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Home News Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project Editor’s comment Buyer’s guide to SaaS management Where next for virtualisation? Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade? Downtime computerweekly.com 28 JULY - 3 AUGUST 2015 PHOTO COURTESY OF BEN SALTER/FLICKR Hornby steams into digital age The model railway maker is ensuring classic brands such as Airfix and Scalextric appeal to modern tastes through digital innovation
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Home
News
Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
computerweekly.com
XX-XX MONTH 201528 JULY - 3 AUGUST 2015
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Hornby steams into digital ageThe model railway maker is ensuring classic brands such as Airfix and
Scalextric appeal to modern tastes through digital innovation
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Home
News
Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
Jeep hack raises questions about responsibility for securityThe reported hacking of a Jeep Cherokee has sparked fears that more than 470,000 cars made by Fiat Chrysler could be at risk, and raised questions about who is responsible for security. Researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have demonstrated they are able to take control of a Jeep Cherokee and crash it by hack‑ing into its computer systems from 10 miles away.
General Electric to move 300,000 employees to Microsoft Office 365General Electric (GE) is moving more than 300,000 of its employ‑ees onto Microsoft Office 365. The contract is one of the larg‑est Microsoft is thought to have secured to date, with GE employ‑ees from more than 170 countries set to benefit from the move. As a result, they will have access to cloud‑based versions of flagship Microsoft productivity tools.
Software audits cut government IT bill by £85m in 2014/15The government saved £85m through software audits of Whitehall departments during the last financial year, contributing to more than £220m of IT savings identified by the Cabinet Office. The audits were one of a number of IT‑related contributions to £5.9bn total savings made during 2014/15 by the Crown Commercial Service, the central procurement agency for the government.
Mac, iPhone and services deliver record quarter for AppleApple has reported a strong finan‑cial quarter, driven by record sales of iPhone and Mac, record revenue from services, and the launch of Apple Watch. The company posted quarterly revenue of $49.6bn, up by 33% compared with the same period a year ago, while net profit was up by 39% to $10.7bn. Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones in the quarter, up by 35% on last year.
Smartwatches a new frontier for cyber attack, HP study showsSmartwatches with network and communication functionality represent a new and open frontier for cyber attack, according to a study by HP Fortify. The study revealed that all of the 10 tested smartwatches contained significant vulnerabilities, including insufficient authentication, lack of encryption and privacy concerns.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
Bilingual coders earn more than single language colleagues
THE WEEK IN IT
Hunt asks Lane Fox to develop NHS digital innovation proposalHealth minister Jeremy Hunt has called upon digital pioneer Martha Lane Fox to develop a proposal for digital uptake in healthcare. The minister said Lane Fox will present ideas about how to increase the uptake of digital innovation across the NHS to the NHS National Information Board.
Microsoft grows cloud business but makes $2bn lossMicrosoft has reported a $2bn loss on revenues of $22bn in its fourth quarter of 2015, due to charges associated with the purchase of Nokia’s mobile phone business and restructuring.
SAP cloud revenue grows as portion of overall salesSAP’s financial results for the sec‑ond quarter of 2015 indicate a 5% growth in cloud revenue as a propor‑tion of overall revenue, up from 6% in the same period in 2014 to 11%.
Worldwide public cloud spend tipped to hit $70bn in 2015The amount spent on public cloud services worldwide will reach nearly $70bn in 2015, according to IDC. Nearly half (45%) will be generated by firms operating in the manufac‑turing, banking, professional ser‑vices and retail markets moving to cloud to tap into the big data analyt‑ics, mobile and social trends.
Google posts revenues of almost $18bn in strong second quarterGoogle posted revenues of $17.7bn, up by 11% compared with the same period in 2014, while profits were up by 17% to $3.93bn. Advertising rev‑enue was also up by 11% compared with the same period in 2014.
Mainframe fails to save IBM from 13th declining quarterIBM’s second‑quarter financial results were buoyed by sales of its new mainframe, but overall rev‑enues and profits were down for a 13th consecutive quarter. n
.❯ Openreach CEO defends current operating model.
❯ Cisco quits set-top boxes and reshuffles IoT organisation.
❯ Salesforce eager to support startup culture.
❯ IBM steps up open-source cloud commitment.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling BankAnne Boden tells Karl Flinders about how her time with startups convinced her to build a digital bank from scratch
UK challenger bank Starling is the brainchild of an IT pro‑fessional who has spent much of her working life at some of the world’s biggest banks – but Anne Boden
tells Computer Weekly how spending time with startups out‑side mainstream banking convinced her to build a digital bank from scratch.
The UK banking sector is going through a period of unprece‑dented transformation, driven by a combination of cultural, tech‑nology and regulatory change. Starling Bank is the result of the convergence of all three.
The bank – one of a growing group of challenger banks in the UK – will only offer a current account, based on customers’ smart‑phones. It is going through the licence application process with industry regulator the Prudential Regulation Authority and raising its next round of funding of more than £10m. Starling expects to get its licence in 2015 before launching next year.
The bank’s proposition is simple: It only offers a current account, used via smartphones, and is using the latest mobile and data technologies to support digital lifestyles. The company’s mission
statement explains its ambition of “building a bank that will cham‑pion the power of modern technology to open up possibilities and create a whole new way of banking”.
IT inside banking – and out“All through transparency, collaboration and connectivity,” says Starling. “A truly mobile experience, delivering much more than an app and a cash card.”
And who better to set up a bank with the sole offering of a cur‑rent account fit for the digital lifestyles of consumers, than some‑one who has not only worked in the tier‑one banking sector for more than 30 years in IT and operations – but who caught the startup bug after taking time out of the mainstream business to better understand it.
Starling founder Anne Boden is an IT professional who got into banking: Armed with a BSc in computer science and chemistry, and an MBA, the now fellow of the Chartered Institute of IT joined Lloyds Bank in the early 1980s when, she says, she was “doing fintech before fintech was fashionable”.
ANALYSIS
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
After Lloyds Bank her career has included: A period heading up UK IT at Standard Chartered; being one of the original design‑ers of Chaps, the Clearing House Automated Payments System; a role as a strategy and technology consultant at PwC; restruc‑turing European operations at UBS; global CIO for reinsurance at Aon; and running business in 34 countries for ABN Amro and subsequently the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), when it took over the Dutch bank.
But it was after leaving RBS in 2011 – to spend time working with startups to find out what was going on in financial services out‑side the big organisations – that she realised how banks needed to change. She joined Allied Irish Bank as chief operating officer and began implementing some of the ideas she’d had while work‑ing with small financial technology groups. This was successful for the bank but Boden wanted more – and realised the only way to get it was by starting from scratch with a new bank. And the time was right to do this.
Cultural disruptionShe says the confluence of regulatory, technology and cultural changes was the big bang that triggered Starling Bank. She says that, when the industry regulator changed the rules for setting up a bank in March 2013, it closed a “Catch‑22”. “Before this you couldn’t get a licence until you had everything in place, such as all the systems and people. But you couldn’t get all this without the licence.” But the introduction of a two‑stage process, known as Option B, allowed for authorisation with restrictions that made it possible for firms to get people and systems in place.
Then there was the cultural change that has seen people live their lives on their mobile phones. The third change came with the technology developed by startups in the sector now known as finance technology – or fintech.
“It is now possible to start a new bank, people live their lives on their mobile and there are some great technologies out there,” Boden says. In January 2014 she started working full‑time setting up Starling Bank.
Boden describes the time she spent outside traditional banking: “It was incredible, lots of things have happened. My world was all
ANALYSIS
Boden: “It is now possible to start a new bank, people live
their lives on their mobile and there are some great technologies out there”
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
about enterprise systems, huge projects, departments with tens of thousands of people and budgets of billions of pounds. All of a sudden I went into a world of learning what people were doing in small startups. I realised that certain things were a lot easier in small startups. They didn’t have the bureaucracy, they were very agile and they were using technology in a different way.
“I took all those learnings into Allied Irish Bank. I managed to reduce costs, restructure the organisation and bring in new tech‑nologies.” For example, the mortgage application process was reduced from taking three weeks to three days. Other IT strat‑egies included taking legacy systems and exposing application programming interfaces to them to deliver applications on top.
“But I realised I could do even more if I started from scratch,” adds Boden.
She also took inspiration from the likes of Apple. “The music industry changed with iTunes, Amazon changed the shopping experience and banking deserves to change as well,” she says.
Data analysis revolutionNo financial service is more fundamental to many people than their current account. It is not about making interest or investments but about being able to access your money when you need it. “That is where tech matters. The day to day,” says Boden.
Starling sees itself as being different, in that it is focused on a current account rather than just transferring a full product set to the digital format.
Boden says Starling wants to do one thing and do it really well. The current account will be free and even offer a little interest, with Starling making its revenue on the interest on the balances and interchange on card payments.
The highly automated current account will cost little to run. It will use data to offer money‑management advice in real‑time.
Boden says customers can do things like set rules on their phone, so the app can inform them if they are spending more than usual on certain things – and even make recommendations about how to save money.
She says the combination of big data and mobility offers the opportunity for banks to provide useful data to customers to help them manage money.
Starling will leave customers to decide which other financial products they want to use and enable them to access third‑party financial services through apps. “We are going to launch the product, grow our customer base and allow our customers to access other fintech propositions, because we are not going to be doing other products,” says Boden. n
ANALYSIS
❯Six challenger banks using IT to shake up UK retail banking
“The music indusTry changed wiTh iTunes, amazon changed The shopping experience and banking
deserves To change as well”Anne Boden, StArling BAnk
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
Model railway company Hornby takes classic hobby brands into digital ageHornby’s head of digital strategy tells Clare McDonald about how the firm chose Braintree as its online payments platform following its website migration last year
Model railway retailer Hornby launched a responsive website in June 2014 to cater to the technology‑savvy generation who use their phones for everything.
After the new website was put in place, Hornby implemented the Braintree v.zero payment gateway system, owned by PayPal, to allow customers to safely complete online transactions.
Almost a year on, Hornby’s head of digital strategy, Richard Fletcher, explains why, even for an established brand, it is important to stay on top of the current trends and engage the ever‑evolving customer base.
“It’s something that the business knows it needs to do,” he says. “Part of the challenge is just to ensure that we are always very mindful to our trade partners and retailers, but in a sense it’s online or bust.”
The need for responsive web designFletcher explains that the implementation of digital systems such as a responsive website or mobile apps are necessary to
ensure further engagement between the separate brands, such as Scalextric and Airfix, with its customers.
Like many companies which make the move to a responsive website, Hornby could see a third of its site traffic was coming from smartphones and tablets. Its customer base is diverse, so the firm had to make sure it was catching its customers no matter how they hoped to interact with the business.
CASE STUDY
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
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Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
“Our audience is really wide‑ranging. We have enthusiasts who are fanatical about collecting the locomotives or Hornby, or con‑necting their racetracks around Scalextric, or building specific models of certain figures with Airfix,” says Fletcher.
“On the other end of the scale, we have people who perhaps would only consider us once or twice a year for a present. So we need to be all things to all men and we need to make sure we represent the brand. It’s a community; we want people to feel at home when they hit the website, and feel like they’re part of a hobby and an experience.”
The brand wanted to make sure it gave users the confidence to buy across any channel, from online to mobile to in‑store.
Before the responsive approach, Hornby had a long‑standing website which had been custom built, but it was no longer fit for purpose. “It can be a great benefit to have something tailored just for you, but it means you’re limited for future expansion,” says Fletcher.
At the time the original website was built, there was little known about how to properly utilise e‑commerce, so to add it on would have been very time‑consuming and expensive.
Giving customers the chance to reserveFletcher explains that although the previous website enabled e‑commerce, it had more of a feel of an online catalogue that people could buy from than a platform that could drive both com‑merce and brand interaction.
“From a payment perspective, we just wanted to be able to innovate. The primary reason for choosing Braintree was that I
wanted a payment services provider that would power a planned pre‑order functionality,” says Fletcher.
“We always have a huge amount of anticipation for range announcements, and people are desperate to know what our new products are across all of the brands, so it was essential that con‑sumers had the confidence and the ability to be able to pre‑order their items on day one.”
Allowing customers to pre‑order products was the main reason for deploying the Braintree payments system, and has given the website a huge boost in visits and conversion rates.
Hornby used external agency Gene Commerce to per‑form a bespoke integration of the payment system, but has an in‑house team that looks after the website from a marketing and design perspective.
CASE STUDY
Allowing customers to pre-order products was the main reason
for deploying the Braintree payments system H
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Home
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
“We’ve seen a huge improvement in conversion and traffic to the website. For conversion we’re looking at a double‑digit improve‑ments year on year for online orders,” says Fletcher.
Extending the customer experienceAlthough the firm considered mobile apps, it felt a responsive site was more suited to the brand than a mobile application. “The best way was to manage from a single point rather than looking after a website and app separately,” says Fletcher.
“There might be some mobile‑specific items we can develop for some of the brands. For Scalextric, for example, we have app racing control technology,” he says, pointing out that the mobile application controls for Scalextric also allow users to gauge fuel level, tyre wear and fastest lap times for the cars, bringing the experience of the brand to a different platform.
“We’re hoping to make Scalextric as easy as possible for people to engage with,” he says.
The brand has developed a standalone power base, which will allow all Scalextric models, including those from the 1970s, to be controlled from an iPhone or iPad. “We can engage that more closely with the website and get people to compete in terms of fastest laps and things they’ve done,” says Fletcher.
The firm plans to work a lot on engagement over the next year, having launched website blogs for each of the brands and insights into how products are created. It is also hoping to expand its reviews platform and social media strategy.
“We’ve got these iconic brands with a great deal of history, and my goal for the online team is to be able to innovate for the future to make sure we can support the brands and keep both our enthu‑siast and mass‑market consumers happy,” Fletcher concludes. n
CASE STUDY
❯Park Resorts launches responsive website to improve the user experience
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation projectCIO Mike Young tells Clare McDonald how Dentsu Aegis Network consolidated its IT infrastructure and adopted a unified approach to worldwide collaboration
Dentsu Aegis Network is a media and digital marketing company consisting of six global brands, each of which has its own presence across the world.
When Mike Young started as CIO of Dentsu Aegis three years ago, it was clear the firm needed a transformative IT leader to help it use technology to develop a unified approach to collabora‑tion, data and IT infrastructure.
Bringing the business togetherYoung describes his job as bringing together the technology and data strategy for the brands under the Dentsu Aegis umbrella.
According to Young, the business has been supportive in moving the “legacy CIO role” from behind the scenes to the boardroom.
“Much like our Japanese parent, we put a lot of emphasis on looking after the client and making sure we’re meeting customer needs,” says Young. “When you consider 50% of our revenues and a number of our brands are digitally enabled, technol‑ogy sits at the core of everything we do.”
INTERVIEW
Mike Young, Dentsu Aegis Network: “Technology sits at the
core of everything we do”
MAP: ALEKSLE/ISTOCK
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Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
With 27,000 employees serving more than 500 clients in over 110 countries around the world, it was important for Dentsu Aegis to make sure its technology and data strategy was the same across all of its offerings.
“When I turned up three years ago, it looked like a business that had been pulled together through a lot of mergers and acquisitions,”
says Young. “A lot of the tech felt like it was bolted on rather than something synonymous with centralised services and products.”
This led to an expensive and inefficient architecture running both old and new systems, which needed to be consolidated.
“When you’ve got disparate IT, where it looks and feels different on a market‑by‑market basis, the customer is going to feel that, and they’re going to see it,” says Young.
Though some parts of the business have technology specific to that brand or its clients, Dentsu Aegis followed a unified approach to collaboration across the firm.
“If you’re using IT, it should be the same anywhere in the world,” says Young. “The core of everything we’ve got in the centre acts as that central hub, with the technology systems around a big datacentre and collaboration tools.”
Reducing inefficient technologyWhen Young joined as CIO, the firm had around 600 IT staff managing separate systems with different functions across the different markets it operated in.
Dentsu Aegis outsourced its operations and engineering to Tata Consultancy Services to centralise servers and some IT architec‑ture. It began by consolidating its servers and datacentres, reduc‑ing 80 servers to one global exchange, and 50 local datacentres to four datacentres in key regions across the world.
The firm now has one datacentre in both Hong Kong and New York and two in London on separate sites.
“In moving from 50 datacentres to four and lifting all those boxes and all that architecture out of the market, there was dis‑ruption – there always is,” says Young. “Despite in‑depth planning and your best endeavours, you don’t always maintain the service where you’d want it to be. You end up with two [systems] – you end up with the legacy and you end up with the new.
“When you’ve got the new to the point where it’s a living and breathing animal, you’re starting to build a centralised architec‑ture,” he adds.
INTERVIEW
“when i joined The company Three years ago, a loT of The
Tech felT like iT was bolTed on raTher Than someThing
synonymous wiTh cenTralised services and producTs”
Mike Young, dentSu AegiS network
computerweekly.com 28 July - 3 August 2015 12
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Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
The firm now has all of its own architecture, which is based on the most up‑to‑date version of Microsoft’s software offer‑ings, including AX Dynamics, Lync and SharePoint, as well as Windows 7 and 8.1.
This has moved Dentsu Aegis’s IT expenditure against company revenue to 5%, down from around 7.8%.
Ahead of the competitionOf all of the IT projects embarked upon since his introduction to the company, Young believes the firm’s implementation of its centralised datahub is what will put it ahead of the competition.
Although the competition has now begun the journey towards centralisation, he believes Dentsu Aegis’s datahub will have it far ahead by the time the competition catches up.
“One of the issues CIOs have to contend with is how to bring the data story together while doing this other stuff around the tech,” says Young.
“We’ve deliberately made our IT transformation process a move to simplified architecture rich in collaboration tools with one provider – Microsoft – to allow us to tap into the simplified data architecture that gives us,” he adds.
The hub, which is based on Cloudera, has a service‑oriented architecture and allows the firm and its clients to analyse cus‑tomer data and adapt their marketing strategy to boost sales.
The hub hosts global applications that are available to all cli‑ents, connecting them to the big data system, and allows use of a statistical model called “R”, allowing on‑boarding, cleansing and analytical insight, all in real time.
“That’s very different from just making data look visually appeal‑ing; this is about drawing insight from core data really quickly,” says Young.
Centralised collaborationDentsu Aegis used Microsoft SharePoint to allow the fast launch of its intranet and collaboration system Neon, which acts as a central hub for members of the business to keep up to date with company information and news.
“All of the brands have their information on there and all of the internal departments have their information on there. Neon has been a real beacon in working out what everyone’s doing and how we might talk about certain things in the business,” says Young. “This wasn’t the case 18 months to two years ago. We had some‑thing in the region of 28 or 29 separate intranet sites, now we’ve just got one.”
The firm also uses Microsoft Lync company‑wide for file‑sharing, video conferencing and chat, helping to unify the separate brands and regions. “With 27,000 employees across 110 countries, [there is] inorganic growth because you continue to grow through merg‑ers and acquisitions,” says Young. “You’ve got to find a way of get‑ting the employees you bring in through that process on to your platform as quickly as you possibly can.”
In 2014, the firm incorporated 25 more companies and is plan‑ning to take on the same, if not more, in 2015. “We’re constantly re‑inventing the way the brands work and that brings a push coming from the other side,” says Young. “You don’t get bolted on here; you become part of the family.” n
INTERVIEW
❯GDS turns to Box to manage collaboration across UK government departments
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News
Banker’s startup experience feathers the nest for Starling Bank
Model railway company Hornby takes classic brands into digital age
Technology becomes the heart of global business in IT transformation project
Editor’s comment
Buyer’s guide to SaaS management
Where next for virtualisation?
Is enterprise focus of Windows 10 enough to entice businesses to upgrade?
Downtime
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There is no escaping digital, so embrace it
If your childhood featured the joys of Scalextric, then you can’t fail to feel a frisson of excitement at the prospect of controlling the racing cars from your smartphone and sharing race data with your friends.
This is just one of the innovations being considered by Hornby, the owner of Scalextric and Airfix models, as well as the iconic model railways brand (see page 7). That’s a lot of childhood memories encapsulated in one sentence.
For anyone of a certain age with fond recollections of those great toys, you can hardly think of a more traditional business than Hornby. Yet the hobbies company is investing heavily in digital to maintain its relevance to children (and some adults) otherwise infatuated with video games and the internet.
It’s a great example of a seemingly old‑fashioned firm embracing the digital age. And it’s what every established company in any industry needs to do. Industry watchers often get somewhat blinkered by shiny digital startups and the ballooning share prices of internet companies, and forget the opportunities of taking everyday products and services and transforming them for the digital consumer.
In the next five to 10 years, there are going to be lots of household names that fail to make that transition, which will simply dis‑appear. Many of us won’t just be indulging in Scalextric nostalgia, we’ll be reminiscing about the high street names we used to buy from that didn’t adapt in time. The list already includes the likes of Comet, Woolworths and Blockbuster, and they won’t be the last.
In contrast, government isn’t going bust any time soon, but it’s refreshing to hear the new Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock describing digital government as “a chance to build a new state”. There’s a growing recognition among senior politicians – at last – that technology is at the heart of reforming the public sector.
Even notorious technophobe Tony Blair said in a speech last week: “Technology and its implications for everything from the NHS through to government itself is the single most important dimension.”
Digital leaders reading this article might scoff and say, “Tell us something we don’t know”. But don’t underestimate the number of companies – and IT managers – that still don’t get it. The race is there to be won – on a Scalextric track and in the digital revolution. n
Bryan Glick, editor in chief
❯Read the latest Computer Weekly blogs
EDITOR’S COMMENTHOME
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Most organisations have enough experience with software as a service (SaaS) that they now know basic criteria to look for in a SaaS provider: funda‑mentals such as uptime, performance and supplier
viability metrics. However, few organisations have evolved their SaaS selection criteria to focus on newer metrics that are better indicators of a SaaS supplier’s performance.
The fundamental metrics of SaaS management are must‑haves. While these are not as closely connected to business outcomes, gaps in these areas could signal major trouble for your SaaS implementation, and failure to achieve these basics could jeop‑ardise your business results.
For example, service disruptions – or, even worse, security issues – can hurt or ruin your customer experience, even if the systems are not directly customer‑facing.
Forrester recently surveyed 990 technology decision‑makers and found that 57% of them have concerns about cloud secu‑rity and protection against cyber crime. Additionally, accord‑ing to the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), data breaches are a top concern around SaaS, particularly in light of very public
SaaS criteria to track for business outcomes
Organisations should evolve their SaaS selection criteria to focus on newer metrics that are better indicators of supplier performance,
writes Liz Herbert
BUYER’S GUIDE TO SAAS MANAGEMENT | PART 1 OF 3
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data breaches such as the Apple iCloud breach. Some security checks can be simplified by checking whether your SaaS part‑ner adheres to the latest standards. Look for standards such as Safe Harbour, ISO 27001 compliance and the CSA seal of approval.
Evaluating small playersMany of today’s leading SaaS suppliers are small, but firms shouldn’t disregard them outright based on their size. They are also often unprofitable initially – the SaaS subscription‑based pricing model contributes to this.
But buyers should be cautious and consider other key factors related to their viability: How much revenue does the provider generate annually? Is the provider particularly susceptible to currency fluctuation? If so, which currencies and why? If pri‑vately owned, who are the provider’s investors? What are their ties and backgrounds? Is the SaaS system just one part of a portfolio of software, or is the company 100% SaaS?
These questions will help you move beyond the obvious evalua‑tion points – and also help you eval‑uate these suppliers fairly based on the maturity of the marketplace. In some cases, you can also ask about SaaS escrow relationships that may give you an extra level of protection in case the supplier goes out of business.
Performance and business continuityForrester recommends you measure actual performance and uptime, inclusive of planned maintenance windows. Increasingly, SaaS suppliers are making it easy for their customers to track these metrics by exposing data through customer portals or even public websites. You can consider third‑party uptime monitor‑ing tools as well, such as those from McAfee or HP Enterprise. Also, ask your provider about recovery time objective, which is the time to get data back after a failure, and recovery point objec‑tive (RPO), which is the time between backups – both of which translate into risk of data loss.
Typical uptime guarantees in SaaS agreements range from 99% to 99.99%, but are usually exclusive of planned maintenance. Typical RPO is 12 hours, which puts you at some risk for data loss. You can consider SaaS backup tools such as Backupify or SaaSify for additional control and redundancy over data backup.
While SaaS suppliers have made good progress on criteria that matters to business, such as access to new features and speed
to deploy, SaaS leaders are pushing the envelope to drive business out‑comes and to show that they drive business outcomes.
Of course, this assumes that you have clearly defined your busi‑ness goals and business case for using the SaaS systems, which is not always the case – particularly when business buyers are deploying
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measure acTual performance and upTime, inclusive of planned mainTenance windows. suppliers
are making iT easy for Their cusTomers To Track These meTrics
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SaaS under the radar. Hint: The real value in SaaS is generally the business value, not necessarily cost savings.
Tracking and benchmarksFew organisations track whether or not the SaaS tools they use actually improve their cus‑tomer experience, customer retention or cus‑tomer satisfaction. Your customers’ satisfaction may be more directly correlated with certain SaaS systems – e‑commerce, for example – and less directly related to others, such as human resources applications or salesforce automation applications.
This is an important metric to track, especially if meeting the rising expectations of your customers drove you to SaaS in the first place.
SaaS suppliers are increasingly providing you with proactive health checks and dashboards for tracking use. Most of these are high level – number of logins, for example – but SaaS sup‑pliers, such as Salesforce.com’s Cloudpulse or SuccessFactors’ Employee Central, and add‑on tools such as Gainsight and Applango, are starting to offer more meaningful dashboards that show you detailed analysis of utilisation rates and patterns cor‑related with business results, such as login and use behaviour for top‑performing sales reps.
Nearly 15 years on since modern SaaS systems such as Salesforce, Google Apps and NetSuite first emerged, we still have very limited benchmarks on business metrics. Look for this to change with the increased focus on analytics, demonstrated
by the introduction of tools such as Salesforce’s Wave and Workday Big Data Analytics. Workday offers various compensation benchmarks, as well as “smart” recommendations based on machine learning and technology it acquired from startup Identified – such as who is at risk of leaving and what changes might influence them to stay. Other examples are IBM’s industry benchmark for its
digital analytics customers and SuccessFactors’ Workforce Analytics product.
Along with metrics, you should assess how well the SaaS system connects to your ecosystem of customers and partners. SaaS promises to make it easier to connect with suppliers and customers since it uses the public internet and open standards‑based application programming interfaces. Some SaaS suppliers go even further by prebuilding connections and creating communities.
For example, Ariba is not just a SaaS version of a sourcing tool, it is a fully integrated business network that you get access to as soon as you subscribe. Some SaaS suppliers also have connections to customer communities that could be valuable to you. Leading SaaS suppliers, for instance, might integrate with Facebook or Twitter for closed‑loop communication with your customers on service or sales issues they are facing. Monitor the value of the community – and whether it is relevant to your business needs. n
This is an extract from the Forrester report “SaaS vendor evaluation: Criteria to track for
business outcomes” by Forrester vice-president and principal analyst Liz Herbert.
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❯The majority of organisations are running applications in the cloud, but IT managers
are concerned they are losing control of the SaaS budget.
computerweekly.com 28 July - 3 August 2015 17
Its ability to reduce costs and ensure enterprises have computing power when they need it has quickly made the virtualisation of servers mainstream, but the transformation to business operations that virtualisation will bring about is
only just beginning.Driven by demand from the business, virtualisation of the desk‑
top is at least on the to‑do lists of CIOs.In a world where business is done any time, any place, any‑
where, organisations crave boundaryless access to applications. As a result, desktop virtualisation is being pulled into organisa‑tions by business departments. In contrast, mature server virtu‑alisation was pushed to the business by IT departments, mainly as a way to cut IT costs.
But CIOs should not immediately give in to demand from depart‑ments and roll out desktop virtualisation on request because it is driven by user requirements.
While every business is likely to benefit from virtualisation in some way, it will not be enterprise‑wide, but rather focused on particular departmental and user requirements. To this end, it is not for everybody.
In contrast, server virtualisation is an easy choice for any organi‑sation running server farms.
Virtualisation has the power to transform IT IT leaders and industry experts met at a Computer Weekly CW500 Club event in June to discuss future developments in virtualisation.
Where next for virtualisation?
At a recent Computer Weekly CW500 Club event, CIOs met to discuss the past, present and future of virtualisation. Karl Flinders reports
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Roy Illsley, principal analyst of infrastructure systems at Ovum, said virtualisation is not new, but the way businesses are harness‑ing it will change the lives of CIOs and transform the role of IT.
“In a sense, we have come full circle with virtualisation,” said Illsley, adding that some of the latest developments in virtualisa‑tion are merely re‑inventions of what has come before.
“Around 12 years ago, when VMware started out, there was a rival technology – Parallels Virtuozzo – which was operating sys‑tem virtualisation rather than machine virtualisation,” he said.
According to Illsley, 12 years on, Docker is being hailed as the new kid on the block, but it is doing what Parallels did all those years ago. Docker is, essentially, a type of containerisation technology that lets developers run applications – new and legacy – anywhere, whether in the cloud, virtual environments, datacentres or on laptops, for example.
Technology with a business focusSince the early days of virtualisation, said Illsley, machine virtualisation has cornered the market, but other forms of virtualisation are set to change enterprise IT because it is what the business wants.
This changes virtualisation from something pushed to the business by IT departments because it helped them do more for less, into something pulled by the business to enable it to do the things it wants, when it wants.
This business‑focused technology phenomenon is driving organisations to get more out of it, said Illsley. “Virtualisation of the compute level is pretty much a mature market technology and is here to stay.”
In the future, the combination of virtualisation – making the infrastructure more agile – and mobility will mean you can provide access to applications in any way needed.
As an example of the change virtualisation is going though, Illsley cited the effect of mobile phones on how businesses use phones.
“Everybody has a mobile phone and uses it to communicate in a way that suits them – whether it is by text, email, voice or video.
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Illsley: “Virtualisation of the compute level is pretty much a mature market technology
and is here to stay”
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If you go back 40 years, you had a desk with a telephone on it and if it rang, you answered it. But if you wanted to make a phone call, you had to press a hash button to connect to an operator to make the call,” he said.
Another past complication when using the phone was to do with the way employees were trained to use them by the telephony teams, he added.
However, the mobile phone is now a business technology and gives employees the opportunity to use the phone when, where and how they want.
Get business backing for IT transformation“[Virtualisation] will change your life – it is not going to happen overnight, but in the next five years,” said Illsley.
He said CIOs need to engage with the business and get its support in changing IT, as some in IT will fight the changes because it might make their skills redundant. “You will have resistance, so get the business on‑board.”
Don Kavanagh, chief architect for the business design authority at the National Crime Agency, said his current role sees him sit in the business from a transformational point of view. This gives him a ringside seat to see how the business is pulling virtualisation into the organisation.
Virtualisation has been at the core of everything he has worked on over the past six years, from the early instantiations of cloud and the ability to work with flexible back‑end servers, he said.
“The biggest impact was the business drivers that pulled through the changes needed. That comes from the shift to businesses wanting to do things in their own
way to get the business benefit.” Kavanagh said this is not just about making things available, but making them available in the right format.
“One of the main drivers has been mobility and the ability to work consistently across offices and locations, nationally and internationally,” he said.
Kavanagh described the benefits virtualisation brought to the London Business School by making it possible to run courses from anywhere in the world, and to the NHS by making it possible to share information and documents with consultants in different locations, enabling them to work on cases collaboratively.
Securing virtualised environmentsKavanagh said desktop virtualisation brings with it huge security responsibility because enabling remote access to systems is a big step for organisations with stringent security requirements, such as the NHS.
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“virTualisaTion will change your life – iT is noT going To happen overnighT, buT in The nexT five
years. you will have resisTance, so geT The business on-board”
roY illSleY, ovuM
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“I have worked with organisations where security has been fun‑damental,” he said, adding that this makes desktop virtualisation far more complex compared with server virtualisation.
To drive a transformation programme, it is easy enough to virtualise the back end, said Kavanagh, but using it to provide remote access is tricky.
“Being able to slim down the desktop, have thin client, be able to move it onto any form factor and be secured back to a corporate server became fundamentally important,” he said.
According to Kavanagh, one of the biggest concerns is over “letting the data out into the wild”, such as letting someone sit in Starbucks and access financial or human resources data.
“It has become fundamentally valuable to organisations to give staff access to 80% of applications from any device,” he said.
This has helped organisations transition from legacy estates to build experiences centred in the modernised environment, with people only occasionally needing access to legacy environments. Kavanagh said legacy elements are slowly being uplifted and the dependencies are being broken, meaning they can then be brought forward on virtualised desktops.
“It doesn’t work for everyone. It is about understanding personas – who needs what. By understanding the personas of who you have got, you can spread out the applications, form factors and bandwidth relevant to the job they do,” he said.
Virtualisation is not for every businessAt cost, regulation and security‑conscious investment bank Morgan Stanley, virtualisation is by no means a “no brainer”.
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Working in the finance sector, Rob White, executive director of infrastructure at Morgan Stanley, has been in close contact with virtualisation technologies. Finance firms, such as large investment banks, are high consumers of computing power.
Since the credit crunch of 2008, they have been trying to cut costs without diminishing performance.
White has experience virtualis‑ing desktops and application vir‑tualisation, and said mainframe technology could already do many of the things server virtualisation offers, such as provisioning, but virtualisation made it better.
“Our relational database man‑agement system engines can do a similar job to hypervisors, dynamically allocating resources across the different databases as required,” he said.
To this end, virtualisation might not be right for everyone, White added. “You have to look at what you are trying to get because there are other ways of getting the same result.”
Weigh up all the optionsFor example, when it comes to virtual desktops, Morgan Stanley has been less enthusiastic. This is largely because it does not
have the same cost benefits. White explained the low cost of commodity “fully baked” PCs makes it difficult to justify the cost of appliance computers limited to Citrix‑like functionality.
“Long‑term operating expenditure cost arguments were often made, but didn’t really stand up to scrutiny,” he said.
So why has the database group at Morgan Stanley been slow to adopt virtualisation?
“We are high consumers of input/output and, in some cases, central programming units. This results in our higher‑end cli‑ents being able to use the entire machine,” said White. “In addition, there are other routes to extracting maximum value from the machine. We are able to consolidate data‑bases onto one host.”
Looking to the future, White said he expects new technology to increase the take up of virtualisa‑
tion. “There are technologies out there, but at the moment people are just testing the waters. In the longer term, virtualisation could lead to a disruptive way of delivering services. For example, we can deliver application bundles,” he said.
White advised CIOs to go out with a balanced portfolio and to not just focus on virtualisation because it has become popular in the enterprise. n
“There are virTualisaTion Technologies ouT There,
buT aT The momenT people are jusT TesTing The waTers. in The
longer Term, virTualisaTion could lead To a disrupTive way of delivering services”
roB white, MorgAn StAnleY
computerweekly.com 28 July - 3 August 2015 22
For almost three decades, Microsoft Windows has ruled the oceans of business and consumer computing.
Windows 10, the latest iteration of the (literally) iconic operating system (OS), will start sailing off the shelves
this week. Its primary purpose is to unify the OS across PCs, tab‑lets, smartphones and embedded systems, as well as Microsoft’s games console Xbox One, its new interactive whiteboard Surface Hub and its soon‑to‑arrive head‑mounted 3D display HoloLens.
Windows 10 offers the prospect of a shared application archi‑tecture across all these devices, and a common storefront in the form of the Windows Store.
Organisations adopting Windows 10 Enterprise edition, mean‑while, are promised an easier upgrade path than in the past, vastly improved mobile device management (MDM) capa‑bilities, better security, and simpler sign‑on and authentica‑tion through the cloud‑based Azure Active Directory (see Why upgrade to Windows 10 on page 26).
But while most commentators agree Microsoft is moving in the right direction, will Windows 10 succeed in securing the company’s ambition of continued platform dominance in this multi‑platform, multi‑device age? “As far as Microsoft’s nirvana of ‘Windows everywhere’ goes, I think the company has already
Should businesses upgrade to Windows 10?
Many organisations skipped the PC-unfriendly Windows 8 release, but Windows 10 is far more enterprise-focused, writes Jim Mortleman
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missed the boat,” says Dale Vile, distinguished analyst at Freeform Dynamics. “Most organisations are too far down the line with alterna‑tives. Devices are the most volatile part of the IT equation and firms want to keep their options open.”
But when you’re talking about process‑centric applications rather than what phone the marketing manager wants to use, Vile says Microsoft has a strong story.
“With the cross‑platform play, it can woo customers with the prom‑ise of being able to manage eve‑rything end‑to‑end. Customers have total flexibility in terms of which form‑factor device they deploy to particular users without having to rewrite the application. That’s undoubtedly going to be attractive to some users. You can’t do that in the Apple or Android worlds,” he says.
The reality of BYODMicrosoft, of course, recognises the reality that many organisations already follow a heterogene‑ous device strategy, particularly when it comes to BYOD, and it has sensibly decided to support Android and iOS devices with apps that allow people to hook into their enterprise Windows 10
systems. But for more advanced features, such as the shared appli‑cation architecture, or having the Siri‑like personal assistant Cortana fully integrated into their mobile interface, they’ll need Windows 10‑based smartphones or tablets.
We may yet see Microsoft become a dominant mobile device player, but for now the jury’s out. For enterprises, of course, the ques‑tion is not how they help bolster the Redmond giant’s mobile ambitions, but whether it’s a sensible business decision to upgrade to Windows 10
as their primary desktop platform. Clive Longbottom, co‑founder of analyst firm Quocirca, thinks the jury’s out on that one too.
“Take‑up will probably be slow. Enterprises have grown wary after the disasters of Vista and Windows 8. They don’t have a massive amount of trust in Microsoft saying that this is the great‑
est Windows ever – again,” he says.But he acknowledges the new OS does have
serious attractions for some enterprise custom‑ers, including the aforementioned prospect of “run anywhere” applications, but also other operational improvements, such as the new model for updates and patches, which will see an end to the huge, bundled service packs of yore.
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❯ IT departments will increasingly support a highly heterogeneous computing
environment over the next five years.
“Take-up will probably be slow. enTerprises have grown wary
afTer The disasTers of visTa and windows 8. They don’T
have much TrusT in microsofT saying ThaT This is The greaTesT
windows ever – again”Clive longBottoM, QuoCirCA
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“Windows 10 is certainly a major move by Microsoft. It is a shift to continuous delivery of updates – no massive fork‑lift upgrades in the future,” says Longbottom. “Then there’s the obvious stuff, such as the fact the security model underpinning it is far more modern; the fact it has been optimised for fast, consistent inter‑net access with the new Edge browser, and so on. It deserves to do well, for sure, but whether Microsoft can persuade customers effectively of its merits is another matter. It has to get all those XP desktops migrated.”
Similarly, Scott Rundle, senior consultant at managed service provider Riverbank IT, believes the transition to Windows 10 is unlikely to be fast. “Initial take‑up of the operating system will be slow as clients want to ensure a smooth transition to the new plat‑form and there are so many factors to take into account – applica‑tion compatibility, hardware compatibility, user training and sup‑port. These can all have a potential business impact which will need investigation and consideration before taking the leap.”
Another issue that may stall adoption, according to Freeform Dynamics’ Vile, is the learning curve for users. Although Windows 10 brings back the much‑loved Start menu that Windows 8 was so criticised for ditching, the tile‑based interface still predominates. And, for many users, the switch isn’t going to be easy, he says.
“A lot of people presumed the user interface was going to be sorted out with Windows 10, but from what I can see it’s a bit of a moving feast. It’s going to be a significant adjustment for some users – with all the ramifications for training and support that implies. You can’t just expect people to fall into using it,” he says.
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Although Windows 10 brings back the much-loved Start menu that Windows 8 was so criticised for ditching, the tile-based interface still predominates
continued on page 26
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WINDOWS 10 FOR BUSINESS
Why upgrade to Microsoft Windows 10?
Simpler secure sign-on via Azure Active DirectoryUsers can now log into cloud-based services such as Office 365 or the Windows Store by using their Active Directory credentials. It makes the process more seamless and is more akin to what the other giants are doing with a single login across multiple services.
Improved mobile device management (MDM)MDM options which allow enterprises to manage bring-your-own devices (BYOD) have been expanded to encompass corporate-owned devices. This will allow multiple users who share a single device to have full control over the Windows Store, VPN, device-wipe capabilities and configuration of enterprise data protection policies.
Greater control over updatesThe frequency and criticality of the patches can be adjusted. This is to be welcomed. This element of control can still reside along-side the existing Windows Server Update Server (WSUS) service, which allows customers to determine and control which patches are installed, and how often.
New runtime configuration toolsEnterprises can configure devices for business use without re-imaging. This eases tasks such as setting up wireless net-works, VPNs, email profiles, enforcing security policies and installing apps, security updates and language packs.
Windows StoreThis will handle single and volume purchases for employees and allow businesses to restrict which applications an employee can see. It offers flexible distribution options and licence manage-ment. We will also see universal applications that can run on a tablet or desktop.
Increased securityThere’s a two-factor authentication feature which treats the device as one factor and a user PIN or biometric signature (such as a fingerprint) as the other. WindowsBitlocker has also been upgraded to extend the protection beyond the originating device, giving an additional layer of protection which follows data as it moves between devices and cloud/network locations.
Kevin Curran, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and reader in computer science at Ulster University, says that as well as sporting a more user-friendly interface than Windows 8, Windows 10 Enterprise adds a host of features specifically aimed at encouraging business customers to upgrade. These include:
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WINDOWS 10 FOR BUSINESS
Microsoft’s hope seems to be that Windows 10 will become per‑vasive in the consumer space, thus negating worries about user unfamiliarity and putting pressure on IT departments to adopt the same system people are using on their personal machines.
The vanilla version of the OS is free, which is likely to speed up adoption among consumers and device manufacturers. And clearly, features such as Xbox integration and devices such as HoloLens will, in the first instance, be primarily targeted at the consumer gaming market.
But Vile believes that in the longer term, HoloLens could also prove valuable to business customers. “Early versions are likely to be expensive and fairly clunky, but it has a lot of potential. I think it’s inevitable that kind of technology will work its way into the
workplace, initially in high‑value areas such as the medical sector for use in training and remote assistance, for example,” he says.
Windows 10 in the enterpriseAnd while Microsoft’s control over enterprise operating plat‑forms may not be as strong as it once was, Windows 10 is cer‑tainly an aggressive push to retain its dominance. There’s much to like about it, and plenty of potential.
As Riverbank’s Rundle notes: “As with any new release of Windows, it is an exciting yet challenging time for IT – ensuring business‑critical applications continue to operate while at the same time taking care that businesses don’t fall behind the curve when it comes to utilising new and innovative technology.” n
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Tech grabs the rhino by its horns to save it from extinction A group of UK conservationists have begun using GPS tags, heart rate monitors and cameras on rhinos to deter poachers.
The project is run by not‑for‑profit group Protect, which developed the Real‑time Anti‑Poaching Intelligence Device (Rapid) to protect the endangered species from being killed for their horns.
The device, which is being tested in South Africa, monitors the heart rate of rhinos in real time. If the heart rate elevates or drops, it will trigger an alarm that allows a conservationist to view what is happening to the animal via a horn‑implanted camera.
A GPS collar tracks the creature, enabling a rescue team to be sent to the animal if the footage shows it is under attack.
The collar also acts as a warning to poachers, who will be aware that they can be identi‑fied should they harm a rhino wearing one.
A rhino is killed in Africa every six hours, and it’s hoped the Rapid devices will protect the ani‑mal from extinction. n
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❯Read more on the Downtime blog
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