Opinion on CIO UK

Malice in Wonderland

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:14:41 GMT

Lewis Carroll described the IT security scenario CIOs face perfectly

Despite best efforts by enterprises and security vendors; recent news stories and the prevailing opinion of executives I talk with both indicate a growing concern over information theft from malicious activity. Is this concern justified?

Data from the threat assessments we have carried out across the globe would certainly seem to indicate that it is. Based on 130 assessments...

Labour government has succeeded in lower gov IT costs

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:20:13 GMT

John Suffolk set e-government on the right path

As we warm up to a general election, I want to dwell on the positive moves we have seen from the current government in trying to achieving the cost savings in public sector IT spend.

Look, no sticker: AMD's Leslie Sobon on PC branding and Intel Inside

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:27:44 GMT

AMD sticker-free option will give branding back to PC makers

In Part One of CIO UK's interview with AMD VP of product and platform marketing, Leslie Sobon talked about her ambition to proliferate the four-socket server. In Part Two, she discusses PC branding, tablets, netbooks and custom chips.

AMD wants to put four-socket servers everywhere

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:14:41 GMT

AMD's Leslie Sobon is seeking to proliferate the 4P server sector

After a period when its Opteron processor gave Intel a rare bashing in the volume server sector, AMD has struggled of late to shrug off its reputation as the bridesmaid of microprocessors. Now, however, the firm has a new plan. I met Leslie Sobon, the company's VP, product and platform marketing, to talk about the chances of offering a serious alternative to the 800-pound gorilla of the chip industry.

If Technology Press Releases Covered Great Moments In English History

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:57:07 GMT

How would tech marketers handle 1966 and all that?

I don't know about you -- indeed, how could I when we hardly ever meet? -- but I get lots and lots of press releases.

Google opens Apps Marketplace (and scares the bejeezus out of Microsoft)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:23:35 GMT

Access to thousands of complementary services is another boost for Google's challenge to Microsoft

In the great tradition of no-brainers, Google today opened the virtual doors to its Apps Marketplace, inviting us all to download, try out and purchase complementary services to its core productivity applications and communications suite.

NHS database and summary care records must be embraced

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:22:42 GMT

Check the privacy and security by all means, but let’s make our brilliant NHS better and move into modern practices

The British Medical Association (BMA) believes the plans by the Department of Health and the National Health Service to create a national database of patient summary care records is a serious privacy breach.

Although individual privacy is important and anyone developing a far...

Dyson's right: we need a bolder, ingenious Britain

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:43:51 GMT

Sir James Dyson's Ingenious Britain calls for help in rebuilding our reputation as great developers

Ruggedly handsome, hugely wealthy, highly personable and feted by all, there is a lot to dislike about Sir James Dyson* but it has to be said that he's talking a lot of sense when it comes to UK attitudes to technology.

HP-EDS UK boss: Election will see IT spend hiatus, not drought

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:58:01 GMT

HP Enterprise Services MD Craig Wilson predicts IT spending pause but that's all

In the third and final part of our interview with HP Enterprise Services (the former EDS) UK MD and VP Craig Wilson, we talked about ICT services after the impending general election and Wilson's view on a radically new model of services that he believes is coming.

HP-EDS UK boss: Civil servants are terrified by outsider views of IT projects

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:08:28 GMT

HP Enterprise Services UK MD Craig Wilson interview Part 2

In the second part of CIO UK's interview with HP Enterprise Services (the former EDS) MD and VP Craig Wilson we talked about the challenges to contracts between outsourcers and government and public sector.

HP-EDS UK boss on BSkyB, the merger and building an alternative to IBM

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:46:29 GMT

HP Enterprise Services boss on the 'new' EDS

In my experience at least, EDS always had a tendency to keep itself to itself. That's unsurprising as when it did appear in the press it was usually on the sticky end of stories relating to problematic public-sector projects.

'Twitter for business': Reed tests Salesforce.com's Chatter

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:02:59 GMT

Exhibitions giant pilots micro-blogging for information exchange

Being a simple bloke, I'm a big fan of Twitter as a simple way to air simple views. My only surprise is that the company is missing out on what may well be the big revenue source for this sort of tool -- B2B.

Cloud Computing is the new SOA

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:27:00 GMT

And that's good and bad

I've always got a "long list" of blog entries I want to write (unfortunately it often takes me ages to get around to writing them). I've been meaning to write a couple of possibly dull-but-worthy posts for the past couple of months now: one on why Cloud Computing is like SOA, and one on why it isn't. But then, just very recently, I read a tweet from ‘thought leader' Peter Hinssen, saying "Cloud Computing will remove the CIO from the board table". That was all the catalyst I needed to get off my backside and write some of my thoughts down (I'll explain why in a moment).Cloud Computing: building on SOA principlesSo let's get to the topic at hand: why is Cloud Computing the new SOA?From an IT or enterprise architect's point of view, there are definitely similarities. If we put the commercial and financial aspects of the Cloud Computing model to one side for a moment, and just concentrate on how Cloud Computing platforms work to deliver software functionality, then what we're looking at is a software service delivery platform - something that is conceptually at the heart of every SOA initiative. From an application and data integration standpoint, too, the principles of SOA shine through Cloud Computing very strongly indeed.

IT charge-backs can be a 'think of a number' game

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:39:24 GMT

Attempts to quantify IT spend are often artificial

For IT departments, the ability to charge back has long been regarded as either badge of honour or longed-for status symbol but ask CIOs about the process of creating a charge-back scheme and the clanking noise that you hear is skeletons falling out of the closet.

So You Want To Get Into CIO...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:17:20 GMT

How to pitch CIO and a forward-features list... finally

You know, I've done a lot of things right since I started the job of Editor-In-Chief of CIO UK nigh on two years ago. My tea making wins universal approbation; I am a generous contributor to leaving-this-place/birthday/anniversary/I've-just-replicated card collections; I am a courteous colleague with a winning, lopsided grin for all; contributors often get paid in a timely manner; and I pay close attention to my personal hygiene (aside from in the case of the 'lucky' pullover I wear every day).

BBC technology is being attacked on all fronts

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:01:39 GMT

Auntie can't win with commentators, but consumers seem happy

Whatever it decides to do, the BBC is accused of being wrong. On the day when CIO publishes its interview with the broadcaster's new CIO Tiffany Hall the organisation faces strike action from its outsourced supplier Siemens and just last week...

Jeremy Allaire weighs in on Apple/Flash stand-off

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:43:44 GMT

Brightcove CEO and ex-Macromedia CTO says firms must follow both Apple and Adobe dev models

The saga of Apple mobile devices and their (non-) relationship with Adobe's Flash technology has been revisited by many industry watchers ever since the announcement of the iPad last month and reports (for example, here and here) that Steve Jobs had described the ubiquitous Flash as buggy and overly demanding of system resources.

Learning to lead

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:19:00 GMT

Enabling a mutual exchange of knowledge is a powerful form of leadership that can transcend cultural differences

The millennial transition of 1999/2000 was memorable for many reasons, not least the threatened drama of the Y2K bug. Personally, it marked my move from a near three decades of big-company life to what has now been a decade of small-company portfolio life. But thinking back a further ten years to 1990, I can now see an interesting coming together of leadership experiences that I will...

Different States of mind

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:02:00 GMT

US software companies have a big home market but also outscore their European counterparts in marketing and dynamism

There is SAP from Germany, and there was Business Objects from France (now part of SAP) and the British accounting software firm Sage. There is also Dutch digital security solutions provider Gemalto, and Software AG, the German database...

Don't skill yourself short

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:03:00 GMT

Don't fall short

You may or may not be aware that the European Commission has a campaign in progress that aims to raise awareness of the growing demand for highly skilled ICT practitioners and users within the industry. This will culminate in an ‘e-Skills Week' in March. In relation to this I am writing a book called The e-Skills Manifesto - A Call to Arms. In preparing this book it has opened my eyes to the challenges we face as an industry and as a society.A recent study by IDC showed that in five years' time only 10 per cent of the jobs in the EU will not require ICT skills. Couple that fact with an increasingly acute shortage of IT talent, then it is clear we are careering towards a serious problem.As a CIO you may feel this is not an issue for you given the economic pressure to get rid of staff rather than acquire them. Well here are a few things to consider.Your existing talent pool is overpaid for what it does. The further east you go, the cheaper the labour. Similarly, head westwards and you find that ICT staff again deliver greater economic productivity. This indicates a people management problem. It would be a mistake to fire off a stern email to the head of HR as this is your problem.There are a number of important trends that CIOs have to face. One is that technology is getting more modular and more intuitive to use. It's been a long time since application developers have needed a good understanding of hardware architecture. In other words, technology tools are dumbing down the production of applications. Thus users will increasingly be the developers of applications, that is, if they decide not to whip out their Amex card and buy the service they require directly over the web. This all coincides quite neatly with the emergence of ‘generation-Y' users who in many cases have an exulted perspective of their own technical prowess. The bottom line is that the IT function's ability to play a strategically influential role in the organisation will not be constrained by the way the CIO deploys their people and technology, but by the way they manage the extended IT community, aka the users.So from a career-continuity perspective the sooner you grasp this nettle the better.Now that your remit covers every staff member in the organisation and that essentially every staff member (IT function or not) needs some degree of e-skills, it should soon dawn on you that sitting in the eye of the e-skills cyclone has given you a misplaced sense of peace.So this is what needs to be done. Polish up your people management skills if necessary. Are you presiding over a highly effective technology army with a shared esprit de corps, or are you vaguely aware that you have line management responsibility over a highly dysfunctional, cost consuming, ADD-raddled collection of sociopathic user-haters? Two extremes indeed, but you need to be crystal clear where you are on the spectrum and then deal with it as necessary. Take ownership of user training. The idea of making this the responsibility of HR is of course a mistake. Do you really trust someone who neither understands what the system is supposed to do nor how it does it to sell your opus to the users? There is no reason for doing this unless you have a deep desire to punish your helpdesk.You can use this as the argument to extend your remit into the HR space. If you don't, then the head of HR might start taking a look at your space.In writing the book, I noticed some of the issues that have slid down many of our agendas, including green IT and social inclusion. As an industry, we have overhyped green to the point of fatigue, and the need for a quick return on investment has pushed this off our radar. But as a CIO you should be at the heart of your organisation's green initiatives, and this is another remit-extender from a career perspective.Social exclusion will be exacerbated by the increased pervasiveness of IT in business and society. There will come a point where a significant proportion of the unemployed become unemployable because they lack rudimentary IT skills. What's to stop you donating a few laptops to the local library or leisure centre? You could also provide them with some storage and processing capability. The hardware could be configured for easy access to job boards, ECDL training plus any other relevant service. In fact with the helpdesk savings you make by taking control of system training you could donate some of that capacity to being available to the community via your sponsored telecentre.Again e-skills is an acute issue for everyone. As a CIO you are best placed to address this, if you yourself have the skills needed.

iPad legitimises the netbook

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:52:00 GMT

Padding out Netbooks

But there is method in my madness. January proved that technology still has one major hurdle to overcome before it can be considered truly valuable... it needs to conquer the British weather. Thanks to the snow I would say that in
any meaningful sense, this year started...

At 20, Photoshop is a spring chicken compared to veterans of PC era

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:32:15 GMT

Classic PC applications are in their 20s and even 30s

So Photoshop is 20 years old. Its menus and shortcuts appear to be an Enigma code to outsiders and it requires the sort of computer configuration usually saved for missile defence systems, but a whole generation has grown up and enjoyed gainful employment through this iconic collection of ones and zeroes.

Service downs brand-infringing sites but problem won't go away

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:38:11 GMT

MarkMonitor's Site Staydown Service closes sites that hurt clients' brands

I've written in this space before about MarkMonitor, the self-styled "global leader in enterprise brand protection" that helps fashionable or well-known firms fight fraudsters, counterfeiters, pirates and sundry other ne'er-do-well's. Today the company made available its Site Staydown Service, a sort of big red lever to let clients shut down websites threatening their reputations and income.

We're heading into the clouds

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:35:18 GMT

Making the business case for cloud based computing

If you were hit by a car last year and woke up in 1973 wearing a flower print nylon shirt, skin tight leather jacket and Cuban heels, then you may have missed the technology world becoming obsessed with clouds. Now before you think your return to 2010 has been corrupted and the IT world has gone insane and now lies on its back in fields and pastures looking for cat shaped fluffy white weather...

Atos Origin chief on EDS-BSkyB, Olympics, elections and man-to-man marking

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:58:39 GMT

Atos Origin UK CEO Keith Wilman says outsourcing deals will be less grey, more black and white

With Atos Origin announcing financials that appeared to show an improvement in the group's fortunes (and with analyst TechMarketView suggesting that the firm has entered the Top 10 in UK software and IT services companies for 2009), I spoke by phone this morning to UK CEO Keith Wilman about what's going on at Atos and in the sector. Here are the highlights of our conversation.