How to innovate in an imperfect economy

Toby Marsden, Director Application Solutions, HP

The use of new mobility options (e.g. tablet computers, smart phones etc.), cloud technologies and services, plus the continued stresses to deliver innovation faster to help drive business growth is impacting application development teams like never before. Keeping this in mind Toby Marsden, Director Application Solutions, HP Software EMEA, looks at the value of agile application life-cycle management to organisations.

The demands of managing project risk, quality, cost and time are providing a real quandary for the teams and process already implemented by most corporations. To incorporate each one without negatively affecting another is now at the forefront of the mind for all application development professionals. Today’s applications have to support increasingly complex business processes. Not surprisingly, applications are becoming more intricate and inter-connected. In a survey conducted by Capgemini and commissioned by HP1, an overwhelming majority (88 per cent) of survey respondents agreed that software systems have increased in complexity.

Previously, organisations were able to deal with increased workloads by adding resources to their quality management teams; but, with reduced IT spending, companies are looking at alternate ways of keeping pace with growing complexity – such as streamlining the quality process, increasing the degree of test automation and outsourcing testing activities. However, despite weak economic conditions and limited resources, IT organisations still seem to have experienced a steady increase in software quality over the last two years; over 80 per cent of respondents said that quality is actually improving. This can be attributed to the fact that a growing number of organisations are finally treating application quality as a formal process – incorporating quality methodology into their application life-cycle.

To go back to the survey results, nearly three quarters of respondents in the survey adhere to a defined quality assurance (QA) methodology that they follow in the majority of their IT projects. This can be seen as a sign that application quality will continue to improve and

keep up with the increased complexity of business applications. One of the main reasons it seems companies have failed to fully leverage their test automation solutions has been the lack of planning and inadequate funding needed to deliver key services around the deployment of automation tools, training and mentoring of resources – something we hear a lot when it comes to innovation within IT. Cutting corners

Cutting corners

In order to cut costs at the time of technology acquisition, purchasing departments often veto service-line items that would help with the planning and successful implementation of enterpriselevel technologies. In some cases, the organisation may purchase services for a successful initial implementation, but underfund ongoing maintenance and mentoring, thereby undercutting the future success of the investment.

In other cases, turnover in resources and project champions can cause automation e orts to slow down or completely stall, with QA teams reverting back to creating manual test cases using word processing applications. In extreme circumstances, QA teams diligently create thousands of automated scripts without a clear strategic plan, only to fi nd that their e orts go to waste due to drastic changes in the platforms and the functionality of applications under test. Don’t let us forget that simply learning how to use the automation tool is not enough. To successfully implement a test automation project, it is essential to have a deep understanding of automation strategies, frameworks and tools.

What does this mean for the future of application development?

As the globalisation agenda further drives the demand for innovation and increases pressures on competition, the need for agility with the least risk and at the minimum cost accelerates. It is critical that application development teams work together to address these challenges. Therefore, collaboration between these teams and the activities they perform is no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’ but must be set intrinsically at the heart of all processes across the application life-cycle. It is also now of paramount importance that real-time visibility of change is seen by key stakeholders both in management and application development activities to ensure risk is minimised and resolutions can be quickly implemented to keep projects on track.

The survey indicates that new and increased investment needs to be considered for automation throughout application life-cycle management, particularly for visualisation requirements, test environments, data management and business modelling. Investment in these areas is expected to generate higher quality applications, reduce rework and decrease the cost of testing and defect management later in the application life-cycle.

One route for consideration is virtualisation technologies, which are helping companies increase the e ciency of their IT infrastructure by hosting applications on the cloud. They can increase application capacity and plan for peak loads without increasing the size of their data centres and associated maintenance costs. The same survey data indicates that across all industries and geographies, companies are leveraging cloud testing and are planning to increase the number of hosted applications over the next three years.

Out with the old, in with the new

Despite the challenging economic times, companies seem to still be continuing to invest in new application development projects. However, the focus is shifting from complex multi-year systems to quick and nimble applications aimed at improving the company’s competitive edge and generating quick return on investment (ROI).

Traditional application development methods cannot support building, testing and deploying an application in six months. However, new agile methods can prove project ROI much earlier in the application life-cycle and allow companies to quickly adapt to changing market needs, while reducing waste. A growing number of companies across all industries are beginning to adopt agile methods at least for a portion of their projects. Although agile delivery practices have been around for over 10 years, the economic downturn and the need to focus on faster returns is renewing interest in agile and fuelling its rapid adoption.

Finally, having an experienced champion mentoring the project will increase the organisation’s chances of meeting their quality objectives. In practice, it takes at least three to fi ve years of direct, hands-on experience to develop automation skills that resemble a champion. In order to fully leverage their investment in test automation, enterprises need to look at the big picture when acquiring and deploying tools.

A well-defined implementation, integration and adoption strategy with qualified professional services and training for internal sta can help push a technology investment to exceed expected results and move the organisation closer towards their commitment to quality. QA teams need to learn to look at IT investments in the same way business investments are considered and implemented – that’s when they will see a real ROI from their IT systems.

References

1. This World Quality Report Survey was completed online by over 1200 CXOs, IT directors, quality assurance (QA) managers and engineers at various companies around the world. All major industries are represented in the survey from consumer products and retail to distribution and logistics and energy, examining the state of application quality and testing practices across di erent industries and geographies.

The Next Battlefield: Data Center Cyber Security

Mark Grindle, Business Management: Consultant (Non-Technical), HP

IT has always been thought of as a bunch of geeks with pocket protectors and slide rulers. Ok, I’m dating myself, we’re now pictured as geeks that drink Red Bull and play
video games all night (that’s a current stereotype isn’t it?) But are we really 21st century soldiers?

I’m not trying to compare us to the valiant men and women that are risking their lives to protect our nation every day. What we do cannot be compared to them; we’re a long way from risking our lives, but we are in a battle. A battle that never stops and is fought with weapons that constantly adapt. Our battle takes place on the electronic battlefield and the weapons vary from denial of service to viruses to hacks. And every time we develop a firewall or antivirus definition, someone figures out how to work around it.

So far our defense has been focused on protecting data – credit cards, identities, personal information, even intellectual property. But as a recent broadcast by 60 Minutes shows, electronic warfare is changing (see this ZDNet article about the Stuxnet virus, with embedded video). Our attackers are now going after equipment and machinery. Real things that can impact more than our finances, things that can cause physical harm to people and communities.

The recently discovered Stuxnet virus was designed to attack a specific Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) that monitored and controlled centrifuges in a nuclear power plant. And by the way, it only impacted specific nuclear power plants: only those in Iranian facilities. It was pretty devious; it installed around the world but only modified the PLCs in the Iranian facilities. It just slightly altered how the centrifuges worked, and it made sure the monitors showed everything as normal. It was millions of lines of sophisticated code that performed specific actions on specific equipment. Obviously it was a directed attack, and fortunately it was uncovered before any real damage was done. History has already shown how devastating a nuclear power plant problem can be.

So what now? Well, personally, I’m going to look at IT Security differently. I’ve been in and around IT Security for years, and I try to be conscientious about passwords, userids, social engineering, keeping my antivirus up to date, and the like. Now I have to start thinking about what are the bigger repercussions of a breech. I still need to think about protecting data, but what else is there? Technology components are everywhere, and that means there are opportunities for hacking everywhere.

Yes, it’s horrible to have your credit card information or identity stolen, but does it really compare to a power plant getting shut down? What about a cellular or telephone network being impacted? How much IT is in a water processing facility? How much automation is in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and food processing?

The battlefield is shifting, the soldiers are different, and the war is electronic. Be prepared!

Learn how HP Enterprise Data Center Security Services can help you defend your servers, mainframes and storage from cyber and physical threats.

Future of work is already here

We as IT professionals are acutely aware of growing consumer attitudes towards technology devices - from smart phones and tablets to PCs and applications. Apple has changed everything in this respect. Most organisations today are preparing for an era of ‘bring your own computer’. Imagine if consumerisation became an even more pervasive trend within the workplace, especially with regard to office space? What should be our response as corporate executives?Recent workplace studies by Professor Lynda Gratton and her team (see www.hotspotmovement.com) indicate that office staff will need to adjust to an ever more virtual working environment. The combination of broadband communications, collaboration tools, enterprise social media, and sustainability concerns is leading to an increasing emphasis on home (or out-of-office) working. Add to this the expectations of new generations entering the work place we see that the way we work in the future is likely to change dramatically. But compare this to our rigid approach to office design today and we can sense a growing chasm in the making.

Now think about the broader effects of the digital revolution on other aspects of our lives. The advent of online shopping and home based entertainment has had little impact on our desire as individuals to travel to communal spaces such as shopping centres and cinemas. Every indication suggests that as workers we will prefer a balance between home working and trips to the office. But what might the office look like in 2015 and beyond if we adopt a consumer attitude to space?

According to Foster & Partners, when the Hong Kong and Shanghai head office was built in the eighties, only 5% of office space was designated as ‘collaborative working areas’. Today some 50% of the total office space in this iconic building is ‘collaborative’. Many large organisations are beginning to consider radically different scenarios for office design and space allocation. One Fortune 1000 organisation has reduced its physical footprint by some 50% and chosen to supplement this on a pay-as-you-go basis, treating its workforce as consumers of office space.
The implications for the CIO are quite profound here. We as IT professionals are providing the technology based tools for an entirely different way of working but our peers in other parts of the organisation such as facilities and property management are having difficulty keeping up with the pace of change. Unlike the eighties when entire buildings had to be demolished because they were unable to accommodate the influx of new wiring schemes and PC terminals, the workplace revolution of today is likely to be less dramatic. However in the longer term the forces driving change could be much more impactful on how we design and allocate working space.

If we begin to treat our future workforce as individual consumers rather than armies of factory labourers we will begin to see entirely new paradigms for satisfying their technology and physical needs. Perhaps the CIO has an advantage here – given the recent trends in IT consumerisation. Maybe it is time to share this experience with our colleagues in the HR, Facilities and Property spaces?

The Future State

Andrew Watson, National Tech Officer, HP

One CIO recently made the following observation and it has stuck with me. He said that “there is a law of unintended consequences which must be allowed for”. When I asked exactly what he meant by this he gave the example of VDI and how VDI is so reliant on the network infrastructure. He needed a network upgrade in order to exploit VDI—that was his unintended consequence.

In the world of the future state of a converged, cloud enabled world with everything delivered as a service other dynamics cannot be ignored. These dynamics reflect some of the other major trends we are all observing and include mobility, consumerisation, context aware computing and big data and analytics. The interplay between these, and other, elements requires an holistic approach. The maturity model I discussed before still applies and is a very useful vehicle to adopt.

As one comment stated in response to an earlier blog—the CEO and CIO visions are both key. Where is the business strategy taking the company? What is core and what is non-core to the company? What priorities are securing the quarter by quarter performance and the long term security of the company? The CIO is responding to these drivers proactively as well as reactively. Alignment between the Business and IT is fundamental to the future state being achieved in a structured and timely manner. If the alignment exists and the aligned team has a clear vision from the CEO and CIO then the journey to the future state can be built on a solid foundation.

Building upon this foundation, a maturity model can show what is needed within each dimension to move forward. Some important principles need to be established as the journey begins. I am assuming that core and non-core has already been established/defined.

But, for example, what about the area of management tools and processes? Do you define your processes (perhaps building upon what you already have in place ) and then look for tools in the market that support these processes.

Or do you decide to follow something like ITIL and choose a framework and supporting tools that are leaders in the market and then adapt your processes?

I have been with many clients over the last 6 months where they are exploring exactly this point. The clients have gone with both the options described here but I am seeing a move towards the second option—-choose a framework and supporting tools and then adapt the processes. The main reason for this (as explained to me) is to avoid deep levels of customisation in order to use products in ways which are not natural to them. That makes upgrades hard and hence a journey to a future state hard (or should I say harder than it is already).

Another example is in the finance domain. The future state offers the promise of agility and pay per use. It also offers the move to a more Opex world than a Capex world. I have been in many workshops with clients where, as good as this sounds at Board level, many KPIs exist across the management levels in the company which relate to opex management (cutting costs, containing costs).

As attractive as switching capex expenditure to opex may be for these companies the behavioural framework needs to be setup for success—and that means making sure the management KPIs reflect the direction that the company wants to move in.

Note that I have not really talked about any technology yet—however new and shiny it may be. We all know that great technology is one element that is driving some of the global trends I mentioned earlier but the technology is but one dimension within the maturity model. “

Seeing the wood from the trees: storage vendor success

David Chalmers, IT Management: CIO, CTO, CSO, HP

We are currently in the early stages of a period of change, the scale of which has not been seen before. We are all used to having to think about how we can renovate and improve our storage solutions – from proprietary direct attach through to standards based SANs to the hybrid internal/Cloud solutions of today and tomorrow – but the scale of the data we are now being required to hold, manage and gain value from is continuing to increase at a rate few of us can keep pace with. To stay afloat and successful, users need to navigate their way through an ever more complex set of technology solutions from an ever wider range of vendors, all of whom make claims to be able to help the user make sense of the confusion.

We can see changes like the introduction of Cloud based storage offerings that promise limitless capacity as well as new generations of much more sophisticated data management tools that through approaches such as real Thin Provisioning and Automatic Data Tiering allow us to provide what the user needs, rather than the traditional approach of providing what they want. We can also look at Storage Federation as an approach that will provide significantly more flexibility and scaling within user’s storage solutions, allowing more capacity to be used and have less lying idle. Most vendors are of course on the path of improving their solutions but only those that can take new ideas and technologies and then apply them across their solutions to provide the range of answers to the questions that today’s users are asking will be successful. HP acquired world class Thin Provisioning technology when it brought 3Par into its solution set. However it has improved that solution through the application of its in-house management solutions and much lower cost manufacturing and component delivery. At the same time, the Thin Provisioning approach has been used to improve its in-house developed EVA solution set. This is the style of accelerated solution delivery that will add discernable value to the user.

However, the real challenge comes from not only being able to discern the wood from the trees but being able to find a solution provider who is aggressively driving this new wave of platform innovation. These days that means through both internal cross-platform R&D, appropriate acquisitions and has comprehensive management offerings, for it is here that the current and future storage solutions will either add value and improve the users’ life, or fail and merely add complexity and cost to typically already strained solution sets.

Look for the vendors who understand that the world is a complex place, that understand that most users’ have and will choose to keep hybrid solution sets and who applaud them for that approach. There you will find those with the foresight to be considered for moving from supplier to partner – the others will most likely not be around in the future anyway.

And now for hors d’oeuvres: IT Change in Financial Services

Fil Zanasi, Industry Specialist, Fiancial Services, HP

Let me continue the food theme to my blogs. Last week, I spoke at a Financial Services IT Executive Dinner in central London. There were Heads of IT from several banks and insurance companies. The topic for the evening was “Change in Financial Services” and sparked a really interesting exchange of perspectives. Change clearly means very different things to different people and different organizations.

For one established insurance company, change led to discussions around Solvency II and transforming to keep the regulators happy. To a the underwriter of well known bank who was present, change meant modernization and joining the 20th century. No. That’s not a typo. His Head of IT told the room that everything was still done manually, in triplicate, and on paper. One copy went to the client. One copy went to the insurers and the other …… “got shoved in a filing cabinet”.

To the innovative organizations in the room, change meant faster and better IT service delivery. As an aside, I find it really amusing how so many IT leaders try so hard to avoid saying the “C word”. It was as if saying the word “Cloud” was beneath them. It was like watching heavy metalfans squirm as they discussed the X-Factor.

‘Effecting change to embrace mobility’, was also a topic. In this respect Barclay’s Pingit and plans for Vocalink to build a database which links mobile numbers to bank accounts were discussed. Mobile is currently a huge, hot topic in its own right. More blogs to follow.

IT management helps with change. Automation can help the innovators build their new services faster as well as enforce good IT practice and alignment of IT with business strategy. The right IT information can help de-risk the transformations necessary to keep the regulators happy. It can also help diagnose IT problems more quickly so that customer satisfaction is maximized. And control over your IT stops silly people from doing silly things. The most common reason for an IT outage is a silly (manual) change.

When I was at junior school, the canteen was across the playground. During winter, we needed to wrap up warm and change into our outdoor shoes before leaving the main school building and crossing the playground to the canteen. Putting on shoes, scarf, and coat were all simple tasks. But it all just took too long when we were racing to be the first in the lunch queue. I went as quick as I could. But, in haste, I often got it wrong and my coat buttons would be out of alignment or my laces would come undone. The teacher would then tell me to start again. A lot of effort, wasted time and frustration. And worse. I had missed out on my favourite pudding.

I recently met the CIO of Corporate Banking for a major UK bank. He made a great point about “time to market”. When the interest rates finally go up, banks are going to be racing to launch their mortgage products before their competitors. Unfortunately, the IT aspect of launching a new product can really slow things down. It takes time to build IT infrastructure. It takes time to build, change and test software applications. And if you rush these things then you often make more mistakes. (And teacher gets very cross).

It got me thinking. How can financial organisations make sure that they get their buttons done up properly and laces secured, ready for that race for their share of the pudding? I meet with a lot of financial organisations who share this concern and who see automation as the answer. Automation reduces the delay, cost and error of launching new products and services. You could say that it allows them to have their cake and eat it. I’ll talk about some specific examples in future blogs.

I hope that satisfies your appetite until the next morsel.

We cannot afford to underinvest in UK computing

Jason Gorman, Managing Director, Codemanship

A company director would understand that they have to invest proportionately in marketing their business. Typically, businesses spend about 5% of their annual turnover on marketing just to stand still. And considerably more if they’re trying to build their business from a standing start or if they’re launching major new products.

If you were running a £1 billion-a-year business, you might invest £50 million every year on marketing. If you were in charge of the marketing department of that business, and they gave you just £50,000 to market their £1 billion-a-year business, you’d assume they’d grossly miscalculated. Or you’d assume they know nothing about marketing.

You have to speculate to accumulate, and you have to speculate proportionately. The amount you invest usually needs to be pitched to match the size of the problem you’re trying to solve. £50,000 would be a very healthy marketing budget for a business turning over £1 million a year. But it’s a drop in the ocean for a company turning over £1 billion.

What would likely happen if you invested a disproportionately small amount into marketing your business? Your business would shrink.

So when it comes to deciding how much we should invest in the future of UK computing, we need to first ask “what is the size of the problem?” How much is computing worth to UK plc?

My issue is this: when we hear about computing education and the UK’s computing industry in the mainstream media, in government and in other places where these decisions are shaped, the scope of the discussion is limited to a tiny fraction of our real “digital economy”. While we agonise over the future of computer games development in the UK, we’d do well to remember that computing plays a large part in the fortunes of major supermarket chains whose annual profits can outstrip our gaming industry by themselves.

It’s easy to forget that supermarkets are a product of the computing age, and that their operational effectiveness and competitiveness is closely tied to their ability to create, adapt and evolve their bespoke IT systems. Tescos and Marks & Spencers need skilled programmers every bit as much as the games developers do.

The reality is that there probably isn’t a single company in the FTSE100 index for whom that isn’t now true. The combined economic value of those 100 public companies runs into hundreds of billions, and the impact of computing on their bottom lines can be profound. If Acme Plc want to change the way they handle sales and fulfilment, chances are they won’t be able to do it without changing their systems. In comparison, the economic impact of a delay in shipping the next whizzy shoot’em-up is chickenfeed.

Then there’s the critical importance of computing in UK science and engineering. These days, most scientists don’t sit in labs with tests tubes and bunsen burners. They sit at computers, writing software to analyse and interpret data and simulate the real world. Can CERN operate without computers? Not at all. Not even for a moment.

Here’s the real bottom line for UK computing. WIthout it, we go right back to the 1940s. And so does our economy. Seven decades of amazing scientific advancement, progress in standards of living, economic growth and prosperity, the only rational explanation for which is computers. It’s certainly not because we’ve been getting smarter or working harder.

The real value of computing to the UK is incalculable. It has seeped into every aspect of our lives and transformed many parts of our existing economy, as well as creating entirely new ones that were impossible without computers.

Strategically, computing is more important to UK plc than anything else. That may sound like a bold claim. But if you sit down and do the maths, it’s undeniably true. Whatever we’re planning for the future, it will almost certainly rely on computing. And there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle.

When we miss this much, much bigger picture and focus in on computer games and digital media, we risk massively underinvesting in our digital future, by several orders of magnitude. Investment in computing education, apprenticeships, help for tech start-ups and all that good stuff, if measured in the millions of pounds, would be like a £1 billion-a-year company investing £50,000 a year in marketing. The net effect is that our economy will shrink.

I don’t understand why politicians and business leaders and pundits don’t get this. Computing is a very real limiting factor on every aspect of our economy. If we cannot nurture the talent and the skills required to build this future economy on the scale required, then that future won’t happen on the scale we need. It’s really as simple as that.

At this point, recession or not, we must consider investing billions every year into computing education. We have a huge amount of ground to make up that we’ve lost over the last two decades. A genuine UK computing renaissance isn’t going to happen on a shoestring budget.

Money must be found to put a qualified computing teacher – y’know, one who can actually really program – in every single school, and they must be paid enough to ensure that some coding job in the City won’t lure them away. My guess is that will cost in excess of £1 billion a year.

Money must be found to give every child a programmable computer when they start school. That could run into £50 million a year (thanks to the Raspberry Pi).

Money must be found to create and operate high quality learning resources, such as web sites, videos, TV shows and books, and make them freely available to children and schools. We could be talking about another £200M+.

Funds must be created to finance and encourage UK tech start-ups and ensure all that new talent doesn’t leave the country. We’ve been historically great at research and development and inventing cool stuff, but absolutely hopeless at turning that ingenuity and creativity into British businesses. Intellectually, we punch well above our weight. it’s just a shame that we’re such entrepreneurial weaklings. A fund of several billion pounds a year to invest in good tech start-ups and growing tech businesses might help ensure that UK software businesess can grow beyond the point where they just become fodder for foreign buyers.

And maybe a lot of these tech start-ups won’t go the distance, but while they’re trying, it will keep all that talent productively busy and professionally satisfied ready for the day when those lucky few grow into our own versions of Google and Microsoft. Or they’ll take their places in the wider economy, helping banks and supermarkets and rail operators and hospitals and TV channels to stay ahead of the competition and keep UK plc ticking along for future generations.

At this critical time, we must not skimp and we must not falter. We cannot afford to underinvest in our computing future.

It’s going to get messy: Bolognese and IT Management

Fil Zanasi, Industry Specialist, Fiancial Services, HP

Tags: chief financial officer, Finance, IT Performanace Management, IT performance management software, IT Performance Suite

In late December 2011, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed that he backed most of the recommendations in the Vickers’ banking report, including ringfencing retail operations (access to cash, payment services etc.) from the investment bank operations.

I haven’t yet seen the exact definition of “ringfence”, but I listened to Brian Hartzer, Head of Retail Banking at RBS, being interviewed on BBC’s The Bottom Line program. Hartzer said that ring fencing will cost RBS hundreds of millions of pounds to “decouple this spaghetti and create separate systems”. Much of this “spaghetti” will depend on IT. So that will also need decoupling.

Continuing Hartzer’s metaphor, how can IT management tools (or should that be cutlery?) separate my lovely plate of spaghetti? How can it reduce the cost of this separation? How can it mitigate risk, maintain quality of service throughout, and ensure that the whole process runs as smoothly as possible?

My view is that IT management can help in many ways and here are the first 3 examples that came to mind.

1. Firstly, the bank needs to understand more about the spaghetti it must untangle. What software applications, IT infrastructure, data, people and projects support the systems that need separating? How do they all depend on each other? A bank needs to be sure that unplugging something doesn’t bring down a critical service. Wouldn’t it be tasty if they could mitigate risk by understanding the implications of an IT change before making it? And if this “understanding” was provided automatically, then it would always be up-to-date without the need for expensive manual processes.

2. Secondly, as we separate the spaghetti into 2 separate plates (sorry!) how do they ensure that customers and staff have a constant high level of service from the systems? Wouldn’t it be delicious if they could constantly test the availability of critical services and immediately inform IT if there was a problem? And if they could automatically diagnose the root cause in a heartbeat, then even better.

3. Thirdly and finally, this decoupling exercise will require many IT projects to be created. Banks typically execute many hundreds of projects every year and a customer told me recently that they typically have over 150 IT projects running at any one time. How do the bank’s executives ensure that the segregation projects are running on time, especially when interdependencies between projects are unavoidable?

Banks may well be fined for missing the regulatory deadlines, so this is a serious commercial consideration. Wouldn’t it be truly scrumptious if they could easily track the success of these projects and immediately see any risks to them? Even better if they could see all of this on one screen, while on the move.

IT management knives and forks have recently made great strides in sophistication and integration, and can now credibly address these issues. Furthermore they can support all future strategic transformation as the bank moves with the times. Buon appetito !

Dispelling Common Myths of Consumerization of IT

Tyson Hartman, CTO & Corporate Vice Presiden, Avanade

Today, I’m excited to announce Avanade’s latest global research findings addressing the impact of consumerization of IT. As we’ve heard from executives and IT departments of our customers, and as noted in the press,  we found that there is a rapid shift in the way employees are using personal technology in the workplace. In fact, globally, 88 percent of executives report employees are using their personal computing technologies for business purposes today. So it may not be surprising that nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of C-level executives report that the growing use of employee-owned technology is a top priority in their organization.

Our global survey of 600+ C-level executives and IT decision makers also dispelled several commonly held beliefs about the trend – including employee device preferences, hesitance of business leaders to embrace the trend and executive perspectives on Millennials. For business leaders, the consumerization of IT has less to do with the worker and more to do with the way employees work. Our research shows that productivity and anywhere access are rated significantly higher by executives over improved employee morale or providing greater responsibilities to younger employees.

And, despite the notion that business leaders are resisting the shift, we found that companies are investing in staff and resources to enable the consumerization of IT and have many of the resources that are needed today. Here’s my quick take on investments for consumerization of IT.

As you can see, progressive CIOs and IT organizations have moved from gatekeepers of consumer technology to enablers of these innovative devices, applications and services. Enterprises have an opportunity to embrace the consumerization of IT to help IT be a strategic enabler and leverage the breadth of today’s powerful consumer technologies to drive business productivity.

I encourage you to read the full report here. Or, check out our infographic on the findings below.

To download the infographic as a PDF, please click here.

Top Ten – tried and tested, time saving apps for iPad

Kerry Richardson, Client Services Manager, CC Ltd.

So you have an iPad and I’m sure you sit down with a coffee at the weekend thinking, “right, what do I do with it, apart from the usual things, email, calendar and looking at a few websites?” There are literally tens of thousands of iPad apps but here are a few of our favourites. Tried and tested and definately worth spending a few quid on. None of these apps will save the world, or transform your business but they will give you more of that valuable resource, time …

	Flipboard	A must for news junkies, amalgamate your news & social feeds into something that looks much more like a newspaper. A huge time saver.
	Drop-box	For those documents that you need to have everywhere. Update it on your PC and then when you need to see it on your iPad you have the latest version.
	Popplet	If you are a visual person who likes to map out his mind then Popplet is perfect. Everyone at home uses this, from my kids mapping out school projects to us mapping out business projects.
	CamCard	Turns business cards into text and saves them into your address book.
	Keynote	Work smarter when creating presentations. Can be saved as Powerpoint files for you to send out for their final transformation.
	WebEx	Attend WebEx meetings on your iPad, wherever you are!
	Instapaper	We all do it, find a great article or news story and then lose it and have to find it again. Instapaper lets you save web pages for reading ‘offline’ later.
	Evernote	Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders–and makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at home, at work, or on the go.
	PenUltimate	Notes, scribbles, diagrams, the easiest-to-use handwriting app for iPad. Integrates nicely with Evernote.