Not quite as ear-catching as the American War of Independence slogan: ‘No taxation without representation’, maybe, but potentially as world-changing. Having started in the IT industry as a storage specialist and then gradually acquiring knowledge and skills in other data centre and IT disciplines, what has always struck me, at least until now, is the extraordinary inability and/or unwillingness of the various technology specialists to learn about, let alone understand, what goes on outside their own little world. Even to the extent that the storage hardware professionals more often than not proudly proclaimed their ignorance of all things storage software-related. Same technology, two different disciplines, so two largely separate teams.
Of course, there always has been and, I suspect, always will be, the jockeying for position over which part of the overall IT infrastructure is the most important. The network folks point out that it’s all very good having large amounts of data, but if you can’t move them around quickly and efficiently, then servers and storage aren’t much use. For the server folks, the applications are what matter most, and who would need either storage or networks if there weren’t all those applications sat on servers, generating data and traffic? As for storage? Well, create all the information you want, move it around all you want, but if you can’t save it somewhere, what’s the point?! And I guess the security folks would point out that if your servers, networks and storage aren’t secure, we might as well all go home…
Alongside these technology silos, we have parallel industry sector silos – all of which have tended to move at their own pace when it comes to adopting IT as a business enabler. The finance sector, the media industry and the Web companies have led the way when it comes to technology adoption, with the other industry sectors lagging some way, or a very long way, behind.
Convergence has been long talked about, both in terms of the IT functions working together, and the data centre and IT folks at least saying ‘hello’ to each other in the morning. However, it seems as if the quest for digital transformation has brought this required coming together into stark focus. The data centre and IT disciplines really do need to work together, and with the rest of the business, to ensure that technology solutions work right across the enterprise. Meanwhile, it’s also becoming clear that the various industry sectors are beginning to understand that, if they want to interact with each other, they’re going to have to consider how best to adopt and implement joint, end-to-end solutions, using common technology platforms.
The poet John Donne famously wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less”
I thought I’d leave the bit about Europe in just so some of you can have a chuckle over Brexit (chuckling is better than crying over the unholy mess, whichever side of the debate you sit on); but if we amend the first part of the quote thus:
‘No company is an island entire of itself; every company is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’
hopefully, you’ll get the idea. Cloud, IoT, AI, ML, VR, autonomous vehicles…just as none of these technologies can work to maximum effect in isolation from others, neither can one company involved in, say, the transport sector, hope to be as efficient or as successful as possible without interacting with a whole technology and industry-focused ecosystem.
Integration, not isolation (unlike Brexit), has to be the way forward.
Meaningful artificial intelligence (AI) deployments are just beginning to take place, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey shows that four percent of CIOs have implemented AI, while a further 46 percent have developed plans to do so.
"Despite huge levels of interest in AI technologies, current implementations remain at quite low levels," said Whit Andrews, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "However, there is potential for strong growth as CIOs begin piloting AI programs through a combination of buy, build and outsource efforts."
As with most emerging or unfamiliar technologies, early adopters are facing many obstacles to the progress of AI in their organizations. Gartner analysts have identified the following four lessons that have emerged from these early AI projects.
1. Aim Low at First
"Don’t fall into the trap of primarily seeking hard outcomes, such as direct financial gains, with AI projects," said Mr. Andrews. "In general, it’s best to start AI projects with a small scope and aim for 'soft' outcomes, such as process improvements, customer satisfaction or financial benchmarking."
Expect AI projects to produce, at best, lessons that will help with subsequent, larger experiments, pilots and implementations. In some organizations, a financial target will be a requirement to start the project. "In this situation, set the target as low as possible," said Mr. Andrews. "Think of targets in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, understand what you’re trying to accomplish on a small scale, and only then pursue more-dramatic benefits."
2. Focus on Augmenting People, Not Replacing Them
Big technological advances are often historically associated with a reduction in staff head count. While reducing labor costs is attractive to business executives, it is likely to create resistance from those whose jobs appear to be at risk. In pursuing this way of thinking, organizations can miss out on real opportunities to use the technology effectively. "We advise our clients that the most transformational benefits of AI in the near term will arise from using it to enable employees to pursue higher-value activities," added Mr. Andrews.
Gartner predicts that by 2020, 20 percent of organizations will dedicate workers to monitoring and guiding neural networks.
"Leave behind notions of vast teams of infinitely duplicable 'smart agents' able to execute tasks just like humans," said Mr. Andrews. "It will be far more productive to engage with workers on the front line. Get them excited and engaged with the idea that AI-powered decision support can enhance and elevate the work they do every day."
3. Plan for Knowledge Transfer
Conversations with Gartner clients reveal that most organizations aren't well-prepared for implementing AI. Specifically, they lack internal skills in data science and plan to rely to a high degree on external providers to fill the gap. Fifty-three percent of organizations in the CIO survey rated their own ability to mine and exploit data as "limited" — the lowest level.
Gartner predicts that through 2022, 85 percent of AI projects will deliver erroneous outcomes due to bias in data, algorithms or the teams responsible for managing them.
"Data is the fuel for AI, so organizations need to prepare now to store and manage even larger amounts of data for AI initiatives," said Jim Hare, research vice president at Gartner. "Relying mostly on external suppliers for these skills is not an ideal long-term solution. Therefore, ensure that early AI projects help transfer knowledge from external experts to your employees, and build up your organization’s in-house capabilities before moving on to large-scale projects."
4. Choose Transparent AI Solutions
AI projects will often involve software or systems from external service providers. It’s important that some insight into how decisions are reached is built into any service agreement. "Whether an AI system produces the right answer is not the only concern," said Mr. Andrews. "Executives need to understand why it is effective, and offer insights into its reasoning when it’s not."
Although it may not always be possible to explain all the details of an advanced analytical model, such as a deep neural network, it’s important to at least offer some kind of visualization of the potential choices. In fact, in situations where decisions are subject to regulation and auditing, it may be a legal requirement to provide this kind of transparency.
Organizations are embracing self-service analytics and business intelligence (BI) to bring these capabilities to business users of all levels. This trend is so pronounced that Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2019, the analytics output of business users with self-service capabilities will surpass that of professional data scientists.
"The trend of digitalization is driving demand for analytics across all areas of modern business and government," said Carlie J. Idoine, research director at Gartner. "Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and SaaS (cloud) analytics and BI platforms are making it easier and more cost-effective than ever before for nonspecialists to perform effective analysis and better inform their decision making."
Gartner's recent survey of more than 3,000 CIOs shows that CIOs ranked analytics and BI as the top differentiating technology for their organizations. It attracts the most new investment and is also considered the most strategic technology area by top-performing CIOs.
As a result, data and analytics leaders are increasingly implementing self-service capabilities to create a data-driven culture throughout their organization. This means that business users can more easily learn to use and benefit from effective analytics and BI tools, driving favorable business outcomes in the process.
"If data and analytics leaders simply provide access to data and tools alone, self-service initiatives often don't work out well," said Ms. Idoine. "This is because the experience and skills of business users vary widely within individual organizations. Therefore, training, support and onboarding processes are needed to help most self-service users produce meaningful output."
The scale of the task of implementing self-service analytics and BI can catch organizations by surprise, especially if they are successful. In large organizations, popular self-service initiatives can very rapidly expand to encompass hundreds or thousands of users. To avoid a descent into chaos, it's crucial to identify the right organizational and process changes before starting the initiative.
Gartner recommends addressing four areas to build a strong foundation for self-service analytics and BI:
Align self-service initiatives with organizational goals and capture anecdotes about measurable, successful use cases
"It's important to confirm the value of a self-service approach to analytics and BI by communicating its impact and linking successes directly to good outcomes for the organization," said Ms. Idoine. "This builds confidence in the approach and justifies continued support for it. It also encourages more business users to get involved and apply best practice to their own areas."
Involve business users with designing, developing and supporting self-service
"Creating and executing a successful self-service initiative means forging and preserving trust between the IT team and business users," said Ms. Idoine. "There's no technical solution to build trust, but a formal process of collaboration from the start of a self-service initiative will go a long way to helping IT and business users understand what each party needs from the other to make self-service a success."
Take a flexible, light approach to data governance
"The success of a self-service initiative will depend hugely on whether the data and analytics governance model is flexible enough to enable and support the free-form analytics explorations of self-service users," said Ms. Idoine. Strict, inflexible frameworks will deter casual users. On the other hand, a lack of proper governance will overwhelm users with irrelevant data, or create serious risks of a breach of regulation. "IT leaders must find the right balance of governance to making self-service successful and scalable," she added.
Equip business users for self-service analytics success by developing an onboarding plan
"Data and analytics leaders must support enthusiastic business self-service users with the right guidance on how to get up and running quickly, as well as how to apply their new tools to their specific business problems," said Ms. Idoine. "A formal onboarding plan will help automate and standardize this process, making it far more scalable as self-service usage spreads throughout the organization."
Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.5 percent from 2017, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.
"Global IT spending growth began to turn around in 2017, with continued growth expected over the next few years. However, uncertainty looms as organizations consider the potential impacts of Brexit, currency fluctuations, and a possible global recession," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "Despite this uncertainty, businesses will continue to invest in IT as they anticipate revenue growth, but their spending patterns will shift. Projects in digital business, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and progression from big data to algorithms to machine learning to artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to be main drivers of growth."
Enterprise software continues to exhibit strong growth, with worldwide software spending projected to grow 9.5 percent in 2018, and it will grow another 8.4 percent in 2019 to total $421 billion (see Table 1). Organizations are expected to increase spending on enterprise application software in 2018, with more of the budget shifting to software as a service (SaaS). The growing availability of SaaS-based solutions is encouraging new adoption and spending across many subcategories, such as financial management systems (FMS), human capital management (HCM) and analytic applications.
Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)
| 2017 Spending | 2017 Growth (%) | 2018 Spending | 2018 Growth (%) | 2019 Spending | 2019 Growth (%) |
Data Center Systems | 178 | 4.4 | 179 | 0.6 | 179 | -0.2 |
Enterprise Software | 355 | 8.9 | 389 | 9.5 | 421 | 8.4 |
Devices | 667 | 5.7 | 704 | 5.6 | 710 | 0.9 |
IT Services | 933 | 4.3 | 985 | 5.5 | 1,030 | 4.6 |
Communications Services | 1,393 | 1.3 | 1,427 | 2.4 | 1,443 | 1.1 |
Overall IT | 3,527 | 3.8 | 3,683 | 4.5 | 3,784 | 2.7 |
Source: Gartner (January 2018)
The devices segment is expected to grow 5.6 percent in 2018. In 2017, the devices segment experienced growth for the first time in two years with an increase of 5.7 percent. End-user spending on mobile phones is expected to increase marginally as average selling prices continue to creep upward even as unit sales are forecast to be lower. PC growth is expected to be flat in 2018 even as continued Windows 10 migration is expected to drive positive growth in the business market in China, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The impact of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X was minimal in 2017, as expected. However, iOS shipments are expected to grow 9.1 percent in 2018.
"Looking at some of the key areas driving spending over the next few years, Gartner forecasts $2.9 trillion in new business value opportunities attributable to AI by 2021, as well as the ability to recover 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity," said Mr. Lovelock. "That business value is attributable to using AI to, for example, drive efficiency gains, create insights that personalize the customer experience, entice engagement and commerce, and aid in expanding revenue-generating opportunities as part of new business models driven by the insights from data."
"Capturing the potential business value will require spending, especially when seeking the more near-term cost savings. Spending on AI for customer experience and revenue generation will likely benefit from AI being a force multiplier — the cost to implement will be exceeded by the positive network effects and resulting increase in revenue," said Mr. Lovelock.
Interest and investment in blockchain as an emerging technology is accelerating as firms seek secure, sequential, and immutable solutions to improve business processes, enable new services, and reduce service costs. Given the maturity state of the technology, the hype surrounding potential applications, and the need for specialized skills, the majority of blockchain spending will be in the services market – both business and technology services. A new forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC) shows worldwide spending on blockchain services growing from $1.8 billion in 2018 to $8.1 billion in 2021, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 80%.
IDC defines blockchain as a digital, distributed ledger of transactions or records. The ledger, which stores the information or data, exists across multiple participants in a peer-to-peer network. There is no single, central repository that stores the ledger. Distributed ledgers technology (DLT) allows new transactions to be added to an existing chain of transactions using a secure, digital or cryptographic signature. To develop, build, deploy, and maintain these distributed ledgers and smart contracts, enterprises are turning to professional services firms, systems integrators, and application developers.
"IDC believes the short-term blockchain services opportunity is small but strategically important, as developers, vendors, and their customers work out the standards and protocols and promote blockchain capabilities as a 'trust and scale' alternative to traditional database, ETL, and OLTP applications," said Michael Versace, research director, Digital Strategy Consulting at IDC. "Over the long-term horizon, blockchain services, including business consulting, IT consulting, custom development, and managed services, have the potential to become foundational to a new generation of enterprise IT infrastructure, resulting in a growing demand for consultants and developers and hundreds of billions of dollars of market size for the service company of the future."
As blockchain begins to find its way into corporate strategies and business processes, a variety of business and IT consulting, development, platform, outsourcing, and educational services will be needed. These fall into three market segments:
Project-oriented services consist of business consulting services that define enterprise strategy and readiness, identify high-value applications and profit pools, and metrics for value creation using blockchain technologies; IT consulting services that advise on platform selection, data and system architecture, application performance, capacity and business continuity planning; system integration for the planning, design, implementation and management of blockchain solutions; and custom application development to design, build and test new blockchain applications.
Outsourced services consist of business process outsourcing for the execution of key business activities, business processes, or entire business functions by an external (third party) services provider or outsourcer; and other outsourced services such as hosted application management, blockchain infrastructure outsourcing, and hosted infrastructure services.
Support services which consist of support and training services including hardware and software deployment and support services, content development, training processes to support enterprise, partner, or end-user adoption of blockchain networks and technologies.
"IDC expects to see dramatic growth in the blockchain developer marketplace over the next several years," noted Versace. "By 2021, the number of consultants and developers in blockchain services will have grown tenfold from current estimates."
A new update to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Robotics and Drones Spending Guide forecasts worldwide spending on robotics and drones solutions will total $103.1 billion in 2018, an increase of 22.1% over 2017. By 2021, IDC expects this spending will more than double to $218.4 billion with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) or 25.4%.
Robotics spending will reach $94 billion in 2018 and will account for more than 90% of all spending throughout the 2017-2021 forecast. Industrial robotic solutions will account for the largest share of robotics spending (more than 70%), followed by service robots and consumer robots. Discrete and process manufacturing will be the leading industries for robotics spending at more than $60 billion combined in 2018. The resource and healthcare industries will also make significant investments in robotics solutions this year. The retail and wholesale industries will see the fastest robotics spending growth over the forecast with CAGRs of 46.3% and 41.2%, respectively.
"Industrial robots are becoming more intelligent, human-friendly and easier to work with," said Dr. Jing Bing Zhang, research director, Robotics. "This has accelerated their rapid expansion in the manufacturing industry beyond automotive, especially in high-tech manufacturing that requires light-weight robots with higher precision, flexibility, mobility and collaborative capability. Vendors who are not able to meet such demands will see their market position quickly eroded."
"Growth in the service robotics market is being driven by a collision of robotic technology maturity, market readiness, and related technology maturity," said John Santagate, research director, Service Robotics. "Robots did not reach this point overnight; it has been a decades-long effort to bring robots to the point they are today. Over time, innovators have been building upon existing technology and layering new and emerging technology onto robotic devices. We have reached a point now where the mechanics of robots are mature and the addition of artificial intelligence, advanced vision systems, cloud applications, Internet of Things, and continued mechanical innovation has enabled safe, collaborative robots that are working with people rather than replacing people."
"While robotics has its roots in the manufacturing sector, we continue to see increasing acceptance and adoption of robots in several other industries, such as resources and transportation," said Jessica Goepfert, program director, Customer Insights & Analysis. "Organizations in these areas are attracted to the promise of greater efficiency and productivity. But they are also turning to robotics to address other concerns such as skills shortages, workplace safety, and keeping up with the accelerating pace of business."
Worldwide drone spending will be $9 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall market with a five-year CAGR of 29.8%. Enterprise drone solutions will deliver more than half of all drone spending throughout the forecast period with the balance coming from consumer drone solutions. Enterprise drones will increase its share of overall spending with a five-year CAGR of 36.6%. The utilities and construction industries will see the largest drone spending in 2018 ($912 million and $824 million, respectively), followed by the process and discrete manufacturing industries. The fastest growth in drone spending will come from the education (74.1% CAGR) and state/local government (70.5% CAGR) industries.
"Drones have become an indispensable tool, especially in industries such as oil and gas, agriculture, and telecommunications. In many instances, drones have helped reduce their employees' exposure to dangerous tasks such as cell tower or electrical grid inspection. Farmers have also utilized drones to help monitor their land for irrigation deficiencies. While there is a growing number of consumer drone enthusiasts, we expect that drones will soon become part of the connected-home providing home security, monitoring children at play, or delivering groceries," said William Stofega, program director, Mobile Device Technology and Trends.
"Drones have become a forefront solution for many tasks and applications that were once deemed too dangerous, dirty, dull, or dear. Technological advancements such as improved sensors, enhancements in collision avoidance systems, or innovations related to full automation or intelligent piloting, have propelled new interest and acknowledgement from many industries that drones are here to stay. Groundbreaking improvements in the technology has piqued interest by industries that operate in open or outdoor space, such as utilities, where inspection-related applications such as transformer substation inspection or power line, foliage, and telephone line inspection are key drivers of the industry. As policies change and governments work with vendors and end users to formulate regulation allowances, new opportunities and expanded use cases will come to light as their benefits are realized across all industries," said Stacey Soohoo, research manager, Customer Insights and Analysis.
China will be the largest geographic market for robotics, delivering more than 30% of all robotics spending throughout the forecast, followed by the rest of Asia/Pacific (excluding China and Japan), the United States, and Japan. The United States will be the largest geographic market for drone spending at $4.3 billion in 2018, followed by Western Europe, China, and the rest of Asia/Pacific (excluding China and Japan). However, exceptionally strong spending growth in China (55.5% CAGR) and Asia/Pacific (excluding China and Japan) (62.0% CAGR) will move these two markets ahead of Western Europe by 2021.
The European Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2018 is a management-level event designed to help channel organisations identify opportunities arising from the increasing demand for managed and hosted services and to develop and strengthen partnerships.
Previous articles here have reflected on the changes that the managed services model brings customers – their abilities to change their buying model to revenue-based, often to do more with less resources, and then adopt new working tools such as analytics, which just weren’t available at the right price before. The impact on the IT industry supplying those customers has been profound as well, requiring a real re-think of sales processes, built around a continuous relationship with the customer, not just a “sell-and-forget” on big-ticket items.
Obviously, the IT channel is attracted by the prospect of more sales by working in managed services, with the world market predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5% to 2019. But it is such a fundamental change in their structures, that some are thinking it a step too far, even under pressure from customers for the benefits that managed services can bring them. Those partners may find themselves rapidly left behind as the new model becomes the standard in most industries.
This, coupled with the ease of entry into the market for cloud-based solutions suppliers, means that the IT channel is having to face a whole new competitive threat. A business “born in the cloud” has an obvious advantage when trying to sell cloud services to a customer, compared with a traditional reseller – the cloud-based channel “eats its own dog-food”, to adopt a rather unwholesome phrase imported across the Atlantic.
So, in establishing the agenda for the European Managed Services and Hosting Summit in Amsterdam in May this year, the organisers are thinking beyond the obvious GDPR issues which will inevitably be in the headlines as its deadline comes round, and even the ever-popular M&A discussions of company value, to bring out a flavour of the sales-engagement process in managed services. We are asking our leading speakers to examine the business processes of the best managed services companies, to try to identify what makes them tick - and tick ever faster and with wider portfolios.
How is the sales process managed? How are the salespeople rewarded in the revenue model? How do they maintain that ongoing relationship with the customer in a cost-effective way? How do they ensure that the salesforce is motivated and retained in the longer term, while keeping them up-to-date with the latest information on the market, the technologies, and customers issues?
None of this is easy, and many managed service providers, integrators, traditional resellers and even those new and fast-growing “born-in-the cloud” supplier companies still have many questions to put to the experts, and the MSHS Europe is the perfect event at which to do this, with many leading suppliers on hand as well as industry experts.
The MSHS event offers multiple ways to get those answers: from plenary-style presentations from experts in the field to demonstrations; from more detailed technical pitches to wide-ranging round-table discussions with questions from the floor. There is no excuse not to come away from this with questions answered, or at least a more refined view on which questions actually matter.
One of the most valuable parts of the day, previous attendees have said, is the ability to discuss issues with others in similar situations, and we are all hoping to learn from direct experience, especially in the complex world of sales and sales management.
In summary, the European Managed Services & Hosting Summit 2018 is a management-level event designed to help channel organisations identify opportunities arising from the increasing demand for managed and hosted services and to develop and strengthen partnerships. More details:
Security and risk management leaders must take a pragmatic and risk-based approach to the ongoing threats posed by an entirely new class of vulnerabilities, according to Gartner, Inc. "Spectre" and "Meltdown" are the code names given to different strains of a new class of attacks that target an underlying exploitable design implementation inside the majority of computer chips manufactured over the last 20 years.
Security researchers revealed three major variants of attacks in January 2018. The first two are referred to as Spectre, the third as Meltdown, and all three variants involve speculative execution of code to read what should have been protected memory and the use of subsequent side-channel-based attacks to infer the memory contents.
"Not all processors and software are vulnerable to the three variants in the same way, and the risk will vary based on the system's exposure to running unknown and untrusted code," said Neil MacDonald, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner fellow emeritus. "The risk is real, but with a clear and pragmatic risk-based remediation plan, security and risk management leaders can provide business leaders with confidence that the marginal risk to the enterprise is manageable and is being addressed."
Gartner has identified seven steps security leaders can take to mitigate risk:
"Ultimately, the complete elimination of the exploitable implementation will require new hardware not yet available and not expected for 12 to 24 months. This is why the inventory of systems will serve as a critical roadmap for future mitigation efforts," said Mr. MacDonald. "To lessen the risk of future attacks against vulnerabilities of all types, we have long advocated the use of application control and whitelisting on servers. If you haven't done so already, now is the time to apply a default deny mindset to server workload protection — whether those workloads are physical, virtual, public cloud or container-based. This should become a standard practice and a priority for all security and risk management leaders in 2018."
Angel Business Communications have announced the categories and entry criteria for the 2018 Datacentre Solutions Awards (DCS Awards).
The DCS Awards are designed to reward the product designers, manufacturers, suppliers and providers operating in data centre arena and are updated each year to reflect this fast moving industry. The Awards recognise the achievements of the vendors and their business partners alike and this year encompass a wider range of project, facilities and information technology award categories as well as Individual and Innovation categories, designed to address all the main areas of the datacentre market in Europe.
The DCS Awards categories provide a comprehensive range of options for organisations involved in the IT industry to participate, so you are encouraged to get your nominations made as soon as possible for the categories where you think you have achieved something outstanding or where you have a product that stands out from the rest, to be in with a chance to win one of the coveted crystal trophies.
This year’s DCS Awards continue to focus on the technologies that are the foundation of a traditional data centre, but we’ve also added a new section which focuses on Innovation with particular reference to some of the new and emerging trends and technologies that are changing the face of the data centre industry – automation, open source, the hybrid world and digitalisation. We hope that at least one of these new categories will be relevant to all companies operating in the data centre space.
The editorial staff at Angel Business Communications will validate entries and announce the final short list to be forwarded for voting by the readership of the Digitalisation World stable of publications during April and May. The winners will be announced at a gala evening on 24th May at London’s Grange St Paul’s Hotel.
The 2018 DCS Awards feature 26 categories across five groups. The Project and Product categories are open to end use implementations and services and products and solutions that have been available, i.e. shipping in Europe, before 31st December 2017. The Company nominees must have been present in the EMEA market prior to 1st June 2017. Individuals must have been employed in the EMEA region prior to 31st December 2017 and the Innovation Award nominees must have been introduced between 1st January and 31st December 2017.
Nomination is free of charge and all entries can submit up to two supporting documents to enhance the submission. The deadline for entries is : 9th March 2018.
Please visit : www.dcsawards.com for rules and entry criteria for each of the following categories:
DCS Project Awards
Data Centre Energy Efficiency Project of the Year
New Design/Build Data Centre Project of the Year
Data Centre Automation and/or Management Project of the Year
Data Centre Consolidation/Upgrade/Refresh Project of the Year
Data Centre Hybrid Infrastructure Project of the Year
DCS Product Awards
Data Centre Power product of the Year
Data Centre PDU product of the Year
Data Centre Cooling product of the Year
Data Centre Facilities Automation and Management Product of the Year
Data Centre Safety, Security & Fire Suppression Product of the Year
Data Centre Physical Connectivity Product of the Year
Data Centre ICT Storage Product of the Year
Data Centre ICT Security Product of the Year
Data Centre ICT Management Product of the Year
Data Centre ICT Networking Product of the Year
DCS Company Awards
Data Centre Hosting/co-location Supplier of the Year
Data Centre Cloud Vendor of the Year
Data Centre Facilities Vendor of the Year
Data Centre ICT Systems Vendor of the Year
Excellence in Data Centre Services Award
DCS Innovation Awards
Data Centre Automation Innovation of the Year
Data Centre IT Digitalisation Innovation of the Year
Hybrid Data Centre Innovation of the Year
Open Source Innovation of the Year
DCS Individual Awards
Data Centre Manager of the Year
Data Centre Engineer of the Year
Data protection of digital data is a fundamental and mandatory responsibility for all organizations. Therefore, organizations need to understand the basic principles and concepts of data protection, especially in our current era of massive data breaches. To satisfy that need, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has developed a technical whitepaper to provide the industry with a vendor-neutral overview of the relevant best current practices for data protection at the storage level.
By Thomas Rivera, CISSP, Chair of SNIA Data Protection and Capacity Optimization (DPCO).
Data protection is traditionally viewed as the execution of backup operations that are assured of providing data recovery if a loss of the original data (production data) occurs. In fact, data protection encompasses much more than backups and recovery techniques, such as dealing with issues related to data corruption and data loss, data accessibility and availability, as well as compliance with retention and privacy rules and regulations.
There are many factors to consider when it comes to data protection at the storage level. The main areas fall into three data protection “drivers”. These are data corruption and data loss, accessibility and availability, and compliance. Protected data must meet intended uses for all three drivers. Preventing data corruption and data loss ensures that the data is what the organization expects it to be when the data needs to be used. Accessibility and availability relate to the data being made available in a timely manner for intended uses. Compliance ensures that the data usage meets all associated legal and regulatory requirements.
Data corruption and data loss
Data must be protected both logically (to prevent data corruption from hacking or other external threats) and physically (in the case of data loss or the irreversible failure of a storage device). Physical prevention of data loss from hardware failure on a random-access storage system can use techniques such as RAID or erasure coding.
Backup and recovery are two of the traditional cornerstones to data protection for both physical and logical reasons. Backup relates to the processes of providing a copy of the data at a point in time and recovery refers to the ability to restore data for intended application use according to the organizational Service Level Agreements (SLA). One approach on a storage system itself is through the use of snapshots. These snapshots may serve as the basis for the data that is copied to a backup target storage system. Other approaches include the use of continuous data protection (CDP) or to use a public or private cloud as a backup service.
Cloud backup refers to backing up data to a remote, storage-as-a-service (public, private or hybrid). A cloud backup service is not a pre-defined, fixed solution and must be considered in the overall context of a business data protection or disaster recovery strategy. Cloud-based backup appeals to many businesses because it offers a low-cost way to protect business data off-site but there are many different considerations to be aware of when planning such an implementation.
Moving the business data into the cloud is the easy part. Getting it back when you really need it is when things can get challenging. For this reason, it is important to understand all the imperatives before embracing public cloud-based data backup as part of the data protection and disaster recovery strategy.
When considering backup to a cloud provider, it is imperative to define the business requirements. These requirements may include business demands, SLAs and Quality of Service (QoS) levels for the backup data, along with the required skills for deployment of the cloud-based backup technology. It is also important to pay careful attention to the network design that will connect the cloud service provider to your data center. What network currently exists, what security does it offer, is there enough bandwidth redundancy, latency, etc.
Replication and mirroring are also used to make copies of data. Replication refers to point in time copies whereas mirroring provides for continuous writing of data to two or more targets. Replication may be used for both physical and logical data protection while mirroring is a physical data protection approach.
An archive is an official set of more or less fixed data that is managed separately from more active production data. As such, copies have to be made for data protection purposes, but more active measures, such as standard backup or mirroring are not necessary.
Accessibility and Availability
For accessibility and availability, Business Continuity Management (BCM) includes the processes and procedures for ensuring ongoing business operations. One key aspect of BCM is Disaster Recovery (DR), which involves the coordinated process of restoring systems, data, and the infrastructure required to support ongoing business operations after a disaster occurs. But a BCM plan also includes technology, people, and business processes for recovery.As part of accessibility and availability, basic infrastructure redundancies need to be provided, including UPS systems to provide redundancy for power in case of a power outage and extra network and power connections.
Compliance
Compliance includes the application of specific technologies that allow for the ability to secure data for meeting the appropriate rules and regulations typically related to data retention, authenticity, immutability, confidentiality, accountability, and traceability, as well as the more general problem of data breaches. There are a number of technologies that relate to compliance including:
The two sides of data protection
Data protection is an important component of any Information Technology (IT) system, and the methods used for data protection and how they are configured have important inter-relationships with other aspects of the data center. By its nature, data protection has two sides: the backup or replication side and the restore or recovery side.
The backup side of data protection is the process or processes performed on a regular, or even a continuing basis to create one or more copies of an organization’s primary data at a particular point in time. Backup processes may well differ from one type or subset of data to another, and they must be chosen with care to minimize the impact on the availability of primary data to all applications and users that need it. The backup must also provide for recovery of data in the way prescribed by the organization’s Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with regard to each set of data. Thus traditional daily backups (copies of data to a different media) may be used for some subsets of data, while a real-time mirroring process may need to be used for other, highly critical data sets, in order to facilitate faster restores of the data.
Successful recovery operations are the result of having put appropriate backup processes in place, and recovery of lost or corrupted data is vital to an organization’s health. A recovery operation may be required just to replace a file that a user accidentally deleted or a corrupted set of data (operational recovery), or to replace a major portion of a data center or an entire data center, in case of a disaster such as a multiple device failure, a virus, denial of service attack, or the destruction of a data center by a fire or flood (disaster recovery).
There are two important considerations or objectives for data recovery that in turn determine how it needs to be backed up; they are the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO). RTO and RPO are important factors in deciding what backup or replication strategy the business needs to use, and they need to be a part of any organization’s SLAs with regard to data protection.
Data protection and digital archives
Although a digital archive represents another set of copies of primary data like those intended for backup or disaster recovery (DR), an archive is more immutable in nature, with changes either not allowed, or strictly controlled by a journaling process. Also, archives themselves require data protection; they are not intended to be used for data protection.
Archives may be divided into two types based on their intended longevity, with those intended to last more than ten years being considered a long-term archive’s. Long-term archives typically require different methods for storage, security and management.
About the DPCO
For more information about the relevant best current practices for Data Protection, please feel free to download the complete technical white paper at: https://www.snia.org/education/whitepapers
The DPCO was created to foster the growth and success of the market for data protection and capacity optimization technologies.
For more information about the work of the DPCO, visit: http://www.snia.org/dpco
The role of the IT manager has changed dramatically over the last few years, as has the role of IT. No longer seen as a necessary evil, IT has shifted from being a mere function of business to being an enabler of growth.
By Gavin Russell, CEO, Wavex.
While the provision and maintenance of the technology infrastructure still plays a part, as does managing third-party suppliers, vendors, staff and operational requirements, IT managers and IT as a whole has become a lot more strategic. This means that IT managers have a lot more to consider, and more to actually manage as a result.
This is evident considering that in many organisations there is a drive to align the IT strategy to the business strategy. The benefit? The business has certain goals to achieve and by connecting both aspects, IT can be mapped out to help achieve those goals. IT becomes an enabler, rather than the distractor. In the past, IT was seen merely as a function, with the IT manager seen as someone who keeps things running, identifies problems and worries about getting the right level of investment approved.
If an IT manager is expected to help drive strategic business goals – how do they find the time? The short answer: by using a range of increasingly sophisticated tools to improve the efficiency of the function.
Consider something like monitoring; there’s a great deal of this that needs to take place in order to ensure the business, its network and its assets keep working.
With the solutions available on the market at the moment, proactive monitoring becomes that much easier, whether it’s during a standard workday (9-5) or outside office hours. These platforms proactively monitor operations and also allow IT managers to gain overall visibility over the entire system, through a web portal, dashboard or app. Getting an early warning of a possible infrastructure or network problem can stop them escalating into full-blown critical incidents requiring substantial manpower to resolve.
Another area that can drain resources and attention is shadow IT. This has been a challenge for organisations for the last few years, driven largely by the use of personal devices on the company network. While shadow IT in the traditional sense is still a concern, un-vetted devices on a company network present a significant vulnerability, there is also a more subtle side to the issue. This almost covert side of shadow IT comes in the form of software. Often, PCs and laptops are bought with a number of software programs pre-installed, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. If the software is used often and is part of the organisational workflow it will be upgraded and patches will be applied by IT as standard.
However, if the software isn’t used, it may be forgotten about. In this case it wouldn’t be subjected to the constant updates and patches that are necessary to ensure the security around the software is up to spec. As these applications get older, the number of ways they can be exploited by hackers increases and can pose a significant risk to cyber security. The solution? The IT manager and team need to have an awareness of the software that is installed on every single end point. It’s here that a vulnerability monitoring solution can add value by constantly looking at what software is installed across the network and its end points, and compare that with a database of known vulnerabilities.
Essentially IT managers are battling on multiple fronts, so the use of automated, proactive monitoring tools can add tremendous value, freeing up time to focus on strategic initiatives.
IT and the IT manager are integral to business success. But with the changing role of IT and the growing cyber threat landscape, it’s critical that IT is recognised as strategic partner throughout the business. By aligning the IT strategy with the wider business strategy, the IT manager has the opportunity to ensure the board understands the strategic value that IT can deliver. Taking that further, with the right tools and monitoring platforms IT managers can ensure that they are able to monitor their infrastructure, operationally and in terms of cyber security, and deliver that value back to the organisation.
When looking at the virtualization landscape in its broader sense I can’t help seeing that the real problem is agility or, rather, the lack of it.
By Pravin Mirchandani, CMO, OneAccess Networks.
Talk of robotic process automation (RPA) is all the rage, but what can it really do for your business?
By Scott Dodds, CEO at Ultima.
First, let’s be clear about what we mean by RPA. Put simply, it is the use of software ‘robots’ to automate business processes, for example, in back-office functions or your other core business processes. By automating time-consuming, repetitive tasks organisations stand to improve their productivity and gain competitive advantage.
But RPA provides much more than this. Software robots can also be used to ensure greater accuracy and compliance of data by removing human error, which in turn provides greater security of data and information. A bonus for those companies worried about meeting the forthcoming GDPR regulations in May.
Software robots consistently carry out prescriptive, logic-based functions to automate end-to-end processes or process parts, without the need to modify underlying systems. They speed-up back-office tasks in areas such as procurement, finance, IT, human resources and business processes.
Recent industry research has found more than half (57 per cent) of the UK’s SMEs fear big businesses use of RPA will help to drive them out of business in the next five years. But the good news is that this needn’t be the case. There are now RPA offerings that can be purchased by SMEs at affordable prices as part of Software-as-a-Service offerings. The technology is relatively simple to implement and requires little or no infrastructure and application re-architecture.
SME and IT solutions provider, Ultima is using RPA across several of its own business processes and is seeing some dramatic changes in productivity. The CEO, Scott Dodds, estimates the company’s overall productivity has increased by a factor of two, allowing its staff to focus on growing the business and delivering an improved customer service.
One of the most exciting ways Ultima is using RPA is to automate some of its forecasting and planning tasks within the business. Software robots collate real-time sales and marketing information and process all the information they collect during the day, to produce detailed forecasts and business intelligence for the next morning. To collate this information and analyse it would have taken approximately eight to ten hours per day of staff time. As a result, the business has improved business intelligence to plan with, and staff have more time to spend on customer service and strategic thinking.
Within most organisations IT support teams spend too much time undertaking manual administrative tasks, such as backups, running diagnostics or system checks and managing patch processes. Using software robots frees these people to concentrate on higher priority tasks, or to work on business improvement and change projects, without the need to increase headcount.
Ultima is using software robots, or what it likes to call its ‘Virtual Workers’, to handle the processing of tickets that come into its IT managed services desk. As software robots are available 24/7, 365 days of the year the company is able to respond to customer needs faster and more accurately as the robots leave no room for human error. Where once they had between six and ten touch points for staff logging and dealing with each ticket they now need only two. This reduction in the number of times a member of support staff has to handle each ticket has led to enormous productivity gains.
RPA is also proving its worth across human resources. End-to-end business processes, such as a starters and leavers’ work-flow, can span multiple teams or extend to third-party providers, partners and customers. In many cases, these process ‘islands’ are linked by inefficient hand-offs which slow down processing and can result in errors.
At Ultima when people join or leave the firm there are many routine and mundane tasks that HR staff used to spend many hours completing, for example, ordering new equipment and logging them on to IT, HR and financial systems. With RPA all this is done automatically once a few details of the joiner are put into the main system. And indeed, if anyone leaves, their equipment is automatically recalled and they are logged off all appropriate systems. In addition, Ultima has automated some of its invoice posting activities and is currently looking at other processes it can automate to create real savings.
Within any corporate function, there are a host of common, cyclical activities which are candidates for being automated. RPA can be implemented to handle everything from accounts payable, accrual bookings and credit checks, to salary processing, tax reporting and auditing, improving standardisation and speed of execution.
Contact centres and service desks tend to use several different systems and applications, and often undertake a high volume of low complexity, repetitive tasks such as fulfilling service requests. Service agents often have to navigate multiple applications while simultaneously managing the call with the customer. Where customers make contact via email or messaging systems, agents are required to translate this information from those systems while executing the required actions.
Software robots can improve the experience by streamlining processes and enabling customers to leverage self-service portals for common requests. By simplifying the service agent process with the automation of tasks, and the introduction of Natural Language Processing (NLP) for extracting key information from emails and messaging chats, agents can focus on providing the best experience for customers, in the quickest time.
On a positive note, the One Poll research undertaken by Ultima of SME senior executives found that two-thirds of businesses want to use robotic process automation. With sixty-five per cent of companies reporting that they either plan to or already automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks. It found the financial services sector leads the charge, where more than 80 per cent of companies either plan to or already automate at least some business processes.
For SMEs now is the time to sit down and think about which internal processes could be automated to create efficiencies in your business. Ultima has only automated five key processes, but the returns have been dramatic. Most businesses will have several processes they can automate; some businesses will have a myriad of processes that can be automated. Working out which ones to automate should be done on a clear ROI basis and by looking at where mundane tasks are hampering staff’s ability to work on more important tasks.
One thing that Ultima is keen to point out is that it is not using RPA to help reduce staff numbers. Rather, the firm sees it as an opportunity to free up staff time and allow them to focus on more strategic work. McKinsey’s research has shown that employees welcomed the technology because they hated the boring tasks that the machines now do, and it relieved them of the rising pressure of work.
Scott Dodds, CEO, Ultima comments, “We call our software robots ‘Virtual Workers’ as they are there to work alongside humans to do the work they don’t need, or want, to do. They have allowed our employees to spend more time on strategic and creative projects that will give us competitive advantage, and has already improved our productivity by a factor of two.”
The research backs this theory up. It found 77% of respondents want to use RPA to automate mundane, transactional tasks, and 56% said freeing up staff time to focus on more strategic work was a key driver for using RPA.
Now is the time for SMEs to embrace the opportunity of implementing RPA in their businesses to increase productivity and help them remain competitive. RPA and the digital transformation that it brings by automating tasks and procedures that allow specialist teams to focus on higher-value tasks is exciting. It means that smaller businesses will be able to deliver tasks at a scale and speed that would only have previously been imaginable for larger enterprises.
To the outside observer, the world of cybercrime might seem cryptic at best, and completely unknowable at worst. However, the important thing to remember is that no matter how dark or murky it may appear, cybercriminals have their own set of goals and objectives, just like you.
By Angel Grant, Director, Identity, Fraud and Risk Intelligence at RSA Security.
So just because understanding the enemy is hard, this doesn’t mean it’s impossible or unnecessary. Amassing this kind of knowledge is an essential step in achieving business-driven security, which dictates that organisations stop thinking of security as just a technology problem and learn how to link security incidents with business context. Corporations that try and get to know their opponents, and are willing to put themselves in their shoes, will always have leg up when it comes to defeating them. In fact, with 2018 fast approaching, knowing what your enemies want and the lengths they’ll go to get it might be the only way to protect what matters most to your business.
Don’t stop there. Good cybersecurity is a continual process. Even after launch, it is important to keep revisiting the question. Cybercriminals are nothing if not adaptable, and the rock-solid defences you put in one day might be a piece of cake to crack the next.
A little dose of paranoia can also be extremely healthy. It’s best to assume the worst and that you are compromised already. Think of all the ways you might be vulnerable, and act to find out more about who might be hunting you and how. For example, if your customers encounter phishing attempts, is it easy for them to report incidents to you (e.g., through a dedicated email address), so you can track the nature and characteristics of this type of fraud.
You should also try to question why the hacker is trying to get at you. If your ‘crown jewels’ were to be sold on the dark web, what kinds of agents would be behind that? Who is collecting data on them, and how can you tap into that surveillance to gain insight that can help your business?
By doing this, you’ll be better able to stop fraud before it happens, reducing the risk to your organisation of cyber attacks, identity theft, and account takeover.
It’s not enough to only check people when you let them in. From there, you need to keep an eye on visitors once they’re inside. To do that, you need to know how a “normal” person behaves. For example, a visitor to your house might take a seat and make conversation. If they leap to their feet and start checking out your valuables, you’ll want to keep a closer eye on them.
Continuous web session analysis recognises that cybercriminals don’t behave like other site visitors; they move faster, navigate differently, and often leave more than one device trail behind. To spot these differences, you need a reliable baseline to measure against. Do this by consistently identifying and tracking the interactions that occur across the entire customer web session, from login and browsing to the completion of a transaction. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you discover anomalies between how a genuine customer and a cybercriminal interacts with your web and mobile services.
To this end, data is one of the most powerful tools in your quest to profile your enemy. Optimise the security investments you’ve already made by correlating data from your various anti-fraud tools to get a more complete picture of normal and anomalous behaviour. Advanced data analytics technologies mean you can do this without compromising your customers' experience or data privacy.
It’s not enough to just understand your opponent if you don’t know how to take the necessary steps to protect against them. Now that you’ve gotten to know your enemy, you’ll want to capitalise on the understanding that you’ve built up and take the fight to them. Here are five tips for doing exactly that.
1. Understand and avoid business logic abuse
Fraud does not only occur at the transaction level. It has the potential to occur the moment a user hits your web page. Many precursors to fraud, such as DDoS attacks, web scraping, and HTML/script injection, occur at the pre-login stage and that can indicate a high potential for business logic abuse—the hijacking of normal application flows for illegitimate purposes.
Business logic abuse is not easily identified by traditional security software, so it’s essential to prevent these attacks from occurring in the first place. A good example of a business logic abuse attack is coupon stacking in the ecommerce world. Combining good coding practices with a solid understanding of your application flows and transaction processes is essential to prevent cybercriminals from abusing your website to commit fraud.
2. Put your omni goggles on
When building your omnichannel strategy, you’ll be thinking first and foremost about the new business models you can achieve. But you also need to think about omnichannel fraud management from the outset, especially in connecting with partners and aggregators.
If there's one thing we can be certain of, it's that cross-channel attacks will grow. This is why visibility into device reputation (e.g., has this particular mobile, tablet or computer previously been used to commit fraud) and user behaviour across channels is critical. Now is the time to invest in centralised fraud management that can leverage input from all anti-fraud tools used across your channels.
3. Use the buddy system
Visibility isn’t just about what’s going on in your own organisation—it also means understanding fraud activity within the context of global, cross-industry threats. For example, fraud intelligence feeds can tell an organisation if an IP address or account has been involved in confirmed fraud, or if a shipping or email address has been used by a known reshipping mule.
Collective intelligence is a powerful tool—sharing helps everyone improve their fraud detection and means we win as one.
4. Recognise the value of a whole-organisation approach to security
Change the internal conversation. Rather than looking at cybersecurity and fraud management as an overhead, think instead of the positive contribution they make to your bottom line by reducing fraud losses, improving the customer experience to drive revenue, and protecting your business reputation.
Once you do that, it’s much easier to get buy-in from the whole organisation and establish close co‑operation between different departments (after all, what looks like benign activity to one group may be a significant problem when viewed holistically). Combining the information security team’s technical knowledge with the fraud team’s view of criminal behaviour, for example, could bring valuable insights.
5. Step it up… carefully
Effective fraud management is a balancing act between minimising losses and reducing customer friction. Be clear in establishing your organisation's tolerance to risk, then tailor your interventions to your threshold.
Whether your risk tolerance is high or low, you can always work on improving the customer experience with consumer- optimised authentication methods, such as fingerprint or voice recognition or in-app one-time passwords, based on your user populations, segmentations, and regulatory requirements.
As 2018 begins, cybercrime might seem like an unstoppable force - however that doesn’t have to be the case. The bad guys might be getting smarter, but businesses who take the onus upon themselves to learn about the mounting threats they face, and act appropriately, will be in a great position to reap the rewards.
International manufacturers and industrial organisations have been investing more heavily in digital programs and initiatives to help accelerate the era of IT-optimised smart manufacturing in the age of Industry 4.0. This includes automating data and processes, and adopting technologies to support this, with which digital transformation goes hand-in-hand.
By John Newton, CTO and Founder, Alfresco.
According to a recent PTC report, manufacturing will be the biggest IoT platform by 2021[1], reaching $438 million as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) increases efficiency and decreases downtime. While a separate study by Accenture[2] says that the IIoT could help reduce machinery breakdowns by 70% and reduce overall maintenance costs by 30%.
However, many companies are still struggling to deal with the flow of information across the extended enterprise. As manufacturers’ first-generation processes and systems, built on 30-year-old technologies for 30-year-old computing environments, can’t meet new demands. As a result, businesses risk being left behind because of the need to immediately manage and analyse exponentially increasing amounts of data, images and documents. As well as having to deal with the use of unsanctioned applications or ad hoc workarounds that leave content insecure, out of date, or non-compliant, which introduces risk no company can afford.
This results in intense pressure for manufacturers to improve the way they manage product and engineering information. Here are the five biggest forces intensifying manufacturers’ interest in new technologies and digital transformation:
1. Mobile and Social: The rise of mobile and social technologies has changed not only where we work, but how we work. Manufacturing organisations are under tremendous pressure to support connected, tech-savvy employees whose expectations have been shaped by consumer web services. Staff expect to find and share business and product-related information as easily as they can browse and buy a book online, and this leads to unsanctioned use of non-business tools. They also expect their company systems to support remote and collaborative working styles, allowing them to get their work done independent of location, network, and device. Their expectations for ease of access intensify the pressure on IT organisations to modernise their content and process management strategies.
2. Evolving Customer Expectations: With customers able to stay connected 24/7, the pressure to deliver for them on their chosen platforms and around the clock is huge. To meet these new expectations, manufacturers face disruptions across the product lifecycle. Not only must they innovate faster, but also create products that are software enabled and connected (e.g. cars and even tractors). These next-generation products require collaboration amongst diverse engineering teams that previously haven’t worked together. These product lifecycle management changes must be supported with new forms of information that can be readily shared inside and outside of the enterprise. But orchestrating this across divisions, geographies, expertise, and roles in the product lifecycle is a more complicated challenge than ever before.
3. Value of the Extended Enterprise: Exponential growth in connected activity and information flow is reshaping the modern manufacturing firm. Today, businesses are often a web of companies, contractors, suppliers, resellers, employees, and customers. The ability to share content and process effectively across the extended enterprise is a must. Manufacturing firms are extending their value chains by using external collaborators for product design, development, marketing etc., in particular to optimise processes and increase transparency. Partner and supplier input is also crucial, facilitating all of this collaboration will lead to the ultimate extended enterprise.
4. Big Data, the IoT and the era of context: IDC predict the market for big data technology and services will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 percent by 2019[3]. A staggering 90 percent of it will be unstructured information such as e-mails, documents, and video. This adds to the content management challenge. Furthermore, as these pressures converge with new IoT capabilities, offline products are turned into ones always on tap with data. The digitised manufacturer now has a slew of new sources of product information that must be managed, updated, analysed, and somehow combined with those produced from within.
5. Hybrid Cloud IT Infrastructure: Manufacturers aren’t known for going overboard investing in advanced IT, yet leading-edge cloud computing technology seems tailor-made for them and many are moving business content to this platform. IDC and Forrester predict a major shift to hybrid enterprise content management. This next-generation approach involves storing content both on-premises and in the cloud that are seamlessly connected. Hybrid ECM meets IT’s need for control and compliance, while freeing business users and external collaborators to be more productive.
The digital economy favours those who consistently demonstrate agility and do things differently. The flexible, digitised manufacturer will invest in technologies to create value across the extended enterprise and in the process, deliver on the real business of innovation, revenue growth and customer satisfaction. Manufacturers should look at how digital transformation initiatives can deliver real impact across the value chain, including employees, partners and suppliers, enabling better collaboration and knowledge sharing. The end of the year is the perfect time to look ahead at how they can innovate with new business model approaches and leverage the latest technology.
Containers are considered one of the most innovative technologies among developers because they streamline the development process and make it as agile as possible. As a result, there are many arguments in favour of using container-based hosting for testing environments.
By Alexander Vierschrodt, Head of Commercial Product Management Server, 1&1 Internet SE.
Containers can run independently from the operating system and additional virtual machines, allowing the application in a container to be copied and transferred easily from the development environment to the testing environment. This lets the developer continue working on projects during the test without being affected by it. This evolved process creates more flexibility, since testing and productive operation can run simultaneously, enabling continuous delivery.
The new status quo
In Europe, container technology has evolved from something rare and exotic to a popular phenomenon, with large corporations increasingly wanting to optimise their IT infrastructure. Just a few years ago, outside of the developer community, container technology was only popular in certain circles. The technology has since been adopted by many companies who have realised that with the help of containers, IT processes, especially development projects, can be made more efficient and implemented more quickly.
Kubernetes has established itself as the leading brand in the automation of provisioning, scaling, and managing container applications, and has become the industry standard. With Kubernetes, the open source community has created a great tool to set up and manage a wide variety of containers. In addition, many new products and services relating to container technologies are also emerging. Gradually, a container ecosystem is growing, which will eventually connect open source and commercial applications symbiotically. This makes it increasingly easier for companies to use containers and find a set of tools that suits their individual needs. At the same time, users are generally becoming braver and more open to trying new things, and consequently, more and more companies have endeavoured to implement container technology. This is an important step. Only companies that implement containers along the entire application process can benefit from their full potential, as well as take advantage of highly scalable and ultra-flexible IT infrastructure.
Software testing: plan-build-run vs continuous delivery
Businesses have become increasingly more agile across the board, especially in their IT departments. IT professionals are constantly searching for new technologies to make their projects flexible and testable. This is where the strength of container technology comes into play. The classic plan-build-run model has been obsolete for years as it is too rigid for the development of IT projects, which must be fast and flexible. The stringent sequence of planning, construction, and operation offers no space for continuous review of the project. As a result, errors are usually identified and remedied only in the test phase shortly before the final phase. In the worst case scenario, the entire development process must be run again. An agile, flexible process with fast implementation is therefore impossible using this model.
Continuous delivery, on the other hand, relies on a consistent review of the individual subprojects. Iterations and optimisations are done during the ongoing development process and are thus constantly executed. The cornerstone of continuous delivery is that the code or the project can be delivered and used productively at any point in time. Unlike the plan-build-run concept, there are no fixed project times in the continuous delivery system, during which the integration, testing, or completion of the project would take place. Iterative sprints take place exactly when they are needed for the project. This ensures that there are no unpleasant surprises that could delay or prevent a project from going live.
The benefits of dynamic continuous delivery are significant when compared to the classic plan-build-run process. It is therefore clear why the former is the more advanced and promising method today. The benefits, much like the process, merge smoothly into an ongoing cycle. First of all, it is less risky; releases can be continuously developed and implemented, and do not require expensive preparation. Roll-backs are also easy and straightforward, meaning a quicker time to market can be guaranteed. In particular, testing and improvement phases are usually very time-consuming. With continuous delivery, these phases are ongoing during the actual development process. The result is an uninterrupted quality control and verification process. This allows you to react quickly and flexibly without risking the headaches that can be the case with the classic plan-build-run model. Additionally, errors are detected earlier. The consistent review of subprojects ensures a higher level of quality in the end; there is no time pressure in the final phases of development, as the transition to a productive system often follows directly.
Use of containers in testing: agile and reliable
Conventional test environments have the disadvantage that they are very resource-intensive. The virtual machines (VMs) used here require the appropriate operating systems, computing power, and storage space for the VM itself, as well as the stored data volume. Additionally, there are numerous security risks to the resources used, all of which need to be patched separately. Containers, on the other hand, share all these resources with the so-called container host. It provides all of the operating systems, storage, and other necessary resources. All containers in the cluster access this host and its resources, making it faster to use because not every container needs to boot separately. In addition, container processes are isolated and are therefore less vulnerable to security risks.
If you transfer a test project into a container, the project benefits from a faster development time. The container is not only available more quickly, but also independently of the actual environment since it interacts with the container host in terms of resources. Security is also less of a concern than in conventional development environments. Because all the resources needed are used centrally through the cluster host, it takes much less effort to maintain and update security settings. In this way, gaps in security can be eliminated faster and more effectively, or do not even arise in the first place.
One further advantage is that the environment within different containers in a cluster is identical, and can be adapted to the actual production environment during testing. This way, the transition is seamless and free of problems.
Conclusion
Container technologies are not only beneficial for software testing: development projects of all kinds benefit from this technology because it saves resources while also being stable, flexible and agile. Furthermore, in comparison with conventional development environments, they are more cost-effective.
In order to be able to use containers efficiently, many companies will need to make adjustments to their processes. An IT strategy on its own is the most basic requirement in order to successfully implement containers. However, to achieve agility in the entire development process, the correct corporate structure must be present in addition to the appropriate IT architecture. If both of these are present, then nothing stands in the way of success.
Berendsen, a world leading textile and laundry provider, is using Highlight’s network and application monitoring service to deliver visibility into its managed network service supplied by Gamma.
The Highlight service is an integrated part of Gamma’s managed voice and data network service. It allows both Berendsen and Gamma to have a shared and consolidated view into the behaviour of the network that serves Berendsen’s 152 circuits with 52 laundries and an array of on-premise customer sites across the UK. Highlight’s graphical view delivers insights into what might need upgrading, where misuse is happening and where there are issues that need to be fixed.
Berendsen provides services for workwear, facilities, hospitality and healthcare to end users in a wide range of sectors including hospitals and care homes through to high tech cleanrooms and up-market hotels. In October 2017, Berendsen doubled in size following its merged with Elis, the French laundry business. The combined group now manages the textile, hygiene and safety needs of over 300,000 customers in 30 countries worldwide.
Antony Pugh, IT Service Manager at Berendsen, manages the WAN services across all the company’s UK sites and laundries: “When we started working with Gamma a key requirement from the outset was to know what was happening within the circuits. We had used a monitoring service through our previous provider for just an hour or two to investigate an isolated problem. It was completely re-active. With Gamma, we were keen to take a more proactive approach with better historical details to help with the analysis and sizing of the network.
“Gamma has since helped us to upgrade from a basic DSL network to a more robust fibre network to cope with our expanding business. Our imperative is that data is reliable and instantaneous so that we can guarantee consistent IT services at all times across the business.”
Each Berendsen site in the UK now has two lines for redundancy, using both for maximum bandwidth. The most important traffic travels down the primary line with less critical traffic on the secondary. Citrix is used for 95 per cent of activities with thin clients connecting back to virtualised services at the company’s head office in Basingstoke.
Gamma chose Highlight as the best option for its customers and its own network operations. Highlight is integrated into Gamma’s automated ticketing system, enabling customers like Berendsen and Gamma’s support staff to work closely as a team.
“Highlight is a valuable addition to the network and gives us a massive amount of visibility,” adds Antony. “It has been perfectly set up and the graphical display enables us to see clearly when heavy internet use is causing spikes that impact other users. We can then make changes to class of service configurations to ensure non-priority and critical traffic are allocated correctly. For example, our increasing use of laptops meant some timed backups were taking place at peaks times and we were able to adjust them to quieter periods.”
The network needs to cope with a number of projects underway that report on usage information across the laundry services. Machines capture details on the number of items washed per hour. And readers located at key points during the laundry process capture information from the RFID tags that are stitched into items. This allows Berendsen to track when items arrive on site, where they are in the process and when they are shipped back to the customer.
The RFID tags also carry details about the manufacturer, the item’s age, when last seen, when washed, and any repairs. This enables Berendsen to check if laundry is lasting its three-year lifecycle and to alert customers if items are not being circulated sufficiently.
Berendsen uses Highlight’s service to see what traffic is flowing across the lines. “I really like being able to identify individual devices and see if ports are being used properly or perhaps identify if activity is for personal use. If one of the machines is not reporting, we can check the network to identify exactly what is going on. And at one site, we discovered someone was watching Netflix for a considerable amount of time. Rather than block the application and punish light users who enjoy Netflix during their breaks, we were able to inform the local manager.”
Highlight’s AppVis is another key tool that filters application performance information, so Antony can focus on what is important. “I know that Citrix, printing and Microsoft Azure are the highest utilised across the network, so I don’t need to constantly see this information,” he confirms. “Instead I can concentrate on any usage spikes from valid applications as well as any increases in less desirable applications such as BitTorrent, Facebook or Netflix. I can then minimise abuse without penalising valid usage; this is only possible if I can see clearly what is happening through Highlight.”
Antony explains that “Before Gamma and Highlight, we just didn’t know if we had a problem. We couldn’t see what was happening. Today, our IT services are faster, more stable and we know which lines are approaching 90% or 100% usage. With this information we can justify any further investment for increased bandwidth and it removes any perception that we are upgrading for the sake of it. I can prove that everything is being used as it should.”
The proactive monitoring and alerting means Berendsen can now fix issues before they impact users or end customers. “If there is an issue, Highlight helps us to identify what we don’t need to look at, so we can eliminate it from an investigation. We can then make small adjustments to ensure services are continually improving. I’m not always looking for the fastest, but I do insist on everything being consistent. Consistency of service is the key to happy users,” confirms Antony.
“Most importantly, I really value the fact that both Gamma and our team at Berendsen are using the same insights from Highlight. This means Gamma takes a more consultative and advisory role compared to any of our previous providers. Our combined focus is now always on where improvements might need to be made to working practices or processes in order to optimise network usage. We are constantly thinking three and six months ahead as things in the business are moving at such a fast pace. We want to be ready for the future.”
Since the year 2000, Highlight has enabled Service Providers and Enterprise Corporates to see clearly both network and applications performance in real-time. As well as delivering visibility and analytics, Highlight enables service providers and enterprise customers to both have visibility of the same accurate, easy to use graphical information. This critical data supports the right conversations concerning issue resolution, planning and capacity management. Highlight supports and enhances ICT expansion, new technology deployment and cloud transition initiatives, where both providers and corporates are confident in the partnership.
Highlight is software as a service, delivering powerful value to the business performance of service providers and enterprise corporates around the world. Highlight is fast and easy to deploy. Highlight’s simple pricing structures and zero CAPEX makes it a business enabler which is budget sensitive. Highlight guarantees providers and corporates better business results in network and applications service management, operations and customer experience.
The Highlight service is used in 90 countries, on 6,000 enterprise networks including 40% of the FTSE-100. Highlight, providing the best provider and corporate customer value and experience at a competitive price.
Highlight 'See Clearly' from Highlight on Vimeo.
As the world continues to become more and more connected, we’re beginning to see a network of devices that will support an entire shared economy across many industries. For enterprises, the Internet of Things (IoT) presents huge opportunity to be more efficient, to find new ways to engage and keep customers and to transform the way business is conducted.
By Tony Judd, Managing Director, Enterprise EMEA at Verizon.
Continued innovation in smart cities, connected cars and wearables demonstrates that IoT is the future for how we will live and work. However, despite the exciting potential, IoT is still too complex, too fragmented, too expensive to connect and too hard to scale.
So what will the future hold? How will the potential of IoT be supported and propelled through the use of complementary technologies?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being fueled by a mix of technological, political and social factors, which are driving more organisations to adopt IoT-enabled solutions. For example, the use of social media and mobile technology has transformed consumer and citizen expectations. Also, the declining costs of sensors, connectivity and processing power has made IoT a more viable proposition to a broader set of organisations. Changing regulatory requirements across a number of industries are also making an impact.
A report released by Verizon shows that Gartner forecasts continued growth in the IoT sector, with more than $2 trillion expected to have been spent on IoT by the end of this year alone – up 31% since 2016.
After years of focusing on cost-cutting, many industries — from financial services to manufacturing — are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves and boost share prices. Many organisations are starting to use IoT as a roadmap to improve their customers’ experiences, accelerate growth and create new business models that are driving societal innovation.
We see the Software-Defined everything world to be a key driving force behind IoT.
Networks today are relatively static because they are so complex — when you change them, you risk breaking something. Software Defined Networks offer the opportunity to add more sophisticated, coordinated services on a virtualised basis as well as driving the intelligence from the front line back into the enterprise to enable organisations to immediately act on it.
What SDN offers is scalability and speed, but more importantly, it offers a deeper, richer experience for organisations. This gives enterprises a more sophisticated network feature set and service experience that allows for greater operational efficiency and speed to market by moving the functionality into the software layer.
However, a powerful network is only the beginning – combine this power with enterprise-grade cloud and security solutions enabled through a wider variety of omni-connected smart devices and the performance power behind IoT can be immense.
With IoT still in its infancy, it’s difficult to say with certainty what threats companies are facing, but we can look at what we do know. Of the projected five billion enterprise devices that will be around in 2020, not all of them will necessarily be Internet-visible, and not all devices will be sending sensitive data. In fact, many of them will be simple devices that have a single function — like a light sensor.
That said, any device that is connected, regardless of whether it’s IoT-enabled, is a potential target for a cyber-attack. The devices themselves may not be the end target (they could be used to carry out malicious activity as part of a botnet attack), but they could be used as a gateway into the broader enterprise network and critical systems.
IoT is all about making the things around us smarter, but many sensors, especially those embedded in assets, must be frugal. Limitations on space mean that processing power and battery life are often limited. This means that many sensors aren’t capable of running the endpoint protection capabilities we’re used to seeing in more sophisticated assets, like laptops.
As IoT devices become more widespread and more closely integrated with core enterprise systems, the more important it is that security is made paramount from the start. Just as with any other IT system, organisations should regularly assess the risk, apply appropriate security measures, and test their effectiveness.
So how will all of this evolve even further? Organisations need to look at simplifying the IoT, with the aim of accelerating market adoption amongst consumers and businesses; bringing more solutions to market.
For example, deploying an IoT platform allows customers to manage their IoT deployments and all related data — from device to network to application — in an end-to-end way. IoT platforms can also enable partners to market their services and most importantly, create opportunities for developers to build applications, all in an open environment. This approach lays the groundwork to launch integrated solutions and for enterprises to implement IoT solutions quickly and easily.
Additionally, once solutions are deployed, it’s possible to link IoT platforms to a big data engine to help businesses gain more actionable insights. This will allow organisations to take in massive amounts of data, quickly analyse it and turn that data into usable intelligence to improve company solutions.
With its current fragmented approach, it is clear that for IoT to be a success in the future it will require suppliers to cut through IoT’s complexity and change the current IoT model.
The market winners will be organisations that have experience across the board from networks, devices, platforms and applications; that can work in partnership with their customers and understand their goals to maximise impact. These organisations adopt a higher level approach to IoT, not only to simplify adoption but crucially provide the supporting functions/expertise that this new technology will need to expand.
How the IT industry will consolidate and create containers best practice
By Marco Ceppi, Ubuntu Product & Strategy Team, Canonical.
The use of containers is undoubtedly one of the hot topics in IT. The market is predicted to be worth $2.7 billion by 2020 according to 451 Research, as businesses continue to leverage the performance, cost efficiency and scalability benefits for running applications in the cloud.
The technology may still be in its relative infancy, but its ability to combine the security of traditional virtual machine isolation with speed and flexibility is prompting a wide variety of businesses to take the plunge. Indeed, 42% of respondents to a recent survey said their organisation is already using container technology, while nearly a quarter (23%) are currently evaluating the use of containers.
There are, of course, some challenges that need to be overcome – such as re-architecting legacy apps, a lack of developer experience, and ensuring application security – but the promise of container technology is clear.
This growth in popularity has resulted in an explosion of start-ups appearing in the market that are focused on building, managing or providing container services, adding to the plethora of container-based solutions released by virtually all the major cloud providers and vendors.
While this has created an abundance of choice for customers, it’s that choice which makes it difficult for businesses to understand what is exactly the right choice for them.
A disconnect has also emerged between the interest being shown in containers and actual adoption – with many enterprises hesitating due to security and implementation concerns – both of which are issues that the industry will be keen to solve.
Despite the promise of ‘containerization’ and the potential benefits on offer, the technology is at a stage where many businesses are yet to be fully convinced.
The financial services industry, for example, is one that has been quick to embrace containers, but CIOs and IT managers in other sectors are still unsure if the technology is the right option for them.
It’s still relatively early days of course, so this hesitation is to be expected as any new technology comes with risks. But, one way of calming any fears is for the industry to establish best practice guidelines that businesses of all sizes can follow.
This is currently missing from the world of containers, primarily because early adopters are attempting to figure out what best practices should look like as they go along in an effort to get ahead of the competition. The result is that conventional wisdom is continually being challenged as businesses figure out exactly what works and what doesn’t.
But, by collaborating to provide recommendations for the creation, deployment and usage of containerized applications, vendors and customers can consolidate their experiences and help the industry to develop.
Not only will this provide businesses with confidence in their deployments, it will also encourage them to try new things and come up with innovative solutions to traditional business problems.
As with any emerging technology, fostering greater standardisation across the industry is key to kickstarting adoption.
Traditionally, a lack of standards has held back technology from progressing. Without having common building blocks that the whole industry must adhere to, businesses can’t be sure that the technology will work in the way they expect it to.
But, once most of the industry agrees on a certain base standard, technology tends to take off. Businesses get a clearer path along which to travel and can be sure that the fundamental aspects of the technology will work in the same way, regardless of the vendor that built it.
The world of containers is no exception. By creating a standard way to build and manage container technology, all customers get access to a similar set of basic services that they can be sure will meet their performance expectations.
They can then pick solutions from specific vendors, whether that be Canonical, Google, Microsoft or anyone else, based on their specific business needs.
Various industry bodies are already in place to help shape the future of the industry, with the Open Container Initiative (OCI) and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) being two of the biggest organizations seeking to tackle complex business and technology problems through open source collaboration.
The OCI, for example, was established in 2015 with the aim of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtime, while the CNCF boasts 138 members after less than two years of activity - including the world’s six largest public cloud providers – and is continuing to grow at a significant rate.
Progress is certainly being made, but more needs to be done if the true promise of containers is to be realised. The adoption of common standards and best practices will not only serve to guide the container community, but also provide a more level playing field for vendors and customers.
It will also significantly increase the level of technological innovation within the industry, helping the world of containers evolve from chaos to widespread adoption.
Since its launch two decades ago, the Internet has enabled businesses to rapidly transform the way they organise, operate, and serve consumers. However, undergoing a complete digital transition is no easy undertaking; it may take a considerable investment of time and resources before succeeding.
By Karan Puri – Senior Corporate Vice President - Consumer and Commercial Services, Americas, HCL Technologies.
Of course, there is never any guarantee that digital transformations will succeed at all. In fact, digitising products and services has only increased the number of consumer complaints across many industries, such as utilities and automotive. Not surprisingly, many enterprises consider digital transformation to be a daunting task and very few have a comprehensive roadmap in place to provide direction to their digital strategy.
The reasons cannot solely be about CAPEX and OPEX, and the significant infrastructure investment that such an initiative entails. This goes beyond the complexities of transitioning from legacy systems towards emerging technologies. So, the question remains: Where are we going wrong?
Unless businesses are ‘born digital’, it is rarely easy transitioning practices and processes to a digitally-enabled framework. Most CIOs and CTOs agree that legacy systems are the biggest roadblock for a successful migration, but they often miss out on a much more pressing and obvious problem – the people and the intra-organisation culture that develops around them.
Digital transformation can often directly threaten what employees consider traditionally accepted best practices. Once implemented at an infrastructure level, digitisation frees up the flow of information, allowing seamless horizontal and bottom-up exchanges, while diminishing the value of top-down communication. This not only renders certain management functions redundant, but also circumvents traditional HR systems by allowing subject matter experts to emerge organically, and as an extension of the freeform knowledge exchange—a hallmark of a digital enterprise.
A technology-enabled environment can actually promote a do-it-yourself work ethic, driven partly by the fear that automation, smart machines and artificial intelligence may replace most human workers. Here is where employees can innovate and resolve workplace issues through lateral communication and a host of tools readily available at their disposal. On the other hand, personal branding can be seen as an emerging threat with employees interacting across channels, quickly garnering recognition based on skill and merit. These self-made thought leaders may become powerful outliers, which a traditional management system would find hard to control.
In this paradoxical scenario, enterprises striving to adapt faster to technology may also want to focus on digitising their talent management strategies. Business leaders can look towards utilising data and analytics for identifying high performers, empowering employees at an individual level—with the ultimate target of synergising diverse skillsets for sustained organisational growth.
The first step along this process is to identify the set of human obstacles preventing this transition, which often include prioritising technology over people, competing priorities among leaders, the fear of losing control over central functions, and the inability to determine business value using outmoded ROI calculations. Each of these issues eventually sum up and culminate in a lack of sponsorship from senior management.
The next step involves the overhaul of the enterprise work culture. Every member of the value chain can then be empowered through a shared sense of purpose to facilitate effective and unbiased decision-making. Taking a leaf out of the open-source movement, a digital forum can be created where employees across the organisation can collaborate, formulate, and facilitate change processes. Backed by sponsorship from the highest levels of the organisation, this forum can become a useful learning repository—spreading knowledge, ensuring visibility, and establishing best practices for successful transformation. This will also mark a shift from earlier digital transformation efforts that emphasised more on system requirements, leading to further delays and large cost overruns.
Instead, the focus will be on using strategic mentoring as well as encouraging participation in activities such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) and hackathons. For instance, McKinsey notes that organisations that use customer analytics see a 126% profit improvement. Implementing an interconnected blueprint that binds managers, systems, employees, and consumers together will drive the future enterprise. How we utilise these connections to build a dynamic, interdisciplinary work culture will redefine how we succeed now and in the future.
Processing power has dominated the conversation about the possibilities of real-time Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is a crucial requirement to deliver actionable insights in the lowest timeframe possible.
By Ciaran Dynes, Senior Vice President of Product, Talend.
However, while computing power is part of the challenge, it is not the full story. The 2016 Gartner Market Guide for Self-Service Data Preparation reported that “analytics users spend the majority of their time either preparing data for analysis or waiting for data to be prepared for them”.
This exposes a crucial but often overlooked aspect of the data processing function – data quality. It is imperative that the insights gained from analytics and AI are not just quick, but also accurate and reliable. This means ensuring that the correct data is in the correct place. After all, there is no AI without perfect data, and there is no perfect data without humans. In this way, we can view AI as an extension of human intelligence, as it is only as good as the data humans provide and ultimately designed to provide insight which a human can use. To be difficult, you could say AI is really augmented intelligence.
According to IBM, bad data costs the US $3 trillion per year. Meanwhile, Gartner estimates the average financial impact of poor data on organisations is $15 million every year[1]. The Harvard Business Review credits this to “hidden data factories”, where departments end up having to fact-check existing data already in the system. This burden is added on to performing their existing core function, creating stress and unnecessary additional work to the team. In turn, this leads to problems including incorrect data ending up in the hands of customers, and employees spending up to 50% of their time finding and correcting data. As most business leaders would agree, neither of these are ideal outcomes.
In a world where data has been termed the “new oil”, it makes sense that businesses want to ensure that the bits and bytes they process are top quality. However, the current processes for doing so are both tedious and inefficient. As a result, organisations are unable to deal with the vast amount of pure, unstructured, unvetted data, leading to a data deluge. This means organisations are rarely using the full range of data available to them in mining for business insights – in 2013, less than 1% of the world’s data was being analysed according to IDC. Similarly, once data scientists have invested copious amounts of time in refining and preparing the data, the insights businesses receive are no longer in real time.
But why does this time-to-insight matter? It should come as no surprise that markets move fast – and databases expire. A 2013 report into Inbound Marketing from HubSpot estimated the rate of decay of data at 22.5% every year. In order to get actionable insights, businesses need to ensure they are keeping up with this pace. This means replacing old, obsolete data with up-to-date, accurate data as fast as possible. With data informing every aspect of business functions – from marketing through to strategy – ensuring data quality is paramount. Using real-time analytics and AI will help organisations adjust offers and pricing to current market events, target new and existing customers with the right options for them, and stay ahead of the competition by developing products and solutions using the latest market intelligence. In short, data-driven real-time analytics and AI are becoming a mandate for business success.
Key tenants of enabling real-time analytics and AI are the ability for employees to access the data they need when they need it. This is why self-service, cloud-based data access, data preparation and data integration are so important for the modern business. With more data in the cloud than ever before, businesses need to take a new, cloud-first approach to data management. In an ideal world, this involves a carefully balanced data environment – ensuring data privacy and protection, while still offering the right people the access they need, when they need it.
One company already implementing an advanced approach to data-driven strategy is Travis Perkins, the UK’s largest building materials supplier. Initially, the company had many siloed and inconsistent product records online, which was significantly affecting its online sales. Employees had to manually update products with the correct information, but in the real-time online sales environment, this was no longer a viable solution. As a result of a sophisticated data-driven strategy, Travis Perkins has experienced a 30% increase in conversion of sales on the Wickes website, while customers can find products online far easier than before. The improved data quality environment opens Travis Perkins up to the potential of real-time analytics and insights around inventory, product location, and customer relationship management. Furthermore, by combining a fast move to the cloud for analytics with a strong data quality strategy, the builders’ merchant and home improvements retailer has accelerated its time-to-insight by 75%. The accountability of data quality has been pushed back to business users prior to their requests being sent to business insights team, achieving efficiencies by saving time spent deleting irrelevant lines of data.
When it comes to structured data, deduplication of databases is one of the most critical tasks, but also one of the most time-consuming. AI can be used to massively reduce the time it takes to deduplicate a database, which improves data quality by cleansing duplicated data sets. If you have 80million data sets, 2% are likely to be duplicates: that’s 1.6m records. While this is impossible for a human to delete these records manually in a time-efficient manner, AI cannot do the job all on its own. Yes, the process can be automated, but only if the data quality of the input is absolutely perfect. By isolating a smaller sample of data and applying a rule, the human can see if all the duplicate data is deleted without damaging the data set by deleting useful, non-duplicate data. It may require some trial and error, but once a rule has been found it can be applied to the entire database. This is a good example of what I mean by augmented intelligence.
With unstructured data, using Natural Language Processing (NLP), we can teach machines to understand natural human language – whether verbal or written. By extracting information like names and phone numbers from unstructured data sets such as email threads and notes pages, NLP can enrich a data quality strategy. An example of NLP being used in practice is what I call the “lazy sales rep” scenario. One may use Salesforce to store useful information such as phone numbers, job titles, PA contact details and work-from-home days. Until now, this has been valuable data that has gone unexploited. To exploit that data, humans need to harness the power of AI. By labelling words within an unstructured data set, users can give machine learning components what they need to automate tasks and extend the outcomes of certain labels across larger data sets. This means that information captured by sales reps but not shared in a way which allows the data to be properly exploited can now be made extremely useful to the business. That is an example of humans helping machines to help humans – or what I have termed augmented intelligence.
Advanced self-service data preparation SaaS applications are essential for businesses using real-time analytics and AI to create a virtuous relationship between users and machines. Talend’s Integration Cloud and Data Preparation solutions deliver instant data-as-a-service to business users throughout the organisation. At the same time, it allows IT to maintain control and governance to ensure compliance with data regulations like the GDPR. The solution accelerates time-to-insight by up to 3x. This means businesses can more efficiently use data as a strategic asset to improve performance and competitiveness. The business impact of giving employees 50% of their time back, by removing barriers to real-time analytics is hard to overstate.
In the modern data-driven age, businesses need to embrace a new approach to data quality to make the most of the opportunity of real-time AI and augmented intelligence.
[1] Gartner, Inc. “Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools,” Mei Yang Selvage, Saul Judah, Ankush Jain, 24 October 2017.
You’re in charge of co-ordinating a smart city initiative. The possibilities seem limitless. The Internet of Things (IoT), with its embedded sensors and next-generation communication networks, promises to unlock new internal efficiencies and better customer services.
By Phil Beecher, Wi-SUN Alliance.
Smart parking stalls will tell cars when they’re vacant. Street lights will adjust their brightness to suit ambient conditions. Sprinklers will use moisture and weather data as they decide when to water local parks.
It all sounds exciting, but there’s one problem that could derail your dreams of a smart city: a lack of interoperability. There will be tens or hundreds of thousands of devices in your IoT network. Ensuring that they are designed to communicate with each other isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s crucial to a scalable, functional IoT infrastructure. There are three broad reasons why.
The first reason crops up in the vendor’s design lab before you even see the IoT device. By designing their devices around interoperable standards, manufacturers give you more choice, lower costs, and put you squarely in the driving seat.
Building their products around interoperable technology stacks enables manufacturers to draw on proven software and firmware libraries, putting a wide array of product options and features into their devices without reinventing the wheel. The lower cost of innovation benefits everyone – especially customers like you, because vendors can pass these cost savings on.
Interoperability also changes the relationship between the customer and the vendor, tipping the balance of power in the customer’s favour by eliminating vendor lock-in.
In the bad old days, users had to buy equipment from the same vendor just to ensure that it worked with the equipment they had already sourced. This problem, known as ‘technical debt’, was a big issue in the pre-IoT era when rack-mounted storage, server and network equipment were the main enterprise IT purchases.
There is no room for that in a modern industry supporting hundreds of thousands of connected devices. By ensuring that vendors support interoperability standards, customers are free to make choices based on product quality, cost, and vendor service.
The second place where interoperability matters is at the sharp end, where customers deploy this equipment. In IoT environments, performance is key. Equipment often requires a low-latency response and won’t tolerate friction in the system. If you’re gathering real-time traffic flow information from road sensors and using it to control smart speed signs, you can’t afford to wait for that data.
Interoperable IoT devices, built to talk to each other natively via standard interfaces, will deliver results more quickly than those that must translate requests through middleware. Standardization is important here.
The same goes for resilience. One of IoT’s big promises is strength in numbers. If the transceiver atop a street light fails, your municipal mesh network can keep operating because there are redundant devices nearby to pick up the slack. For these failover scenarios to work properly, devices must communicate on the same frequencies with the same software interfaces.
The final scenario where interoperability matters in your IoT strategy hasn’t even happened yet, and that’s why it’s so important.
IoT infrastructures aren’t just discrete, project-based implementations with a single use case. If you design them that way, you’re missing a major opportunity[PB1] . They’re platforms for future innovation. To truly take advantage of IoT’s promises, you must design your infrastructure to support use cases that you haven’t even thought of yet.
Think about your smart city, five years hence. The moisture sensors you installed to monitor road drainage were built by a different project team than the one that designed your smart traffic signal network, but you had the foresight to mandate the same IoT interoperability standard for all project teams.
Your city planner makes a case for changing speed limits dynamically by altering traffic signals based on road conditions. When it’s wet, slower traffic reduces accidents. Because you thought ahead, you can build applications that combine data from those two IoT projects.
To create these new applications, organizations must rely on a productive, dedicated team of developers. These technology professionals will also benefit from an interoperable IoT infrastructure. By developing to the same technology standards and interfaces with every software project they build, they can streamline their skills and bring applications to market more quickly.
Standardized programming interfaces also make it easier to embrace modern, automated development cycles that promote continuous improvement. The result? A more responsive development team that can fix bugs and introduce more features to IoT applications based on user feedback.
The importance of interoperability is only going to grow in the next few years as more devices come online. Gartner predicts that there will be 7.5bn enterprise IoT endpoints installed in 2020, representing a 140.8% increase over 2017’s 3.2bn. That excludes the consumer IoT device landscape, which is even larger.
That’s a lot of devices, and a lot of latent value. How can you unlock it? By ensuring that those devices can talk to each other. The bottom line: Think hard about interoperability in your IoT infrastructure now to realize its full potential in the future.
[PB1]Sounds a bit patronizing. Not something I’d say.
Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods drew the attention of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union on an issue that affects every industry touched by technology: What will happen to the millions of workers whose jobs are at risk of automation — and who is responsible?
By Amit Sharma is founder and chief executive officer of Narvar.
The question feels particularly urgent in retail, which employs nearly three million people in the UK . A study by Cornerstone Capital Group estimates that nearly half of retail jobs could be eliminated in 10 years. This is underscored by store closures and losses in revenue reported from shops including Toys ‘R’ Us and New Look.
Retail is rapidly changing, but technology isn’t the enemy and workers aren’t doomed. Sales are actually growing, thanks to e-commerce. Although traditional retail jobs are declining, new opportunities are emerging. Meeting customers’ expectations — for personalised recommendations, in-store pickup, free and fast shipping — requires both machines and humans.
As new jobs replace traditional ones, workers will need support and training from their employers. Retail executives are responsible for identifying the jobs their business will need in the coming years, being transparent about those that could be eliminated, and training their workforce accordingly. To fulfil the responsibility to its workers, retailers must first understand the types of skills and roles which will be in demand in the age of automation.
Here are five jobs with the most promise:
1. Data scientist
Retailers are starting to apply machine learning to solve problems at the scale of thousands, and even millions, of customers. Data scientists are already in high demand, and the gap between skilled workers and available jobs is expected to increase. McKinsey projects a 50 to 60 percent shortage of qualified applicants for these positions by 2018. Retailers will need to invest not just in buying data analytics technologies, but in developing the talent that will use these tools to benefit the business. To ensure they have the talent they need, despite the pending shortage, it makes business sense to nurture current employees with an interest and aptitude for data science.
2. Experience design
As products become more commoditised, retailers differentiate themselves by the intangibles — the all-important but somewhat nebulous concept of customer experience. Today, many of these experiences cross the digital divide. You might see an ad for shoes on Facebook then buy them at a Nike store, or you might search for reviews on your phone while trying them on in person. Forrester predicts that by 2020, 42 percent of in-store sales will be influenced by online interactions.
Top retailers are picking up on this trend by experimenting with experiences that blend digital content and physical spaces. The online-only makeup brand Glossier recently opened a pop-up showroom in London where shoppers could try products and snap photos in an Instagram-worthy setting.
Retailers need people to build the experiences that will connect customers to their brand — before and after the purchase. New experience teams will demand a number of non-traditional retail skills, including software engineering, UX design, product management and omnichannel marketing.
3. Operations and logistics
While algorithms can optimise many parts of supply chain management, retailers need people to do the rest of the work — namely, the decision-making, planning and interpersonal skills that are difficult to automate.
These skills will become more important as retailers experiment with different ways of optimising their logistics. Sainsbury’s, for instance, is trying to entice online shoppers into stores with new incentives, like the option to avoid checkout queues. While scenarios like this may lack a cashier, they demand people behind the scenes to make sure inventory data is accurate, handle in-store operations and broker relationships with partners and vendors. Workers who stand behind a cashier today may find that their skills to these areas, namely their knowledge of the store and inventory, and interpersonal skills that are as effective managing teams as they are pleasing shoppers.
4. Personalised service
Retailers are using technology to provide curated, personalised service for every customer, not just VIPs. An algorithm may be able to keep track of trends and tastes, but it’s still only a human who can connect with a customer’s emotional needs. London-based retailer, Thread, uses algorithms and online personal stylists to provide recommendations based on a shopper’s likes and dislikes. It empowers curators with data and technology to quickly learn preferences and grow their subscribers’ wardrobes.
Traditional sales associates or cashiers may transition to brand ambassador or other specialised service positions. This path will become more viable for workers as retailers focus on services that complement the products they sell. Best Buy, for example, is doubling down on the company’s Geek Squad repair service and consulting consumers on smart home technologies.
5. Retail’s responsibility and opportunity
Change is inevitable, but automation doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. By increasing productivity, technology can create new jobs and even reduce inequality. Transitioning smoothly will require cooperation between businesses, non-profit organisations, government agencies and education leaders.
“When retailers view labour not as a cost to be minimised but as a driver of sales and profits, they create a virtuous cycle,” writes Zeynep Ton, author of “The Good Jobs Strategy,” who researched labour practices at successful low-cost retail chains such as Costco. “Investment in employees allows for excellent operational execution, which boosts sales and profits, which allows for a larger labour budget, which results in even more investment in store employees.”
Preparing current employees for future jobs is the right thing to do and the only way to sustain a business. This is an economic responsibility as well as a social one. Ton’s research shows that retailers that invest in employees have better financial results, lower turnover and higher customer satisfaction rates than their competitors. As Digital and Technology Director of Sainsbury’s, Jon Rudoe,
said , “The world is changing rapidly. Our vision is for Sainsbury’s to have a world-class digital and technology function to ensure that we can deliver great services for our customers whenever and wherever they want to shop with us.”How will the Internet of Things (IoT) impact the enterprise? Asking this today is like asking in 1900 about the impact of the internal combustion engine. There will be technical and commercial developments over the next 50 years, and we cannot clearly see that far ahead. There are some trends that we can predict with confidence for the next five years, and we can see principles that will continue to apply beyond that, but we cannot forecast their effects.
By Chris Harding, Director for Interoperability, The Open Group.
The IoT is the network of connected devices that enable computer systems to monitor and control aspects of the physical environment. Sensors and actuators have been used in computer systems for many years; it is the ability to connect to such devices anywhere in the world through the Internet that is new. The IoT has applications in many areas, including personal and home environments, smart cities, factory automation, and transport.
The first trend analysts are predicting is growth. IoT software and solutions are at the top of the list of emerging technologies Forrester thinks you need to follow closely. Gartner projected that 8.4 billion connected “things” would be in use in 2017, up 31% on the previous year. Boston Consulting Group estimates that companies will spend an incremental €250 billion on IoT in 2020.
Another clear trend, contributing to the first, is increased functionality at lower cost. Moore’s law applies to intelligent devices, just as it does to IT in general. The cost of basic sensors and actuators is already low, so the trend will be to add to them communication and processing capability. A basic wired temperature sensor currently retails at under $5. Make it wireless, and you will at least double the price, but that will often not be important; for example, it costs much more than $5 to dig up a street, if that’s what you have to do to connect with wires. Adding storage and processing capabilities might double the price again, but the device will still not be expensive.
The internal combustion engine affected different enterprises in different ways. Rail companies lost traffic to road and then air transport. Farms produced more by replacing horses with tractors. Enterprises generally could operate more effectively in many ways because they had faster, more flexible transport; for example they could sell more effectively through travelling salesmen.
Enterprises will benefit from the IoT in different ways. Transport companies will be able to use vehicles that can sense their environment and drive themselves. Farms are experimenting with automatic cultivators that can distinguish weeds from crops. Enterprises generally will operate more effectively because they have intelligent buildings; for example their offices will be more comfortable to work in and more economical to run.
Some enterprises will design IoT systems, but most will use IoT products and services supplied by other companies. An intelligent building control system that regulates lighting and heating in a company’s offices might be a purchased product or provided as a service by a specialist supplier; few companies will develop their own building control systems. An automatic cultivator could be a product purchased by a farm. The same farm might subscribe to a crop monitoring service that combines information from sensors in the fields with weather data and analysis of images taken by drones to deliver data on crop growth, forecasts of harvest dates, and alerts of pests and diseases.
The challenge for enterprises using IoT products and services will be to integrate them with other systems. A building control system that includes control of access to secure areas, for example, will be integrated with HR systems, to ensure that the right people have the right access. An automated cultivator will use field plans and crop records, which will also be used by the crop monitoring service, and by other farm systems, and will share with them data gathered during its operation. The farm’s data will also be shared with government systems, for example to contribute to nation-wide analysis of crop health.
The ability to integrate IoT products and services with other systems within and outside the enterprise is a critical factor for successful use of the IoT. Other critical success factors include some, such as reliability and cost-effectiveness that apply to any system. They also include security, which applies to other systems, but has particular considerations in the context of the IoT.
Integration of the IoT products and services used by an enterprise requires them to have open interfaces and a shared interpretation of the data that they exchange.
Unless there is a need for sub-second response times, open software interfaces usually take the form of Web APIs. Many IoT systems do have real-time requirements, but sub-second responses are generally required within systems, rather than between them. IoT products can expose Web APIs over the Internet. Services that use the Cloud for data processing and storage typically do expose Web APIs over the Internet. Enterprises should select IoT products and services with stable, well-documented Web APIs, for integration with other systems.
Data exchanged using Web APIs takes the form of name-value pairs, in which the name identifies the item of data that has the value. The systems exchanging the data must interpret the names in the same way. It is no good, for example, if one system interprets “temperature” to be the temperature at a given time in degrees Centigrade while another interprets it to be the average monthly temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. Enterprises should select IoT products and services whose API documentation uses standard vocabularies to specify the interpretation of the exchanged data.
Security is a particular concern for the IoT. Some IoT systems can control their environment, so that a security breach can directly result in physical damage, as well as damage to the system’s software and data with consequential financial, emotional and reputational damage to users and their associates.
The infrastructure of most countries contains IoT systems. Their security is a matter of national importance. A breach that renders the power grid unavailable, for example, could have severe consequences for the comfort and even lives of its inhabitants, and for the health of its economy. A hostile country might use its national resources to engineer such a breach, as an act of war. A commercial enterprise that has IoT devices in its infrastructure might suffer such an attack by a rival enterprise. Criminals could use the threat of such an attack for extortion.
Some IoT devices are in physical situations where it is difficult to maintain them. Particularly with older devices, it may be difficult to apply software patches to address security vulnerabilities. These devices leave their systems open to attack. They can also be “captured” by attackers and used to attack other systems, as in the Dyn cyberattack that disrupted the Internet in 2016.
The game of chess, which is an intellectual model of warfare, is also a model for IT security. There is no strategy that guarantees success; you can only win by playing better than your opponent. Enterprises using the IoT must analyse the risks involved, and use appropriate countermeasures to eliminate or mitigate them.
The applications of the internal combustion engine are all very different, but they do have a common characteristic: more of what, in a person, would be muscle power. Enterprises using them gain physical strength. With the IoT, by this analogy, they gain sensory perception, and the ability to apply their strength precisely. The IoT gives them what, in a person, would be eyes, ears, and hands.
Processing IoT information will take a substantial proportion of enterprise computing power just as, in a person, a substantial amount of brain activity is devoted to sensory perception. It is estimated that about 30% of neurons in the brain’s cortex are devoted to vision, 8% to touch, and 2% to hearing. Enterprises are using big data analysis and cognitive computing to gain business insights from IoT data. This will account for an increasing proportion of IT spend over the next 10 years, and may well reach the 40% suggested by the human analogy.
The current trend is for this to be spent on vertical industry applications and the computing resources to support them. It is unlikely that this will change. The idea that a general enterprise sensory perception system will evolve is carrying the human analogy too far. So we will see major vertical IoT solutions that include both physical devices and specialist analysis and control software.
The IoT will have as big an impact on enterprises as the internal combustion engine did. It will give enterprises the ability to sense and control their environments in a coordinated way. There will be major challenges for enterprise architects to overcome, but like the internal combustion engine, the Internet of Things will ultimately benefit not only enterprises but also the people in them, and society as a whole.
Enterprise network perimeters have been extended by the IoT. Whether it’s sanctioned IoT or the multiplicity of gadgets being brought in by users to the enterprise environment, IoT represents a threat because each and every device effectively becomes an endpoint on the network. That’s a potentially massive attack surface and it has profound implications because it means network security may only ever be as good as the weakest device on it.
By Ken Munro, Ethical Hacker and Partner, Pen Test Partners.
IoT devices are now in the hands of the hacker, who has the opportunity to reverse engineer these at leisure. From a smart lightbulb to a smart kettle, this technology is easy to come by and generally features low level security because of the price point of these peripherals.
Vendors are simply not adequately engaged to prevent this, with security seen as an added expense: recent research from Gemalto suggests that only a paltry 9 percent of IoT vendor budgets are spent on security. That’s because it falls way down the list of priorities, chief of which is getting the product to market on time.
The result is IoT products that have scant security protection. The most common failings are the use of default credentials, a lack of encryption, and leaving in place extraneous features such as open web ports. These provide the hacker with multiple attack vectors to exploit in order to take over the device which can then be used to compromise the enterprise network itself.
Such issues are further compounded by a lack of support. Some devices may not enable the device to be updated at all, others need to be upgraded physically, and while the more sophisticated may boast the ability to support Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, the mechanism itself may not be secure. This could potentially allow a rogue update to be used to propagate malware over the device.
Where’s the evidence?
The problem is not limited to consumer IoT; even sanctioned enterprise-grade IoT deployments can be susceptible. We routinely survey IoT ecosystems and find that supposed ‘isolated’ devices can be accessed and used to compromise internal networks.
On one investigation, we were able to infiltrate the network purely through the smart lighting infrastructure while more recently we took a look at Building Management Systems and found thousands of corporate HVAC controllers on the public internet. The problem wasn’t down to the security of the kit but rather the way these controllers had been installed by electricians and HVAC engineers with very little security knowledge. As a result some controllers were completely unprotected with their authentication bypassed and could easily be identified and located using the Shodan website. Some had already been hacked.
Aside from poor installation, attacks can be performed against the IoT device itself by physically extracting key internal components such as the chipsets or SIM cards. These devices often have deep and often privileged access to the network and some components will automatically regard any form of access as trusted. Attempting to connect to them and forcing them to communicate with techniques such as running voltage through the chip can often reveal a treasure trove of information, including passwords, the servers the device is talking to, and how that information is relayed. IoT chips, for example, will often store secret keys in memory that are almost always unencrypted. Even if one can’t dump the firmware, readout is often possible direct from RAM. Simply pull the keys from memory and you can compromise the network.
Having hacked one device it then becomes easy to compromise other linked devices before stepping onto the network proper but we’re also increasingly becoming aware of the possibility for remote attacks that take advantage of poorly secured access mechanisms to take control of the device and/or to propagate malware onto the network.
Why is this happening? Because assumptions are being made that IoT devices do not pose a threat in themselves. Very few people are alarmed about the prospect of their kettle being hacked and even fewer make the connection that a compromise of this device could result in a compromise of the network and their credentials. This combination of poor security and a lack of awareness means IoT is highly vulnerable, with 84 percent of IoT adopters claiming to have suffered a security breach over IoT, according to a global survey.
What can I do about it?
Organisations are having difficulty in policing these devices with recent reports revealing that 82 percent of businesses are not confident they would be able to successfully audit all the IoT devices on their network. With no idea of what’s on your network, how can you secure it? There’s currently very little guidance to help them either in the form of standardisation, guidelines or frameworks for deployment and that can see the enterprise having to go it alone when it comes to performing due diligence and selecting equipment.
Thankfully, steps are now being taken to issue guidelines with the likes of the IoT Security Foundation’s Working Groups looking to develop an IoT Security Compliance Framework, Compliance Validation and Test procedures, and a vendor Trust Mark. The aim is to encourage a ‘security by design’ approach that sees both software and hardware security measures taken that de-incentivise reverse engineering, making it simply too convoluted and non-productive, thereby reducing the attack surface.
These guidelines are still being produced so in the absence of regulation organisations must take steps to verify the security of sanctioned IoT deployments and extend BYOD themselves. So what steps should you take to deploy IoT safely?
First of all, do configure the device and don’t rely on defaults. Device passwords need to be long, complex and stored securely. The services your IoT device is controlling need to be segregated and you should also ensure that each device is also segregated to prevent chains of devices being taken over.
From a management perspective, don’t rely on those overseeing the IoT implementation to verify its security and do test the deployment to identify any weaknesses. Assign responsibility for overseeing IoT security to specific individuals. Remember that BYOD policies need to include IoT devices and seek to educate users on the risks of installing that new smart kettle, plant feeder etc in the office environment.
Going forward, there’s every reason to expect a major IoT system breach because these devices are insinuating themselves into the enterprise environment and provide such a handy stepping stone onto the network. Once a compromise becomes proven, expect it to change hands on the black market and proliferate, at which point it’s only segregation that will save you. Thinking like a hacker and limiting connectivity could therefore make the difference between a vulnerable and secure ecosystem.
Ken can be contacted at ken.munro@pentestpartners.com or follow him via Twitter @thekenmunroshow
The rise of new technologies and their impact on a multitude of sectors has defined the digital disruption of recent years. Banks continue to close more branches as the thirst for more efficient and online services grows, while a renewed focus on the digital customer experience is sweeping through the airline industry.
By Nick Nonini, Managing Director EMEA, at Verint Systems.
This drive for innovation is effecting organisations of all shapes and sizes, as they reconsider their operating models to respond to the demands of an ever more digital consumer. At the same time, organisations are faced with an uncertain economic outlook as Brexit negotiations get underway, the prospect of rising inflation and slowing wage growth means that consumers will likely expect greater levels of customer service in the future.
But research from Verint has revealed a far more complex prognosis, examining the causal link between the rise of digital technologies and customer churn, as companies are having to respond, or risk losing valuable business.
The research shows that consumers who prefer to engage with brands via digital channels, are more likely to swap providers than those who engage through human touch interactions, such as via the phone or in-store.
This link between communication channel preferences and retention showed that just under half (49%) of those who prefer to engage with organisations via digital channels have been with providers for more than three years, compared with 58% who prefer to pick up the phone and 57% who prefer to go in-store.
When executed properly, the value of the human touch in customer service can drive better customer engagement, retention, and feed into the bottom line. Yet, in order to achieve this, companies need to strike the balance between embracing the modern digital agile customer, while taking care not to alienate those that prefer to engage through traditional human touch interactions. To be successful, companies must adapt to new operating models, new ways of interacting with consumers, and new ways of selling. Back office integration is a key part of this, and plays an important role when it comes to meeting customer expectations in the modern age.
The front office has played the most essential role in delivering customer service in recent years, as it’s traditionally been the first point of contact for the consumer. Yet, as more consumers engage with brands digitally, the line between front office and back office operations has become increasingly blurred. Consumers now expect the back office to deliver the same levels of customer service, such as billing, processing orders and updating records, that the front office fulfils.
Back office operations no longer have to take a back seat. Companies must move beyond the customer contact centre and adopt a holistic approach to ensure the back office comes on this digital journey with them, balancing the older paper heavy processes with digital demand and ensuring nothing slips through the net.
The drive for digital innovation across a huge range of sectors is unstoppable, and the consumer demand for these services is only set to rise. But with this demand comes equally high expectations, especially from a younger more tech-savvy generation. As this consumer base becomes more prevalent in the market place, so brands across sectors, and indeed across the world, are seeing their retention figures fall.
To meet these expectations and retain a strong customer base, companies must align their operations. This is particularly true in the back office where operations are often complex, comprised of many lengthy, multi-touch processes and extend over different work groups and systems. To move past the chaos to coordination, businesses must gain visibility and control over what is being done by whom, when and for how long.
In achieving this, companies need to look to introduce workforce management solutions capable of addressing the complexities and needs of different back office functions. By galvanising back office teams, the business can improve employee productivity and performance, helping brands to make the digital experience more personal, meeting the demands of the digital consumer.
*Verint conducted research of more than 24,000 consumers in 12 countries across nine industry sectors - in partnership with Opinium Research LLC, and additional insight from analysts IDC.
The application forms part of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure ™ solution for data centres, and delivers detailed remote monitoring and critical information direct to the users’ mobile phone.
Overview
Kelvin Hughes is a developer and manufacturer of navigational and radar systems for civil and military applications, with a manufacturing history dating back over 250 years. The company, which was acquired by German defence contractor Hensoldt in 2017, is based in Enfield in Essex, where its corporate data centre has been located for the past five years.
The data centre and its IT equipment host all of the company's critical applications including its ERP system, development servers and data storage systems. As a Ministry of Defence (MOD) subcontractor, the company has a vital requirement for both physical and cyber security, in addition to strict access control. Business continuity and disaster recovery are also important aspects of the facility’s day-to-day operation.
“If the data centre fails, the company essentially stops trading,” said Ian Mowbray, Infrastructure Services Manager at Kelvin Hughes. “Reliability, both in terms of the data centre hardware, the IT equipment and the services supplied by Kelvin Hughes is an issue on which the company cannot afford to compromise.”
From Inception to Delivery
Kelvin Hughes’ original data centre, which was designed and built with the help of Schneider Electric, consists of 12 racks containing a mixture of physical and virtual servers and data storage arrays. However, only eight of the racks are in use today by Kelvin Hughes, with the additional four populated by another company which is collocated on the business premises.
There is scope for considerable expansion in the data centre, which would bring with it a need for additional monitoring and management of the facilities to ensure that it continues to operate effectively.
Mowbray's team comprises six people who are responsible not just for the IT equipment and helpdesk, but also for the entire building management including environmental control, access control and maintaining the water supply for the data centre cooling equipment.
Advanced Insights
In recent months, Kelvin Hughes has deployed Schneider Electric’s StruxureOn service, to help maintain its data centre operations whilst providing remote management and monitoring. Ian Mowbray explains that when built, the facility featured a contained hot aisle together with close coupled cooling equipment.
“Schneider Electric’s InfraStruxure with Hot Aisle Containment Solution (HACS) has greatly helped the efficiency and effectiveness of our data centre cooling system,” says Mowbray. “A number of the servers have been virtualized making the requirement for physical servers unpredictable. The HACS enables a high density load and the flexibility to reliably accommodate, power and cool an additional number of IT devices.”
“We used to have a monitoring server in the computer room which looked after all of the infrastructure and sent us email alerts if anything was amiss,” said Ian. “But during a recent routine upgrade of the batteries in our UPS systems, we learned about StruxureOn and that we could deploy it as part of our existing maintenance agreement with Schneider Electric.”
“Anything that provides additional insights and proactive monitoring or management of our facilities is of great interest because we’re a small team and it’s essential to know what’s happening in the data centre on a daily basis.”
StruxureOn enables data-centre managers and operators to both view and control all their equipment from a single central console, more commonly known as the “single pane of glass”.
A great benefit of the new system, according to Mowbray is that alerts to any issues that reach a certain threshold of concern can be sent directly to a duty manager via the mobile phone application. “It means we can continue to monitor the computer room remotely at weekends, and should we encounter any issues, they are delivered directly to my Smartphone.”
“The app also makes it much easier to communicate with Schneider Electric in cases where external support is required.” He continued. “As a customer, we can log a support call directly into the maintenance team via the app, meaning that we don't need to phone the helpdesk any more. We have previously encountered cases where a power supply has malfunctioned over a weekend, we've logged a call and the Schneider engineer has been on site first thing Monday morning with a replacement part.”
Resiliency is key
The data centre is designed to be ultra-resilient and as such has a lot of redundancy built into the UPS infrastructure. “Due to the fact that we’re running at around 50% of total capacity, we can get about two and a quarter hours autonomy time from the batteries at our current load. In addition, we can continue to run the water pumps and In-Row cooling units, because we have a 4000 litre water buffer located outside, which gives us substantial cooling redundancy to continue to cool the room even if we experience a power loss.”
By utilising Schneider Electric's PowerChute software, which selectively shuts down various servers in the case of a prolonged power outage, the autonomy time of the batteries can be increased even further. “We can actually squeeze about three and a half hours out of the batteries before everything stops,” says Mowbray. “In reality, mains power would typically be restored long before then. The longest power cut we have had in five years only lasted for 20 minutes.”
Mowbray says that the security of the data centre is adequately provided by the Schneider Electric Symmetra UPS systems, which remove the need for a backup generator. “We considered that option,” he says, “but given the level of risk it wasn't worth it. It's more important for us to shut down the kit safely in a controlled way than to have a generator, which may or may not even start!”
Data Centre Lifecycle Services
The service provided by Schneider Electric is essential to the effective management of the data centre's facilities. “The StruxureOn monitoring service has enabled us to extend our virtual team at literally no extra cost,” says Mowbray. “In order to deliver detailed insights and reporting at a similar level we’d need a far bigger team in place to monitor the facility 24/7.”
“From the point of view of engineering, product maintenance and lifecycle support, Schneider Electric continue to provide an excellent service to Kelvin Hughes,” he continued. “Any time we've had an issue with a piece of infrastructure equipment, they've always sent a replacement with an engineer in a timely manner, I cannot fault their service team.”