BP Extracts Savings with Supplier Overhaul

4-10 October 2011 | computerweekly.com

Use social media in CRM social networking affects how your business interacts with customers page 10

Security’s best-kept secret Self-encrypting drives offer near-infallible security so why are they used so little? page 12

Transform the datacentre IT leaders discuss the techniques available to optimise your critical IT operations page 14 BP extracts savings with supplier overhaul Bp reduced its technology supplier base from 3,000 to just seven and forced them to work together in a collaborative environment, saving $800m as a result page 4 © BP p lc Highlights from the week online

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Government pulls plug on > Research: Do CIOs have more 1 ailing £11bn NHS NPfIT clarity about cloud computing?

computerweekly.com/247968.htm T hin k stoc Xantus surveyed 50 CIOs from organisations across a range of Researchers claim to have public and private sectors and sizes. 2 broken SSL/TLS encryption The results show that, while there is computerweekly.com/247969.htm still a lack of clarity and a reluctance to fully commit to the cloud, there is a FBI arrests LulzSec hacker general acceptance of the benefits 3 suspect over Sony data breach and a growing commitment to computerweekly.com/247974.htm develop those benefits. computerweekly.com/248009.htm EC buys Microsoft for 20 4 years without competition > Using technology to drive computerweekly.com/247907.htm productivity and growth in the EU > Buyer’s Guide: Social networking adds another layer to CRM practices This report shows ICT investment Hackers turn to online From the way social networking is often reported in the media, it would seem to be and productivity growth are closely 5 games to target victims that traditional customer relationship management has had its day, and all compa- linked – and European countries are computerweekly.com/247961.htm nies need to do is to create a Twitter account and a Facebook page and engage lagging behind other parts of the prospects and customers through these. But it is not quite as simple as that. world in both. Demand for SAP and computerweekly.com/247987.htm computerweekly.com/247991.htm 6 Oracle skills doubles computerweekly.com/247984.htm > The future of work: Expectations staffing Guide of the next-generation workforce East Coast rips and replaces This research provides insight into 7 IT service desk system the mindset, expectations and computerweekly.com/248000.htm behaviour of the world’s next generation of workers and what this Burying the NHS National will mean for businesses in 8 Programme for IT preparing to accommodate the computerweekly.com/247976.htm demands of this workforce. computerweekly.com/247963.htm Adobe releases Flash 9 Player 11 and AIR 3 > Gartner Research: SAM stand- computerweekly.com/247950.htm ards and best practice adoption This research shows that interest in Top European banks might > IT Apprentice: How technology > Buyer’s Guide: Choosing the right standards and best-practice 10 switch to Indian IT internships bring niche skills tool in a changing BI landscape frameworks to support software computerweekly.com/247977.htm With the number of students gaining Business analytics has been effective asset management is increasing, IT-related qualifications falling, the IT in decision-making for three of four but uptake of SAM-specific Get the latest IT news via RSS feed sector is preparing alternative IT career enterprises, according to a survey standards and frameworks is low. computerweekly.com/RSSFeeds.htm paths for young people. sponsored by SAS. computerweekly.com/247925.htm computerweekly.com/247939.htm computerweekly.com/247855.htm

opinion blogs

> Security Think Tank: Measuring > Matt Scott: Review – BlackBerry Torch 9860. Just how illuminating is this smartphone? security maturity in the supply chain BlackBerrys are still the corporate phone of choice for many businesses because they offer a high Measuring security in supply chains is level of functionality and versatility at a relatively low cost. But the success and popularity of Apple, inherently difficult due to their “third along with BYOD schemes, has made the iPhone the smartphone of choice for many business users. party” nature. Various contracts will be computerweekly.com/blogs/inspect-a-gadget governing the relationship and it is a careful balancing act to negotiate > Cliff Saran: What to watch out for when migrating to Office 365 around what is formalised within the Office 365 is Microsoft’s latest iteration of its online business productivity suite, contract and what makes for a potentially shifting many traditionally on-premises products and services from the server pragmatic safeguard, writes Dani room to the cloud. Briscoe of The Corporate IT Forum. computerweekly.com/blogs/it-fud-blog computerweekly.com/247994.htm > Adrian Bridgwater: New Firefox for Android: helping developers first, THEN users > Security Zone: Utilising a dedi- Open source browser Firefox has been updated for Windows, Mac, Linux and (for the purposes of cated network test team to enhance this short communiqué) the Android mobile operating system. It is worth noting that Mozilla is if security and reduce vulnerability anything extremely software developer-focused with this particular release. In recent times we have witnessed computerweekly.com/blogs/open-source-insider multiple successful attacks on the network and infrastructure at various > Karl Flinders: How BP got its IT suppliers to collaborate and perform after vendor consolidation large organisations, writes Mugdha Oil and gas giant BP spent 65% of its $3bn annual IT budget with 3,000 suppliers in 2008, but now it Raje, member of the Ethernet Testing outsources to only seven and has reduced its annual IT budget by $800m. Vital to the success of the and Certification group at AT&T Labs. multi-supplier ecosystem was retaining supplier performance levels while getting them to work together. computerweekly.com/247954.htm computerweekly.com/blogs/inside-outsourcing

2 | 3-10 October 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com the week in IT

Government IT Datacentres IBM signs £525m DWP contract to Airbus completes powerful provide Universal Credit systems datacentre deployment with HP The Department for Work and Pen- Aircraft manufacturer Airbus has sions (DWP) has signed a seven-year taken delivery of two pre-configured contract with IBM worth £75m per HP datacentres, as part of a system year to provide systems which will said to be the 29th biggest high-per- include the delivery of its flagship formance computing deployment in Universal Credit programme. IBM the world. The HP Performance Opti- will provide services across 60 appli- mised Datacentres (PODs) have been cations in the department’s business delivered to Airbus sites in Toulouse, technology estate for up to £75m per France, and Hamburg, Germany. year. These will include a customer Each POD contains servers, storage, information system, resource man- networking, software, management, agement, fraud referral and interven- and integrated power and cooling. tion management – with some of the computerweekly.com/248007.htm systems to be used for the delivery of Universal Credit. skills computerweekly.com/248020.htm Apotheker pockets £8.4m from HP Demand for SAP and Oracle skills doubles, says recruitment firm Mobile computing Former HP CEO Leo Apotheker has walked away from the company with a Demand for IT professionals with Nokia to axe 3,500 jobs as $13.2m (£8.4m) pay-off, including a $2.4m additional bonus, despite HP’s Oracle and SAP skills has doubled handset sales decline share price plummeting under his 11-month stewardship. over the past three months as em- Troubled mobile phone company Apotheker was sacked following the announcement that HP was to sell its ployers seek more high-end technical Nokia is to axe 3,500 jobs as sales of market-leading PC business, ditch its TouchPad tablet range and buy UK expertise, according to recruitment its handsets continue to plummet. software company Autonomy for £7.1bn. company Maximus. This is the high- Nokia said the plans will start to Former eBay chief Meg Whitman has replaced Apotheker as HP’s CEO, est growth the company has recorded affect staff numbers from next year. and Ray Lane has moved from non-executive chairman to executive since the recession began in 2008, It plans to close its manufacturing chairman of the board of directors. and coincides with a 104% increase facility in Cluj, Romania, by the “We very much appreciate Leo’s efforts and his service to HP since his in the number of ERP experts looking end of 2011. The company will appointment last year. The board believes that the job of the HP CEO now for work. also review the long-term role of its requires additional attributes to successfully execute on the company’s computerweekly.com/247984.htm manufacturing operations in Salo, strategy,” Lane said. Finland; Komarom, Hungary; and computerweekly.com/248032.htm Government IT Reynosa, Mexico. LibDems call for central IT office to computerweekly.com/248023.htm address government skills gaps The Liberal Democrats have called mobile computing for a new central government office Amazon launches Kindle Fire tablet Business mobile device provision for IT to address the “severe skills but business appeal uncertain gap” of civil servants and govern- Amazon has confirmed its much- ment managers. Ministers and senior anticipated entry into the tablet mar- civil servants – with a few honour- ket with the US launch of its Kindle able exceptions – do not “get” infor- Fire device. But the initial impres- mation technology, the LibDems said sions from IT analysts suggest that in an IT policy paper. Amazon’s foray into tablets is unlike- computerweekly.com/248002.htm ly to appeal to corporate IT buyers. The 7in Fire tablet utilises Amazon government IT Web Services cloud storage, features Memset signs as first UK SME a new web browser called Amazon partner to government G-Cloud Silk and runs on a version of Google’s Cloud hosting SME Memset has Android operating system. signed up as one of 10 companies to computerweekly.com/248018.htm trial government G-Cloud services. It follows the news that Warwick- Skills shire County Council is piloting a Source: iPass Mobile Enterprise study UK IT scores highly in R&D but G-Cloud e-mail service expected to skills gap still a major concern save £250,000. The government is ex- The UK is the fifth most competi- pected to publish its G-Cloud strategy tive IT market in the world, but the SME working group gagging order this month. lack of sufficiently qualified IT pro- “This [gagging order] computerweekly.com/247988.htm fessionals is still a major concern, according to the 2011 IT Industry absolutely flies in the face outsourcing Competitiveness Index produced by Security firm G4S signs £32.9m the Economist Intelligence Unit. The of the government’s contract for Fujitsu IT services report, which looked into the state Security company G4S has outsourced of the IT sector in 66 countries, uses transparency agenda” its IT infrastructure and services to criteria such as overall business en- Fujitsu and has agreed a £32.9m seven- vironment, IT infrastructure, human Mark Taylor, head of New year contract. Three business units in capital, research and development the UK and Ireland will be supported environment, legal environment, and Suppliers to Government panel by Fujitsu, which will provide cloud support for IT industry development. computing capabilities. computerweekly.com/248015.htm computerweekly.com/247996.htm computerweekly.com/248029.htm

3 | 4-10 October 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com news analysis

Supplier Relationship Management BP cuts $800m from IT services costs in move to reduce supplier numbers Reducing outsourcing complexity meant ensuring continuity while getting the best from suppliers, writes Karl Flinders

il and gas giant BP spent said Deasy. “You need to get them to- 65% of its $3bn annual gether and set them joint targets.” IT budget with 3,000 sup- Deasy said it is important to make O pliers in 2008, but now it sure suppliers know there is some- outsources to only seven and has re- thing in it for them when they attend duced its annual IT budget by $800m these meeting, which are aimed at as a result. improving ecosystem collaboration. Vital to the success of the new mul- And with more and more businesses ti-supplier ecosystem was retaining multi-sourcing their IT services, col- supplier performance levels and get- laboration between suppliers will be- ting them to work together in the come increasingly important. light of reduced competition. “We need to tell the suppliers that BP is a sizeable consumer of out- there is a marketing opportunity for sourced services across its business them. If they can demonstrate that and has extensive overheads associ- they are able to work in a collabora- ated with working with partners. tive ecosystem they can use our rela- Taking IT in-house was not an option tionship as a reference for new busi- due to the company’s size, global ness,” he said. presence and confluence of diverse Deasy said it is surprising how lit- business functions. tle the senior executives at IT suppliers in the same ecosystems interact Reducing cost and complexity so there are huge behavioural chang- BP Group CIO Dana Deasy told an es to be instigated. audience at Gartner’s annual outsourcing summit in London how the Managing change company cut hundreds of millions BP also had the challenge of get-

in IT outsourcing costs in two years © B P p lc ting its own supplier management while retaining a multi-supplier IT Oil and gas company BP cut its suppliers from 3,000 down to just seven teams and CIOs to move in the same outsourcing environment. direction. Deasy said getting internal Most of the $800m savings on IT supply managers to change how they came from the company’s sourcing Supplier collaboration on pushing suppliers’ performance work was the biggest challenge. He transformation, he said. Deasy said the challenges for BP in the face of reduced competition. said BP had underestimated the time Deasy said the company wanted to were to ensure suppliers give their all Each supplier has a core role, it took to communicate the changes. reduce the cost and complexity of and work together in a collaborative which BP expects them to stick to. At The company recognised the busi- working with thousands of IT suppli- ecosystem: “We had to keep all the the same time they must collaborate ness continuity risks of reducing its ers. It now has seven IT service pro- vendors on edge to get the best out of as if they were one. supplier portfolio. It carried out a hy- viders and has shaken up its supplier them. But we also had to create a col- BP introduced a mandatory week- pothetical incident of losing an entire management capabilities to ensure it laborative environment.” long event where the CEOs of its sup- city in India where a lot of its IT and gets the most from them. As well as boosting internal suppliers are expected to get together for BPO services are delivered from. The seven suppliers are: IBM; Tata plier management with a dedicated group meetings and one-on-ones Known as “City Down”, the test Consultancy Services; Infosys; Ac- team and taking up supplier manage- with BP. “You need to get the top of helped BP understand how suppliers centure; Wipro; HP; and T-Systems. ment standard BS11000, BP focused the house [supplier CEOs] aligned,” could work together in a crisis. ■

Gartner’s 10 IT outsourcing game-changers more online 1) The economy: The recession changed outsourcing. 6) Industrialised services. Blog: How BP got its IT suppliers to perform after vendor consolidation 2) Generation Y: People born between 1982 and 2000 7) Asset lift: The more that businesses buy IT as a computerweekly.com/blogs need the right kind of technology in place to satisfy them. service the less the need for internal assets. News: BP recruits IT professionals 3) Globalisation: There are more choices of where to buy 8) Consumerisation. for Future Leaders programme IT services but also new risks for CIOs to consider. computerweekly.com/247943.htm 9) Risk: Assessing the risks of working with suppliers. 4) Green IT: Firms need to lower their carbon footprints. News: BP outsources supplier 10) Externalisation: How the IT department get other management to T-Systems 5) Cloud computing. companies to do things for you. computerweekly.com/239544.htm

4 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com news analysis datacentres The impact of the Olympics power drain on London-based datacentres Companies are exploring less expensive and more reliable datacentre options outside London, writes Kathleen Hall

ower shortages and costs are becoming an increasing concern for companies with Agri Press P datacentres in London as the Olympics approaches. Verizon Business recently opted to locate its flagship European data- “Power costs centre in Amsterdam rather than London, as it was concerned about in London power shortages in the capital during the Olympics. are going up Hermann Oggel, president of Euro- pean business at Terremark, which […and it] is was recently acquired by Verizon, said London was considered as the going to get site for the latest Verizon datacentre. “We spoke to utility companies in worse as the London and looked at premises, but found it economically better to man- Olympics age from Amsterdam,” he said. The global telecoms giant is not the approach” only business concerned about the is- Stefan Haase, sues of increased power costs and the InTechnology threat of power outages in the build- up to the Olympics. Stefan Haase, director of cloud services provider InTechnology, said the company has been renting space in a datacentre in London, but will not renew the contract next year because “power in London is up to 30% more expensive than other parts going on around the major Olympics from the London Stock Exchange. of the country”. project, with only so much power in Proximity to the exchange reduces more online “The power costs in London are the pot,” said Taylor. latency as every 200km reduction in going up dramatically. We looked But Andy Buss, service director at fibre cuts one millisecond. News: Verizon rejects London around London to see if we could analyst firm FreeForm Dynamics, “We run an extremely efficient da- datacentre site due to Olympic find anything suitable once we real- said there are some advantages of tacentre. We’ve already secured power Games power drain ised the total cost increases but we being in London, such as the ultra- in advance of usage for the existing computerweekly.com/247978.htm couldn’t find anything suitable,” he high bandwidth and the city being site. In the build-up to the Olympics said. “The power issue is going to get well served by the London Internet we have had to make sure we’re run- Whitepaper: Building datacentres worse as the Olympics approach.” Exchange, with good links to the glo- ning to optimum efficiency and ca- using containers and modules As an alternative to London, In- bal internet. For companies trading pacity, and forward planning for the computerweekly.com/247253.htm Technology opted to build its own in the stock exchange, a faster con- event been in place for a number of datacentre in Reading. nection can be the difference be- years,” said Graeme Creasey, UK head Analysis: The battle to reduce carbon tween profit and loss, he said. of operations at the company. footprint as datacentres expand Cheaper alternatives However, Buss acknowledged Even without the run-up to the computerweekly.com/246881.htm For 85% of datacentre applications that there is a growing trend in co- Olympics, power capacity will re- it’s no longer a prerequisite to have location and banks ripping out non- main an issue across the UK, and Case study: Datacentre services your datacentre in London or the critical applications, moving them London specifically, until more supplier Equinix’s apprenticeship tips South East, said Simon Taylor of da- to datacentres outside the city power stations are built. But in the computerweekly.com/247758.htm tacentre company Next Generation where power and real estate is meantime, as costs remain an issue Data. More affordable fibre networks much less expensive. for companies, it looks likely that News: UK datacentre spend 2nd and sophisticated remote diagnos- an increasing number will move highest, expansion 2nd slowest tics have led to a growing trend of Efficiency a priority out of the city for non-critical oper- computerweekly.com/247826.htm more companies moving out of the For datacentre provider Interxion, ations. For companies that need to city, he adds. being based in London is crucial remain in the city, more investment CW+: Next-generation datacentres “Power is very scarce in London for its customers dealing in high in power-saving technology is like- – benchmark index report and around the M25. There’s a huge frequency trading, as it puts the ly to be needed to offset costs and computerweekly.com/246752.htm amount of physical development company just 15 microseconds away power scarcity. ■

5 | 4-10 October 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com news analysis

Cloud computing What IT managers need from suppliers of cloud services Cloud services providers and their customers do not see eye-to-eye on cloud computing, writes Bill Goodwin

T departments and suppliers Common standards It is a subject that frequently goes have a long way to go before they And they want the ability to be able unmentioned during sales pitches, understand each other on cloud to switch contracts from one cloud said Phillipa Spark, consultancy man- I computing. That was the conclu- T hinkst o ck computing service provider to an- ager at Lloyds Banking Group. “I have sion when IT practitioners and sup- other, simply and without fuss. had presentations with suppliers pliers met at London law firm DLA Nicky Stewart, programme direc- where they have not mentioned data Piper to discuss the barriers to cloud. tor for government technology at protection or security. They would do In the words of Mark O’Conor, part- SCC, and former head of ICT strategic well to make it a point of difference ner at the law firm, suppliers and buy- delivery at the Office of Government and be upfront about it,” she said. ers are like a tentative couple out on a Commerce, sees cloud deals entirely “It’s a matter of understanding the first date. “It feels like we are at odds,” in commercial terms. risk,” said David Marshall, enterprise he said. “Each side is looking to the “I don’t care about technology. I architect at Pfizer. “The organisation other and both sides are waiting for don’t want to be locked in. I want the retains accountability for the risks each other to take a step forward.” ability to switch,” Stewart said. and part of the barrier is understand- Cloud computing – which offers IT But users need to accept more off- ing the indemnities it needs.” departments the potential to buy in the-shelf cloud services to gain flexi- For their part, suppliers said in IT services as a commodity when bility, rather than using customised many cases customers do not under- they need them – has become one of systems. “If we start going down the stand what they are buying when the hottest, most hyped and perhaps bespoke route, we lose switchabili- they move into the cloud. “Business- most confusing topics in IT. Cloud computing: one of the hottest, most ty,” said Mordey. “A lot of cost comes es don’t understand the differences Although opinions still differ over hyped and most confusing topics in IT in when we add bells and whistles. between cloud services and outsourc- what exactly the cloud is, the market As soon as you start adding require- ing,” one delegate told the meeting. for cloud services is booming. Accord- just have to sweat. I can’t write it off,” ments, you lose flexibility.” And some customers seem to have ing to analyst firm Gartner, cloud serv- said Steve Mordey, ICT sourcing Cloud computing is still a long an ideological objection to handing ices will grow from $89.4bn in 2011 to manager at the Department of Health. way from having a common set of their data over to third parties, the $176.8bn by 2015. “There are tens of years and multi- standards that makes switching sup- meeting heard. millions of investment in doing pliers practical. It is clear from exchanges like these Cultural shift things a certain way,” said one dele- that suppliers and customers still Most CIOs are no longer sceptical gate. “One of our barriers is that it Risk aversion have some way to go before they can about the cloud, IT professionals at takes time for the public sector to In the public sector, the fear of see eye-to-eye on cloud. the meeting agreed. Yet moving IT evolve, and we are evolving in a mar- negative publicity can act as a de- “Suppliers are saying, ‘I wish cus- services into the cloud is easier said ketplace that is still evolving.” terrent to adopting new services. tomers understood’ and customers than done. The problems are particu- Government procurement regula- Switching from one contract to an- are saying, ‘I wish suppliers under- larly acute in the public sector. tions mean the public sector usually other can be seen by the press as an stood’. We have not even begun to get Public bodies are so locked into has no choice but to move slowly, admission of failure, delegates told into regulatory requirements,” said working with established systems in- said Mordey. the meeting. O’Conor. “They have moved apart. tegrators and IT systems that moving “Having to go through long- It’s about public scrutiny,” said We now need to turn those ships to the cloud requires a major cultural winded and draconian mechanisms Blake. “I don’t think we are good back towards each other.” ■ change, the group heard. to appoint a [provider] gives us a enough at sharing information with Christine Blake, a public sector major headache,” he said. our suppliers. I have been in meet- procurement specialist, told the Small IT suppliers in particular ings with suppliers and the one thing group that government departments find it impossible to negotiate the my CEO wants is to avoid negative more online will need a different mindset if they complexities of government pro- publicity, and that moves things are going to take up cloud services. It curement contracts. One public along,” she said. Research: Do CIOs have more clar- will mean organisations will have to sector IT supplier that had made Ben Whur, a former government ity about cloud computing? accept that they can work effectively progress in this area, Erudine, was programme director, agreed. “The computerweekly.com/248009.htm with off-the-shelf IT services, rather forced out of business, following a public sector has to take on more than heavily customised systems. dispute with an overseas customer risk. It often ends up paying for risks In depth: How to make sense of “We each think our own govern- over unpaid bills. that are not there,” he said. cloud computing ment department is different and End users at the meeting agreed “Some of that comes from taking a computerweekly.com/247877.htm specialised, but in reality we all buy that what they most wanted from generalised view of everything,” said the same stuff, and the differences be- IT suppliers was a commitment to Rhys Sharp, CTO at SCC. “The gov- News: Internal IT must focus on tween us are marginal,” Blake said. quality service. ernment defaults to a lower-risk item integrating external services It is not easy for public bodies to They need suppliers that can meet and applies that across everything.” computerweekly.com/247952.htm move quickly into the cloud, howev- service level agreements (SLAs), er, as most have invested heavily in without having to drill down into the Cloud security concerns News: West London Free School developing in-house IT systems. technical specifications of the serv- Yet suppliers often don’t appreciate chooses IT in the cloud “It’s organisational latency. I have a ice, said Frank Falcon, IT architect at the security concerns IT departments computerweekly.com/247972.htm net book value of £10m in hardware I Colt Technology Services. have about cloud.

6 | 4-10 October 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com Fluid data storage helps you save time and slash costs.

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Scan to see a snapshot of customer success with Dell Compellent storage. news analysis enterprise software EC buys Microsoft software for 20 years without open competition Mark Ballard says European Commission IT procurement raises questions over procedures negotiated with Microsoft

he European Commission the total cost of ownership, and is (EC) has been buying Mi- carried out within the framework of crosoft software since 1993 the EC’s well proven Technology T without open and public Management Process,” the Digit competition to assess alternative spokesman said. products, according to documents “There’s no fair and Decisions were subject to internal released to Computer Weekly. controls and adhered to European As a result of striking its sixth suc- level playing field” law, the spokesman added. He insist- cessive uncontested deal with Micro- ed the Commission was not locked in soft in May this year, the EC has en- to buying Microsoft: “We have al- sured Microsoft will have Paul Holt, Canonical ways made it quite clear this is not dominated the desktop comput- the case, and that an analysis is made ing environment of European in- of the market options every time.” stitutions for 20 years without allowing a single rival to com- Committees mull May deal pete for the business. The latest deal in May secured li- Documents released to Com- cences for the European administra- puter Weekly raise questions tion’s continued use of a comprehen- about a procurement regime that sive range of Microsoft software. It allows a sole supplier to reign included desktop operating systems, unchallenged for so long using Microsoft Office, SQL Server Enter- legal exceptions meant only for prise database software, and tools for extraordinary circumstances. collaboration, project management, The documents also raise security and e-mail. questions about the validity of But Šefcovic has introduced a se- the official justifications the EC ries of IT governance committees that used in its arrangements with have still not decided whether the EC Microsoft, called “negotiated should take up options available procedures”, the last of which con- mote competition. They were forced tion as the sole supplier of desktop under its latest licensing deal to concerned approximately €50m of soft- to use technical standards deter- operating systems and office produc- tinue along Microsoft’s upgrade path. ware licences for 36,000 PCs and mined by Microsoft. tivity applications to the EC. A pending decision on whether to their supporting infrastructure across A Microsoft spokesman would not By 2003, the EC’s official justifica- upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows 7 42 European institutions, including comment: “The Commission is the tion had changed. It claimed alterna- operating system remains unsettled, the European Parliament and Court contract partner and they decide on tive software would be technically nine months after it was first put be- of Justice. the procedure,” he said. incompatible and migration unusual- fore heads of directorates. Microsoft backs the official line the ly burdensome, so it had no choice Graham Taylor, chief executive of Total dependence European Commission’s Directorate but to carry on buying Microsoft. Open Forum Europe, a lobby group Karsten Gerloff, president of lobby for Informatics (Digit) has given in backed by Google, IBM, Oracle and group Free Software Foundation Eu- answer to recent questions by MEPs Is Microsoft locked in or not? Red Hat, said the group failed to un- rope, said the Microsoft arrangement about the contracts. The EC used the same incompatibil- derstand why the EC had used the was a disgrace to the EC. Maroš Šefcovic, the EC vice-presi- ity line to justify uncontested deals negotiated procedure to prevent com- “It’s astounding that every single dent and commissioner for inter-in- with Microsoft in 2007 and 2011. petition in desktop software. ■ agreement between the Commission stitutional relations and administra- The justification appeared to contra- and Microsoft since 1993 has been tion, is leading a major reform of IT. dict Šefcovic’s claim the EC was not concluded without a public call for He told MEPs the EC was committed locked into Microsoft and was com- tender,” he said. to promoting interoperability using mitted to interoperability standards. more online “The result has been the EC’s total standards. But he said these stand- A spokesman for Digit said EU pro- dependence on a single software ven- ards could include those implement- curement directives have changed Blog: What secrecy did for dor for its office automation platform. ed by commercial software vendors. several times over the past 20 years, European procurement Europe’s procurement regulations ur- He denied the EC was locked into but suppliers were chosen after a computerweekly.com/public-sector gently need an update. The rules supply from any single vendor. thorough analysis of the market, user leave too much room for anti-com- Digit claimed in 1992 that it must requirements and cost of ownership. News: European Commission petitive, negotiated procedures.” enter a private arrangement with Mi- “There are a number of procedures renews Microsoft contract Paul Holt, sales director of Micro- crosoft because no-one else could used for the acquisition of goods and computerweekly.com/245212.htm soft rival Canonical, said: “There’s no supply the required software. But the services. The choice of the procedure fair and level playing field.” EC’s official justification for the ar- is, for every procurement case inde- News: European Commission He said the Microsoft deals pre- rangement was vague. pendently, duly motivated. It results signs largest ever software deal vented European institutions from Similar uncontested deals in 1996 from a thorough analysis of the mar- computerweekly.com/244307.htm using open standards that would pro- and 1999 cemented Microsoft’s posi- ket situation, user requirements and

8 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com community

Bryan Glick leader Dale vile opinion Chaos at HP The role of the reseller in reflects wider addressing SME security tremors in IT ver the years, research The biggest problem that exists findings have consistently when it comes to security and data he world’s largest technology firm is demonstrated widespread protection is that business managers now on its third CEO in just over a O exposure to risk when it and IT generalists often don’t know year. First Mark Hurd resigned after comes to data protection and security what they don’t know. Many haven’t allegations of sexual harassment among smaller businesses. considered the implications of the T With increasing use of the internet way they use IT and the internet, and and false expense claims. Hurd was an aggressive cost cutter, not popular among and an increasing reliance on elec- even those that have are frequently tronic data, there are a lot of acci- unaware that most of the challenges employees, but loved by shareholders. dents just waiting to happen. can be dealt with cost-effectively The choice of Hurd’s successor came as a This was the foundation for a with the right solutions. surprise to many. Leo Apotheker was a Ger- roundtable attended by two of us One possible answer to this is manically efficient CEO of SAP, but would from Freeform Dynamics on 1 Sep- mentoring. Mike Southon, himself a have been on few outsiders’ shortlist to take tember. Hosted by Symantec, and mentor, said experienced peers can arguably the top job in the IT industry. held at the Department for Business, give invaluable advice and guidance. Apotheker shocked observers even more Innovation & Skills in London, the A mentor can articulate needs and main speakers and panel members solutions and have no vested interest when he announced HP was to offload its were: James Caan, entrepreneur; in a commercial outcome. Many do $41bn PC business – the world’s largest – Michèle Barker, Department for Busi- not even charge for their time. ditch its 55-day old Touchpad tablet range, ness, Innovation & Skills; and Ross Wayne Cockerill runs an IT solu- and buy software firm Autonomy for £7bn. Walker, director for small business at tions company that services the local He achieved a notable hat-trick of shocks Symantec Corporation. SME community, reselling products in getting fired just six weeks later and walk- Barker highlighted how dependent from Symantec, Microsoft and oth- the UK economy is on SMEs and ers. He alluded to the constant chal- ing off with a $13.2bn pay-off that will cause how dependent SMEs are on IT and lenge of having to translate the techy many to question the rewards of failure. the internet. Good IT security for gobbledegook put out by big suppli- HP even managed one further surprise of SMEs is essential. ers into something meaningful to his its own, appointing former eBay CEO Meg Walker said IT security solutions customers and the need to help cus- Whitman to the top job. Nobody could doubt are becoming more accessible to tomers appreciate the risks and de- Whitman’s success and leadership ability at SMEs. But suppliers often use lan- fine the problem in business terms. the auction site, but she has no experience guage that may be meaningful to For a full service organisation such large enterprises, but goes totally over as Cockerill’s, this is challenging but of running a major technology supplier. the heads of many SMEs. achievable. And if other resellers are Meanwhile, HP’s share price plummets, James Caan pointed out that we to play their part, they need to under- leading cheeky critics to suggest a takeover have SMEs with a need for security stand how to engage their customers. bid from highly acquisitive, cash-rich Oracle. on one side of the equation, and sup- They need to bridge the gap be- HP’s travails are a symptom of an unprece- tween that conversation and ex- dented restructuring of the IT industry, as so- changes taking place continually called consumerisation turns consumer Suppliers often use language around the provision of hardware and software. The basic idea is to pig- technology into the driving force of business that goes totally over the heads gy-back the risk discussion on the IT, and the cloud promises to break tradition- back of conversations and transac- al supplier strongholds in out-of-date, com- of many SMEs tions that are already taking place. mand-and-control style IT departments. But none of this can happen with- HP is at least insulated by relative sales out investment and commitment success, unlike struggling Nokia, Cisco and pliers who can meet that need at rela- from the big IT suppliers, so it was tively little cost on the other. The key encouraging to hear Symantec is pro- Blackberry-maker RIM question is therefore, how do you viding tools to partners to help them The IT sector has caused great disruption bring the two together? engage with SMEs, matching solu- in many of its customers’ industries, as tech- Government-sponsored education tions to needs. Investment in SME- nology and the internet break old business is useful, but not sufficient to deal friendly delivery mechanisms such models, reduce barriers to entry, and pro- with the problem. Tapping into SME as cloud is an important part of this. mote innovation. That same disruption is networking and support groups is Martha Bennett from Freeform Dy- now changing the IT industry itself and when one possible solution. namics probably summed it all up A strong advocate of this was a best when she spoke about the need the biggest supplier in the world is affected, journalist who spoke about col- for a coordinated approach in which you can’t help but feel we’re reaching a sig- leagues running an online communi- suppliers, channel partners, advisors nificant tipping point in IT. ■ ty-based forum for small businesses. and special interest groups work to- Many of the participants in the forum gether to tackle SME security. ■ proved quite savvy when it came to Editor’s blog IT and security – they just need better Dale Vile is managing director of analyst firm computerweekly.com/editor support from suppliers. Freeform Dynamics

9 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com buyer’s guide T hinkstock

Using social media in CRM practices Clive Longbottom looks at how social networking has affected the way businesses interact with customers

Companies still receive paper mail, enters into a downward spiral that is issues will arise. telephone calls, e-mails, web contacts difficult to halt. For example, a company with dis- CW Buyer’s guide and so on. All social networks do is It is pointless creating a position of jointed overall CRM may find the customer relations add to that complexity. Any user of “social media Tsar”. The person will person responsible for social media social media in a customer relations only be working in their own world, has made an offer through the com- part 1 of 4 department must ensure they view outside of the big picture. pany’s page on Facebook. A follower the total picture of any individual or The results will be silos of informa- goes to the website to see about the rom the way social network- group across all of these touch points. tion that are difficult to pull together product - but wants it in a different ing is often reported in the Social media users can be your and fully understand. Everything size or colour. They phone to find out media, it would seem that greatest asset - or your greatest must be integrated. if the item on special offer is available F traditional customer rela- enemy. A happy customer who pass- in the right size or colour - but the tel- tionship management (CRM) has had es the word on in the social network The wrong and the right way ephone agents are completely una- its day, and all companies need to do can rapidly extend positive brand It should be remembered customers ware of the offer, as it is not on their is to create a Twitter account and a awareness. An unhappy customer is and prospects tend to work through system. The prospect goes away un- Facebook page and engage prospects far more likely to pass on their views, multiple channels. They may have happy - and spreads the word and customers through these. though. However, if you identify first contact through the company’s through leaving messages on the Fa- However, it is not quite as simple their problem rapidly and deal with website; use social media to gauge cebook page, on their own page and as that, and the devil - as always - is it effectively, they may turn to being the sentiment of the crowd about a through Twitter. The company’s in the detail. positive. But, without everything specific product or brand; and then brand is hit, and damage is done. As with any new technology, the being integrated, it is far more likely use the telephone or e-mail to finish But picture this done the right social network does not push away the customer will end up even more off the deal. If all the touch points are way. The company decides a special everything that has gone before. unhappy, and the company’s brand not covered through a single system, offer is to be made. It looks at all the »

10 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com buyer’s guide

different» options it has available and The end result should be a happy looks at what the overall desired out- customer and a host of new prospects comes are. In this case, the main driv- aware of the company’s brand er is seen as driving brand recogni- tion - something where social networks can excel. Therefore, the business decision is that the main places for the offer will be through Facebook and Twitter - but in a manner where everything is joined up. Web advertising, paper marketing, e-mails and so on are all created tell- ing people that if they follow the company’s Twitter account or favour- ite the company’s Facebook page, they will gain a code that will get them the special offer. Maybe, for every friend they refer or every Twit- ter retweet, they will gain an extra amount towards the offer. The whole process of the offer has to be built in to the overall CRM system - the telephone agents, the e-commerce system, the inventory and logistics systems all need to be aware how the offer is going to work and what it means to them. The end result should be a happy customer (they get a special deal) and a whole host of new prospects aware of the company’s brand, due to the viral effect of the social network. In short, a low-cost means of others doing the work for you. tomer wants, so that a Tweet gets re- experience management (CEM) strat- and Twitter) cannot be forced out by Integrate CRM systems sponded to via Twitter, a Facebook egy, replacing LiveCycle. the private, but has to be embraced, The main issue is that systems will comment via Facebook , an e-mail Building on Flash and Air, Adep is and that the broad reach of social net- be required that enable everything to via e-mail and so on, all linked and aimed at enabling a highly interactive working means that a company has be pulled together in a meaningful joined up. and engaging two-way customer en- less control over what is being said - manner. For example, all mentions The big CRM players are beginning gagement interface, along with pro- but must be able to respond to ensure of a company through social network to work this out. For example, Sales- viding a customer feedback loop ena- that their brand is protected. channels will need to be monitored, force.com has launched Chatter, bling feedback to be obtained to make Social networking is not something along with any accepted different nominally a private social network websites more engaging and therefore to be looked at as separate to existing forms of this (for example, in the for business-to-business (B2B) value more profitable. customer interactions; it is just an in- social media world, Microsoft is not chains, but it can be integrated with Customer recommendation en- cremental extra that needs to be em- just Microsoft, but also Mcirosoft, public social networks to enable gines, such as those seen on Amazon, braced. Ensuring that everything is MSFT, M$ft, Micro$oft and so on). monitoring, tracking and two-way in- are also a way to engage with custom- pulled together will help to ensure A means of parsing the messages to teractions in a business-to-consumer ers. Just as comments on Twitter and that social CRM works for the pros- figure out whether these are positive (B2C) manner. Others may just sup- Facebook can help or hinder a brand, pect, for the customer - and for the or negative will also be required. A port publishing to social sites; spe- enabling customers to comment on business. ■ rapid means of response to enquiries, cialist companies such as Confirmit their orders and to give honest feed- to positive and negative comments have moved from employee surveys back on the purchase and the compa- In part 2 of this Buyer’s Guide, Computer also needs to be in place - all tied in to more freeform social interactions, ny as a whole can be beneficial. In- Weekly highlights real-world examples of to the other channels of interaction, including using public social net- deed, looking at a site like customer engagement tools being used to so that all bases are covered. works to gain broader reach. secretescapes.com, there are many harness the power of social media. Customers’ and prospects’ social brickbats being thrown around based accounts all need to be tied into their Feedback boosts your brand on some of the holidays on offer, but master customer record, and bringing Other ways of interacting with cus- the site owners take a very positive all information together in a simple tomers in a social manner go beyond approach to this, asking for more in- more online manner for reporting and analysis is just integrating into social network- formation and thanking people for a must. It should be possible to re- ing sites. For example, Adobe has their negative feedback, promising White paper: Social media in spond through a single interface in introduced its digital enterprise plat- that it will all be taken into account the enterprise the manner that a prospect or cus- form (Adep) to underpin its customer as they look to identify other offers. computerweekly.com/242786.htm What should be obvious from all of this is that using social networking as News analysis: Review of the part of an overall business strategy is top 10 social media stories Social networking is not something to not something that can be easily computerweekly.com/244587.htm identified as a single basic approach. be looked at as separate to existing It has to be based on the fact that the White paper: Connecting with your social environment is changing on a customers: A guide to social media customer interactions regular and rapid basis, that the pub- computerweekly.com/239093.htm lic environment (such as Facebook

11 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com hardware security

SEDs: Security’s best-kept secret Self-encrypting drives are impervious to hackers and users – so why are they used so little? Warwick Ashford finds out

elf-encrypting drives (SEDs) The contents of an SED is always Encryption invisible to users their organisations routinely are one of the information encrypted and the encryption keys An important characteristic of SEDs turned off their laptops’ security security industry’s best kept are themselves encrypted and pro- is that the encryption is invisible to protection, despite 68% of their or- S secrets. They solve many tected in hardware that cannot be ac- the user, does not interfere in their ganisations having policies in common data loss problems, are easy cessed by other parts of the system. workflow and cannot be turned off. place that do not allow this. to use and manage with minimal im- Because disk encryption is handled In 2011, the Ponemon Institute The Ponemon Institute said such a pact on system performance. in the drive, overall system perform- of IT published a survey of profes- high percentage of employees violat- Yet relatively few businesses and ance is not affected and is not subject sionals who report to chief infor- ing company policy suggests organi- governments use SEDs, according to to attacks targeting other components mation officers or chief informa- sations are not effective at creating or Robert Thibadeau, who assembled of the system. tion security officers. The survey enforcing awareness about the need the original team at disk-maker Sea- SEDs also speed-up and simplify showed 40% believe employees of to protect sensitive and confidential » gate, the company that pioneered the drive-redeployment process. By SED technology. deleting the encryption key, the data At the most basic level, SEDs pro- is rendered unreadable, eliminating vide hardware-based data security by the need for time-consuming hard “If SEDs are more expensive than continuously scrambling data using a drive data overwriting processes. key, as it is written to the drive, and Data overwriting can take days to standard drives, then standard drives then descrambling the data with the meet military standards, but deleting key as the data is retrieved, giving the encryption key of an SED takes are shipped” users a high level of data protection. just a few seconds.

12 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com hardware security

What is an SED? more online An SED is a self-encrypting hard drive with a circuit built known without knowing the password. News: Keep encryption simple and into the disk drive controller chip that encrypts all data to Very strong passwords are permitted by the Trusted standardised, says Gartner the magnetic media and decrypts all the data from the Computing Group specification for SEDs of up to 32 computerweekly.com/ 247940.htm media automatically. All SEDs encrypt all the time from bytes. With such a password, it is practically impossible the factory onwards, performing like any other hard drive, for a would-be data thief to recover the media encryption News: Soca beefs up data with the encryption being completely transparent or key and access data on the hard drive. encryption following investigation invisible to the user. In January 2009, the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) computerweekly.com/247899.htm To protect the data from theft, the user provides a published final specifications for SEDs that are widely password. This password is used by the drive to supported by PC, server drive and application providers. News: CISOs use risk to show the encrypt or decrypt the media encryption key. In In March 2009, hard drive suppliers started shipping value of security to business goals this way even the media encryption key cannot be SEDs based on the TCG’s specifications. computerweekly.com/247935.htm

information.» Half of respondents be- “If SEDs are more expensive than Now Thibadeau is hoping to raise deploying SEDs can forget about hit- lieve SEDs would significantly limit standard drives, then standard drives the profile of the SED to enable it to ting the headlines for the loss of an this dangerous practice. are shipped,” Moretti says. fulfil its potential in a world where unencrypted hard drive containing For these reasons, SEDs appear to The problem is that the buying de- data protection is becoming increas- personal records, as has been seen be the perfect technology to stop the cision is made around the cost of the ingly important. often in recent times in the UK. increasingly frequent loss of sensitive bundle, as IT security professionals Security is not a priority for disk When more organisations are using data through the theft or loss of lap- are not typically involved in the buy- manufacturers or hardware suppli- SEDs, Thibideau predicts a rapid ac- tops containing thousands of records. ing decision. ers, he says, which is why there has celeration of adoption will produce a So why are SEDs used by only a few Also, because hard disk drive sup- been no demand, but Thibadeau be- classic hockey stick effect. organisations? pliers do not sell to IT security pro- lieves this will change as more public While cost concerns have played fessionals or other users, but rather to and private organisations are made an important role in making it Why so few use SEDs hardware suppliers, there is no de- aware of the benefits of SEDs and more difficult for public and private Since SEDs are not shipped as mand being created for SEDs. have a better understanding of how organisations to procure SEDs as standard, procurement departments One of the biggest challenges has they can be deployed and managed. part of their data security arsenal, in public and private sectors go been in raising the availability and Unlike disk makers, Wave has a there are several other, less obvious with the most economic bundle, awareness of the technology from the commercial interest in promoting the reasons for the low adoption level says Alessandro Moretti, member start, according to Thibadeau, who is security benefits of SEDs and sells of SEDs. ■ of the (ISC)2 board of directors and now chief scientist at a software sup- both to vendors and users. a senior risk and security executive plier for hardware-based security, Thibadeau says any government Part 2 of this feature next week highlights the in financial services. Wave Systems, department or other organisation main business concerns about SEDs.

How does an SED work?

The encryption key used in SEDs is called the Media Encryption Key (MEK). Locking and unlocking a drive requires another key, called the Key Encryption Key (KEK) supplied by the user (or the platform, or the network). As the name implies, the KEK is used to encrypt or decrypt the MEK. The KEK is never stored in plain text inside the drive. If no KEK is set, the drive is always unlocked and appears not to be encrypting even though it is. If a KEK is set, the drive will power up locked until the correct KEK is given to the drive by the user. When a locked self-encrypting drive is powered up, the BIOS first sees a shadow disk that is much smaller than the real disk. The shadow disk is usually around 100 megabytes. The software in the shadow disk is read-only, and this software requires the KEK from the user to unlock the real disk for use and to decrypt the MEK so the real disk can be read and written to. The shadow disk software stores a cryptographic hash of the KEK so it can recognise if the user gives the right KEK. When the user enters the passcode (KEK) the shadow disk creates a hash of that passcode and compares it with the stored hash of the KEK. If the two match, the MEK is decrypted and put into the encryption/ decryption circuit inside the drive, the BIOS is called to start from the disk again, but now this is the much bigger real disk with a capacity in gigabytes rather than megabytes, and the operating system boots normally. This shows one of the chief benefits of SEDs. By design, SEDs do all the cryptography within the disk drive controller, which means the disk encryption keys are never present in the computer’s processor or memory, where they could be accessed by hackers. Likewise, authentication of the user is done within the SED and never exposed within the memory or operating system of the computer, which means attacks on vulnerabilities in the operating system cannot be used against an SED’s pre-boot process. The Seagate MomentusXT SED: The company pioneered self-encrypting devices

13 | 4-10 october 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com datacentres

Best practice in datacentre T hinkst o ck transformation At a recent Computer Weekly roundtable, in association with Oracle, IT directors discussed techniques for transforming the datacentre and the challenges of such a project. Lisa Kelly reports

he word “transformation” for flexibility. “Cloud-based provid- Into the cloud different comfort zones of what we is on the lips of many IT ers are also helping achieve agility,” Cloud computing – referred to as “the are happy to put in the cloud, but leaders when discussing the said Duncan. c-word” by several delegates – pro- we are all using some sort of soft- T datacentre, but how far are Bill Limond, CIO at the City of voked a cautious response from the ware-as-a-service.” organisations along the road towards London Corporation, said the local IT leaders due to concerns over data Limond said organisations need optimising their critical IT opera- authority has achieved 80% virtuali- security, lack of control and cost. to see the opportunity in the cloud, tions? IT directors met at a recent sation. “We are dealing with perpet- “Cost of ownership is actually not just the concerns. “In the con- roundtable event hosted by Compu- ual change, and virtualisation and quite expensive – costs escalate, so text of change, the cloud has accel- ter Weekly, in association with Ora- cloud gives you lots of benefits. we are rolling out an internal cloud, erated change and made the inter- cle, to hear from their peers and learn Local government is undergoing a but don’t underestimate the expense nal enterprise compete. Change is from the best practices in use across period of change and that concen- of cloud,” said O2’s Duncan. always there, but change has made the industry for transforming the trates the mind.” Manuel Restrepo, head of shared us more agile. The c-word means datacentre and the challenges such a Adam Wallace-Scott, group IT dis- services centre at BNP Paribas, big competition and opportunity,” project presents. aster recovery manager at SABMill- said the financial services group is he said. er, said the brewer is moving away an early adopter of the cloud, but Deane Copson, global datacentre Virtualisation from one provider in the US and highlighted two concerns: how architect at Deloitte, said certain There is a wide range in the levels moving towards centralisation of da- critical the information is within businesses have a model that fits of virtualisation implemented so far tacentres in Europe where the firm the constraints of financial services; cloud better than others. “If you within organisations. is growing its footprint after making and where you have dynamic factor cloud into change, we see it Keith Duncan, head of datacentre one major acquisition a year for the change, how do you come back as a tool or delivery mechanism that design and delivery at Telefonica past four years. from the cloud into an in-house you can use. For example, when a O2, said the mobile network pro- “We are aligning closer to the busi- datacentre if needed? spike in capacity around Christmas vider had virtualised 20% of serv- ness and trying to do things in a dif- “There is no clear definition or means the additional cost of cloud ers, but no more yet because of ferent way, which is taking us down distinction about the way to come for a month is cheaper than having “a high volume of legacy systems the virtualisation path,” he said. down from the cloud into a local- to build.” and a number of challenges David Watts, vice-president of ised production environment – Another challenge presented by embracing change”. hardware sales at Oracle UK, cited a cost and savings are completely the cloud is the implied breakdown “We don’t have a specific target. It survey by analyst Quocirca that sug- different,” he said. of the traditional IT command and may be 40% in three or four years, gested virtualisation is not as wide- Jack Scard-Morgan, UK CIO at control structure, as users bypass the but it will take time and we are being spread as many believe, with only City broker ICAP, said the cloud still IT department to buy cloud-based realistic,” he said. 11% of respondents undertaking an means different things to different services. The main driver for more virtuali- in-depth rationalisation, virtualisa- people. “There are 20 different defi- “Cloud allows people to take servic- sation is the business requirement tion and consolidation programme. nitions of what cloud is and we have es on their corporate credit card. Is this »

14 | 4-10 October 2011 Daily news for IT professionals at ComputerWeekly.com datacentres

» good or bad?” asked Scard-Morgan. Oracle technology director David Dafydd Hughes, head of vendor Rajan said when Oracle consolidated Case study: Telefonica O2’s management – GHS, at oil giant BP, its datacentres, the real opportunity said: “Do your consumerisation stuff came from focusing on the consolida- datacentre transformation first, before you let someone muck tion of data not just servers. around with corporate data. It doesn’t “Datacentre consolidation is enor- Keith Duncan, head of datacentre, design and delivery at Telefonica O2, has seem right to let go of control with mously valuable – Oracle made a been overseeing datacentre transformation at the mobile operator for the corporate data.” $1bn consolidation cost saving. But past four years and has faced a number of challenges along the way. Limond said that up to 80% of that was not just about servers, it was “The biggest challenge was to close three sites. We are now on our people will use their own computing our focus on the consolidation of the fourth and knocking off one a year. Virtualisation and consolidation within a devices for work purposes in a year data and processes that subsequently site is all very well, but closing non-strategic sites is where you get the or two, but in the public sector the empowered our integration of new benefit,” he said. problem is more to do with govern- acquisitions,” he said. Duncan still has a long way to go, tackling the “sprawling estate” consisting ment security mandates. BP’s Hughes said data is the rea- of 10 key sites with major datacentres, shared sites and 3,500 physical “It’s not the devices, it’s the data,” son to consolidate. “Cloud will fail devices across key sites, as well as shops, and three petabytes of data, he said. “There’s always a tension be- as it causes data sprawl. The ques- consisting of data records and customer data which is growing. tween personal privacy and what’s tion of how you manage a data “In 2007 we realised datacentre resource constraints was the biggest open. We need to provide security model that is spread over disparate challenge, with no place to put new equipment. Now around 20% of the and control openness.” systems is not fixed.” estate is virtualised, but we still have a long way to go,” said Duncan. Scard-Morgan said the bounda- He added that one of the biggest He said the recent massive data growth on the back of smartphones, with ries between corporate and person- barriers to datacentre consolidation is around a third of the population owning them, is a huge challenge for the al IT are blurring. “We like people legacy equipment. He said a main- mobile operator. to have their own personal devices, frame switching cost of $20m com- “The exponential increase in the volume of data must be balanced with the but we sandbox what’s corporate pared with a $4m annual running transformation processes,” said Duncan. and what’s personal. It’s culture and cost means there is little business Other issues include Telefonica’s growth – organically and by acquisition data that’s important, not the tech- case for change. “A four to five-year – and the problem of integration into the overall operation of the organisation, nology,” he said. payback on that investment doesn’t along with obsolescence and the difficulty of switching off big number- work,” he said. crunching machines. Consolidation “We run one of the datacentres at “More challenges we face are with operational expenditure – running a Duncan said O2 has managed to nearly 90% capacity – others are 50- datacentre is expensive,” said Duncan. consolidate sufficiently to close three 60% utilised. We balance the data- Datacentre transformation is crucial to solving the problem of growth being datacentres, virtualising and consoli- centre strategy with how dense we linear with costs. “More servers mean more costs and we are trying to break dating into strategic sites. want to drive these things. We ac- that. Virtualisation is a big opportunity for us,” said Duncan. “With two of the sites, we used quire and diversify all the time, and He is also focusing on flexibility and speed. “Time to market is a key driver the support of third parties and one the IT is simple in terms of consoli- as we need to launch new services quickly,” he said. we did ourselves. It was easier using dation. The big issue is integrating Duncan’s approach when embarking on the transformation programme our own experience as we have a [acquisitions’] business processes was to be bold in tackling the challenges and to focus on two key principles: number of people with intimate into BP,” Hughes said. server virtualisation first and then storage consolidation. knowledge of the applications,” Bringing the finance department on board was fundamental. “The he said. Aligning datacentre acknowledgement that finance was happy for us to build shared infrastruc- Guy Rudduck, vice-president of transformation to business ture ahead of demand and charge back on discreet projects was crucial,” operations, datacentre services at Duncan was asked about the scale he said. Colt, said infrastructure challenges and approach to transformation at Duncan has four points for IT chiefs considering datacentre transformation: were an issue when the hosting firm O2, and whether it was driven “bot- 1. Be bold and confident. “We all live in a zero tolerance environment so pay consolidated sites. “Infrastructure tom-up” or “top-down”. close attention and be realistic in execution.” was an issue as we threw more high- “When we set out on the journey 2. Align datacentre transformation to the business programme. “This is a big energy and bandwidth equipment it was a local initiative, and with the one to take away. Rather than taking the technological approach, tack more into sites not designed for that, so we acquisition [of O2] by Telefonica we to the business programme and projects and dovetail with them.” had to retrofit.” now have the challenge of global 3. “Take the business with you, get stakeholder investment and sell it to consolidation. Our approach is top- the business.” down with the introduction of con- 4. Cultural change is very important. “It is not just about technology. solidation and virtualisation tech- Transformation of culture of the organisation is just as important as the more online nology,” he said. introduction of new technology.” “A big thing was standardisation Internet giants must be more with defined standard templates for conscious of datacentre green- server build. If you choose from house gas, says report standard templates, it’s quick. We centralised depreciation in finance. A major incentive was reducing computerweekly.com/247887.htm don’t promote bespoke and don’t We don’t recharge to the business – time to market. “Instead of days and provide anything that’s not in the we recharge to projects.” months, provisioning is down to Verizon rejects London datacentre service catalogue. We started with hours,” said Duncan. site due to Olympics power drain three templates but that has got big- Cultural change Stakeholder engagement and computerweekly.com/247978.htm ger over time.” Transformation of organisational cul- change management is important, Duncan said his datacentre trans- ture is as important as transformation said Oracle’s Watts. “Ignore it at your Datacentre services supplier formation saw better alignment to of the datacentre, said Duncan. peril. If you build and tell people Equinix gives its top three tips for the business to create a model “Our experience is that support they must use it, it will not be well apprenticeship selection where compute power could be teams are aligned to technology and received. The consultative approach computerweekly.com/247758.htm sold to business divisions over you have to get them to think about works best,” he said. time, with depreciation handled ac- service and customers as people are Limond added: “It’s all about con- Gartner: Building datacentres cordingly. “We pulled in finance very technology-focused,” he said. tinuous change and how you support using containers and modules through creating a position of trust “One of the biggest challenges is that in the best and most economical computerweekly.com/247253.htm – over time they said, now we will that people like the comfort of lega- way possible. Information and data allow you to buy ahead. We have cy infrastructure.” management is what it’s all about.” ■

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Global warming joke causes waves at Maldivian embassy After a satirical blog was published stating the Maldive Islands were to be omitted from the next Times Atlas of the World, the country’s acting high commissioner to London wrote to the Heard something amusing or exasperating on the industry grapevine? E-mail [email protected] Daily Telegraph’s editor demanding clarification and an apology. The blog in question claimed the “emotional truth” was more impor- sages in a bottle, if the success of one giant to set up shop in the Emerald island nation was to be left out of the tant than actual truth. Canadian is anything to go by. Isle, joining the likes of Google and next edition of the Times Atlas of the The Maldives acting high commis- In the last 20 years a guy called Ha- Facebook to make Dublin its new World. The author, James Delingpole sioner said the entry had implied that rold Hackett has sent out over 4,800 international home. – a climate change sceptic – said the his country’s climate change plight messages in a bottle from Prince Ed- No doubt David Cameron has been next edition of the atlas would omit was a con-trick, and it was despicable ward Island, along Canada’s Atlantic overturning Number 10’s furniture some low-lying areas at risk of rising and hurtful. coastline. in a Bullingdon Club-style fit of rage sea levels. However, he added that Maldiv- Since 1996 he has received over at the thought of his beloved Tech The tongue-in-cheek post was put ians had as much of a sense of hu- 3,100 responses from all over the City being overlooked again. together following comments from mour as anyone. world and is is now in contact with So, apart from the Guinness, lucky scientists who said the Atlas had all these people. shamrocks and Riverdance, what’s exaggerated the scale of ice-cover re- Twitter gets twitchy as green For Downtime, one of the more the big appeal? Could it possibly be duction in Greenland. analogue rival makes a splash obvious advantages of the analogue that Ireland has the lowest corpora- According to the blog it wasn’t just With social media companies failing technology over Twitter is the need to tion tax in Europe at 12.5%, more the Maldives that is set to be turned environmentalists, messages in bot- to drain a bottle of something every than half the present 26% UK rate? ■ into a modern day Atlantis – Tuvalu tles might take over. time you want to send a message. and major parts of Bangladesh were With green activists unhappy with also said to be at risk. the lack of carbon footprint monitor- Dublin challenges Tech City as the contacts The post even contained fictitious ing at social media giants, there could technology capital of Europe Computer Weekly/ComputerWeekly.com quotes, saying that in map-making, be a re-emergence of the use of mes- Twitter has become the latest tech Marble Arch Tower, 55 Bryanston Street, London W1H 7AA

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Correspondent: Jenny Williams How many monkeys does it take to write Downtime? 020 7868 4288 [email protected] Production editor: Claire Cormack 020 7868 4264 [email protected] Virtual monkeys have randomly re-created works by Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s poem, A Lover’s Complaint, along with However, instead of real monkeys, Anderson used Senior sub-editor: Jason Foster 99.99% of Shakespeare’s other works. Hadoop, Amazon EC2, and Ubuntu Linux to create 020 7868 4263 [email protected] US programmer Jesse Anderson set up the project “virtual” monkeys. DISPLAY ADVERTISING in August 2011 to test the theory that monkeys random- Downtime thinks it’s only a matter of time before the Sales director Brent Boswell ly smashing at typewriters would eventually re-create monkeys re-write Computer Weekly articles. 07584 311889 [email protected]

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