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Cloud providers
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IBM GOES TO PARIS AND AMAZON TO FRANKFURT AS MORE
CLOUD COMPANIES RESPOND TO DATA PROTECTION CONCERNS
BY BUILDING DATACENTRES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
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Financial IT
Cyber security
Ulster Bank owned by the Royal Bank of

Scotland (RBS) has been fined 3.5m
by the Irish financial services regulator in
relation to the IT problems experienced in
the summer of 2012. This follows reports
UK regulators will punish RBS with a fine
of tens of millions of pounds for the same
incident (see pages 6-7).
Cyber criminals target corporate executives while they are travelling to steal
sensitive data, researchers at security
firm Kaspersky Lab have revealed. The
company uncovered a cyber espionage
campaign, which focuses on C-level
executives connecting to corporate data
using hotel Wi-Fi networks.
Irish regulator Central Bank of Ireland

stings Ulster Bank over RBS IT failings
Cyber criminals target executives while

they travel, according to Kaspersky Lab
Superfast broadband
Public sector IT
broadband has now touched 1.5 million

homes and businesses across the UK, just
three months after it celebrated passing
its millionth premises. From a troubled
start, and despite the criticism that still
besets it, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK)
is now passing more than 40,000 new
properties every week, the government
has claimed.
The private sector could learn from the

NHS and the rest of the public sector
when it comes to inspiring trust among
consumers over personal data. The third
and most recent Data Nation report
from professional services firm Deloitte
revealed 60% of respondents were most
trusting of public healthcare providers and
51% of other public sector organisations.
Networking
Government IT
BDUK passes 1.5 million premises mark NHS more trusted with personal data
The governments roll-out of superfast
than private sector, shows report
Juniper CEO Shaygan Kheradpir resigns Government backs

following allegations of misconduct
down on PSN security
Juniper Networks CEO Shaygan Kheradpir
has quit his post less than a year after
he was appointed, following allegations
of misconduct in negotiations with a key
customer. In a brief statement, Juniper
said Kheradpir stepped aside following
a review by the board of directors of his
leadership and his conduct in connection
with a particular negotiation.
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The government has

admitted the security rigmarole councils had to endure to connect
to the public services network (PSN) were
too prescriptive, as it moves to a flexible,
proportional approach to compliance.
Government CTO Liam Maxwell said the
latest security classifications will focus on
proportional risk assessment.
UBS MOVE TO ORACLE HR IN

THE CLOUD HITS DELAYS
Swiss bank UBS has hit major delays migrating
to a cloud-based human resources (HR)
system and is yet to complete the move
twoand-a-half years after deciding to
implement Oracle Fusion Human Capital
Management (HCM).
Sources said the migration to the
system,which will provide HR services to
support 65,000 workers, has been hit by
majordelays.
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Internet access
Cloud computing
Two days after US president Barack

Obama came out in favour of net neutrality, Cisco CEO John Chambers used his
quarterly results call to reiterate Ciscos
position against the idea, saying it would
hurt his business. Obama said internet
service providers (ISPs) should not be
allowed to restrict access or speed.
Australian airline Qantas has upgraded

its Oracle enterprise resource planning
(ERP) platform and moved it into the
cloud through an IT outsourcing contract
with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
The airline contracted TCS to upgrade its
customised Oracle E-Business Suite to the
most recent version.
Cisco CEO John Chambers attacks

Barack Obama over net neutrality
Qantas puts Oracle ERP in the cloud

with Tata Consultancy Services contract
Cloud skills
IT outsourcing
Open-source infrastructure-as-a-service
(IaaS) specialist Reconnix said most IT
leaders still fear moving from traditional
server and hosting environments to IaaS.
A year after it issued a report making
similar claims, Reconnix has published
another document suggesting senior IT
managers fear cloud migration because
they lack the in-house skills for it.
ing operations of the Co-operative Bank

as part of an outsourcing contract worth
up to 325m over 10 years. The contract, which is not quite finalised, will see
Capita take over the operations that support 250,000 mortgage customers of the
Co-op and Britannia. As part of the deal,
Capita will buy the banks existing mortgage processing operations.
Financial IT
Public sector IT
Lack of in-house skills stymies IaaS

Capita bags Co-op mortgage contract
migration, according to Reconnix report Capita will acquire the mortgage process-
Deutsche Bank appoints its first CDO
Deutsche Bank has appointed its first

chief data officer (CDO), with former BT
tech executive JP Rangaswami taking on
the role to standardise information management to support the banks digital
strategy. He joins from Salesforce.com,
where he has been chief scientist since
2010. Prior to that he had a five-year
spell at BT and before that was CIO at an
investment bank.
Councils need to embed

digital in processes
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The local public sector needs to ensure

digital is embedded in planning, policy
and process, alongside IT, according
to Hampshire County Councils digital leader, Jos Creese. Speaking at the
Whitehall Media Public Sector Enterprise
IT event, Creese said he is seeing a degree
of digital delusion in government. n
ONLINE RETAILERS NOT THE BIGGEST THREAT TO HIGH STREET

9%
No preference
between online and
physical shopping
32%
59%
Prefer physical
shopping
Would abandon
physical stores
foronline
Total: 1,000 respondents in the US and Europe
Source: Bearingpoint
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Can IT professionals adapt to using

Microsoft software in the cloud?
Mobility and cloud computing disrupted Microsofts model, but the software giant
has responded by integrating Office with Android and Dropbox. Cliff Saran reports
icrosoft has been busy fleshing

out its mobile and cloud strategy.
The company has updated Office
for iPhone and has released a beta version
of Office for Android tablets. Integration
with Dropbox is also part of the Office suite.
These latest developments illustrate
the companys commitment to making its
products work in a world where Windows
is no longer the dominant operating
system(OS).
In our mobile-first and cloud-first
world, people need easier ways to create,
share and collaborate, regardless of their
device or platform, said Satya Nadella,
the suppliers new CEO.
Microsoft said web integration between
Dropbox and Office will first be included
in the next updates to the Office apps for
iOS and Android, which are due out in
the next few weeks. Online access will be
available in the first half of 2015. Dropbox
will also make its application available on
the Windows Phone and Windows tablet
platforms in the coming months.
Selling the benefits of cloud
While Microsoft continues to build out

Office 365, it has to convince IT departments that it can deliver security and manageability to support greater use of cloud
applications in the enterprise.
In a demonstration at TechEd Europe
last month, Joe Belfiore, corporate vicepresident for PCs, tablets and phones
at Microsoft, showed delegates how
a user could log in through the Azure
Active Directory (AD) when they boot
up a machine for the first time. After
the userenters their login credentials,
applications are automatically downloaded
to a new PC.
Azure Active Directory is at the heart of
Microsofts device management strategy,
which spans desktop devices, laptops,
tablets and smartphones. Active Directory
offers role-based access to on-premise IT;
Azure AD extends this to the cloud. Users
can be authenticated via any device that
can connect to Azure Active Directory over
the internet.
DOWNTIME
TechEd
Europe 2014:
Microsoft
strengthens
Azure hybrid
cloud
TechEd
Europe 2014:
Windows 10
OS will
simplify PC
deployments
Web integration between Dropbox and Office will be included in the next updates to the Office apps for iOS and Android
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security focus for admins
Most mobile device management

(MDM) systems operate at the device
level. We protect at the level of the
user identity, thanks to Azure AD, said
Microsoft senior director of product
marketing AndrewConway.
Microsoft Office 365 provides basic
mobile device management. Using polices
in Azure Active Directory, an administrator can restrict which applications the user
can access, and whether the clipboard can
be used to copy and paste content from
documents.
At the enterprise level, Microsoft sells
its Enterprise Mobility Suite. This includes
InTune, for device management across
Windows, Windows Phone, iOS and Android,
along with Azure Rights Management to
protect corporate data.
Ovum principal analyst Richard Edwards
said Microsoft was offering a spectrum of
device management tools, from basic MDM
in Office 365 to the full Enterprise Mobility
suite. Microsoft offers a holistic set of
Most mobile device

management systems
operate at the device
level. We protect at
the level of the user
identity, thanks to
Azure Active Directory

Andrew Conway, Microsoft
capabilities to manage computers and users
based on their role, he said.
With these tools, Edwards said IT
administrators can provide granularity of
security and compliance all the way down
toprotecting data.
Challenges of moving to the cloud

Basic access to Azure Active Directory
is free. Office 365 E3, the full version of
Azure Active Directory is at the heart of Microsofts

device management strategy
Microsofts office productivity suite, costs

14.70 per user per month. E3 includes
cloud-based access to Exchange server and
50GB for each users inbox.
The pricing is compelling, especially
against the cost of running this infrastructure
in-house. Why isnt every business migrating
desktop IT to the cloud?
The main challenge for large enterprises
is when there is a broad range of users,
said Edwards. Moving to the cloud takes a
lot of time to plan. It is a bit like switching a
bank account.
Increased demand for bandwidth is
another potential issue. Edwards recommended IT managers consider using additional capacity or network traffic shaping
tools to manage bandwidth.
There are several approaches IT can take.
For instance, Aspera (now part of IBM)
specialises in high-speed file transfer for
extremely large files.
Avere Systems takes a different
approach,using flash memory and SSD
drives as part of its Virtual FXT Edge Filer,
which caches data stored in the cloud on
flash storage.
In the Ovum report, Office 365: Email
migration, coexistence and adoption,
Edwards noted: Sending and receiving
email via Office 365 will generate a
considerable amount of network traffic
over the organisations various internet
connections. Employees who are used to
distributing large files internally via email
over the corporate LAN and WAN could
well perceive significant degradation of
theiremail service. n
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IT stress testing
can fix banks
legacy problems,
say experts
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Fines, benchmarking and

mandatory software testing
are being put forward as ways
to prompt banks to update IT.
Karl Flinders reports
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How
endemic is
IT under
investment in
UK retail
banking?
Software
stress testing
protects
enterprise apps
in production
inance sector regulator the Financial

Conduct Authority (FCA) is expected
to fine the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
tens of millions of pounds following a major
IT problem that locked customers out of their
accounts for days. But is a fine the best way
to persuade banks to upgrade the outdated
technology at the root of the problem, or just
a box-ticking publicity exercise?
To an unhappy RBS customer, a
multimillion-pound penalty might sound an
appropriate punishment but it could prove
the opposite, if all it achieves is to create the
illusion of progress while giving the bank
a cheaper alternative to improving the IT
systems at the heart of the issue.
Regulators use capital adequacy ratio
tests to check banks have enough capital to
absorb a certain level of loss. But banks are
built on large and complex IT systems and
there are no such regular, industry-wide IT
tests, despite the risk to the economy of a
prolonged failure in the finance sector.
CA-7 batch process glitch
In 2012, RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers were locked out of their accounts for
days as a result of a glitch in the CA-7 batch
process scheduler, which froze 12 million
accounts. Customers were unable to access
funds for a week or more as the banks manually updated their account balances.
This IT disaster spurred the finance regulator into action. The Prudential Regulation
Authority (PRA) wrote to a number of banks,
asking them to provide more details about
the availability, resilience and recovery capabilities of their IT systems.
But will RBSs fine motivate the banks
which today rely totally on IT into taking
the right action?
One IT professional in a major European
bank said fines will only work if they make IT
investment a lower-cost option. Banks focus
on the economics so if the fines are small or
non-existent, there is less incentive to fix the
IT. But bigger fines would help CIOs put the
case for greater investment in IT, he said.
Upgrading banking IT
The IT professional said another method

of compelling banks to upgrade IT would
be to benchmark them against each other
and tell customers the results. Regulators
could benchmark the banks and publish
relative levels of IT maturity, investment and
outages, he said.
But wholesale legacy technology replacement is still unlikely, he said: I dont think
they will. There is a lot of mainframe
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software out there in Cobol or PL/1 and its

not going away any time soon.
He pointed out that the main driver could
prove to be competition from other firms taking market share or offering cheaper services
by having a lower cost base. IT is opening
up the financial services arena hugely and
the banks are only just waking up to it. I think
the public is more open to new brands than a
few years ago and, if they have confidence in
regulation to protect them, there will be less
resistance to trying a new brand, he said.
Mandatory IT auditing for banks
Chris Skinner, chairman at the Financial

Services Club, does not consider the RBS fine
a good idea. Its been punished enough by
reputational damage. It has already cost the
bank millions in compensation and will cost
500m a year in additional investments in
technology to sort out the issue, so this fine
is just rubbing salt into the wound, he said.
But it will focus attention on the IT systems,
Skinner pointed out: It will certainly encourage banks to invest in sorting out their legacy
mess. Banks cannot survive with systems
from the 1980s and earlier. Another option
to get banks to improve things would be to
impose mandatory tests on systems in the
same way bank liquidity is tested, he said:
There should be an annual audit test for systems compliance as systems risk is as threatening as market, credit and liquidity risk.
Fining the taxpayer
Gareth Lodge, analyst at Celent, said fining RBS would have little impact over and
above sanctions already in place: In effect,
because it is state-owned, the fine is on
itself. RBS is paying far, far more in compensation already and the fine is far, far less
than itll cost to fix the issues.
He said banks will soldier on with IT that
fails every now and again. The banks already
spend huge amounts on IT. Id draw a comparison with the NHS or the government
we all know there are problems that need
fixing, but the how is less clear, without
massive cost and disruption, said Lodge.
He agreed that a form of IT stress test is
a possible option, but cautioned: Defining
standards or thresholds could be tricky.
For banks, there is a temptation to invest
in strategic initiatives such as mobile and

digital, but the business case for transformation for keeping the engine running smoothly
is often harder to make.
Fines could drive investment
Daniel Mayo, financial services analyst at

Ovum, said the fine was a good idea because
it sent a clear signal that such events are
unacceptable and need to be prevented in
future. It creates a precedent for future fines
on other institutions and should help to stop
complacency, he said. It will also clearly
indicate that compliance and operational risk
functions need to have this covered.
Mayo said he expected the fine to drive
some investment, but whether this is net
new investment or a re-allocation remains
uncertain. For banks, there is a temptation to invest in strategic initiatives such as
mobile and digital, but the business case for
transformation for keeping the engine running smoothly is often harder to make, he
said, adding that a fine might swing the balance to a degree.
Regulators must test banks IT
Mayo suggested systems should be regularly tested, with regulators ensuring IT is

a part of risk-control self-assessments and
scenario planning, and that this is reported
back to them.
Jean-Louis Bravard, outsourcing consultant
and former CIO at JP Morgan, said the fine
was just a PR stunt. Having one arm of government tax a predominantly governmentowned entity is mostly PR, he said.
Bravard did not expect the fine to drive
other banks to invest in IT. The gap between
what is fundamentally needed and the
existing mostly legacy IT widens daily.
IT needs far more stress testing than capital
accounts, for example, he said.
Bravard suggested regulators should conduct a systematic review of bank IT, with the
power to impose fixes: Lets not kid ourselves a fundamental retooling of UK bank
IT will take years and will affect profitability.
He said legacy replacement will not
happen any time soon if the banks can
go another day without the pain of new
projects which may not yield benefits before
four or more financial quarters. n
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Cloud firms race to build EU facilities

and ease data sovereignty concerns
EU organisations are demanding their cloud data stays in their own countries
for reasons of legal and internal compliance, reports Archana Venkatraman
loud providers such as Amazon,

Microsoft, Google and VMware are
building datacentres in the European
Union (EU) as locally based enterprises insist
their cloud data stays in the region.
One such cloud provider, IBM, has
announced it will open a SoftLayer datacentre in Paris before the end of 2014.
This is IBMs third cloud-focused facility in
Europe, after its Amsterdam datacentre and
the more recent UK facility in Chessington.
The Parisian datacentre will be part of IBMs
$1.2bn plan to build 15 datacentres in Europe.
IBM built the Parisian facility to assure
French enterprises using SoftLayer infrastructure their data will stay in France,
complying with EU data sovereignty rules.
Were addressing clients and countries
growing desire for data sovereignty head-on,
said Lance Crosby, chief executive of
SoftLayer. The Paris cloud centre allows us
to support workloads and applications from
French customers who want their data to
stay in the country and secure in the cloud,
and provides our global clients with an
opportunity to get even closer to their customers in the region.
European datacentre growth
Microsoft
faces deadline
to hand Dublin
email data to
US government
Europe
should become
trusted cloud
region in the
post-Prism age,
says EC
The company decided on Paris because

France consistently ranks in SoftLayers top
10 best-performing countries in Europe.
French analyst firm Markess reported that
the cloud computing market in France
increased from 2.2bn in 2012 to 4.1bn in
2014, as more companies adopted cloud to
deploy web-centric workloads or transform
their existing operations.
The first Parisian SoftLayer datacentre will
start with about 1,400 servers and will have a
maximum capacity of 4,000 servers. It will
be based in the Globalswitch facility in
Clichy, just outside Paris.
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IBM says it
will open its
datacentre facility
in Paris before the
end of the year
IBM is expected to place its next European

datacentre in Frankfurt, Germany.
IBMs European datacentre programme
coincides with Amazon launching its second
EU datacentre in Frankfurt, Germany. Open
for European users since October 2014, the
AWS Frankfurt datacentre complements its
existing Dublin datacentre.
Speaking at the opening of the Frankfurt
region, AWS senior vice-president Andy
Jassy said: Our business in Europe is growing so dramatically, it is time we added
another in the EU, and Frankfurt offers the
best network infrastructure.
Preoccupations with data sovereignty

More importantly, he added: Many of our
enterprise customers say they want to keep
their applications and data in the EU.
He said AWS has thousands of enterprise
customers from Germany increasingly
demanding local datacentre infrastructure so
they can migrate data-sensitive, missioncritical workloads to AWS.
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According to Amazon, many large enterprises in heavily regulated industries such

as the banking sector, insurance, oil and gas
and healthcare are turning to public cloud
services. In Europe, British Gas, National Rail
Enquiries, BP, Dutch bank De Nederlandsche
Bank and Vodafone Italy use AWS.
AWSs German customers include Talanx,
a firm in the highly regulated insurance
sector. Talanx is one of the top three largest
insurers in Germany and one of the largest
insurance companies in the world, with over
28bn income in 2013.
For Talanx, data privacy is paramount,
said Achim Heidebrecht, head of group IT.
Using AWS we are already seeing a 75%
reduction in calculation time, and 8m in
annual savings, when running our Solvency II
simulations while still complying with our
very strict data policies.
With the launch of AWS on German soil,
we will now move even more of our sensitive
and mission-critical workloads to AWS.
Academics in Germany say many businesses and universities do not move data to
the cloud because internal rules forbid
putting data outside Germany.
Hubert Burda Media a large media
company in Europe with over 400 brands
and revenues in excess of $3.6bn has
policies preventing its data being hosted
outside Germany. JP Schmetz, chief scientist
at Hubert Burda Media said: Now AWS is
available in Germany, it gives our subsidiaries
the option to move assets to the cloud and
use AWS more meaningfully.
US Prism scandal and EU privacy
European enterprises concerns around data

privacy and security on the cloud stem not
just from concerns over the vulnerability of
cloud to hacking, but also from the Prism
scandal and the US Patriot Act, which
allows US judges to demand US-based
cloud compa EU opens consultation on cloud computing
nies hand over
Masterclass on new EU Data Protection
customer
EU court declares data directive invalid
data, regardless of which
geographical region it is held in.
Cloud giant Microsoft has been fighting a
US federal court ruling that Microsoft must
comply with a US warrant and hand over
customer email data stored in its Dublin

datacentre. Its UK Azure customers include
Toyota, Coca-Cola, Aviva and EasyJet.
AWSs Jassy said the company fully complies with applicable EU data protection laws
and provides a data processing agreement to
customers who want to store personal data
with AWS.
Most enterprise customers who care
about data privacy encrypt their data on
AWS, said Jassy.
If customers hold the key to their data on
AWS, then government requests for data is
not an issue for us.
If the US or any other government asks for
data from AWS, we dont respond unless it is
a court order or it is legally binding. In cases
when it is legally binding, we challenge very
aggressively any over-reaching demands. We
then notify the customer and ask them to
manage the issue.
But, so far, it hasnt affected any of our
customers and it is not something that
people on our platform experience.
Addressing security concerns
Meanwhile, Google is reportedly investing

600m (472m) in a giant 120 megawatt
datacentre in the Netherlands as it seeks to
capture more of the enterprise cloud business. Google has three large European
datacentres in Ireland, Belgium and Finland.
It also has a smaller 20 megawatt capacity
datacentre in Eemshaven, Netherlands.
VMware opened its second IaaS datacentre in the UK to provide services to organisations that need to keep their data in the UK.
A Vanson Bourne study revealed that most
of its enterprise customers (86%) in the UK
said it is important to ensure their businesscritical data is stored with a UK-based cloud
service provider.
The theme of building local IT facilities for
European customers resonates across all
service providers. At its annual Solutions
Summit in Brussels in September, Michael
Dell, founder of Dell, said: Security is still a
big concern for European enterprises.
According to him, enterprises in Europe
prefer local clouds for data sovereignty and
privacy issues, so the company is supporting
local system integrators with local datacentres to build cloud for its customers. n
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Shop Direct targets world-class status

through technology-driven change
CIO at the company behind Very.co.uk, Andy Wolfe, talks to Angelica Mari
about a three-year IT transformation project that began with his appointment
CW500
echnology occupies centre stage

at Shop Direct as
the retail giant pursues
its goal of becoming a
world-class digital retailer.
The company behind brands such as
Littlewoods.com and Very.co.uk is driving a
three-year IT transformation process that
began in January 2013 with the appointment
of CIO Andy Wolfe.
Wolfe, who previously headed a digital
transformation programme at mobile giant
O2, was tasked with addresssing some of
the technology-related issues of the business and creating a path to support its online
plans and ambitions.
The companys digital progress has already
generated tangible results, with a pre-tax
profit of 6.6m in 2013 its first in 10 years.
The previously underperforming online channel now represents the majority of sales,
while mobile revenue is also on the rise.
We have a huge ambition and challenge
for IT at Shop Direct. Its all about the modernisation of the infrastructure, as well as
creating value through technology while
increasing the pace of technology-driven
change, Wolfe tells Computer Weekly.
interview
place, such as information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) service management

principles, as well as a proper enterprise and
service architecture setup.
Moving e-commerce to the cloud
A good example of a core project Wolfe

started was the re-architecture of the companys front-end Oracle ATG e-commerce
platform to the Amazon Web Services
(AWS) public cloud. This was key to enhancing customer experience across Shop
Directs retail websites, with availability the
main area of focus.
The retailers entire e-commerce infrastructure now sits on the cloud including
Oracles enterprise data discovery platform
Endeca, as well as the AWS-provided elastic
load balancing (ELB) and relational database
services (RDS), which now support Shop
Directs database.
The migration was a good example of that
drive to get service under control. Since our
shop is always open, availability is critical
to us and therefore the first thing to tackle,
says Wolfe.
IT transformation
Timberland
focuses on
online
customer
experience
UK
retailers must
invest more in
digital
technologies
As soon as he joined the company, Wolfe

had to get moving with the transformation project and fast. He says the solution
for Shop Directs problems at the time was
pretty straightforward.
It was a case of clearing the decks. This
meant stopping some stuff and starting
some stuff, as well as compartmentalising
changes, he adds.
It was very clear to me from the start
that to make some very important changes,
we would have to put some new things in
Wolfe: We have
a huge ambition
and challenge for
IT at
Name:
Shopxxxx
Direct
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Since we started on that, the team has

done a great job in supporting the business,
which was the result of a great deal of hard
work. In 2012, during our peak quarter, availability was 57% across our sites. In 2013 it
was 100% in the same period, plus we have
seen a massive uplift in business volume.
That was my priority. First, to get stability; then, increase efficiency in project and
programme management, focusing on areas
such as personalisation in the e-commerce
platform, increasingly placing IT as a differentiator, he adds.
Shop Direct is one of the largest implementations of AWS in the world and something
Wolfe is very proud of.
Thats because it has enabled a faster
pace of change, as well as the ability to
respond very fast to market demands in a
sustainable and low-cost way software as a
service (SaaS) is critical to making that possible, he says.
Becoming a multi-channel business
Thanks to the increase in availability and

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improvements in the IT supporting the busiTO WINDOWS
ness, Shop Direct has managed to shift from
SERVER MIGRATION
its previous catalogue-sales focus to being a
fully-fledged digital retailer but the change
DESKTOP AS
programme is far from finished.
A SERVICE USE
Now the foundations are in place, the
BEGINSTO GROW
company wants to move towards being a
true multi-channel business with more work
WHY ELECTRONIC
across web, social and big data analytics,
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FOR 2015 ELECTION
We have big brands and aggressive targets
that IT has to support, so we needed a
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sustainable plan to get IT in the forefront of
the business and also get the business more
aware of trends in the marketplace, he says.
One such trend is personalisation, which
he claims is
massive in
CIO interview: Dave Ubachs, Staples Europe
retail right
CIO interview: Paolo Cinelli, Ikea
now. This body
CIO interview: Hugh Fahy, Net-A-Porter
of work, which
is geared
towards offering certain products and distinct experiences across the Shop Direcct
sites, is closely related to what the company
does in data analytics.
We have to focus on personalisation, so
the customers can keep coming back to us.
We have a huge amount of data of our own

and also data from our financial services arm.
When combined, these two sets of data
can provide the business with some interesting insights about customers as they shop
around, says Wolfe.
The aim is to use technology to get these
insights in a way that doesnt generate
latency for the customer and doesnt interrupt the experience online. The big challenges are around what data we have and
what value we get from it, and whether it
gives us a better view of the customer lifecycle, he adds.
Wolfe says the IT team is working on data
schematics for that project, as well as working out what datasets will be fed into the
algorithm they create.
The big challenges

are around what data
we have and what
value we get from it,
and whether it gives
us a better view of the
customer lifecycle
Pre-Christmas rush
Meanwhile, Shop Direct has to get its house

in order ahead of its busiest season the
team has 30 IT-related changes that must
be delivered in the next few weeks, before
everything is locked down for Christmas.
Changes are broadly split across the things
required to continuously improve the level
of service, speed and stability across our
systems stack as the traffic profile increases
and the way customers browse and shop
our sites changes during the golden quarter,
says Wolfe.
Thats along with the introduction of new
capabilities such as multi-select which enables our customer to quickly navigate to the
products most relevant to them, he adds. n
This is an edited excerpt. Read the full interview online.
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IT leaders need to act

fast and keep up with
the pace of change
he age of the command and control IT department is over on that most experts are agreed.
The balance of power in corporate IT has shifted
away from the IT team and away from their technology
suppliers to their users in the business. But plenty of IT
leaders are still trying to come to terms with what that
means for how best to manage and organise their team.
Last week saw the Gartner Symposium in Barcelona
the analysts annual IT leadership shindig. At the event,
Gartner experts put forward their latest research on IT
management, hailing the emergence of bimodal IT.
The analyst said IT departments need to operate in
two modes one for fast-moving, agile, digital initiatives; the other for more conventional IT, with stricter
governance, systems management, change control and
so forth, essentially for back-office systems.
Not every expert is so convinced. Simon Wardley,
who works with multi-national companies and with the
Government Digital Service (GDS) on techniques such
as mapping and strategic gameplay, ridiculed Gartners
research. He proposes a three-way model for IT what
he calls pioneers, settlers and town planners. He suggests there needs to be a middle stage that takes all the
agile, digital stuff, and evolves it to become business as
usual, managing the culture and process changes that
often implies.
That theory makes a lot of sense how many times
have we seen great new corporate IT innovations that
simply fail to take hold because the business is not
ready to take advantage of them?
Whichever view you subscribe to, the common theme
is that the IT department is rapidly changing and having
to take on new ways of working, different skills and better ways of relating to its business users.
The structure and skills of IT departments have always
evolved as technology changes, of course. But the pace
of that organisational change is going to feel bewildering for many IT leaders in the next few years.
Whatever style or structure IT leaders prefer, they need
to rethink the very fundamentals of their team. Those
who dont will soon find someone else doing it for them. n
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Eight big
data myths
that need
busting
Big data
security
analytics still
immature,
saysecurity
experts
Digital businesses should harness big

data to unlock their digital customers
Customers have high expectations for personalised services. Mike Sutcliff and
Narendra Mulani report on how businesses and governments can meet them
igital technologies offer businesses

opportunities to create value. These
arise as analytics, mobile, cloud and
social media change how organisations,
consumers and employees interact with each
other. Businesses and governments can, for
instance, create new customer experiences,
improve citizen services and deliver better
patient outcomes, as well as reduce costs
and increase productivity of their staff.
The fuel for this digital transformation is
big data. According to a recent Accenture
study, around two-thirds of companies
worldwide have completed big data
implementations so far.
Of at least 1,000 respondents, nine out
of 10 senior technology, data, marketing,
operations and financial leaders from these
companies reported satisfaction with the
business outcomes, viewing big data as an
important part of their digital transformation.
Big data enables the digital business for
two reasons: it is the key to unlocking digital
customers, channels and markets, and is
essential to running the digital enterprise.
Unlocking digital customers
According Accentures research, 53%

of executives said their company applies
big data to improve personalisation. For
instance, data-driven insights feed mobility
and location-based services. These services
deliver recommendations and special offers
to customers depending on where they are
and what previously collected and analysed
data says they are likely to be interested in
buying at any given moment.
Enabling the digital enterprise
For 58% of respondents, big data

technologies help their business remain
competitive in a digital economy. And
most companies believe big data will
revolutionise business operations in the
same way the internet did an impressive
objective for those of us working in the field.
The deeper an organisation wades into
digital offering, for example, data-driven
services that span multiple devices the
more vital it becomes to have full command
of big data. Its new services and work
processes will create new data that should
be analysed continuously to allow these
services to improve and stay competitive.
Sooner or later, an organisation typically
becomes part of one or many digital
ecosystems, which multiplies the data it
processes, exchanges, conveys and can
ultimately benefit from. n
A major catalyst for digital business

transformation is customers who have high
expectations for personalised services and
want to do business with brands that offer
the best price, experience, quality, mobile
offers and so on. If a company does not
deliver, customers will look at a competitor.
Big data offers organisations a chance to
Mike Sutcliff is the group chief executive
learn more about what customers want and
ofAccenture Digital. Follow him on Twitter
the context behind those desires to shape
andLinkedIn.
the right experience for them. For instance,
retailers can better manage their inventory to
Narendra Mulani is senior managing director
determine how much stock should be held,
of Accenture Analytics. Follow him on Twitter
where to hold it and when they need it, so
and LinkedIn.
consumers know what product is available
and when they will receive their order.
This is an edited excerpt. Click here to read the full article.
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Moving on: How to cope when

Windows Server 2003 expires
Clive Longbottom explores how firms using Windows Server 2003 can overcome
challenges when Microsoft ends support for the operating system next year
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The
significance of
Windows
Server in a
changing IT
landscape
Managing
Windows
Server audit
logs to cover
your assets
Windows Server migration part 2 of 3
icrosoft is ending support for another product in its operating systems portfolio.
Earlier this year, the company withdrew support for Windows XP, and now
Windows Server 2003 is up for the chop an event many companies may find
more difficult to deal with than the demise of XP.
From 14 July 2015, Windows Server 2003 users with a standard support package will not
receive updates or patches. For those willing to pay extra, continued support will be available,
but this should only be viewed as a last resort. Companies are better off dealing with the
operating systems expiration by using available funds to update systems. Why?
Windows Server 2003 is more than a decade old and many of its internals are even older.
Over time, it has become a multi-layered mess of patches and updates to keep pace with
changes in business and technology, while trying to keep ahead of security threats. It is
now unfit for purpose. In 2003, the internet was relatively undeveloped in terms of how
businesses and individuals used it: security issues were different and organisations were
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mainly concerned with internal connectivity. Now the value chains between organisations,
their customers and suppliers mean requirements for the technology platform have
changedconsiderably.
However, the rush to move from Windows Server 2003
does not seem to have occurred everywhere. For every
pplications
company that is moving to an alternative platformbefore
support ends, another seems to be sticking fingers in its
developed
figurative ears andgoing La, la, la!.
internally
Microsoft estimates there are more than 10 million live
systems relying on Windows Server 2003, with almost
may not be
one-third of those being in Europe. Companies could
keep running the operating system without updates and
compatible
hope all goes well, but this is a risky decision. To be safe,
with a newer
they will need to migrate in the next nine months or
pay Microsoft or a third party for support. Analyst firm
operating
Quocirca says the only viable option is to migrate.
However, the main issue for most companies is
system
dependence onapplications not compatible with later
operating systems. Theapplications may have come
from a supplier that hasclosed or since been acquired by a company that no longer provides
support, or perhaps the application was created internally and its documentation has since
been mislaid. Either way, there are several ways to solve this problem.
Tough choices
First, use discovery tools to identify servers on your network and which operating system
they are running. Ensure these tools can identify what is running on the servers. Most
tools will identify common commercial packages from the past decade or so. They should
also identify running executable files, even if the software source cannot be identified.
System management suppliers include CA, BMC, IBM, HP and smaller suppliers such as
Centrix Software and RES Software, along with software as a service-based suppliers such
as ServiceNow. All have some level of discovery capability in their systems management
orITservice management suites.
Second, identify how these systems are being used. Many IT staff are surprised to find
that what they thought was a mission-critical system is actually rarely used by the business.
For every company moving to an alternative platformbefore

Windows Server 2003 support ends, another seems to be
stickingfingers in its figurative ears andgoing La, la, la!
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Many variations in resource usage

are automated events launched
by the application itself to run
garbagecollection, reporting,
backupor otherevents. If those
applications are barely used, ask
ifthey are of anyimportance. If
not,getridof them.
Obsolete applications
For heavily used programs

or those critical to the
business, there are a couple
Windows 2003 Server can be run in a contained virtual machine on a
of options. One is to see
Windows Server 2012 base, allowing older software to be used securely
if the functionality provided
by the application can be
superseded by a more up-todate application to which existing data can be exported. The new software does not have
to be Windows-based. In fact, selecting a cloud-based service could remove the risks and
costs from of managing an IT stack. It could also provide more flexibility and support for a
business with a variable workload.
A recent Microsoft platform may also handle the
application.
For instance, Windows Server 2012 is a
unning
more functional platform than Windows Server 2003
and has updated security architecture and support for
indows
todays technical environment.
erver
Many systems integrators and technology suppliers,
such as Dell, IBM, HP, Accenture and TCS, can help
without
migrate applications. For businesses looking to perform
migration themselves, suppliers such as AppZero
support is a
provide software that can interrogate and migrate old
major security
applications and get them running. This is similar to
how ChangeBase and AppDNA fix desktop applications
threat
that will not run on later operating systems. For
in-house applications, the company may wish to rewrite
the application. However, Quocirca says this approach could see your organisation in the
same situation further downthe line.
R
W
2003
Windows Server on a virtual machine
For firms using a mission-critical service that cannot be migrated from Windows Server
2003 and has no modern alternative, Quocirca advises running the application as a
virtual machine in a more modern operating system for example, Windows 2003
Server can run in a contained virtual machine on
Windows Server 2012. However, interactions with
Breaking up with Windows Server 2003 is hard to do
the outside world should always be through the
The next steps for Windows Server 2003 users
latest operating system to ensure security. This may
If youre still running Windows Server 2003, you failed
have someimpact on performance but, if the base
environment is a virtualised or cloud-based system,
sufficientresources should be deployed to the virtual machine to avoid such issues.
Windows Server 2003 instances must be addressed one way or another. Running the
operating system without support is a major security threat. Doing nothing is not an option. n
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Enterprises begin migrating

more desktops to the cloud
Janakiram MSV reports on the growth of enterprise application migration
tothe cloud, and looks at the top providers and latest deployment models
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How cloud
security
concerns
affect trust in
DaaS providers
Why there
are no DaaS
monitoring
products yet
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irtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is as old as traditional virtualisation. In 2006,

VMware announced the VDI Alliance with HP, IBM, Citrix, Sun Microsystems
(nowOracle) and other companies. Since then, the virtualisation and VDI
marketshave matured to support evolving enterprise requirements. While public
cloud has provided a logical transition for virtualisation customers, VDI has been slow in
moving to the cloud.
Anyone who has implemented VDI with a few hundred desktops will agree it is complex
to set up and manage the infrastructure. VDI deployment demands advanced skills in
networking and storage. Microsofts licensing terms made it difficult for enterprises to deploy
a model aligned with their business needs. Providing VDI high availability and business
continuity was an expensive and challenging task for IT departments. And, on top of all this,
VDI could not keep up with the pace of virtualisation.
BYOD and public cloud drive DaaS adoption
Amazon EC2 launched in 2008, bringing mainstream computing to the cloud. Since then,
many server workloads have moved to the cloud. But it is only now that the industry has
started to see desktops migrating to the cloud. Two important factors are driving the
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clouddesktop phenomenon: The bring your own device (BYOD) trend and the migration
ofenterprise workloads to public cloud. With the rapid increase in consumer use of devices
such as phones and tablets, the enterprise IT department has come under tremendous
pressure to support employees who want to use their own devices. Many employees do
not need a PC to get their work done and knowledge workers want access to their data and
applications on any device at any time.
The use of file-sharing and synchronisation services,
such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Microsoft
lacing
One Drive, are on the rise. Documents and files can
be accessed and edited across multiple devices. To
desktops on
access legacy applications that are available only on a
Microsoft Windows desktop, users can log in through
clouds close to
a remote desktop client running on theirdevices. The
servers helps
trend is forcing enterprise IT departments to provide
employees with secure access to data, applications
deliver a
anddesktops.
The other important driver lies in the growth of
better user
enterprise application migration to the cloud. Legacy
experience
server workloads, such as enterprise resource planning,
customer relationship management, HR and payroll
applications are moving to public and hybrid cloud.
These applications are still based on client and server architecture, which demands a thick
client running on a desktop, to access the server.
Since it is not practical to run the server on a public cloud and the client on a local
infrastructure, enterprise IT wants to place desktops on clouds close to servers. This helps
them deliver a better experience to users without compromising performance or security.
IT
Desktop as a service deployment models
Presentation virtualisation: Widely known as remote desktop hosted sessions or terminal

services. This is the most common deployment model found on public cloud. Each user gets
a Windows desktop-like session that runs on a Windows Server operating system.
Desktop virtualisation: This is based on the original VDI model in which each client desktop
is provisioned as a dedicated virtual machine, running in a centralised infrastructure or
locally, on a PC with a hypervisor.
Application virtualisation: Application virtualisation deals with streaming application
interfaces to client devices, instead of installing them locally. The application executes on
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With the rapid increase in the use of mobile devices,

enterprise IT departments have come under pressure
to support employees using their own devices
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a centralised server while rendering only the interface on the clients. This enhances the
experience by optimising bandwidth. This is typically used to run multiple versions of the
same application in isolation.
Personal desktops: These enable better control by offering users personalisation and
customisation. Personalisation may include application settings, interface changes and
filesystem modifications.
Pooled desktops: Pooled desktops deliver stateless desktops that are reset at the end of
each session. This is used to assign desktops to temporary employees or users who access a
desktop in a kiosk mode.
The desktop as a service market landscape
Desktop as a service (DaaS) is one of the fastest-growing cloud service delivery

models. After a late start, the DaaS market is now growing substantially, with suppliers
such as VMware, Amazon, Microsoft and Citrix
investing heavily in the cloud service. With data
and applications becoming available on multiple
ware is
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devices and breaking the boundaries of desktops, a
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new concept of integrated workspaces has emerged.
TRANSFORMATION
partnering
Amazon WorkSpaces, Citrix WorkSpace Services
with oogle
andVMware Horizon are moving towards the concept
EDITORS
of workspaces.
COMMENT
and
Here is a quick summary of the key DaaS providers.
Amazon WorkSpaces: A managed desktop service
to bring
OPINION
from AWS announced earlier this year. This marked the
official entry of Amazon into the application services
powerful
BUYERS GUIDE
targeting enterprises. With many server workloads
TO WINDOWS
desktop
moving to EC2 and virtual private cloud (VPC),
SERVER MIGRATION
enterprises can host desktopsclose to the server.
applications to
Combined with Amazon Zocalo, Amazon WorkSpaces
DESKTOP AS
is emerging as a powerful DaaS platform.
hromebooks
A SERVICE USE
Citrix
Workspace
Services:
As
a
leader
in
desktop
BEGINSTO GROW
and application virtualisation, Citrix has a proven track
record with its XenDesktop and XenApp family of products. Although Citrix does not own a
WHY ELECTRONIC
public cloud or datacentre infrastructure, it is enabling its partner ecosystem to deliver DaaS
VOTING IS UNLIKELY
to customers. Citrix Workspace Services can run on the datacentre infrastructure, public
FOR 2015 ELECTION
cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud.
Microsoft Azure RemoteApp: Microsoft says Azure RemoteApp is a cost-effective
DOWNTIME
system for a fluctuating workforce or fast-changing business requirements. It is based on
a presentation virtualisation model for delivering applications to a variety of platforms,
including Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. Azure RemoteApp does not provide access to
the full desktop, it only delivers the application, hiding the rest of the desktop interface.
VMware Horizon DaaS: When it bought DeskTone,
VMware expanded the Horizon and View family of
VMware Horizon DaaS to deliver apps as a service
products to the cloud. vCloud Air, VMwares public cloud,
Delivering applications from the cloud is DaaS
provides the infrastructure for its DaaS platform. Horizon
No more VDI predictions: Its the Year of DaaS
DaaS supports presentation virtualisation, personal
desktops and hosted applications. By partnering with
Google and Nvidia, VMware is bringing powerful desktop applications to Chromebooks.
Currently, the DaaS market is about delivering Microsoft Windows desktops and applications
to users. As Apple Macs gain acceptance of enterprises, it will be interesting to see if DaaS
providers bring OS X desktops to the cloud. n
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DATA CONCERNS
VM
G
NVIDIA
Janakiram MSV is a Gigaom Research analyst and the principal analyst at Janakiram & Associates.
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Tick or click: Why electronic

voting is unlikely in 2015
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DATA CONCERNS
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EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE
TO WINDOWS
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A SERVICE USE
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WHY ELECTRONIC
VOTING IS UNLIKELY
FOR 2015 ELECTION
DOWNTIME
Elections
should be
electronic to
increase
turnout
measures
to counter
electronic
voting security
flaws
As the 2015 UK general election draws closer, the use of electronic

voting is once again under consideration. But is the technology secure?
Peter Ray Allison reports
ith the 2015 UK general election approaching and the increasingly digital
nature of society, electronic voting is once again being promoted as the next
stage in the evolution of democracy. But despite the ease and cost-saving
opportunities, security questions remain.
In a speech to the University College London Constitution Unit in March 2014, Jenny
Watson, chair of election watchdog the Electoral Commission, revealed the commission was
examining a range of ways to make voting more accessible, which include radical options
such as e-voting.
Almost in parallel with this, in November 2013, speaker of the House of Commons John
Bercow MP announced the formation of the Speakers Commission on Digital Democracy.
The commission is designed to make recommendations on how parliamentary democracy
in the UK can embrace the opportunities afforded by the digital world
The Speakers Commission on Digital Democracy has divided its work into five core areas,
with electronic voting being considered as a separate issue. A report from the commission
about its findings is due to be published in January 2015.
This is not the first time the UK has considered electronic voting five local authorities
in the UK held pilot schemes in 2007. Following these schemes, a report by the Electoral
Commission discovered issues with the security and transparency of the systems, and the
capacity of the local authorities to maintain control over the elections.
Electronic voting around the world
The UK is not the only country to conduct research into electronic voting. In 2005, US
defence headquarters The Pentagon decided to drop its proposed online voting system,
which would have allowed overseas military personnel the opportunity to vote in the elections later that year. The reason cited by the deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was
the inability to ensure the legitimacy of votes. Despite this, the US government continues to
employ touchscreen voting machines in its elections.
ILUHANOS/THINKSTOCK
ELECTRONIC VOTING
ELECTRONIC VOTING
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WHY ELECTRONIC
VOTING IS UNLIKELY
FOR 2015 ELECTION
DOWNTIME
Estonia is the country which has embraced digital voting the most, with electronic and
online voting being used since 2005. A quarter of voters in the country have used electronic
voting during parliamentary elections, while the tool is also employed in local, general and
municipal elections.
However, an independently peer-reviewed academic paper about the voting system used
during the Estonian 2014 elections was able to demonstrate through laboratory tests
the system was vulnerable to a series of wide-ranging attacks, which could manipulate the
results without being detected. This was despite the Estonian government employing a
unique smartcard identity system.
Jason Kitcat, a member of the advisory council for the Open Rights Group which
specialises in electronic voting defines the three broad groups of electronic voting currently
available as:
n Machines in a polling station supervised
bypeople.
n Remote electronic voting (internet voting,
he real driver of
voting over digital TV and such like).
n Electronic counting (the counting of
voter participation
paperballots).
is the importance
The UK-based independent ballot and election services supplier, Electoral Reform Services,
of elections and
routinely employs an online voting system as
well as postal, telephone and SMS voting for
trust in politicians
private-institution elections, such as for the
council of a society or university. Although
ou can t solve
important, these are relatively low stakes when
those problems with
compared with the possible repercussions of
national government elections.
technology
Increasing voter participation
Jim Killock,
One of the key reasons for the Electoral ComOpen Rights Group
mission considering electronic voting is it
perceives the tool will increase voter attendance, especially targeting an increasingly
disenfranchised younger generation.
The commissions argument for employing electronic voting is since people spend so much
of their life online, with internet shopping and online banking, voting should be no different.
However, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, respectfully disagrees with this notion.
The real driver of voter participation is the importance of elections and trust in politicians.
You cant solve those problems with technology, he says.
Another of the arguments for using electronic voting machines is they remove the need for
printed paper ballots. However, during the UK pilots that were run until 2007, Kitcat discovered in Sheffield it cost 1 per paper vote and 70 per electronic vote.
ELECTRONIC VOTING OPEN TO INFLUENCE

The parties who might wish to influence a governmental election can be broadly fitted in one of
three main groups:
n Political parties wanting to sway the election in their favour.
n Foreign governments wanting a sympathetic government in power.
n Corporations with vested interests in a particular party being in power.
ELECTRONIC VOTING
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WHY ELECTRONIC
VOTING IS UNLIKELY
FOR 2015 ELECTION
DOWNTIME
Electronic voting costly and insecure
Electronic voting is a difficult tool to produce, says Kitcat. You have an immovable deadline
which is very high risk, with very high security requirements and a lot of people trying to use
it simultaneously.
No system is ever 100% secure and this is just as true with electronic voting machines. Just
as a computer or laptop is susceptible to attacks from malicious software and viruses, so too
are electronic voting machines. These can range from insider or outsider attacks to widespread viruses on the client software.
Professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge computer laboratory, Ross
Anderson, says when political power is about to
change the stakes are very high, which could lead
to issues.
The fundamental problem is you can have subany in the
version of the technical mechanism, subversion of
the organisation that does the vote tabulation and
computer science
announces the result, or you can have coercion of
world and
individual voters, he says.
Maintaining an audit trail
academia agree
One of the key hurdles in implementing electronic

electronic voting
voting is the need for maintaining an audit trail,
should a recount be called for. When the vote is
is a fundamentally
stored electronically, it becomes far more difficult
flawed idea
to verify and recount the votes.
Not only must electronic voting be auditable, the
paper trail must be maintained in such a way that
voters remain anonymous.
There has been an awful lot of discussion on the technical means for election mechanisms
that are both anonymous and accountable, says Anderson.
You submit your vote in some encrypted form so you can check it has been accounted for
in a list of cast votes, but nobody else can link it to you. There are various approaches to this,
from fancy cryptography to multi-part stationery, he adds.
However, Kitcat says despite the research on preserving anonymity while maintaining an
audit trail, there isnt a simple answer.
The solutions are so mathematically complex they would not be understood by any likely
user of the system, he says.
Even if a technique could be found, a method for ensuring system security still needs to be
discovered. The consensus among computer scientists is not with modern-day technology,
states Kitcat. Maybe in the future, but not at the moment.
The future of electronic voting
A further consideration is that a significant percentage of the older generation currently

thehighest-voting demographic may not be confident in using electronic voting machines,
so electronic voting could never be used exclusively, and
other channels, such as traditional paper voting, would
Labour wants to revive e-voting for 2015 election
have to be maintained as options.
E-voting problems cause loss of votes, says report
Despite the arguments against electronic voting,
Is e-voting a threat to the integrity of elections?
people still believe there will be an all-electronic digital
environment. Perhaps one day the technology will exist
for a secure, anonymous, reliable and auditable form of electronic voting, but it does not
exist today. Many in the computer science world and academia agree electronic voting is
a fundamentally flawed idea and any form of government elections is the one place where
technology should not be used. n
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Silicon Roundabout gets a new name
Transport for London (TfL) plans revealed

by the Evening Standard have shed light on
the future of Londons Silicon Roundabout,
which was, until
recently, less of a
roundabout and
more ofa polluted,
congested, sixlane death trap for
unwitting cyclists.
The scheme,
approved by Boris
Johnson as part of a
multibillion-pound
plan to improve
roads in the capital, will see one side of
the roundabout paved over to create a
kind of peninsula a lovely, calming space
lined with benches where startups can
congregate to code under the shade of
beautiful London plane trees.
The mayor reckons the scheme will

ease traffic flow and make life easier for
pedestrians and cyclists.
But amid the architects drawings*
and the boasts
about nurturing
technology and
creative talent
in East London,
whatJohnson
seems to have failed
to consider is the
effect on the Silicon
Roundabout brand.
Silicon Traffic
Calming Scheme
just doesnt have the same ring to
Downtimesears.
*Why, by the way, do the people
depicted in these drawings always look
so slim and pleasant looking? It really
doesnt reflect reality in London. n
MAN RECEIVES CASH INJECTION
Read
more on the
Downtime blog
A Dutch cryptocurrency fanatic has taken the startup term cash

injection a little more literally than expected. Martijn Wismeijer,
who runs a company called Mr. Bitcoin in Amsterdam, has put
near-field communications (NFC) tags under the skin of his
hands to store digital cash. Not put off by the name of the chip
manufacturer, Dangerous Things, Wismeijer had NFC Type
2-compliant radio-frequency identification (RFID) chipsets,
encased in two preloaded biocompatible glass casings, injected
in his hands. While organisations search for a business case
for this method, parents could use it as a way to deliver pocket
money. It might reduce the regularity of requests.

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18-24 November 2014 | ComputerWeekly.

computerweekly.com xx-xx Month 2014 1

Ulster Bank owned by the Royal Bank of

Irish regulator Central Bank of Ireland

Cyber criminals target executives while

broadband has now touched 1.5 million

The private sector could learn from the

Juniper CEO Shaygan Kheradpir resigns Government backs

access the latest

The government has

UBS MOVE TO ORACLE HR IN

computerweekly.com 18-24 November 2014 2

Two days after US president Barack

Australian airline Qantas has upgraded

Cisco CEO John Chambers attacks

Qantas puts Oracle ERP in the cloud

ing operations of the Co-operative Bank

Lack of in-house skills stymies IaaS

Deutsche Bank appoints its first CDO

Deutsche Bank has appointed its first

Councils need to embed

access the latest

The local public sector needs to ensure

ONLINE RETAILERS NOT THE BIGGEST THREAT TO HIGH STREET

Total: 1,000 respondents in the US and Europe

Can IT professionals adapt to using

icrosoft has been busy fleshing

Selling the benefits of cloud

While Microsoft continues to build out

security focus for admins

Most mobile device management

Most mobile device

Azure Active Directory

Challenges of moving to the cloud

Azure Active Directory is at the heart of Microsofts

Microsofts office productivity suite, costs

CLOUD FIRMS BUILD

Fines, benchmarking and

inance sector regulator the Financial

CA-7 batch process glitch

The IT professional said another method

software out there in Cobol or PL/1 and its

Mandatory IT auditing for banks

Chris Skinner, chairman at the Financial

Fining the taxpayer

in strategic initiatives such as mobile and

Fines could drive investment

Daniel Mayo, financial services analyst at

Regulators must test banks IT

Mayo suggested systems should be regularly tested, with regulators ensuring IT is

Cloud firms race to build EU facilities

loud providers such as Amazon,

European datacentre growth

The company decided on Paris because

IBM is expected to place its next European

Preoccupations with data sovereignty

computerweekly.com 18-24 November 2014 8

According to Amazon, many large enterprises in heavily regulated industries such

US Prism scandal and EU privacy

European enterprises concerns around data

customer email data stored in its Dublin

Addressing security concerns

Meanwhile, Google is reportedly investing