Grey Matter Issue 55 | Spring 2012

Building on 29 years of software know how Making Sense Extracting information from the data available to your business Mobile platforms The choices to be made when targeting mobile devices Silver linings Can you rely on the cloud for your security needs?

Welcome Contents Editorial It has long been the case that we view intellectual property 4 Software News Editor:...... Matt Nicholson - software, the written word, music or film - differently to real, Mindjet, JetBrains, WinZip, Technical Editors:... Sean Wilson, Paul Edwards phyiscal objects. This stems from a feeling that copying intellectual Paessler and more. News Editor:...... Paul Stephens Publisher:...... Andrew King property without paying is somehow different because it doesn’t 6 News in brief Contributors:...... Tim Anderson, Simon actually deprive the author or the distributor of anything: steal a TV, Our new-style section now Bisson, Mary Branscombe, Kay Ewbank, Jon lists coming events. Honeyball, Graham Keitch, Paul Stephens and the owner can no longer watch television; copy a song, and the Design and layout:...... Jason Stanley owner has still got the original. 9 Inside Data Illustration:...... Sholto Walker This attitude was compounded by the growth of the World Wide Using the free editions of Web Developer:...... Dave Clayton Web through the 1990s. Right from the start, one of the big benefits of SQL Server and Oracle. Advertising & Circulation the Web was that - once you’d paid your phone bill - everything else 10 Competition Marketing:...... Holly Hudson, Ash Khagram, was free. However, once we’d got over the novelty of it all, many of us Win an iPad 2 with AVG! Anna Roach started wondering how we were going to make a living in this brave Tel: 01364 654100 12 Making sense new world. Companies like Amazon and eBay didn’t have a problem Email: [email protected] Bringing business as they were selling ‘real things’, but those of us in publishing, music intelligence to your users. HardCopy is edited for Grey Matter four and eventually even film had to face the fact that no-one seemed to times a year by Matt Publishing, Bristol, UK. be prepared to pay for what we produced. It is printed by Warners (Midlands) plc and requested by 15,000 readers. Meanwhile, the mobile phone market was growing, handsets were getting more sophisticated, and something very strange started Copyright © 2012 Grey Matter Ltd. All rights to happen. On the Web, publishers struggled to convince their reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior audience to hand over a paltry sum to read their articles or download consent of the copyright holder. their music; but on the phone, users were happily handing over All trademarks acknowledged. several pounds in exchange for a couple of seconds of banal ringtone. HardCopy is a trademark and Grey Matter a And that culture continues today. As a business model, charging registered trademark owned by Grey Matter 16 Data presentation Limited. While all reasonable attempts are people to access your Web site simply doesn’t work - if you’re not Building business made to ensure accuracy, Grey Matter and selling ‘real things’, then the only model that does seem to work is one Matt Publishing disclaim any liability intelligence into your apps. that relies on advertising. But on the mobile phone, wrap it up into an whatsoever for any use of information 20 Mobile platforms herein. Prices exclude VAT unless specified. ‘app’ and people are prepared to pay. It’s something to do with the Tools and platforms for process of downloading and installing that gives you the illusion of Cover Image credits: mobile applications. ©iStockphoto.com/photocanal25 ownership and personalisation - things that we are prepared to pay for. There’s also the branding offered by the Apple App Store or the 27 A silver lining Can you rely on the cloud Windows Phone Marketplace, or indeed Orange or Vodafone, that Advertisers Index for your security needs? creates the impression of endorsement. 2 Symantec This is the magic of the app, and for the software industry its a big 30 Straight talking 7 Adobe Tim Anderson ponders incentive for targeting mobile devices. It’s also a paradigm that 8 Mindjet Adobe’s strategy. Microsoft, through Metro on Windows 8, and Apple are keen to bring 11 AVG to the desktop. However there are wider implications. 32 And Another Thing 15 SAP Business Solutions Jon Honeyball ponders One of the great strengths of the Web has been the lack of 19 Microsoft BI the future of Windows 8. ownership: nobody decides what can and cannot be published, or 22 Embarcadero charges for the privilege. As users we like not having to pay, and we 34 Short Cuts 25 Windows Azure value the lack of censorship; but as publishers we favour apps and, Views from the edge. 26 GFI although we don’t want censorship, we would like publishers to have 29 Paessler PRTG to jump through some hoops as that does confer some sense of value 31 Intel on what does get published. Apps are more controlled, both by those Register Now! 33 ABBYY running the app stores and, on mobile devices, by the carriers. The HardCopy magazine is published four times 35 Infragistics app model does make for a safer and more profitable environment, a year. Make sure you don’t miss out by 36 Flexera but we do risk losing something important in the process. registering or updating your details at Grey Matter Limited www.softwareknowhow.info/hc/register Prigg Meadow, Ashburton, Devon, TQ13 7DF, UK Read HardCopy online [email protected] HardCopy is hosted on Grey Matter’s software information portal. To view buyer’s guides, news, blogs and forums go to Matt Nicholson www.softwareknowhow.info Editor, HardCopy

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 3 News Software News AdminStudio 11 goes user-centric Flexera • www.greymatter.com/flexera

Flexera has released AdminStudio 11, such as system an updated version of its flagship requirements and .NET application migration and packaging suite. The dependencies. product is the first to support Microsoft’s AdminStudio 11 supports System Center 2012 Configuration Manager adding and editing of ISO with its user-centric deployment model, and 19770-2 compliant software also, via its Virtualisation Pack, the first to tags, allowing software asset perform application suitability testing for management tools to Windows Server App-V, a central component in identify installed apps even Microsoft’s private cloud strategy. after they’ve been AdminStudio 11 is ‘tightly integrated’ with repackaged. There’s also a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, new API for automating AdminStudio 11 suite is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s with an import wizard and bulk import utility AdminStudio tasks from System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. which can automatically identify the best script and .NET languages. candidates for migration to the new model, so The edition-dependent Virtualisation Pack Meanwhile the workflow capabilities of allowing apps to be distributed to users on any tests applications for App-V compatibility, AdminStudio and Flexera’s FlexNet Manager device. It also gathers application metadata differentiating between client and server apps suite for Enterprises have been merged into a required for conversion by analysisng elements and making relevant recommendations. new Workflow Manager product.

JetBrains smells the CoffeeScript JetBrains • www.greymatter.com/jetbrains

Prague-based developer tools vendor ‘mark object’ action, and support for server-side that included JavaScript, HTML and CSS support JetBrains believe in a fast product node.js apps. The duplicated code detector and plus a bundled decompiler. 6.1 brings the new cycle, and to prove it they’ve upgraded four of revisions graph also feature in version 3.0 of the SDK for writing plugins to ReSharper itself, plus their products in the past few weeks. Three of PhpStorm PHP IDE, along with an integrated improved settings and location of unused .NET them - WebStorm 3.0, PhpStorm 3.0 and IntelliJ UML tool and integration with Xdebug and assembly settings, and fixes for what JetBrains IDEA 11 – get support for the Ruby-influenced Zend Debugger profilers. candidly describes as ‘over 150’ performance CoffeeScript JavaScript dialect, while the fourth, JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA 11 Java IDE gets, issues (plus ‘over 800’ bugs) in the 6.0 release. Visual Studio productivity add-on ReSharper among other things, a ‘rethought and reworked’ JetBrains makes IDEs and tools for a range 6.1, gets an SDK for developing its own plugins. UI with improved favourites and templates of languages and platforms including Ruby, Other new features in the WebStorm 3.0 handling, plus better GitHub integration and Python and Apple’s Objective-C. The non JavaScript IDE include a duplicated code beta support for the Groovy 2.0 language. Last Microsoft/Apple specific products run on detector, improved JavaScript debugger with summer’s ReSharper 6.0 was a major release Windows, Linux and Mac.

WinZip 16 offers Facebook integration WinZip • www.greymatter.com/winzip

The legendary WinZip file compressor compression engine and support for RAR and WinZip window. is approaching its 21st birthday, but 7Z file formats. A similar approach is used to circumvent developers WinZip Computing, now owned by WinZip 16 offers 1-click access to WinZip’s the problem of mail servers refusing to handle Corel, seem determined to keep up with ZipShare, a free service which lets you upload attachments of more than a few MB. This time modern trends. WinZip 16, just released, up to 100MB of files (max 20MB each) to cloud the cloud service in WinZip’s ZipSend interacts features Facebook integration, Blu-Ray support storage, then post links to them on your with a client app, integrated with WinZip 16, and a way around the ‘too big to email’ problem Facebook wall or group. Unlike ‘real’ Facebook that automatically diverts attachments over a when sending large files such as audio and uploads there are no restrictions on file types, specified size to the cloud, then inserts a link video, alongside more traditional and the whole process, including typing your into the email message. Maximum data size is enhancements including a new 64-bit accompanying message, can be done from the 50MB, or 2GB with a Pro account.

4 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy News

Mindjet brings information mapping to SharePoint Mindjet • www.greymatter.com/mindjet

In what it modestly describes as ‘good documents, replacing SharePoint’s list-based indicate that some workers find SharePoint hard news for Microsoft’, Californian vendor navigation with a more visual, object-based to master, with one Forrester Research survey Mindjet has released Connect SP for SharePoint, representation. Links can also be made to tasks reporting that 37 per cent of IT buyers rated its a version of its free-format project planning and and calendars, creating ‘Project Dashboard’ level of adoption as “less than expected.” information mapping system which can be used maps. Tasks can be created and edited, direct “With often large investments in enterprise as a navigation and collaboration front-end for from the map, and there’s an integrated task SharePoint installations, CIOs are tasked with data in a SharePoint repository. search feature. Maps can be published to getting the greatest adoption and return on this Users can create information maps, similar SharePoint sites, making them accessible to technology,” said Blaine Mathieu, Chief Product to those in Mindjet’s MindManager desktop Web users without the Connect SP application. Officer at Mindjet. “Satisfying that need is our product, and link objects in them to SharePoint Mindjet points out that industry reports business opportunity.”

Vendors vie for virtual backup business Symantec • www.greymatter.com/symantec • Veeam • www.greymatter.com/veeam

Competition in the backup and still developing them as separate products backup’ auto configuration, ‘bare metal’ recovery market is hotting up with (with some shared technology), and has just recovery from CD/DVD and physical to virtual virtual environments a key battleground as come up with significant new releases of both. machine recovery. Customers can now opt for security giant Symantec pitches new versions of Version 7.5 of NetBackup features five the capacity licensing model already available its backup products against a major new release major enhancements. A policy-based with NetBackup. from virtualisation specialists Veeam Software. Replication Director allows easily-managed NAS The big news in Veeam Backup & Back in 2005 Symantec acquired Veritas snapshotting and replication, while NetBackup Replication V6 is support for Microsoft’s Software and with it two separate backup Accelerator is ‘next generation backup agent Hyper-V, integrated via a single console in what products, the Windows server-based Backup technology’ boasting improved data reduction. had previously been a VMware-only product. Exec and the enterprise-level, multi- platform Support for VMware and Hyper-V has been There’s also a new distributed, load-balancing server NetBackup. Six years later the company is improved, and there is a new Search feature architecture with multiple proxy servers and and new Cloud connectors for AT&T, Rackspace repositories, giving what Veeam says is and Amazon. Enterprise scalability. The list of improvements V-Ray technology also plays a key role in include better replication performance Backup Exec 2012, driving its new ability to act (claimed up to 1,000 per cent), an agent for as a unified tool for backup, de-duplication and Windows-based self-compressing smart restore on VMware, Hyper-V and physical backup targets, reduced CPU usage and 1-click environments. The release, also features a VM restore. Real-time statistics are enhanced, redesigned admin console with ‘intelligent and there’s a new Bottleneck monitor.

Paessler keeps the updates coming Paessler • www.greymatter.com/paessler

Agile development means frequent portable from iOS and Android to Win Phone 7, updates, and no-one takes that more Amazon’s Kindle and FireFox Mobile. seriously than Nuremberg-based In what Paessler describes as “two hands performance monitoring specialists Paessler AG full of additional awesomeness”, the desktop who have just released the ninth update to their WebGUI has also been overhauled, with faster PRTG Network Monitor in just four months. AJAX response and two new sensor tree views. According to Paessler, PRTG 9.2 contains Meanwhile users who’d rather not rely on over 400 changes since version 9.1.6, released Internet Explorer can now monitor Web page just five weeks earlier. Heading the list is support load times using a WebKit-based sensor. Other for VMware 5, enabling monitoring of ESX 5, enhancements include a new WMI UTC Time Virtual Center 5, and VMs located in vApps. Also Sensor which measures the difference between on the major improvements list is a complete the system clocks of monitoring and monitored rewrite of the old ‘Mini HTML’ interface for devices, and an improved FTP sensor. The device tree view in the PRTG 9.2 network monitoring package. mobile clients, now reborn as the touch- Features in the other eight updates optimised, jQuery Mobile 1.0-based ‘Mobile released since last September include improved Windows Scheduled Task sensor and additional WebGUI’ and compatible with everything SQL sensors and Active Directory integration, a Device Tree Views.

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 5 News News in brief

On Adobe Creative Suite 4 or older? Then upgrade now! Adobe’s new upgrade pricing policy means that, from the launch of Windows 8 update Creative Suite 6 and the Creative Cloud subscription service (due in the In a lengthy blog post on Windows on ARM (WOA), president of first half of this year), customers will have to be on CS5 or 5.5 in order to Microsoft’s Windows Division Steven Sinofsky has revealed that the qualify for upgrade pricing. Don’t panic though, as CS3 and CS4 owners Consumer Preview of Windows 8 on x86/64 will be available to the will get a special offer on the new products until 31 December 2012. CS2 general public for download by the end of February. It is not known customers won’t be able to buy upgrades to CS6, but can move to when devices running WOA will become available but the intention is Creative Cloud membership. In the meantime owners of CS2, CS3 or CS4 that both ARM and Intel architecture versions should ship at the same who’d like to upgrade to CS 5.5 can take advantage of a 20 per cent time. For more details, and much more on WOA, see the Building discount being offered until 15 March. More at greymatter.com/adobe. Windows 8 blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/. Grey Matter has been appointed an Adobe Gold Reseller in recognition of our experience with Adobe products.

Confused about the Cloud? Help is here! If want to know more about Microsoft’s cloud services platform, then Grey Matter’s new Windows Azure Helpdesk has the answers. Grey Matter is a Microsoft Approved Centre of Excellence partner for Azure. Contact [email protected] or visit greymatter.com/mcm/windows-azure. Alternatively, if you’re an ISV and you’d like to offer your applications from the Cloud, then Grey Matter has partnered with Rise and soVision to provide Cloud Managed Services for ISVs. The service includes combined billing for Microsoft ISV Royalty licences and UK-based datacentre hardware, and allows you to bill your customers directly and to offer • Microsoft has announced that it will be changing volume licence prices 30-day trials. Find out more at isvknowhow.com/Licensing/Cloud.aspx. in the UK on 1 July to bring them in line with its European prices. This is most likely to involve an increase so you might want to consider making Showcase pages help you get the most from Microsoft any purchases before that date. Grey Matter has launched two new showcase Web pages designed to help customers get the most from Microsoft products. Bing Maps • A reminder that the Visual Studio Developer 11 Preview is available for (greymatter.com/bingmaps) takes you through applications, features anyone to download from msdn.microsoft.com and will remain active and licensing of Microsoft’s online mapping service, with an FAQ. Grey until 30 June. This will be a major update with Windows 8 and Azure Matter is the official Bing Maps Distributor for UK, Western Europe and support, .NET 4.5 and a big increase in tools for JavaScript at the tip of a APAC, so we probably have the answer. very large iceberg. Meanwhile if you’re a Microsoft Software Assurance customer you may be eligible for Planning Services days to help you plan your software • Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer delivered the keynote at January’s CES show, deployment. Grey Matter can help you activate your entitlement and including some impressive Windows 8 demos. See the whole performance choose a planning partner. Visit greymatter.com/mcm/dps for more at http://youtu.be/qYDxMF9ea6E. information. • TechSmith has launched Camtasia for Mac 2, a new version of its screen recording and editing package with improved performance, new graphic

2

0 annotations and a redesigned editor with blur-out capability. The company

1 2 Coming soon has also shipped version 4 of Camtasia Relay, its multi-user screen/ • The international software development conference QCon London presentation recorder, with new features including camera support, a 2012 is celebrating its sixth year at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference global caption editor and direct publishing to YouTube. Centre from 7 to 9 March. Find out more at qconlondon.com. • SmartDraw 2012 represents a major update of this professional-quality • Microsoft is hosting a seminar on Visual Studio 2010 Application chart design package. Highlights include redesigned project management Lifecycle Management on 19 March at its offices in Victoria, London. views, new information hubs with links to external documents, automated More at www.greymatter.com/information/events. timelines, custom chart libraries and a new Meeting View for organising project tasks by person. • Grey Matter will be partnering Embarcadero at DevWeek 2012, the UK’s biggest independent conference for software professionals. The • Netop Vision Pro is a new generation of this classroom management event runs from 26 to 30 March at London’s Barbican Conference package. New features include high-speed screen sharing for video and Centre. Visit devweek.com for details. graphics-intensive applications, a new Ultimate Web Control with on-the-fly blocking of distracting Web sites, and remote logging-in of student computers.

6 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy

Database Inside Data Graham Keitch looks at what you can achieve with the free editions of Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server.

Two of the industry’s leading database there be a requirement to scale the database for developers working with PHP, Java, .NET, suppliers, Oracle and Microsoft, provide during the development process, or later. XML and Open Source, and for ISVs who want a free development and deployment editions of When it comes to developer licence starter database to distribute free of charge. If their flagship databases. Both provide free restrictions, we begin to see minor differences in and when there is a requirement to scale licences for developers and a free lightweight the way Oracle and Microsoft approach things. beyond these restrictions, projects can be Express edition for deployment, with strings This partly reflects historical and cultural migrated with relative ease as XE uses the same attached. SQL Server 2008 R2 is the current distinctions between the two. Both developer code base as its bigger brothers. Together with release from Microsoft although Release licences now permit development, testing and the free tools that Oracle provides for Windows Candidate 0 for 2012 (code named ‘Denali’) is demonstration usage but in some documents developers, XE is a good choice for those now available. The free editions of SQL Server Oracle specifically excludes anything that relates wishing to evaluate the Oracle platform for include Developer and Express. Oracle also to an existing commercial or production system. their .NET applications. provides a free licence for developers and an Traditionally Oracle has been associated with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express is Express edition, Oracle Database 11g XE. more complex environments, which together similarly restricted to one processor while Let’s begin by covering some common with some of their advanced database options supporting a maximum database size of 10GB. ground. From a developer’s perspective, free can blur the boundaries between development, It doesn’t provide the high availability and access to the database technologies that might testing and production. management tools you’d expect to see in more underpin a project is clearly desirable for For example, Oracle Real Application advanced editions but those that are provided Testing allows testing in are sufficient for small scale, non-mission critical real production applications. There is full integration with Visual MySQL Community Edition conditions. Other Oracle Studio and support for the basic elements of There is also a free version of the world’s most popular open-source database options the .NET development environment such as the database, available from Oracle. MySQL Community Edition is a fully facilitate advanced Entity Framework, Common Language Runtime integrated, transaction-safe, ACID compliant database. Commercial resource sharing, making and Native XML. customers can purchase commercial editions that meet specific it possible to offload A new feature in the 2012 release will be business and technical requirements from Grey Matter. commercial tasks such as LocalDB. This is a small component that reporting to a machine functions as an integrated part of a tool or that is also used for desktop application that needs a local database evaluation purposes. Both vendors recognise testing or failover. In complex situations like this, runtime with T-SQL support. Designed for this and offer free licences for this purpose. it’s necessary to ensure the hardware single user implementations, an application Developer licences provide access to most of architecture, software and licensing models are that uses LocalDB opens a file to access SQL Oracle’s database and developer tools. These economically configured to best serve Server functionality, including ACID can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology production, development, security and high transaction support. Network (OTN) website and include tools for the availability requirements. This is an important Oracle J2EE environment and tools that allow consideration regardless of which vendor is .NET developers to connect with the Oracle providing the database solution. The licensing platform from within Visual Studio. definitions that govern permitted developer use i Developers are unlikely to be content with also change quite frequently so it’s necessary to Find out more stripped down versions of the database while ensure you understand and agree to these. vendors naturally want to expose the best Both vendors also provide a free Graham Keitch is the database pre-sales specialist at Grey features of their technologies for use in new lightweight edition that can be deployed in a Matter and has worked in IT for over 20 years. You can projects. Consequently, both Oracle and production environment, with restrictions. contact Graham at [email protected] or phone Microsoft ensure the developer licence provides These are the Express editions, referred to as XE him or any of his colleagues on 01364 654100 to discuss access to the full functionality of their respective in the case of Oracle. Oracle Database 11g XE whether a free developer or Express edition is appropriate high end Enterprise and Datacenter editions. can be installed on any size host with any to your needs, and explore suitable licensing plans for deployment. Oracle With core functionality and code deployed number of CPUs (one database per machine). It XE, Microsoft SQL Server Express and MySQL Community Edition can be across all editions of both product sets, this will store up to 11GB of data and use up to 1GB downloaded from their respective Web sites. minimises the additional work needed should of memory and one CPU. It is a suitable platform

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 9 Competition # WIN a 16GB Apple iPad 2!

AVG and Grey Matter are celebrating the Server Protection and File Server Protection, while AVG We will also accept entries submitted online at launch of AVG Internet Security Business Social Networking Protection checks in real time links that www.softwareknowhow.info/hc/competition Edition 2012 by giving you the chance to win your very are exchanged within Facebook and MySpace. own 16GB Apple iPad! All you have to do to enter is answer the competition AVG Internet Security provides all-round question below, fill out the rest of the form and send it to: protection, looking after identity theft, viruses and problems you might encounter visiting harmful Web AVG iPad 2 Competition sites. This edition has been built using feedback and Grey Matter Ltd suggestions from AVG users. New enhancements Prigg Meadow include AVG Accelerator, which optimises your Internet Ashburton connection and reduces download time, and AVG Devon TQ13 7DF Advice which monitors your activity and makes real-time suggestions to enhance your computer’s performance. Also part of the package is AVG Email

issue 55 entry form Apple iPad 2 Competition question: Which of the following was NOT a new product enhancement in AVG # Internet Security Business Edition 2012? q AVG Accelerator q AVG Advice q AVG Spam-a-Lot Bot

Your details Additional information

Name______Who is your current security provider? Company______q AVG q ESET q McAfee q Sophos q Symantec q Trend q Vipre q Other Address______

______Postcode______Number of PCs and laptops in my company?

Telephone______

Email______Number of servers in my company? q I would like to receive HardCopy magazine.

q I would prefer not to receive information on products or services that I might find useful to my work When does your current security licence expire? (note that we keep your information private and will not sell or rent your data for marketing purposes).

TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF ENTRY

1. No purchase necessary for entry to this competition. 8. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the # 2. The prize is one 16GB Apple iPad 2. There is no cash alternative. decision. 3. Completed entries must be received by 13 April 2012. 9. Employees of organisations connected with this competition are not eligible for entry. 4. Entries submitted online at www.softwareknowhow.info/hc/competition or completed on a 10. AVG and Grey Matter reserve the right to use the winner’s name in promotional photocopy of this page will be accepted. materials. 5. Only one entry will be accepted per person. 6. The winner will be decided by a random draw from the correct entries received by the closing date. The competition promoter is Grey Matter Ltd, Prigg Meadow, Ashburton, Devon TQ13 7DF. 7. The winner will be announced on 16 April 2012 and will be notified by email or telephone.

10 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy

Business Making sense These days, Business Intelligence means much more than drilling into database cubes, as Mary Branscombe discovers.

For much of the last decade, each new MARY year has been heralded as the year in BRANSCOMBE which Business Intelligence will be

Mary is a freelance IT democratised, becoming accessible to the writer who’s worked ordinary user and not just a small group of on both sides of the data-modelling experts working with highly fence, from writing manuals to developing specialised tools that offer little interactivity. a technology area for In fact, there’s been software available for a major online service. some time now that makes it possible for She’s also the editor of IT Expert magazine. ordinary business users to extract information and gain useful insight from the mass of data maryb@ exposed by their business. Giving end users hardcopymag.com timely access to such information was one of PowerPivot lets you slice and dice data from multiple sources using the major improvements offered by SQL Server an interface that looks more like an app than a report. 2008, and the R2 release went further by adding ‘self-service’ analysis through PowerPivot for that is at all interesting is bound to provoke beyond traditional databases and spreadsheets. Excel and an improved Report Builder. These more questions, and new ideas on how to Whether it’s emails, survey responses, went hand-in-hand with master data explore the data in an effort to understand documents, video, sound, the fire hose of management and data quality tools which help what is going on. This is a spontaneous process. Twitter and other social networks, the growing ensure that users are accessing data that is You need to be able to ask questions and get number of ‘big data’ datasets that are synchronised and accurate across multiple answers in real time, and not when someone in increasingly available in the cloud, or the flood systems. As these tools have evolved, attention the IT department happens to find the time to of sensor data generated by the nascent has returned to the back-office in an effort to craft and run the queries you have requested. ‘Internet of things’, the information that is ensure that the information sources are capable This is self-service BI, and it’s how the majority relevant to your business is now coming from of reacting to a query in good time. of business analysis is now being done. more disparate sources than ever. Any data analysis that returns information Furthermore, these days we want to go When it comes to external information out on the Web, we take the universal interface of Case Study search engines for granted, bringing you results from a wide range of sites and services. CareGroup Healthcare in Boston used PowerPivot to analyse how many Business Intelligence needs to take the same patients were being readmitted to hospital within 30 days, and why. So-called universal approach, giving access to different ‘bounce-back’ readmissions are bad news for patients and expensive for the hospital. CareGroup sources that we can mine and compare through quickly discovered it was a particular problem for elderly patients, where it turned out to often a single simple interface, rather than forcing us be related to issues with taking medications. Using PowerPivot it took four hours to develop a to learn multiple tools and interfaces. reusable report that pulled data from Oracle, SQL and Access databases – a process that had So-called ‘traditional’ BI reporting tools previously taken two days every month to build by hand. As a result, nurses now call recently have become simpler and more powerful in discharged elderly patients to talk them through their prescriptions, so avoiding many recent years, and they are beginning to work readmissions. with a wider range of data sources than traditional numerical data stored in structured

12 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Business

interacting with the data. You can also share PowerPivot with your colleagues through SharePoint, visualisations and all. PowerPivot offers excellent performance even with large data sets containing millions of rows, so you really can explore data without grinding your system to a halt (although for the largest files you want to be using the 64-bit version of Excel). The mashups of Web data that have been popular in recent years are good examples of a different way to explore data, organising it geographically as an effective way to visualise data. The European Environment Agency’s Eye Data mashups are the Web equivalent of canned reports: you can’t on Earth site overlays a large data-stream of add data sources but you can explore interactively. water, air and noise quality information coming from 22,000 water monitoring points in 27 databases and spreadsheets. You can expect not the appropriate business terms makes it more countries, 1,000 air monitoring stations in 32 just dashboards and reports but pivot tables accessible to the ordinary user. countries, user reports of noise levels and air and multi-dimensional models that let you For many, Excel is the BI tool of choice, and quality models onto an interactive map of explorer data visually and interactively, nesting with the PowerPivot add-in, it’s not limited to Europe. Programming a mashup like that is variables and navigating hierarchies of number-crunching and pivot tables. PowerPivot complicated, but PowerPivot makes it relatively information, or animating data to see what lets you access data from relational databases, straightforward to connect data to maps. If trends develop. There are also more specialist text files, public and commercial data in SQL you’re going to do a lot of this kind of work, tools for handling less traditional data sources, Azure, or any service supporting the Open Data tools like Panorama NovaView make it much although these inevitably offer less Protocol (ODP), and work with them together. easier to add grids, charts, heat maps and other sophisticated options. You effectively get the power of an OLAP components and graphical objects onto It’s also important to remember that not all PivotTable without having to create a SQL cube, PowerPivot data. information is created equal: opinions on Twitter or connect to SQL Server. might be influential, but they’re not easy to PowerPivot gives you friendly layouts and Getting social translate into the hard numbers required for the full power of Excel’s data visualisations, Managing customer support and sentiment analysing past trends and market results. including horizontal and vertical slicers for analysis (to see whether people talking >> Extracting information from video takes either serious back-end voice recognition processing, or someone on hand to transcribe or annotate Analysing data in the cloud manually before you can use it for analysis. Be More and more data is becoming available out in the cloud, either in public or commercially through the likes of Azure realistic about what you can achieve from DataMarket. Microsoft has said it intends to put all the features of SQL Server in SQL Azure, including reporting and analysis unstructured and semi-structured data. Look for services. Currently in beta is a DataMarket add-in for Excel that lets you purchase and import data, but Azure is far from the tools that let you check back to the underlying only cloud service offering datasets, and the types of data you can work with in the cloud are often different to those you data source so that you can make a judgement are used to. on the reliability of your insights against the These data sources involve higher volumes of data that is far less structured, and often requiring you to experiment original data. with the model rather than fill in a familiar template. Intel’s Compute Continuum GM Peter Biddle suggested recently that in five years, a fire hydrant could have a terabyte of data associated with it, ranging from water pressure history, to which Slice and dice fire engine last connected to it, to which films used it as a location. When everyday objects have that much data available, SAP Crystal Reports is a classic BI reporting and we’re going to need tools to filter and navigate to what’s relevant. analysis tool and, as with the reporting services While every ‘big data’ source has its own tools, learning and using multiple interfaces is time consuming and can lead built into SQL Server, the focus is on pre-built to errors if you can’t compare sources directly. A better solution would be connections for familiar tools that let you work reports designed by an IT team that can use with unstructured and semi-structured ‘big data’ sources alongside internal company data and other data sources that you Adobe Flash and Flex which allow users to sort, already have. Such a tool chain for big-data analytics is something Microsoft’s Information Services team is working on filter and reformat. The filtering options are under the codenames Isotope and Roswell. powerful enough to make the reports flexible, According to a recent job advert, Roswell is “a new service for information workers to easily discover and publish data but this is about structured reports rather than and applications in the enterprise.” The job description talks about accessing and unifying cloud data services and we the spontaneous exploration of data. already know that Isotope – the Hadoop service expected for both Azure and Windows Server this summer – will integrate Crystal Interactive Analysis is a simpler tool with tools like Flume, which aggregates log data from sources like sensor networks, as well as Sqoop, a tool for transferring that focuses more on self-service data access to data between Hadoop and relational databases. multiple data sources, and on ad-hoc tools for Put all that together and Microsoft will have a set of data services that scale up and down so that you can work with creating interactive reports with tables and familiar datasets, unstructured data from the public cloud or your company servers and private cloud, all from the same charts that allow you to drill down or refine with familiar tools. This shift to big data and new sources is going to be the next big step in business intelligence, and ranking and filtering. Automatically replacing Microsoft’s approach should help you continue to get value from the BI investments you’re making today. the more obscure database terminology with

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 13 Business

what’s happening in the projects we have to annotate them manually, but as you do work on are to be found as much in so you get a visual representation of the notes email as in any formal documents. on screen as well as searchable, tracked text. The Outlook Social Connector in You can chart the data you annotate in Outlook 2010 makes it easier to see NVivo even if it’s not based on numbers, or social updates and files you’ve visualise data using radar charts, tag clouds and exchanged with contacts as well as tree maps to get an overview of the patterns meetings you’ve both been in, but if and connections in your data. This can also help you want to dig into the information you identify where your results have been that is concealed in your inbox, then skewed by input from any specific source, such check out Xobni. as a particularly chatty interview subject. Xobni adds links to NVivo is best known in academic and information you’ve exchanged research circles but it’s becoming popular with through services like Dropbox economists, market researchers, analysts and and salesforce.com as well as consultants. Australian firm Banarra is using it emailed file, link, appointment to measure corporate sustainability. Making and social network updates. It sure the improvements that corporations claim also lets you see useful are real rather than just PR puffery means statistics such as when analysing a wide range of source data that particular people most often includes both qualitative and quantitative data. reply to your email, when you Organising information in a more free read or send the most form way is useful, whether you clip details messages, and how often the from Web pages into OneNote and apply boss emails you. custom tags, or build a visual representation Nvivo lets you annotate and tag qualitative, unstructured data for analysis. using a mind-mapping tool like MindManager

<< about your company are angry, Mine and map to organise key results or topics you want to happy, frustrated or satisfied) are the If you’re working with a mix of documents, research. MindManager’s new Connect SP commonest uses of the streams of social survey results, interviews and other qualitative plugin can automatically show SharePoint network data, and tools like HootSuite, research data, NVivo lets you analyse and document libraries and collaborations as mind TweetFeel, Dialogix, Radian6 and NetBase structure your information without losing track maps, so helping you to explore semi- Insight Workbench can help you here. But of where your references come from. You can structured data. although they are improving, most don’t yet tag audio, video and image files alongside text BI tools are vital for anyone who needs to match the features or the interfaces of more and data, and assign concepts and make business decisions. The advantages are familiar BI tools. relationships to ‘nodes’ that you use to build both obvious and dramatic. As Microsoft’s Ted But when it comes to information from hierarchies or mind maps. The textual analysis Kummert puts it, “You make people look better. social networks, don’t assume that analysing automatically links synonyms and words with They now know something they didn’t know how people feel about your brand is all you can similar meanings so that you can search for one before. They have some insight they didn’t have really do. Applications like MicroStrategy’s term and be sure you’re seeing all the relevant before. They’re going to be more effective at Wisdom helps you analyse promotions and results. Video, pictures and audio aren’t their jobs tomorrow. Business is going to feedback received through Facebook automatically analysed or transcribed, so you be better.” applications, giving you detailed demographic information about your fans and your customers so that you can do some very targeted marketing, or automate the sending of personal messages such as birthday greetings from your CMS. For more powerful analytics, SAS Social Network Analysis combines sentiment analysis, customer segmentation and fraud detection. That said, for most of us, the truth about i Find out more

Phone 01364 654100 or email [email protected] to discuss any of these products in more detail and find out how you can make best use of the data available to your business. You can also find further details on our Web site at www.greymatter.com/hc/Business-intelligence. You can extract useful information from your email habits and using Xobni Analytics.

14 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy

Development Data presentation Simon Bisson checks out the latest tools that can help developers present data in new and exciting ways.

We live in a world of big data: terabyte Business Intelligence (BI) development own queries, it provides a one-stop shop for SIMON upon exabyte of information that tools originate from three different roots. Some data for anyone who needs access, tying into BISSON increasingly includes geographic data as well as come out of business analytics tools like Crystal, search tools that help report designers find the both structured and non-structured content – some come from databases and the OLAP right information sources. Integrated report Simon is a freelance IT writer and technology all of it important and all of it needed to help world. Others aim to bring these all together, design tools also simplify the creation of reports consultant who has users make the right business decisions at the building on familiar development tools and that can be shared with end users, and built worked on large scale right time. Some end users can handle platforms. into dashboards or accessed over the Web. Web architectures, mobile Web projects free-form analytic tools, such as those built into There’s support for embedded Flash and XML solutions Microsoft’s Office productivity suite or Tableau’s SAP Crystal Solutions objects that make reports more interactive. for clients in both graphical tools, but not all need that level of The tools available from SAP are among the Reports can also pull in data from Web services, the private and the public sector. complexity, which is where purpose-built tools best known, building on the familiar features of allowing you to use live data in your come in handy. Crystal Reports. At the heart of Crystal Solutions dashboards. You can use the Crystal Dashboard simonb@ There are also security concerns. Letting is Crystal Server 2011 which allows you to Design tool to create and share reports on hardcopymag.com users work with all the data you have may seem deliver and manage information analysis and corporate portals, giving users access to attractive, but there are many good reasons for reporting across a business, while still sophisticated analysis and including what-if controlling user access to raw data. Industry managing licences and monitoring overall scenarios. The Dashboard Design package also regulations may limit access, and there may be usage. Now firmly part of SAP, Crystal Reports lets you create custom Flash elements for your concerns over network bandwidth or CPU continues to build on the work done by Crystal applications, adding your own widgets to a usage. Licensing concerns can also encourage Decisions and Business Objects. dashboard. organisations to centralise business intelligence The tools bundled with Crystal Server Developers can build Crystal Reports into and analysis tools, building them into and allow you to set up a common semantic layer their applications, and there are tools for both around portals and collaboration services, or across your data sources. Instead of giving users Java and .NET. An Eclipse plug-in adds reporting integrating them into line-of-business direct access to the sources themselves, and the to Java applications, with an embedded applications and services. complex task of designing and optimising their runtime engine. Similarly, Visual Studio tooling means that reports can be delivered either as WinForms desktop applications or through ASP. NET to the Web. SAP also offers a runtime licence which lets you include reporting features in applications that are shared with partners or sold commercially. Embedded reports have all the features of standalone reports, including Flash components, while also letting your code interact with report contents. If you prefer, you can use the full Crystal Reports package to build dynamic user interfaces in Adobe Flex, using Crystal components in Adobe’s own Flash Builder design and development tools. Crystal Reports isn’t limited to creating formatted reports. There’s also support for XML output that can be processed by other applications, or as part of a Web 2.0-style mash-up, integrating report data with services like Google or Bing Maps to take advantage of SAP’s Visual Studio plug-in lets you design Crystal Reports screens the geographic nature of much of today’s without leaving your everyday IDE. business data. Mash-ups like this can be

16 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Development

SharePoint 2010 Microsoft’s enterprise content management tool, SharePoint, is also its enterprise portal product. While it doesn’t contain its own business intelligence tools, it serves as an effective wrapper and delivery mechanism for reports that have been created in other tools. You can use it as a host for SQL Server reports, as well as Excel and Visio-powered BI applications, while its Business Connection tools can link it to multiple information sources, including line of business applications. Where SharePoint comes into its own is in conjunction with PerformancePoint 2010, Microsoft’s performance management tool. Building on top of Microsoft’s BI framework, You can use SQL Server’s Report Builder to quickly design and layout new reports. PerformancePoint is designed to distil and display key business indicators on a dashboard. interactive, using JavaScript to add additional Integration Services. You can use the SSIS You can use it to deliver scorecards and business logic, and you can take things further designer to create a series of tasks that handle benchmarks, as well as KPIs. with Crystal Interactive Analysis which lets you the data flow through the ETL tools, managing Alongside its display features there’s an edit report workflows and add your own C++ transformations and handling data aggregation. element of analytics, letting users drill down functions. You can also add event handlers to report on into information sources to understand just automated ETL operations, for example why an indicator is in its current state. SQL Server 2008 R2 emailing an administrator when a job PerformancePoint’s decomposition tree lets The current release of SQL Server comes with a completes, or if a job fails. SSIS scripts are you quickly drill down into data sets, using wide selection of business intelligence features, written using familiar tools and in familiar visual tools to display the contents of a including a set of Visual Studio extensions for BI languages, allowing you to programmatically multi-dimensional data set. developers. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence manage ETL tasks in C# or Visual Basic. PerformancePoint scorecards and Development Studio is a powerful plug-in for More complex BI tasks are handled using dashboards are powerful tools, and can be the familiar Visual Studio IDE, with all the SQL Server Analysis Services, and BIDS provides filtered by time as well as by content, letting features you’d expect for building and a selection of development tools to help design end users focus on relevant information managing business analytics. One thing to note and build OLAP solutions to speed up queries quickly. Similarly the various Web parts that is that, while BIDS does ship with the current and reports. You can use BIDS to combine data make up a PerformancePoint report can be version of SQL Server, it’s not compatible with sources and views to create either an OLAP linked together to give more complex Visual Studio 2010 (you’ll have to wait for SQL cube or a data mining model. BIDS doesn’t take reporting and analytic capabilities with minimal Server 2012 for that) so you’ll need to have a simplistic approach to OLAP design, and it’s programming effort. A Dashboard Designer is Visual Studio 2008 to hand for any BIDS projects. capable of building large, multi-dimensional integrated with SharePoint’s Business The heart of SQL Server 2008 R2’s business cubes with support for external functions Intelligence Center. Here you can create new intelligence features is Report Server, and BIDS written in familiar .NET languages. It’s a dashboards, linking to data sources and is where you design and develop dynamic powerful tool that requires a lot of knowledge, creating and designing custom scorecards. The reports. A project wizard will help you create but makes it easier for experienced BI designer lets you configure the target values new reports, linking them to data sources. A developers to work with SQL Server 2008 R2’s for your KPIs, as well as tying them to indicator design view gives you tools for laying out analysis tools. icons. You can also select the filters >> reports, including a toolbox of visual components that includes charts and tables. You can see the source data and build the SQL Server 2012 appropriate queries before previewing the The next release of SQL Server isn’t out just yet but a release candidate is available. SQL Server 2012 introduces a new report and debugging its output. While you can edition, specifically focused on Business Intelligence. Along with a new version of BIDS, SQL Server 2012 introduces the build reports from scratch, the wizard handles Business Intelligence Semantic Model. BISM mixes multi-dimensional data with the familiar relational database in a new data source connection, helps design queries tabular model and is able to support everything from large scale corporate BI solutions to ad hoc queries by end users. and sets you up with a basic report layout which Other new features include tools to simplify mash-up design, as well as deeper integration with SharePoint. SQL you’re free to edit and refine. One option lets Server 2012 improves information management, helping you lock down your data sources and ensure that the right you create a report model that can be used by people have access the right data. Increased regulation and new security models makes it essential to manage security at end users in the ad hoc Report Builder. You can an information level, preventing sensitive information leaks. add and edit entities, and manage the data The future of data is the cloud, and SQL Server 2012 takes advantage of the work done to deliver SQL Azure. This sources available to users. means the BI development tools that come with SQL Server 2012, like BIDS and Report Builder, will also work with the BIDS also handles the development of rules reporting tools built into SQL Azure. Taking BI to the cloud gives you a whole new way of delivering analytics to your users, for SQL Server’s extraction, transformation and supporting massive scale cloud data as well as your own internal business systems. loading features, through its support for

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 17 Development

<< available to users looking to drill Desktop users may want to take advantage While Open Intel isn’t designed for down into data, for example adding tools that of the geographic data tools built into complex OLAP or data mining applications, it is focus on a specific geography or date ranges. MapPoint 2011, which is also available with a able to work with most common databases and free SQL Server add-in that lets you add map data sources. You can use the built-in mash- up Bing Maps layers to reports using the desktop MapPoint builder to create and edit map-based reports Microsoft’s consumer search service may seem client. Maps are stored in SQL Server, along with with support for spatial queries and map an unusual tool to reference in a piece on shape and point data, and there’s support for annotations. As it’s designed to support business intelligence, but its mapping service spatial queries against data warehouses. interactive portals it supports the concept of makes an ideal platform for building and apps, although these are essentially commonly delivering geographic reporting tools. viaEuropa used views and reports. There’s also support for Replacing Virtual Earth, MultiMap and A regional alternative to such services is the OData protocol, giving you access to public MapPoint.NET, the latest versions of the Bing viaEuropa from Europa Technologies which and commercial datasets alongside your own Maps SDK include tools for adding your own incorporates Ordnance Survey data of the UK data and so increasing the options for layers to a map, and connecting to SQL Server, into its cloud-hosted mapping service, and designing and delivering mash-ups. but you will most likely need a commercial includes a free service for non-commercial use. The development team describes Open licence for Bing Maps if you’re using them as It is standards-based so you can use it with a Intel as an ‘accelerator’, and it’s certainly quick part of a BI solution. wide selection of data sources, making it easy to get started – and as there’s an option to use The Bing Maps APIs include both AJAX and to build into your business analytics platform, Azure there’s no need to invest in infrastructure Silverlight controls, as well as a set of tools for embedding Bing Maps content into mobile applications for both iOS and Windows Phone. There’s even a WPF version of the map control for use in desktop .NET applications, with support for touch. You can use the geocoding features of the APIs to take textual geographic data and layer it over a map, and the APIs contain tools for drawing polygons and polylines onto the map, as well as layering tiles. A set of translucent polygon fills can be used to display heatmaps, for example, a useful Open Intel makes it easy to work with geographic information, overlaying both pinpoint data and heatmaps. tool for showing relative values across a wide area. There’s a lot you can do with the Bing Maps and it works with Bing Maps. Products include a for public-facing analysis portals. The APIs (and the similar Google APIs), and support range of vector data sets with support for instructions include the scripts needed to set for familiar programming models make them features like contours and over 850,000 named up the appropriate data sources. Open Intel is easy to incorporate into your BI solution, and places around the world. designed to be used with the MapDotNet tools easy to mash your data with public mapping Currently viaEuropa is working to improve for building and design geospatial data, with data. The SQL Server data connector is an open UK geocoding, using the Ordnance Survey support for most common formats. You also source project hosted on Microsoft’s CodePlex AddressBase to link postal addresses with use MapDotNet to set up the appropriate site with a range of different display types, rooftop geocoding. Rooftop geocoding allows spatial indexed for your data, speeding up including vector and raster data. Like the Bing you to link data to specific buildings, making it queries and display through Bing Maps. APIs, there are both AJAX and Silverlight easier to deliver detailed reports to field staff Delivering effective business intelligence versions of the connector. and sales teams. requires a lot of development work. Whether i it’s ensuring that your information security Find out more Open Intel policy is ready to support end user data An alternative to commercial BI developer tools exploration and analysis tools, or designing and comes in the shape of Open Intel. Designed to building a report server, there’s a lot to be done For further information on tools that can help you deliver BI solutions help build open data portals, this is a visual to get your data, servers and code ready for BI. to your users, contact Grey Matter on 01364 654100 or email business intelligence tool which you can modify Business Intelligence will become increasingly [email protected]. You can download Open Intel from and customise in Visual Studio. It’s not just for important as it helps us manage and use the http://oi.codeplex.com and there’s a 60-day trial of MapDotNet at your own internal servers either as it takes increasing amount of data that is becoming www.mapdotnet.com. For more on viaEuropa the company’s Web advantage of the storage and Web features of available – dragging it out of the warehouse site is at www.viaeuropa.uk.com. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, and uses the and into the growing internal and Bing Maps tools for geospatial reports. external data marketplaces.

18 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy

Development Mobile platforms Deployment to mobile clients is becoming increasingly important, but which platforms do you go for? Tim Anderson investigates.

The trend towards mobile is gathering Apple a 62 per cent market share for the third disadvantage is that you have to keep several TIM pace. Gartner reports worldwide quarter of 2011 and Android 33 per cent. independent projects synchronised. Minority ANDERSON mobile device sales up 5.6 per cent in the third Android’s share should grow, thanks to the platforms suffer because of the small payback quarter of 2011, to over 440 million units with launch of new mass-market devices like for the investment in code. A freelance journalist since 1992, Tim around one third smartphones. In the same Amazon’s Kindle Fire, but Apple has a strong Second, you can use a cross-platform Anderson covers quarter, the analyst firm reports a decline of 11 hold and will likely have new models of its own toolkit. These are numerous, with some of the a wide range of per cent in PC sales in Western Europe. Separate in 2012. best-known being PhoneGap, Adobe AIR technical topics and is well versed in reports show tablet sales of over 60 million Another complication is that the Android (based on Flash), and Appcelerator’s Titanium. modern programming units in 2011, most of them Apple iPads. market is fragmented. Amazon’s Kindle Fire runs These toolkits let you maintain a single code tools, techniques Meanwhile, according to a November 2011 Android, but with several gotchas if you want to base, with some conditional code for specific and technologies. His recent work survey conducted by PHP specialists Zend, target other Android tablets as well. platforms, and compile them into native apps. has appeared in two-thirds of PHP developers are working on The mobile app revolution has been The third option is to avoid locally installed publications including mobile development. Mobile platforms are now mainly consumer-driven, and the market may apps completely and to rely on HTML 5 Web Guardian Technology, The Register, firmly in the mainstream, and it is traditional PC look different in the corporate world. Microsoft apps. Local storage is still possible, and there Computer Weekly, applications that look more like a niche area. should have an advantage as it integrates with are emerging standards for access to device Hardcopy, vnunet. Despite, or perhaps because of, its Enterprise stack based on Windows Server, hardware such as the camera and GPS com, IT Expert and ITJOBLOG, as well as tumultuous growth, the world of mobile Exchange and SharePoint; but Apple is already (Geographical Positioning System). his own popular blog development is far from settled. In the PC era making inroads as employees find iPads perfect In fact these last two options are less at www.itwriting.com. you could develop for Windows and be sure of hitting most of the market. Mobile by contrast presents difficult choices. Is it better to focus on Case Study native code for one or two specific platforms, or to take a cross-platform approach using HTML5 UK developer Lee Armstrong, who has his Plane Finder app on iOS, Android or one of the cross-platform toolkits, or to and Windows Phone, found iOS sales around ten times greater than Android when he studied concentrate on mobile-friendly Web his figures for December last year, while Windows Phone barely registered. applications rather than apps? One thing that is apparent is a consistent theme of Google Android and Apple iOS for meetings, presentations and more. The distinct than they first appear. PhoneGap works dominance. In the influential US market, impact of the tablet-friendly Windows 8 is by putting a native wrapper around a browser Nielsen research reported Android and iOS at another unknown. control, so that you still code in HTML and 52 and 37 per cent smartphone sales However you look at the figures, no single JavaScript. Titanium may also use the local respectively in the fourth quarter of 2011, platform will dominate mobile in the way that JavaScript engine. leaving just 6 per cent for RIM Blackberry and Windows has dominated PCs – unless it turns Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist at developer 3.8 per cent for Windows Mobile and Windows out to be HTML 5. All the smartphone and company ThoughtWorks, is doubtful about the Phone 7 combined. The worldwide market is tablet platforms have strong browser engines, value of cross-platform toolkits. “I think more diverse, though Android still dominates. usually based on WebKit, the open source cross-platform mobile toolkits are a dead-end,” Gartner reports a 53 per cent worldwide market project used by Apple Safari and Google he writes. “It’s just too hard for them to really share for Android smartphone sales in the third Chrome. “WebKit has become the de facto mimic the native experience. If it’s worth quarter of 2011, followed by Symbian at 17 per [standard], which has really been driven by building a native app, it’s worth building it cent, iOS at 15 per cent and RIM at 11 per cent. Apple and Google and against Microsoft. That’s properly, including an individual experience Apple won a bigger share in the fourth quarter driving HTML5 forward,” said Jeff Haynie, CEO of design for that platform.” He considers Web after the release of the iPhone 4S. mobile tools company Appcelerator. applications a better option if you need While Android is ahead in hardware So there are three broad approaches to cross-platform code. numbers, Apple takes the lead if you look at developing for the mobile client. First, you can The issues are complex. Web apps are hard another important metric: the app market. do a native application for each platform, using to monetise, whereas users are more likely to Research firm Strategy Analytics reports a 54 the primary native toolkit for each. That means pay for a native app, even if it was created by a per cent market share for Apple versus 27 per Objective-C for Apple iOS, Java for Google cross-platform toolkit. Further, some cent for Android in 2011. Individual developers Android, Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 and cross-platform toolkits let you get close to the also say that iOS is the most profitable platform. so on. The advantage is that you get the appearance of a true native application. “We In the tablet market, analyst firm IDC gives experience on each platform, but the wouldn’t really describe ourselves as

20 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Development

cross-platform. We’re really an API that allows you target multiple different devices,” says Appcelerator’s Haynie.

The Apple iOS Platform Apple’s unique approach to mobile is based on vertical integration, or what is less kindly called lock-in. Apple manufactures all the hardware and keeps the operating system patched and up to date, rather than leaving this to the whim of operators. Developers get a consistent target, but with constraints on how apps are developed and deployed. Apple’s position is that you should either use Objective-C and its Cocoa Touch frameworks, or else create a Web app that runs in the browser. Runtimes such as Java and Flash are not allowed, though the company did step back from an outright ban of cross-platform development tools. App deployment must be through the App Store, with a 30 per cent cut going to Apple unless it’s an internal corporate rollout where private deployment is possible, or for developer testing and debugging. Getting started with iOS development is a Apple’s iOS powers a range of popular devices including iPad and iPhone. matter of signing up with Apple, paying a yearly subscription (currently $99 per year) and There are a few annoyances. Xcode has a popularity and consistency of the development downloading the Xcode IDE and iOS SDK. This strong visual designer but many developers platform means a large community to draw on includes an emulator for debugging your iOS avoid it because doing layouts purely in code is for help. apps. You do need to develop on a Mac, which more flexible. It is a shame not to have the kind can be a nuisance if you also use Windows tools. of two-way tools seen in Embarcadero Delphi or Developing for Android Objective-C has a mixed reputation, but Microsoft’s Visual Studio. Google Android is primarily a Java platform although it lacks some of the features which C# Another long-standing issue is the lack of with a difference. Your Java code is compiled or Java developers enjoy, it is a productive namespaces. The mechanism for avoiding name not to Java bytecode but to Dalvik Executables, language and not excessively verbose. Xcode collisions is to use your own class prefix, which Dalvik being the name of the Android virtual 4.2 introduced Automatic Reference Counting is not robust or elegant. machine. Oracle claims that Google infringed which means that objects are automatically On the plus side, the GUI objects in iOS are Java copyrights and patents in Dalvik, and this disposed, removing some of the memory beautifully designed, and competently written is the subject of litigation but has not stopped management burden. applications generally perform well. The Android’s remarkable growth. However you choose to develop for Android, you will need the Android SDK. This includes an SDK manager which then enables you to select which platforms you want to support, as well as optional packages. The SDK also installs the Android emulator. The next step is to set up a development tool. The standard for Android is an Eclipse add-on called the Android Development Tools (ADT). This is a plug-in for a standard Eclipse installation that has been set up for Java development. The latest version includes a graphical UI designer as well as editing and debugging support. One of the advantages of Android is that it is easy to debug on a connected device as well as on the emulator. You have to configure your device to allow USB debugging, and to allow installation of non-Market applications. Android looks good, with huge market Developing for Apple iOS with Xcode. share, a familiar language and what is >>

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 21

23

Grey Matter Grey HardCopy • 654100 01364 •

app. This has now been extended to to extended been now has This app. simulate the accelerometer and GPS. and accelerometer the simulate >>

by creating a packager that bundles it into each each into it bundles that packager a creating by RIM’s Ripple Emulator lets you test and package WebWorks apps, including the ability to to ability the including apps, WebWorks package and test you lets Emulator Ripple RIM’s

successfully side-stepped Apple’s ban on Flash Flash on ban Apple’s side-stepped successfully

runtime and Adobe AIR. The company company The AIR. Adobe and runtime

development solution, based on the Flash Flash the on based solution, development

Adobe also has a cross-platform mobile mobile cross-platform a has also Adobe

platform.

work to do customising the app for each each for app the customising do to work

operating system, but there may also be more more be also may there but system, operating

more fidelity to the look and feel of the the of feel and look the to fidelity more

controls. The consequence is that you have have you that is consequence The controls.

composed using HTML and CSS, it uses native native uses it CSS, and HTML using composed

JavaScript, but instead of a user interface interface user a of instead but JavaScript,

Appcelerator’s Titanium. Titanium also uses uses also Titanium Titanium. Appcelerator’s

Another notable cross-platform toolkit is is toolkit cross-platform notable Another

using PhoneGap. using

browser-hosted, or converted to a native app app native a to converted or browser-hosted,

local storage. A Sencha Touch app can be be can app Touch Sencha A storage. local

binding to a variety of sources and support for for support and sources of variety a to binding

integration is another priority, with data data with priority, another is integration

experiences with native style interaction.” Data Data interaction.” style native with experiences

to equip you to develop native quality quality native develop to you equip to

SDK,” CEO Michael Mullany told me. “Its intent is is intent “Its me. told Mullany Michael CEO SDK,” Exchange strong and Server Enterprise you that so iOS for SDK an also is There services.

touch, or an Android SDK, or a Windows Mobile Mobile Windows a or SDK, Android an or touch, BlackBerry market. mobile wider the with these all for samples code and libraries includes

you do anything you could do with Cocoa Cocoa with do could you anything do you pace keep to is challenge biggest RIM’s Android for SDK AWS The notifications. and

developers. “Sencha Touch is designed to let let to designed is Touch “Sencha developers. APIs. device queuing message as such services application

framework aimed at mobile enterprise enterprise mobile at aimed framework for wrappers JavaScript by supplemented and access database storage, online servers,

Sencha Touch is a JavaScript app app JavaScript a is Touch Sencha technologies, Web with app your develop you virtual including platform cloud rich a (AWS),

server. so engine browser WebKit the uses WebWorks Services Web Amazon into nicely hooks it that

building clients for its WebSphere application application WebSphere its for clients building BBX. forthcoming the and OS, Tablet BlackBerry is ecosystem Amazon the of benefit One

example, promotes PhoneGap as a way of of way a as PhoneGap promotes example, OS, BlackBerry platforms: three all targets beta. in is which for support system, payment

support from many companies. IBM, for for IBM, companies. many from support which Widgets) BlackBerry (originally WebWorks Amazon’s through allowed only is purchasing

project. This open approach has won PhoneGap PhoneGap won has approach open This project. called framework a and 5 HTML on focusing In-app GPS. and Bluetooth camera, gyroscope,

Foundation where it is currently an incubation incubation an currently is it where Foundation is RIM However available. yet not are devices Services, Mobile Google includes list no-go

has been contributed to the Apache Software Software Apache the to contributed been has BBX as especially confusing, sounds That The do. cannot you that things of list a with

Adobe. It is an open source project though, and and though, project source open an is It Adobe. runtime. but tablets, Android other for developing like

called Nitobi which has been acquired by by acquired been has which Nitobi called BlackBerry a using apps Android run can it or is Fire Kindle the for developing said, That

PhoneGap was developed by a company company a by developed was PhoneGap HTML5, and AIR Adobe C/C++, native with built Marketplace.

Phone 7, Symbian and Samsung Bada. Samsung and Symbian 7, Phone apps support will BBX tablets. and smartphones Android official the to than rather services

near-abandoned WebOS, Microsoft Windows Windows Microsoft WebOS, near-abandoned both for used be will which OS, PlayBook the of and store app Amazon’s to users driving own,

supports iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS, HP’s HP’s OS, BlackBerry Android, iOS, supports rebranding a really BBX, called system operating its Fire Kindle the made has Amazon system,

camera, GPS, storage and network. PhoneGap PhoneGap network. and storage GPS, camera, new a announced RIM 2011, October In operating Google’s runs it Although memory. of

device features including the accelerometer, accelerometer, the including features device 7.0. version to updated 512MB and pixels 1024 by 600 of display colour

includes cross-platform JavaScript APIs for for APIs JavaScript cross-platform includes OS, BlackBerry older the run still smartphones a has It (‘Gingerbread’). 2.3.4 Android running

other native application. Further, PhoneGap PhoneGap Further, application. native other BlackBerry 2010. of end the at launched tablet budget-priced a is Fire Kindle Amazon’s

a native wrapper so it can be deployed like any any like deployed be can it so wrapper native a tablet, PlayBook the was device QNX-powered Targeting the Kindle Fire Kindle the Targeting

HTML and JavaScript, and then package it with with it package then and JavaScript, and HTML first The International. Harman from system

Using PhoneGap, you write your application in in application your write you PhoneGap, Using operating QNX embedded the of acquisition devices.” compatible

this, with the best known being PhoneGap. PhoneGap. being known best the with this, the announced 2010 April in and smartphones, all to Market Android license automatically

runtimes. Many cross-platform toolkits exploit exploit toolkits cross-platform Many runtimes. as well as tablets touch-controlled include to able not are we reasons, business

browser engines, including fast JavaScript JavaScript fast including engines, browser to platform new a evolving by responded and legal of variety a for “Unfortunately,

and tablets come with high performance performance high with come tablets and has It onslaught. Android and iOS the of face vague: is point latter the on statement

mitigating factor is that all recent smartphones smartphones recent all that is factor mitigating the in share market declining suffered has RIM Google’s Market. the access to order in Google

In the fragmented world of mobile devices, one one devices, mobile of world fragmented the In by approved be and tests compatibility official The RIM BlackBerry RIM The

official Market at all. Android devices must pass pass must devices Android all. at Market official Going cross platform cross Going

has done with Android in general. in Android with done has the use to able not devices Android some

Appcelerator. Google than ecosystem its into users Fire Kindle and offering, Apple’s than compelling less is that

long on Microsoft,” commented Jeff Haynie at at Haynie Jeff commented Microsoft,” on long hooking of job better a done has Amazon Market a profiles, device numerous with chaotic,

Microsoft are fighting for third place. I would go go would I place. third for fighting are Microsoft devices. Android other and Fire Kindle iOS, for bit little a is it that is downside The environment.

integration is no longer enough. “RIM and and “RIM enough. longer no is integration apps support to code server same the use can

now a mature development development mature a now << Development Development

The significance of Microsoft Windows 8 Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, which was meant to recover ground lost by Windows Mobile, has so far failed to grab much market share despite praise from reviewers, and despite offering developers a strong and familiar development platform with Visual Studio and Silverlight. The company is not giving up though, and Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft and launch of new devices have given the platform a much- needed shot in the arm. Is it too late though, with users seemingly content to choose between iOS and Android? This is open to speculation, but there are a few reasons why Microsoft’s mobile platform may yet be significant. PC sales, though still huge, are flagging and Microsoft knows that it must find a way to compete with the iPad and iPhone. Windows Phone 7 was the first attempt, but an even bolder step is to come, in the form of Windows 8. Microsoft has taken the blocky Metro design of Windows Phone 7 and applied it to Windows itself in the form of a touch-friendly new platform that is baked into the next version of Windows, as an alternative to the traditional Windows 7 user interface. Further, Windows 8 will run on ARM as well as on Intel x86 processors, enabling cheaper, more power efficient tablets. A Windows 8 tablet will be nothing like the Windows Tablet devices we have seen in the past. The Windows 8 developer platform is based on a new Windows Runtime (WinRT). The goals of WinRT include sandboxing apps so that they cannot infect or bring down the operating system, and forcing developers to use asynchronous APIs for all slow-running calls so that apps remain responsive. WinRT supports three development models. The first is HTML and JavaScript, using Metro-style Windows 8 is Microsoft’s big hope in the mobile market. JavaScript libraries for access to platform-specific features. The second is .NET, with the user interface in XAML, the design language of Windows Presentation Foundation and its cousin Silverlight. The third is native C or C++ code. All three perform well. WinRT is a new platform, though it has some elements in common with Windows Phone 7 including the .NET runtime, XAML for the user interface, and the overall Metro style. Although Microsoft has not said so, it seems likely that WinRT will also come to a future version of the phone, unifying the two platforms. What this means is that the long-term fate of Windows Phone is linked to the success or failure of Windows 8, and in particular its new Metro side. If Windows 8 Metro is a hit, that success will lift Microsoft’s Smartphone as well.

<< Android as well. Considering the Microsoft’s Metro design style and is the Windows Phone in Autumn 2011 substantially strength of the Flash design tools, along with outcome of intense usability research. The improved the platform. Silverlight was Adobe’s Flash Builder IDE for developers and development platform is .NET using Silverlight upgraded to version 4, background tasks middleware platform to connect to application or XNA: only phone manufacturers and telecom introduced, a local database added, the mobile servers, this is a compelling offering. That said, operators are allowed to use native C or C++. browser was upgraded to Internet Explorer 9, Adobe states that its future strategy is now Visual Studio 2010 (either the free Express and more. focused more on digital publishing and HTML5 version or the full version) forms an excellent This is technically a strong platform than Flash, raising doubts about the future of development environment for Windows Phone, (though it still lacks C or C++ development) AIR for mobile. though the complexities of managing state but the main concern among developers is the when your application can be shut down at any small size of its installed base. Nokia’s entry Microsoft Windows Phone time take some adjustment if you are familiar into the market is helping, but whether it can Microsoft has two Smartphone platforms, both with desktop Windows. An emulator is really carve substantial market share away built on Windows CE but very different. The old provided, or you can sign up as a from iOS and Android is still an open Windows Mobile supports development in C++, developer for $99 and debug question. or with .NET using C# or Visual Basic. You will on an attached device. need Visual Studio 2008 or earlier, as it is not The ‘Mango’ supported in Visual Studio 2010. Although update to Windows Mobile is pretty much obsolete, some businesses still find it useful, particularly if they have existing applications to maintain. It is also a more open platform than Windows Phone. The new Windows Phone platform uses i Find out more...

Phone 01364 654100 or email [email protected] to discuss the development solutions that are available to you for targeting mobile platforms. You can also find out more at Nokia’s Lumia range of www.greymatter.com/hc/mobiledev. Windows smartphones has reinvigorated Microsoft’s phone OS.

24 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy

Security A silver lining Can you rely on the Cloud to handle your security needs? Kay Ewbank checks out your options.

I’m writing this article sitting at an traffic is massively reduced. locally and you experience a hardware or airport. My travelling companion has Looked at from a user’s viewpoint, what software failure, the security software will be KAY just finished checking his emails on his you want is transparency. What you don’t want offline until you replace the part that’s causing EWBANK smartphone and is now downloading a is security that is intrusive, because users will be a problem, so going for the local option means Kay is a database presentation to his laptop from his corporate frustrated and either complain or try to you still need to think about ensuring consultant specialising network. He does have an official office, but circumvent the safeguards. For example, we all continuity. in EIS, financial analysis and GIS systems which spends much of his working life in other applaud the idea of checking the security of has involved integrating company offices across the UK and Europe. Web sites, but most of us curse when those Security reach with existing security This snapshot of working life in 2012 checks mean the site takes longer to load, or One question you need to consider is overall installations and advising on firewall and explains one reason why many companies are worse still is blocked because of an apparent security. It’s clear that Cloud-based security will anti-virus solutions. Her moving their security measures into the Cloud: problem. control threats as they enter your organisation, clients have included because it fits the way their business users work but what about potential internal threats? If the Ansbacher Bank, BASF Systems, Global so much better. Locally based security for emails Pay as you go security is checking emails in the Cloud before Portfolio Management, and Web sites was fine in the days when workers One benefit of Cloud-based computing is its they enter your organisation, for example, what Reiner Moritz Associates went to work reading the newspaper on the more manageable price. If you opt to have local happens if someone inside somehow attaches and the Scottish Office. She is also a train, sat at their desk and turned on a security systems then you need to buy your a virus to an internal email? If you’re not part-time sheep farmer. connected PC. As services, data and the people software licences in order to get started, along checking internally too, your entire who access them move outside the corporate with the servers to run the software on, so the organisation can still be compromised. [email protected] firewall, it makes sense to move security to the cost is weighted towards a high initial outlay. A differentiator between the available Cloud too. You also need in-house staff with the expertise services is what content or data is protected. There are other advantages, of course. to manage and maintain both the hardware and Most will check emails for viruses and malware, From the viewpoint of the IT manager, moving the software. By contrast, a Cloud-based system and will block spam from arriving in email to the Cloud means simpler security. means paying for what you use, while keeping inboxes. Most have options for scanning Web Cloud-based security means you don’t have to the systems running becomes someone else’s sites for problems, and can be used to block set up the hardware needed to run the software, problem. specific Web sites, types of Web site, or online and you don’t have to install and configure the Against this is the fact that you will applications - do you really want your users software. Getting the server working is someone probably be paying more each month for the playing Farmville all day? else’s problem, and the up-front costs can be software, so taken over a number of years the Some have software with the ability to avoided. Cloud-based system will in all probability end check instant messages. If your company allows Once up and running, there’s no local up costing you more. You also need to consider (or even encourages) the use of instant security server to manage, and you can pass all just what your money gets you in terms of messages for business use, this is an important the appropriate data through the security so service level agreements. How many days of the area for control. Beyond these basics you’re into that no matter where your users are working, or month could the service be completely a grey area of what constitutes security and what device they’re using to access the data, unavailable while still meeting that SLA? You what is really content control. Several of the they’re still protected. This minimises the need may think it unlikely that the time could stretch services covered below let you guard against for training and help desk support, and users into days, but in some cases things could be sensitive data being transmitted out of the don’t have to get used to different security that bad. company without permission, for example. options when they change devices. And what happens if the SLA is broken? If The requirements for keeping information Another advantage is the reduced need for the hosting company just hands back your secure are very clearly defined which means bandwidth. The likelihood is that nearly all the monthly fee with an apology, no matter how the central features provided by each of the emails sent to your company are spam of some heartfelt, you’re not going to be popular with products mentioned below are very similar. The form or another, so if these are blocked before your bosses. differences and the way you might choose they ever reach your network perimeter, email Of course, if you run security software between them comes down to two >>

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 27 Security

<< main criteria. Firstly, whether there are any other products from the same company that you might want to use; and secondly, the price.

Symantec.cloud Symantec has a long history in the security market, and many people will have encountered its Norton range of security software. Symantec.cloud is a new offering that builds on MessageLabs. However the Norton heritage still shows through, with all the advantages and drawbacks that implies. If you liked the strong control that Norton applied to the computing environment, then you’ll like Symantec.cloud. If you felt that it interfered Setting security levels in GFI MailEssentials. with the way you work, you may feel the same about Symantec.cloud. both inbound and outbound emails. There’s Cloud Security for Endpoints protects systems The Cloud-based service has options for also an optional archive service that can be remotely, while the Cloud Security for Email security for emails, Web browsing, instant used to keep copies of emails so you get off-site protects against viruses, spyware, phishing and messages and endpoint protection. In the case archiving as part of the service. Trojans. Outgoing emails are scanned as well as of Web protection, all Web requests are scanned GFI has a stated aim to provide software incoming, and unsolicited or problem emails in real time, and you can block Web site for small to medium businesses, and in general are intercepted. categories, file types and specific Web sites. The the software does live up to its promise to be Cloud Security for Endpoints can be used rules can change according to the time of day easy to use, and in my experience draws fewer to protect laptops, desktops and servers from and whether the user is working within the complaints from users than some other problems including malware. Administrators corporate network or remotely. software. It also allows you to try most of its can set access options for applications, Web The Email Security.cloud option protects options in the free trial version – some trial usage depending on the time of day, category against viruses and spam. If you want to scan versions block features so you can’t see how of Web site, or keywords being entered in emails for inappropriate content then Symantec well they work. search terms. Roaming and remote users can Content Control.cloud let you do so in the be protected using a personal firewall with cloud. Similarly, Symantec Image Control.cloud Kaspersky intrusion detection. can be used to scan email and attachments to Kaspersky is generally quite non-intrusive so Bitdefender claims that its software identify, control and stop inappropriate images users aren’t irritated by it. The company entered protects systems in a quiet and non-intrusive from entering or leaving your network. Finally, the hosted market a little later than some rivals, way, but behind the scenes it takes quite a Instant Messaging Security.cloud provides and say they’ve learned from the mistakes of tough approach as to what’s allowed and what similar protection against viruses, URL filtering others. The administrative interface is clean, and isn’t. It checks any running programs to see and content control when your users are using fixed-price billing has the advantage that you that the way they’re working remains within Instant Messaging software. know what your costs will be. ‘normal parameters’, and if that isn’t the case, Kasperksy has Hosted Email and Hosted the application is stopped. There is a 30-day GFI MailEssentials Web security, both administered from a Web trial version that’s worth trying to make sure GFI’s MailEssentials Complete Online is a hosted portal. The Email security has filters for spam, your current applications will co-exist email security and spam filtering service that malware and phishing attempts, while the Web peacefully. provides anti-spam and anti-virus checking security checks for and blocks any viruses and before emails enter your corporate network. spyware that is hidden on Web sites, as well as Mcafee Cloud Security The checks on emails can be carried out on providing Internet content control and the Mcafee’s Cloud Security platform offers the option of blocking files of choice of deploying as Software-as-a-Service, particular types. The Web locally, or a combination of the two. security also offers the option Administrators can use it to secure email, Web of scanning outgoing traffic to and authentication data to and from your stop data being transferred organisation and the Cloud. without your knowledge, and The software is split into a number of to ensure that spyware isn’t modules. The Email Gateway offers built-in sending information gathered encryption for emails as they are sent or illicitly. received, even from mobile devices. There’s also an option to archive emails in the Cloud. Bitdefender The Web Gateway can be set to enforce your Bitdefender has Cloud-based company’s policy on acceptable Web use. It software for protecting also lets you define and control the way 1,000 Viewing reports in BitDefender CloudSecurity. endpoints and emails. The Web-based applications can be used. Other

28 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Security

options provide identity management and Websense SaaS hosted email and calendar offering that also control of REST Web services. Websense offers a range of options including provides Web conferencing and lets you edit Mcafee is owned by Intel, and the products Hosted Email Security which guards against Office documents. in the platform have some features aimed spam and threats such as viruses, encrypts Forefront Online Protection for Exchange particularly at larger companies. The Cloud emails in transit, and has a content filter to traps spam and viruses before they reach your Security Platform is integrated with McAfee prevent confidential data being transmitted network. There’s an add-on called Exchange ePolicy Orchestrator platform, which is without authorisation. Web Security Gateway is Hosted Encryption (EHE) if you want emails to designed as a central administration tool for also available with options for managing who be encrypted as well. managing enterprise security. can see what in terms of Web categories, and for The main advantage of FOPE is its close blocking problem Web sites. integration with Office 365. Earlier releases of Trend Micro Hosted Security The service offers strong filtering, including the service were less than flexible in the options Trend Micro Hosted Email Security protects URLs. This does mean you can protect against you were offered for creating and managing emails from spam and malware such as viruses, users visiting sites where there might be custom rules for company policies to filter what spyware and phishing attempts. It also has the problems, but it can also result in frustration was marked as spam, but this has been option of encrypting emails while in transit to and lost time. In the event that Websense improved in the most recent version. ensure the information remains secure, and decides a site should be blocked, but you know there’s the option of filtering the content of it to be acceptable, then you can gain access by outgoing emails for compliance purposes. filling in a form to release the link, and then i Trend Micro tends to score well against waiting for Websense to remove the block. Find out more other products in blocking spam and malware, and the company is confident enough to Microsoft FOPE promise good money-back terms in its service Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) To discuss your options for moving security into the Cloud, contact level agreements, claiming to offer three times is an Internet-based service that protects your Grey Matter on 01364 654100 or email [email protected]. more compensation than other vendors. You business’ inbound and outbound email from You can also find out more about the services mentioned at www. can try the service for free for a month to check spam, viruses, phishing scams and email policy greymatter.com/hc/cloud-security. it out for yourself. violations. It’s part of Office 365, Microsoft’s

Grey Matter • 01364 654100 • HardCopy 29 Back End Straight talking Tim Anderson is worried that Adobe is leaving developers uncertain of the future of key products.

Businesses like safe bets. When the What did this mean? Great news, of course, The reasons are certainly strategic, rather future of a platform is in doubt, it is for Adobe’s digital media and marketing than being forced through financial necessity. hard to justify investment in projects based on products, but the implications for developers Adobe is doing well financially, and reported an that platform. That is common sense, and have been drip-fed through a number of 11 per cent year-on-year revenue increase in its makes it all the more curious when companies statements, blog posts and reports of meetings. latest results, announced in December 2011. It undermine their own platforms by putting out VP Danny Winnokur posted on 9 November generated $1.5 billion in cash. confusing messages about future strategy. that “Our future work with Flash on mobile Then in January, VP Arun Anantharaman This practice is surprisingly common. In devices will be focused on enabling Flash posted about the future of LiveCycle, Adobe’s June 2011, Microsoft gave an early developers to package native apps with Adobe middleware and Enterprise services product, demonstration of Windows 8, explaining that AIR for all the major app stores. We will no stating that Adobe is “prioritizing our apps for the new platform would be developed longer continue to develop Flash Player in the engineering investment” around several core with HTML and JavaScript. Microsoft had spent browser to work with new mobile device services. These include modules to handle PDF the previous ten years evangelising the .NET configurations.” It seemed that while mobile forms, rights, output, process management, Framework. Developers put this together with Flash was dead, mobile AIR, which compiles the digital signatures and PDF generation, the the downplaying of Silverlight at the company’s Flash runtime into an app, was alive and well. Workbench and Designer tools, the late 2010 Professional Developers Conference Next, on 15 November, product manager Correspondence Management solution, ECM and became uncertain about the future, not Deepa Subramaniam posted that while Adobe connectors for SharePoint, Filenet and only for Silverlight but for .NET itself. Would the is still “committed” to Flex, the XML-based Documentum, and LiveCycle Data Services. new app model in Windows 8 work with .NET approach to coding for Flash, it is shifting What is missing? It is easy to spot some applications? What is happening to Windows engineers from Flex to HTML and donating the things, such as the composite application Presentation Foundation? Flex SDK to the Apache Foundation as an open model called ‘Mosaic’, the other solution As it turned out, those accelerators, and Collaboration questions were not answered until “The reasons are certainly strategic, rather than Services. More striking though is the BUILD conference in being forced through financial necessity.” the uncertainty about Adobe’s September 2011, a gap of three overall strategy. It was only in June 2011 months during which Microsoft chose not to source project. “We recognize we could have that Adobe was talking proudly about its new comment. Microsoft platform developers handled the communication better,” she adds. Digital Enterprise Platform, which was meant to offering solutions to clients had no clear answer More bad news came in December from be replacing LiveCycle. if a potential customer, or a rival supplier, reports of a meeting with Flex developers in The background to ADEP (Adobe Digital questioned the future of .NET and pointed to San Francisco. While reiterating its commitment Enterprise Platform) is this. In October 2010 statements about JavaScript and HTML5 to Flex, Adobe also revealed that Flash Catalyst, Adobe acquired Day Software and with it the becoming the development platform of its interactive design tool, is to be discontinued; foremost REST (Representational State Transfer) Windows 8. and that the design view will be removed from expert Roy Fielding. Day’s core product is a Web Now it is Adobe’s turn. In November 2011 the Flash Builder IDE, as well as the Data Centric content manager called CQ5 which is built on a it issued a press release announcing a shift in Development tools. Java-based repository called CRX. Fielding’s business focus, “to target the explosive growth In the meantime, there was news of vision for CRX included not only Web content categories of Digital Media and Digital redundancies at Adobe among staff who had but enterprise applications: “The Content Marketing.” The other side of this coin was that worked on enterprise development. “A ton of Repository API for Java Technology (JCR) is Adobe would “reduce its investment, and really talented people got let go. This is one of poised to revolutionize the development of expected license revenue, in certain enterprise the strangest things I ever saw,” posted Duane J2SE/J2EETM applications in the same way that solution product lines.” Nickull, formerly a senior technical evangelist. the Web has revolutionized the development of

30 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Back End

network-based applications,” he wrote in a white customers should not have to scrabble around Change and the need for change is paper. for titbits of information regarding what is expected; but the way these major strategy ADEP is or was Adobe’s implementation of happening to its enterprise platform. Everyone shifts is managed and communicated is critical. Straight talking that vision. Adobe strategist Ben Watson told understands that the IT world is constantly Adobe has not handled this well. me that “The core of the platform now becomes changing, because of the rapid advance of Fortunately, there is a positive side to the repository that we got from the Day technology, and that plans which seemed Adobe’s strategy shift. This is that the company acquisition. We are also following their sensible a few years back may no longer make now has a clear focus on HTML5. The leadership around the use of RESTful sense today. Adobe has seen the rise of Apple consequence is that future versions of the technology, so changing how we do our Web with its dislike of Flash, the growing use of Creative Suite will be less dependent on the services implementation, how we do our real Smartphones, the advent of the iPad and other Flash runtime. Tools like Adobe Edge, which time data integration into Flash using data media tablets that are changing client authors HTML5 animations, will evolve rapidly, services.” computing, and the previews of Windows 8 and designers can also expect Dreamweaver to Adobe’s ADEP Web site still presents this showing a new locked-down, Flash-free gain more advanced capabilities. vision, while the LiveCycle page states that “The personality. It has also seen the eBook Flash is still important, of course, next evolution of LiveCycle is here. The new revolution driven by Amazon and Apple and particularly on the desktop where it remains Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) brings wants to remain at the centre of the digital invaluable for overcoming cross-browser issues together core LiveCycle capabilities and much publishing world. and for delivering multimedia content. It is more.” However, these pages are unchanged Jonathan Campos is Principal Architect at worth recalling that Adobe has recently since Adobe’s November announcement, and it Miller and Associates, working on Android, Flex delivered Flash Player 11, including the is not clear what the strategy is now. It seems and AIR development. “The consistency of hardware accelerated graphics rendering telling that Anantharaman wrote in January Adobe AIR provides a stable environment to engine called Stage 3D, enabling console-like about LiveCycle futures, not ADEP futures. A build, test, and deploy that no other platform gaming but running in the browser. This is reasonable guess is that the CQ capabilities will can touch,” he says. “The drawback is Adobe’s supported in Adobe AIR as well. Adobe’s new stay focused on Web content rather than recent focus away from development tools and focus does not make Flash any less capable. “We application services, and that LiveCycle will more on digital marketing and media. This are already working on Flash Player 12,” says VP remain with its somewhat cut-down range of makes me, and many others, wonder what sort Dany Winokur, adding that “we will design new services. of development tools will be coming out in the features in Flash for a smooth transition The high level point is that Adobe’s future for enterprise development.” to HTML5 as the standards evolve.”

Grey Matter • 01364 654 100 • HardCopy 31 Back End …and another thing Jon Honeyball ponders the future of Windows 8 in the light of what he saw and heard at this year’s Consumer Electronic Show.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show was truly Windows 8 supporting because it Another showed an early implementation of (CES) held in Las Vegas in early January would be nearly gone by the time the OS Thunderbolt on Windows, which is very was truly epic. Everything about it boggled the arrives. So everybody has been keeping their heartening to see. But driver support might be mind – the sizes of the halls, the 150,000 secrets very close to their chest. No-one a little weak for the time being, although LaCie attendees, the time taken to move from one demonstrated any meaningful Windows 8 ARM showed a Thunderbolt to ESATA interface box meeting to another. The queues for the buses. tablets. Again, if they announced them at CES, specifically designed for Intel/Windows boxes Some of the stands were the size of small then they would be out of date by the time (not Macs). market towns, while the queues to see the best Windows 8 ARM actually ships. So we are in the calm before the storm. bits just ruined any sort of scheduling. And Microsoft itself was saying nothing Everyone is storing up their innovative ideas for But there were some important themes about nothing. While I would concede that a the Windows 8 launch. Some are being cunning going on. Firstly, almost nothing was being said keynote from Steve Ballmer is rarely an and keeping the really interesting stuff for the about Windows 8. Normally, such silence this eye-opening or educational event, this time it months after Windows 8 launch, fearful that close to the release of a major Microsoft was even worse. The phrase ‘content free’ would being part of the main party will only ensure operating system would be a significant worry, be generous. Even Microsoft knows this, which that they get lost in the noise. verging on panic. But the alignment of the is why it has abandoned the CES keynote slot What is clear though is that this is a time planets is different this time around. for 2013. It just doesn’t fit into their news cycle. for radical solutions and crazy thinking. The For starters, you have to understand that Windows 8 Beta 1 will hopefully be in our move to a touch interface which is coupled to a most of the big PC manufacturers are on a six hands by the time you read this. It is due late full-power OS is something we have not seen month cycle, or thereabouts. So devices shown February, and is now called a Customer Preview before. iOS devices like the iPad are exceptional in January at CES will be fading stars in their Experience or some such nonsense. In the past, multi-touch devices, but the underlying OS is ranges by the Autumn. Because of this, no-one a beta was a beta – you knew where you stood. deliberately reduced in functionality. You might would be prepared to show anything which It was put out for software and hardware want to call Android well featured, but few companies to start checking for bugs and would disagree that it lacks the depth of a full compatibility issues. Today, it is just a Windows release. Problems with Android PowerPoint slide on a timeline of the marketing One of the technologies which Windows 8 A rather sad prediction for you. I took the opportunity at CES to talk team. will help enable is very high resolution displays. to a number of vendors who make Android based slates. Some of Of course, much rides on the quality of this I have seen some 300dpi panels and they them are deeply worried about the fragmentation of the platform, beta. If it is stunning, then Microsoft is on a solid simply blow you sideways. Yes, it is some nine the poor updating cycle, and other problems that the platform has flight path to launch in the early Autumn. If it is times sharper than a conventional Windows acquired. When asked what their future Android plans were, one a dog, then all bets are off. And the paranoid desktop (which is normally 96 pixels to the even went as far as to say “Windows 8!” Maybe there is some truth in silence surrounding the team means we have logical inch in both dimensions), but nothing these rumours that putting Android onto a device actually costs no idea whether the ARM version will ship at prepares you for the shock of looking at a more than deploying Windows, due to the licensing fees that the same time as the Intel version. display which is truly print quality. This is the Microsoft charges on its patent libraries. If so, it will be a sad day A few vendors did poke their head above breakthrough that we have been waiting for, when a strong potential competitor for Windows starts to fade away the parade and demonstrate interesting ideas. both on tablets and on desktops/laptops. It on the larger tablet market space. We need the competition here, A laptop with a full-width touch pad was reduces eyestrain; it stops you having to zoom and there is no doubt that Microsoft is working at a furious pace interesting, and something we will see much in and out all the time; it is going to be because it recognises just how far it is trailing both iOS and Android. more of in the future – especially when absolutely huge. customers start using the Metro interface. Because of this, as developers be prepared

32 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy Back End

to go much richer in terms of the content that assumptions about LPI. We have been used to from companies such as Apple are going to you display to users. We will be able to display checking for orientation, increased screen sizes blow open the entire marketplace for more on the screen, of course, but do not be and so forth for years, but changing LPI/DPI is educational books, for example. Whilst it is easy tempted to just cram in more stuff for the sake going to require careful thinking, especially as a to see how this benefits Little Johnny doing his of looking busy. Far better to reconsider the UI window is dragged from a 300dpi display to a physics homework, think for a moment how features and really ensure that they are making 96lpi display. Do we keep the same layout and this will affect something as humble as the help best use of this new resource. just “go soft”? Or will good apps recognise the file and other interactive training material. A lot And it goes without saying that your code change and assist the user appropriately? of this stuff has lurked around for years, and a really should have a good makeover to ensure There is much to think about here. The 300dpi Windows 8 environment might that there are no nasty depends or start-up new eBook technologies which are appearing come as somewhat of a rude shock.

Disability support Given that we are in 2012, you might be somewhat stunned to learn that there are Windows are rendered useless when using such an app. The high contrast tools fail, applications out there which do not support the disability features which have the reading technology cannot make sense of the self-drawn buttons: it has been carefully designed into our operating systems. Windows has a huge array of become an opaque black hole of an app to the disabled user. them, from large fonts to high-contrast designs to tools which can read directly I cannot believe that I have to write that every development team should have from the screen. Imagine my shock at finding a world-class vendor who supplies at least one test environment configured for such settings, and that this should be software on their platform for Windows which uses a cutesy re-skinning library for part of the QA sign-off procedure. But when a multi-billion dollar company makes Windows. Everything looks like Windows, but its subtly different. It’s like a Windows such a goof simply because it thought the re-skinning was “cool”, you have to app, but not as we know it, Jim. despair. Personally I abhor such re-skinning. I have no problems with radical user Please check code this way, and really ask yourself if any failures are interface design - I normally applaud the free thinking involved. But there has to be acceptable. Of course, there are some combinations which are logical. For example, a benefit, a purpose to the skinning which makes the result better than a standard if you are writing a tool for very precise image editing and colour balancing, then Windows application. When you are dealing with a bog standard application that supporting the black and white high contrast facilities might seem a bit daft, and does boring day to day things, such re-skinning seems somewhat stupid. you would be right. But the number of applications which have a legitimate ‘Get It is especially stupid when you discover that all of the disability features of out of jail free card’ here is really quite tiny.

Grey Matter • 01364 654 100 • HardCopy 33 Back End Short cuts Paul Stephens takes a sideways look at the world of IT.

Feet of clay in Cupertino? couldn’t do email, but these guys did – and they shipped it.” Former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis added: Has Apple’s legendary obsession with secrecy backfired in a big “On reflection it was a dumb move.” way in British Columbia? This is the question that’s been taxing us here in XML: “Of course it wasn’t supposed to happen.” said a W3C spokesperson, “We had some interns the Short Cuts office as we try to piece together the threads of a mystery in one summer and for a joke we told them to design a language with no vocabulary. Next thing we that could lead from the development labs of Cupertino to the retail knew they’d put it on the Web site and now 75 per cent of the world’s cloud storage is occupied by outlets of Vancouver. unnecessarily verbose tag names, 63 per cent of them generated by Microsoft Office applications. To Given Apple’s fondness for giving be honest it’s not something we like to talk about.” nothing away, we can’t say we were all that Sony Playstation: “We suspected that our competitors were spying on us,” said a senior Sony surprised by the recent claim, in Adam source, “so we thought we’d fool them into thinking that we were going to sell a machine with a DVD Lashinsky’s book ‘Inside Apple: How America’s drive, fast processor and plenty of RAM for less than the price of a cheap laptop. Unfortunately the Most Admired - and Secretive - Company Sumo was on in Tokyo and by the time we got back from the honbasho our subordinates had Really Works’, that new Apple employees are launched it. The whole industry’s been losing money ever since.” put to work on fake products to see if they Server Virtualization: (that’s enough fake products – Ed). can be trusted not to email the details to gizmodo.com, or leave the prototype on a Tubes4You bar stool on payday evening. Was this iPad-sized lump Short Cuts strongly approves of Innovation But then a story breaking on Canadian of modelling clay an Centres, such as the one run by Plymouth University at TV network CTV made us wonder whether employee loyalty test too Redruth in Cornwall where start-up software firm Apple’s loyalty-testing strategy might have far from the ultra- HeadForwards does outsourced development for gone horribly wrong. The station reported a secretive Apple? telecoms giant NTT – an appropriate focus in the spate of incidents in the Vancouver area in county where mighty transatlantic cables come which customers had bought iPad 2s from reputable retailers, only to open ashore, providing vital communications links to the the boxes and find lumps of modelling clay where their gleaming new Americas. tablets should have been. At Kent University’s Innovations Centre in The police’s theory is that members of the criminal classes are buying Canterbury the application focus is different, although iPads then swapping out the machine, re-shrink-wrapping the boxes (nice quite possibly still appropriate. Here development firm touch) and taking them back for a refund, leaving the unsuspecting Tinderhouse has just shipped an app which uses GPS retailers to sell lumps of clay to the next customer. to tell under-19s the nearest place to stock up on free However we think there might be a more embarrassing explanation. condoms provided by Kent NHS Trust’s C-Card Could it be that Apple told a bunch of newly-brainwashed – sorry, inducted community-based contraception scheme. “Apps like - employees that the lumps of clay they’d been assigned to work on were the Kent C Card demonstrate how mobile phones Kent NHS’s new apps tells under-19s the actually a new, ultra-uncluttered iPad design (“not even an Apple logo to provide direct access to relevant information,” said nearest source of free condoms – but not break the perfection of the line – awesome, huh?”), and that someone Tinderhouse Director Nick Tatt, “in this case, the nearest if the only phone they can afford is a forgot to tell them the truth before they got them boxed up and shipped condom pick up point in Kent.” cheap Android handset. out to BC? Far-fetched perhaps, but for us it’s all just a bit too much of a Our only gripe is that the app is currently only coincidence. available on the iPhone, which we regard as discriminatory against users of lower-priced Android handsets. As the old saying goes, “It’s the rich who get the pleasure, and the poor who have to make • The Vancouver story got us wondering whether the practice of putting do with a browser-based interface…” new employees to work on fake products might be more widespread than previously thought, and whether this might not be the first time it’s gone wrong. Our investigations revealed some shocking examples of products that were never meant to reach the shelves: “Whaddya mean you prefer Windows Vista: “Bill was getting paranoid about new employees Android?” No, seriously, this is giving our technology away,” said a subdued Steve Ballmer, “so I said, let’s Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doing give them something so bad it’ll make those Linux guys think we’re losing what he does best (showmanship) our grip. Then we forgot about it and the next thing we knew it had during his CES keynote session with shipped and we had 140 million dissatisfied customers. To be honest it’s radio personality Ryan Seacrest. In been a nightmare.” fact he was saying how pleased he BlackBerry Playbook 1: “It was more a test of intelligence than was with the Xbox; that’s just the trustworthiness.” said former co-CEO Jim Balsillie, “We didn’t think that way Steve says he’s pleased. anyone would think we were serious about shipping a pad computer that

34 Spring 2012 • Issue 55 • HardCopy