Analysis on CIO UK

Dedication to regulation

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:05:00 GMT

Going through the motions or seizing the initiative?

Regulation is a fact of life and business. The signs are that its impact will be felt more strongly and constantly than ever as time wears on. Of course, the extent of the impact depends on which industry your business operates in. However, it is hard to think of one that does not require any standards to be maintained at any level.The way in which IT responds to the challenge of helping the business address its regulatory obligations is not set in stone or standardised in any particular way. On one hand, the nature of the industry and the regulations in play dictate the requirements the business must comply to. On the other hand, the way an organisation treats, approaches, procures and manages IT can dictate how those business requirements are translated into imperatives, programs and projects by or for the CIO and its team.Where the former is consistent across an individual sector or country, the latter is certainly not. From the research we have done this pattern is familiar to us, and will no doubt be to any CIO with experience of running IT in more than one organisation during their career.There are always several ways to approach a task where IT is concerned. Note the word approach. I do not mean which products or services to use. That's a different (but related) part of the discussion. Regardless of the problem or topic in question, when analysing studies we have frequently been able to identify different types of organisations through the way they approach problems with IT.The ‘progressive' IT organisations that we have identified will not take a brief, directive or requirement from the business at face value only. They will tend towards carrying out (for want of a better expression) due diligence on the requirement by finding the answers to a series of questions such as:• How have we tackled such a request in the past?• What can we improve or avoid this time?• What choices - technically, operationally and people-centric do we have?• Where can we extend the benefits of addressing the requirement?In other words, such IT organisations take a holistic approach and look for opportunities to make broad improvements using the principles of repeatability and ‘extensible by design'. Not only do the choices they make stand a good chance of fulfilling the brief, but the business is protected should the same or similar requests be made in the future. IT is ready to help again because its ability to do so was built in from the start.Less progressive IT organisations, either by virtue of their own make up, or (more likely) because they have no choice, are likely to take a silo or ‘start-stop' approach to the same brief. There may be little or no due diligence done in terms of building links between previous or future projects. Methodologies may not be repeatable or extensible by design. Next time a similar question is asked, IT will go through the same motions and building on or extending on value created previously will be much harder to achieve.There is no reason why an IT organisation cannot apply those same ideas to how it addresses regulatory change now and in the future. In fact, if we believe that quickly evolving industry regulation may soon necessitate an almost constant ‘change program' approach, then IT organisations that do already take a more holistic view are going to be in far better shape to cope than those that do not.The financial services industry is gearing up for yet another set of impending legislation. This time it's the turn of the insurance industry. Solvency II is ‘their' equivalent of the banking sector's Basel II. There are lessons that can be learned from banks' more recent experiences, some of which decided that it would suffice to create fancy algorithms to calculate certain requirements and this would suit the regulator. By not addressing underlying assumptions, models, processes and broader information management issues, many banks had to in effect, ‘go back and start again'. This was classic silo thinking: Short-term action which addressed the symptoms but not the causes and did not create any real or sustainable value for the business.For Solvency II, the smarter insurance companies will seek to extend the progress they have made at an individual, internal level. When addressing existing regulation around capital requirements (which Solvency II seeks to standardise and harmonise) they will have retained some knowledge of what they actually did in the first place, and not have to re-pay an army of contractors to repeat the work all over again.Less progressive insurers risk continuing piecemeal digestion of whatever the regulator throws at them. While their balance sheets may not reflect the costs associated with a broader improvement program, their risk management capabilities will be weaker, and their capital requirements may be higher than necessary.Solvency II is only relevant to the insurance industry, but hopefully it can serve as a reminder to other organisations that change on the horizon usually signals an opportunity to demonstrate the value and validity of technology investment when used wisely and with the broadest benefit to the business in mind.

CIOs prioritise software initiatives to reduce costs and eliminate waste in 2010

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:57:00 GMT

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• Innovation takes a hit. In 2008, 69 per cent of respondents indicated that using information technologies to increase innovation was either important or very important for 2009. This year, that number dropped to 60 per cent. Whereas 31 per cent indicated innovation was very important last year, just 23 per cent did so in this year's survey.

Making sense of business information

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:36:00 GMT

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So the two priorities, lean and agile, might appear to be in conflict. Yet I am convinced from working with clients in many sectors and many parts of the world that effective Business Information Management (BIM) is the key that can resolve this apparent conflict - and be a real help to businesses seeking to meet today's massive challenges.

Defining cloud computing: A taxonomy

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:44:00 GMT

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• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is a build-deploy-manage environment. These cloud services provide a framework and a software system for application developers to create new services and rapidly deploy them on the Internet. It's becoming common to see PaaS offerings designed specifically for the enhanced use of a SaaS service. For example, Force.com is primarily used to create new applications that directly leverage the Salesforce.com CRM service. • Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is an on-demand virtual hosting environment. These services let more sophisticated developers procure virtual machines in minutes, fill them with whatever they want, and deploy. The VMs are metered for actual resource consumption (CPU hours, bandwidth, and storage consumed), which constitutes the bill for the service. Use a little, pay a little. Use a lot, pay a lot. While this categorisation is relatively easy to understand, it doesn't tell the whole story. There are some services within application middleware and infrastructure segments that are not full platforms but discrete services that can be consumed standalone. Thus, Forrester offers a more complete view of cloud computing (see Figure 2): • Cloud application services are Internet-resident middleware services. These are cloud services that provide a discrete middleware function but are not complete, standalone applications. A non-developer couldn't derive very much value by procuring these services. Examples include cloud databases like Microsoft SQL Azure, billing systems like Amazon DevPay, and integration services like Boomi. • Cloud infrastructure services are discrete infrastructure or IT operations functions. These are either IT infrastructure components in the cloud, such as storage-as-a-service, or IT functions such as disaster recovery delivered as an on-demand cloud service. Clouds aren't citizens of the InternetFinally, beyond understanding what is cloud computing, European customers must also understand where clouds live. While the popular science assumption is that cloud services "live in the cloud" and thus are free from the boundaries the rest of us face, this simply isn't true. Cloud services, like all other IT services originate from datacentres located in specific geographies. And this means that both the service and you as the consumer are still bound to the laws and regulations of your respective jurisdictions when conducting business. For European customers that means understanding your obligations under the EU Privacy Directive and the implication of using a US-based cloud service subject to the US Patriot Act.Want to know more?

Infrastructure consolidation -- time to look at supplier strategies?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:07:00 GMT

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Research results obtained by Freeform Dynamics towards the end of 2009 (http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=902) shows that, despite the considerable efforts of vendors to promote the benefits of ‘consolidation', organisations of all sizes continue have large numbers of servers in their estates. Organisations are undertaking server consolidation projects, especially employing virtualisation technologies, but there is still a long way to go before such projects encompass the majority of systems. With so much attention being placed on infrastructure consolidation, essentially to save money rather than yet to enhance service flexibility, should CIOs think carefully of the implications to their procurement policies going forward?

Liz Benison of Capgemini suggests 5 2010 resolutions for CIOs

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:48:00 GMT

It's never too late for good resolutions!

Now that we're all back at work and the excesses of the festive season are wearing off, personally at least, I have been talking to my colleagues and clients in the IT world about whether or not they will be making any new professional resolutions for 2010.

What CIOs need to know about SOA

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:33:00 GMT

Its real and it's all about your business

Forrester defines service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a business-focused approach to solution design and software architecture. By providing open, flexible access to the business capabilities and transactions buried within an organisation's applications, SOA makes it easier to adapt business software to new business requirements. CIOs who think of SOA merely from a technology perspective will miss the business view of SOA and miss an opportunity to lead their organisations forward. SOA is only the start and the foundation of a much-broader shift in the future of business-focused IT architecture, which means that those who get SOA wrong will have a poor business foundation for many years to come. SOA is mainstream Fifty-six per cent of enterprises say they are using SOA now and an additional 12 per cent will be using it by the end of 2010. Among Global 2000 organisations, 74 per cent are using SOA now. All this SOA usage is not just industry hype and experimentation, either. SOA has been delivering tangible results that make IT executives want more of it: 52 per cent of current enterprise SOA users say it has delivered enough benefit that they plan to expand its use. Only one per cent of SOA users say they are cutting back on SOA because they see little or no benefit while, for 30 per cent, it is still too early to tell. However, getting SOA right takes work: 18 per cent of enterprise SOA users say they are struggling to get the benefits and, in Forrester's experience, this is often caused by a technology-focused approach to SOA.SOA is a foundation for your strategic business future With all the industry hype about Web services, it is easy for CIOs to get the idea that SOA is just another new technology, but taking that attitude means missing a very important strategic point: SOA is first and foremost about your business, not Web services technology. In fact, 38 per cent of Global 2000 SOA users report that SOA is helping them with strategic business transformation. The key points CIOs must understand about SOA are: • SOA aligns your software with your business. While it is true that SOA is fundamentally an approach to software architecture and design - which makes it sound tech-oriented - the most important SOA concept is to design software around the business capabilities you need to run your organisation. Each SOA-based business service performs a complete business transaction or query, hiding the complexity of your IT applications behind a pluggable digital software interface for a specific, targeted business capability such as "submit order" or "distribute sales lead." • SOA creates a portfolio of business capabilities. By designing for the business capabilities your organisation needs, a business-oriented approach to SOA creates a coherent portfolio of business services that directly reflect the design of your organisation's major business transactions and processes. These services are built upon and leverage your existing base of siloed and overlapping legacy applications. They insulate your business from existing complexity by providing a service layer where business alignment is built directly into your software. • SOA brings business capabilities where they are needed. With a portfolio of SOA business services, your organisation can quickly connect your business capabilities to any business process, employee, customer, partner, supplier, government entity, mobile device, or anything else as needed to adapt to changing business conditions and implement business improvements. There is benefit in SOA itself, and there is further benefit in the foundation for business process flexibility, intelligence, and visibility that SOA provides. Because SOA business services are designed to embody your business transactions and queries, other technologies have a business-focused foundation to build on. For example, business process management software orchestrates a series of services to create a managed end-to-end process. Event processing software keys off of services to identify and automatically respond to business events. Analytics software consumes services data to tell you how your business is doing. Unless these and other technologies have SOA's business foundation to build on, implementing them only creates more technology integration issues. To elaborate on the broader opportunities that arise from an SOA foundation, Forrester's Digital Business Architecture and Dynamic Business Applications visions embody a future where the architecture of your solutions matches the design of your business. SOA is critical to your organisation because it is the foundation for achieving a stronger strategic future for your business.

Sensible business process management (BPM) for sensible times

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:55:00 GMT

Making business as usual, better

By most accepted standards somewhere north of two thirds/70 per cent of IT budgets are spent keeping everything running. It stands to reason that in a given year (since we're at the start of a new one) most of what an IT department will spend its time doing could be described as ‘business as usual'.However, in a year following one of the most difficult - financially and operationally - on record, ‘business as usual' needs to find a bit of extra room for improvement. I believe this will be the reality for many IT shops lacking the resources (or will, or sign off) for ‘big' projects in 2010. Essentially, the sources and options for incremental improvement need to be readily available, physically or logically touchable, and naturally, linked to the businesses goals at large. They also need applying consistently. I'll wager that a plentiful supply of opportunities can be found amongst the processes your business employs in its daily activities.

The secrets of healthy long-term outsource relationships for CIOs

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:57:00 GMT

Till termination do us part...

Long term key-supplier framework deals and outsourcing arrangements have long been a feature of the IT landscape, but far too often we read in the press about the high-profile fallings out and terminations. Are there secrets we can all learn from these to make sure the relations we enter into in the coming years blossom throughout their life?

CIOs: Develop a technology watch list

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:52:00 GMT

The Top 15 technology trends to watch according to Forrester Research

The 15 technology trends mentioned in this column are described in the Forrester report "The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch" by Alex Cullen (October 6, 2009), which can be found on Forrester's website through this link: http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=54322.

What CIOs need to consider when assessing VoIP

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:14:00 GMT

Ready for VoIP?

This shift is evidenced in feedback from business and IT professionals as part of some recent research carried out by Freeform Dynamics, which indicates that, compared to two years ago, companies have made a marked shift away from public type services such as Skype, towards more formal...

What CIOs should know about lean

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:07:00 GMT

Register or log in for this report on CIOs implement lean-style initiatives at different levels of the enterprise

An inevitable reaction to the lean economic climate includes discussions around "leaning" costs and staff. But best-practice executives view lean as a performance-improvement approach and management framework, rather than merely a cost-cutting exercise.

Videconferencing comes of age for CIOs

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:13:00 GMT

It's time to get in the picture?

The announcement a few weeks back on Cisco acquiring Tandberg seems to have raised the profile of videoconferencing, with other major players such as Polycom standing to benefit from increased discussion and general activity around the topic. This can be no bad thing for the industry. Videoconferencing seems to be one of those things that vendors bang on a lot about, but enterprises generally have been slow to adopt in a very meaningful way. Yes, there are numerous examples where senior executives are using videoconferencing to replace regular transatlantic travel, resulting in time, cost and carbon savings, but this represents only a relatively small portion of the overall market, namely a subset of senior people in multinational corporations. And even within this subgroup, resistance still exists for those technophobes for whom anything beyond pushing a simple button is just too scary to contemplate. That said, the drivers to adopt videoconferencing on a wider and deeper scale are increasingly making themselves felt, even for smaller companies. Ongoing issues such as reducing office space to reduce costs, and cutting carbon footprints through less travel are omnipresent. But specific events such as swine flu also have a big role to play. The nature of these events means that companies have to be prepared for mass absences. From a business continuity perspective, this simply isn't feasible, and leads to the need for well thought out and well implemented teleworking strategies to be in place. Accessing company resources easily and securely is only one aspect of this. The other centres around the ability of all workers, irrespective of their location to be able to communicate and collaborate effectively. While traditional communications mechanisms such as phone, email and instant messaging play an essential role, they do possess a certain ‘lost in translation' element. These have essentially been our staple communication modes for a number of years but, as we have to rely on them more, and for longer periods, their limitations are becoming more apparent. For example, anyone who has to conduct lengthy audio-conferences over standard quality phone lines will be all too aware of how fatigued they become during the call, and how the effectiveness of the call deteriorates over time. (Doing it over the average VoIP connection is even worse.)Adding visuals to the calls can take this communication up a level, and provide a more interactive, true-to-life user experience. It isn't hard to see the potential benefits that this can bring, and numerous applications spring to mind. In healthcare, for example, being able to carry out consultations via video means that doctors can ‘see' more patients, and patients do not have to travel as far to see a doctor - critical for when people find travel difficult for medical or geographical reasons. Or, for a company discussing a major marketing campaign which has a heavy reliance on visuals and shared collateral, everyone no longer needs to be in the same room. Rather, discussions and reviews can be done via video, bringing in specific people as needed, irrespective of their location. As the need to bring remote parties together in a more effective way increases over time, the case for video across the business becomes more compelling, and not just at the upper echelons of the business.Of course, it is easy to get carried away with the hype that video proclaims. And while it does have the potential to transform the way we work, a number of reality checks still need to be addressed. Some videoconference systems at the top end of the scale - typically the telepresence type systems - are indeed very slick. They are also very expensive. To achieve a permeation of video throughout the businesses, companies need more than just very high end solutions, but rather a range of products which take video down to the desktop in an affordable way.

CIOs need to avoid common mistakes in "vanilla" ERP plans

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:16:00 GMT

What flavour of vanilla?

Every enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation I've been aware of starts with a mantra that ‘we are going to implement vanilla.' However, months down the track and millions spent, some vivid flavours of vanilla emerge - some very successful, some less so. So how do you make the decisions on where vanilla is right, and how do you make those decisions stick?

IT globalisation: drivers, hurdles, and opportunities

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:37:00 GMT

Avoid the key pitfalls that lead to globalisation failures

Breaking out of the virtualisation pilot

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:54:00 GMT

Starting gates or flood gates?

Banks beware! Hungry eyes are watching your �100 billion European Payments Market

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:34:00 GMT

A massive window of opportunity that is still open for banks to make their choice

After demolishing trade barriers for everything from melons to machine tools, the European Commission has financial services firmly in its sights. Its Single Euro Payments Area initiative - SEPA - aims to turn fragmented national markets for payments processing into a single domestic market across all member states. The objective is to give consumers a better deal by promoting competition on a Europe-wide scale, with more choice, more transparency of pricing, greater efficiency and lower costs, writes Liz Benison Vice President - Global Director of Operations, aqt the Capgemini Financial Services Business Unit.

Software pricing and licensing trends in 2010

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:25:00 GMT

Buyers should push for innovative alternatives to hardware-based pricing

Mainframe computing is set for a rebirth

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:46:00 GMT

The mainframe was once dismissed as outmoded legacy computing, but today there are plenty of indicators that it could be set for a major revival

Ten years ago, many people in our industry were predicting that the mainframe would be effectively dead within a decade, killed off by the rise of distributed computing, super-powerful PCs and newer, apparently more exciting options such as the client server. Today, however, there are many indications - including some hard facts - that reports of the mainframe's death have been greatly exaggerated.

New directions for IT services

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:40:00 GMT

Pointing the way to future standards

Even at a time when spending cutbacks seem the most potent symbol of change, hype about tech innovation continues unchecked. But for IT services, at least, talk of innovation genuinely goes beyond hype. Here's why:

Pricing the fluffy stuff

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Is SaaS really a cheaper option?

Cloud really is the new black, and it is hard to get through the day without seeing reference to the various aspects of this new nirvana, in particular the promise of lower costs. With a pay to play pricing model that doesn't require in-house expertise or capital expenditure, but allows companies to pay only for what they use.At first glance, Software as a Service (Saas), part of this ‘Cloud' phenomenon, is seen as an attractive proposition from a financial perspective, however, as SaaS offerings become more mainstream in the workplace, there is increasing discussion about whether or not SaaS really does provide long term cost benefits compared to premise-based solutions. The chart below, which has been taken from research into SaaS with 202 enterprises across Europe carried out by Freeform Dynamics shows that the greatest concern with SaaS is that of accumulated service costs. Almost 40 per cent of enterprises felt that the ongoing costs were a major drawback.Figure: How much are the following potential SaaS drawbacks a concern? Click to expand to full view.

Solvency II -- cost burden or profit opportunity?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:28:00 GMT

New regulations means new opportunities

After the thrills and spills of the global credit crunch, the insurance industry now faces yet another big test - the new EU-wide regulatory regime known as Solvency II. And of course CIOs will be at the heart of the action in the run-up to October 2012 when the new regulations take effect.

7 steps to create successful business satisfaction surveys

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:57:00 GMT

Survey tips for leadership initiatives

IT executives increasingly implement marketing initiatives to improve the communications with their business customers. But these efforts often focus solely on the brand aspects of the services under the IT's control without understanding the business' perception of IT.

Unified Communications in context

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:13:00 GMT

The most common objections to embracing unified communications is difficulty making the business case

We here at Freeform Dynamics have been tracking developments in the unified communications market for quite a while now. If we go back three years, it was still largely all about visions and theory, with very little activity in the mainstream in terms of real life adoption.

Unified Communications in vontext

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:13:00 GMT

The most common objections to embracing unified communications is difficulty making the business case