In-Depth on CIO UK

Why IT vendors must raise their game

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:53:00 GMT

CIO tells vendors to listen and understand

In today's competitive buyer/seller technology market, there is a pressing need for IT vendors that can fully understand and respond to the specific challenges facing CIOs. It has never been harder to differentiate enterprise technologies from the countless IT vendors I meet each month. I'm constantly bombarded with ‘me too' technology solutions and offers, and frustrated by IT vendors who arrive with generic solutions expecting generic business problems.

How the CIO made Coca Cola green

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:25:00 GMT

Green IT improves Coke supply chain

Sezer joined Coca Cola Enterprises in October 2006 as senior vice president and CIO. Born and educated in Istanbul, Turkey, the CIO has considerable experience of SAP enterprise resource planning implementations and joined Coke from white goods manufacturer Whirlpool. As CIO Sezer reports directly to the Coca Cola Enterprises CEO.

The CIO Questionnaire: Adam Gerrard, CIO at Avis

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:05:00 GMT

Car rental CIO on leading IT

Q:Where were you born? A: Bolton, Lancashire.

The CIO Questionnaire: Andrew Newton, IT Director of Keepmoat

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:21:00 GMT

Keepmoat IT Director explains how he operates and how he relaxes

Q: Where were you born? A: Blackpool, Lancashire

Book review: Anywhere

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:16:00 GMT

Searching for the meaning of Google

Anywhere How Global Connectivity is Revolutionising the Way We Do BusinessBy Emily Nagle GreenAnywhere at Waterstones

Book review: Red Wired

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:10:00 GMT

Searching for the meaning of Google

Red WiredChina's Internet RevolutionBy Sherman So & J. Christopher Westland Red Wired at Waterstones

Book review: Googled

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:59:00 GMT

Searching for the meaning of Google

GoogledThe End of the World As We Know ItBy Ken Auletta

Global banking brands need to re-think attitudes to IT

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:45:00 GMT

Time for banks to deliver IT value

Major world banks have been at the forefront of using IT and technology services for 20 years. They have developed sophisticated procurement functions such as smart sourcing; they were early adopters of the offshoring model as captive owners and users of third parties; they engaged in transformation projects to deliver business process change; and they have tried to manage contracts efficiently by creating large governance teams and innovative scorecards to measure performance.But at the end of the day have they captured as much value as they could have done from these initiatives? Has being at the forefront and being early adopters of many technologies led to better value for money than other industry sectors?From my perspective as an adviser to many banks over the years, the key problem has been in the lack of clarity about what banks want to use their technology for and, more importantly, in sharing a consistent vision with their suppliers. This goes to the very heart of the outsourcing dilemma of what is core and what is non-core. JP Morgan Chase's cancellation of its ITO with IBM six years ago on the basis of a change in CEO was not an isolated case and demonstrates perfectly how subjective the question is as to which services should be outsourced and which should not. The issue of core versus non-core continues to dog the strategic direction and the day-to-day tactics of the use of IT by banks.The use of wholly-owned ‘captives' in locations like India and China is another example of the confusion about what is core. Was a captive needed to protect proprietary data or applications, or was it a deliberate plan to set up a successful captive and then sell it to another services provider in due course. In most cases, captives have not generated much value once sold and it would have been cheaper to have gone for an arms' length offshoring service in the first place. Too often, a strict analysis was not carried out and a decision to set up a captive seemed the easiest option even though the costs and time needed- to manage a captive are considerable.The inability to adopt shared services within banking groups, let alone with other entities, means that banks have not managed to use technology as effectively as some manufacturing or retail groups. Costs per user remain too high in financial services and many banks still have multiple systems stemming from mergers carried out more than 10 years ago. Suppliers also know that bankers are high-maintenance and powerful investment banking units will often try and unscramble any attempt at standardisation. This encourages suppliers to work with vested interests within banks to ensure that costs remain high, that technology remains complex and that the levels of duplication and redundancy are higher than at other organisations.Changing business priorities have also meant that banks sometimes shift strategic direction during a project, which means that the initial procurement objectives are changed or that the team managing a supplier is removed or downsized, leaving the supplier with the only real knowledge of what the deal was meant to deliver. This means that suppliers can continue with ‘business as usual' which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of banks not deriving many of the cost savings or transformational benefits of a well planned and carefully executed technology project.The turmoil of the last 20 months, when many banks struggled to survive and others had survival mergers foisted on them by government and senior management, forced many in the sector to re-evaluate their sourcing programmes. Many of our largest UK banking groups need to improve efficiency across a number of different business units, many of which were inherited by recent mergers. This need to consolidate systems and deliver value for money is also a top priority for senior management and will help achieve the Financial Services Authority's goals of shrinking their balance sheets at the same time.I am seeing a positive trend towards planning an overall strategy this time rather than just focusing on a few business units, something which tended to happen during the years of plenty. Some banks are realising that the whole lifecycle of the deal needs to be considered and that it is no use just concentrating on hard-nosed procurement or interactive governance models. In addition, banks are sharing more of their vision with their core suppliers and are also asking their suppliers to co-operate more with each other and to learn the lessons which well-run construction projects like Terminal 5 have demonstrated. Customers need to manage their suppliers and ensure that their suppliers have an incentive to work with each other and not engage in unnecessary finger-pointing when projects go wrong or milestones are delayed.

The CIO Questionnaire: BBC CIO Tiffany Hall

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:25:00 GMT

Auntie opens up

Tiffany Hall rose through the ranks in the back offices of the BBC, spending many years as head of business systems in news before making the news herself with her appointment as CIO in October 2009.

A day in the life of BBC CIO Tiffany Hall

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:21:00 GMT

Auntie opens up

Morning I live near the BBC so I walk or cycle in early and clear the backlog of email. In a typical day I'll have a one-to-one with a direct report, providing an outline of what we are up to, steering groups for HR systems, project boards, network plans, a strategic direction meeting with vendors like Siemens.

CIO CV: Tiffany Hall, BBC CIO

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:15:00 GMT

Auntie opens up

At a BBC opening up to suppliers, viewers and staff, CIO Tiffany Hall is setting standards and building platforms.

BBC CIO Tiffany Hall is setting standards and building platforms

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:38:00 GMT

Auntie opens up

Tiffany Hall rose through the ranks in the back offices of the BBC, spending many years as head of business systems in news before making the news herself with her appointment as CIO in October 2009. The 15-year veteran of the Corporation is now charged with creating an IP fasttrack for the business, robust enough to handle the corporation's transition from tape to video. At the same time, she is faced with the double whammy of driving innovation at the BBC and among its suppliers while having to pay attention to refreshing the legacy business systems infrastructure, which has been sliding down the list of Corporation priorities in recent years.Hall appears unfazed by her to-do list and brings heavyweight experience to the role. "I have been embedded in the programme-making areas so I am in touch with the way in which we are using our technology to make our content," she says."As we go forward into a much more IP-enabled world the extent to which the BBC is using its IP infrastructure for programme-making purposes is increasing quite significantly and I think that was a factor in my appointment. Hall joined from Shell in 1995. "My background, before I joined the BBC, was more in the traditional IT space. I worked on business systems, financial systems and the like, which is perhaps more relevant to some parts of my role now," she says.She was taken on as an IT project manager at the Beeb but was soon appointed head of business systems in News. In 2006 she became the technology controller, BBC Nations & Regions and focused on tapeless broadcast environments, launching BBC Northern Ireland's Digital NI project.The role of the CIO at the BBC is a slicing and dicing of many of the traditional CIO functions. "Though it is a CIO job title the scope isn't necessarily what you would traditionally see, so within Future Media & Technology, there are colleagues of mine on the senior leadership team who deal with all the audience-facing technologies and I deal with all the technologies that are delivered to support the BBC staff in making the content and running the business," says Hall."The other key distinction between this role and other CIOs is that there is a CTO above me. IT and IS are a very important component of what the BBC does with its technology but so are studios and cameras and graphics and all the other stuff, so I am subsumed within that CTO function."Hall reports to CTO John Linwood and will oversee the open technology strategy he has instigated, intended to give technology suppliers more insight into the BBC's plans. These include meeting evolving demands in the back office and business systems as commissioning, scheduling and production systems are playing an increasingly important role in developing new audience-facing services as well as performing their primary function. Outsourcing will continue to feature heavily, along with meeting employee demand for accessibility and flexible working with open, modular and IP-based technologies. The strategy calls for technology innovation to be encouraged, with consumer innovation strongly influencing new services."We are being much more open than ever before with our suppliers, with the industry, around our technology priorities and where we are taking things so we have published a technology framework for that new direction. The thinking behind this is we want the market to be readier to meet our needs and sharing with them what we want and where we want to go should position them better to be so," says Hall.She views the brand and size of the BBC as a double-edged sword. "We risk swamping small suppliers, and yet they are the people we want to work with because they are small and innovative."At the same time, Hall feels a sense of responsibility arising from the BBC's position as national institution. "People, partic-ularly in broadcasting, do keep a close eye on us which is both a privilege and a bit of a responsibility. When the Norwegian state broadcasters ring me up and ask me about a particular decision I feel, ‘don't do it just because we did it'."I have also got the guys who go out and refit the Islamabad bureau and those who project-manage the change of the backdrop on the news channel set, so it is quite a different and interesting mix because of the type of organisation we are."That team came into the CIO function last July when, prior to becoming CIO, Hall was appointed to lead the newly created Development & Delivery team of 120 people as part of the restructure of the Broadcast and Enterprise Technology area within the BBC's Future Media & Technology division. She had covered this role until Mark Jones took it on at the end of 2009. "They were embedded out there with the programme-making areas and we centralised them into my function, partly again because of this idea about IT coming closer to the broadcast function, and partly for efficiency reasons."When you bring together people from different departments you often find fantastic opportunities where somebody who is working on something ‘over here' is relevant for this lot ‘over there'. [For example] ideas from the English regions are being trialled in overseas bureaux."The restructuring at the BBC reflects the fact that, as video becomes increasingly IP-friendly, IT and broadcast technologies are beginning to merge. Hall has been involved in moving content off tape and on to the desktop for some time and is now extending that to longer-form programmes "where the content is more demanding of the IP infrastructure because it is richer, thicker and fatter in terms of the picture quality and the pieces are longer so you get enormous great video files".Bringing the video to the desktop has brought numerous business benefits, enabling greater sharing among project programme teams, faster turnaround and more efficiency through executives being able to view the rushes more quickly without having to wait for the tapes to be shipped from the location shoot.The transfer of video onto the IT infrastructure is revolutionising the production process while keeping the CIO on her toes. "Because these chunks of video are increasingly held as IT files a couple of things are happening. Firstly, you can associate the descriptive text around those files with them much earlier up the production chain which saves the effort of having to re-label something when we are publishing it on the iPlayer or out to the net."[That metadata] takes it through the production chain right through to the audience sites and on to electronic programme- guides, billings and so on. Just the fact that we are producing the content as a file in the first place means you don't have this whole tape transcode thing to enable things to be published."You still have to transcode for different platforms because mobile phones take a different codec from the iPlayer and Virgin is different from Freeview and Freesat, but you are not coding from a tape that has been lovingly handed from one person to another. It is all whizzing around the wires instead, which means that the wires have got a lot more important," says Hall.That dependency mandates a robust infrastructure and the BBC is consulting with outsourced technology provider Siemens to look at the network, capacity, management and support. Storage is another issue as the number of large video files increases exponentially, which also involves examining datacentres. "We are looking at where is the best place to site that capacity, depending on where the big content pots are going to be used. You can imagine that when the natural history unit comes back from a big overseas shoot and goes to Bristol, they come back with hours and hours of HD tape and the most sensible place at the moment to ingest it is right there in Bristol."Those are the factors that are determining some of our thinking around that datacentre strategy and the fact that we are about to move huge chunks of the BBC up to our Salford Media City site - that is another focal point for us." The BBC has been through a period where it has focused very much on putting its money into content, perhaps at the expense of investment in its back-office systems, but that is set to change. "We have reached the stage in the lifecycle of our legacy business systems when we are having a good, long, hard look at that and seeing whether now is the time to divert some of our priorities back into the business systems infrastructure," says Hall."This hasn't been a great focus for my predecessors over the last few years, simply because of where the BBC's priorities were. I am getting a very clear steer from my stakeholders out there in the BBC business that, much as they want to put the money into costume dramas and all the rest of it, we do need some better back-office functions. Traditional back-office stuff around Outlook, when are we going to Windows 7... all of that stuff is very much on the radar."However, Hall also has a remit to innovate. Her team runs an innovation centre - the Blue Room - where it demonstrates the technology that the audience is using to consume content. The Blue Room is for blue-sky thinking and ensuring links between what the Beeb develops and what viewers use. "If you are going to understand the demands of editing something for an iPhone form factor you need to know what an iPhone looks like."Also, Hall describes her ‘Edge' group of innovators as "having a slightly skunkworks feeling about it". "[We talk] about how you connect to the edge of the BBC and the ways you can innovate around that. Working closely with BBC R&D we keep an eye on new developments in the consumer space, and the mobile space in particular, that we could potentially use for the content gathering process where we are in difficult places out in the middle of nowhere."This includes making 3G coverage less flaky outside urban conurbations and looking at a technology called GoSIM which allows simpler roaming capabilities.The theme of consumerisation pops up again and again in Hall's work."Most people have got more powerful and more capable devices that they have bought for themselves and their homes and their families than they are using in the office and the challenge for those managing this infrastructure and trying to drive down costs is to see whether there is the possibility to allow them to bring that equipment into the office and use it in the enterprise. That has HR challenges in terms of policies and process but it also has lot of information security challenges and application and licensing challenges." One of the barriers Hall identifies to consumerisation is simply what you can and can't put on the enterprise systems. "If the people at home have got Macs I have got a central system that won't run on a Mac so with the best will in the world if they are going to come to work and carry out certain functions then they are not going to be doing it on a Mac."It is cost as well though, and doubling up. It doesn't make sense for the planet in terms of the green agenda for there to be multiple devices. For a piece of relatively expensive equipment to be sitting at home unused while you are in the office using another one doesn't make sense."The BBC's new technology strategy has a clear recognition that it has to respond to the demands of its employees, not just for the consumer technology but also the flexibility of location and time that the technology affords. "We are beginning to see the workforce coming through now. They don't necessarily expect to come to the office and they find some of the ways in which we work a bit of an anathema," says Hall."I have got some web developers who sometimes want to work from home and then bring that good work in and plug it into the office and carry on. Well, it is much easier if that technology is much more seamless in terms of whether you are plugged into Starbucks, your home WiFi or the BBC intranet and LAN."Hall describes her management style as friendly and collaborative. "I very much work as a team and try to join up things." Outside work, she enjoys water sports, although the challenges of kayaking the white water rapids must sometimes remind her of her role as CIO, steering through multiple responsibilities in a rapidly changing national institution.

Department for Work and Pensions CTO reveals the power of crowd sourcing in government

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:20:00 GMT

Harnessing the power of the crowd

About the author:James Gardner is the chief technology officer at the Department for Work and Pensions. He writes regularly on his blog at http://bankervision.typepad.com

CIO CV: Damian Ghee

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:40:00 GMT

Grist to the mill

Warburtons mixed ERP improvements into its expansion plans under the careful eye of IT director Damien Ghee.

Warburtons mixed ERP improvements into its expansion plans

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:10:00 GMT

Grist to the mill

"Use your loaf": a rebuke most of us have had thrown our way at some point during our careers. In the case of Damien Ghee, IT leader at bakers Warburtons, it is a daily imperative. Ghee has been with the firm though a period of expansion and Warburtons has been able to rise in part through the impressive mix of ERP use and manufacturing. But IT didn't become an integral part of the 140-year-old Warburtons recipe without a few challenges. As I write this another stalwart of the British pantry, Cadbury, is being swallowed by US firm Kraft, but Warburtons is still family owned, and now led by three cousins. Based in Bolton, Lancashire the company has also been slicing through the UK market with new bakeries in the south at Bristol and Enfield."Our customers pay a premium for our freshness and the extra shelf life it gives them," Ghee says. "The ingredients we use give back to the customer an extra day," he says of the relationship Warburtons has with farmers.The decade has seen significant growth as Warburtons has built new bakeries. It now has 14 plants that produce over two million loaves of bread a day for national supermarkets like Sainsbury's. Ghee says the expansion's success is in part down to the company being very adept at quickly and efficiently expanding its supply chain.Ghee has been with the firm for four years now and first realised how IT could help the business's manufacturing operations when on his arrival he spent a night working with a production planner. "I've been working in manufacturing for a long time and what fascinated me on arriving here is the velocity of the product," he says of the fast turnaround of goods.Ghee's first challenge wasn't technical but promotional, as the bakers and managers had "limited confidence in the role of IT for the business". That confidence was knocked by the SAP ERP platform that is a staple ingredient of the IT at Warburtons. Its implementation had been prolonged, taking four years from 2000 to 2004. Ghee says Warburtons took a conservative approach to the implementation, which is one reason why the integration took so long."They had invested in SAP with a sound business case, but didn't track the business case, thus key business leaders didn't think SAP was achieving its goals," says Ghee. He brought Deloitte in to audit the implementation and assess its benefits. Deloitte found there were still issues, but it was delivering on its original premise. "Introducing SAP is bit like buying a dog for Christmas. It is not just for Christmas, it's for life." Ghee says the Deloitte audit was "one of the best things we did" and went a long way towards helping him convince the senior management that IT is not a one off thing and he says that now they understand the true value of technology.That relationship didn't happen immediately for Ghee, who freely admits he made mistakes on arrival at Warburtons. "I tried to push technology on them that they were not ready for, but now they pull technology from us, which is a nice place to be," he says.Proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Ghee has had his budget for IT investment increased for the last four years. He says getting his team to work more effectively with the organisation has played a major part in the turnaround."One of the first opportunities was around data stored and used to run our mixers and dividers [machines which cut the dough into loaves] which were isolated from the ERP. This is essential for a bakery."The ERP needs to be able to inform the mixers to make 200kg of dough, and the mixer needs to be able to report back that it used 199.677kg of flour to make the batch of dough; the divid-ers also need to report to the ERP that the dough was cut into 370 loaves to keep our central supply chain planner updated."Devising a strategy for the manufacturing execution system described above was one of the first actions Ghee took, he carried out trials at the Enfield bakery. Warburtons decided not to pursue the project, but Ghee is confident it will reappraise the idea at a later date. "Now the business is more mature, and with continuous improvements in operations it wants more data," he says.

CIO CV: Eachan Fletcher

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:06:00 GMT

This sporting life

Sporting Index CIO Eachan Fletcher doesn't mind admitting his love for technology, just so long as he's working for a tech-centric firm

Sporting Index CIO Eachan Fletcher doesn't mind admitting a love for technology

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:40:00 GMT

This sporting life

White goodsSporting Index has identified the former as an opportunity to build a ‘white label' business and wants to build a larger base of clients for which it will provide underlying data for them to sell their own markets. The hunch is that with a wealth of events available now, providing ‘engine' technology could be a winner. "We can offer data feeds that allow operators to fuel up and offer on to their own customers at a margin to increase coverage and reduce cost. We want to deliver more so that ultimately you can make your own customised products. We have the data analytics and strength in modelling events and markets and ability to predict outcomes. We're saying this works well for us and offers the accuracy you need to make money. That underpins what differentiates us from other people."Read how Bwin has a similar White Goods strategyAlso underlying its strength is Platform Computing's Symphony grid-computing orchestration software run in house over a mostly Sun/Oracle infrastructure. "As our coverage broadened the algorithms and volumes were getting unwieldy and that's when we turned to grid computing. I'm actually quite a fan of cloud technologies but the reason we built internally is latency. It's not about the number crunching for us; it's that we need to be able to plan 100 moves ahead and inform price choices in a second," says Fletcher.Availability is also key. "Most people design systems with maintenance in mind but customers don't care whether the system is down by accident or because you chose to maintain it. My philosophy is that you own it for life and build it once with hot maintenance in mind. "We've had plenty of problems, the same as anybody else, but the trick is to realise it's only going to have a certain level of reliability so [the question is] how do you insulate customers."International expansion is also a strong possibility and further out Fletcher isn't discounting the possibility of personal development taking him into a broader management position."I could definitely see myself as a CEO one day but I've got so much yet to do that I have to admit to not thinking that far ahead. But I'd always want to stay where technology is the route to market... and I don't think I could go to a market as fully underpinned by technology as this one."

OnStar CIO's career success was driven by factory floor experience

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 05:48:00 GMT

US CIO discusses lessons from Ford, GM and Apple

Jeff Liedel is as much a car guy as he is a computer guy. That much becomes clear when he's discussing his 20-year career track and the businesses he's served: Ford, Covisint, GM and now OnStar, the in-vehicle communications company and GM subsidiary, where he is CIO.

The CIO Questionnaire: David Ivell, CIO of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Green fingers

Kew Gardens, the gem of the national gardning obsession is not afraid of technology and recently signed a new deal with Oracle. The CIO explains his motivations. Q. Where were you born? A. Bromley in Kent. I have just moved back to UK from living and commuting from Majorca, Spain for last five years.

Apple iPad offers CIOs many commercial opportunities

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:52:00 GMT

Expect to see estate agents and manufacturing carrying the desirable Apple gadget

Is the new Apple iPad just a gimmick gadget for Mac fans? Martin Bailey argues the iPad will find its way into the enterprise and CIOs in retail and manufacturing would be advised to assess the opportunities it offers.On Wednesday 27th January 2010 Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, unveiled the iPad Tablet. Billed primarily as a consumer device, Jobs positioned the tablet somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop and priced it from an attractive US$499. But is there room for it in business, and specifically within manufacturing?The iPad is essentially an iPhone ‘on steroids'. Weighing in at 1.5lb (0.68kg) it has a 9.7" multi-touch screen, speaker, microphone, compass, accelerometer, (so it knows if it's being tilted and rotates the screen accordingly), Wi-Fi (the faster 802.11n standard) and Bluetooth. It comes with three storage capacities built in - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, and is also available with 3G, allowing for internet access when outside of a Wi-Fi environment. It's powered by Apple's own A4 processor which has been specifically designed for the iPad/iPhone operating system and offers 10 hours of runtime and a month standby. Most importantly, it's downwardly compatible with almost all of the iPhone's 140,000+ apps, which means that if you already have an iPhone, as soon as you buy an iPad and plug it in all of those apps will be available on there as well. Although it has an on-screen keyboard that may not appeal to many, it's not far removed in size to a laptop keyboard, and there is an external keyboard accessory for use when desk-based.Let's start by covering what the iPad can't do. It's not a PC or a Mac and doesn't run Windows or Mac OS, or offer multi-tasking (although the rumour mill suggests that the latter may be addressed in future updates). On the iPhone the OS is locked down to the point that each third party application can only store information in their own ‘sealed' area, unlike a PC where ‘My Documents' can contain every file type and be accessed by all applications. It's likely that the iPad will continue this tradition, with Apple already confirming that it will rely on iTunes for syncing with a PC. Also, due to a long running spat between Apple and Adobe, the iPhone/iPad does not support Flash, which rules out access to any websites that rely on it. Apple has been criticised and applauded in equal measure for ring-fencing access to their hardware and software. While it considerably restricts third party development flexibility, it does provide an extremely stable user experience which, unlike a Windows machine, does not degrade over time as more software is installed.During Apple's launch it was clear that Apple's own 1GHz silicon was delivering quite a punch. Applications launched instantly and graphically intensive tasks ran smoothly. Couple a fast processor with a large rotatable touch screen and you have a product that lowers the technical knowledge usage barrier and can provide an intuitive user interface which 75m iPhone users already know how to use. For example, recently I reverted back to my previous smartphone - using the menu system was like wading through treacle and it was missing many of the additional apps that I'd come to rely on. The biggest difference was speed of information retrieval. For frequently performed tasks such as retrieving a contact, checking email or a quick web search there is no comparison. Tasks that I achieve with the iPhone within 15-20 seconds I would not have seen change out of a minute, if not more on the other phone , and this is likely to improve on the iPad. What tasks could the iPad perform?The key here is to identify what it does as well, or indeed better than existing technologies. In their launch event Apple demonstrated iPad versions of iWork, their office suite (covering word processing, spreadsheets and presentations), with each application being available for just shy of ten dollars. While you probably won't get all of the extra templates, clipart and additional bloat that comes with traditional Office suites you could argue that most people don't use many more features than font sizing or basic formulae. The iPad ships with the same basic PIM apps as the iPhone e.g. Calendar, Contacts, Email (including MS Exchange support) and Notes, all of which will sync with a PC or Mac through iTunes. The iPhone configuration utility allows enterprise deployment, providing easy configuration for individual business settings such as email and VPN access. So for the majority of users it will tick the basic office requirements. As a presentation tool the iPad excels. It can be connected to an external display, but would equally be suited for one-to-one presentations, ideal for sales staff or board meetings. Data retrieval is also a strong suit; it provides quick access to document, image, audio or video libraries, doing away with the need for storing large amounts of paper. Expect to see estate agents with iPads under their arms from April onwards! It would be equally at home in a manufacturing design office, providing a quick method of viewing product images or technical information.The iPad supports the popular ePub electronic document format. Publishers will quickly move books, magazines and newspapers over to the format, so people will soon become accustomed to reading on the device as opposed to traditional paper-based media. This will provide companies with an easy way of creating large catalogues in a format that users can digest in a traditional manner. Companies that produce catalogues (such as electronic components or manufacturing consumables) will no doubt warm to this as printed versions are very expensive to produce, and although they will already have full e-commerce on their websites, there is a reason why they still produce printed version - many people still prefer to view information in a book-style format. This would also lend itself well to stock control, providing stores staff with a simple checklist interface when performing stock checks. All versions of the iPad have the accelerometer and compass facilities, and the 3G version opens up further possibilities, as it includes assisted GPS. Many of us already take the likes of Google maps on our mobiles for granted, but when GPS is embedded into a device implemented at enterprise level this stretches the boundaries further. Imagine an application that provides relevant information to a user when they arrive at a specific location; perhaps a salesman visiting a prospect/customer, or branch data when HQ staff visit. Devices that ‘know where they are' could also be used to direct the user to items of interest/relevance around them, although the sensitivity is not good enough for this to locate items on a shelf, for example, and GPS does not always work inside buildings.Integrating the iPad to custom requirementsIf you walk through the stages of production within a manufacturing organisation and analyse the role of software at any given part, most of these relate to the supply of information; either to or from the user. Whether it be in the store room, by a machine tool, booking goods out or back in from subcontractors, despatch and through to accounts. This information will either be fed into an enterprise system (MRP, ERP) or to a more localised system (stock control database, machine tool control software, order management etc), and this is where the work needs to be done if the iPad is to be of any real use. Many software companies are using Apple's software development kit (SDK) to develop apps to interface with their products. Although these apps are often lightweight versions of their PC cousins and optimised for the iPhone it is likely that these will be reworked to take advantage of the iPad's display. We can expect apps covering all mainstream software applications, however more niche products are unlikely to have iPhone/iPad sibling products, as the take up rate would not warrant the development costs.What if you cannot develop or obtain an app to connect to an existing software system? There is a third option; we have already ascertained that the iPad is a competent web client (if Flash isn't required). Invariably the system you want to connect to will have a database, which in turn will have ways of getting data in and out (generally using common connectors such as ODBC), so a relatively simple solution would be to build an intranet that communicates with the application. Windows Server comes with IIS (Internet Information Services), and any of the web centric languages (PHP, Cold Fusion, .NET/ASP etc) will be able to connect to a database easily. The iPad (or any other device) could then interact with the software using a web browser. Although this still requires a considerable level of technical skill, it's likely to be a far easier and more cost-effective skill set to source than developing an iPad-specific app and will result in a more flexible solution that other devices can take advantage of. It would also be easier to manage from a security aspect, as the network administrators take care of user access control to any given data resource on the local network. If Apple is serious about the business angle of the iPad they will need to provide companies with more information on controlling user access, tracking usage and locking down features on it (which, to be fair they have done with the iPhone), otherwise no doubt the wide range of available games will find their way onto it and eat into productivity. Another major concern is that they will be a target for theft. It's likely that you will be able to password protect it and, as with the MobileMe service on the iPhone, locate it if stolen (3G only) or remotely wipe it, but that's little consolation.In recent years Apple products have become über chic and this is something many businesses will want to harness. It's more likely that iPads will find homes in the boardroom than on the shop floor, due to environmental factors alone, but for facilities that already keep their production areas spotless this could be seen as the device that makes them look just that little bit more cutting edge than their competitors.SummaryThe debate is raging fiercely in the blogosphere as to whether the iPad is a ‘game changer' or not, but in my opinion it is. Apple said that they would not release anything equivalent to a tablet or a netbook until they could deliver something that did everything well. Given what is already known about the iPhone and what we currently know about the iPad, reasonable assumptions can be made about the iPad's suitability for a given task. There will be of course many tasks that will always be faster or indeed only possible on a desktop/laptop than the iPad, but as a high speed, highly portable (and highly desirable) ‘media consumption device' the Apple iPad will set the benchmark by which all others will be measured. About the AuthorMartin Bailey is the author of several marketing and IT sector books, and is the Marketing Manager for JETCAM International s.a.r.l. and 123 Insight Ltd (MRP, ERP, CRM and Accounts software). More information about the author is available at www.marketingyour.biz.

The CIO Questionnaire: Eachan Fletcher, Sporting Index CIO

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:22:00 GMT

Sporting chance

Q. Where were you born?A. Scotland (grew up in New Zealand)

Ten board level energy saving and environmental issues CIOs must address

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:05:00 GMT

Top tips from the IBM Eco-Efficiency Jam

IBM recently ran a 'Jam' - an online discussion - on environmental sustainability and why it is important for CIOs, CEOs and CFOs to address it. The Jam involved thousands of practitioners and subject matter experts from some 200 organisations. It focused primarily on business issues and practical actions. Unlike many environmental and climate change debates, this one cleverly side-stepped the science, politics and personal beliefs that get involved.

Analysis: the £200m BSkyB litigation win over HP EDS

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:31:00 GMT

The lies, the costs and the dog with the MBA

In finding that the initial sales process which led to a significant IT services contract involved elements of deceit, the court opened up the service provider to a huge damages exposure, way beyond the value of the contract. CIOs embarking on similar IT or outsourcing services contracts in future will be concerned whether this ruling will affect service providers' view of risk...

Analysis: the £200m litigation BSkyB win over HP EDS

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:31:00 GMT

The lies, the costs and the dog with the MBA

Back to basics: Enterprise Resource Planning

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:37:00 GMT

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) - Past, Present, Future and successful implementation

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software attempts to link all internal business processes into a common set of applications that share a common database. It is the common database that allows an ERP system to serve as a source for a robust data warehouse that can support sophisticated decision support and analysis. Top suppliers include SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics.Data warehouse design can also involve a process of extract, transform and load (ETL) that allows business intelligence software to perform its queries and predictive analysis of your organisation's data. Business intelligence (BI) systems have the ability to sit on top of a data warehouse and perform intelligent querying of data through data mining, online analytical processing (OLAP) and business performance management (BPM). In particular, it is the BPM aspect that MDs/CEOs utilise the most as it becomes a decision support system, providing dashboards for all sorts of performance indicators allowing management quick synopsis of any given situation, allowing quicker decision making.Market trends: Current Consolidation, who owns who and how it will affect the future of ERPThe IT market is undergoing significant reshuffle and consolidation. This has led to a great deal of confusion on who owns who, especially if your CEO does not actively follow the IT industry. ERP system supplier consolidation has meant that Microsoft has bought Navision and Great Plains. SAP now owns BI vendor Business Objects . Oracle is the supplier that is the most influential as far as acquisitions are concerned as it has bought, Sun Microsystems, PeopleSoft, which already owned JD Edwards, Siebel, Primavera and Hyperion. Also IBM bought Cognos as it is software for BI.Lessons learnt that allow future successful implementationsProject leadership can mitigate ERP implementation risks with a strong plan that remains focused on the organisation's goals and objectives. A spirit of cooperation between the vendor and buyer for mutual benefit is often quoted as the single most important factor for success. It is interesting that on average an ERP implementation takes approx 20 months and that only seven per cent of projects finish on time while 68 per cent took "much longer" than expected.A new ERP implementation is best done by splitting the project into three discrete areas: Planning, Change and Review. The areas below will on occasion be conducted in parallel. Planning: The business needs to appoint a steering committee to conduct a thorough SWOT and STEP (PEST) analysis with a view to setting up an ERP capability. It can then be used to identify gaps that need to be addressed. For example, if the STEP analysis highlights that politically, many departments aren't interested or do not know about the new ERP implementation, it needs to be addressed. It also needs to be recorded in the SWOT analysis as a threat. This will highlight how prepared the business is for the required change and the next step can take these findings and ensure:1. A senior Executive is appointed to ensure the project is top driven (Senior exec - CEO etc) and not bottom up (IT driven)2. Business strategy is clearly defined.3. ERP system fits within that strategy.4. Definition of goals/objectives of introducing the ERP system Ensure questions such as what do we hope to achieve at the end? How will we know that we have arrived? - are answered, i.e. clearly define business requirements in detail and set realistic business benefits to manage expectations better.5. Processes in 6, 7 and 8 need to be aligned to the overall business/IT strategy by involvement from both senior managers of functions and experienced users who understand the processes.6. Processes are analysed for alignment to business vision and business/IT strategy and fixed accordingly.7. Processes that are not captured by existing systems are captured.8. Processed are improved.9. Resources both human and technical - ensure miscalculation of time/effort is minimised, manage delivery timeframe expectations.10. The above steps have been completed and a realistic budget is assigned.11. ERP package selection is according to business requirements/process mapping.12. ERP software is aligned to user procedures (May require new procedures) Change: 1. Ensure that all interested parties are engaged and feel involved (business buy in) and that resistance to change is reduced and addressed accordingly. (This can be accomplished by creating a steering committee that has reps from both senior management from every function involved; and a super user who understands current processes. The super user needs to have taken the time to create his/her steering committee to analyse current processes and suggest improvements (See item 5 under planning).2. How do we communicate that this change is required? - On going communications with all stakeholders.3. How will training elements be addressed? What is the current process (Manual/IT based system and if it is an IT system, are there any problems in the way that the system is used?4. Reviews, for example, Gateway Reviews should be conducted to deliver a "peer review" where independent practitioners from outside the programme/project use their experience and expertise to examine the progress and likelihood of successful delivery of the programme or project.Review:Once the project has been delivered successfully, a yearly review should be conducted to enhance or improve the system allowing for continuous improvement. Minor modifications, tweaks and fixes can be performed as business as usual.