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COMPUTERWEEKLY.COM 1-7 SEPTEMBER 2015 1

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Strong US dollar bears down on IT budgets

Chetan Dube: The man behind the robot that will extend horizons

NHS Central Southern deploys Clarizen to boost collaboration

Solvay’s focus falls on tech innovation, says digital boss

Opinion

Editor’s comment

Buyer’s guide to big data appliances

Wearable technology proves its business case

The API economy – or the API Tower of Babel?

Downtime

COMPUTERWEEKLY.COM

XX-XX MONTH 20151-7 SEPTEMBER 2015

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Wearable technology proves its worth on the front line

Soldiers receive field medic training using virtual reality headsets

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Sans Institute identifies top UK cyber security talentA mix of recent graduates, professionals, military leavers and cyber enthusiasts make up the UK’s top cyber security talent, according to the Sans Institute. They were selected from 24,000 applicants, based on a skills and aptitude assessment and a series of interviews, to undertake eight weeks of intensive cyber training in the first-ever intake at the Sans UK Cyber Academy.

Intel and Goldman Sachs invest in Mirantis to boost OpenStackOpenStack software and services provider Mirantis looks set to benefit from a $100m funding round led by Intel that seeks to increase the enterprise appeal of the open-source cloud platform.The company specialises in the pro-vision of software, services, training and support to enterprises intent on running large-scale production deployments of OpenStack.

UK Amazon Marketplace sees 400 million orders in past yearAmazon Marketplace merchants in the UK have received about 400 million product orders in the past 12 months. According to Amazon’s summer report, Amazon Marketplace sellers in the UK have made billions of pounds from purchases by UK customers alone.Worldwide, more than two billion items were ordered from third-party businesses through the website.

Norwegian mountain houses Europe’s biggest datacentreA Norwegian mine looks set to become home to Europe’s biggest datacentre – with IBM and Rittal already poised to take space inside. Lefdal Mine Datacenter is a tier III development and will be built underneath a mountain on the west coast of Norway. The datacentre comprises 75 chambers across six levels, with each one connected by an underground road network.

Edinburgh Council signs £186m IT outsourcing deal with CGI The City of Edinburgh Council has signed a seven-year IT outsourcing contract with CGI in a bid to transform council services.The £186m contract will see CGI update the council’s IT systems and support its “channel shift” programme, which aims to introduce integrated digital services across the local authority.

!Catch up with the latest IT news online

THE WEEK IN IT

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http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500252263/Norwegian-mountain-houses-Europes-biggest-datacentre












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THE WEEK IN IT

Strong US dollar hits European server shipmentsThe strength of the US dollar is starting to make an impact on the IT buying behaviour of CIOs in western Europe – and could prompt a slump in server shipments later this year. That’s the hypothesis from analysts at IT market watcher Gartner, who claim the situation has already weakened the spending power of European CIOs.

Salisbury NHS signs up to Lorenzo EPR systemSalisbury NHS Foundation Trust has become the latest NHS trust to choose the Lorenzo electronic patient record system (EPR) from CSC.

Northern Ireland police to tender for managed IT services contract The Police Service of Northern Ireland is looking for a managed IT services supplier for an initial three-year contract worth between £15m and £100m.

Millennials dissatisfied with online data security, study showsMillennials, generation Y or digital natives are losing trust in the digital economy in the face of increasing reports of data breaches, a survey has revealed. Fewer than 5% of UK and US 16 to 35-year-olds believe their digital identity is completely protected by effective safeguards, according to the survey commis-sioned by security firm Intercede.

Ashley Madison offers reward for information on hackersAshley Madison’s parent com-pany Avid Life Media is offering a £240,000 reward for information on those who hacked its IT systems as it faces mounting legal action.

AWS opens up machine learning service to European developersAmazon Web Services (AWS) has made its machine learning service available to European developers for the first time, several months after it was formally announced.

! Consumers shun connected cars, says JD Power report.

! Symantec offers IoT protection as part of new strategy.

! Torbay Council uses Logi Info for budget management.

! Intel invests $60m in drone company Yuneec.

!Catch up with the latest IT news online

Labour MP Chris Bryant calls for Openreach sell-off from BTLabour MP Chris Bryant has called for more serious consideration to be given to forcibly splitting BT and its infrastructure division Openreach.

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http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500252319/Millennials-dissatisfied-with-online-data-security-study-shows












http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500252254/Avid-Life-Media-offers-reward-for-information-on-Ashley-Madison-hack-as-writs-loom






http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500252192/Amazon-Web-Services-opens-up-machine-learning-service-to-European-developers






http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500252324/Consumers-shun-connected-cars-says-JD-Power-report

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Currency hike bears down on IT budgetsCIOs will struggle to get the best value from 2016’s finances as a strong US dollar drives up IT costs, says Cliff Saran

Analyst firm Gartner has urged CIOs to reassess their budget plans to take account of a 20% increase in the price of dollar-based IT products for 2015 and beyond.

With CIOs preparing their 2016 IT budgets, Gartner warned that prices of servers and software from US suppliers will rise in line with the strong US dollar. The price hike could curb IT strate-gies that require spending with US IT suppliers, and Gartner rec-ommended CIOs cut back such spending by a quarter.

In the Gartner report Building IT infrastructure on a euro budget – why your servers, software and services will cost more, analyst Martin Reynolds wrote: “The most important action is to review your project plans through the second quarter of 2016. Assume there will be a 20% euro price increase on dollar-based IT prod-ucts, and then plan to deal with it.”

In June 2015, Gartner’s head of forecasting, John-David Lovelock, told Computer Weekly: “We’re looking at the US dollar being high through 2017, but the effect we’re seeing now is around product suppliers re-pricing, using obfuscation and trying to keep the rev-enue they generate in line with in-house projections.”

He warned CIOs to look out for software price hikes. “As soft-ware suppliers have increased their prices, we’ve seen users not

noticing. CIOs will be surprised by what their IT spend ends up being this year, and there will be a lot of organisations that over-spend,” Lovelock said.

Although there have been no indications yet of software as a service (SaaS) prices rising, US SaaS providers such as Salesforce have been affected by foreign exchange fluctuations. For Salesforce, the impact represents 9%.

Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins said: “Foreign exchange contin-ued to impact revenue, with year-over-year headwinds of approx-imately $52m and a sequential headwind of around $17m.

“Our geographies also delivered strong growth on a constant currency basis, with the Americas growth of 27%, Emea growth of 28% and Asia-Pacific of 27%. Dollar attrition for the first quar-ter, excluding Marketing Cloud, was approximately 9%.”

Geoff Connell, head of ICT for oneSource, the shared IT service for London’s Havering and Newham councils, said: “This is yet another pressure on already battered local government finances.”

The councils’ main exposure to US licensing is with Microsoft and Oracle, but he said the contracts with these companies have been negotiated in advance as fixed costs for a set period, which protects the IT budget from currency fluctuation.

ANALYSIS


http://www.techtarget.com/contributor/Cliff-Saran

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“The downside means they are hard to reduce but, on the upside, it does insulate us from currency fluctuations,” he said.

But Connell said Havering and Newham councils are waiting to see if their hosting or SaaS service contracts rise because of the strong dollar. “Ultimately, any significant increases may well prompt us to re-procure solutions,” he said.

DEALING WITH CURRENCY FLUCTUATIONSMany CIOs may not have the luxury of having negotiated with key US suppliers in advance, which means their 2016 IT budget could be undermined by software and hardware price rises.

Gartner recommended CIOs virtualise servers wherever pos-sible, but they may also need to prioritise projects that deliver greater business value. In the report, the analyst said: “Specifically, CFOs will ask for a shift to European sourcing where it is possible, the acceleration of projects that deliver the most cost-efficient growth, and cancellation or suspension of projects that deliver lower marginal value. CFOs may also have heard from others about how cloud-based solutions may provide better value.”

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Gartner says many CIOs who have not negotiated

with US suppliers could see their 2016 IT budgets rapidly

devalued by software and hardware price rises

“CFOS WILL ASK FOR A SHIFT TO EUROPEAN SOURCING

WHERE IT IS POSSIBLE”MARTIN REYNOLDS, GARTNER



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Gartner also suggested CIOs should consider deferring server purchases and extending replacement cycles by up to 25% to save money. “If assurance is needed, third-party maintenance companies will offer attractive pricing, and non-critical servers can go to time-and-materials contracts,” the report said.

Currency fluctuation may affect the ability of IT departments to modernise desktop and server infrastructure – such as enterprise-wide upgrades to Windows 10, Office 2016 or Server 2012 R2.

Gartner vice-president Richard Gordon estimated 80% of the price of a datacentre server arises from dollar-based components and labour. This means that, for server hardware sold in Europe, a reseller would have to raise its price. “The cost structure gets wiped out, so the euro price has to increase,” he said. “Buyers will either delay purchases or they will buy lower-priced machines.”

The price increase also affects converged infrastructure. For instance, ANS provides the FlexPod converged system compris-ing Cisco’s unified computing platform (USC), NetApp storage and VMware vSphere. CEO Paul Sweeney said the strong dollar has meant the cost to the customer will increase.

“BUYERS WILL EITHER DELAY PURCHASES OR THEY WILL BUY

LOWER-PRICED MACHINES”RICHARD GORDON, GARTNER

ANALYSIS

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!Gartner warns of suppliers sneaking in under-the-radar price hikes

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With 80% of the price of a datacentre server deriving

from dollar-based costs, Gartner says European

resellers will have to raise their prices


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Chetan Dube: The man behind the robot that will help humanity extend its horizonsIPsoft president and CEO tells Karl Flinders about Amelia, the artificial intelligence platform that will serve as an example of IT developments destined to transform the future of the human race

Chetan Dube left New York University – where he was a pro-fessor of IT – in 1998, convinced there could be a more efficient way of cutting costs than replacing human labour

with cheaper human labour. He began a mission to find a way of replacing human labour by cloning human intelligence.

Some 17 years on, he believes the world is approaching an industrial revolution, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), which will see an unprecedented rate of change.

He says many people gave up on developing AI capable of car-rying out the work of humans, and views the drop in research as an opportunity to fill the gap.

“AI went through the classic Gartner hype cycle of a peak of heightened expectations followed by a trough of disillusionment,” says Dube. He says early AI researchers were confident and, in the 1960s, Herbert Simon predicted machines would be capable of doing any work that man could do, within two decades.

But one of the founders of AI research later said the problem was much harder than anticipated, says Dube. “This trough of

ANALYSIS

Chetan Dube says Amelia will become “the best friend and the most faithful servant that man would have known”


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disillusionment led to a period of ‘AI winter’, when there wasn’t much research or funding for AI-related domains,” he adds.

After leaving university, Dube formed IPsoft, an enterprise IT supplier that has become the vehicle for his mission.

At IPsoft, Dube has built a large business selling autonomic computing systems – but perhaps his greatest achievement is the creation of Amelia, a robot that doesn’t just automate business processes or IT, but is capable of reasoning and which, says Dube, will become “the best friend and the most faithful servant that man would have known”.

SOLVE BUSINESS PROCESS QUERIESAmelia, as Dube calls the software platform, has an understand-ing of the semantics of language and can learn to solve business process queries like a human. It initially learns using the same manuals as humans – it can read 300 pages in 30 seconds – and then learns through experience and observing the interactions between human agents and customers.

If Amelia can’t answer a question, it passes the query on to a human, but remains in the conversation to learn how to solve similar issues in future. It understands 20 languages as well as context, and can apply logic and draw inferences.

The software is already used for services such as technology helpdesks, contact centres, procurement processing and to advise field engineers, among other business processes.

But Dube says it is not easy to sell AI to senior executives, who are becoming confused by the many forms of IT described as smart – wrongly, according to Dube. He says there is too much

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“marketing fluff” about smart systems today, which is undersell-ing “truly smart” machines, such as Amelia, in business.

“Many devices today are referred to as ‘smart’ but, unless they are capable of learning – and making decisions based on that – they are not in fact smart,” says Dube. “The current fluff around everything that is ‘smart’ is just a marketing distraction, rather than anything to do with intelligence.”

This is undermining confidence in the possibilities of AI, he says. “The question that the market is increasingly asking is: ‘Can a thing be classed as smart if it cannot match the intelligence of a 10-year-old?’”

‘SMART’ DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN SMARTThis is causing confusion in the enterprise sector, with busi-nesses disappointed by the promise of smart systems that are not actually smart, says Dube.

“A customer told me his company had a ‘smart’ agent in place for 12 months – but it still couldn’t do the job,” he says.

Dube says true cognitive systems such as Amelia are rare, but are being used and developed in big business – and Amelia has many suitors in the enterprise market.

But he is protective. Enterprises that want to use the system cannot just come up with the money, but must meet other crite-ria. Currently, 162 Global 2000 companies have said they want to use Amelia – but only seven currently do, because Dube wants to avoid any disappointments.

“We are only integrating with companies that want end-to-end digital transformation,” he says. He doesn’t want Amelia to

become just another smart machine, but wants to ensure it learns and becomes better at what it does as part of larger projects.

“Amelia is capable of transformational impact,” he says. “Allowing her to transform a service desk enables the enterprise to realise savings on average above 60%, while improving cus-

tomer experience by bringing down the time to resolution of inci-dents. Extending her reach, in a phased manner, to allow compa-nies to move towards a full digital transformation for competitive gains is a natural derivative of her prowess.”

One customer using Amelia is a large US media company that has already realised the substantial advantage of the system in a callcentre context. The company – which Dube would not name – receives about 65,000 calls to its contact centre every month. It was taking an average of 52 seconds to answer a call, and an average of 18 minutes for a satisfactory resolution.

When the company moved to Amelia, the calls were connected automatically and it was taking an average of four and a half min-utes to reach a satisfactory resolution.

Finance, media and healthcare are the main industries that

“THE CURRENT FLUFF AROUND EVERYTHING THAT IS ‘SMART’ IS JUST

A MARKETING DISTRACTION”CHETAN DUBE, IPSOFT

ANALYSIS



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!The rise of general-purpose artificial intelligence and its threat to humanity

began using Amelia. “She is getting very competent in these verticals,” says Dube.

Telecoms companies will lead the next wave of adoption, as they attempt to add value in the face of competition from over the top (OTT) suppliers: “OTTs are killing telcos,” says Dube. “They are using the assets of telcos them-selves to, ironically, cannibalise the telcos’ revenues.

“Telcos need to better monetise their assets by providing value-added services, such as providing financial and retail advice, rather than battle the OTTs on commodity data and voice services.”

PASS ON BENEFITS TO CUSTOMERSAmelia learns as it goes and this benefits all customers because, if it learns tasks where there is no differentiation between cus-tomers’ needs, it will pass the benefits on to others. But to pro-tect competitive advantage, Amelia does not use proprietary information that gives a customer an advantage

IPsoft has helped many customers reduce the amount of work they offshore to low-cost locations such as India, which have been used to cut the cost of operations such as BPO. AI has ena-bled businesses to replace offshore staff with robots.

But it doesn’t end there. AI platforms such as Amelia will take over a wider range of roles as they become smarter.

Such AI platforms will inevitably meet opposition as people protest about job losses. But Dube says this is only a short-term

concern and should not hinder the adoption of these technologies. “By freeing up the human mind, man could focus on other things – like colonising Mars,” he says.

For example, once, most people in the US worked in agriculture, but today only 2% do, says Dube.

He claims only 10% of the human brain is normally used and common chores take up much of this, so there is a lot of spare brain power to use for more important challenges.

Imagine, for instance, if Amelia could take over the manage-ment of legacy systems at big banks. This task consumes 80% of banks’ IT budgets and probably a larger proportion of their time. Amelia could read all instruction manuals and automated fixes and could possibly support legacy transformation.

Dube has big plans for his brainchild. “In 20 years, Amelia will have freed humanity from the shackles of common chores and allowed it to extend its horizons into creative dimen-sions,” he says. “For instance, Amelia will have taken over gen-eral physicians’ tasks, allowing doctors to focus on more pro-found issues, such as finding systemic cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, rather than day-to-day prescription writing.”

He concludes: “From a currently confused civilization, AI is the only way forward to systemically eradicate suffering and explore other worlds. History is witness that a civilization must innovate – or it will die slowly.”

“BY FREEING UP THE HUMAN MIND, MAN COULD FOCUS ON OTHER THINGS

– LIKE COLONISING MARS”CHETAN DUBE, IPSOFT

ANALYSIS


http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500248762/The-rise-of-general-purpose-AI-and-its-threat-to-humanity

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NHS Central Southern deploys Clarizen to boost collaborationThe NHS Central Southern Commissioning Support Unit has enlisted Clarizen to improve cross-group collaboration and improve efficiency. Clare McDonald reports

The structure of the NHS can often make it difficult for sepa-rate bodies within the organisation to align with each other and communicate effectively.

The NHS Central Southern Commissioning Support Unit (Central Southern CSU) is one of the largest support units in the UK, covering 14 NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups.

This large area of coverage made it difficult for the unit to pro-vide the support its groups required, so Central Southern CSU selected a collaboration platform from Clarizen to help projects run more efficiently and increase collaboration across the board.

REDUCING DUPLICATIONThe commissioning groups covered by Central Southern look after more than 3.7 million patients between them. The unit sup-ports these groups through a combination of analytics and con-tract support, as well as many other essential support services.

“The point of the organisations coming together, and the drive around it in the NHS, was to be more efficient,” says Alison Foster,

director of clinical quality and transformation for the NHS Central Southern CSU.

As part of the collaboration project, several of the clinical com-missioning groups under the Central Southern umbrella were merged to prevent duplication of projects and services.

For example, there could be two medical research projects in the region focused on the same subject, so a system for collabo-ration was needed either to cut duplicate projects or allow the sharing of information between them.

CASE STUDY

“THE POINT OF THE ORGANISATIONS COMING TOGETHER, AND THE DRIVE

AROUND IT IN THE NHS, WAS TO BE MORE EFFICIENT”

ALISON FOSTER, NHS CENTRAL SOUTHERN CSU


http://www.techtarget.com/contributor/Clare-McDonald

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The mergers also meant geographically separate organisations needed to work quite closely, which required a huge amount of collaboration and communication to effectively complete pro-jects and reach goals.

LEAVING THE LEGACY BEHINDA lot of data was also shared in face-to-face meetings, which wasted time as it meant employees often had to travel to different sites to attend these meetings.

Clarizen was among six companies considered by Central Southern CSU, but was chosen due to its ability to provide resource planning and the appeal of its user-friendly platform.

The Clarizen collaboration platform provides a single view of projects to employees who need it. This information is kept fully up to date and is available in real time.

Having a single place to store project documents has allowed faster deployment of projects and created a central data hub which can be searched quickly.

CASE STUDY

The Clarizen collaboration platform provides a single view of projects

to employees who need it, with the information kept fully up to date

and available in real time

HAVING A SINGLE PLACE TO STORE PROJECT DOCUMENTS HAS ALLOWED FASTER DEPLOYMENT OF PROJECTS

AND CREATED A CENTRAL DATA HUB

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http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Benchmarking-social-business-and-collaboration-tools

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NHS organisations must adhere to strict guidelines. Central Southern CSU is now more secure and adherent to code of con-duct because everything is stored centrally rather than dispersed or kept by one person, according to Foster.

The data held by Central Southern cannot be used to identify a patient, and much of the data it works with can be subject to freedom of information requests, but the Clarizen system allows an extra layer of security to be implemented should it be needed.

EFFICIENCY GAINSCentral Southern staff are now using the Clarizen system for time recording and the unit has begun capturing performance data to track the improvement in efficiency of operations.

Approximately 80% of the staff are using it for project manage-ment purposes and to collaborate on project documents. This has led to improved people resource planning, more account-

ability for changes, better resource management and increased business resilience.

“Making time visible enabled us to make faster and better deci-sions about how we would use our time, direct our time and how to target priorities,” says Foster.

COPING WITH TRANSFORMATIONBut with so many different types of business coming together under one umbrella, it was difficult to get everyone on board with the transformation.

One of the benefits of using the new system is that it is able to cater to staff working on different projects with a range of different needs, according to Foster.

She says the IT team was dealing with more detailed data than some other employees, and was previously using Microsoft Project. “We piloted a team in that area to understand how we might bring everyone else on board,” she says.

After a few teams had trialled the system to understand the mini-mum and more detailed requirements for each of the teams, the organisation came up with a set of guidelines for the wider roll-out.

There was some double-running of projects, and local champi-ons were elected across the groups to provide support for those who needed more time to transfer.

“There’s always resistance. We did have some resistance to moving across from what people felt comfortable with, particu-larly with Microsoft Project,” says Foster. “People were keeping their projects on Microsoft Project because they felt they needed to build up the confidence that the new system would be okay.”

CASE STUDY

! Jeremy Hunt elects Martha Lane Fox to develop NHS digital innovation proposal

“MAKING TIME VISIBLE ENABLED US TO MAKE FASTER AND BETTER

DECISIONS ABOUT HOW WE WOULD USE OUR TIME, DIRECT OUR TIME AND

HOW TO TARGET PRIORITIES”ALISON FOSTER, NHS CENTRAL SOUTHERN CSU


http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Security-Think-Tank-Merging-big-data-and-security-is-the-way-to-go

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Solvay’s focus falls on tech innovation, says digital bossBelgium-based chemicals company’s head of digital office, Fernando Birman, tells Angelica Mari about the next stage of IT transformation after merger

After years of IT work to support major merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, global chemicals company Solvay is currently focusing on innovation to drive more

internal efficiency.The Belgium-based firm, which operates in 55 countries, saw its

workforce double from 15,000 to 30,000 in 2011 after it acquired chemicals company Rhodia. As a result, Solvay had to make changes and improvements to its IT setup.

After the merger, the company’s legacy portfolio was renewed and integrated with new datacentre contracts, a new telecommu-nications network was put in place and a service desk installed.

This meant that newer units of the group, in locations such as China and India, received the new set of standard applications.

INTEGRATION EFFORTS“All M&A operations are always followed by huge integra-

tion efforts,” says Fernando Birman, head of the digital office at Solvay. “We couldn’t be different. We delivered many initiatives

INTERVIEW

Birman: “The innovation cell has the mission of listening to its internal customers and also pushing fresh ideas from the IT

world to them”


http://www.techtarget.com/contributor/Angelica-Mari

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to integrate, renew and improve our solutions portfolio and we are now focusing a lot more on innovation.”

Significant changes in IT leadership have also taken place at the organisation recently. Rhodia’s IS director, Jacques-Benoit Le Bris, replaced Xavier Rambaud, who retired last year, as CIO.

Birman, formerly information services strategy and architec-ture director based in Brazil, became leader of the digital office, a newly created global function in the IT department.

According to Birman, his dedicated team’s mission is to kick-start innovative initiatives in areas such as collaboration tools, as well as investigating how new technologies can improve internal pro-cesses and creating a “digital mindset” within the company.

“The innovation cell has the mission of listening to its inter-nal customers and also pushing fresh ideas from the IT world to them,” Birman tells Computer Weekly.

“Imagine we launch a proof of concept with a smartwatch as an interface for some business transactions. If it’s a good idea and robust enough to be deployed, then it will join the IT standard offer. The digital office is there to search, experiment and develop business cases.”

As an example of using collaboration tools to foster smarter working, the digital office is deploying a change management ini-tiative whereby staff application training will go beyond traditional methods to incorporate coaching in how to be more productive, rather than simply how to use software features.

Other initiatives to introduce new tools and technologies to the company include implementing a Salesforce customer rela-tionship management platform, as well as mobile device man-agement to allow secure use of the company’s smartphones and tablets.

BLEEDING-EDGE TECHNOLOGYBirman says Solvay is identifying opportunities to use “bleed-ing-edge” technology – a shift from the previous approach to go for products that were thoroughly tried and tested.

“We are talking about the internet of things, big data, aug-mented reality, robotics and others,” he says. “Sometimes we have to show the possibilities to our people and advise them on how to exploit those technologies because it might not always be obvious.”

According to Birman, creating a digital mindset creates many opportunities for tech-based innovation that might not necessar-ily come from the IT department.

INTERVIEW

“WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THE INTERNET OF THINGS, BIG DATA,

AUGMENTED REALITY, ROBOTICS AND OTHERS. SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO SHOW

THE POSSIBILITIES TO OUR PEOPLE”FERNANDO BIRMAN, SOLVAY


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“The more people are aware of the benefits new technology can bring, the better,” he says. “Probably there are very good ideas hidden in the mind of a Korean salesman or an American maintenance worker. We in IT don’t hold a monopoly of good technology-based ideas.

“As we cannot possibly interview or discuss these ideas with everybody, the best thing to do is to make everybody aware of the technology options out there that are viable to us with events, workshops and generally informing people. We hope people from outside the technology department will start com-ing to us with some very interesting ideas.”

LEADERSHIP CHALLENGESMoving from a well-established function in Brazil to lead a global innovation function out of Europe has its leadership challenges for Birman.

“It’s a very different job,” he says. “Though, after so many years in different IT leadership positions, I must say that I do have the necessary background to achieve my goals. So far, the main chal-lenge is to sneak in the best technology-enabled opportunities that we can identify and try to deploy them quite fast.”

Birman hopes that in the coming months, the digital office will make an even more significant contribution to the overall IT strategy at Solvay.

He says: “By 2016, I’d like to see that we did embrace technolo-gies like augmented reality or the internet of things, through the execution of proof of concepts and many discussions about the complete redesign of business processes and models.”

INTERVIEW

!Having the right digital strategy can make or break an organisation

Birman says the best way to make everybody aware of the

technology options out there is through events, workshops and

generally informing people

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It’s been a bad few weeks for users of Ashley Madison and Mumsnet, after both sites fell victim to cyber crime.

The saga at Ashley Madison has been rumbling on for a couple of months now. The hackers who stole sensitive customer information from the site have now dumped 9.7GB of consumer details onto the dark web, releasing the names and pseudonyms of some 37 million users worldwide. A group called Impact Team took responsibility for the attack, claiming it did so because it was unhappy about the way the site is run.

In the case of Mumsnet, one person – possibly a disgruntled father – created a website on which they posted the passwords of 3,000 Mumsnet users and staff. This caused the online forum to crash and forced every one of its 7.7 million members to change their passwords. As a result, some members are reported to have closed their accounts for fear of a similar attack in the future.

How each organisation now handles the issue is critical to them winning the support and understanding of their existing and, cru-cially, future customers.

Both organisations have suddenly been thrust into the media spotlight and are trying to handle their crises as best they can. Each has gone for an entirely different approach, putting out starkly different statements.

ASHLEY MADISON – IT’S NOT OUR AFFAIRAshley Madison has said the breach “is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality. It is an illegal action against the mem-bers of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any free-thinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities”.

OPINION

Life’s a breach: How to handle the press after a hacking attackEmily Dent, specialist in crisis PR, offers some advice to organisations that unexpectedly find themselves in the headlines



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It lays the blame squarely at the door of the hackers, and takes no responsibility for the breach. Ashley Madison is not owning the problem; it is positioning itself and its customers as victims of an unexpected attack.

MUMSNET TAKES THE FLAK By contrast, Mumsnet has taken the flak. “We’re really sorry for the alarm and inconvenience this might cause, and we realise you’re likely to have further questions about what’s been hap-pening,” the company said, releasing an FAQ document to help members find the answers to the most common questions they may have, and inviting anyone with concerns to contact Mumsnet directly.

In reality, all membership organisations are potential targets to hackers because of the information they hold. But, with certain businesses, the risk is far greater. If a company’s core proposition to the market includes the perceived sensitivity of its data – as is the case with Ashley Madison – the potential for long-term dam-age to the business is substantial.

OWN THE PROBLEM AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITYAny organisation targeted by hackers must own the issue and take responsibility for the breach – even if it must do so through gritted teeth. This is the only way to restore faith in its integrity and trustworthiness. A clear statement detailing what steps will be taken to avoid future data breaches is vital.

Taking responsibility implies that an organisation is in a position – and has the intent – to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Laying the blame at an external party’s door is essentially telling the general public that the issue is out of the company’s hands. This is a sure-fire way to lose existing members and put potential customers off engaging with your brand.

PASSING THE BUCK KEEPS YOU IN THE HEADLINES The media also see through attempts to pass the buck – and they don’t like it. In fact, a story is more likely to run and run in these cases, as journalists try to get to the bottom of the issue. Increased longevity of coverage is even more damaging to a brand and its future business – just ask Tesco.

The best approach is one of honesty, and of a proactive determi-nation to avoid the issue being repeated. Both organisations must now own the issue, apologise and promise to put things right.

Not only is this more likely to kill the story quickly, it could even be a springboard for growth. Shifting the focus from an organi-sation’s security failings to the positive action it is taking sets it apart from others in a similar position.

OPINION

Emily Dent is the PR director at crisis communications

agency Rampart PR.

This is an edited excerpt. Click here to read the

full article online.


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No quick win in overcoming price hikes

The strong US dollar over the past few quarters has influenced the dynamics of the IT industry. Many US-listed suppliers, which have posted lower earnings due to the effects of the currency exchange rate, are now making pricing corrections.

For UK and European CIOs looking at their 2016 budget, this correction means prices of PCs, mobile devices, servers and soft-ware look set to rise.

A Gartner report, entitled Building IT infrastructure on a euro budget – why your servers, software and services will cost more, warns that costs could rise by as much as 20%.

For years IT budgets have been under pressure and CIOs have needed to do more with less. As pointed out by Geoff Connell, head of ICT for oneSource – the shared IT service for London’s Havering and Newham councils – currency is yet another pressure on already bat-tered finances.

Given that currency exchange rate changes are having an impact in reducing relative spending power in regions including western Europe, a strategy to sweat IT assets and defer upgrading may prove a costly move.

CIOs who have followed the financial markets have hedged their bets, as reflected in the uplift in server sales during the first two quar-ters of 2015, according to the data from Gartner’s latest server market share report. But whether IT is bought direct or through a reseller, the currency impact will eventually be felt.

So rather than attempt to ride the storm, CIOs will need to approach 2016 projects with a different mindset. For example, considering foreign exchange rates, when would be the most cost-effective time to push through a Windows 10 or Windows Server 2012 R2 upgrade, or renew software licences?

Given the recent stock price calamity in China and its effects on world markets, keeping an eye on the dollar price will certainly help CIOs get more from their budgets. But the IT perennials of legacy modernisation, application and server consolidation, and adopting open-source alternatives, will have a more profound impact.

Hedging your bets on the financial markets may help to offset the effects of currency-driven price hikes, but the biggest saving will inevitably come from making the biggest changes, which are often slow and require major upheaval. Unfortunately there is no quick win.

Cliff Saran, managing editor (technology)

!Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs

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Gartner’s Hype Cycle offers something of a barometer for the technology trends adopted by business. In the case of data warehouse appliances, acceptance of the technology is moving well beyond the hype, says Rox-

ane Edjlali, Gartner research director in information management.In the appliance model, the supplier commits to preloading

hardware with the necessary operating system and database, all tuned to data warehouse-type workloads in advance.

Although further refinement will be necessary to optimise to the business’s specific demands, the appliance comes out of the box more attuned to the needs of a data warehouse than a generic transactional database.

“The reason they have been well received is they are tuned and balanced for this job,” says Edjlali. “They have become quite com-mon as a data warehouse solution to the point that, as of 2014, Gartner moved them out of the Hype Cycle and into mainstream. Customers understand the advantages and are adopting them as part of data warehouse modernisation.”

FINE-TUNE PERFORMANCEThe other advantage for users is that, as opposed to buying database, operating systems, management software and hard-ware from different suppliers, buyers of the appliance get one supplier to deal with to help fine-tune performance or iron out problems, says Edjlali.

Apart from this benefit, suppliers will have different advantages depending on customer requirements, she says. Information on the market share of data warehouse appliance suppliers is scarce.

APPLIANCES MOVE WELL BEYOND THE HYPE

Simplicity and big data are driving appliance adoption while suppliers strive to integrate cloud services, writes Lindsay Clark

BUYER’S GUIDE TO BIG DATA APPLIANCES | PART 3 OF 3

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Gartner has Oracle, Teradata, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and HP in the “leaders” segment of its Magic Quadrant research. ServerWatch has Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 and SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise as the respective top four in the data-base management system markets, although this also includes transactional databases.

However the market share is measured, more recent drivers for the adoption of appliance technology in the data warehouse comes in the form of big data and demand for analyt-ics performance more generally. Firms are looking to incorporate unstructured data, such as click-streams or social media com-ments, in an environment they understand.

Although distributed file storage system Hadoop can help store this data, it is open source and many users are unfamiliar with it. Using an appliance to incorporate Hadoop into existing approaches to management, query and analytics is appealing to users, says Edjlali.

“The addition of Hadoop into the appliance is interesting,” she adds. “This is extending the data ware-house appliance to support big data scenarios.”

Microsoft, Pivotal, Oracle and Teradata all allow data scientists to query unstructured data held in Hadoop using familiar SQL rather than less well-known MapReduce, the

original approach to querying Hadoop, Edjlali says. IBM allows users to query Hadoop in SQL via its BigInsight console which integrates Netezza with Hadoop, while SAP also supports SQL on Hadoop.

The only restriction on the adoption of appli-ances for data warehouse may be budget and size of organisation, adds Edjlali. “There are smaller use-case solutions that may be better suited for

hardware and software to be bought separately. There are also reasons within the organisation, depending on the way IT is man-aged. Sometimes there are different groups managing hardware and software, so having everything in one box does not fit with the IT approach.”

Matthew Aslett, research director for data platforms and analyt-ics at analyst firm 451, says a downside of the appliance approach is high cost and restrictions on technology choices, which will be dictated by the primary supplier. But these must be offset against the cost of doing it in-house.

“There might be some advantages having separate hardware and data-base suppliers, but I think the com-plexity of configuring and deploying all that yourself would be high,” he says.

In any case, businesses can choose analytics tools to suit their needs away from the main data warehouse appliance supplier, says Aslett.

continued on page 23

“THE ADDITION OF HADOOP IS EXTENDING THE DATA WAREHOUSE

APPLIANCE TO SUPPORT BIG DATA SCENARIOS”

ROXANE EDJLALI, GARTNER

BUYER’S GUIDE

!Enterprises are using SAP Hana for in-memory data marts and SAP Business Warehouse implementations that integrate with other data warehouses.


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BUYER’S GUIDE

Key suppliers

IBMIn 2009, IBM acquired Netezza, a company credited with kick-starting the data warehouse appliance market. But now it is trying to augment this hardware offer with cloud services.

Heidi O’Mahoney, IBM UK analytics director, says this approach is designed to allow customers to experiment with new approaches to analytics without capital investment, providing an early assessment of return on investment.

“You can load data onto the cloud and quantify the value of those analytics,” she says. This approach, supported by IBM’s DashDB offer, applies to traditional data stores as well as the dis-tributed file system Hadoop. Businesses can then decide whether to take the system back in-house or continue in the cloud.

OracleWith its Exadata database and Exalytics discovery platform, Oracle can help users scrutinise structured data and unstruc-tured data held in Hadoop in the same system, both using SQL, says John Abel, engineered systems and public technology cloud leader for the UK, Ireland and Israel.

Abel also argues that because Oracle’s public cloud and private cloud use the same management tools and service categories as the appliances, it lowers the barrier to adopting data warehouse cloud service.

SAPAlthough SAP appears in the data warehouse market with its SybaseIQ database, historically it has mainly been a supplier of enterprise business applications. The company argues that appli-ances exploiting its Hana in-memory technology can bring data analytics closer to live business data.

Mark Darbyshire, chief technology adviser at SAP UK and Ireland, says: “People are talking about using data as an asset, not just for analysis. They have started to realise that it should take part in your business processes.”

TeradataTeradata’s Astor discovery appliances is another technology that offers access to Hadoop unstructured data and data in relational databases in the same system, both queried in SQL.

But Teradata also helps users to fine-tune their appliance to the demand profile, says Mark Perrett, industry consultant: “Some users have limited, predictable access, such as a defined number of users accessing data for regulatory reporting. They can buy something that optimises storage rather than processing power. At the other end, we had an insurance customer that wanted to open the data warehouse to their customers to check their claims online. That could be 10,000 concurrent users. That is when single query response time becomes very important.”



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The real choice is not between an appliance and a mix-and-match approach to in-house hardware and software. It is between an on-premise appliance and an external cloud, he points out.

“You could argue that what Netezza did by introducing the appliance in the 1990s, Amazon is now doing with [cloud data ware-house] Redshift in the last couple of years. The ease of adoption and pre-configuration that was only available with the appliance is now in a cloud service,” he says.

The main suppliers understand this dichotomy and avoid forcing customers to make a choice by providing seamless cloud services aligned to their approach to data structure and management in the appliance.

USING BIG DATA APPLIANCESUK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse was concerned about poor performance and availability of its data warehouse making it hard to measure retail business activities.

It worked with IBM to replace its Oracle Database environment with IBM’s PureData System for Analytics, powered by Netezza, the company says.

The system is designed to support decision-making in the com-pany’s retail division – which supports store, supply chain and insurance operations.

Carphone Warehouse says it has achieved a reduction of more than 50% in the time to market for new business intelligence services; up to 1,200 times faster performance; increased profitability through new revenue streams; and a reduction in costs.

Windows manufacturer Velux is another company that uses a data

appliance. This time, it chose SAP Hana in a bid to create a “single version of the truth”.

In a search for faster processing, the firm moved to SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, both powered by SAP Hana’s in-memory technology, with business planning and rolling forecasting capabilities.

The result was query times reduced to four or five seconds, a 300% increase in usage of business intelligence tools and a tran-sition from annual to monthly forecasting and planning.

Appliances have grown from a new product segment to the mainstream choice for data warehouse hardware and software. Only businesses whose requirements are too small, or that have extensive in-house skills should consider choosing hardware and software independently.

Meanwhile, the growth of cloud services for the data warehouse is adding another dimension to the decision-making about how to support the growing demands for data and analytics services to the business.

BUYER’S GUIDE

“THE EASE OF ADOPTION AND PRE-CONFIGURATION THAT WAS ONLY

AVAILABLE WITH THE APPLIANCE IS NOW IN A CLOUD SERVICE”

MATTHEW ASLETT, 451


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Wearable technology for consumers has hit the headlines in recent months, greatly assisted by the Apple Watch. But many industry commen-tators believe it is in the enterprise market that

such devices will really flourish over the next few years.While wearable devices must fight their corner in aesthet-

ics as well as function to make a mark on the consumer market, Brent Blum, global director of wearables for Accenture, points out: “No-one goes to work and says, ‘My welding mask isn’t cool enough.’ So there are very different design considerations.”

Nevertheless, when it comes to implementing wearable tech-nology for business use, organisations have much deeper pockets than the average consumer, who is likely to baulk at the cost of smartglasses and smartwatches unless there is a clear use case – the most popular at the moment is health and fitness.

In the enterprise space, however, there are use cases aplenty. Although the market is still in the early adoption phase, with most companies trialling rather than implementing the technology, this situation is expected to change over the next year or two.

BUSINESS APPLICATIONSFor instance, one European telecommunications organisation is employing smartglasses for fieldwork. The company has some-thing of a nuanced problem in that both its infrastructure and a significant part of its personnel are ageing. Not only are different chunks of the infrastructure under almost constant repair while upgrade work takes place, but its workforce is starting to retire – taking their skills and knowledge with them.

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY PROVES ITS BUSINESS CASE

Wearable technology could enter the enterprise soon, with hands-free military and police pilot projects already underway, writes Cath Everett

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The firm is sending junior engineers into the field with smartglasses, which display a series of tasks for them to complete in sequence. They can access a knowledge base and connect to experts in real time, using the devices if they hit problems.

Another example is the Metropolitan Police’s deployment of body cameras, roughly the size of a cigarette packet. The aim is to try to rebuild public trust in a force that has been embroiled in controversy following incidents such as the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as a suspected terrorist; and officers’ removal of their identification numbers when policing the G20 protests in 2009.

Despite some privacy concerns, a trial involving 1,000 officers across 10 London boroughs seems to have shown the value of the cameras in scrutinising police behaviour. The cameras were also helpful in gathering evidence of offences, leading to more early guilty pleas and accelerating the justice process. As a result, most of the Met’s 20,000 uniformed officers will now be issued with the cameras by March 2016.

THE PROS AND CONS OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGYBut Blum says wearable technology really comes into its own in key business areas, where people need their hands free to work and to store biometric data for access control, such as opening doors and starting forklift trucks.

He also foresees a time when monitors could be inserted into the brim of a hard hat or pilot’s cap to monitor brainwaves as a way to determine factors such as stress levels and tiredness.

“Airline pilots are required to have a certain level of rest, but different people naturally require dif-ferent amounts,” says Blum. “So you could assess who should be flying, based on who is the most psychologically capable at any given time. Or, if you discover that everyone is suffering from stress, perhaps you could offer them some training.”

Despite benefits such as cost reduction and increased operational efficiency, Saverio Romeo, principal analyst at Beecham Research, warns that wearable technology presents challenges. Most devices do not come integrated with each other or with enterprise systems, so organisations must do that them-selves or hire third parties to help.

SAP has teamed with Vuzix, for instance, to create augmented reality glasses aimed at manufacturers, logistics companies and service technicians.

The smartglasses connect with a smartphone to access data, which is displayed on a screen in front of the eyes of the wearer, who interacts with it using voice commands. Possible users include warehouse staff, who can find products on their pick list with them, scan the barcode to ensure they have the right item and confirm it has been picked.

Another issue is security. Romeo explains: “Wearables are one more element in the internet of things, which means they are open to attack. So, if they’re part of an enterprise IT network, security has to be a strong consideration. Without a proper device man-agement approach, they can become a weak point because, at the moment, they’re very hackable.”

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

!An employee in a disciplinary action could use a wearable

device to surreptitiously record the meeting – and then go on to use the recording in legal

proceedings.


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Even though implementations can prove quite expensive, as these are still early days, he is confident the market will take off.

“I believe the number of deployments will increase at quite a decent pace due to benefits such as reduced operational costs, increased efficiency and the like. But while the market will grow, not everyone will be using the technology – it won’t take over the world,” he says.

APPLE WATCH: FEW APPS IN AN IMMATURE MARKET“From a business point of view, the thing that the Apple Watch is most useful for is travel,” says Kevin Linsell, director of strat-egy and architecture at managed services provider and cloud integrator Adapt. “Rather than stare at a phone screen, you can call up a map or directions and it buzzes on your wrist and will say turn left or right. It works well,” he says.

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY

MOD’s Project Hearts virtual reality training programme aims to save lives

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) will roll out a virtual reality headset-based system over the next two years to train mem-bers of the British Army in triaging wounded personnel on the battlefield. The six-month-long pilot – entitled Project Hearts – started in autumn 2014. The MOD wanted to use off-the-shelf technology to prepare soldiers for handling trauma.

The system is based on the Unity games engine, which includes maps and audio support, the Oculus Rift VR headset and back-end decision-making software developed by Plextek Consulting – the intelligence behind the system.

Soldiers look around with the headset and move across the virtual battlefield with a hand-held controller to find a casu-alty suffering life-threatening injuries.

Every soldier receives training as a field medic and the aim is to use the technology to supplement classroom learning.

Colette Johnson, Plextek’s medical business development manager, explains: “If someone is doing triage and the virtual patient starts to bleed internally – but they don’t recognise the signs – the software will go to the next decision tree and change the patient’s reactions. Their colour will worsen, their blood pressure drop, etc, until the correct action is taken.”

A role-play operator can introduce physiological complica-tions such as increasing respiratory distress or environmental hazards such as enemy fire. Each session takes about 20 minutes, which includes two minutes to set the virtual scene and 90 seconds to close it down by having the patient taken away by a helicopter evacuation team.

Once the system has been fully implemented and rolled out to the Army’s 100,000-plus personnel, the goal is to modify it and introduce it to Royal Air Force and Royal Navy personnel.



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Another pleasing novelty is that the watch will work as a clicker for Mac-based presentations – you simply tap on the screen.

What works less well is the lack of general app support and the inability to view HTML and web content. SMS messages, tweets, iMessages and emails are picked up in text format only, which tends to be in the wrong colour: “For example, blue on a black screen – which isn’t easy to read,” says Linsell.

Nor is it possible to compose or reply to emails; you can only mark them as unread. Moreover, while the watch can be set up to display phone apps on its screen, it is “quite slow and so the screen times out – which is a bit annoying”, Linsell says.

But he acknowledges these are still early days, not least because Apple has only just released a software development kit for third-party developers, meaning Apple Watch apps – business or oth-erwise – are sparse on the ground. He says the watch “is more of a lifestyle device, for things like exercise”, than a business tool.

“I don’t really see a lot of corporate applications. Apple Pay and contactless payment might add something and I could see it being used for security purposes to access buildings or enable equipment. But so far, buying an Apple Watch seems more like a personal rather than a business choice to me,” Linsell says.

CASE STUDY: COGNIZANT ICOMMIT2FIT PILOT PROJECTTo make wearable technology employee health programmes sustainable, it is not enough merely to give staff access to fitness data. To really get results, the human touch needs to be applied in the shape of weekly coaching meetings with healthcare profes-sionals, which include assigning individuals specific goals.

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A wearable device to measure a pilot’s brainwaves could be

used to determine factors such as

stress levels


http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Why-companies-need-to-start-developing-apps-for-Apple-Watch


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These are the key findings of a pilot programme called iCom-mit2Fit, undertaken by the US arm of business and technology services provider Cognizant between January and July 2014.

The pilot involved 127 staff members using FitBit activity track-ers to capture the number of steps they walked each day. They logged their daily food intake and uploaded all the data each week to a HealthActivate portal, and took part in weekly phone-based coaching sessions that used the information recorded.

Participants received personalised emails with observations and advice from coaches. For example, if they were meeting their step goals but not losing the desired amount of weight, the coach might examine their food log and suggest an alternative diet.

Personalised coaching made a marked difference to perfor-mance. The 15% of participants who did not miss a single coach-ing session took 54% more steps and lost twice as much weight as those who kept only 95% of their coaching appointments. Yet they, in turn, took 70% more steps and lost three times as much weight as the 15% at the other end of the scale who missed three or more coaching meetings.

Euan Davis, European lead for Cognizant’s Centre for the Future of Work, says: “You have to be careful how people react to the information they receive and make sure they don’t start drawing conclusions, as it can cause anxiety. So the human element is very important to ground everything and ensure it works. The key is having regular touchpoints to help staff keep to their targets.”

The company now intends to expand its programme to its 1,400 workers across the US and is considering whether to make it avail-able as a commercial service worldwide.

The consumer-oriented Apple Watch boasts eye-catching designs – but has too few applications to prove a business case just yet

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY


http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/outsourcing/2014/07/watch-out-for-a-businesses-harnessing-you-personal-cloud-halo.html


Application programming interfaces (APIs) seem to be all the rage at the moment. Everyone is going on about the “API economy” as if the world will fall apart unless something is done now to manage APIs.

Are APIs that important? Well, yes and no, as any analyst will be happy to tell you.

We first need to look at why APIs are needed, how they can be used and how they are more important now than in the past.

Historically, applications were focused on a single area of the business. HR systems looked after employment issues, CRM sys-tems looked after customer interactions and ERP systems helped manage the running of certain back-office functions.

Each was, to a certain extent, self-contained – they created data, they had reporting systems included in them, people got on with using them and all was fine.

BETTER ANALYSISExcept it wasn’t. Each system created its own data silo. Organisations realised they needed to bring these data silos together so better analysis could be carried out, and this led to enterprise application integration (EAI) and enterprise service buses (ESBs), enabling a certain amount of interaction between the various enterprise applications in use.

This approach required a way of dealing with each application – and so the API was required.

The basic idea of an API is that the owner of one application creates a set of access methods that can be called by another application. The API is documented and, if used correctly, creates

THE API ECONOMY – OR THE API TOWER OF BABEL?

Application programming interfaces promise to open up back-office systems to the business and third parties.

Clive Longbottom assesses their impact

APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACES

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a level of abstraction between the two applications. Through this means, changes can be made to either application without affecting the way they interact.

This need has become even more important with the increasing use of various mobile devices. The need for the “system of engagement”, (the man-ner in which a user creates and interoperates with the data), and the “system of record”, (the way the data is stored and managed), has to be effectively abstracted, so that changes can be made to the system of engagement at the rate now expected by users, without the system of record needing to be changed as well.

So far, so good. However, many APIs contain undocumented functions. For example, application owners may reserve certain functions for themselves for greater functionality or performance, putting third parties at a disadvantage. Other APIs can be badly written and contain vulnerabilities that hackers can use.

Where application programmers write directly to the API them-selves, the problems that arose around the previous attempt to create composite applications with a service-oriented archi-tecture (SOA) repeat themselves. SOA was meant to stop the use of tightly coupled code (code that cre-ates a dependency between two functions), instead freeing up the services to be loosely coupled and replaced at will.

But many SOA-based applications

still carried forward a tightly coupled approach – and it looks like the same problems will carry for-ward as users code between discrete APIs, rather than coding for multiple APIs.

To muddy the waters, cloud computing has come along. For cloud to really deliver on its promise, a completely different approach to what constitutes an application is needed. Instead of using a CRM or

an ERP system, cloud provides the capability to move to a “com-posite application” – one that is built up from a set of specific functions pulled together to meet the needs of a specific process.

These functions could be in-house, in a private cloud or in a public cloud. They need to be brought together in a fast and effec-tive manner – and this can only really be done through APIs.

But what happens if the APIs are poor or not open? Can you take the risk that the composite application will have security issues, or that the application will not work because the API calls being used have not been documented properly?

This is where API management comes in. Many suppliers have software offerings in this market, and many more will probably

enter the market as the reality of cloud computing kicks in.

The idea with API management is that the software manages authori-sation and security between the calling and responding functions, as well as managing audit and infor-mation transformations (making


! Integrating systems and data could pay off big. But publishing an API requires a lifetime commitment to

monitoring its use.

FOR CLOUD TO REALLY DELIVER ON ITS PROMISE, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT APPROACH TO WHAT CONSTITUTES

AN APPLICATION IS NEEDED


http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500248118/Businesses-invest-in-software-to-fuel-digitisation-strategy

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sure that the way the calling function submits its calls is the way the responding function can understand it). Many systems also provide portals that can manage billing and self-service, but these can be viewed as “nice-to-haves”, rather than necessities.

So who are the main players? CA acquired Layer 7 in 2013, which has provided it with strong API management capabili-ties. IBM’s API Management Service has capabilities that enable organisations to bring together functions across a range of plat-forms, including IBM’s own SoftLayer environment.

STRONG CAPABILITIESWSO2 is an open-source API management system that is expandable and has strong capabilities. Apigee is proving popu-lar and has a free API creation system with its Edge product. Fiorano Software is taking the composite application approach directly, using “microservices” as its basic terminology for the various functions it can pull together.

Intel, which acquired Mashery in 2013, is an API management supplier, but it probably is not top of many people’s API manage-ment shopping list. Akana (previously SOA Software) is highly regarded, and has a good history in dealing with the first genera-tion of loosely coupled SOA architectures.

Dell, with its acquisition of Boomi, gained an API integration and management capability that it is playing to a good extent with its cloud aggregation offer.

Other players include Axway, MuleSoft and some of the older ESB API management suppliers such as Tibco, and ETL suppliers such as Informatica.


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As with any new(ish) market, the problem is apparent – there are a lot of suppliers fighting for position and all are taking different routes. There are few standards in the area, so the wrong choice of tool could leave a buyer unable to embrace new func-tions or systems, and needing to reverse out of one product and move into another to keep up with the changes in the way applications are constructed and used.

It is therefore important to make the right choice – or at least, the least wrong choice. Make sure that the chosen API manage-ment tool is flexible and has a broad set of connectors and proven methods of accessing both the data and business logic held in existing enterprise applications.

GOOD ECOSYSTEMLook to suppliers that have a good ecosystem built around their offering, with channel providers who can offer the bespoke work to provide API management for domain- or company-specific applications. Make sure the tool not only provides a means of making APIs work, but also monitors the APIs and applies secu-rity and audit capabilities across the total composite application.

Where hybrid cloud systems are being used, look for systems that can manage billing, thus enabling the real-time use of com-mercial functions in an ad hoc manner. In many cases, this will be a case of seeking service providers that offer API management capabilities that can work with your own systems. Check that the

data they provide is understandable and usable in your environment, and make sure the requests sent by your system will be understood by the service provider’s system.

The market for such API manage-ment tools is still young. There is a need for more maturity in most of

the offerings out there. Many suppliers will find it hard to evolve their tools and will be left by the wayside. Others will come in with new approaches, such as API management as a service, and put pressure on the early movers to become more fleet of foot.

The biggest issue for users is to avoid the many traps there could be along the way towards the API economy. Assuming that all applications and functions will use the same APIs and capabilities is the road to ruin. Developers will continue to create their own APIs under the misapprehension that theirs is the best possible way. It makes far more sense to assume that different applica-tions and functions will move their APIs along at different speeds and to apply a flexible API management tool over the top.

Ensuring that all the different APIs can work together requires a system that can act like Douglas Adams’ proverbial Babel Fish: it needs to be able to accept anything in and make sure that what comes out is understandable to the system dependent on it. This is where skill and domain expertise are required – and this is where suppliers will win or lose.

Clive Longbottom is founder of analyst Quocirca.


THE BIGGEST ISSUE FOR USERS IS TO AVOID THE MANY TRAPS

THERE COULD BE ALONG THE WAY TOWARDS THE API ECONOMY


http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Why-the-CIO-should-loosen-the-grip-on-enterprise-IT

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Authorities restrict innovation in captive marketThey say whatever happens in the US in technology terms hits the UK soon after. It is time, therefore, that UK delivery companies take note of what is happening around the use of drones across the pond, as the business opportunities become increasingly clear.

Two innovators in the US have created a busi-ness line in supplying customers that are unable to move around much and are located in hard-to-reach places. This is great for consumers, and the even better news for delivery companies is that it is a captive market.

However, they do have a slight legal hurdle to overcome. The first attempt to deliver porn and drugs to clients in a Maryland prison, using a Yuneec Typhone drone, was sabotaged by the police.

To rub salt into the wounds, the authori-ties posted bail for one of the chaps at

$250,000, rather than offering startup funding.

One IT innovation analyst claimed authorities have a vested interest in the

current delivery monopoly. “You need to question who they are really trying to protect,” he said.

DOWNTIME

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