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Is Google ready for enterprise IT?

RISING CORPORATE ADOPTION SHOWS GOOGLE IS NO LONGER JUST A CHEAP AND CHEERFUL ALTERNATIVE

TO TRADITIONAL ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

4-10 June 2013 | ComputerWeekly.com

BACKGROUND IMAGE: HEMERA/THINKSTOCK GOOGLE IMAGE: VALENTYNA SAGAN/WIKICOMMONS

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THE WEEK IN IT

Online securityUK masters students to help build trust in digital securityThe UK national Cyber Security Challenge and 15 UK universities are calling on masters students for ideas on improv-ing confidence in, and the security of, the internet economy and digital society. The Cyber Integrity and Meaning of Trust Competition offers winners an opportu-nity to present their ideas to employers looking to secure their online systems and boost customer confidence.

IT recruitmentIT professionals more motivated by engaging projects than big pay rewards IT professionals are more motivated by the prospect of interesting projects than a large compensation package, according to a survey from recruitment consultant Robert Walters. Its Career Lifestyle Survey found that 57% of IT workers regard an interesting job or project “very important”, compared with only 37% who consider remuneration and benefits “very important”.

Mobile networksUS mobile networks 75% faster than EUMobile networks in the US are far more advanced than those across Europe, according to the mobile operator asso-ciation GSMA. A report from the group claimed the speed of data networks across the Atlantic were 75% faster than in coun-tries in the European Union and predicted this gulf would continue to widen.

Healthcare ITNHS publishes £1.2bn GP IT frameworkThe Department of Health has announced a £1.2bn framework for GP Systems of Choice, a scheme that offers central fund-ing for GP clinical IT systems. The frame-work will last for two years, with a maxi-mum of 100 suppliers, and aims to provide a range of GP IT systems and related products and services to general practices in the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.

Cyber securityMore than half of UK citizens fearful of nation-state cyber attacksA survey has revealed that 53% of UK citizens are concerned about other coun-tries launching damaging cyber attacks against the UK. The survey of more than 1,000 UK consumers by security and compliance firm Tripwire also revealed that 40% of respondents feel more vul-nerable to cyber attacks now than they did a year ago.

Internet infrastructureHalf of the worldwide population will be connected to the internet by 2017Nearly half of the world’s population will have access to the internet by 2017, according to Cisco. The networking firm predicted 3.6 billion individuals across the globe will be online in the next five years, leading to a trebling of data going across networks compared with today’s volume.

MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMAN IN UK IT 2013: VOTE NOW

Computer Weekly has launched its second annual search for the most influential woman in UK IT. The Women in IT awards aim to focus on role models and discuss the vital part that female IT leaders will play in making a dif-ference to the future of IT.

A judging panel of employers and IT leaders from across the industry has selected a shortlist of the 25 most influential women in the UK IT community. Readers are invited to help select who should be recognised as the most influential woman in UK IT 2013.

The winners will be announced at an event on 4 July.

access the latest it news via rss feed

› Click here to cast your vote

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Mobile networksKroes pledges European telecoms legislation for 2014Neelie Kroes called European politicians to arms recently to encourage them to back legislation to cut costs for mobile users and ensure a free internet. The vice-president of the European Commission, responsible for the digital agenda, claimed the European Union needed “a different and very politi-cal discussion about delivering a telecoms single market” across the continent.

Cloud computingRoyal Opera House fine-tunes online booking process with AWS cloudThe Royal Opera House has improved customers’ experience of booking tickets online with a public cloud infrastructure that eliminates the need for a virtual “waiting room” window on its website. Scheduling about 500 performances every year, the website provides a gate-way for customers to book tickets for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera.

Data breachDrupal resets one million user passwords after hacker breachOpen source content management platform Drupal has reset the passwords for almost one million accounts after hackers gained access to its systems. According to the Drupal Association, the breach was the result of an attack that exploited vulnerability in an undisclosed third-party application.

IT servicesIndian service provider growth drops by a third in 2012Indian IT services firms suffered a dra-matic fall in sales in 2012, compared with the previous year, but still far exceeded the average growth rate across the indus-try. According to Gartner, the top five Indian suppliers’ revenues grew at an average of 13.3%, compared with 21.8% in 2011. The industry average growth was 2% in 2012, compared with 7% in 2011.

Mobile technologySupermarkets and banks hold the key to mass adoption of mobile paymentsThe use of mobile devices to pay for items and services instead of cash or cards would be widely adopted if supermarkets and banks were to offer an application-based solution. In a study conducted by payment provider Vocalink, over half of UK smartphone users said they would be encouraged to switch to mobile payments if supermarkets offered a service.

Cyber securityChina plans first digital war gamesChina’s state media say the country’s military plans to hold its first digital war games. A report by the official Xinhua news agency said the exercise will “test new types of combat forces including units using digital technology amid efforts to adjust to infor-mationalised war”. n

DEMAND FOR IT PROFESSIONALS TO GROW IN 2013

Source: CompTia

7%

69%

24%

56%

5%

39%

Decrease number of IT staff

Increase number of IT staff

No change

Change in 2012Anticipated change in 2013

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ANALYSIS

Pearson integrates

Google Enterprise and

Office 365

IaaS product Google

Compute Engine made

available

The enterprise business is core to Google’s future. Its approach to col-laboration has potential benefits. But

are IT directors ready to give it a go? Google is known for its software as service

tools, which include collaboration and the Google+ social network. Big Query provides business intelligence in the cloud and it recently introduced the Google Compute Engine for infrastructure as a service.

Academic publisher Pearson has embraced the Google model to deliver collaboration software with greater flexibility than using Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Prior to Office 365 and Skype, Microsoft collaboration was based on the Windows platform. While Microsoft worked well in a traditional IT-centric view of desktop ser-vices, the world has moved on.

Users share documents on cloud services like DropBox and other consumer-focused online storage services; they use their own Android and iOS powered smartphones and tablets to connect to corporate email.

Danny Attias, CIO at performance improvement firm Grass Roots Group, moved the company from Outlook in February 2012 because he wanted to avoid the cost and complexity of on-premise email.

The group, which has 1,400 employees globally, now uses Gmail. It used solutions provider AppsCare to replicate all user inboxes and folder structures into Google.

Soon after, they began using Google Docs for collaboration and Google Hangouts for online conferencing. The company is also using a number of third-party apps from the Google Play marketplace.

Attias said: “There are at least three tools that are integrated into our environment: Smartsheet provides real-time project

planning; Lucid Chart is a technical dia-gramming generation tool and Insight.ly offers a simple CRM [customer relationship management].”

He said software roll-out and licence man-agement for these cloud tools is easy: “There is a central pool of licences so it is impossible to be under-licensed. There is also no need to deploy any software. They just appear in the More menu in the Google environment.”

The products are not from well-known sup-pliers. Attias’ due diligence process involved looking up the number of downloads, check-ing user references and calling the help desk.

Early adopterFive years ago, Rentokil was one of the first organisations to deploy Google Apps on a global scale for email and collaboration. The first Android phones were coming to market and it was still early days for Google Apps,

“We Were trying to put a consumer product into a traditional enterprise and We have groWn up together”pete shorney, rentokil

VALENTYNA SAGAN/WIKICO

MM

ON

SGoogle is now a legitimate alternative to Microsoft in collaboration software. Cliff Saran reports

Is Google ready for the enterprise?

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Location-based workSutton & East Surrey Water is another organisation running Google’s business software. It has deployed Google Map Coordinate, which provides geo-location based scheduling for repairing water leaks.

Jeremy Heath, network manager, said that working with Google is different to traditional

software companies, in terms of technical support. “With Google, you do everything online,” he said. “When I came across an issue, I raised it online and I got an answer back in 10 minutes. The response actually came from Australia, which shows support is 24/7 around the world.”

What makes Sutton & East Surrey Water significant is that its application takes advan-tage of the Google API (application program-ming interface) to create a line-of-business application using geo-location

Similarly, Transport for London (TfL) has revamped its website, using the API in Google Maps to help commuters get around.

“We needed to create a good user experi-ence,” said Phil Young, head of online at TfL. The new site will use cookie-based person-alisation with mapping integrated into the journey planning application.

Such applications show that Google is no longer just a cheap and cheerful alternative to “proper” enterprise software. IT leaders are increasingly finding that Google now offers a viable alternative to Microsoft for collaboration software. n

which Google used to target consumers with a free alternative to Microsoft Office.

Pete Shorney, IT global operations director at Rentokil, explains that both Rentokil and Google learnt from the experience: “We were trying to put a consumer product into a tradi-tional enterprise and have grown up together.”

Since 2009, this relationship has changed. “Maturity has meant that Google now recog-nises enterprise IT and IT departments as its customers,” he said.

IT at Rentokil needed to adapt. Users needed to migrate to the new platform, but IT needed to work in a more Google-like way.

“We had a major shift in how we manage Google as a supplier,” said Shorney.

Unlike most traditional IT suppliers, Google does not work at the same pace as enter-prise IT, so the concept of long release cycles does not exist. “You cannot fight the tide of innovation through change management,” Shorney said.

Traditionally, change management was to ensure an upgrade did not take the server down. “Since Google Apps is a web-based software service we are never taking func-tionality away, just adding more,” he said.

However, Shorney admits they have expe-rienced a couple of issues recently, when Google dropped functionality. He said: “Our relationship is such we get a heads-up, but in the early days ,the notification process was not robust. Stuff was being switched off two days after we had been notified.”

Now the notification occurs earlier. “Google has two release tracks – rapid release and scheduled release,” he said.

Shorney highlights the importance of investing time to get users involved: “We targeted the roll-out on a division by division basis. Although we are UK-based, we trialled 700 users, starting in the US.”

The trial helped the IT team understand how to roll out Google: “A dedicated team of

Google admins – three to four per location – engaged with the business

divisions,” he said. The team went around the Rentokil sites wearing Google T-shirts to provide users desk-side support. “Over a week most users become confident,” said Shorney.

› Haymarket dumps Exchange 2003 for Google› Lessons from going global with Google

› Google lacks enterprise credibility

“With google, you do everything online. When i came across an issue i raised it online and i got an ansWer back in 10 minutes”Jeremy heath,

sutton & east surrey Water

ANALYSIS

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The authors of a business book on lean analytics claim the technique is set to become the norm and will be taught in business schools. Brian McKenna reports

How lean analytics has the potential to change business decision-making

Attending to the “one metric that really matters” is one principle of a lean analytics approach propounded by

Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz, co-authors of Lean Analytics.

Croll argues that there is afoot a “funda-mental shift in how businesses are run and how decisions are made”. And despite the affinity between their Lean Analytics book and Eric Ries’ Lean Startup, Croll says this is “not just a shift for startups but for busi-ness decision-making. It will be considered normal in three years and required curricu-lum in business schools in five”.

Montreal-based Croll is the founder of Solveforinteresting.com and has been involved in a slew of events, including O’Reilly’s Strata and Techweb’s Cloud Connect. In 2000, he co-founded Coradiant, a “user experience management company” acquired by BMC Software in 2011.

Testing business ideasAt the heart of what he and Yoskovitz call “lean analytics” is a democratisation of data, underpinned by cloud and social media technologies. They argue it is now much more possible to try out business hypotheses quickly, and find out who really cares about a company’s product.

He gives the example of San Francisco-based Lit Motors, the maker of a fully-enclosed electric motorcycle: “The risky part of that was ‘who will care?’ It took its $700,000 seed investment, built a proto-types showroom, watched people play with the prototypes and got pre-orders.”

Startup entrepreneurs have a “bias to build” that blinds them to using data to find out what people will buy, says Croll.

“Making what you can sell sounds like common sense, but think about the peo-ple who start companies – for them, any

prediction of the future that does not sound unreasonable is not useful,” he says. “Founders by definition are people who like to build things, and who have an unusual view of today, because they need to envi-sion something different. So they will reject popular feedback and have a bias towards building things they want to build.”

Asking the right questionsAs a corrective to this entrepreneurial cognitive bias towards ignoring data, the two authors are running a lean analytics Geckoboard workshop, on 7 June in the East End of London, at which Croll says they intend to “bring a broad range of examples of people applying data-driven analytical thinking in business to find the right product for the right market more quickly”.

“But this does not just apply to small start-ups. There is a subversive style of [iterative] thinking here that is not taught in traditional business schools,” he adds.

“Traditionally the MBA would be the decision-maker and the business analyst would deliver a requested report. The former is now exploring the data for himself or herself. A key

Croll: Lean Analytics is “not just a shift for startups but for business decision-making”

Business applications,

data analytics can make

business lean

Get your copy of Lean

anaLytics

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business and you are losing a quarter of cus-tomers per year. Is that good or bad? Losing 2% of customers per month in a SaaS busi-ness means that most stick around for four years. That’s good.”

Croll’s advice for enterprise IT is to stop jealously protecting technology that is not so precious any more: “It was designed for a world where computers were scarce. Now they are abundant and we make money around it, not from it. It’s like being an author [of a business book] – you make money because you have a book, not so much from the book.” n

shift is democratisation of analysis tools that are more interactive,” says Croll.

“The business leader of tomorrow is less the person who can persuade others to act in the absence of information, and more the person who asks good questions, recognising that their gut feel is just a hypothesis to be tested. The business has to tolerate them asking questions. In the past, the person asking ques-tions all the time was just annoying,” he says.

Data-driven lean startupCroll speaks of a logical sequence for a data-driven lean startup. Find 100 people who care about your product and make them stick around; get virality; make some money; invest to acquire new customers; then grow the busi-ness more conventionally with a more expan-sive sales and marketing organisation.

And so, a new restaurant business would avoid expensive marketing and making fancy menu cards upfront, instead experimenting with different menus, and would move for-ward once it had hit on what was working.

“Once you’ve got the right menu, you go for virality, then control costs, spend money on ads to acquire new customers, and so on,” says Croll.

He says it is crucial to know what your key metric is: “Most people don’t know what metric to look at for their business. For exam-ple, you are a SaaS [software as a service]

“the business leader of tomorroW is less the person Who can persuade others to act in the absence of information, and more the person Who asks good questions”

INTERVIEW

Lean Analytics authors Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz say it is now possible to try out business hypotheses quickly

Data hoarding and

bias among big challenges in

big data and analytics

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CASE STUDY

Straightforward GUI and the ability to retire a device from a network made MobileIron an appealing prospect for Hamilton Fraser. Jennifer Scott reports

Insurance firm’s BYOD plan had to keep pace with security compliance

Insurance firm Hamilton Fraser has signed up with MobileIron to help it roll out a bring your own device (BYOD) strategy

across the business.The company specialises in home insur-

ance and is one of the government’s major contractors for the tenancy deposit protec-tion scheme, made compulsory in 2006, which gives both landlords and tenants an independent arbitrator to solve any disputes when moving from a rented property.

Hamilton Fraser’s main base is in Barnet, North London, where it houses 125 employ-ees. The company has a big focus on tech-nology, with 23 of its staff working in IT roles.

“My own vision centres on the fact tech-nology is always on the move,” says Pete Agathangelou, IT manager at Hamilton Fraser. “Business resilience and security is such a huge area in terms of credibility for a firm like us, for potential partners, customers and anyone we serve. That means it is very

high on my list, when I am looking at solu-tions, that they are resilient and secure.

“It is a double-edged sword. Technology moves so fast, but so do security threats, and because we are tied to government contracts we need to make sure everything is secure – especially while working towards our ISO27001 compliance,” he adds.

Supporting BYOD Agathangelou began thinking about BYOD in 2012 when he saw the office environment begin to change.

“I noticed the youngsters who work for the company on their mobile devices at lunch-time, playing games and using social net-works. Then I noticed how the devices were being used by senior managers who wanted their email on the go,” he says.

“Both these scenarios pose a risk. A dis-gruntled employee could easily send out emails uncontrolled if you aren’t careful.”

THIN

KSTO

CK

Case study: City of London

School goes wireless

Warren School

upgrades legacy IT for

BYOD and flexibility

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over a couple of months and MobileIron was the best fit.”

After deployment by ITSE, which took no more than a day and a half, the IT team was able to establish how many people were accessing the network for business and

whether they were using an approved device or circumventing the system another way.

Acceptable use policy“This was the first stage of our strategy with MobileIron,” says Agathangelou. “Now we are working on the second stage, which is tying those users down.”

Teaming up with human resources, the IT department has created an acceptable use policy and is raising awareness among staff.

Those who want to use their own devices must have an application downloaded to their mobile or tablet that will enable IT to wipe any corporate data from the device if it is lost or stolen, or wipe the entire device if the employee so wishes.

“The user policy has been accepted and, in most cases, people have been reasonably positive,” says Agathangelou. “People don’t have anything to fear – all it does is vali-date the way they access the data. The way we have handled the communications has involved marketing and explained what we are doing and why.”

Hamilton Fraser has regular contact with ITSE to keep on top of any future features it could add to its BYOD deployment. n

The IT team had already embraced mobil-ity by rolling out corporate iOS devices – iPhones and iPads – as these were both cost-effective and popular with staff.

“We had a look at what was available, and as a relatively small company the overheads were not too bad,” says Agathangelou. In contrast, the cost of a full corporate roll-out of BlackBerry devices would be difficult to justify for a small business, he adds.

However, Hamilton Fraser realised Apple devices were not the only ones employees were using on the corporate network.

“You cannot control what people are going to bring in and there is no question iOS is extremely popular, especially with our board members and the business develop-ment people,” Agathangelou says. “But, at the same time, you can’t ignore the fact Samsung is the biggest shipper of smart-phones, so Android is still a huge area for us.

“We need something that will be reliable enough to cope with whatever the industry throws at us and wanted to make sure it was not just about the price.”

Securing network accessIn September 2012, Agathangelou asked his team to draw up a list of suppliers which could help identify the size of the existing problem and find ways to tackle the issue of access to the corporate network with unau-thorised devices.

Trials began with both paid for and free solutions to see what would give the best results for Hamilton Fraser’s environment.

“The BYOD market is extremely fast mov-ing, so we knew we would have to review the strategy on an almost annual basis to make sure we were compatible with any changes,” he says.“MobileIron was not the cheapest, but the GUI [graphical user interface] was straightforward and did not have the same

delay issues as some of the others.

“The support from partner IT Security Experts

[ITSE] was excellent and features such as retiring a device from a system and it never receiving corporate email again was better than wiping it. We conducted the survey

› BYOD to force mobile operators into services› Managing BYOD endpoint security

› WatchGuard warns against security threat

“We needed something reliable enough to cope With Whatever the industry throWs at us and We Wanted to make sure it Was not Just about the price”pete agathangelou,

hamilton fraser

CASE STUDY

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Government CTO sees technology as an enabler for digital change

Liam Maxwell, the government’s first chief technology officer (CTO), has driven Whitehall’s IT transformation

agenda for several years, previously holding posts as deputy government CIO and direc-tor of ICT futures at the Cabinet Office.

During his time at the Cabinet Office Maxwell has earned a bulldog-like reputation and is famed for responding to requests for expensive IT projects by holding up a sign on his phone reading, “What is the user need?”

But providing departments have seen the light and agree that large-scale systems integrator-led projects are a thing of the past, he is keen for Whitehall to realise that the Cabinet Office is there to help it save money.

To this end, the Cabinet Office has released a set of documents aimed at providing a blueprint for CTOs redesigning Whitehall digital services in its Government Service Design Manual.

Does he see this as an aid to departments that have large IT contracts coming up for renewal? “No. A lot of departments’ con-tracts finish in the next couple of years. If you look at the chart it goes like this after 2014,” he says, drawing a steep downward curve. “And you have to ask yourself, ‘Do we want to continue spending £2,000 per employee to run things like hosting?’ Probably not.”

Some contracts may be renewed, he says, but the point is the models for delivering IT have changed. “This has been a really mov-ing field. Just three to four years ago, people were going out and buying a lot of tin, run-ning it and hooking it up with massively high-speed fibre links. And in some places the relative cost per user is extremely high. Yet now it’s available as a commodity,” he says.

The cloud has transformed everything, says Maxwell. “That is a really big cultural change. This is our way of making sure people are aware of that transition,” he says.

In the future, shared services centres will provide much of the back-office functional-ity across departments, with desktop infra-structure connectivity now a commodity. Large mainframes running the old ICL VME operating system may remain in a few big departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs, “but once you move away from that, the infrastructure can become com-moditised”, says Maxwell.

A user-need approach to technology applies internally to civil servants as much as to the public-facing piece. “That means we can start implementing some of the same reforms that we have started to put into digital public services into the technology we have,” he says.

Cultural changesMaxwell believes some departments have already built sufficient capability to take some of their previously outsourced tech-nology back in-house. “That is another key part of it – the ability to get the skills back. We spent years outsourcing our IT. And we gave all our IT people away to the private sector, so we are now getting some people back in.” The Government Digital Service is

Government CTO Liam Maxwell talks to Kathleen Hall about raising awareness of cloud services across government and taking a user-first approach to technology

G-Cloud framework the

model of the future, says

Liam Maxwell

Government departments

handed manual for digital

services redesign

CW500 interview

Maxwell: “There is a lot of confusion

about what is digital and what is IT”

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additionally building a recruitment hub to help departments re-skill.

He points to Estonia as an example of a country doing successful digital government, due to its high in-house technical expertise. “The whole point of this is to help people take charge of their own destiny and be able to be in control of their own IT,” says Maxwell.

“Part of our time also is what we call collo-quially ‘the bench’, so it’s about co-delivery, which is where we have a department saying ‘actually, we need some help’. That is a more positive and collaborative way of working,” he adds.

The term “ICT” has been dropped from the government’s lexicon, with “IT” also a fast disappearing acronym, he says. The pre-ferred language is to talk about technology as an enabler for digital change.

“ICT is redolent of the aggregation of IT, but over the past 18 months we’ve been dis-aggregating and doing exactly the opposite, which is why we have moved away from the phrase,” says Maxwell.

“Increasingly, we are talking about tech-nology because we are focusing on users’ needs.” As technology such as hosting becomes commoditised, they are turning into “technologies” rather than “IT functions” that require layers of management to run.

“‘Government as a platform’ is the approach we are using in the digital space, but it is also the approach we are using in the technology space,” says Maxwell. This involves identifying common areas that can be shared and then redesigned.

“There is a lot of confusion in some quar-ters about what is digital and what is IT – [until] you state what the nomenclature is and what things actually mean, which is

what the manual does,” he says. “Digital is

a transformation play; it is about transform-ing the business – it just happens to involve quite a lot of technology.”

Moving to digitalBreaking silos and moving to a platform approach will also be important in enabling

digital transactions – the most challeng-ing aspect of the goal to move to a digital government.

Maxwell says this is progressing at speed. “Transactions are going like gangbusters at the moment,” he says. “Digital transactions for the government are the future. The tech-nology piece is to support that. But the big priority at the moment is the transactions.”

He says the Government Service Design Manual will support the move to put 25 big transactions online across government in the next two years: “This is a key compo-nent of preparing the ground for that, and it ties in with that.”

Maxwell estimates there are around 50 individuals in CTO roles across government. But is there a danger that by appealing to this group he is preaching to the converted?

“The manual is not just for the CTO com-munity,” he says. “Our whole approach is we want to publish and be open with every-one. So this is also for senior leaders in the civil service – it’s not specifically technical, although there are some technical aspects.”

Maxwell acknowledges that change cannot be driven from the centre with a stick alone. “We are looking for feedback as well. We are very keen on peer review and being very open to people. We don’t have a monopoly on the best way of doing things,” he says. n

› Interview: Mark Hall, CIO, HM Revenue & Customs› Interview: Gwyn Thomas, CIO, Welsh Government

› Interview: Sally Howes, CIO, National Audit Office

INTERVIEW

“Just three to four years ago, people Were buying a lot of tin, running it and hooking it up With massively high-speed fibre links. in some places the relative cost per user is extremely high. yet noW it is available as a commodity”

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Those who ignore the changes in IT sector could drop off a cliff

Watching the IT industry at the moment is like reading a good crime novel. There are pieces of evidence appearing, often appar-

ently unconnected, but which all point to one ines-capable conclusion.

The difference in IT is that this is not a question of “Who done it?” but of “Who hasn’t done it?”

The nature of the disruptive change underway in the IT sector is not gradual and evolutionary, but a path to a cliff – and once you’re over that cliff there’s no going back.

It is the case in the PC market, with Dell and HP bound to the past by inertia and old business models as PC sales suffer record declines. It is happening in business too, with retailers like HMV, Comet and Blockbuster fail-ing to spot the dramatic shift to digital.

And another area the cliff is going to suddenly appear in front of a lot of suppliers is the cloud – and here is another clue to the how this one is going to play out.

Research from Morgan Stanley has predicted a dra-matic increase in revenue to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the web giant’s cloud computing operation. Morgan Stanley says AWS will reach $24bn in sales by 2022, compared with an estimated $2bn now.

Macquarie Capital, meanwhile, predicts AWS will hit $38bn revenue in five years, taking up 53% of all cloud spending. Morgan Stanley warns that suppliers of server and storage technology are likely to suffer as a result.

The only argument seems to be over just how big AWS will become, and how quickly.

It’s not just Amazon, of course – although the com-pany has a head start on its rivals.

Google is gaining growing credibility as an enterprise supplier and while its corporate revenues are relatively small today, there’s every chance they will go through a similar boom in coming years. Google will be a threat in many sectors of corporate IT.

The other difference between IT and a crime novel is that all this is entirely predictable, and you don’t need to read the final page of the book to know what is going to happen. We’ll find out “who hasn’t done it” when those suppliers fall off the cliff. n

Bryan GlickEditor in chief

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While it is important to act swiftly to forge a competitive advantage from these trends, it is also vital that choices made in applica-tion architecture and development are right — because they set an organisation on its path for the future. Tomorrow’s success-ful organisations will be defined by their choices today.

Choosing the right solutionsIn the era of the nexus, it is important that AD leaders integrate the past into their plans; with the past comes much experi-ence, much value and also much baggage. To move forward, organisations must not only integrate legacy offerings and assets, but do so in a way that reduces complex-ity and minimises their dependence on legacy thinking.

At the same time, organisations must take advantage of new, disruptive innovations in technology without creating chaos in existing applications portfolios. With more functional-ity and integration added to an organisation’s major applications, it is vital that application governance is given the attention it deserves. An application strategy that can adapt to the necessary increase in the pace of change will be a core characteristic of successful busi-nesses in the years to come.

Finally, with budget a concern, organisa-tions must use this period of change to mod-ernise their applications portfolios, review the real cost and business value of cloud, SOA and agile, and take meaningful action on choosing the right providers and negotiating the best terms and conditions from them. n

OPINION

As cloud adoption increases throughout the enterprise, moving quickly is important to gain a competitive advantage. David Mitchell Smith reports

The future of application development

Last year, cloud was one of the new trends to watch — creating new oppor-tunities and risks through a service-

oriented architecture (SOA).Cloud adoption continues to increase and

most organisations are making important decisions in executing their cloud strategies.

Not all new applications are intended for a cloud deployment, but as organisations build up their private cloud environments (adopt-ing private platform-as-a-service in their datacentres), they will look to migrate their applications to the cloud.

Furthermore, deploying an application that is not cloud-enabled over a private or public PaaS (platform as a service) can defeat all the “cloudiness” implemented in the cloud infrastructure below the application.

Another hot issue is the explosion of the mobile device market, which brings with it the need to support mobile and social appli-cations together with rapid growth in the volume, variety and velocity of data.

Internal capabilities neededIncreasing demand for mobile and multi-channel means that a rapidly increasing number of organisations need to develop an internal mobile application development (AD) capability. But productivity challenges will drive businesses towards partnering with external organisations to deliver solutions in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Gartner predicts that by 2015, mobile AD projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1. However, while mobile AD becomes a large percentage of total AD work and mobile application development platforms rapidly mature, mobile development prac-tices lack common agreement on best prac-tices and broad skills availability.

Gartner categorises the combination of information, cloud, social and mobile com-puting as a “nexus of forces”, which CIOs should consider as part of their strategy.

Video interview:

Gartner chief of research,

Chris Howard

CIO strategy for 2013

David Mitchell Smith is a vice-president and Gartner fellow

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BUYER’S GUIDE

LNT Group, which operates Ideal Care Homes, has deployed a mobile device manage-ment (MDM) system from Absolute Software to manage a fleet of iPhones.

As Computer Weekly has previously reported, LNT Group, decided to migrate from BlackBerry and develop an Apple-only estate.

Leigh Ellis, development team manager, says: “We were seeing a large increase in people who wanted to use their own iPhone and Android smartphones. The chairman wanted to give everyone a phone, which would enable staff who work at the care homes to have a two-way communication with head office”.

In December 2011, the company decided the best approach would be to standardise with iPhones. These were rolled out to 1,700 staff in June 2012.

In terms of security, Ellis says LNT Group wanted to ensure everyone could access email and certain documents securely. “We needed to set guides to determine what people could access,” Ellis explains.

THIN

KSTO

CK

Multiple operating

systems complicate

BYOD policies, but MDM helps

Integrated business services address

enterprise MDM,

analytics

Care home operator manages Apple estate with AbsoluteSoftware firm offers the right MDM solutions for LNT Group to manage a fleet of iPhones without needing individual iTunes accounts. Cliff Saran reports

BUYER’S GUIDEmobile device management part 3 of 3

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Some documents were time and location specific. For instance, document access was restricted at weekends.

“We started thinking about the constraints such as what we wanted to block and the potential problems that would arise with these security measures,” Ellis says. Most lapses in security occur when someone needs to access something that was not considered when the security strategy was drawn up. To accommodate this request, security becomes relaxed.

Finding the right providerWith the roll-out of iPhones, Ellis looked at what could be done to restrict access. He admits that in this respect, iOS was quite limited. “There was an API but it was not easy for an end-user to configure,” he says. Luckily, a search on the internet revealed there were quite a lot of MDM solutions, upwards of 37 providers. He says: “We narrowed this down to a small number that did exactly what we needed.”

In terms of feature set, the company wanted a dynamic live inventory. Previously LNT attempted to manage 100 devices on a spreadsheet, which needed to change manually, and it was not accurate.

Each device required individual hands-on attention from IT for typical maintenance requirements such as updates. This was time consuming and left the deployment vulnerable to human error and other poten-tial inconsistencies.

Ellis says LNT Group wanted MDM soft-ware that could maintain a live connection with the phone to improve manageability. “We also wanted automatic email configu-ration to push email down to the phone and we wanted to push down apps without the need to set up an iTunes account for every user, which would have been time consuming,” he says. Another requirement concerned data loss prevention: the MDM software needed to lock stolen and lost phones and enforce pass-codes to provide stricter access controls.

Ellis narrowed down the 37 to a shortlist of four. He then looked at the benefits of each product and selected Absolute Manage from Absolute Software.

Specialising in iphone managementAbsolute Software specialises in firmware-embedded endpoint security and manage-ment for computers and ultra-portable devices. Its Computrace persistence technology is embedded in the firmware of computers, netbooks and tablets from manufactures includ-ing Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.

Absolute Manage allows organisations to remotely manage and secure endpoint devices from a single console, including PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices.

One of the main reasons for going with Absolute Manage was because of how the product manages iPhone apps. Absolute Software offered app enrolment without the need for iTunes and it also gave LNT group the ability to enrol employee-owned devices, which would enable the company to offer staff the ability to use their own smartphones.

Ellis says: “It did not take very long to enrol 1,700 phones compared with other products. With 10 people, we got all the phones setup in a day and we didn’t have to plug the iPhone into a computer. All configuration was achieved over Wi-Fi.”

“it did not take very long to enrol 1,700 phones compared With other products. With 10 people, We got all the phones setup in a day and We didn’t have to plug the iphone into a computer”

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In terms of the back-end, Ellis says it was unnecessary to make changes to the firm’s Active Directory to build policies for access. Absolute Manage integrates seamlessly with the Windows Active Directory so that exist-ing employee details could be imported to Absolute Manage for consistency across the organisation so there was no need for IT to perform manual data entry.

Absolute Manage allows LNT to wirelessly configure, query and wipe or lock managed devices. For example, it provides policy-locked configuration profiles so that noncom-pliant devices (jailbroken, blacklisted apps installed) are blocked from accessing the corporate networks and email.

Ellis adds: “We used Absolute Safe to define policies based on documents.”

To support applications on the iPhone, Absolute Software provides its own app store which Ellis rebranded as the LNT Appstore. Ellis says the company uses this to distribute its own iLNT employee portal app, as well as suggest apps staff may like to use. One of these is the Facebook Page Manager app which care home managers can use to access the Facebook page of care homes.

The advantages of the appThe iLNT employee self-service app enables staff to see their clock-in hours and request holidays. Since staff are also shareholders, employees can also use iLNT to access their share certificate. The iLNT app additionally serves as a communications tool, allowing head office to send news updates to staff.

Following the iPhone roll-out, Ellis says the LNT group is now looking at rolling out iPads to each care home to provide access to Skype. He is also planning to develop a care home app which will be used to provide training videos.

The LNT Group’s roll-out of iPhones represents the way IT would traditionally provide IT equipment to employees. Some businesses may be tempted to avoid the cost of the device totally, where employees use their own devices. MDM products such as Absolute Manage can secure these devices but the business needs permission to install software on the employee’s device.

Then there is the reimbursement minefield. According to research from Nucleus Research that looked at US communications charges, in a well-managed corporate environment the monthly telco bill per employee would be no more than $65. However, staff using their own devices would have their own mobile contracts. Nucleus Research estimates that employee reimbursement on telco costs would be $75 or more.

From a financial perspective, the big winner in BYOD (bring your own device) is the network operators. Instead of dealing with the might of corporate procurement, bargaining power is diluted back to the individual employee who lacks the time, knowledge and buying power to drive a hard bargain. By driving support back to the carriers, enterprises also lose control of their technology and data and gain additional dependence on the supplier, the report stated.

By issuing devices to staff, LNT Group has avoided this hidden cost. It also means the company gets around the tax implications that would occur if a business subsidised device purchases. n

› MDM is no BYOD silver bullet› Microsoft’s push on MDM, cloud and BYOD› How to manage mobility beyond using MDM

IPHONE APP DEVELOPMENTEllis started with no experience of pro-gramming the iPhone but ended up devel-oping the iLNT app after only five months. He says: “I did a computing degree. I had Java experience, but I had not used the Objective C programming language that Apple uses for the iPhone.” He took a one-week course on iPhone programming and taught himself how to develop apps for the iPhone. The software he ended up developing needed to integrate with the company’s back-end HR system, which involved building a back-end web server.

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REVIEW: RUNREV LIVECODE 6.0

Scottish cross-platform programming specialist RunRev released its LiveCode 6.0 software recently, with a promise of drag and drop programming that anyone can use. Now available in a free of charge, open source community edition, the software is presented to the user through a

graphical user interface (GUI) with an English-style programming language.

LiveCode apps can be deployed across all popular platforms for mobile, desktop and server on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Android. Its maker cites exam-ples of apps already developed, from ebooks to games and onward to apps for business automation, entertain-ment, medical, health, sports and nature.

Developed via a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised £500,000 in funding, LiveCode is said to draw inspiration from the HyperTalk programming lan-guage that used to ship with Apple’s line of computers way back when they were known as the Macintosh.

Three questions to

ask before developing

mobile apps for business

LiveCode’s drag and drop programming GUI offers an interesting introduction to the world of software application development. Adrian Bridgwater reports

in creating livecode, runrev has engineered a neW feature called open language

Does RunRev LiveCode really make programming easy?

THIN

KSTOCK

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Free under the under the GPL3 licence, the LiveCode 6.0 Community Edition’s liberty comes with the stipu-lation that users must also release their app source code for public access. The high-level language used by LiveCode is purposely abstracted to present an English-like syntax for programming.

Application functions can be built with support for scrolling, use of graphics and tablet-centric capabili-ties, such as accelerometers, multi-touch gestures and motion detection. Users create applications based around “stacks” of cards and then select which UI elements to add to each card, such as forms, buttons, menus, text boxes and media items.

LiveCode maker RunRev says LiveCode puts program-ming in the hands of students, business professionals and novice developers, regardless of their familiarity with programming. The visual development environ-ment is easy enough to learn and is intended to let users write software as they learn the basic techniques behind computer programming teaching and logical thinking.

To make the open source version of LiveCode pos-sible, RunRev has reorganised some 500,000 lines of C++ code running on the six supported platforms of Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and Windows Server. In doing so, it has also engineered a new feature called Open Language that allows anyone to create a new command or function without having to touch the core. The firm claims this is a first for an open source programming language.

Getting startedThe 43.5MB file should take just a few minutes to download via a reasonable internet con-nection. After you enter your name and email address, you will need to get past the secu-rity Captcha code to progress to the community edition download. At this point you will also have the option to download the paid-for commercial edition, which is charged at $500, but let’s assume that you are going to download the free and open source release.

Once downloaded, you can exit your browser and check your downloads folder to identify the “LiveCodeCommunityInstaller-6_0_0-Windows.exe” file which should be waiting for you.

livecode puts programming in the hands of students, business professionals and novice developers, regardless of their familiarity With programming

The 43.5MB file should take just a few minutes to download via a reasonable internet connection

Mobile app development

trends to watch

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Creating an applicationA user starts off by creating a New Mainstack from the top of the File menu. From this point onward actions can be added to the object from the Tools menu displayed on the left-hand side of the screen.

LiveCode is a drag and drop programming GUI which serves as a very interesting introduc-tion to the world of software application development for anyone, but it would be unfair to suggest that an initial basis in programming would not help you at this point. Buttons, checkboxes, labels, shapes and other items can be placed on the workspace and the user can then start to ascribe functions to these graphical items using the Code function on the top menu.

Learning toolsAlso included from the top menu is a Resource Centre and a Dictionary, which provide a fairly comprehensive (if not particularly simplified) route to getting skilled up in LiveCode.

There is just about enough screen real estate (even on a 15in laptop screen) to run LiveCode with a YouTube

it Would be unfair to suggest that a little programming knoWledge Would not help you use livecode

LiveCode running with a YouTube instructional video window shrunk to fit the available space (above) and LiveCode Dictionary feature (left)

Create New Mainstack Adding a field to the stack

Digital app developer

skills take centre stage in

corporate IT

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instructional video window shrunk to fit the available space as you learn your way with the software – and this is probably the most prudent way to start off.

While LiveCode will always be dis-tanced from official development tools in either the Windows, Apple or other

camps, it could cer-tainly be argued

that it supports enough fea-tures of these

platforms at any one single release to satisfy most users starting out in programming. Don’t be fooled though – you won’t be producing the next Angry Birds inside your first 24

hours with this tool. Even the most basic read and write commands will seem like rocket sci-ence to the complete novice to start with. Programmers with an existing basis of knowledge may find it nothing more than a distraction, and yet another language to learn despite its simplified presentation, so there are trade-offs here.

If you have a craving to keep learning, if you have the desire to break the mysticism associated with software application development controls shared by the non-technical community, and if you have the time to invest in the product, then it could just turn you into the next big thing in software. n

LiveCode is a drag and drop programming GUI. Buttons, checkboxes, labels, shapes and other items can be placed on the workspace and the user can ascribe functions to these graphical items using the Code function

a resource centre and dictionary provide a fairly comprehensive route to learning skills in livecode

What’s next for mobile

application development?

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“determined to end the exploitation.”So, if you ever end up in Ohio, stick to

Starbucks and the casinos – there ain’t no one-stop shop any more...

Finally, the gadget we’ve all been waiting for... iSpoonThis is what every gadget-loving foodie needs in their kitchen - an iSpoon.

Remember the last time you were using the Jamie Oliver app on your iPad and confused your stylus with your wooden spoon, consequently getting passata all over the screen of your shiny device?

Or have you ever tried to tap away at your iPhone with your wooden spoon?

Well the iSpoon is now here to solve those problems. No need to get a fancy device with wave-on functionality to save your sticky fingers, double up and have a spoon AND your stylus do the work. n

Tasty stakes shut down in OhioThe days of the internet café seem a distant memory as we all pile into the nearest coffee chain with our own devices and leech off of the Wi-Fi. At least we still have the choice...

Residents in Ohio have been told by the local law enforcers there will be no more internet cafés and a full-scale ban is set to be unleashed. Why? Because they believe the venues are a front for gambling!

Turns out when people stopped needing the venues, owners looked into making their money in other ways. A gambling licence could prove costly, so instead they began offering free goes on games if you purchased airtime on their PCs, circumventing regulators and attracting a hip and happening – ok, elderly and bored – crowd.

Now these secret dens are set to be shut down by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, who said he was

THATCHER FUNERAL OFFERS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONEOnly the Olympics was a more in-demand live programme on iPlayer than the funeral of former PM Maggie Thatcher.

There were 986,000 requests for the programme, with most people watching the day’s events on a live stream.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of her there must be a reason for this popularity. Downtime thinks its appeal is down to it having something for everyone. A significant portion of the audience were enthralled by a state funeral while the rest wanted to make sure she was really dead.

Read more on the

Downtime blog

WIK

ICO

MM

ON

S