HP Reverses Course on Openvms 3 | Six Wrong Reasons to Hire a Consultant 40

HP Reverses Course on OpenVMS 3 | Six Wrong Reasons to Hire a Consultant 40

September 2014

How Analytics Empowers Business: Our 20 honorees are mining data to identify sales opportunities, deliver vital services and more accurately predict costs. 8 Vol. 1, No. 2 For breaking news, visit computerworld.com / View our magazine archives at computerworld.com/magindex

COMPUTERWORLD Table of Contents P.O. Box 9171, 492 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701-9171 | (508) 879-0700 The 20 winners of Computerworld’s » Editorial Gregg Keizer, Lucas Mearian, 2014 Data+ Editors’ Choice Patrick Thibodeau, Jaikumar Vijayan Editor in Chief Awards are reaping business Scot Finnie Editorial Project Manager benefits from big data.Cover age Mari Keefe Executive Editors begins on page 8 Ellen Fanning (features and design) Senior Associate Editor Julia King (events) Rebecca Linke Winners | 9 AstraZeneca | 10 BlueCross Managing Editors Office Manager Johanna Ambrosio (technologies) Linda Gorgone BlueShield of Tennessee | 11 Cisco | 12 Colorado Sharon Machlis (online) Contributing Editors DHSEM | 14 CGIAR | 15 Emory University Ken Mingis (news) Jamie Eckle, Preston Gralla, JR Raphael Bob Rawson (production) | 17 HealthTrust | 18 Idaho National Laboratory | » Contacts 20 Intel | 22 Keller Williams Realty | 24 Kennesaw Assistant Managing Editor Valerie Potter (features) Phone numbers, email addresses and State University | 26 Kisters | 27 LA Clear reporters’ beats are available online at | 28 Merck | 29 Persistent Systems | 31 Point Art Director Computerworld.com (see the Contacts April Montgomery link at the bottom of the home page). Defiance Zoo and Aquarium | 33 Shine Technologies Senior Reviews Editor Letters to the Editor | 35 SwiftIQ | 36 Texas Children’s Hospital | Barbara Krasnoff Send to [email protected]. 37 Thomson Reuters Features Editor Include an address and phone number Tracy Mayor for immediate verification. Letters will be edited for brevity and clarity. News Editors Mike Bucken, Marian Prokop News tips News Analysis 3 Hewlett-Packard throws a lifeline to OpenVMS [email protected] users. | Opinions 6 Paul Glen says you should blame yourself National Correspondents Julia King, Robert L. Mitchell Tech newsletters when your boss overloads you. | 40 Bart Perkins lists six wrong Sign up now for top stories, Reporters breaking news and more at: reasons to hire a consultant. | Departments 38 Shark Tank Sharon Gaudin, Matt Hamblen, www.computerworld.com/s/newsletters More on Computerworld.com

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September 2014 | Computerworld 2 News Analysis operating systems

Itanium chips and is promising eventual support for x86 proc essors. In June 2013, HP announced that it would not validate the operating system to its latest hardware or produce new versions of it. The move to license the OpenVMS source code to a new entity, VMS Software Inc. (VSI), amounts to a reversal of that decision. “HP and VSI have provided what appears to be a path forward for existing VMS sites,” said Stephen Hoffman, who was on the OpenVMS engineering team at Digital Equipment Corp., where the system was developed, and then at Compaq, year after putting which acquired Digital and was OpenVMS on a later acquired by HP. HP Reverses Course, path to extinction, Hoffman is now an indepen- Hewlett-Pacakard dent consultant at HoffmanLabs. Gives OpenVMS New Life Areversed course and licensed Many OpenVMS users just A year after saying it planned to end support for OpenVMS, the venerable operating system want to be able to stay on the Hewlett-Packard licenses the esteemed operating system to a new company that plans operating system. HP stirred to a startup. By Patrick Thibodeau to develop ports to the latest up a slew of complaints among

Thinkstock September 2014 | Computerworld 3 News Analysis operating systems

OpenVMS users when it said it a longtime OpenVMS support ary,” Harris said, citing Open- would not validate OpenVMS and maintenance firm. VMS’s disaster recovery, security beyond Integrity i2 services In a road map, VSI outlined and clustering capabilities. running Tukwila quad-core plans to validate the operating OpenVMS is largely invis- processors. That decision effec- system on Intel’s Itanium eight- ible in a world dominated by tively put the operating system core Poulson chips by early Windows, Linux, cloud-based on an end-of-life path. 2015. The company also said it systems, and even Unix systems The latest announcement would support OpenVMS on such as HP-UX, AIX and So- came just days after an Open- HP hardware running the up- laris. But it runs critical systems VMS user group in France posted coming Kittson chip and that it and its users consistently praise will develop an x86 port — al- it for its reliability, engineering though it didn’t specify a time and capabilities. HP and VSI have provided what frame for the latter initiative. HP has about 2,500 Open- appears to be a path forward VSI also plans to develop new VMS customers on support for existing VMS sites. versions of OpenVMS. contracts. That does not in- Stephen Hoffman, consultant, HoffmanLabs clude OpenVMS users who use Legendary Strengths independent support vendors, VSI CEO Duane Harris said such the Parsec Group, which an “open letter” to Hewlett-Pack- his company approached HP has 350 OpenVMS customers ard CEO Meg Whitman urging about OpenVMS because of running some 7,000 systems. her to reconsider the decision to the operating system’s strong VSI hopes to expand the pull support for OpenVMS. The customer base. OpenVMS is OpenVMS market and sell the letter described the role of Open- used in nuclear power plants, software to new customers. It VMS in running transportation in process control systems in all intends to modernize the op- systems, health services and industries, by the U.S. Navy and erating system’s application nuclear power plants in France. in transportation and finance. development tools and improve VSI is funded by the inves- “It’s a marquee piece of soft- its capabilities — including the tors of Nemonix Engineering, ware; its strengths are legend- number of cores it can support.

September 2014 | Computerworld 4 News Analysis operating systems

software, beginning early next Between the Lines | John Klossner year with a port to HP Integrity OpenVMS i4 systems running the eight- is the most core Poulson chip. Previously, secure HP said it would not validate operating OpenVMS beyond its Integrity system out i2 servers running the Tukwila there. quad-core processor. Duane Harris, CEO, VSI “There is obviously a need to build a track record,” Hoffman said of the new company, noting Harris believes OpenVMS’s that OpenVMS customers “are security features and fault toler- classically conservative” and ance will be strong points. will want to see and touch the “We feel very strongly that software that VSI delivers before OpenVMS is the most secure they run it in their production operating system out there, environments. “That would not and certainly more secure than be particularly different from a Windows and certainly more new HP release,” he added. secure than Linux,” said Harris. Noting that moving an Open- VMS application to another having an impact. On the Veteran Developers platform is costly and time-con- comp.os.vms Google Groups VSI said it has assembled a team suming, Hoffman said VSI “has discussion forum, one person of veteran OpenVMS develop- the potential to throw custom- wrote that “two OpenVMS exit ers, some from the core DEC ers a lifeline . . . and the custom- projects here at work (a con- team that developed the operat- ers are definitely interested.” version to Linux and another ing system back in the 1970s. The change in the road map to SAP) have been put on hold VSI plans to deliver new for OpenVMS may already be indefinitely.”u

September 2014 | Computerworld 5 Paul Glen Opinion

Paul Glen is the co-author of The Geek Leader’s Handbook and a principal of Leading Geeks, an education and consulting firm devoted to clarifying the murky world of human emotion for people who gravitate toward concrete thinking. You can contact him at [email protected].

When Your Boss Overloads You, Blame Yourself

At work, do you ever feel the projects will ever end. time in productive work. like one of those circus per- You’re caught up in what’s And when this happens, formers spinning plates on the commonly known as thrashing, most of us curse our bosses for top of poles? With a dozen dif- spending a disproportionate giving us too much to do. We ferent projects going at once, amount of your time switching blame them for our stress and you spend your time frantically between projects. Every time lack of productivity. running from one to another, you set one aside and pick up But you shouldn’t blame your attending to each just enough to another, it takes mental and boss for this. It’s as much your keep them all spinning. You’re emotional energy to stop one fault as it is hers. exhausted from the relentless train of thought and remind A boss’s job is to get as much pace but know that the best yourself where you left off on done as possible with the re- you’re going to do is avoid the the other. When you do this too sources available. Many manag- crashing disaster of letting them often, you spend most of your ers interpret that as meaning drop. And it feels like none of time switching and little of your they have to heap as much work

September 2014 | Computerworld 6 Paul Glen Opinion

as possible on the people they cerned that the next thing your Either way, you’re not being supervise. Some of them may try boss requests will push you over intransigent or refusing to work. to gauge how much you can ac- the edge, you have options. You’re simply giving your boss complish without thrashing, but Ask your boss to clarify your the information she needs to get most will just keep giving you priorities. Calmly list all the the best from you. It’s not a sign things to do to make sure you’re things that you have to do, then of weakness to admit that you doing as much as possible. tell her how many you feel you have limits. In fact, self-aware- So why do I say that it’s your can address effectively at one ness and honesty are signs of fault as much as your boss’s? Be- time, and ask her to rank them self-respect and professionalism. cause it’s your responsibility to in the order she wants you to Although it’s tempting to be productive, to monitor your work on them. You’re not say- blame your boss for overloading own work and to let your boss ing you won’t do them. You’re you, it’s not reasonable or fair. know what’s realistic to expect just asking for guidance to en- It’s your responsibility as a pro- given the time available and the sure that you address the most fessional to ensure that you can circumstances you’re working important goals first. produce the best results possi- under. In other words, it’s not Clarify the impact of being ble given the constraints of your your job to willingly agree to ev- overloaded. Again, calmly list work. And it’s part of your job erything your boss tells you to do. everything you have to do, then to let your boss know honestly I’m not suggesting that you tell your boss how many you what you can and can’t do. u should just start telling your boss feel you can address effectively no when she asks you to do any- at one time. If she tells you that thing new. There are appropri- you must do them all at once, ate ways to make sure that you explain the impact of thrashing It’s part of your job to let your avoid thrashing and give your on your productivity and the boss know honestly what you organization the best return on total amount of time you’ll need can and can’t do. its investment in you. When you to finish them simultaneously find yourself thrashing, or con- rather than in sequence.

September 2014 | Computerworld 7 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Computerworld’s 2014 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards for Analytics recognize 20 organizations reaping business benefits through big data initiatives. These honorees are mining data to analyze trends, make predictions and boost the bottom line.

AB:THinksto Creditck September 2014 | Computerworld 8 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

bines external medical data ments at the sentence or phrase — including publications, level. Users get information at patents, clinical trials and re- 1/50th the volume of a document- search grants — with internal level search, and each document AstraZeneca content found on departmental is highly accurate, Brown adds. An enhanced search engine nology services director. file shares, in Microsoft Share- One of the challenges was to brings 100 million instantly AstraZeneca deployed the Point, SharePoint Online and simplify pharmaceutical vocabu- searchable documents to R&D Sinequa Big Data Search and Office 365 systems, and via lary, so the team first indexed teams. By Stacy Collett Analytics Platform in the cloud EMC’s eRoom collaboration information and tagged it with a and now provides end users system and Documentum con- half-million terms in 15 to 20 cat- Pharmaceutical research with 100 million unduplicated tent management system. egories and then deployed some and development projects re- documents that are instantly Built-in text-mining algo- smart algorithms that could, for quire collaboration among searchable. The platform com- rithms let users search docu- example, tell when the term cat members of huge distributed was being used to refer to a feline R&D organizations with hun- animal and when it was being dreds of millions of documents used to refer to a CT scan. Brown AstraZeneca ployees would work in a year. to parse. Facing such a chal- uses technology from SciBite, At a glance lenge, AstraZeneca needed a n Advice: “Offer simple, a startup in Bexhill, England, big data system that would fos- intuitive interfaces to users, to add rule-based logic and ac- ter collaboration among teams, handling the complexities curate scientific vocabularies to n Business objective: eliminate redundancy, help of business information and the platform. The system had To speed R&D by offering researchers zero in on relevant even scientific information been rolled out to 1,000 users by 100 million documents in one data and shorten research times. under the hood,” says Nick December 2013; it now supports location. “If we can save every user Brown, technology services 8,000 researchers. u four minutes a day in searches, n Project payback: director. Also, “offer real- that equates to [time spent by] Time savings equal to the num- time responses, or face users Collett is a Computerworld con- 85 people per year that we can ber of hours 85 full-time em- abandoning your solution.” tributing writer. You can contact save,” says Nick Brown, tech- her at [email protected].

September 2014 | Computerworld 9 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Executives at BlueCross at lower costs. Challenges BlueShield of Tennessee realized included integrating the data in 2011 that they needed a better Blue Cross Blue sets, adopting the agile scrum way to help staff, external part- Shield of Tennessee methodology so the team could ners and clients glean insights At a glance have multiple work streams from the organization’s data. going at once, and figuring out So the health insurance pro- data interdependencies as the vider built a data analytics and n Business objective: To project progressed. Program reporting platform that displays extract information from the manager Denise Matthews says actionable clinical and adminis- organization’s data to sup- the team tackled challenges trative information to business port strategic goals. by getting staff certified in stakeholders, provider groups agile scrum, strengthening the n Project payback: and employers. Sherri Zink, systems that support the data One project using the Cus- the company’s vice president of project and getting feedback tom 360 platform identified medical informatics, says team from users as pieces of the and closed 50,000 gaps in members started building what overall project were rolled out. care that corresponded to it calls the Custom 360 plat- Carla Raynor, vice president $1.8 million in savings. BlueCross form by creating a “data ware- of strategic marketing for BCBS housing structure that would n Advice: Understand who is of Tennessee, says she uses the BlueShield be our single source of truth going to play what role so you information from the system for disparate data sets, whether can align tasks with the right to tailor marketing messages that data was internal or not.” skill sets, says Sherri Zink, and thereby engage her target of Tennessee Later the team created vice president of medical audience more effectively. u A custom data analytics algorithms and built reporting informatics. And be very and reporting platform dashboards to support business connected to the business Pratt is a Computerworld extracts valuable insights users who drill into the data for so your project advances the contributing writer in Waltham, from healthcare data. insights that help them provide organization’s strategy. Mass. You can contact her at By Mary K. Pratt more effective healthcare [email protected].

Thinkstock September 2014 | Computerworld 10 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Initiative and worked with “disparate data and organize MaintenanceNet to develop a the whole company around a Cisco system that mines data on ser- source of truth.” At a glance vice contracts and provides that “We brought together Cisco’s information to distributors and data and our partners’ data, resellers. The system is hosted improved it and then gave it n Cisco Business objective: A custom platform mines by MaintenanceNet, and resell- back to them without relying on To automate service renewal data on service contracts to ers and distributors can easily spreadsheets or emails,” he says. data and create actionable track when clients are up for access it to track contracts and Another challenge, Shasteen sales leads. renewals. By Mary K. Pratt contact customers when it’s says, was getting IT workers time to renew. used to a DevOps model. n Project payback: Cisco’s distributors and re- The main challenge with Angie Beltz, vice president of In 2013, Cisco increased sellers needed better insight into developing the platform was product marketing for the Cisco renewal rates from 17% to when the service contracts they handling the data, says Jed Solutions Group at Tech Data more than 55% in the Ameri- sell to customers expire so they Shasteen, operations man- Corp., says her company has cas and saved more than could more effectively renew ager for Americas distribution seen an estimated 10% uptick in 8,000 hours of sales and ad- them. The goal was to automate service sales at Cisco, noting customer renewals since it be- ministrative time for distri- management of the contracts that project staffers had to take gan using the Cisco platform. u bution partners each month, and use analytics to identify and more than 20,000 hours which ones were due to end for reseller partners. soon — information that wasn’t n Advice: Maintaining qual- easy to track in the high-volume We brought together Cisco’s data ity data is a partnership that IT market, says John Richard, and our partners’ data, improved it involves everyone, according Cisco’s director of Americas dis- and then gave it back to them without to John Richard, director of tribution service sales. relying on spreadsheets or emails. Americas distribution service To solve the problem, the Jed Shasteen, operations manager for Americas distribution service sales, Cisco sales at Cisco. networking vendor launched the Cisco Partner Annuity

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 11 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

DHSEM needed a platform for sharing information and performing analysis in real time.

State Emergency Operations Center staff coordinate response and resources during the September 2013 flood event.

forming analysis in real time. The agency deployed Esri’s ArcGIS Online to gather information from a wider range of stakeholders and then share Colorado DHSEM insights on impacted areas. A cloud-based system Last September, rainfall needed a faster way to track A cloud-based platform for collects, maps and forced nearly 18,000 Colorado where flooding and damage mapping and data manage- shares disaster area residents from their homes and were occurring. Faced with the ment, ArcGIS Online allowed information with state caused hundreds of millions of need to coordinate hundreds of the DHSEM to collect data decision-makers. dollars in damage to the state’s response personnel and to brief quickly and then share continu- BY Stacy Collett infrastructure. The Colorado executive decision-makers, the ally updated maps showing road Division of Homeland Security DHSEM needed a platform for closures, traffic control points, & Emergency Management sharing information and per- evacuation areas, damaged fa-

Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Homeland Security & September 2014 | Computerworld 12 Emergency Management, Public Information Office Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Colorado DHSEM n Advice: “Make sure you’re casting a broad At a glance net [when collecting data] and not just limiting your resources to emergency n Business objective: To response personnel,” says collect and share flood data Dave Hard, director of in real time among federal, emergency management. state and local agencies. “That would include GIS n Project payback: Speeds folks, public works, local decision-making, policy- communities and the private (want in?) making and budgeting. sector.” cilities and georeferenced aerial imagery. The platform also played a key role in the response to the The Computerworld LinkedIn Forum is a community for all things IT: massive Mesa County mudslide in May. “It has reduced du- news, analysis and discussion about plication of effort and enabled new ways of thinking of how topics within IT, including careers, to help each other during a large disaster,” says Dave Hard, management and hot topics. If you are an enterprise IT practitioner director of emergency management in the DHSEM, which at any level we’d love to have you join. is part of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Apply for membership today at “The timely sharing of the data also helps in decision- www.computerworld.com/linkedin making” on resources, policy-making and budget planning, says Colorado DHSEM director Kevin Klein, who plans to use the platform to predict and mitigate natural disaster risks in the near future. “Any hazard I can prevent, I’m on much better off than trying to respond to it later,” he says. u

13 Computerworld | September 2014

CW_Linkedin_ad_full.indd 1 8/3/10 11:59:13 AM Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

agriculture specialist at Esri. Glenn Hyman, senior re- Consultative Group CGIAR searcher at the International At a glance Center for Tropical Agriculture on International in Cali, Colombia, says, “Re- search centers [like ours] are n Business objective: going through our own litera- Agricultural Research To address the problem of ture to find all the data applica- At the heart of the RTB initia- hunger worldwide through an tions and knowledge that have A maps application, tive is an application called RTB understanding of geographic a geographic dimension. [The developed with scientific Maps that aggregates individual trends in the causes of RTB initiative] is a very use- crowdsourcing, identifies maps that show crop distribution, food insecurity. ful way for them to share their priority areas for crops. desolate areas, pest and disease work and look at patterns be- BY Stacy Collett n Project payback: locations, and socio-economic yond their narrow interests.” The organization is still data. Scientists access the system For example, Hyman says a calculating ROI. Many people in the developing online and can choose to over- scientist at his center was re- world struggle with hunger, lay the specific maps that satisfy n Advice: “When you have a searching ways to prevent the food insecurity, poverty and their research criteria. RTB Maps big collaborative project like spread of crop-damaging mealy- threats to their livelihoods. was built with ArcGIS server this, give credit to the con- bugs. Using RTB Maps, the In response, CGIAR, an in- technology from Esri, a vendor of tributors,” says researcher researcher discovered a natural ternational organization that geographic information systems. Glenn Hyman. “[Research is] enemy of the bug that controls coordinates agricultural re- The RTB initiative is really becoming democra- the pest in Africa, and now that search, set up the Roots, Tubers “crowdsourcing scientific tized now that you can put technique is being used in Asia. and Bananas for Food Security thought” by eliciting input everything on the Web.” The application also pulls in and Income program, which from four primary international information from social media, identifies endangered areas and agricultural research groups including videos, tweets and highlights opportunities for im- and other scientists and agrono- posts, to enrich scientists’ un- proving agricultural conditions. mists, says Susana Crespo, an derstanding about crops. u

AB:THinksto Creditck September 2014 | Computerworld 14 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014 Emory University A streaming analytics platform helps physicians predict potentially life-threatening scenarios. By Julia King

Patients in an intensive care unit typically are surrounded by machines and monitors measuring heart rate, lung capacity and other vital signs. Clinicians must take in and process multiple streams of data, which is typically analyzed retrospectively. At the Emory University School of Medicine, a team headed by Dr. Tim Buchman, a professor of surgery and director of the school’s Center for Critical Care, is using IBM’s streaming analytics platform along with data aggregation Emory University’s big data team: Gari Clifford, Myffy Hopkins, Terry Willey (seated) and Sharath Cholleti.

Jack Kearse / Emory University September 2014 | Computerworld 15 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014 software from Excel Medical Electronics to collect and analyze more than 1,000 real- Emory University Although Emory’s ‘ICU of the Future’ time data points per patient per At a glance project is still in the research phase, it second from between four and promises to help physicians recognize six independent data streams. potentially life-threatening scenarios Although Emory’s “ICU of n Business objective: and intervene proactively. the Future” project is still in the Collect, display and analyze research phase, it promises to patient physiological data in help physicians recognize po- real time. and trajectories of thousands tentially life-threatening scenar- of other patients. “It would be a n Project payback: ios and intervene proactively. quantum shift in caring for pa- Developed novel visual dis- “By displaying heart rate and tients more rapidly and efficient- plays of critical data from oxygen saturation rate simul- ly, and in a more targeted man- multiple monitoring devices. taneously and updating it as ner,” says Dr. Tommy Thomas, a frequently as allowable, we can n Advice: IT professionals critical care physician at Emory. detect life-threatening clinical should “go into the clinical For now, “this is all going on events that folks at the bedside environment, join the work in a research study, but we’re are missing,” says Buchman, flow and absorb the thought quite confident that caretakers who is also a practicing physi- flow,” says Dr.T im Buchman. will get earlier warnings and cian. Additionally, clinicians “Learn how clinicians create prevent significant disability would be able to assess current and sustain situational aware- and sometimes even death once patient data in relation to his- ness — how they gain access exposed to these novel views of torical data from thousands of to data, how they make sense data,” he adds. previous patients. of data, and how they try to Full implementation will Essentially, the system would project the current state into require FDA approval, and identify archetypes of patient a future state.” Buchman estimates that that types by looking at the outcomes remains “years away.” u

September 2014 | Computerworld 16 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

HealthTrust platform to handle the ever- At a glance increasing types and volumes of HealthTrust data it processes. n Business objective: A business intelligence The system analyzes past Uncover quality data for platform helps hospitals procurement and contract data, use in an analytics tool that reduce supply costs and automated data extracts from member hospitals can use to improve quality of care. hundreds of member hospi- manage expenditures. By Stacy Collett tals, and supply data from distributors to help hospitals get a n Project payback: H ospitals constantly strive clearer picture of their overall $13 million in customer phar- to manage their costs and im- expenditures and the variety of HealthTrust’s big data team: Michael macy savings in one year. prove care, and HCA’s Health- supplies they use. Arnold and Kristin Caldwell (seated), and Don Eddleman, Syed Nasar, Jerry Robert- n Advice: “When you look Trust Purchasing Group uses “Hospitals tend to use dif- son, Bobby Brown and Ashley Johnson. at the technology you’re analytics to help them do that. ferent supplies for similar pro- leveraging, use its strengths A provider of supply chain and cedures without realizing it,” One year later, “we have and don’t try to fit that tech- supplier contracting services explains Brian Abbate, senior identified almost $13 million nology into what you already to more than 1,400 member business analyst at HCA. The in savings to our members in do, or you might not get the hospitals, HealthTrust devel- analytics tool identifies cases their [pharmacy expenditures [value] you’re looking for,” oped a business intelligence where that is happening and alone],” says Don Eddleman, says Don Eddleman, director platform and a customized ana- shows their impact on cost. director of architecture and of architecture and integra- lytics tool that allow members For the project to succeed, integration. He adds that tion. In addition, he says, to examine their spending hab- HealthTrust had to persuade HealthTrust also improved “deliver features as quickly its and identify opportunities customers to trust the data, find its methods for ingesting, as possible and engage your to save money. or train people with the skills organizing and sharing data, customers. That immediate HealthTrust deployed Mi- to manage the new platforms which helped it reduce cycle feedback lets you know you’re croStrategy’s enterprise BI (which it did with the help of times, improve quality and building the right thing.” platform and Cloudera’s Ha- consulting firms), and integrate detect characteristics about the doop-based data management data with business partners. data more quickly. u

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 17 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Idaho National Laboratory A digital library puts infrastructure data at government officials’ fingertips. By Mary K. Pratt

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a vast collection of data that can help local, state and federal agencies plan for and respond to emergencies. But the disparate nature of this data, which includes more than 100,000 I daho National Laboratory’s big data team: Wayne Simpson, Mary Klett and Dale Christiansen.

INL photographer Chris Morgan September 2014 | Computerworld 18 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

facility records, 20,000 docu- information — in databases, as ments, 50,000 images and documents, on Web pages or as I daho National 5,000 Web pages gathered PDF files. Working with data Laboratory from various government feeds and crawlers, team mem- At a glance entities, made searching for bers built a system that could ac- specific information and in- cess data however it was stored. sights impossible. Then they normalized the data n Business objective: In October 2013, the Idaho and pushed it into search tools. Develop a searchable library National Laboratory took on the They’re now adding tools that of data to make it easier for challenging task of using all that can help users analyze data and government entities to study, data to create its Infrastructure predict how emergencies could plan for and respond to Protection Digital Library. “Our impact infrastructure in their emergency situations. job was to normalize the con- regions. Michael Norman, di- tent so it could become search- rector of the DHS’s Infrastruc- n Project payback: The able and useful,” says Wayne ture Information Collection $500,000 project yielded a Simpson, an architect in infor- Division, says the library saves system that made it signifi- mation management at the lab. people hours of work by making cantly easier to find and ac- Simpson says the project information easy to find. It also cess information required to required him and his colleagues helps ensure that government prepare for emergencies. to find ways to deal with the officials don’t miss a critical n Advice: If you undertake a variety of ways people store the piece of data. u normalization effort involving big data, remember that no single tool can do it all, says Our job was to normalize the content so it could Wayne Simpson, an architect become searchable and useful. in information management Wayne Simpson, architect, information management, Idaho National Laboratory at Idaho National Laboratory.

September 2014 | Computerworld 19 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014 Intel An advanced predictive analytics system helps prioritize resellers with high-volume potential. By stacy Collett

The trend toward smaller mobile devices has changed channel dynamics for Intel. In the past, companies bought parts from Intel and built their own computers. As a result, “we had a very clear view of the whole market,” says Lilian Kubail, sales insights manager within Intel’s sales enablement organization. Now large OEMs are building smaller laptops and tablets and then selling those products to distributors, who in turn sell to resellers, making it Intel’s advanced analytics team developed a predictive analytics engine that was rolled out globally, harder for Intel to track who is yielding an annual increase in incremental revenue of $20 million. selling its products.

Peleg Havazelet September 2014 | Computerworld 20 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

To help sales staffers find clusters have been defined, those accounts and engage with it goes through “supervised them, Intel developed its own classification” where business Intel including labor, and it returns advanced predictive analytics rules are applied to the data, At a glance $20 million per year. solution. and then the output is ranked n Advice: “Have a really The project involved from highest to lowest sales strong business partner who combining existing information volume potential. n Business objective: shares the vision and is will- on resellers with external data The predictive analytics en- To help the Intel sales orga- ing to help and influence the on which organizations are gine was tested at Intel’s Asia- nization optimize its account organization when change making big investments in Pacific online sales center in management and thereby needs to be made,” says Ivan the market and growing their late 2012 and then rolled out increase estimated incremen- Harrow, director of business businesses. Then the IT team globally. It yielded an annual in- tal revenue; to identify and analytics in sales and market- looked at interactions with crease in incremental revenue prioritize which resellers have ing IT. “Technology on its own Intel’s websites to see which of $20 million. u the greatest potential for will never solve all the issues organizations were looking high-volume sales. — there has to be a good part- for information, and which n Project payback: The proj- nership between IT and the products were being accessed. ect cost less than $800,000, business organization.” Once data was gathered, The tricky “the tricky part was figuring out part was which data sets were the most figuring out relevant,” says Ivan Harrow, which data director of business analytics sets were in sales and marketing IT. The the most analytics engine takes the data relevant. and uses a methodology called Ivan Harrow, director of business “unsupervised clustering,” analytics, sales and which looks for hidden patterns marketing IT, Intel in unlabeled data. Once the

Thinkstock September 2014 | Computerworld 21 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Keller Williams Realty A new BI system and real- time dashboards identify trends in home sales. B Y Mary K. Pratt

Keller Williams Realty International collects and analyzes transaction data from its 700 franchised offices and 100,000 agents in more than a dozen countries. The data The Keller Williams big data team: Jason Tang, Cary Sylvester, Wendy Hale and James Elsea.

September 2014 | Computerworld 22 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Keller Williams company increased the Realty number of agents attending You can drill in and get enough At a glance training events — a move that comparisons to really see, clearly, delivered an ROI within the where there’s a trend. first year of deployment. Danny Thompson, executive director of operations, n Business objective: Keller Williams Realty n Advice: Make sure data To cull business insights from needs are considered upfront real estate transaction data in every project, and don’t to support forecasting and analysis enables the Austin- underestimate the time it will predictive analytics. based company to identify take to untangle information trends and develop insights n Project payback: pulled from older systems, says that help it make informed By using its BI tools to analyze Wendy Hale, senior BI devel- business decisions. Those training effectiveness, the oper/analyst at Keller Williams. insights have been so valuable that the company was able grow during the past five to At the same time, the company veloper and analyst, says Keller seven years, even as the real added real-time dashboards Williams uses Tableau to drive estate market suffered a severe that executives use to monitor strategy by looking for connec- slump, according to Cary all transactions in the U.S. and tions among pieces of data. Like Sylvester, vice president of Canada. “You can drill in and any deployment, implementing technology innovation and get enough comparisons to re- Tableau involved challenges. communication. ally see, clearly, where there’s Among other things, the com- Keller Williams first imple- a trend,” says Danny Thomp- pany needed to beef up its serv- mented a business intelligence son, who as executive director ers and improve data quality, he system in the late 1990s and of operations uses Tableau to says, emphasizing that it must migrated to Tableau Software’s determine the effectiveness of remain diligent about data stan- desktop and server analytics corporate coaching. dards to ensure that the quality and BI tools in December 2013. James Elsea, a senior BI de- doesn’t decline. u

September 2014 | Computerworld 23 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Kennesaw State University An applied statistics program at a Georgia university digs into real-world data from large companies. By Julia King

In 2006, professor Jennifer Kennesaw State’s big data team: Ken Hoganson, chair of the computer science department; Lewis VanBrackle, chair of the statistics and ana- Priestley and her colleagues lytical sciences department; Jennifer Lewis Priestley, professor of statistics and data science; Joe Dolan, a student pursuing a master’s in ap- at Georgia’s Kennesaw State plied statistics. Not pictured: Mark Anderson, dean of the college of science and mathematics.

David Caselli September 2014 | Computerworld 24 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Once the data is extracted and cleaned, we emphasize to students that they’re only halfway done. Next, the real work starts, which is translating the data into meaningful information to support someone else’s business decision-making process. Jennifer Priestley, professor, Kennesaw State University

University were charged with starts, which is translating the building a new undergraduate data into meaningful informa- program in statistics. What they tion to support someone else’s Kennesaw State employers of these degree created is an applied statistics business decision-making proc University holders potentially save millions program that incorporates real ess,” she says. At a glance in training costs. data from large companies like Today, Kennesaw State offers CompuCredit, Southern Co. n Advice: A partnership with a 50 applied statistics courses and and SAS Institute. university could become an organi- every one of them incorporates n Business objective: Create “Everything is scrubbed and zation’s most powerful weapon in use of a real-world data set. The an academic program that teach- anonymous,” Priestley emphasiz- its arsenal to tame big data, says university’s master’s degree in es students to use big data and es. In fact, she adds, “the data is a Kennesaw State professor Jennifer applied statistics has become its analytics to solve real-world complete disaster, which is actu- Priestley. Organizations willing to flagship program. business problems. ally fabulous because it’s real.” share their data with universities for “For me, working with real- Working with the real-world n Project payback: 100% educational purposes help to create world data was invaluable,” says data, students in both the un- job placement for graduates; a ready-made supply of talent. Joe Dolan, a graduate student dergraduate and a newer gradu- now working as an intern at a ate program learn how to ex- media analyst firm. “From what tract, load and clean data, and Priestley explains. Students also and cleaned, we emphasize to I’ve seen throughout my time how to create transformations learn how to tell a data story. students that they’re only half- in the job market so far, it’s no- of variables to be analyzed, “Once the data is extracted way done. Next, the real work where but up for me.” u

September 2014 | Computerworld 25 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

updates on flood conditions to says Michael Natschke, head of about 1,000 professionals and water solutions at Kisters. Kisters 1.6 million public users. The portal went live in Feb- At a glance The team deployed Esri’s Arc- ruary — just as Belgium entered Kisters GIS mapping and spatial analysis a dry spell. Luckily, the portal A central Web portal com- software for integrating forecast- also monitors drought condi- n Business objective: bines spatial and weather data ing maps; Kisters’ water manage- tions. Create a central access point to monitor flood and drought ment information system and “The public and professional for information on floods conditions. By Stacy Collett Web interoperability system for widgets were all integrated and droughts, provide a integrating measurements, hy- into one seamless state-of-the- cross-domain view, and In 2012 and 2013, Belgium drologic conditions and forecast art Web services-based portal, serve both professional endured heavy rainfall as Eu- data; and a content management making context-aware access to users and everyday citizens. rope’s jet stream changed paths system for integrating browser- water information easier,” says and brought flooding to central based presentation widgets. Kris Cauwenberghs, head of the n Project payback: Europe. The Flemish Environ- Some 2,000 locations pro- Flemish Environment Agency’s A holistic view of flooding ment Agency needed a better vide water-level data to the sys- flood management unit. u and drought situations. way to inform citizens and wa- tem every 15 minutes, and tidal n Advice: “It’s important ter management officials about data is updated every minute. to get the data right,” says forecasted flood conditions. Updates are applied to short- Some 2,000 Michael Natschke, head of Kisters, a German engineer- term forecasts hourly and to locations water solutions at Kisters. ing and technology company, long-term forecasts twice a day. provide water- “If not, you get no value developed a Web-based portal “The biggest technical chal- level data to the from it and you can’t turn it that integrates complex spa- lenge was harmonizing Kisters’ system every into information.” tial and sequential data such product for time series data 15 minutes, as inundation maps, river wa- management and the Esri Web and tidal data is ter levels, radar information, technology product for the updated every flood alarm reports and public spatial information . . . and then minute. Twitter feeds to provide hourly normalizing this information,”

Thinkstock September 2014 | Computerworld 26 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

and tie them to criminal activity. That would enable a district attorney to, for example, use LA Clear cellphone data to show that a At a glance suspect had been with someone LA Clear else at a particular location be- GIS software and geospatial ly display cellphone activity and fore or after a criminal incident. n Business objective: analysis help crime-fighters correlate it with other data and “Now, we’re able to merge an Streamline the process pinpoint criminal activity. events, such as the issuance of entire date range of call records of gathering evidence in B Y Julia King search warrants, to create com- with cell site data and load it into criminal cases. prehensive evidence packages. a map and see, for example, that n Project payback: Tracking cellphone activity “Before, low-tech law en- two criminals went and cased Faster criminal convictions; plays a key role in helping law forcement analysts would a jewelry store two days before the time required to enforcement officials determine manually enter the latitude and they did a smash-and-grab,” prepare evidence declined where suspects were before and longitude of every call made Nunez explains. Using the new from 20 to 30 hours to four after crimes were committed. into a map point system, which sophisticated 3D mapping sys- to 12 hours. Using a combination of Esri was fine for a two-dimensional tem, analysts can show move- GIS software and geospatial view of what occurred right at ment and activity over time. n Advice: Senior lead analysis technology, analysts at the time of the crime,” explains Referring to a recent murder analyst Toni Nunez says the Los Angeles Regional Crimi- senior lead analyst Toni Nunez. case, Los Angeles prosecutor it takes a year or two to nal Information Clearinghouse LA Clear wanted the ability to Lana Johnson notes that “being learn how to present cell- (LA Clear) are now able to visual- quickly identify patterns of calls able to visually show [the jury] phone location data visu- that the defendant’s phone trav- ally. Key issues are learning eled to the crime scene along how to tell a story with LA Clear wanted the ability to quickly with a phone belonging to his maps and to demonstrate identify patterns of calls and tie fellow gang member was . . . key a point using all available them to criminal activity. to securing a first-degree mur- data on hand. der conviction.” u

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 27 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

them at scale,” says Gerard Megaro, director of innovation and analytics at Merck, explain- Merck possible to significantly reduce ing that a total of 1.5 million At a glance manufacturing discards. Merck terabytes of data, including Open-source and cloud previously archived data and n Advice: “The most technologies help aggregate current data, was queried from important thing is to n Business objective: vast amounts of data about a one place and subsequently understand your business Discover the causes of yield key vaccine. By Julia King analyzed on a single platform. context,” says Gerard Megaro, variations in the vaccine The five-person project team director of innovation and production process. Variations in the manufacture then performed more than analytics. Also, don’t be of batches of pharmaceuticals 15 billion calculations and ex- n Project payback: afraid to use open-source can force drug companies to amined more than 5.5 million Pinpointed sources of technology. “We really wanted discard products, potentially batch-to-batch comparisons. manufacturing variations after to spend money on the talent incurring tens of millions of In all, the team analyzed more three months, an outcome to understand the problem, not dollars in losses. than 1 billion records, applying that could yield millions of the hardware and software to Hoping to understand how advanced analytics to deter- dollars in savings by making it host the problem,” he explains. to reduce variability in the man- mine which production fac- ufacturing process, Merck used tors had the greatest impact on a combination of cloud technol- product yield. ficient,” says George Llado, vice ogies and open-source Hadoop “I gave [the project] three president of IT for supply chain big data tools to aggregate and months and a couple of hun- and manufacturing at Merck. analyze 12 years of data associ- dred thousand dollars, and “We now have a much faster ated with the production of one [Megaro] came back with a heat way to get at [data] we couldn’t of its key vaccines. map that pointed us toward a get at before and to build a “We were able to aggregate number of variables that would sustainable model that we can the complete data set of every impact the manufacturing continue to apply [to the manu- batch produced and compared process and make us more ef- facture of other products].” u

September 2014 | Computerworld 28 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Persistent Systems’ big data team: Kedar Bindu, Divya Motivala, Ankit Koshti, Avinash More, Kaushik Raghupathi, Mitesh Shah, Kapil Godhwani, Amruta Pawar, Manish Mahajan, Siddhesh Bhobe and Mayur Jain.

With social media chatter As head of digital marketing for She teamed with Persistent analyzed and leveraged, the 2013 Indian movie Chennai Systems in Pune, India, to ana- Persistent a Bollywood movie Express, Shailja Gupta needed lyze social media content. “Just becomes a blockbuster. to work social media channels looking at numbers doesn’t Systems By Mary K. Pratt to optimize interest in the film. really help. How you use those

September 2014 | Computerworld 29 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

It wasn’t so much about pure statistics and Persistent Systems grossing opening weekend mind-boggling numbers. For us, it was At a glance in India and overseas of any more about getting to specifics,looking Bollywood movie, and it under the layers of the numbers. exceeded 2 billion rupees in Siddhesh Bhobe, business head, Persistent Systems n Business objective: ticket sales faster than any Leverage big data analytics major Bollywood movie. to support a social media n Advice: Use analytics to us, it was more about getting marketing campaign for the effectively look under the to specifics, looking under the Bollywood movie Chennai hood to get insights that layers of the numbers: What Express. you can incorporate into themes of the movie do they n Project payback: At the your strategy, says Siddhesh like? What’s the sentiment of time of its release, Chennai Bhobe, business head at the movie that gets them excited Express had the highest- Persistent Systems. and then keeps them excited?” Using its proprietary technology, Persistent Systems analyzed numbers for your own strategy that, he says, was debunking the social media chatter, which at is what matters,” she says. idea that Facebook “likes” mea- times included 750,000 tweets Siddhesh Bhobe, business sure fan and consumer engage- about the movie per day, to head at Persistent Systems, ment. To maximize fan engage- identify trending words and sen- says social media buzz tends ment, Bhobe says executives timents. Gupta then used those to be high just before a movie’s need to understand the data insights to devise marketing release and stays high for four hidden in social media activity. strategies that capitalized on the to five days. The goal with this “It wasn’t so much about pure trends, thereby sustaining inter- project was to sustain interest statistics and mind-boggling est in the movie over a longer longer. One challenge in doing numbers,” Bhobe explains. “For period of time. u

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 30 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium Thanks to a cloud-based analytics system, staffing levels better match visitor attendance. By Robert L. Mitchell

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquar- ium turned to cloud-based analytics when it needed a way to better predict how many visitors would be coming on any given day. With 65% of its expenses dedicated to payroll and attendance swings that ranged from Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium’s big data team: Donna Powell and Derek Chapin.

Ingrid Barrentine / Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium September 2014 | Computerworld 31 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

1,200 to 5,000 people per day, Tacoma, Wash., facility. finding a way to ensure that Unfortunately, historical at- staffing levels corresponded to tendance and revenue data was We needed to attendance levels represented locked inside the point-of-sale have better a huge opportunity for savings. system, and reporting capabili- access to “We live and breathe by atten- ties were weak. “We needed to our data and dance at the gate,” says Donna have better access to our data apply that to Powell, business and adminis- and apply that to the business,” the business. trative services manager at the she says. But there was another Donna Powell, business and administrative problem as well: The two-per- services manager, Point son IT organization lacked the Defiance Zoo & Aquarium resources to take on the project. Point Defiance anticipated attendance, and Explaining that “we knew we Zoo & Aquarium the zoo has since expanded its couldn’t bring an extra burden create the system. “The big chal- At a glance use of the system for member- to them,” Powell says she cham- lenge was figuring out how to or- ship, marketing and education pioned a strategy that involved ganize the data and making sure purposes. Online ticket sales bringing in Cognos and inte- it was accurate,” Chapin says. n Business objective: are expected to increase by grator BrightStar Partners to Initial issues with connectiv- To better predict visitor 25% for 2014. create a SaaS-based system that ity to the cloud-based system attendance so daily staffing pulls data from the zoo’s 12 mil- required a network bandwidth n Advice: “Don’t be afraid to numbers could be adjusted lion POS records and combines upgrade. The new system, now take on a project because you in advance. it with weather data to help running smoothly, includes don’t have the technical back- predict attendance. both a data warehouse and an n Project payback: The ground or don’t have dedicated IT facilitated that initial con- interactive dashboard with a system has delivered signifi- IT staff; it’s doable,” says Don- nection to the POS data and then drag-and-drop user interface cant labor cost savings by bet- na Powell, business and admin- stepped back. Powell and visitor that lets staff analyze trends ter matching staffing with istrative services manager. services supervisor Derek Chapin around revenue, attendance, then worked with the vendor to and food and retail sales. u

September 2014 | Computerworld 32 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

A deep analytics tool gathers insights on viewing habits for display advertising. By sTacy Collett

Shine Technologies helped one of Australia’s largest online advertising publishers find better ways to target its audiences and break down their behaviors in detail after ad campaigns. A Melbourne-based IT services provider, Shine developed a deep analysis tool that enabled the publisher to gauge the success of ad campaigns and determine how and when audiences interacted. Using their own firm’s ad- serving Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) decision Shine Technologies’ big data team: Pablo Caif, Luke Alexander, Graham Polley and Kon Soulianidis. engine, Shine’s IT team configured DFP to write its ad logs to Google Cloud Storage and point Google’s BigQuery to those files for loading and analysis. Next, they used the Big- Shine Technologies Query API to build a graphical

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 33 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

reporting front end. “It’s cheap to run . . . and we didn’t need to worry about set- Shine investment within 12 months. up, maintenance or scalability,” Technologies explains Graham Polley, a se- n Advice: “Outsource At a glance nior software engineer at Shine. your problems but not your Outsourcing solved one solution,” says Graham Polley, of the biggest challenges — senior software engineer at n Business objective: managing the massive volume Shine. “Harnessing the power To understand audience of 75 million records that come of global cloud providers engagement with advertising through Shine’s ad server logs enables a fast, iterative campaigns through the every day, an onslaught that approach that will scale with analysis of ad impression logs. added up to 2 billion records your growth. It also allows per month for a total of 1.5TB of n Project payback: The you to focus on product data. Team members also had client realized a return on its features and not technology.” to safeguard the records and ensure that people’s privacy was protected, so they verified “This capability gives our up ad yields and creating that the data was encoded or organization unprecedented incremental revenue streams,” encrypted and didn’t include real-time insights [that] are says a product manager and personally identifiable driving tangible improvements platform user at the online ad information. in user engagement, driving publisher. u

Using their own firm’s ad-serving Google DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) decision engine, Shine’s IT team configured DFP to write its ad logs to Google Cloud Storage and point Google’s BigQuery to those files for loading and analysis.

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 34 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

Founded in 2011, SwiftIQ which helps unify data sources ucts was collecting and storing needed to expand its computing and make them accessible on data, but he says the Google capacity quickly. But instead of demand, and Swift Predictions, Cloud Platform provided a building out its own infrastruc- which uses machine learn- cost-effective solution. Using SwiftIQ ture, it turned to Google’s Cloud ing and predictive algorithms Google’s hosted systems, Swift A software maker Platform for storage, support to generate insights into data. IQ could focus on building the scales up its online for long-running processes and SwiftIQ’s products, which are algorithms and not worry about sales offerings using the ability to handle unpredict- aimed at the retail infrastructure. Google products. able scale. industry, allow users Frederick Barber, By Mary K. Pratt SwiftIQ makes Swift Access, to make customized chief analytics of- sales recommenda- ficer at consultancy tions based on an Meredith Xceler- individual’s offline ated Marketing, says SwiftIQ consumer product companies. and online shopping SwiftIQ’s products At a glance preferences. The enable his team to n Project payback: Quicker five-person company do something new. and more easily accessed uses the Google App “Big content means insights that make it possible n Business objective: Engine for develop- you have lots of mes- to create more individualized Google’s hosted systems are Mine disparate consumer ment, as well as the sages or products marketing materials. a cost-effective infrastruc- data, including details about Google Compute En- ture option, says SwiftIQ or content recom- people’s online activities, to n Advice: When thinking gine, Google Cloud co-founder Alex Harvey. mendations that you uncover contextually relevant about big data, don’t limit Storage, Google can put in front of insights that can be used to yourself to only what you can BigQuery and Google Cloud the consumer, but you have to create personalized content do in the local environment, Datastore. decide what you put in front and/or highly targeted says chief architect and co- SwiftIQ co-founder and chief of whom,” he explains. “That’s marketing efforts for retail and founder Alex Harvey. architect Alex Harvey says one hard to do on scale without an of the biggest challenges in enabling technology. That’s developing his company’s prod- what SwiftIQ does for us.” u

September 2014 | Computerworld 35 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

realized $4.5 million in direct T exas Children’s and analytics tools. Hospital benefits in the first year after n Advice: The secret for suc- deployment of the analytics- Texas At a glance cess with an enterprise data powered project. warehouse in healthcare is a Among other things, “we collaboration involving mul- found that collection of data in Children’s n Business objective: tiple departments, including the EMR provided an opportu- To leverage integrated data and IT, clinical care, quality assur- nity to review data by disease and analytics in order to identify ance, services and finance, as see how we could influence care Hospital and prioritize opportunities for well as executives at the high- from an outcomes and cost per- improvements in clinical care A specialized analytics est levels of leadership, says spective,” says CIO Myra Davis. and administrative services. tool identifies the most CIO Myra Davis. IT has to see “The clinical leadership created pressing tasks for a healthcare n Project payback: $4.5 mil- itself not only as an enabler 10 different clinical programs to provider. By Julia King lion in direct benefits in the that provides technical tools, determine ways to enhance care.” first year after deployment of but also as a partner with all Additionally, the project en- Even after successfully dean enterprise data warehouse other stakeholders. ables TCH to aggregate data on ploying electronic medical re- populations of children with like cords, Texas Children’s Hospital diseases so it can better under- struggled to accurately identify when it deployed a healthcare- On the clinical front, the stand how its healthcare deliv- ways in which it could improve specific enterprise data ware- hospital was able to reduce the ery is affecting all children in the efficiency, effectiveness and house that draws data from average length of stay for asth- region with that disease, notes health services delivery. The nine hospital systems, includ- ma patients by 11 hours. And in Dr. Charles Macias, chief clini- challenge was combining the ing the EMR repository. It then the administrative arena, giving cal systems integration officer. gold mine of data in the EMR applied a sophisticated analytic health providers and managers “Now,” Macias says, “decisions system with data from financial technique called Pareto analysis direct access to data visualiza- for effective management can be and administrative systems. to identify areas where changes tions and reports yielded a 67% done across a healthcare system In 2011, TCH took a step to- would produce the most signifi- reduction in report generation with relative ease in identifying ward addressing that challenge cant improvements. costs. Overall, Texas Children’s the outcomes of our efforts.” u

AB: Credit September 2014 | Computerworld 36 Data+ Editors’ Choice Awards 2014

ral language questions] into a structured query in our platform, and we give [clients] a Thomas Reuters Thomson Reuters visual representation back so At a glance A financial analysis tool lets users dig deeper they understand correlations. with a new natural language search. By Mary K. Pratt That allows people to discover answers to questions dramatical- n Business objective: Hoping to give its clients a to improve on its capabilities, ly faster than they had before,” To help clients explore comprehensive view of the says Albert Lojko, global head Lojko says. Thomson Reuters financial markets with tools information they need to make of Eikon at Thomson Reuters, a also developed an interactive that enable them to access decisions in the financial mar- provider of information to pro- feature that gives users a single data quickly and make kets, Thomson Reuters five fessionals in a range of fields. global map with overlays of real- informed decisions. years ago rolled out a home- So as part of its ongoing efforts time weather, news and business n Project payback: grown financial analysis tool to update Eikon, the company data, such as ship routes. And in Eikon’s user base tripled called Eikon. developed several new key ca- February, the company rolled in 2013. Eikon successfully pulled pabilities, including a natural out a tool called Social Media together and displayed in a language search function that Monitor, which analyzes and n Advice: Find the right comprehensive way data that allows users to pose open-end- scores social media posts to give talent, says Albert Lojko, had once been siloed, but the ed questions. users insight into trends. global head of the Eikon company saw opportunities “We translate [the natu- Lojko says the biggest chal- initiative. lenge in developing these capabilities was assembling the talent We translate [the natural language to make it happen. He says he questions] into a structured query in sought experts with deep domain our platform, and we give [clients] a expertise, particularly in search visual representation back so they capabilities, from top companies understand correlations. even if they had no experience in Albert Lojko, global head of Eikon, Thomson Reuters financial services. u

THinkstock September 2014 | Computerworld 37 If There’s a Big Red Button, We’ll Find a Way It’s a few years back, and this computer room has an area dedicated to print services. “There wasn’t enough room to store all the forms needed for any single shift, so a ramp was installed to let the printer operators use small carts to bring the forms in and out of the controlled computer room area,” reports a pilot fish working there. “An emergency power-off switch had been switch. A perfectly normal installed at the top of the accident. Management ramp — no cover or pro- mandated that the switch tection, just this big red be moved 12 inches higher knob at a height of 6 feet. — but still no cover — so As luck would have it, an most people would have to operator was walking up work at pulling the switch. the ramp, tripped on the Then they hired a printer flooring and pulled the operator who was 6 feet

Hal Mayforth illustration September 2014 | Computerworld 38 Shark Tank

At one point I tried to run shutdown for the program I was testing. Suddenly, to my horror, I saw it shutting down every licensed program on our internal network: compilers, linkers, configuration management — everything.

7 inches tall. He too went ting down every licensed have been able to do what customer contact log. The up the ramp, tripped and program on our internal that program did, so the small printing started af- grabbed the switch. After network: compilers, linkers, program clearly had a se- ter this comment, typed that, management decreed configuration management curity flaw. They promptly in by a customer service that a cover be installed to — everything. I felt like the unlocked my account.” agent: ‘and the customer protect the switch.” guy in a movie who causes said #^%$(& (expletive a domino effect when he deleted).’ The sequence of leans on a bookshelf that It’s Just a LITTLE special characters that the Domino Theory tips and knocks over a row Swearing customer service agent Pilot fish is trying out a of bookshelves. I quickly IT support pilot fish at a used instead of the obscen- piece of commercial soft- called the help desk to tell financial institution gets ity just happened to include ware, using a demo key them what happened. Next a call from a user: “The the printer’s control code with a license manager. morning, I found my ac- letters on my report are for condensed printing.” u “The program came with a count locked when I tried printing really small.” “Af- shutdown program for the to log in. The help desk said ter looking at the termi- In big print or small, license manager,” says fish. it was locked because of nal, network and printer, I send Sharky your true tale “At one point, I tried to run what happened the day be- could not find any obvious of IT life at sharky@ shutdown for the program fore. I reminded them that I cause,” fish says. “I then computerworld.com. I I was testing. Suddenly, to didn’t have root access and looked at the report be- swear you’ll score a sharp my horror, I saw it shut- there was no way I should ing printed, which was a Shark shirt if I use it.

September 2014 | Computerworld 39 Bart Perkins Opinion

Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville, Ky.-based Leverage Partners, which helps organizations invest well in IT. Contact him at [email protected]. 6 Wrong Reasons for Hiring Consultants

There are good reasons to hand. One common version of lowed. But the executive him- the decision to someone else hire consultants. You can this is hiring a layoff specialist self needs to do the dirty work. (“Here’s what my expensive pull them in to add their objec- to terminate people. But good study found, and it would be tivity, specialized expertise or the executives — good leaders — To avoid accountability. reckless not to follow Famous extra capacity you need to meet aren’t afraid to get their hands Some executives are Consulting’s advice”). a deadline. But some of the rea- dirty. If a staff reduction were loath to make deci- Studies certainly can assist sons that consultants are hired imminent, they wouldn’t shirk sions. One stalling in making decisions, but while are just wrong. Here are six: their duty to explain the situa- 2tactic that these types favor is to consultants can clarify issues, tion, and they would lead the commission a study. A consult- present trade-offs and recom- To offload the dirty layoffs personally. That doesn’t ing project allows them to not mend ways to improve, they work. Some execu- mean there aren’t good reasons only postpone the decision (“I’m have no authority to implement tives want to bring in a for hiring HR consultants. They sorry, we can’t make a decision their recommendations — and hired gun when they’re can help coach the layoff team until the study is complete”), no experience within the orga- uncomfortable1 with the task at and ensure that labor law is fol- but also shift responsibility for nization to help them judge the

September 2014 | Computerworld 40 Bart Perkins Opinion

worthiness of their recommen- run around existing IT staff. parts of IT, finance and HR. IT other government agencies may dations. The client remains re- They direct the consultants to was cut out of the process. This consider them to be employees sponsible for the final decision. limit their contact with IT and became evident when one of who are entitled to benefits. If to discount staff perspectives the CIO’s direct reports was re- the organization gets caught, it To justify a decision. during IT strategy, architecture fused an assignment to the out- will end up paying significant Sometimes a man- or outsourcing engagements. sourcing evaluation team, even penalties, probably in excess of ager is bent on imple- This can be a self-defeating tac- though she had previously been what it sought to save. menting a decision, tic. Even if the IT organization a vice president at a major out- even3 though it isn’t the best is dysfunctional, its staffers are sourcing company. After that To help an out-of- course of action for the enter- sure to have useful skills, expe- rebuff, IT disengaged. While IT work friend. Don’t prise, because of benefits for rience and perspective. They staff were polite and answered hire unemployed him or his department. To justi- understand the informal norms the consultants’ questions, they friends unless they fy such a move, he might frame and the organizational history. offered nothing beyond what 6have the exact expertise and ex- a very narrow question with Many of them have worked for was asked. Eventually the effort perience you need. Enough said. tight constraints and then shop multiple organizations and have collapsed, wasting $3 million. When you hire consultants for a consultant who will tell expertise not directly related to for the wrong reasons, other em- him what he wants to hear. He their current job. Failing to en- To avoid paying taxes ployees and executives notice, can probably find someone who gage these people insults them and benefits.In an ef- and it doesn’t win you any points. will do that, but that doesn’t and can undermine the project. fort to skirt employ- Organizations lose respect for make the decision right. Personal animosity can lie ment law and reduce individuals who squander cor- behind such moves. In one costs,5 some organizations fill porate resources and don’t have To marginalize ex- organization that I’m famil- low-level positions with con- the courage to make responsible isting staff.Some iar with, the CIO and the vice tractors rather than employees. decisions. Good executives use executives, for rea- president of business plan- This is dangerous. If the organi- consultants properly; poor exec- sons of their own, ning didn’t get along. The VP zation exerts significant control utives use them inappropriately. 4see a consulting engagement engaged a consulting firm to over the way these people per- Choose which side of the fence as an opportunity to do an end cut costs by outsourcing major form their duties, the IRS and you want to be on. u

September 2014 | Computerworld 41