From the newsdesk

Technology shall inherit the world

2010-02-03T12:14:59+00:00

The tech industry had a few action-packed days last week. Apart from Apple’s much-hyped tablet launch the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos took place. This was the first indicator of the year that IT will act as a key instrument to strengthen economic and social welfare as the world starts to climb out of the recession.

Pundits, academics, businessmen and technology leaders at forward-looking companies (as well those playing catch-up) have blogged and tweeted throughout the conference saying that innovative ideas are needed to prevent yet another economic crisis.

The overall mood at the conference was ‘cautiously optimistic’ and the tech sessions at WEF united a host of big names including the founders of the main social media networks, as well as several industry heavy-hitters, all ready to seize the opportunity in the crisis and to set an agenda for change.

‘Rethink, redesign, rebuild’ was the theme of this year’s conference, which highlighted prospects such as the power of social networking tools to not just improve business offerings and their relationship with customers, but to create value from a socioeconomic standpoint – the multimillion-dollar Facebook fundraising to help Haiti is just one example of this.

While much of the conference discussed the speed and scale of recovery and the role technology will play in this, it also covered future challenges that only the best-prepared organisations will be able to tackle. These include privacy, enabling the effective use of IT to promote collaboration and more productivity, as well as managing rapid cycles of technological change through open models of innovation, without crippling the business with short-term cost cutting strategies.

Some would argue that decisions are hardly ever made as a result of WEF discussion and that the debates “preached to the converted”. Nevertheless, as we enter a new decade, the summit underscored the power of fast-changing technologies, their increasing ubiquity and the fact that businesses will be forced to adjust to the good and bad facets of these dynamics – it is no longer a matter of choice.

Hopefully, if nothing else, Davos will have influenced the way in which business leaders approach technology and prompted them to up their game and deal with their very modern problems before it’s too late.

Angelica Mari is Chief Reporter of Computing Magazine

The future of online retail lies in a tablet?

2010-01-25T12:27:43+00:00

Last week I was at a breakfast briefing held by IMRG, the online retail trade body, where trends and performance for the e-tail segment were discussed.

As the sector matures and competition increases, online retailers are now looking at other ways in which to expand their market presence and maintain a competitive advantage.

One of the interesting points discussed during the event was the potential of mobile-based devices, and all the web retailers present agreed that the introduction of a more appropriate device to shop online would bring them extremely good news.

Tech commentators have speculated that the launch of Apple’s tablet, which is expected to be a 10-inch touchscreen, is set to revolutionise the publishing and games industry and possibly take some netbook and laptop market.

If you think about a laptop - keyboard, mouse, processor, storage and screen - these things are changing: cloud-based computing is taking processing away, touch screens are taking the mouse away and speech recognition may eliminate keyboards, said chief executive of online clothing retailer M&M Direct, Steve Robinson.

“What you are left with is a screen and a very small amount of memory used for the most personal of data plus security. I guess then you just need a screen that is usable and the iPhone is still a little small, certainly for in the home and work use – and this is probably what the tablet will become,” he said.

According to founder of web-based wine retailer Naked Wines Rowan Gormley, the tablet launch may be a ‘big step forward’ for his business, as it will bring the ‘missing link’ of the online impulse purchase in wine.

“The missing piece is a screen that is big enough to read the 250 characters required to explain the characteristics of a bottle of wine to a customer, plus a picture to make their mouths water,” said Gormley.

“The iPhone is just too small to do that and laptops are not always on. So we hope the tablet will be the solution,” he said.

We won’t know until Wednesday, but if Apple manages to replicate the success of the iPhone, the impact of its tablet could be far-reaching for online retailers.

The next question is, if so many web retailers are still struggling to use customer data to their advantage and increase product availability online in the first place, how long will it take until they can take advantage of the possibilities a new device may bring?

By Angelica Mari

Look after your IT staff - or someone else will

2009-10-29T15:52:05+00:00

A recent report by Deloitte talked about the need for specialist human resource (HR) staff and policies to create better career paths for IT professionals.

The subject came up again over lunch with an IT recruitment expert. According to McGregor-Boyall director Stewart Taylor, one of the things that often goes unnoticed in that debate is that HR struggles to get a seat on the table as much as the IT department.

“Often, HR and IT don’t get enough credit about what they do and face very similar challenges in gaining credibility from the chief executive,” said Taylor.

“One of the reasons for that is the majority of senior management teams don’t have enough exposure to these departments – they are often focused on sales, sometimes research and development when it is critical to their business, and are generally more worried about appeasing shareholders and about what analysts have to say,” he said.

Taylor added that an indication that those two functions are not seen as “strategically valuable” is the fact that appointments pages in the national press rarely include senior roles in HR or technology.

Apart from the common struggle for recognition from top management, Taylor also thinks that HR and IT do not communicate as well as they should.

“Relationships can be a lot better and companies can improve their chances of attracting and retaining the best IT staff – it is all down to good communications and trust,” he said.

Other issues mentioned by Taylor stemming from poor interaction between the two departments include the difficulty in filling senior roles due to poor training and succession planning – a theme that has been often discussed in Computing’s latest campaign, Tomorrow’s IT Leaders – and the consequent need to fill “dead man’s shoes”.

“Employees often get discouraged when they realise they can’t move anywhere unless there is an indication their boss is being considered for another job,” said Taylor.

Businesses need more openness and better hiring policies, said Taylor. This would include better inductions so employees are clear about what are the career progression opportunities available and what areas they will need to develop to move up the ladder.

From talking to recruiters, there seems to be a general consensus that IT professionals are among the most active job movers in industry – even if they are not actively looking, the vast majority are “passive jobseekers”, who will often consider opportunities available and have cards up their sleeve.

That said, busy IT leaders need to react to these new dynamics and spend more time with their people – increasingly, managers are engaging with HR and learning departments to ensure the best people are retained and that their development needs are well understood, but many are still stuck in the recessionary mindset and just keeping the lights on.

The word of warning for such managers is: if you don’t look after your people, someone else soon will.

By Angelica Mari

Fridge, oven, kettle – lend me your ears

2009-10-22T10:58:59+01:00

Being able to talk to a computer has always been a dream of mine. As a child I marvelled as Dallas whispered instructions to the ship’s computer, Mother, in the film Alien – “Roll 92 degrees starboard yaw”. And I envied Deckard in Blade Runner telling his imaging software: “Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there”.

Soon such fantasies could exist beyond the realm of sci-fi. In fact, if the government’s proposals for a smart grid go ahead, talking to your computer could become a reality in all UK homes. How? Through electricity.

Both the Labour Party and and the Conservatives are committed to upgrading the UK’s electricity grid, which dates from the 1960s.

Not only is the nation’s grid ageing but it is also stupid. It works on the premise that electricity goes only one way – from central power stations through sub stations and then into homes and businesses.

Currently, energy cannot go the other way without a grid upgrade – that is, the public cannot sell any home-generated energy back into the grid, which is a blow when people are increasingly being encouraged to connect solar panels or wind turbines to their homes.

This is where the technology comes in. A smart grid would allow decentralised energy generation. With a smart meter installed in every home, it would allow information on energy use to be sent across the grid to electricity suppliers, giving them a more accurate view of electricity use nationwide.

Electricity suppliers have to produce a lot more power than there is demand. If there is a spike – such as when millions put the kettle on in an ad break during Coronation Street – they must be sure the lights do not go out.

A smart grid would lessen the amount of wasted electricity in the network. Not only would it allow suppliers to measure usage patterns – including spikes – more closely, it could also allow a firm to transfer power from one part of the grid to another more easily.

Now here comes the fantasy. Imagine you have a smart meter in your home that is connected to a smart grid. You now know how much energy every appliance in your house is using. The meter allows you to save money because you can set certain non-essential items only to function when electricity demand – and the price – is low. Your washing machine will only come on at midnight and your boiler picks the best time to switch on.

But should power be needed elsewhere, you have a deal with your energy provider that it can switch off these non-essential items and route the power elsewhere in the grid to meet unexpected demand. Your supplier could even take some of the energy from your electric car’s battery or your wind turbine, should you agree to it.

Every home acts like a battery for the grid – and these systems could easily become voice activated. This means that if you are away for the weekend and want to save heating by turning it off, but don’t want to come home to a freezing house, you can simply dial it up from your mobile phone and turn it on before you get home. You could remotely switch the oven on, or 10 minutes before you arrive home have the kettle boiled in time for a cuppa.

As ever, science has managed to realise fiction’s dreams. Let’s hope the sci-fi nightmare does not follow. “House, open the garage door. Open the door, house…”

By Tom Young

A ticket to rant

2009-10-16T14:57:32+01:00

Dealing with companies that have a purely online presence can be a nightmare – particularly when they offshore their call centre functions.

It leaves consumers feeling the company is faceless and that there is no touch point they can relate to. Never has this been worse for me than a recent experience dealing with train booking site Thetrainline.com.

I booked two tickets for a train journey in September – one for me and one for my girlfriend.

We caught the train from King's Cross but were thrown off at the first stop by the conductor because we were told our tickets were not valid on that train.

At this point I rang Thetrainline.com to find out what was going on and spoke to a lady who told me that we were booked on the train as per the confirmation emails.

When I told her this may be the case as far as we were concerned but we had just been thrown off that train, she hung up on me – my first sign of problems to come.

We had to wait for a later train, missed our connection and had to find a hotel.

I pursued my request as a consumer rather than pulling the old trick of mentioning I was a journalist to see if that helped encourage them.

I'm glad I did - the poor customer service in the wake of the event highlights one of the main dangers of faceless e-commerce web sites: trying to get someone to take responsibility for your problem.

Thetrainline.com has no direct customer relations number so I rang its main phone number and was told to send an email to customer.relations@info.thetrainline.com. I did so on 22 September and have still received no reply almost a month later.

I rang the main number again two days later. I was put through to the floor manager. She told me she would forward my request to the refunds department, who would process it by 30 September and let me know either way if my refund application had been successful.

I asked for a direct number for the refund department in the fear that I would have to go through the tedious process of explaining the whole process to another worker before they directed me to the right place. But she refused.

By 5 October I heard nothing. I rang again to see what had become of my claim for a refund for the two tickets. After enquiring after the status of my refund to the employee she asked me to wait on hold. I did so, for over 10 minutes, before, hilariously, being hung up on.

At this point I felt there was more of a story behind the problem than simply my personal customer complaint. I rang the press office and put to them a number of questions. They forwarded it on to a UK-based customer services manager who gave me an apology for the first time.

She admitted the "system error" saying:

"Please accept my sincere apologies for our system error, we are reliant upon having the most up-to-date information supplied to us by the National Reservations System. However irrespective of this, it is clear we have not supplied correct information to you, our customer, and for that I would like to sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and distress caused to you when asked to disembark from your journey."

At last, somebody who acknowledged the mistake and apologised for it – but only because they were afraid of bad press coverage.

When asked why nobody had responded to my email the customer relations manager replied: "The customer relations team is a team of three at the present time, therefore there has been a backlog of cases which we have not responded to as quickly as we would have liked to, but we do work hard to ensure we deal with issues as quickly as possible. We are currently running at 15 working days behind, which is well above the national rail average, which is a 28-day minimum response rate."

Even better - I was to get a refund:

"I will ensure you receive a full refund for the booking and also £50, which is the costs you incurred as a result of the ticket type error. The refund will be processed today and this should appear on your bank statement within 3-5 working days."

I planned to wait until the refund was in my bank account before writing this article, to avoid the payment being dependent on avoiding bad press.

Lo and behold, five days passed. No refund. I emailed the customer relations manager. No reply. I rang the mobile number she gave me for four days consecutively. No reply.

I did a bit of internet researching, found the building she worked in, found her direct line. I rang that every day for four days. No reply.

And this from the customer relations manager who had already admitted the company had made an error, and who knows she is dealing with a journalist. If this is how they treat someone in what I acknowledge may be a privileged position, how do they treat customers who are not journalists and who never have the good fortune to get through to the customer relations department?

I'll tell you how it seemed for me: by hanging up the phone and knowing they won't have to suffer any consequences.

If you have had similar problems with Thetrainline.com or other consumer e-commerce web sites, I would be very interested to hear from you. Email me at tom.young@incisivemedia.com .

UPDATE - on 20 October the customer relations manager finally replied to an email, saying that the refund was now being processed. On 22 October I received the refund. Good luck to anyone pursuing complaints with Thetrainline.com in future. Patience is a virtue.

By Tom Young

Spirit of innovation in need of a tonic

2009-10-16T10:54:59+01:00

As the government tries to stabilise the country’s economy after the worst recession since the Second World War, it has been forced to reconsider the models of economic growth pursued since the era of neo-liberalism began.

This rethink has seen renewed emphasis on investment in skills and infrastructure, and a drive to foster increased technological innovation.

But even with this focus on encouraging startups and entrepreneurs, the chances of the UK creating a hub of innovation that in any way resembles Silicon Valley remain pretty slim.

In June, Gordon Brown announced the creation of a UK Innovation Investment Fund to support technology-based businesses with high growth potential. The fund is designed to spur the growth of small businesses, startups and spin-outs in the fields of digital and life sciences, clean technology and advanced manufacturing.

In July, the first government-backed innovation awards for science and technology - the iAwards - were launched. Science and innovation minister Lord Drayson said they would recognise the achievements of individuals and businesses working at the cutting edge of technology.

More specifically, the government said, the iAwards would highlight innovation that would help tackle the nation’s key challenges, such as creating jobs, addressing the healthcare needs of an ageing society and fighting terrorism.

New research adds support to the government’s belief that supporting technological innovation can help to drive recovery. Last week, a study by analyst IDC suggested UK IT spending is likely to outpace the country’s current meagre rate of GDP growth to reach £50bn by the end of this year, up nearly two per cent on 2008.

IDC’s research predicts the UK IT market will drive the creation of nearly 2,500 new businesses and 78,200 new jobs by the end of 2013.

But while the government is finally acknowledging the important contribution the IT sector makes to the country’s economic wellbeing, it needs to do substantially more if it wants to help UK technology firms emulate the performance of their US counterparts.

In May, the British Venture Capital Association published figures showing that while US investors provided $30bn (£18.8bn) in 2008 for startups, the UK invested only $1.7bn.

The reasons why the UK has not managed to create its own version of Silicon Valley are not clear-cut, but during a flurry of startup-focused events in recent weeks, speakers and entrepreneur delegates tried to find the answer.

Suggestions included the fact that the US holds more startup events that bring together venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs. Many delegates cited cultural differences for example, the US has a more open culture where money can be discussed freely and it is more supportive of risk-taking than the UK.

The US media was also said to do more to encourage startup activity and universities in the US are seemingly better able to nurture innovative thinkers. Other answers included the higher capital gains tax in the UK compared to the US, and the lack of UK government tax credits given to new businesses.

Events such as last month’s 10th Cambridge Enterprise Conference and Seedcamp clearly demonstrate that the UK startup scene is brimming with potential that needs to be harnessed. This country desperately needs to build on this talent to create a vibrant hub of innovation. Government investment and award incentives are a start, but they are not enough on their own.

By Rosalie Marshall

WAN optimisation specialists face market compression

2009-09-30T15:06:20+01:00

How long will it be before ubiquitous, high speed bandwidth and Windows branch caching make WAN optimisation technology obsolete?

We used to be told we could never ever have enough internet bandwidth, but with today's mesh of DSL, fibre optic and wireless coverage, is that maxim still true?

Lamentably, there are still pockets of the UK within which, because of low population density, it does not make economical sense for network providers to deliver any high speed links at all. But where that return on investment calculation does yield a positive result, businesses and consumers alike are often spoilt for choice in their choice of supplier, bearer technology, data rate and tariff.

Most complaints about wide area network (WAN) and internet performance these days concern lack of availability rather than speed – incidents where the whole thing goes down rather than slows to a crawl.

All of which may be a cause for alarm among WAN optimisation and application delivery companies, which include Expand Networks, Juniper Networks and Riverbed Technology to name but a few. These vendors specialise in providing compression and caching technology designed to speed up the performance of network links connecting one office to another – especially pertinent in corporate environments where remote, branch or distributed offices access applications and data stored on a central server based at another location.

When these WAN optimisation companies first appeared, the idea was simple - to make the most out of the WAN bandwidth already available by providing a pair, or multiple pairs, of easy to install appliances at each end of the link which involved less capital outlay than paying for additional bandwidth from the service provider.

Even in the days when expensive ATM based leased lines and SDSL services were only available to the few, the WAN optimisation argument for many was debatable. Now, when 100Mbit/s and gigabit Ethernet are more widely available, and telcos like BT are upgrading backbone infrastructure to handle greater volumes of data traffic between cities and continents, it can be tenuous to say the least.

Moreover, Microsoft has integrated branch caching technology into its Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 desktop, making a portion of the same technology free to own for anybody running those operating systems.

If WAN optimisation and application delivery technology can be successfully allied to private cloud computing and business continuity initiatives, it may have a chance. Otherwise, we may be looking at a once buoyant market heading into terminal decline.

By Martin Courtney

The changing face of the IT industry

2009-09-17T10:07:58+01:00

The recession is seemingly on the brink of a turnaround and IT companies are leading the way, at least according to a recent confidence survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Confidence can be ephemeral, and unfortunately, the survey does not tell us what we really want to know: why IT firms feel more confident about the future, and whether that confidence is based on tangible improvements, such as revenue income, customer order or operational efficiency enhancements.

You might have expected more from a study which, without a hint of irony, weighs in with the line: “Wales is now the most confident part of the UK.” Surely such assurance has more to do with the Welsh Assembly subsidising training schemes at firms making redundancies, rather than any national tendency towards self belief?

One IT company not feeling more confident is BT. The telecoms giant has scrapped its graduate recruitment scheme, blaming the recession and ongoing staff consolidation. In contrast to the Welsh Assembly, there is no help from Gordon Brown here, just another blow for any student looking for the first step to an IT career.

A new route into the industry might be to study social, rather than computing, science, according to Gartner. The analyst’s prediction, that technology expertise will take a back seat to skills in studying and exploiting human behaviour on the internet, seems ludicrous at first.

But anything can happen in marketing, especially with the financial backing of executives who should know better. A good example is the Metropolitan Police, which is employing consultants to analyse sites such as Flickr and YouTube to discover how the capital’s police are perceived among internet users, and definitely not to monitor radical views or any disposition towards attending political demonstrations.

The risk in this is finding out only what one demographic feels, and consequently ignoring the silent majority not using social media.

At least Facebook et al give dole-bound students something to do with their time – perhaps one of them will create a virtual version of Wales where we can all feel more confident.

By Martin Courtney

India is ready for more business

2009-09-10T07:41:00+01:00

Waiting for dinner at a restaurant in Mumbai airport recently, I overheard a loud American sitting nearby talking to an associate about the project he was running a captive IT operation in Mumbai.

“I just want these f***ers to do what we pay them those peanuts to do. If I want business analysis, I’ll get my guys in head office to do it,” he said. “I guess the probability of giving that kind of work to these guys is the same as saying that this place [India] will ever develop.”

This ignorant conversation continued until I had to catch my flight, but that remark about India’s development made me think.

During my travels across the country last month to research the state of the Indian market, I visited ITPB, the Bangalore technology park where many IT sector giants are based.

The level of bureaucracy that I needed to negotiate just to get into the campus was mind-boggling. Indians take this in their stride and seem to expect foreigners to do the same.

In a culture where seemingly pointless processes are so ingrained, it is understandable that some might wonder how well IT professionals in India can adapt to high-level requirements from clients abroad.

The Indian education system provides IT with a never-ending stream of first-class technical expertise, but often fails to give the much-valued soft skills needed to work with foreign clients. But the IT leaders and outsourcers I spoke to in India said the IT services environment is their “finishing school” and that graduates can acquire soft skills after 90 to 120 days of training.

Most firms running captive operations in India say their staff are so eager and more than happy to work long hours that they have to be held back.

Tesco, for example, is planning to use the vast pool of local expertise in banking to support the expansion of its personal finance arm.

Other businesses with captive operations have also suggested that Indian staff will increasingly be working on business-critical systems.

Even though some like the American in the airport still view Indian IT workers as mere “code monkeys”, the fact is they will play an increasingly vital role in global business in the years to come.

By Angelica Mari

Why IT failure comes easy to government

2009-08-20T12:26:00+01:00

I recently went to the Royal Academy of Engineering in London to watch a roundtable discussion. It was at the launch of a joint study with the BCS and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, called Engineering Values in IT.

The premise of the report was to try to move to a situation in the UK where appropriately qualified chartered engineers and chartered IT professionals lead major IT projects both in the public sector and in industry.

A typical comment from the discussion was that to maintain a gas boiler requires a registered person, but the same does not apply to designing a nuclear power station. OK, so that’s an oversimplification, but the point is valid.

It is public sector IT projects that most need targeting by this sort of initiative, especially given that their success rate hovers below 40 per cent. There have been many successful public sector IT projects, but the norm seems to be failure inevitably at huge cost to the taxpayer and it is the high-profile projects that hit the headlines which induce hand wringing and lowered heads.

There were several anecdotes that roundtable members delivered to many chuckles and knowing grins, but unfortunately some of the most cutting and funniest were off the record.

The biggest problem, according to the assembled experts, is that contracts are invariably awarded to the IT supplier that comes in with the lowest-cost bid. One suggestion to stop this happening was that interested suppliers should not be able to bid for the contract until the project was conceived and costed properly.

One roundtable member summed up the situation thus: “There’s an unholy alliance between the suppliers, who want the business and would like to do it on the basis of specifications so ill-thought out that there’s no risk transferred to them.”

Cue general guffaws all round at this point.

“And the people in government letting the contract know perfectly well they won’t be in the same post when those contracts are delivered, and that their careers will be enhanced by being able to place the contract before they move on. They also know that if they budgeted the contracts properly, they would never get funding from the Treasury to go ahead. So both sides customer and supplier are motivated to lie about how much the project will cost and how long it’s going to take. I don’t see how you cut through that.”

The best one-liner of the day? “There will never be any Cabinet responsibility for these contracts, because nobody wants to be the minister for failed public sector IT projects.”

Millions of words have been expended on how to move the success rate for these critical projects closer to 100 per cent rather than being less than 50 per cent. The big question is, would deploying an appropriately qualified chartered IT professional as champion guarantee the project’s success?

One worry expressed at the roundtable was that if, after choosing appropriately qualified professionals, the success rate of public sector IT projects did not improve - what then?

Major change is needed here. My solution looks back to mythological times, when the only recorded successful method of removing an equivalent amount of waste was deployed by the legendary Greek hero Heracles - or Hercules, if you’re Roman. In his fifth labour, Heracles diverted the Alpheus and Peneus rivers to flush out the Augean stables, washing away years of accumulated filth.

Now there’s a public sector project if ever there was one diverting part of the Thames to flush out the miscreants responsible for wasting vast amounts of taxpayers’ money. Of course, if these same people took on the task, not one drop of the Thames would reach its intended destination.

By Dave Bailey