An iteration needs to be long enough for a team to sometimes produce fairly advanced features. Even if these are only developed to a minimum quality or prototype level, they may take weeks. Similarly, an iteration should not be so short that most of it is spent on planning, testing and deployment, with little time for the actual development.l Customer expectations: If you’re developing an app for a client, they may influence how often they expect to see movement and change. This is not necessarily a negative factor if the customer can participate more easily in shaping the development of the application to meet their expectations.l Team pressure and rhythm: A deadline needs to positively pressure the team into productivity without being unrealistic and causing the team to opt out of the process. To decide on the deliverables for an iteration, a risk-driven approach is superior to choosing the low-hanging, easy features first.

When taking this approach, you should first develop the high-priority/high-risk features followed by high-prior-ity/low-risk and, finally, low-priority/low-risk. Low-priority/high-risk features should be avoided altogether until the app is a proven success.

extract from A Practical Guide to Web App Success by Dan Zambonini, published by Five Simple Steps.

Iterative development for web app successing native, platform-specific apps.In April this year, the FT’s HTML5

web app reached two million users after launching in June 2011. The media group has since dropped its native iPad app.

Steve Pinches, FT group product head for emerging technologies, says the app eliminates problems with creating multi-platform native apps by speeding up the development pro-cess and reducing costs for develop-ing multiple native apps.

Pinches says: “We believe that, in many cases, native apps are simply a bridging solution while web technol-ogies catch up and are able to provide the rich user experience demanded on new platforms.

“As these improve we expect to see more HTML5 apps and fewer na-tive apps, but there is always likely to be a market for native apps for specif-ic brands or when deeper integration with the hardware or super fast per-formance are required,” he adds.

While web app development al-lows preferred tools, which are not specific to a supplier, to be used, challenges remain.

Pinches says tools and documenta-tion are lacking for mobile-based web app development. The HTML5 web-kit browser uses a device’s graphics hardware to improve graphics and video display. However, this causes issues such as screen flickering.

But organisations are using HTML5 for mobile apps despite the remaining challenges.

Cardiff University deployed a cross-platform HTML5 mobile app in September 2011 to accompany its na-tive iPhone app, which provides in-formation and services for students.

Eileen Brandreth, director of uni-versity IT at Cardiff University, says: “The Cardiff University app is a great way to widen access to some of the university’s key information, tools and services at a time when growth in smartphone use is increasing rap-idly in the university community.”

Developers at digital agency, Box UK, used jQuery Mobile framework to develop the university’s app.

Gavin Davies, principal software developer at Box UK, says: “The final specification of HTML5 is unlikely to be set in stone until at least 2014, but we’re already seeing a number of benefits, including powerful audio and video support, useful client-side

“We all need to work together to stress the web as a platform and to push over the few remaining hurdles”

storage capabilities and highly ad-vanced accessibility. As an open for-mat interoperable between mobile and web, there’s also less reliance on closed source proprietary plug-ins.

“A significant saving can be made in developer time to implement many features; while proprietary technologies like Silverlight or Flash require obscure, baroque tags or fancy JavaScript plug-ins for media elements such as video, HTML5 ena-bles it to be added in the mark-up just like any other standard elements, while retaining semantic meaning.”

Legacy limitationsHowever, Davies believes corporate organisations are more limited, as they tend to have older versions of Internet Explorer installed, which have poor support for HTML5.

“This means that inelegant work-arounds are sometimes required to provide features,” he says.

Research firm Forrester recom-mends using HTML5test.com, Mod-

ernizr and the HTML5 boilerplate to target differences in browser support and identify cross-platform features.

Forrester also believes native apps are still preferable in the face of such restrictions.

“Gaps in hardware acceleration, inconsistent support for on-device instruments, and incomplete user in-terface control frameworks still make creating the most engaging device-centric apps a bridge too far for HTML5 at this point.

“That will change over time, but for the foreseeable future, we still see a place in the app internet for native apps and middleware tools that cross-compile to device-optimised code,” writes Forrester in a report ti-tled Embracing The Open Web: Web Technologies You Need To Engage Your Customers, And Much More.

Despite its limitations, industry leaders see HTML5 as a common lan-guage with the potential to complete-ly overcome native operating system (OS) restrictions.

In a keynote speech at the Interna-tional CTIA Wireless Association 2012 conference in New Orleans, Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, called for the mobile ecosystem to stop de-veloping proprietary platforms.

He says: “We need to move beyond the silos of native operating systems and hybrid apps on proprietary plat-

forms to device-agnostic platforms that run the full, standards-compliant and open web.

“We all need to work together to stress the web as a platform, to push over a few remaining hurdles like graphics and video and native device API access and work together on the common language, HTML5.”

Users demand that software devel-opers think about how the next gen-eration of apps will transcend differ-ences between OS platforms and browsers, to create a seamless and re-sponsive experience.

Whether that happens with HTML5 or a future technology that does it better, the development pro-cess will need to be flexible to cater for new and emerging technologies - and the common language industry leaders are pushing for. ■

15 | 26 June-2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

more online› Will HTML5 applications change enterprise app development?

› Will HTML5 replace Flash and increase web security?

› HTML5 browsers gain influence as integration pendulum swings

outsourcing

16 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Business process outsourc-ing (BPO) has been provid-ing businesses with a way to cut costs for years, but

current IT trends are shaking up the sector, putting CIOs at the forefront of planning.

A perfect storm is in progress, with customers seeking to cut additional back-office costs due to continued budget pressure, while suppliers are trying to create additional services and the revenues that go with them.

IT’s growing role in BPOTechnologies such as cloud comput-ing, business analytics software, social media platforms and process

structure of delivery. It found that 40% of high performers consider technology provided by the service provider to be an important compo-nent of the BPO relationship, com-pared with only 27% of typical per-formers. A total of 56% of high performers believe it is important to gain access to technology in a BPO

How technology is changing BPOKarl Flinders discovers how IT has become central to the provision of outsourced business processes as demand for greater efficiency and lower costs is leading to increased automation and less reliance on people

relationship, while 34% of typical performers agree.

“Effective technologies and archi-tectures contribute to cost reductions and more efficient operations by streamlining the systems environ-ment and reducing the number of systems involved, often standardis-ing the technology environment on a unified, centralised platform,” says Anoop Sagoo, products industry BPO lead at Accenture.

Ilan Oshri, a professor at Loughbor-ough School of Business, says IT is increasingly becoming part of the ser-vice, as well as the platform through which they are provided. “Business-es have been considering more func-

automation software are being used within BPO to enable businesses to lower costs and be more effective.

Recent research from Accenture re-vealed that high-performing BPO re-lationships – those that deliver busi-ness value – use technology as a source of innovation and advantage, rather than just providing the infra-

Research reveals that high-performing BPO relationships use technology as a source of innovation and advantage

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outsourcingtions for BPO, mainly because of the current economic conditions and be-cause the suppliers [can now] pro-vide BPO services much better than 10 years ago,” he says. “Buyers are also expecting vendors to deliver high value, and therefore expect the vendor to work closely with them on improvements.”

At the same time, says Oshri, it has become critical to buyers to consider alignment between IT and business process performance.

Adding greater valueAll of these trends are leading to a bigger role for IT in the BPO sector, he says, which is being driven by businesses and their suppliers. BPO suppliers are attempting to move beyond the provision of bodies or full-time equivalents by offering ad-ditional value-add services through technology.

Because outsourcing relationships are like marriages, both partners have to get something from it. Through ad-ditional technology-based services, customers will get more for their money, while supplier business mod-els will change, with less reliance on providing human resources. This move by suppliers to what are known as “non-linear growth models” is a growing trend, particularly among offshore BPO suppliers which have relied heavily in the past on selling low-cost labour.

“Many of the large vendors are now pitching the end-to-end value proposition to clients, claiming that they are capable of introducing im-provements across IT and BPO. IT is an enabler for suppliers, and some-times it is a differentiator. Ten years ago, the little BPO carried out was pretty much detached from the IT function,” says Oshri.

Mark Lewis, head of outsourcing at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, says the growing scale of the BPO market requires greater levels of auto-mation through IT. “The main BPO providers see IT as a way of achiev-ing non-linear growth,” he says.

Companies that have traditionally made their money by providing workers at a lower cost are changing to these business models, he says, and while the Indian BPO providers have taken a while to catch up, they are now doing so rapidly.

Cognizant, which delivers services from India, is one such supplier. Paul Roehrig, a senior BPO specialist at the company, says the integration of busi-ness process work and technology has “profoundly changed the business process service value for clients”.

“New business process services are emerging that integrate human pro-cess work with collaboration and au-

Planning and selection of BPO services and providers is an area where the CIO will need to play a key role

tomation via technology enablers and automation platforms,” he says. “We’re also seeing next-generation technologies such as cloud, social tools, and analytics much more effec-tively applied to delivering business process services.”

Transforming processesRoehrig says that 10 years ago, many businesses were trying to outsource non-core processes primarily to cut costs, but although lower unit cost is still critical, they now want more.

“Companies everywhere are grap-pling with the challenges and oppor-tunities presented by the mega-trends of continued globalisation, new tech-nologies such as emerging social/mo-bile collaboration, and a new mindset for problem solving and dynamic process work,” he says.

“These themes are shaping a new kind of business process service, and there is growing evidence of a major market shift as next-generation busi-ness process services and solutions offer ways to modernise activities that underlie complex dynamic knowledge work.”

Businesses intend to modernise processes in response to a continued economic downturn, says Roehrig. “Process virtualisation and externali-sation is truly transforming how en-terprise work will be conducted over the coming years.”

Another transformational trend in business today is the importance of data and the technology that enables businesses to use the data they have. BPO can help businesses harness big data, says Accenture’s Sagoo.

“In the past couple of years, we’ve seen BPO moving away from large-scale transaction processing, largely associated with operational cost take out and process efficiency, and mov-ing towards being a driver of tangible business value,” he says. “As such, BPO today is about mining the huge volume of transactional data that is being processed. BPO providers and their clients today are sitting on a gold mine of data, and it’s all about using the provider’s industry exper-tise and insight, analytics and inno-vation to help a client tap into that in-formation to operate its business better and drive business outcomes.

“The ability to undertake analytics on transactions, understand the in-sights and then identify opportuni-ties to improve and add value to the client’s business is what clients today expect from BPO. Analysis of trans-actional data provides clients with actionable insight into their business operations,” says Sagoo.

Suppliers are able to focus on ser-vices that improve the business due to the increasing use of process auto-

mation robots, which carry out the grunt-work. Businesses are using software that automates processes as an alternative to offshore BPO servic-es. When workloads spike, the busi-ness does not have to pay its out-sourcing service providers for more human resources.

Lewis at Berwin Leighton Paisner says using software to automate busi-ness processes is on the up and will cut people costs dramatically, with fi-nance and accounting robots replac-ing people in the back office.

“There has been very little automa-tion in BPO, mainly because of the amount of offshoring, but as offshore people costs increase, automation will increase,” he says.

Mobile network operator O2 has deployed software from Blue Prism to automate business processes in an effort to reduce the cost of back-office operations and cut its reliance on off-shore recruitment to cope with spikes in workload. The company’s back of-fice has about 400 individual mini-processes, which are used to work around bigger processes to support new service offerings.

Part of the business case for buying the Blue Prism licences came when Apple changed the size of the SIMs in its latest iPhone. With less than six weeks’ warning, O2 had to have a business process in place to deal with changing customer SIMs. O2 said that before the automation software was acquired, there would have been a three-month spike in demand for 60 full-time staff in India to cope with the changeover.

CIOs as change agentsIt is benefits such as these which could put the CIO in a leading role in the business. The CIO’s visibility across the organisation means they are well positioned to understand the various business processes and interdependencies.

“They can play a key role in the outsourcing relationship, help-ing to elevate the role of IT to a business enabler and source of com-petitive advantage,” says Sagoo.

Planning and selection of BPO services and providers is an area where the CIO will need to play a key role, he says: “The CIO’s role will in-creasingly deal with information rath-er than technology, fulfilling the origi-nal vision of the role. As technology

becomes more transparent and cloud architectures reshape and simplify de-livery infrastructures, the CIO will need to be more focused on under-standing and supporting the needs of the business by ensuring availability, accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of information to users and processes across the business.”

Oshri agrees that CIOs are playing a bigger role. “A sourcing decision is no longer a standalone decision about the IT component, but rather moving towards an integrated sourc-ing approach in which executives will need to consider how IT can be aligned into business processes and how IT can improve business pro-cess performance. The CIO is central to such discussions within the firm and with the firm’s supplier net-work,” he says.

“CIOs are increasingly becoming the business technology change agents within the enterprise,” says Cognizant’s Roehrig. “The role of the CIO is evolving from the caretaker of the systems of record to the person who unlocks value at the intersection of process and technology. The CIO of the 21st century will be instrumen-tal in helping unlock process-aligned business value.”

IT-enabled BPO is a huge sector – it dwarfs the IT outsourcing sector in terms of spending – but as businesses attempt to take advantage of new technology trends, the IT element of BPO relationships will grow at the expense of people.

Technology trends such as cloud computing and big data are support-ed by technologies such as social media and smart devices to create new services to complement BPO. ■

17 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

more online› Cloud and big data to drive BPO benefits

› European IT outsourcing activity hits record high

› CIO brings innovation to business process outsourcing

› Finance and accounting BPO services: Life beyond lift and shift

»

18 | 26 June - 2 July 2012 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com

Need to motivate your staff? Have you tried a zombie horde?Sometimes, just sometimes, your boss shouting and spitting in your face at close range may not be the thing to give you that much-needed motivational boost you have been waiting for.

In fact, insults and threats could soon be on the way out. Don’t worry though, pats on the back and cliché-filled pep talks are less likely to replace them now, especially thanks to this idea Downtime has come up with.

The Zombies, RUN mobile app for Apple and Android devices gave us this idea. The app turns running into less of a workout and more of a game. With pre-recorded stories and brilliant sound effects, you are immersed into another world, where zombies are the number one threat.

You are tasked with leaving the township to collect supplies on your

journey, and every so often you will start to hear the groaning of zombies on your tail, making you speed up or risk being eaten alive.

Downtime likes this – not only is a whole township of people depending on you for supplies, but your own life is at stake.

CIOs across the industry should sit up and take note. Want to increase your workforce’s efficiency and work ethic? Just get a zombie and chain it to the wall. Then, for every minute a presentation is late, you can just loos-en the chain.

Downtime is certain that would yield results.

Move over Bafta, make way for the Worst Domain Name AwardsDomain name registrar Names.co.uk has announced a nationwide search for the worst domain names regis-tered on the web by businesses. It has already discovered a handful.

Downtime, back when we were in-nocent, fell for this trick once at school. We saw no problem when being told by friends to visit a web-site called “Pen Island”. It was only when you see the full URL that you realise what you’ve just typed – www.penisland.net. Amazingly, a company specialising in personal-ised pens has snapped this domain name up.

Never one to find bodily functions even mildly amusing, being upper class and what not, Downtime didn’t find this next one remotely funny. Graphic design company Speed of Art has opted for the regrettable www.speedofart.com. Is it just us, or does that conjure up images of a middle-aged man in tight swimming trunks breaking wind?

Finally, an online meeting service, which has been acquired by Sales-force, seems to have decided that the best way to get noticed in the current climate is to buy a web name that ac-curately describes those real-life car-toon characters Jedward. Even going so far as to use the same descriptive

word for each twin with its domain choice of www.dimdim.com.

Names.co.uk is not doing this all on its own – you can get involved, discussing, sharing and voting on its Facebook page.

All this has left the Downtime team thinking we might start our own search. Now we just need to think of something worth looking for. Treasure perhaps. ■

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

Rain rain go away, we need the sun to charge our mobiles todaySmartphone technology has increased at such a rate that the phones of just 12 months ago are beginning to look like relics. However, battery technol-ogy has failed to keep up the pace, so no matter how shiny our new phones are, the batteries run out faster than ever.

It is of little consequence if you are able to plug in the charger at home or work, but when you are away from all your home comforts for five days in a field, there is no hope for the smartphone to run the course – the battery WILL die.

Vodafone thinks it has come up with the answer. As festival season kicks off, the company has unveiled its latest product – the Vodafone Booster Brolly. Covered in solar panels, Vodafone claims users can plug their phones into the umbrella via USB and handsets will charge in just three hours. On top of that, the brolly has a built-in antenna to boost reception for the user and any other Vodafone customers nearby.

Here at Downtime we know about music festivals, and after getting soaked in a field recently at Download with a phone bereft of battery, we sing the praises of this little invention. Now to get our hands on one before the next festival weekend…

downtime

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