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Building a private cloud: Get ready for a bumpy ride

By Fei Lumbania on August 26, 2010

By Bill Claybrook
Computerworld (US)

FRAMINGHAM - When cloud computing became a topic of discussion a few years ago, public clouds received the bulk of the attention, mostly due to the high-profile nature of public-cloud announcements from some of the industry’s biggest names, including Google and Amazon. But now that the talk has turned into implementation, some IT shops have begun steering away from public clouds because of the security risks; data is outside the corporate firewall and is basically out of their control.

Tom Bittman, vice president at Gartner, said in a blog post that based on his poll of IT managers, security and privacy are of more concern than the next three public cloud problems combined. He also wrote that 75% of those polled said that they would be pursuing a private cloud strategy by 2012, and 75% said that they would invest more in private clouds than in public clouds through 2012.

Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester Research, agrees that IT’s emphasis is more on private clouds these days. He says that IT managers “are not interested in going outside” the firewall.
Hurdles involved

Building your own private cloud involves some challenges, including these:

* Budget. Private clouds can be expensive, so you need to do your due diligence and figure out what the upper and lower bounds for your ROI will be.
* Integrating with public clouds. Build your private cloud so that you can move to a hybrid model if public cloud services are required. This involves many factors, including security and making sure you can run your workloads in both places.
* Scaling. Private cloud computing services usually don’t have the economies of scale that large public cloud providers provide.
* Reconfiguring on the fly. You may have to tear down servers and other infrastructure as it is working to move it into the private cloud. This could create huge problems.
* Legacy hardware. Leave your oldest servers behind — you should not try to repurpose any servers that require manual configuration with a private cloud, since it would be impossible to apply automation/orchestration management to these older machines.
* Technology obsolescence. The complexity and speed of technology change will be hard for any IT organization to handle, especially the smaller ones. Once you make an investment in a private-cloud technology stack, you need to protect that investment and make sure you stay up to date with new releases of software components.
* Fear of change. Your IT team may not be familiar with private clouds, and there will be a learning curve. There may also be new operational processes and old processes that need to be reworked. Turn this into a growth opportunity for your people — the stress of doing and learning all this may be mitigated by helping your folks keep in mind that these are important new skills in today’s business environment.

Still, as Bittman’s blog post points out, private clouds have their share of challenges, too; in his poll, management issues and figuring out operational processes were identified as the biggest headaches. And, of course, an on-premises private cloud need to be built internally by IT, so time frame and learning curve, as well as budget, need to be part of the equation.

Indeed, transitioning from a traditional data center — even one with some servers virtualized — to a private cloud architecture is no easy task, particularly given that the entire data center won’t be cloud-enabled, at least not right away.

In this two-part article, we’ll examine some of the issues. Part 1 looks at how cloud differs from virtualization and from a “traditional” data center. Part 2 will examine some of the management issues and look at a few shops actively building private clouds, and the lessons they’ve learned.

While we generally think of a private cloud as being inside a company’s firewall, a private cloud can also be off-premises — hosted by a third party, in other words — and still remain under the control of the company’s IT organization. But in this article we are talking only about on-premises private clouds.

Also, despite all the hype you might hear, no single vendor today provides all of the software required to build and manage a real private cloud — that is, one with server virtualization, storage virtualization, network virtualization, and resource automation and orchestration. Look for vendors to increasingly create their own definitions of private cloud to fit their product sets.

VIRTUALIZATION IS ONLY PART OF THE PICTURE

Many IT managers equate a private cloud with virtualization. What they describe is usually virtual infrastructure, meaning that “you can treat your servers, storage and networks as a single pool of resources that workloads can request on demand,” explains Tony Iams, vice president and senior analyst at Ideas International, a research firm with emphasis on enterprise IT infrastructures.

But virtualization and the cloud are not the same thing; to be considered a cloud, the architecture must be set up to provide both orchestration and automation on top of the virtualization layer.

There is no single ‘correct’ way to transition to a private cloud environment from a traditional data center.

Orchestration is the coordinated delivery of many types of resources, such as processors, storage and networks, to provide an integrated provisioning process; resources can be delivered in minutes rather than days or weeks. In other words, a single command or request causes a number of actions to occur, possibly in a specific sequence, to coordinate the provisioning request.

The whole point of a private cloud is to allow IT managers to reduce costs and provide so-called agile provisioning rather than just making management of the infrastructure more convenient. A private cloud with virtualization underpinnings turns the technology infrastructure into a pool of resources that can be provisioned on demand with minimal manual intervention.

Without a focus on delivering IT services, it’s unlikely you’ll attain the full benefit of private clouds.

COMPARISONS TO TRADITIONAL DATA CENTERS

In a traditional data center setup, “every time you add a server, somebody has to walk to a firewall console, set up firewall rules, attach the server to a VLAN, set up load balancing” and do many other tasks, explains Jeff Deacon, cloud computing principal at Verizon Business. But a private cloud needs minimal human intervention other than bringing in new computers or storage to keep up with demand. In a cloud environment, there is one console that lets operators set parameters to automate the entire process, rather than requiring IT personnel to log into different consoles for security, networking and server OS functions.

Another of the main differences between private clouds and traditional data centers involves IT processes. Private clouds may require a re-architecture of how data is used, and processes may have to be rewritten.

For example, today many IT organizations have to contend with sets of requirements that must be met in the provisioning process for budget; discussions with the storage, network and server groups; and tons of paperwork. This type of process is in stark contrast to the streamlined, short-duration provisioning done in clouds. Time to provision may go from weeks in the traditional data center to minutes in a cloud.

You may also have to re-architect deployment of legacy applications to take advantage of private clouds. Many legacy applications are running on mainframes and proprietary Unix platforms. Most virtualized environments, including private clouds, are geared to run on x86-based systems.

Also, in a virtualized environment, we generally don’t know exactly where an application is running at any given time. Because most legacy applications are tied to a specific platform, running them in a private cloud will often require re-architecting them.

Divorcing applications from the hardware is a hallmark of clouds, including private clouds. In a traditional data center, those 10 servers over there might be running billing applications and those five over there running CRM apps. With a private cloud, however, it’s not known ahead of time which servers are running which specific applications. The applications run on whichever servers have free cycles at the time the apps need to run.

Private clouds involve two groups: the IT (data center) operations folks and the business users who want to run applications. A private cloud gives business users the opportunity to quickly provision a server and run an application when they want to — without human intervention.

The IT operations folks have to make sure that sufficient resources are available for the type of on-demand computing that business users have heard is available with public clouds, and that usually means that the wait for user-requested resources is minutes, not days. Anything short of this, and users will be unhappy.

This is what private clouds are all about: providing the on-demand elasticity of public clouds but doing it within the company’s firewall.

Another difference is that some IT managers or business users may expect private clouds to act like public clouds. In a public cloud, the public cloud provider’s IT operations group is responsible for the compute infrastructure, and the enterprise’s business application groups manage and monitor their own applications, under agreement, on the public cloud. If the private cloud is expected to operate in a similar manner, that means the IT group may need to give up its traditional application-management role.
The steps for transition

The first thing is to broaden out beyond server virtualization. At this point, a lot of users are looking at virtualization for purposes of availability. So look at those aspects of virtual infrastructure that improve availability as the next steps toward a private cloud.

Today, people are integrating storage with virtualization and are beginning to understand the impact of broad virtualization of resources, Iams of Ideas International says. “When we get to the stage where virtualization of servers is the rule rather than the exception and most workloads are virtualized, this is the stage in which virtualization gets woven into the operational process,” he says.

When you get to this stage, you have to rethink what this does to your storage processes, Iams says. “For example, how does virtualization affect backup and recovery?”

Iams outlines the following steps for creating a private cloud:

* Virtualize your storage and try to achieve the same flexibility with storage that you already have with virtualized servers.
* Coordinate server virtualization and storage virtualization with management tools such as Windows Azure Storage Management and VMware vStorage.
* Virtualize your network infrastructure and, again, coordinate that with your management tools.

Your infrastructure has been fully virtualized when you have server virtualization, storage virtualization and network virtualization. The crossover point from a virtual infrastructure to private cloud comes when you have the management tools that treat all three types of resources — servers, storage and networks — as a single pool that can be allocated on demand.

Of course, all this is from a technology-centric point of view. Iams says that there is a parallel track that relates to the transition from an organizational perspective, including people, processes, governance, policy and funding. One key question: What does a private cloud structure do to budgets and financial flow within an organization?

Public clouds require users to pay only for what they use. Because a private cloud does not provide users with a fixed amount of capacity like they may have had with a traditional data center, chargeback is almost certain to be an integral part of private cloud environments.

Virtualization expert Bernard Golden views chargeback as very important because price is an important rationing mechanism — and rationing computing resources will be more important in an environment where obtaining resources is as easy as filing out a Web form.

Few, if any, companies go through all of the above steps/stages in parallel. In fact, there is no single “correct” way to transition to a private cloud environment from a traditional data center. A private cloud is in part the logical conclusion of server virtualization where it is extended to storage and networks and then managed with tools that treat servers, storage and networks as a single pool of resources. Automation and orchestration tools are the key to moving from a virtualized infrastructure to a true private cloud.

But one thing is very clear: If your IT organization is not willing to make the full investment for whatever part of its data center is transitioned to a private cloud, it will not have a cloud that exhibits agile provisioning, elasticity and lower costs per application.

As part of the transition, you need to determine whether your staff has the experience and skills required for a private-cloud environment or whether you need to hire someone who has been involved in building private clouds.

How you get started depends on your existing infrastructure. If you already have server virtualization, you have a definite advantage over those who do not. Most important: Do not rush out and buy a ton of software from vendors, especially from a single vendor, without a plan in place.

Next time, in Part 2: Profiles of some private-cloud adopters and how they have approached the management issue.

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Apple said to be making big mobile payment move with recent hire

By Fei Lumbania on August 18, 2010

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
August 18, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Apple could be making plans for a big role in mobile Near Field Communications (NFC) with the recent hiring of Benjamin Vigier as its product manager of mobile commerce.

Future iPhones and other Apple devices could be converted to mobile wallets, allowing users to quickly pass or tap a phone over a receiver using the NFC short-range wireless specification.

Nokia has made inroads in NFC, but is not considered a strong mobile phone competitor in the U.S.

“Apple could finally bring NFC to the masses,” wrote NFC expert Bob Egan, global head of research for Tower Group, in a tweet today, regarding the hiring of Vigier.

Egan noted too that Apple is a “magical marketing powerhouse” with a large patent portfolio and widespread distribution alliances that would help Vigier and Apple.

Part of Egan’s optimism is based on Vigier’s strong resume, as detailed on LinkedIn .

Neither Vigier nor Apple could not be reached for comment on his role at the company. Vigier arrived in July at Apple, and previously was product manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at mFoundry, where he conceived and managed the Starbucks mobile payment system on the iPhone and Paypal Mobile, which is featured on BlackBerry and some other phones.

Computerworld blogger Jonny Evans said the Vigier hiring is sign that Apple is “moving forward fast” into NFC , possibly with iPhone 5 next year.

Evans noted a 2009 Apple patent for building an NFC antenna into a touchscreen, as well as other patents for ticketing and even use of the service name iPay.

NFC is more popular in Japan than anywhere else, although adoption in the U.S. is considered slow, perhaps due to U.S. consumers’ concerns about security with mobile payments. Generator Research recently said that mobile payments would hit $633 billion in 2014, up from 68 billion in 2009.

Gartner said recently that mobile payments would reach the mainstream in 2012 , when 3% of all mobile device users will be making mobile payments. While a small percentage of the total, that represents 190 million users.

Gartner puts NFC in a list of mobile payment technologies that also include SMS (Short Message Service), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Unstructure Supplementary Service Data (USSD), which is not used in the U.S.

In other payment system news, Google said on Monday that it bought Jambool , a company that makes a platform for managing online payments for virtual goods sold on gaming and social networking sites.

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CFO: IT’s New Boss?

By Fei Lumbania on August 9, 2010

by John Mark V. Tuazon

At a time when automation of business processes was the biggest fad among large enterprises, it was natural for CIOs to report to CFOs because such transformations occurred mostly in the areas of finance, such as in deploying accounting packages.

As businesses expanded— and as technological innovation became more fast-paced—IT deployments have gone out from the old setup and spilled over to influence the way entire organizations carry out their work.

A recent Gartner survey, however, reveals that more and more IT organizations are finding themselves easing back into the old setup, especially due to the recent financial crisis and the fact that higher-ups are still stuck in the IT-as-a-cost-center conundrum.

In the survey of over 480 senior finance managers, 42% of IT organizations are already reporting to the CFO, while a staggering 53% prefer to move to this setup.

Gartner’s survey talked with finance controllers across the globe. Computerworld Philippines ran its own survey, asking local CIOs about reporting setups in their own companies. Of those surveyed, only 25% said they report to the CFO, while 65% report to their respective CEOs.

Of those CIOs who report to their CFOs, 80% said the setup has been beneficial to their company, while the remaining 20% said otherwise.

Surprisingly, all of those who responded that they are not currently reporting to the CFO said their IT organizations are better off under the CFO.

“Where the CIO should report is a question as old as the CIO role itself,” said John Van Decker, research vice president at Gartner. “CFO reporting can lead to success if the CFO has a deep understanding of IT’s value.”

CULTIVATING CFO-CIO RELATIONSHIP

Therein lays the effectiveness of this setup: CFOs who appreciate the work of IT understand the intricacies of the department’s cost requirements, and would generally vote in favor of IT investment.

This, however, is hardly the case in reality, according to Mayi Valdes, director of operations at Encash, an independent deployer of ATM machines. “CFOs tend to look at the cost of IT projects–and will advocate evaluations looking for the most ‘cost-effective’ (or cheapest) solutions,” he relates, adding that this strategy has been proven, time and again, to be ineffective.

In the Gartner report, analysts said CIOs should invest on a CFO-CIO relationship, and that they “must understand the impact their CFOs have on technology decisions in their organizations and ensure that they are providing the CFO with the appropriate understanding of technology.”

On the flipside, Valdes— who reports directly to the company’s President—says CFOs should function primarily to mitigate enthusiasm on IT projects, and not to adversely control budgets, which could potentially cripple the entire organization. “[Their role is] to remind the IT Head, as well as the project champions, that the real objective of any business strategy is to remain competitive and profitable— and not to be the first to use new technologies,” he explains.

STREAMLINING BUREAUCRACY

The CFO-CIO reporting structure is an ongoing raging debate among most organizations around the world, with CIOs pining for long-overdue recognition of their department’s vital importance to the enterprise.

Aside from the fact that it is in the finance department where IT’s role was first appreciated, CFOs offer a buffer for the CEO who often do not understand the way CIOs talk about their technology implementations, according to a CIO.com article by Thomas Wallgum.

“There was also, perhaps not coincidentally, always a little breathing room between CEOs and the expanding and bewildering IT departments,” he writes. “Of course, the CFOs spoke in 1’s and 0’s too—but the gulf between the two departments always seemed vast. Over the years, CEOs wanted constant control over ballooning IT spend. And who better to do that than the Chief Bean Counter?”

Randy Sac, IT infrastructure and services head at marine terminal operator Asian Terminals, argues that since IT has earned itself a C-level position over the years of efficient implementation, CIOs should be at the same level as the CFOs or the COOs, especially when it comes to decision making for their own departments. “[They] should [all] be in the same level, reporting directly to CEO simply because IT deployments are aligned to whatever the business mission and vision is, as set by the management committee, headed by the CEO,” he retorts.

Valdes, meanwhile, believes that adding another layer in the decision-making process is at the least counter-intuitive, and at the most counter-productive. “Putting another layer in the decision-making process provides delays in the implementation of IT strategies. In fact, the IT strategy may even be killed at the level of the CFO, should the CFO decide against an IT initiative,” he posits, adding that going against this tide means deviating from recent views of IT as a strategic enabler for any company.

This view is shared by Lito Estacio, chief information officer at Cypress Semiconductors Philippines. “Today’s time calls for speed, accuracy, and competitiveness. IT provides these attributes. Why create an organizational bureaucracy if the shortest path is a straight line?” he asks.

THE DOWNTURN EFFECT

The answer could be evident based on the signs of the times. According to the recent State of the CIO report, a global survey of IT leaders conducted by CIO.com, 43% of CIOs are currently reporting to the CEO, down three percentage points from 2009 data. A rise of three percentage points to 19%, on the other hand, was seen in CIOs reporting to the CFO.

CIO.com’s Wallgum provides an analysis: “The dip from 2009 to 2010 is evidence of the downstream effect of the global meltdown and the New Normal in IT: CEOs clamped down on spending and, in some instances, shifted CIO reporting relations to CFO,” he pointed out.

Considering that IT project implementations don’t come cheap, it is highly plausible that the economic downturn had to do with the shift in reporting structures. Valdes, however, downplays this claim, saying that “the more IT savvy a CEO, the more chances the CIO will be a direct report,” and that management views of IT—more than economic factors—play the bigger role in such circumstances.

CFOS AS IT DECISION-MAKERS

The debate is apparent, and all the more relevant given the recent economic conditions, but the discourse begs the question: how effective, really, is the CFO in making decisions for IT?

Not so much, if Cypress’s Estacio is to be asked. “Nothingpersonal, but when CFO’s make IT decisions, the beneficial impact is most likely to be shortlived,” he candidly suggests.

Estacio says the management depends on information— or good data—to make decisions, so the burden to influence the management lies in the hands of the CIO. Additionally, he says, CIOs and CFOs often do not meet eye-to-eye with expenditures. “IT strategic expenditures are planned way ahead of time, and CFOs don’t have a vision of the IT infrastructure requirements,” he adds.

Valdes provides a humorous quip, if businesses still opt for a CIO-CFO reporting structure: “The biggest contribution of a CIO is providing relevant management information at the right time,” he reasons. “If the CIO reported to the CFO, then the senior/upper management of the company will have to content themselves with financial information and statistics as of month-end.”

STRIKING THE BALANCE

IT spending and budgeting is a tricky territory, one mired by constant tugs and pulls between the IT head and the financial controller. Granted, IT projects are strategic enablers of the company, but the reality is the organization simply cannot grant every IT head’s wish.

The challenge, therefore, lies in justifying the effects of IT implementation, whether on the process aspect or on the bottom line view. “The fine line that draws the balance between IT Investment and minimizing costs is the returnon- investment (ROI),” Estacio suggests. “Generating ROI analysis and being able to sort a major decision out of it should be process-driven, and not based on personality or position.”

Valdes, meanwhile, says that CIOs should look further away from saying that IT saves the company money, and into throwing arguments based on how much revenue IT can bring to the firm. “The myth that automating processes leads to savings in costs has been shattered many times over. CIOs need to see the impact in revenue increases to justify IT initiatives,” he claims.

Not all implementations carry income-generating facets, however. So for CIOs cramped between the unfortunate place of managing costs while looking for IT solutions, the choice is to continuously hunt for alternatives, as in the case of Jonas San Luis, assistant vice president for management information system, Insular Life Health Care. “As a CIO, I look for solutions that are reasonable and relatively affordable. If I find the solution to be too expensive, I simply look for an alternative. That way, there’s a bigger chance of getting the IT investment approved.”

A CURIOUS CASE

Lorraine Belo, chief information officer, Wilcon Builders Supply, is one of very rare circumstances— fortunate ones at that—where CFOs and CIOs work hand in hand, especially because Belo wears the two hats at once. “We do not have an official CFO as both CIO and CEO share CFO responsibilities,” she shares.

Belo says this setup has thus far been beneficial to her company, especially in realizing her visions for IT. “It makes the process of updating our IT infrastructure more efficient,” she explains.

Having insight from two departments of the company gives new power to the IT department, according to Belo. “Being a CFO with knowledge in any other field related to a company is certainly a plus as he can better understand the situation,” she posits.

In the end, Belo echoes the view that at the end of the day, achieving the goals of the organization is of utmost importance. “I believe that the CIO should consult with both the CFO and CEO. They must make sure that they are all on the same page when it comes to achieving goals set by the company.”

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Gartner: Asia Pacific PC shipments to grow 20.3 percent

By Fei Lumbania on July 9, 2010

By Computerworld Hong Kong staff
Computerworld Hong Kong
July 9, 2010

HONG KONG - The Asia Pacific personal computer (PC) market is estimated to grow 20.3 percent to reach 114.6 million unit shipments in 2010, said Gartner Tuesday.

According to the research house, spending on PCs in the region is forecast to grow 12.4 per cent in 2010, compared to only 2.9 per cent in 2009, due to a sharper decline in average selling prices for PCs in 2009.

“While overall growth in Asia Pacific was strong in 2009, at a country level India and the more mature markets with high PC penetration exhibited weak PC shipments,” said Lillian Tay, principal research analyst at Gartner. “However, the improving worldwide economy should lead to better confidence to invest in 2010, especially in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Similarly in India, PC buyers are now more confident to spend, with employment on the upswing.”

CHINA LEADING PC GROWTH IN ASIA PACIFIC

Gartner expects China to represent 60 per cent of all PCs shipped in Asia Pacific and 19 per cent of PC shipments worldwide in 2010.

In 2009, PC unit growth was spearheaded by China and the South Asian Markets, said Gartner. China took 59 per cent of all PCs shipped in the region, up from 54 per cent in 2008, the advisory firm noted. In 2010, government stimulus programs, including stimulation of domestic consumption, helped to mitigate the adverse effect of the US and European recessions on these export-oriented economies, said Gartner.

PC shipment growth in China is expected to reach 22.1 per cent, said Gartner, adding that government and education segments will have the most stable demand in the professional market.

The government announced early this year that it will try to increase education spending to four per cent of 2010 GDP and is focused on creating opportunities in schools and kindergartens using PCs, Gartner added.

In addition, the Chinese government is also looking inward in stimulating domestic consumption to drive China’s growth and rely less on export-oriented growth. Therefore, the government can be expected to promote more entrepreneurship and initiatives to help small and midsize businesses become agile and productive, with the PC an integral tool in office productivity, the research house said.

2009-2014 GROWTH

The entire Asia Pacific PC market will register a compound CAGR of 15.7 per cent between 2009 and 2014, said the research firm. Emerging PC markets will lead the growth, particularly China and India. South Asian markets such as Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are also expected to perform strongly.

“In the mature PC markets, we expect stronger growth for 2010 and 2011 as PC replacements gain momentum. This reflects an expectation of increased IT budgets and adoption of Windows 7 by organizations replacing PCs that are beyond their useful life,” said Tay.

Mobile-for-desk-based PC substitution continues unabated and first-time PC buyers are increasingly turning to mobile PCs, said Gartner. Mobile PC units will grow 35.2 per cent in 2010 reaching 53.2 million. In 2011, a milestone will be reached where mobile PC shipments will take 51 per cent share of all PCs shipped in Asia Pacific.

According to the analyst firm, Asia Pacific desk-based PC unit shipments will increase 9.9 per cent to 61.4 million units in 2010, largely driven by the success of a rural PC program in China, where 70 per cent to 80 per cent of PCs shipped are desk-based PCs. In other markets it will be driven by the replacement of aged desk-based PCs.

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The Mobility Effect

By Fei Lumbania on June 1, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon

Visionary CEO Steve Jobs ushered in a new era in mobile computing with the introduction of the legendary iPhone back in 2007, and nothing has been the same ever since. Increasingly, the iPhone has crept into the enterprise space, what with the platform’s innovative offerings that allow for more worker productivity.

This is the enterprise story of today: more and more workers are being driven out of the office space, in an effort to cut on costs. Conversely, new technology offerings also allow for more productivity in communication and collaboration using mobile devices, ringing in new forms of innovation for the enterprise.

By 2013, IDC predicts the number of Internet-capable mobile devices that will go online to reach 1 billion. Shipments of that figure were already reached in 2009, as 1.2 billion mobile devices went around the world. ABI Research expects that number to double in five years.

Out of all mobile devices, smartphones enjoy a comfortable lead over mobile Internet devices, netbooks, consumer electronics, and cellular modems, IDC says. In the latter part of 2009, smartphone vendors shipped a total of 43.4 million units to users around the world, up by 4.2% sequentially despite the debilitating effects of the global financial crisis.

“By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide,” according to research firm Gartner. “The total number of PCs in use will reach 1.78 billion units in 2013. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser- equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.”

This renewed preference for smartphones over PCs is ushering in a new era of computing and employee productivity—but how are modern-day CIOs and IT managers coping with the fast-paced use and development of mobile devices in the enterprise?

Empowering the Sales Force

In the case of Philusa Corporation, a marketer and distributor of personal care, pharmaceutical, baby care, and household care products, the use of mobile devices is central to their business process. In 2007, the 43- year old company with a deep experience in wholesale business operations decided to overhaul their sales process, in response to the growing need to streamline the entire firm’s operations.

“Prior to deploying mobile units for our sales force, the process was done purely on paper,” relates Arlan Dimalanta, the company’s IT manager. The process goes as follows: the sales person gets the customer’s order, logs it on to a sales order form, and brings or faxes the report to the office. Then, the office personnel keys in the order and prints it out, and the designated officer approves the order.

“Before, it takes more than a week for some orders to be submitted, processed and completed,” Dimalanta laments. “That resulted in customers ordering products from us only once a month.”

Philusa Corporation implemented a mobile solution by arming their sales force with Palm Treo smartphones. These mobile phones are equipped with a custom-built application created by a third-party developer that connects seamlessly with their SAP software, enabling sales orders to be inputted automatically to the system, as well as call planning and reporting from people in the field. The approval system of orders has also been automated.

The devices were initially rolled out to their pilot team in Central Luzon, consisting of seven sales employees. “Within 8 months of deployment, we were able to equip 80 sales personnel for a nationwide implementation,” Dimalanta says, adding the first 3 months were relegated for refinement of the system.

The immediate effects of the new system were patently overwhelming. For the customers who used to have a once-amonth sales-order cycle, the company is now able to take orders and deliver twice in the same period. “It’s a win-win situation for us and for our customers,” shares Dimalanta. “Quotas are being hit, so 2009 proved to be a good year for us.”

Change Management

For their part, Dimalanta says deploying the system was easy, “but user adoption, that, more than anything else, is the common system implementation challenge.” The IT manager says he had to do thorough change management, because the system was not an IT project, but a business project aimed at improving the sales process.

“Not all our sales people are technology-savvy,” Dimalanta points out. “So we had to think of a buy-in.” To encourage their sales agents to be open about the new system, Dimalanta and the Business Process Development and Implementation team conducted trainings pooling young and old sales people alike. There was also wisdom in starting off with a pilot team: “Sales people listen to sales people,” Dimalanta shares. “So when they saw the pilot team at ease with the system, they welcomed it. It was also important that the Sales head was also driving the project forward.”

Guarding Data

Keeping employees productive even beyond office walls is becoming a widespread trend, but it also poses new concerns for the IT division, especially in terms of keeping their data intact. “According to Symantec’s latest Internet Security Threat Report, 63% of vulnerabilities reported in 2008 affected Web applications,” shares Luichi Robles, country manager, Symantec Philippines. “In 2009, we also saw the first smartphone botnet that took advantage of users’ contact lists to spread itself via SMS.”

As smartphone adoption in the enterprise continues to boom at breakneck speed, cybercriminals see opportunity in targeting early adopters of the technology. Dimalanta says there is no data leak prevention system installed just yet, “but security is addressed more on the policy and user education aspects.”

In terms of overall network security, the company policy remains as a complete lockdown. “Our gateways and firewalls are accessible only on corporateissued devices,” Dimalanta explains, adding that end-users can’t just simply bring their devices in and connect to the network. “We are not 100% sure of the security features on these personal laptops [and other mobile devices], so we are not risking it.”

Totally blocking off the network from other mobile devices, however, can be a management feat in a time when cellphone and smartphone prices are falling steeply and very quickly. For those who dare tread the less-traveled path into an open network system, Symantec offers specific solutions to ensure data integrity is retained.

“Symantec Network Access Control Mobile Edition works with our Endpoint Protection Mobile Edition to enforce compliance with security policies [so that] only secure, policy compliant devices can access the network and email on Microsoft Exchange,” Robles says, adding that a centralized logging, reporting, and alterting system further enables firms to proactively monitor the status of managed devices.

Nokia, on the other hand, a Symbian-based phone brand that is increasingly popular for consumers in the Philippines, also offers a host of security solutions for enterprise mobile devices. “Nokia smartphones support implementation of various device management IT policies such as mandatory use of phone lock code and remote wipe of phone data, as well as data encryption of the phone memory and memory card,” shares Benoit Nalin, general manager of Nokia Philippines.

Ease of deploying mobile solutions, according to Nalin, is also important. “Nokia offers a direct access, no additional middleware investment, easy to deploy solution,” he says. “We also designed various solutions on our smartphone to help these professionals manage their work during ‘downtime’ hours.”

Part of these solutions include messaging features such as integration with Microsoft Exchange’s ActiveSync protocol, Lotus Notes Traveler for real-time access to IBM Lotus Notes push email and PIM synchronization, Nokia Messaging for consumers, and Ovi Mail, the only e-mail service that enables users to create an account directly on their mobile phones, for the general public.

Reducing Complexities

Security, however, is just one side of the two-faced coin of issues that CIOs have to address. As more handset companies manufacture different kinds of devices in their attempt to take a bite off the mobile devices market pie, end-users would have a bevy of mobile devices and brands they can use in the enterprise, given there is an open system.

“With a growing workforce, IT is tasked to support a greater number of [mobile] device types and user types at any location,” recalls Nicolo Hallare, managing director and COO of Sybase Solutions Corporation.

Hallare said IT managers are coming down with pressure from executives and end-users alike to support additional mobile platforms and personal mobile devices. This is a given, considering the wealth of brands and types of mobile devices out there.

Having to manage a densely heterogeneous and interoperable mobile environment, however, becomes the trade-off.

“Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile continue to be strong platforms but the strong entrance of iPhone and Android will make it exciting to watch,” Hallare relates. “We believe that the market will continue to be varied in its use of platforms and as such, we have increasingly supported the new and upcoming platforms in our Mobile Enterprise Solutions.”

Sybase helps enterprises deal with the most common issues with mobile devices in the organization through their security and manageability offering called Sybase Afaria. The solution offers a centralized, powerful device management suite that gives IT the full control of the range of devices and applications deployed, viewable on a single console.

Additionally, Afaria allows IT to deliver fixes, upgrades and refreshes to mobile users remotely without the users’ involvement, ensuring mobile workers have the right software in the field.

Mobility for Growth

Philusa Corporation’s Dimalanta reveals that they are planning to phase out their Treo units in favor of newer mobile devices that provide more features, such as Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, and the iPhone. “In 2007, hands down, the Palm OS was more stable and easy to use compared to other operating systems,” he shares. “There were no viruses for the Palm OS, and the interface is easier to use, lowering the learning curve.”

The non-availability of Palm OS devices in 2009 prompted the change, according to Dimalanta. Incidentally, just recently, Palm offered itself up for sale after a lackluster performance in the mobile race, succumbing to now-industry giants Apple, Google Android, and the Windows Phone.

“If enterprises open their eyes and look at areas to be improved by mobility, then they stand to reduce costs and increase their sales,” Dimalanta notes. “Solutions are all around, and we have proven that it can be done. It’s time for more enterprises to adopt the technology.”

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10 Mobile & Wireless Technologies That Should Be on Your Radar

By Fei Lumbania on June 1, 2010

By Computerworld Philippines Staff

Gartner is highlighting 10 mobile and wireless networking technologies – including new versions of Bluetooth and location-awareness — it says will play a big role in business-to-employee and business-to-consumer interactions over the next couple of years.

“These mobile technologies were selected because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organizations will face through 2011,” said Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a statement.

The list:

Bluetooth (3 and 4): Both Bluetooth updates are coming by next year, with Version 3 exploiting 802.11 for a speed boost and enabling transfer of multimedia transmissions, and Version 4 featuring a low-energy mode that will allow devices to work with external peripherals and sensors, such as laptop autolocks.

Mobile Web: Look for much more widespread use of smartphone Web browsers as better screens on smartphones make surfing the Web more inviting from these devices. Vendors such as Microsoft are said to be building much better mobile browsers, such as for Windows Phone 7.

Mobile Widgets: These will rely on technologies such as JavaScript and HTML to provide handset users with real time updates on everything from the weather to blog posts.

Platform-independent mobile app development tools: These will be needed to enable apps to run across the increasingly dizzying array of mobile devices, such as those debuting at the CTIA show.

App Stores: Look for even more app stores beyond the most famous, Apple’s, such as the one being coordinated by major mobile carriers. Gartner expects organizations to create their own app stores in some cases to distribute apps to customers and employees.

Enhanced location awareness: Gartner says GPS will be on more than three quarters of mobile handsets by the end of next year, and this should spur an explosion in apps to exploit location-awareness. Privacy issues will require constant attention though.

Cellular broadband: The rise of 4G wireless, fueled in part by FCC directives on national broadband, should enable wireless users to do more than ever with their existing devices and open the door for new types of mobile devices.

Touchscreens: Recent research shows that most smartphones now have touchscreens, so application developers will need to take this into account as they build programs.

Machine-to-machine communications: Advances here will enable new smart grid, security and retail applications and devices.

Device-independent security: Look for cloud-based security to help CIOs better safeguard corporate data and devices.

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Smartphone sales shoot up, benefiting RIM, Apple, Android

By Computerworld Philippines on May 20, 2010

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
May 20, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The smartphone’s impact on the mobile phone marketplace globally is well-established, but smartphone growth continues its upward trend in fairly astounding degrees, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.

Smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2010 grew by nearly 49% compared with the first quarter a year ago, the biggest year-on-year increase since 2006, said Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst. That rate of growth put smartphones at 17.3% of all mobile phones sold in the first quarter (54.3 million out of 314.6 million) up from 13.6 % in the first quarter of 2009.

Gartner previously projected that the smartphone’s share of the overall mobile phone market would reach 43% globally in 2013 and jump to 70% in Europe and North America. Milanesi said the first quarter results bolster that forecast.

The biggest beneficiaries of the smartphone growth trend are the companies that control the entire smartphone ecosystem, including the operating system, hardware and services, such as Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd. and iPhone maker Apple Inc., Milanesi said in an interview.

RIM only makes smartphones, yet in the first quarter made its debut as one of the top five best-selling makers of all kinds of mobile phones.

RIM sold 10.5 million smartphones in the first quarter, up 46% from 7.2 million sold in the first quarter of 2009, putting it fourth behind top-selling mobile phone maker Nokia. Samsung was in second place and LG Electronics was third. But RIM also finished second in sales of all smartphones, behind the Symbian OS used in Nokia devices, but ahead of the iPhone OS in third, the Android OS in fourth and the Windows Mobile OS.

Milanesi said RIM helped itself in the market about two years ago with a focused marketing program on consumers, following up its strong reputation with business users.

“People generally now know who RIM is, and the experience by consumers in Europe is that it’s pretty cool to have a RIM device,” said Milanesi, from offices in Egham, UK.

But Milanesi said the smartphone competition is “very tough” and Gartner continues to forecast that in 2012, the Symbian will lead in smartphone sales, followed by the Android, and RIM and the iPhone in a tie with 13% market share each.

For the first quarter of 2010, the iPhone sold nearly 8.4 million units, up from 3.8 million in first quarter and increased its market share.

The Android OS joined the iPhone OS as the only two OSes in the top five to increase smartphone market share , Gartner said.

In terms of the smartphone OS wars, Symbian finished with 24 million sales in the first quarter and 44% of the market, while RIM had 19.4% of the market with its 10.5 million in sales. The iPhone OS reached nearly 8.4 million in the quarter, with 15.4% of the market, followed by Android with 5.2 million and 9.6% of the market, Gartner said.

The Windows Mobile OS in smartphones reached 3.76 million units sold or 6.8% of the market, a slight drop from the 3.738 million units sold in the first quarter of 2009 when Windows Mobile had 10% of the market.

Milanesi said that a somewhat surprising market trend has developed around Asian manufacturers of mobile phones, including Hong Kong-based G-Five, which sold 4.3 million phones in the first quarter to garner 1.4% of the overall mobile phone market. G-Five doesn’t make smartphones.

“G-Five has pretty much come out of nowhere and really underlines how some vendors…have been growing in markets such as India and the pressure they put on tier-one players,” she said.

There has also been a rise in the so-called white-box vendors that manufacture phones for other brands, Gartner said. As a group, they commanded 19% of all mobile phone sales, or 60 million of the 314.6 million sold in the first quarter.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld . Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .

Read more about smartphones in Computerworld’s Smartphones Knowledge Center.

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Deutsche Bank: It ‘was wise’ to get exec support for BPM

By Fei Lumbania on May 19, 2010

By Leo King
Computerworld UK
May 19, 2010

LONDON - The heads of an extensive business process management project at Deutsche Bank have said they were “wise” to have ensured executive support for their project from its initiation.

The company’s Global Transaction Banking division began the BPM project in late 2008 with the aim of standardising and simplifying the processes of starting up and running client accounts. GTB manages payments and securities transactions, and as the world’s largest clearing bank of the Euro currency it clears €1.2 billion (US$1.7 billion) daily.

Abhijit Gupta, chief enterprise architect at Deutsche Bank, yesterday told delegates at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit in London: “We took this project to the global head of the unit, to avoid needing to get buy-in later. It was too fundamental a change not to.”

The key to the project’s success so far, Gupta said, was fitting IT processes to a blueprint, which was created by top level business strategists. The blueprint also involved key stakeholders who used the systems being asked what they needed.

Under the first two phases of the programme, now running, the firm’s legal contracts for new customers, and the processes of starting new accounts, were essentially standardised — within the context of the local regulatory environment and the products on offer.

In the final phase of the project, due by July, ongoing operational systems will be fully standardised, with legacy technology being removed. Previously, Gupta said, any ‘onboarding’ process of new customers could involve over 12 systems.

The whole project also involved a shift to more service oriented architecture, in order to create an integrated suite of services open to different countries with different demands and ways of working.

Gupta said the changes meant “faster onboarding” of clients, simplified and consistent processes, and greater self administration for customers. The bank estimated that it had set up accounts for nearly a thousand large customers, with complex portfolios, using the new system.

“It was hard at first to explain to the business the need for a blueprint,” he said. “But they’ve seen how effective it has changed things. People now check that any changes fit with the blueprint.”

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Gartner: SaaS adoption on the rise

By Computerworld Philippines on May 6, 2010

By Computerworld Hong Kong staff
May 6, 2010

HONG KONG - More than 95 percent of organizations expect to maintain or grow their use of software as a service (SaaS), Gartner said on Tuesday.

The research firm lately unveiled results of a survey where respondents cited significant integration requirements and a change in sourcing strategy as the top two reasons for adoption followed by high total cost of ownership (TCO).

The survey, said Gartner, was conducted in December 2009 and January 2010 and involved 270 IT and business management professionals from a variety of industries in North America, Europe, and AsiaPacific who were personally involved in the implementation support, implementation, planning and/or budget decisions related to the purchase of enterprise application software.

However, most companies still don’t have policies governing the evaluation and use of SaaS with only 39 percent of respondents indicating that such a policy or process exists, up just 1 percent from 38 percent in 2008, said Gartner.

“SaaS applications clearly are no longer seen as a new deployment model by our survey base, with almost half of those surveyed affirming use of SaaS applications in their business for more than three years,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. “The varying levels of maturity within the user base suggest growing opportunities for service providers along the adoption curve, as organizations seek assistance with initiatives ranging from process redesign to implementation to integration services.”

Popular SaaS apps
The scope of functionality of SaaS applications has broadened significantly in recent years, Mertz noted. In terms of popularity for SaaS usage, the survey showed that e-mail, financial management (accounting), sales force automation and customer service, and expense management are the most popular in terms of current use, with more than 30 percent of the survey base using these types of applications.

In terms of expected investment levels in SaaS offerings over the next two years, survey respondents gave generally encouraging responses for software and service providers, with on average 53 percent of organizations expecting to increase investment levels slightly and 19 percent significantly, said Gartner. However, not all buyers intend to increase usage, with almost one-quarter of all respondents expecting investment levels to remain about the same, and 4 percent looking at a slight decrease in investment levels, the analyst house added.

Regionally, North America and Asia Pacific respondents indicated a stronger interest in procuring tools via a SaaS model, and, compared with those in Europe, show greater confidence that their organizations will increase investments in products offered as SaaS or through a subscription model through year-end 2010, Gartner noted.

Frowning customers
The survey also found that some organizations have found SaaS offerings to be less than optimal for some buyers, and 16 percent of respondents said that they are transitioning from SaaS to on-premises solutions.

Although there was no single outstanding reason that caused respondents to shift to on-premises, in general, the majority of organizations in this position was facing significant integration requirements and became unsatisfied with a TCO that became too high, said Gartner.

Despite the continuous adoption of SaaS across regions, more than one-third of the respondents have noted concerns on their recent SaaS deployments.

Most respondents with these issues are located outside North America, specifically in Asia Pacific where high-speed high-availability networks, are not as readily available as in North America, said Gartner, adding that issues with integration and customization were some of the primary issues cited by respondents overall.

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More Than 95% of Organizations to Maintain or Grow SaaS Use

By JM Tuazon on April 30, 2010

By Channelworld staff
Channelworld India
April 30, 2010

BANGALORE - More than 95 percent of organizations expect to maintain or grow their use of software as a service (SaaS), according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Survey respondents cited significant integration requirements and a change in sourcing strategy as the top two reasons for adoption followed by high total cost of ownership (TCO).

However, Gartner found that most companies still do not have policies governing the evaluation and use of SaaS with only 39 percent of respondents indicating that such a policy or process exists, up just 1 percent from 38 percent in 2008.

The survey involved 270 IT and business management professionals from a variety of industries in North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific who were personally involved in the implementation support, implementation, planning and/or budget decisions related to the purchase of enterprise application software.

Mertz said the scope of functionality of SaaS applications has broadened significantly in recent years. In terms of popularity for SaaS usage, the survey showed that e-mail, financial management (accounting), sales force automation and customer service, and expense management are the most popular in terms of current use, with more than 30 percent of the survey base using these types of applications.

In terms of expected investment levels in SaaS solutions over the next two years, survey respondents gave generally encouraging responses for software and service providers, with on average 53 percent of organizations expecting to increase investment levels slightly and 19 percent significantly. However, not all buyers intend to increase usage, with almost one-quarter of all respondents expecting investment levels to remain about the same, and 4 percent looking at a slight decrease in investment levels.

In comparing current with new investments in future on-premises and SaaS investments within their organizations, 72 percent of respondents believe SaaS investments will increase, while 45 percent hold the same notion about on-premises budgets. Regionally, North America and Asia/Pacific respondents indicated a stronger interest in procuring solutions via a SaaS model, and, compared with those in Europe, show greater confidence that their organizations will increase investments in products offered as SaaS or through a subscription model through year-end 2010.

However, the survey found that some organizations have found SaaS solutions to be less than optimal for some buyers, and 16 percent of respondents said that they are transitioning from SaaS to on-premises solutions. Although there was no single outstanding reason that caused respondents to shift to on-premises, in general, the majority of organizations in this position were facing significant integration requirements and became unsatisfied with a TCO that became too high.

Despite the continuous adoption of SaaS across regions, more than one-third of the respondents have noted concerns on their recent SaaS deployments. Most respondents with these issues are located outside North America, specifically in Asia/Pacific where high-speed high-availability networks, are not as readily available as in North America. Issues with integration and customization were some of the primary issues cited by respondents overall.

“These issues aside, organizations are becoming more savvy when it comes to renegotiating their SaaS contracts,” Mertz said. “A key survey finding was that more enterprises are renegotiating contracts for greater functionality, additional users and improved financial terms. Thirty percent of respondents said that they had renegotiated their SaaS contracts before the end of the initial term.”

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Pinoy-led firm in US recognized for cloud computing

By Computerworld Philippines on April 14, 2010

By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
April 14, 2010

Once again Filipino ingenuity has shone with the recent selection of a Filipino-led company in the US, making it to the finals of the Best of InterOp 2010, a contest that seeks to award the world’s most innovative technologies across nine major categories.

The company Morphlabs Inc., a cloud computing platform enabler for enterprise and service providers, was selected on Tuesday as one of the three finalists for the InterOp Awards’ cloud computing category. It is headquartered in the US, with operations in Japan and the Philippines. Morphlabs’ development center is composed mostly of Filipino software engineers.

“We are very proud to have been named for this recognition” says Winston Damarillo, a Filipino serial entrepreneur and CEO of Morphlabs. “mCloud™ is the result of a seamless collaboration between our US-based R&D and our Philippine-based engineering teams. This proves that impactful innovation can be created anywhere in the world.”

Damarillo claimed Morphlabs’ flagship product – mCloud Series – provides complete cloud management and provisioning platform that enable enterprises of all sizes to leverage the benefits of both private and public cloud computing.

Only last month, Morphlabs also served as finalist in the ICT International awards for Innovation. This time at the InterOp challenge, it is said to have broken through the global arena with the likes of IBM among its co-finalists.

The cloud computing market, according to forecasts from Gartner Research, will reach approximately $150 billion by 2013. It also reported that through 2012, IT organizations will invest more in private cloud services than in offerings from public cloud providers.

The panel of judges of the Best of Interop finalists was made up of award-winning editors and analysts from InformationWeek Analytics. The judges selected the products they believe have the greatest potential to impact and advance business technology efficiencies, helping move the industry forward.

Morphlabs is one of the exhibitors at Interop Las Vegas 2010 which starts April 25. The Best of Interop Award winners will be announced on April 28 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

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10 mobile technologies to watch in 2010

By Computerworld Philippines on March 30, 2010

By Nick Jones
PC Advisor (UK)
March 30, 2010

LONDON - There’s no doubt mobile technologies have already made a big dent on our lives.

Whether its checking is surfing the web from your netbook while at the airport, updating your Facebook status from your smartphone, or even reading a novel on an e-book reader.

According to research firm Gartner, the impact of mobile technologies on our lives looks set to continue to surge in the next couple of years too.

Gartner says investments in mobile applications and technologies will increase through 2011 as organisations emerge from the recession and begin spending again.

With this in mind, the research firm has picked out the 10 mobile technologies to watch in the coming years.

“We are highlighting these 10 mobile technologies that should be on every organisation’s radar,” said Nick Jones, vice president of Gartner.

Jones said the technologies were selected “because they will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organisations will face through 2011″.

Bluetooth (3 and 4)

Two new Bluetooth versions will emerge by 2011: Bluetooth 3 will introduce 802.11 as a bearer for faster data transmission, and Bluetooth 4 will introduce a new low-energy (LE) mode that will still allow communication with other Bluetooth devices.

Both versions will include other technical improvements to improve battery life and security.

Gartner believes that Bluetooth 3 will be employed for activities that need a lot of bandwidth, such as downloading images and videos from handsets).

Bluetooth LE will offer functions, such as the ability to lock down a PC automatically as soon as the user moves away from the machine.

The mobile web

Gartner says that by 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser.

Furthermore, in Europe and Japan, smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner will make up around 60 percent of handsets shipped.

The growth in smartphones with relatively large and high-resolution screens will encourage greater numbers of people to access conventional websites on mobile devices.

Mobile widgets

Widgets are web apps that use technologies such as JavaScript and HTML.

Many handsets support widgets running on their home screens, where they are easily visible and accessible.

Gartner says that despite the lack of standards, widgets provide a convenient way to deliver simple, connected applications, especially those involving real-time data updates such as weather forecasts, email notifications, marketing, blogs and information feeds.

“Because widgets exploit well-understood tools and technologies, they have lower entry barriers than complex native applications, and thus can be a good first step to assess the demand for an application on a specific platform before undertaking expensive native development,” the research firm says.

Platform-independent mobile AD tools

Gartner believes mobile platforms will become more diverse through 2012.

“Therefore, tools that can reduce the burden of delivering installable applications to several platforms will be very attractive,” the research firm says.

Gartner says the while platform-independent application development (AD) tools cannot deliver a ‘write once, run anywhere’ equivalent to native code, they can significantly reduce the cost of delivering and supporting multi-platform apps that provide will run even when there’s no signal coverage.

App Stores

According to Gartner, app stores will be the primary (and, in some cases, the only) way to distribute applications to smartphones and other mobile devices.

Gartner believes that app stores will play many roles in an organisation’s commercial strategies.

“They will be a distribution channel for mobile applications and a commercial channel to sell applications and content (especially in international markets), and they will provide new options for application sourcing. Many applications will exploit ecosystem cloud services. ”

Enhanced location awareness

By the end of 2011, over 75 percent of devices shipped will include a GPS.

GPS will be the primary, but not the only, means of establishing handset location.

However, Wi-Fi will remain important in situations where GPS is unavailable or unreliable.

Gartner said the popularity of location-aware handsets will lead to a wide range of location-aware apps that will serve as a foundation for more-sophisticated apps in the future.

“However, organisations must be sensitive to local privacy regulations, ensuring that apps are ‘opt in’, and remain on alert for new risks and concerns that will be raised by location awareness.”

Mobile broadband

During 2010 and 2011, the availability of mobile broadband will continue to grow as mobile networks enhance their offerings.

Gartner says improvements in wireless broadband performance will mean an in the nukber of devices and activities that no longer require fixed networking, making mobile broadband a more effective fallback when fixed connections fail.

The firm also believes embedded mobile broadband technology will become a standard feature in many laptops, as well as e-books and media players.

Touchscreens

Touchscreens are emerging as a dominant technology. They will appear in over 60 percent of mobile devices shipped in Western Europe and North America in 2011.

“Touch-enabled devices will also make increasing use of techniques such as haptics to enhance user experience,” Gartner says.

According to the research firm, organisations developing native handset apps may need to exploit single and multitouch interfaces and haptics to give their apps a compelling and competitive user experience.

M2M

Many network service providers increased their commitment to machine to machine technology (M2M) or remote monitoring of devices in 2009, which according to Gartner means a range of M2M service options will be available in the coming years.

Gartner says key applications that will use M2M technology include meter reading, security/surveillance and track and trace functions.

Device-independent security

This isn’t strictly a single technology, but refers to a collection of security technologies that enable the use of apps, which are not tied to specific devices and platforms, and, in many cases, do not require security tools to be installed on the client.

Gartner says this includes thin-client architectures, applications as a service, platform-independent forms of network access control (NAC), portable personality, virtualisation, and hosted security services, such as ‘in the cloud’ virus scanning.

“Device-independent tools cannot provide the rigour of fully installed security, but a blend of several of these tools can enable CIOs to deliver applications that can run on a wider range of devices while reducing security risks.,” Gartner says.

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IDC bucks trend with less bullish 2010 chip forecast

By Computerworld Philippines on March 25, 2010

By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
March 25, 2010

TAIPEI - IDC analysts on Thursday said the global chip industry will grow this year but offered one of the least optimistic industry revenue forecasts so far this year, saying the global recession remains a problem.

IDC expects chip industry revenue to rise 16 percent this year as a recovery in the sector continues, but warned that end demand may be disappointing later this year due to unemployment in key markets around the world and an end to some government stimulus projects.

“When you look at the semiconductor market, we are definitely in a full recovery mode,” said Mario Morales, head of chip research for the market researcher, at a conference in Taipei. However, IDC does not expect the strong recovery in consumer demand that other analysts are forecasting.

The chip market is on the rise this year mainly because the global recession caused orders to slow so much early last year that companies have had to catch up with replenishing their inventories. Inventory rebuilding may account for around half of all chip orders today, Morales said, but those orders will slow as companies fill their needs. End demand has rebounded since the depths of the recession, but it’s not rebounding fast enough to take up the slack from slower inventory orders.

The 16 percent figure puts IDC at the low end of global chip revenue forecasts for this year. IDC’s main rival, Gartner, predicts 20 percent year-on-year growth to US$276 billion this year, up from $231 billion last year, when worldwide chip revenue declined 9.6 percent. Gartner noted strong demand for memory chips and PCs as a basis for its forecast, but also warned that inventories may be building too fast.

Many market researchers, including Gartner, expect strong global PC sales to boost the chip industry. Investment banking firm Credit Suisse said in a report published Tuesday that corporations will be heavy buyers of new PCs, a main reason the firm is bullish on chip industry growth this year.

IC Insights, a smaller researcher focused on chips, forecast 27 percent revenue growth for chips in 2010, in a report earlier this month. The market research firm predicts DRAM revenue will surge 74 percent this year to lead the chip industry rebound.

IDC also sees DRAM as a major contributor to the global chip rebound this year, but puts its growth at a more modest 44 percent this year to US$32 billion. The memory chip industry is recovering from a decade low hit last year amid the global recession as companies such as Qimonda declared bankruptcy.

DRAM makers have started to increase output at a pace that will trigger a correction, or a short-term drop in sales, later this year, predicted Soo Kyoum Kim, memory analyst at IDC.

“I see some oversupply [in the second half],” he said. DRAM output will increase 25 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, he said.

But DRAM chip prices will remain at profitable levels for companies, he noted.

The main difference between IDC and other research groups is its focus on the potential impact of the global recession. Some government stimulus packages put in place early in the recession will end soon, which could lead to a slackening of demand. Job losses have also remained a problem in many parts of the world, which could mute end demand. Still, the research firm predicts the chip industry will post a strong rebound this year.

“I think the recovery will continue to be very gradual,” said Morales.

(IDC is part of IDG, the company that operates IDG News Service.)

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SAP brings cloud-based BI to local SMBs

By JM Tuazon on March 18, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
March 19, 2010

German software provider SAP is opening its business intelligence doors to SMBs and other mainstream consumers by porting their standalone BI software to the cloud, aptly dubbed SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand.

Following its acquisition of enterprise software firm Business Objects in 2007, SAP brings the former’s expertise in information analysis into a software platform easily deployable and acquirable through the public cloud.

Answering the need of company managers for quick and informative business insights using idle data, SAP executives said BI OnDemand—which it claimed is the first of its kind in the market—will be most effective in identifying cost points in any company, especially relevant during the recent crisis. “It becomes effective even in cost cutting because executives now have a way of seeing which areas of their company need improvement,” explained Eric Sin, senior director for South East Asia hub, SAP.

The cloud approach also makes it easier for users to share processed information online. “Users can process data into charts and tables and send them easily through e-mail,” Robin Fong, business development manager for business users, South East Asia, SAP.

Among the many features of the offering include a way to integrate Crystal Reports, which presents data in a clean and neatly-formatted manner. The cloud app is also capable of executing “what-if” or predictive analysis of data without any programming required. “Everything is basically just drag and drop,” Sin quipped.

Since the firm’s release of BI OnDemand four years ago, executives said there have been at least 260,000 subscribers to the service.

With the new cloud-based service, Sin said SMBs can now leverage the power of BI in their companies without having to acquire licenses, hardware and software at such prohibitive costs.

An advantage for early cloud adopters is the software’s ability to integrate with data residing on users’ accounts on Salesforce.com, another cloud-based application that focuses on CRM. “Users can access the data warehouse and other CRM info from Salesforce.com and port them into BI OnDemand, all within just a day,” Sin related.

The move towards a cloud-based BI application is SAP’s answer to the growing demand for BI worldwide, which Gartner predicts to grow 22% even in a tough economy. A “big percentage” of SAP Philippines’ revenue, in fact, came from its on-premise BI offering, according to country manager Jennifer Ligones. “Business Objects is probably the best acquisition SAP has ever made,” she added.

Interested users can avail of the cloud BI service for at least 22 Euros per user per month, equivalent to as much as P1,600 per user per month. The price varies depending on what tools and add-ons the users need, the executives clarified.

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60% of virtual servers less secure than physical machines, Gartner says

By Computerworld Philippines on March 16, 2010

By Jon Brodkin
Network World (US)
March 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, the analyst firm Gartner said in new research Monday.

This state of affairs will remain true until 2012, but security should improve substantially after that point, Gartner said.

Gartner predicted that by 2015, only 30% of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical machines they replaced.

Cisco, NetApp, VMware team up on virtualization security

Virtualization itself is not inherently insecure, but “many virtualization deployment projects are being undertaken without involving the information security team in the initial architecture and planning stages,” Gartner said.

Virtualization adoption is growing quickly. Just 18% of enterprise data center workloads that could be virtualized have been converted to virtual servers, but by the end of 2012 more than half of eligible workloads will have been virtualized, Gartner said.

“As more workloads are virtualized, as workloads of different trust levels are combined and as virtualized workloads become more mobile, the security issues associated with virtualization become more critical to address,” Gartner said.

Gartner identified six common security risks associated with virtualization deployments. First on the list is that 40% of virtualization projects are undertaken without information security professionals in the initial planning stages, according to survey data from Gartner conferences. “Typically, the operations teams will argue that nothing has really changed — they already have skills and processes to secure workloads, operating systems and the hardware underneath,” Gartner said. “While true, this argument ignores the new layer of software in the form of a hypervisor and virtual machine monitor (VMM) that is introduced when workloads are virtualized.”

Secondly, Gartner notes that a threat to the virtualization layer can harm all hosted workloads. The hypervisor, as a new platform, contains new vulnerabilities including ones that have not yet been discovered. “Gartner recommends that organizations treat this layer as the most critical x86 platform in the enterprise data center and keep it as thin as possible, while hardening the configuration to unauthorized changes. Virtualization vendors should be required to support measurement of the hypervisor/VMM layer on boot-up to ensure it has not been compromised. Above all, organizations should not rely on host-based security controls to detect a compromise or protect anything running below it.”

Additional risks include the following: Network-based security devices are blind to communications between virtual machines within a single host; workloads of different trust levels are consolidated onto single hosts without sufficient separation; virtualization technologies do not provide adequate control of administrative access to the hypervisor and virtual machine layer; and when physical servers are combined into a single machine, there is risk that system administrators and users could gain access to data they’re not allowed to see.

Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

Read more about data center in Network World’s Data Center section.

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Cyberattacks raise e-banking security fears

By Computerworld Philippines on March 11, 2010

By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
March 11, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The unabated plundering of online bank accounts belonging to small and mid-size businesses is raising significant questions about the authentication and fraud detection mechanisms now used in financial institutions.

Such cyberthefts have led multiple businesses to file lawsuits against their banks, and prompted government regulators to call on financial institutions to improve security systems.

The FDIC recently disclosed that during the final 2009 quarter alone, cyberthieves stole mre than $150 million from small and mid-size business accounts.

In most of those cases, the FDIC said, thieves obtained a business’s valid banking login credentials by illegal means. The hackers used the stolen credentials to send money from the accounts to overseas bank accounts via wire transfers.

Banks, by and large, have mostly contended that the thefts occurred because the victims failed to adequately protect their banking credentials.

Since banks are not required to reimburse commercial accounts for losses resulting from such thefts, most of the impact on them has come from a public relations standpoint.

On the other hand, the thefts have led to tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses for numerous small businesses, which now have little hope of recovering the money. Some have filed lawsuits against banks charging that they failed to detect and stop transactions that were patently fraudulent.

Earlier this month, for example, Hillary Machinery Inc filed a lawsuit against its bank, PlainsCapital, after online crooks used stolen credentials to transfer more than $800,000 from its account last year.

The bank later recovered about $600,000 of the stolen funds, but has so far refused to pay the remaining amout to compensate the Plano, Texas-based manufacturing firm for the remainder.

In its lawsuit, Hillary charged that PlainsCapital did not stop wire transfers that involved foreign bank accounts and dollar amounts completely out of norm for Hillary. The company claimed that it had a reasonable expectation that its money would be properly protected by the bank. The company also argued that a small business cannot be expected to hold significant expertise on data security issues.

In a similar case, a Sterling Heights, Mich.-based manufacturing firm is suing its bank after online crooks stole some $560,000 from the company’s online bank account via a series of unauthorized wire transfers last year. The lawsuit that Experi-Metal Inc. filed late last year blamed the theft on loss on Comerica Bank’s alleged failure to heed signs that should have alerted it to the fraudulent activity.

Though it’s unclear yet how courts are going to rule on such lawsuits, the attacks have prompted many questions about the authentication and fraud detection mechanisms used by many banks.

As far back as 2005, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council issued guidelines to banks on implementing stronger authentication for online transactions. Among other things, the Authentication in an Internet Banking Environment report called on banks to upgrade current single-factor authentication processes — typically based on user name and passwords — by adding a stronger, second form of authentication by the end of 2006.

The unceasing attacks on small business accounts shows that many banks, especially small community banks, have still not deployed such controls, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner Inc. analyst.

“The good news is there are plenty of effective fraud detection and authentication solutions that can and are thwarting these attacks when employed by the banks.” she said. “The bad news is that many banks are not using these solutions and the bank regulators are not paying adequate attention to this.”

Regulators such as the FDIC and the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have so far not enforced their own recommendations for strong authentication. “The bank examiners are really behind the 8-ball on this,” Litan said.

Paul Smocer, vice president of security at BITS, an industry consortium representing the 100 largest financial institutions in the U.S, said there’s been a “real uptick in sophistication” in cyberattacks targeting commercial accounts over the past six months or so.

Such attacks are seriously testing token-based authentication measures used by banks for many years, Smocer said.

“Until fairly recently, token-based authentication was considered to be very strong,” he said. However, as banking malware get increasingly sophisticated, “token methodology is not as strong as it has been historically.”

Smocer said there is a rapidly increasing need for context-aware and out-of-band authentication tools as well as monitoring tools that are capable of detecting fraud by comparing current transaction patterns against historical behavior. “We are starting to see a lot of our members move in that direction,” he said.

BITS has started advising members on ways to identify accounts where so-called “money mules” have moved to transfer stolen money to overseas bank accounts. “By working with law enforcement we are seeing patterns beginning to emerge with regard to the nature of the activity that mules often engage in,” Smocer said.

The attacks are pushing bodies such as the American Bankers Association to ask members to review internal security controls.

In a February alert, for example, the ABA asked banks to be on the alert for funds-transfer fraud involving small and medium-sized businesses. The alert specifically cited “large-value” payments to previously unknown payees, unusual international payments and new accounts “with high-value, high-volume transactions [and] previously unfunded accounts with large-value incoming funds that are cashed out as soon as funds are cleared.”

The bankers association is “strongly recommending” that banks review existing controls, such as their anti-money laundering tools, to determine whether features can be added to fulfill the recommendations, said Doug Johnson, senior policy advisor at the ABA. The ABA is also advising members to implement multiple layers of security for detecting fraud in much the same way that credit card companies have been doing for years, he added.

“Cybersecurity is always an arms race. It is incumbent upon financial institutions to be vigilant. If the exploits change the defenses have to change with them,’ said Johnson who is the ABA’s representative on Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council. “We are obviously very much concerned about the potential for these exploits to really damage the relationship between the customer and the bank and we will do everything in our power,” to alleviate the situation he said.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld . Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan , send e-mail to jvijayan@computerworld.com or subscribe to Jaikumar’s RSS feed .

Read more about security in Computerworld’s Security Knowledge Center.

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Gartner: PC shipments to grow by 20 percent this year

By JM Tuazon on March 5, 2010

By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
March 5, 2010

NEW YORK - Gartner has raised its worldwide PC shipment forecast for this year, predicting growth of 20 percent compared to 2009, partly driven by growth in shipments of mobile devices like laptops and netbooks.

The analyst firm in December predicted worldwide PC shipments to grow by 13.3 percent this year. Gartner is now saying PC shipments will total 366.1 million units in 2010, compared to 305.8 million units shipped in 2009.

“The PC industry will be overwhelmingly driven by mobile PCs, thanks to strong home growth in both emerging and mature markets,” said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, in a statement. Shipments of netbooks, which Gartner calls mini-notebooks, will also grow in 2010, but not at the rate of previous years. The devices could face competition from next-generation tablets and new laptops with ultra-low-voltage processors, Shiffler said.

Mobile devices accounted for 55 percent of all PC shipments in 2009, and will account for close to 70 percent of shipments by 2012. By comparison, desktop PC shipment growth will be minimal and limited to emerging markets. The market will remain robust over the next few years as consumer demand for PCs increases and companies open up budgets to upgrade PCs.

Gartner also said its “initial thinking” is that vendors could ship up to 10.5 million traditional, keyboard-based tablets and next-generation tablet devices this year.

Apple’s iPad is one of many new devices coming to market that could change the PC market, Gartner said. The iPad bundles Web surfing, multimedia, e-book reading and gaming into one device. It is due to ship later this month.

Users may no longer need a PC to access Web applications, and the emergence of new devices is changing the way PC makers think about the market, Gartner said.

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Open-source hardware takes steps toward gadget mainstream

By Computerworld Philippines on March 4, 2010

By Howard Wen
Computerworld (US)
March 4, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Open-source software is one of the great success stories of the past few decades. The Apache HTTP Server is the world’s most popular Web server, Linux has more than held its own against Unix and other proprietary operating systems, and Mozilla’s Firefox browser has given Microsoft’s Internet Explorer strong competition over the years.

Could the same philosophy — the free and public dissemination of underlying code and specs, with multiple developers from disparate sources contributing to the design — work for tech gadgets as well? Will we one day commonly use smartphones, netbooks or other gadgets that have been developed under an open-source model, maybe even preferring them over proprietary products like the iPhone?

After all, it’s possible today to design a device — including its electrical and mechanical architecture — on a personal computer with CAD and schematic design software, order nearly all the components needed for it online, and then process the manufacturing of a prototype through a low-cost supplier. So the idea of organizing an open-source project online to build a device isn’t far-fetched, nor is it one that requires millions in start-up funding.

But can such gadgets succeed against those developed by established commercial manufacturers with deep pockets? Mark Driver, a Gartner analyst who specializes in open source, thinks that open-source gadgets have the best chance in markets where the technology has matured to the point that it is commonplace.

“Open source is about commoditization,” Driver says. “These products are taking a market where there really isn’t a lot of concrete differentiation … between what’s out there and providing an alternative, which is exactly what open source does right. Linux got wildly popular not because it did something new; it’s because it did what Unix did, but did it in a much more open fashion.”

Defining open-source hardware

While there are numerous open-source computer and electronics components available today, only a handful of complete tech gadgets are being developed under an open-source philosophy. However, what exactly defines a hardware project as being open source remains … well, open.

Generally, hardware that is “open sourced” means at least some of its plans have been made available to the public, thus allowing others to contribute to its development or, if permitted by its creator, to manufacture the device themselves or even modify the plans to create a new device.

Always Innovating Inc., for example, encourages outsiders to contribute to the development of its ARM-processor-based tablet/netbook hybrid, the Touch Book. Weighing 1.8 lbs., the device features a touch screen, a removable keyboard and a customized Linux operating system distribution. It can run for 10 hours on a single battery charge.

The schematics for the Touch Book are freely available on Always Innovating’s Web site. “We also provide advanced support and consulting services for companies who want to build their own devices starting from our design,” says Chief Operating Officer Alexandre Tisserant.

“This is the way we are following: Build reliable, innovative products, and by opening them, you will get the necessary feedback and contributions to improve them and design new ones faster and easier,” Tisserant says.

That’s the open-source ideal, anyway. On the flipside, “the worst-case scenario would be a project emerging using an open-source moniker, and it ends up being nothing more than a marketing gimmick,” says Gartner’s Driver. “If it’s only from one vendor, or one source of support, those kind of things are the weakest forms of open source.”

Who’s in the market for open-source gadgets?

Unsurprisingly, the kind of user such gadgets are geared toward — and appeal to — the most is the tech hobbyist. The Touch Book has so far sold mainly to this crowd, says Tisserant, who says “several thousand” units have been sold. Yet his company is looking now to sell it to vertical markets. Because the Touch Book is highly customizable, it could easily be integrated into taxis or police cars, or connected to a hospital’s private network as an “always on” portable device for medical staff, Tisserant says.

Then there’s the Frankencamera, a Linux-based digital camera that can be programmed to control exposure, flash, focus settings and more. The camera is being developed by a team of graduate students at Stanford University and is meant for academic use.

“Specifically, we want to make this easy for graduate students doing research that could use a programmable camera, or undergraduate CS students doing courses in programming,” says Andrew Adams, one of the lead developers of the Frankencamera. “We’re graduate students ourselves, and this whole project is born out of our frustration with trying to program cameras to do what you want them to.”

A consumer-oriented open-source project that has so far failed to catch on is the Neo FreeRunner smartphone and its supporting Linux-based platform, called Openmoko. The project was launched by Openmoko Inc., with both the operating system and the design plans for the internal electronics and housing available for others to use and improve on.

The company officially stopped supporting the project in April 2009, according to Product Manager William Lai. “As time and technology progressed, the funds involved in competing with the likes of Apple, RIM, Android, etc. were out of our scope, and we soon realized that the technology outpaced our ability to deliver on a timely basis,” he says.

However, the Openmoko platform and FreeRunner phone are still being developed by a volunteer community.

Distributing and testing hardware is difficult

With software, anyone can download a copy of an open-source program and try it out practically instantly. It’s equally easy to give feedback to its developers and contribute code to fix bugs or add features.

The open-source model in software development thrives on this constant distribute-and-test process: The more copies of the code you can get into the hands of other people, and the quicker you do so, the faster the project’s developers can field feedback in order to fix and improve the software for its next release.

But applying the open-source model to hardware isn’t as straightforward. Copies of prototypes can be expensive to produce and distribute to fellow developers for evaluating and testing, so development doesn’t progress as quickly.

Tisserant calls this “the cost of the test”: “When you get your first piece of homemade hardware, you can do some modifications. But you will have to order a new piece with your new design. This takes time — a few weeks — as well as money.”

In order to seriously challenge the traditional proprietary model of developing hardware, a manufacturing time frame of less than one week would be ideal, says Tisserant: “The easier and faster you can test, the easier and faster you can learn.”

Turnaround time could be lessened with the use of affordable rapid prototyping or fabrication machines. For example, the body of the Frankencamera is laser-cut acrylic. So anyone with access to a laser cutter can take the plans for the Frankencamera’s body and make their own.

A device like the RepRap, a 3D printer for rapid prototyping, could play a significant part in open-source hardware development. The RepRap is itself open source. While commercially available 3D printers cost around $20,000 at the low end, the RepRap’s design is freely available to anyone who wants to build one. (Its developers estimate that the materials cost around $480.) What’s more, the RepRap can replicate many of its own parts, with the rest of its parts cheaply available, so you can build another one using the first.

“Someone with a RepRap or a laser cutter and a soldering iron can put together something. Open hardware designs combined with rapid fabrication gets at exactly the original intent of open-source software — if the design is open, you can modify it to meet your needs, and freely share those modifications with others,” says Adams.

Although the RepRap and other rapid-prototyping machines can speed up prototyping, they’re not an end-all solution since their capabilities are meant for creating only the housing or external case for a gadget. Such a machine can help build prototypes of, say, a netbook’s outer shell faster, but most of the device’s internal electronics still need to be sourced out for manufacture.

Nevertheless, opening up a device to the public (especially during its early design phase) encourages the formation of a community that can propose and contribute improvements. This can help reduce the number of prototypes that need to be built, saving money and time.

The lack of open-source culture among component makers

A device that is open source does not necessarily mean every component within its design schematic is also open source — in fact, it probably uses several proprietary parts.

Any consumer tech device is built with many smaller components. The makers of these parts are usually secretive about revealing their inner workings, unless it’s to a paying client. This can be a challenge for anyone trying to develop open-source hardware if their device’s design plans are to be released publicly.

“In the software world, there’s a rich culture of providing basic open-source building blocks like compilers, editors, support libraries and operating systems,” says Adams of the Frankencamera project. “Unfortunately, chip manufacturing is an inherently expensive business, and there’s far less room for the kind of altruistic sharing that seems to be the major motivator behind a lot of open-source contributors. Having to sign [non-disclosure agreements] to even see how to use a part like an image sensor is common.”

Although he and his fellow Frankencamera developers have encountered hesitation or refusals from companies they’ve approached to acquire information to help them build their digital camera, they have come across some willing to contribute — in particular because of the open-source aspect of their project. (Most of the Frankencamera’s electronics are commodity parts that anyone can buy. A few components, such as the camera’s power circuitry, were specially designed by the project’s team.)

“Companies that are hard to extract information or parts from don’t care whether you’re planning something open source or commercial — they’re equally reticent. People and companies that are willing to help are usually more willing to if it’s going to be open source; they know they’ll be able to benefit from any results too,” says Adams.

The issue of intellectual property

A big question swirling around open-source hardware projects is the legal issue of intellectual property — who owns what (including the whole and the individual parts) in an open-source device, especially if several people are contributing designs? Brendan Scott, a lawyer who specializes in IT law and runs the Web site Open Source Law, strongly advises the creators and lead developers of such projects to address this matter before anybody agrees to make anything.

As for how this should be handled, he says there is no one-size-fits-all answer. “In some cases, it will be better for individuals to retain intellectual property [in what they contribute]; in others, it will be better to transfer it to some holding entity. The main thing about intellectual property in a project is to turn your mind to the issue before you start — or soon after you start — rather than when you finish. By not addressing the issue, you may discover that the issue has been decided for you, perhaps in a way you are not happy with.”

Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of the TechCrunch blog, might agree. In July 2008 he announced plans to create a low-cost Web tablet, later dubbed the CrunchPad. While the hardware development process wouldn’t be fully open, Arrington’s idea was to “design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them,” as he wrote in the announcement.

The project got off to a promising start as TechCrunch partnered with Singapore-based Fusion Garage to develop and manufacture the CrunchPad. In late 2009, however, the agreement fell apart when Fusion Garage announced its intention to sell the CrunchPad without TechCrunch’s involvement. Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan claimed that his company had sole intellectual property rights to the device, while Arrington said both companies shared IP rights.

Fusion Garage plans to sell the device as the JooJoo tablet, and TechCrunch has filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage. As of this writing, Fusion Garage has been taking pre-orders for the JooJoo, which the company’s site says “will ship in 8 to 10 weeks.”

Asked what legal steps or counsel he and his Frankencamera developer colleagues have taken to protect their hard work, Adams says, “In this regard, life is easier when there’s no money to be made. Because everything we do is as students of Stanford University, we have pretty good legal avenues available to us if someone should try anything nefarious. So far, though, the vast majority of what we have heard from the general public is interest, encouragement and offers of help.”

Applying current open-source licenses to hardware

Another legal matter is whether current open-source licenses apply to hardware, at least suitably enough. Most were drafted in the context of software, and this is evident in their wording: The commonly used GNU General Public License refers to “the Program.”

Scott of Open Source Law postulates that with a generous reading, existing open-source licenses could be applied to hardware projects without modification. “It is not too far-fetched to think of hardware plans and component lists as the source from which an ‘object’ — literally — is ‘compiled’ or ‘assembled,’” he says.

“The intellectual property landscape for hardware is a little different from that of software,” Scott continues. “Copyright applies to copies of software, but does not typically apply directly to copies of hardware, particularly for items for which their form is functional — although making a copy of hardware can result in an infringement for the plans from which the hardware is made.”

Scott anticipates that, over time, licenses will be customized or amended in order to cover issues faced by hardware created under open source. For example, the TAPR Open Hardware License was specifically designed for hardware projects. And the Arduino project, an open-source electronics platform with both hardware and software components, uses a license for the designs of its hardware that is separate from the license for its firmware (the operating software that runs on it).

Making money (or not) from open-source hardware

Always Innovating’s Tisserant acknowledges that hardware companies going the open-source route might have lower profit margins, but he says they can benefit from lower research-and-development costs and shorter development cycles. “The goal is not to keep your secrets and live on endless royalties, but to share the knowledge and grow upon fast innovation,” he says.

Although Openmoko Inc. no longer supports the FreeRunner phone and Openmoko smartphone platform, Lai says the company isn’t through with open-source: “For the last year, Openmoko as a company has been focused on bringing open source in front of an audience of mass appeal. We want to continue to design products using open-source elements,” such as the WikiReader ($99), a pocket reader preloaded with Wikipedia content, says Lai.

As far as the developers of the Frankencamera are concerned, they have no business plan because their project isn’t meant to sell an end product. Their goal is to get the schematics of Frankencameras into the hands of students at other academic institutions, so they can build their own at minimal cost to use in their coursework and research.

In turn, they hope their project will “convince camera manufacturers that letting end users program their cameras is something that actually adds value and makes people want their product more, because there’s a community of enthusiasts constantly adding new features to it,” says Adams.

“How successful would the iPhone have been without the app store? Now why can’t you write and download apps to your camera? Our personal goals are to do interesting research, and give other people the tools to do interesting research, not to make money,” Adams says.

Selling open-source gadgets beyond the techie crowd

Jeff Orr, a technology analyst with ABI Research, thinks for an open-source hardware project to succeed in the marketplace against proprietary, commercial products, it still needs “some ownership — some individual, some entity — that is providing the workforce to assemble and distribute these products … Once I’ve bought it, what’s the support like? Is there a warranty if something goes wrong?”

Still, he is cautiously optimistic about the potential of open source at gadgets’ R&D stage: “Could [the open-source model] challenge the commercial research and development process? I think so … because you create a larger pool of knowledge that any individual or organization could learn from.”

But will an open-source gadget ever take off in the same way Firefox and Ubuntu have, becoming a household name among mainstream gadget users? Open-source gadgets will become more common, Gartner’s Driver predicts, but he is unsure if we will see one that appeals to a wide user base and can challenge an equivalent proprietary product.

“Will we see the same kind of revolution in those kind of devices that we saw in software? That’s probably a much less likely occurrence to happen, at least for the foreseeable future,” Driver says.

Howard Wen is a frequent contributor to Computerworld

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Google-Microsoft search war hits new heights

By Computerworld Philippines on March 4, 2010

By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
March 4, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The already heated online search war cranked up a notch in recent days as Google officials openly blamed Microsoft for triggering the European Commission’s antitrust probe into its activities.

Analysts say that if true, Microsoft’s decision to seek an EC antitrust investigation into Google activities would mark the latest move in its continuing effort to knock the high-riding search vendor down a peg or two.

The EC announced late last month that it had launched an antitrust investigation of Google based on complaints from three firms, two with connections to Microsoft.

Over the past year or so, Microsoft has been spending a lot of money and development resources to capture some of Google’s 60% share of the search market. But while the release of Microsoft’s Bing search engine last summer did garner a lot of attention, Google still maintains the dominant position it has held in the search market for years.

Now Microsoft appears to be taking a different route — creating a legal storm that would distract Google officials and keep them from focusing on the future of the business.

“Against Google’s level of control,” any effort to compete directly in the search business “could take [Microsoft] a lot of years and a massive investment,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “This approach [using legal means to distract Google] potentially shortens their time and the investment.

“The disparity in market share is simply too large for them to close the gap unless Google makes a massive sustained mistake or is hit by a successful antitrust action,” he added.

Whit Andrews, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said it’s no surprise that the Microsoft-Google battle would enter a new realm, in this case the courtroom.

“I think that search is the most important crossroads in the history of information,” Andrews said. “I expect the striving conflict among the most powerful companies and countries in the world to intensify.”

In a conference call with journalists last week, Julia Holtz, Google’s top antitrust lawyer, blamed Microsoft for sparking the probe. “Microsoft is our competitor, and that explains many actions,” she said.

She noted that the three companies whose complaints triggered the investigation included Ciao, a German company acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

“Ciao [was] a long-time AdSense partner of Google’s, with whom we always had a good relationship,” Holtz said in a blog post. “However, after Microsoft acquired Ciao in 2008, we started receiving complaints about our standard terms and conditions. They initially took their case to the German competition authority, but it now has been transferred to Brussels.”

She also noted that a second complainent, Foundem, a U.K. price comparison site, is a member of of a trade group called iComp , which is largely funded by Microsoft.

French legal search engine ejustice.fr was the third company whose complaint against Google is under investigation by the EC.

Microsoft responded to Holtz’ charge by contending that Google responded to the EC investigation by pointing fingers rather than answering the charges.

Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft, added in a blog post that “Google hasn’t been shy about raising antitrust concerns about Microsoft in the last few years. Ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”

Enderle noted that in the past, Microsoft frequently complained that rivals like Oracle Corp., Sun Microsoystems Inc. and Google were behind antitrust probes that targeted its actions.

Stuart Williams, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said users shouldn’t assume that Microsoft’s apparent legal challenge to Google indicates that it’s decided that Bing is not up to the challenge of taking on the search giant. It simply means that Microsoft is using all the tools in its arsenal.

“Both vendors have strong search technologies; the cases are not indications that either is throwing in the towel,” said Williams. “Large corporations can fight in the market as well as in the courtroom.”

The analysts do note that no matter who prompted the antitrust investigation, Google should prepare itself for the legal challenge.

“If you think about it, the validity of the charge should be based on the validity and substance of the evidence, not on whether a large competitor brought it to the enforcement agency’s attention,” said Enderle.

“I think this is a natural progression. Google’s should have been to anticipate that the fight they helped start with Microsoft would likely come back to haunt them. It’s like firing a nuclear bomb with the belief that the other side won’t turn around and use it against you.”

The antitrust action appears to be the latest battele in an escalating battle between Google and Microsoft on several fronts, from enterprise applications to operating systems and now especially to the burgeoning search market .

Nancy Gohring and Paul Meller of the IDG News Service, contributed to this article.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld . Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin , send e-mail to sgaudin@computerworld.com or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed .

Read more about government in Computerworld’s Government Knowledge Center.

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Demystifying the Social Media Conundrum

By Fei Lumbania on March 1, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon

It started out as a clever tale of unintentional and spontaneous humor, but the people behind Team Manila—a local graphic design merchandise collective—didn’t expect that printing the words “Payong na Itim” (Black Umbrella) on a, well, black umbrella, would pique the curiosity of its 3,000 followers on popular microblogging site Twitter so much that they haven’t stopped producing the distinct merchandise ever since.

What was once just an experimental venture is now a mainstay offering of their store, a solid proof of the much-hyped idea that social networking sites—or social media in general—indeed has its roots planted even in the enterprise sphere, if corporate heads have the mind and will to muster its potentials.

For Team Manila, a group of young graphic designers specializing on Manila-themed merchandise and lifestyle items, their business is heavily entrenched in the tangled web of the Internet given the young demographic of their customers.

And investing heavily on this group of Internet-savvy consumers sure had its payoffs. In November 2009, a Twitter link to a promotional graphic uploaded on the team’s Flickr account garnered much interest that as much as 1,333 viewed it within a few hours after posting.

But page views are nothing if they can’t be converted to actual product sales, and Jowee Alviar, half of Team Manila’s creative team and co-founder of the collective, was only more than happy to report that “many people turned up during our Saturday sale, which was only promoted through Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and our website.”

Team Manila, however, is no stranger to the unique social aspect of their product marketing. Before Twitter and Facebook were even conceived, they were already engaging their customers regarding the products they sell. “We would upload a number of designs on our mailing list, and members get to choose which ones they like,” narrates Alviar. “The top six designs are the ones that get printed and sold in our stores.”

This democratic inclusion of the customers in the planning and production stages of their merchandise was carried over to Twitter, which only expedited the process. “Through social media, we are able to include them [in our decisions as a company], especially because we want to be accessible to them,” Alviar says.

For its more than seven month run on Twitter, engaging with the customers has been the key to Team Manila’s social media success. “We want to establish a relationship with our clients, to connect with our market,” Alviar says. This is the reason why, aside from marketing promotions, Alviar—who handles the account—posts updates ranging from the mundane to the utterly nonsensical. “We want to find ways for them to re-tweet our posts, which further increases our reach,” he adds.

Zeroing In

Yet for all intents and purposes, the audience flocking Twitter—captive as it may seem—remain to be a niche segment of any company’s market. For Pepper Lunch Philippines, a local food outlet serving do-it-yourself grilled steaks, engaging with customers via social media meant zeroing in on a particular group of customers.

“Twitter is a way to connect with a certain customer group of Pepper Lunch customers. We have a lot of different customers and Twitter is a way for us to get close to this particular group,” says Jeroen van Straten, owner of the food franchise.

Since October 2009, van Straten says they’ve been posting promotional materials, information on upcoming events and store openings, and opportunities for customers to bag free items, food, and gift checks on their Twitter account. “It is a way for us to connect with our loyal customers,” he adds.

One particular time, van Straten shares, he posted updates about a new menu dish on the store. “People immediately re-tweeted the message and many have come over to the stores ordering the item, telling the cashier that they came over because of the Tweet!” he explains, adding that Twitter offers a unique new form of instant advertising for companies.

Realizing the potentials of the Internet in promoting their offerings, van Straten decided to shift to guerilla mode and has since been hunting feedback and comments about his venture online. “We monitor and follow all traffic, posts and comments on blogs and social networking sites that write about Pepper Lunch and answer them personally,” he says. “We use Google Alerts to notify us about all Pepper Lunch related stuff going on online. “

This “turning of the tables” is the immediate product of the social networking boom, with companies keen on hunting out the dingy corners of the web for conversations that can prove beneficial for their companies.

Every day, customers are talking about products and services over the Internet. “We need to listen to that conversation. When people are talking about your products and services to their friends, how can we take that info, and do something about it for the good of the company?” says Shivanu Shukla, industry manager, ICT practice for Asia Pacific, Frost & Sullivan, in an earlier interview.

Facing the Music

Turning into an all-seeing eye is exactly what Globe Telecom, one of the country’s three telecommunications companies, is hoping to achieve. After seeing the apparent impact of social media over the lives of Filipinos—down to even the ones who don’t have Internet access—during the calamitous period when twin typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng hit the country’s capital, the company went full throttle into the social media landscape.

“[The year] 2009 saw the rise of social media presence in the Philippines when Ondoy and Pepeng hit. Of all possible channels to reach loved ones and authorities, people turned to social media to seek help, refuge, and action,” relates Philip Caballes, social media manager of Globe Telecom. “This validates our observation that social media is no longer just a trend in the country but a reality.”

For Globe, latching on to this reality meant being present in every social media channel available. “Globe is present in all major social media channels such as Facebook, Friendster, Multiply, Twitter, Plurk and in some up and coming Web 2.0 destinations. Globe uses these channels in different ways depending on what the site is good at doing,” Caballes explains.

Globe has more than 17,000 fans on its Facebook page, over 10,000 contacts in Friendster and Multiply, and at least 2,000 followers on Twitter as of writing. Harnessing the potentials of this vast audience, however, required heavy investment on Globe’s part, which upper management was more than willing to provide. “Social media investment this year has increased from 5% to 25% of our digital marketing budget from 2008 to 2009,” Caballes says.

But even if social media in general can greatly benefit a company through marketing or PR means, the different platforms available possess unique intricacies that, when leveraged properly, can raise these benefits exponentially. “We are present and active in [most social channels available]. The most effective channels for us are Twitter for handling customer engagement issues, Facebook for topical conversations, Multiply for publishing and Friendster for broadcasting,” Caballes clarifies.

But Globe isn’t only present on these popular and public social media platforms. Caballes says they also have presence in proprietary social media assets developed internally, such as Gloo.com.ph—a collaboration tool—and Minglr.ph—a social media feed aggregator.

Establishing presence, however, is merely the first step. Globe backs this up with quick and efficient response to queries and inquiries, which Caballes says “ranges from quality issues to network inquiries and the occasional compliments.”

Globe takes no longer than 48 hours to respond to feedback, Caballes says. “Twitter interactions tend to be faster, though,” he adds.

And what does Globe get out of this? “We measure ROI for social media activities differently. It is not measured against a media buy but on the level and depth of engagement we get with our customers,” Caballes explains.

A Curious Case

But another kind of engagement got the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), the capital’s electricity provider, jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. As if jolted by the immediate and massive effects of social media, Meralco’s PR department woke up to a start during the recent typhoons when a deluge of false information being spread around washed up on their doorstep.

“We already had plans to setup a Twitter account, but mostly just as a supporting platform for our corporate blog,” narrates Kirk Campos, part of Meralco’s external communications group. “A day before Typhoon Pepeng (international codename: Parma) made landfall, a message circulated around Facebook claiming that Meralco will shut the metro’s power down by nine in the evening.”

Campos said people were already spreading the information around thinking it was accurate, which created more problems on their part. “I had to go on air and clarify the matter. We had to categorically state that there was, and there will be, no such incident,” explains Joe Zaldarriaga, the external communications group head of Meralco. “Aside from traditional media, we came up with almost a spontaneous move to go to Twitter.”

Meralco’s back-breaking crisis PR didn’t stop there. A week after the incident, a transmission facility operated by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) suddenly broke down, causing intermittent brownouts in some portions of Eastern Manila. “There was someone on Twitter—who goes by the handle of @manilaelectric— delivering a blow-by-blow account of the incident, even implying that a ‘Meralco substation exploded,’ which is not the case at all,” Zaldarriaga says.

That moment, he says, the PR team of Meralco got in touch with Nick Nichols, a power sector consultant who initially set up to reserve the Twitter handle @meralco because he “wanted Meralco to have its own Twitter account.” “After we got in touch with him, he verified our identities for due diligence, after which he turned the account over to us,” Zaldarriaga relates.

The PR Team then linked the Twitter account to the official website of Meralco, and announced subsequently the opening of the account over broadcast media, to give credence to the account. “We have around 1,500 followers right now, who mostly deliver queries and inquiries about power interruptions in their areas,” Campos says.

Evolve or Die

The massive explosion of social media reverberated throughout every aspect of society that choosing to ignore its business value can potentially spell misfortune for firms that do not harness its powers.

Analyst firm Gartner puts it boldly in saying that “resisiting social media is futile,” and that firms opting to resist or ignore it is still making a decision—of shutting their organization from a vast pool of valuable information.

Meralco, a 106 year-old company, has paid heed to this advice, and is slowly reaping the benefits. “You have to adapt to the changing environment, and keep researching, finding out, what are the new trends in the information field, what are the new channels being opened to further engage the consumers,” asserts Zaldarriaga. “Learning is a process, it’s an everyday process. You learn, and you have to adapt accordingly. You should always be in step with the development in the field.”

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Gartner predicts 20 percent growth for chip industry in 2010

By JM Tuazon on February 26, 2010

By Dan Nystedt
IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
February 26, 2010

TAIPEI - The global chip industry will rebound sharply from the global recession and post 20 percent year-on-year growth in 2010, market researcher Gartner said Thursday.

The growth forecast is slightly higher than others have predicted but is in step with bullish forecasts for the global semiconductor industry this year. Strong demand for a variety of chips has contributed to strong earnings growth at chip makers from microprocessor giant Intel to memory chip king Samsung Electronics.

Strong growth in PCs and memory chips will be primary drivers for semiconductor revenue to reach US$276 billion this year, up from $231 billion last year, Gartner said in a statement. Worldwide chip revenue declined 9.6 percent last year.

“We have seen clear evidence that the semiconductor industry is poised for strong growth in 2010,” said Gartner analyst Bryan Lewis, in the statement.

Gartner expects 20 percent more PCs to be produced this year than in 2009, a major boon for chip makers. DRAM makers will benefit from a 55 percent rise in revenue this year, making the chip segment the fastest growing “by far,” the market researcher said. Most DRAM chips are used in PCs.

The full-year chip industry growth target is slightly higher than that of in-house forecasters at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chip maker. TSMC last month said it expects the global semiconductor market to grow 18 percent this year, after contracting 9 percent last year, due mainly to strong PC and mobile phone sales.

The company plans to spend a historical-high $4.8 billion on new factories and production lines this year to keep pace with fast chip industry growth, and to make up for slower spending during the recession.

Samsung, the world’s biggest memory chip maker, predicted last month that strong PC sales will raise chip revenue 10 percent to 20 percent this year and that prices of DRAM and NAND flash memory chips will remain strong.

Gartner warned Thursday that a correction might be needed for the chip industry in the near term in order to head off an inventory glut. The researcher said that according to the data it tracks, there is a need to re-balance chip sales with system sales.

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Windows Phone 7, Meego OS herald new start for smartphones

By Computerworld Philippines on February 16, 2010

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
February 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - In separate announcements from Barcelona today, three traditional powerhouses in computing and communications — Microsoft , Intel and Nokia — kick-started major revamps to their technology to adapt to a quick-changing smartphone and mobile device market that’s increasingly dominated by Google and Apple .

“Microsoft is in a bigger ’start over’ penalty box than Intel and Nokia, but it really is a start over for all of them,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates about the announcements made at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “Microsoft does have a much steeper road to climb to get back into the game than Nokia/Intel does.”

Intel joined Nokia in unveiling Meego , a Linux -based open operating system to be used in smartphones, netbooks, connected TVs and tablets. Meego combines features from Intel’s Moblin OS and Nokia’s Maemo OS. Devices using Meego are expected to arrive in the second half of 2010.

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touted Windows Phone 7 Series software that’s expected to be running on smartphones due out by the 2010 holiday season on a variety of carriers globally, including AT&T in the U.S.
Ballmer said the new version of Microsoft’s operating system for mobile phone will bring “more consistency in the hardware platform and in the user experience” than earlier versions.

In both announcements, it was obvious that the three companies are adjusting to the market success of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and the coming iPad tablet, as well as Google Inc. The search company is behind a host of software applications for a variety of upcoming Android OS smartphones and devices that it helped create in its sponsorship of the Open Handset Alliance.

Gold said that Microsoft has “basically had to nuke its existing OS and start over,” while Intel and Nokia could blend most of the existing code in Moblin and Maemo to create Meego.

Ballmer did not describe Windows Phone 7 Series as a start-over, of course, but implied it comes in reaction to past criticism of Windows Mobile OS and its decline in sales in late 2009.

“We have a chance to make a major impact on the [smartphone] market… (with the new OS),” Ballmer said. “We had to step back and recast.”

Ballmer also didn’t go as far as he did last fall when he told investors that Microsoft had “screwed up with Windows Mobile” and had shuffled its Windows Mobile team to regain lost ground.

Updated user functions in Windows Phone 7 include concepts such as “hubs” that display a page of contacts called “people,” for example. Other hubs will be labeled “office” for note-taking and synchronizing documents with a PC; “games,” for integrating with the Microsoft Xbox live online community; and “music+video” for synchronizing the smartphone with Microsoft’s desktop Zune jukebox and music store software.

Windows Phone 7 will also provide a touchscreen Qwerty keyboard as in some Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, Ballmer said.

Even with new innovations, Microsoft will continue to employ a licensing model where phone manufacturers pay a fee for Microsoft software, Ballmer said, offering no details. He also argued that “free” software in open operating systems such as Android might not really be free.

Gold called the Meego announcement a positive for both Intel and Nokia. It will help Nokia make a “direct assault” on the enormous momentum behind Google’s Android and Chrome, and will help Intel attack the ARM chip architecture used in smartphones and other smart personal devices, he said. ARM chips, developed and licensed by ARM Holdings, are used extensively in smartphones and mobile phones; Intel has developed the Atom chip to compete directly with ARM.

But Gold said “it remains to be seen if anyone besides Intel and Nokia will embrace Meego.” He believes Nokia will hold onto its existing Symbian OS for lower-end mobile phones, but needs something like Meego for higher end smartphones down the road.

Nokia dominates the smartphone market today with its Symbian OS, but Android is projected to catapult to the No. 2 spot behind Nokia by 2012, according to Gartner Inc. and IDC.

While Apple’s total share of the smartphone market is well behind Symbian’s, the company’s growth year-over-year — and excitement over next month’s arrival of the iPad — that make it such a challenge for traditional companies like Microsoft, Intel and Nokia.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld . Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed@matthamblen or subscribe to . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .

Read more about mobile and wireless in Computerworld’s Mobile and Wireless Knowledge Center.

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Outlook 2010 IT skills checklist: The vertical climb

By Computerworld Philippines on January 5, 2010

By Denise Dubie
Network World (US)
January 5, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - After a year of hiring freezes and layoffs, IT professionals in 2010 will face a challenging employment market and the search for IT talent will grow beyond in-demand high-tech skills to also include industry-specific business savvy.

How to make yourself layoff proof | How to get fired
IT professionals still smarting from the pain of the economic recession inflicted in 2009 won’t find immediate relief in a booming employment market for 2010, analysts say. Companies will be rebuilding IT teams, but the majority of them will return to pre-recession levels as IT executives examine different sourcing options while working to help their businesses recover from the downturn.

“Companies looking to fill internal IT roles will focus more on crucial business-facing positions. There is no longer a blurring between IT and the business; those barriers are broken down now. IT will be expected to take more of a leadership role and make decisions for the business,” says Lily Mok, vice president of Gartner’s CIO Research. “IT needs to look for opportunities to really help the business transition from recession to recovery. IT needs to do more than support the business now; it needs to prepare an organization to return to growth and show how technology can be used to help the business shine.”

That means managers and recruiters are on the lookout for IT pros with vertical-industry knowledge in areas such as healthcare, insurance and government, as well as experience with business process re-engineering. Yet technology-specific skills around emerging areas such as cloud computing and software-as-a-service will drive the need for savvy vendor management approaches, while security, virtualization and data center technical know-how will continue to be sought after among the pool of available IT pros.

“Data shows that the combination of deep technical IT skills with project management or leadership experience, as well as looking at the intersection of IT and risk management for the business, are the areas in highest demand,” says Jeff Schwartz, principal of human capital at Deloitte Consulting.

Know your vertical
The stereotype of IT existing in the back office and not facing the business is gone. In years past, industry watchers have advised high-tech workers to better communicate with the business, but now the task is to become a critical player in the success of the business — and not only by taking direction. IT professionals will be expected to take a leadership role in 2010 and take initiative in making decisions in the best interests of the business.

“Even with all the new technologies going on, the job market for IT pros is about the application of the technologies to the business. The skills required going forward will be multi-faceted in ways they haven’t been in the past. Technology workers need to understand the business and provide a diverse set of technical skills to become the go-to person to deliver the right technology for the business,” says Rich Milgram, CEO of recruiting and strategic staffing provider Beyond.com.

Some vertical industries in particular will see a huge spike in demand for high-tech workers. For instance, healthcare is expected to see demand for 70,000 new IT positions in the next 12 months, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association. The increase in open jobs is due in part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which includes billions in provisions for healthcare IT. The expected uptick in demand is driving industry organizations such as CompTIA to find the best ways to educate and train IT workers on healthcare-specific skills.

“We are working now to determine what kind of IT roles should be supported in certifications from CompTIA,” says Terry Erdle, senior vice president of skills certifications at CompTIA.

Also associated with economic stimulus plans, insurance companies and government agencies will experience a significant increase in demand for high-tech talent.

“There is little question that the healthcare sector, regardless of what the outcome of healthcare reform will be, is going to continue growing. From an industry perspective, healthcare is at the top of the list followed by government agencies in terms of demand,” Deloitte’s Schwartz says.

This sharpened focus on business knowledge will also drive demand in IT governance, business processes engineering, project management and architect positions, high-tech talent experts report.

“The skills within IT that are process-centric are clearly more in demand today,” says Sean Ebner, regional vice president of Technisource. “The blurring of lines between business process engineers and technology engineers has happened and companies want to hire candidates that will be able to apply governance, to implement and modify systems in a more cost-efficient manner using process engineering and knowledge automation.”

Understanding the business, being able to re-engineer processes in such a way to streamline operations and optimizing IT projects will be top of mind for many hiring managers, IT industry watchers agree.

“Those coming from the business side or being very well versed in the business processes are in good positions,” Gartner’s Mok says. “Combining the knowledge of the technical systems with business processes will help IT professionals get and keep key positions.”

Secure next-generation nets
It’s no surprise with multiplying headlines around data leaks and cybercrime that security skills remain sought after, even in a down employment market. Yet the type of security professional in demand ranges from technical skills acquired via certifications to executive-level risk managers, analysts say.

“Security continues to be in demand, in both operational and strategic positions. Information risk management is seeing growth as well as those positions that require a tactical technical focus,” says David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer at Foote Partners.

Foote Partners data shows that while many certified and noncertified skills experienced pay decreases throughout the recession, IT professionals with security certification on average experienced a nearly 2% pay increase through the third quarter of 2009. Over the past two years, IT security certifications overall saw average premium pay increase by more than 3.6%, trailing only architecture/project management certifications, which experienced a 5% compensation increase in the same timeframe.

“If you know how to keep your company’s data secure, you were in demand yesterday, are in demand today and will be in demand tomorrow,” says Tom Silver, senior vice president with Dice.com.

CompTIA in late 2009 polled some 1,537 high-tech workers and found 37% intend to pursue a security certification over the next five years. Separately, nearly 20% indicated they would seek ethical hacking certification over the same time period. And another 13% pinpointed forensics as the next certification goal in their career development.

“When you add the results, you will see that about two-thirds of IT workers intend to add some type of security certification to their portfolio,” says Terry Erdle, senior vice president of skills certifications. “This trend is driven by two factors: one, security issues are pervasive, and two, more and more people are moving to managed services and software-as-a-service models, which involves more complex networking. That level of non-enterprise data center computing has people look more closely at their security infrastructure.”

Acquire open source skills
Open source software is gaining steam among enterprise companies that find the flexibility and low cost appealing and now can pick and choose among commercial support packages. Certified skills and experience in the realm of open source packages are already on recruiters’ radar, according to IT talent experts, who report that companies in 2010 will seek candidates with open source skills.

“We are seeing a ton of demand for skills around open source technologies and frameworks. Demand for Python, Ruby on Rails and PHP development skills far exceeds the number of people available with skills,” says Michael Kirven, co-founder and principal of IT resourcing firm Bluewolf.

The online job resource for technology professionals, Dice.com, also reports seeing increased interest in open source skill sets. Silver says the Web site has seen a growth in interest around programming skills such as Ruby on Rails and Python as well.

“There are about 1,000 jobs open looking for such skills and we expect open source technologies are an area employers will be looking to hire,” he says.

Yet keep in mind the interest in these technologies is at an enterprise level, from employers looking to hire IT professionals that can help them run data centers more efficiently and cost-effectively.

“Hiring managers want to see more than people playing around with open source in a sandbox environment. People that get trained and certified on these open source technologies will stand out when their resumes fall on recruiters’ desks,” Kirven adds.

Understand the hype
Emerging technologies, perhaps shrouded in a bit of hype, have garnered attention from hiring managers as well. With vendors touting cloud computer, software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and social networking tools as a productivity, operations and economic problem solvers, enterprise IT leaders will want staff who can navigate through the fluff and find the substance in such offerings.

Gartner recognized cloud computing, mobility, social networking and virtualization as top technologies for 2010 and in turn, that means hiring managers will be seeking skills in those same areas, according to Mok. That is one reason the research firm identified Java, .Net and other Web development technologies as a sought after skill set.

“The demand for such skills is not about the amount of available IT pros that know Java, it is more with the quality of the skill sets people have in those areas,” Mok explains. “The future is the Web via social computing and those are just extensions of a variety of multimedia and Web skills. It is directly related to how businesses can use the Internet to better connect with customers.”

While Web development skills aren’t new, cloud computing, for instance, is being presented as a new technology, though many would argue it is based on previous models for delivering technology. Still such confusion around cloud services could be quickly cleared up but a high-tech worker well-versed in the market who knows what moves might best benefit the company. Such knowledge is going to get IT leaders’ attention, IT talent experts say.

“Anyone looking for work in the IT space should be well-versed in what cloud means to the company they want to work for. It means many different things, everyone is throwing cloud into their product pitches,” Bluewolf’s Kirven says. “Hiring managers want to see people that have done cloud before and understand how it can be used and how it can turn into a disaster. They want the best possible talent in house to try to drive these new initiatives.”

Vendors such as IBM are even getting in on the cloud skills action. The company in fall 2009 launched its IBM Cloud Academy, which it describes as a “global forum for educators, researchers and IT personnel from the education industry to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skills and share best practices for reducing operating costs while improving quality and access to education.” CompTIA also in the fall of 2009 acquired MSP partners, which Erdle says, is helping the industry organization “baseline requirements for a set of certifications around managed services, SaaS, cloud and virtual skills.”

“We get several calls per week around SaaS, cloud and virtual skills that companies want guidance on considering we are the vendor-neutral party,” Erdle explains. “CompTIA is working now on building certifications programs to release in 2010 and get in front of this growing demand.”

Deliver advanced data centers
In the wake of the recession, companies won’t abandon the lessons learned from over-provisioning or spending needlessly on excess infrastructure resources, for instance. Designing and delivering cost-efficient, consolidated data centers will top the list of many IT leaders and finding employees experienced in the areas of virtualization energy-efficient computing will be critical to their success during the economic recovery.

“There is huge demand right now for a lot of the skills around data center moves and consolidations. There are skills lacking in virtualization technologies and even network technology that they need to understand to support next-generation data centers,” Bluewolf’s Kirven says. “Add data center security and disaster recovery skills to that list and the ideal candidate would need to be very well versed in the many technologies that make up data centers of the future.”

As companies continue to invest in virtualization, the demand for IT professionals experience in designing virtual data centers will also grow. According to Foote Partners, virtualization continues to land on the research firm’s hot list of technologies and related skills.

“There has been a lot of spending around virtualization skills already,” Foote says.

Companies today are seeking talent in virtualization and employment watchers expect the existing numbers to only continue to grow.

“We have more than 1,000 jobs on the site right now that call for understanding virtualization and how that technology can be applied to a company’s infrastructure,” Dice.com’s Silver adds, “If you have experience in virtualization, if you essentially know how you can help your company’s data center run more efficiently, then you are already in demand.”

Looking ahead
Industry watchers report IT staffs could remain lean in the coming months and that economic recovery might not indicate a full job recovery to pre-recession numbers. That doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity for IT professionals to expand their careers and take advantage of the opportunity to become a critical part of their company’s business in the long-term, according to Gartner’s Mok

“IT departments during the downturn were very cautious about where they reduced and more organizations plan to keep staffing levels flat for a period of time. As the recovery continues, they might not even add too much, so I don’t think we will ever go back to the big IT departments of 2000 or 2001,” she says. “But companies realize today that these business-savvy technology skill sets take time to develop and they are doing a better job of workforce planning and training staff on the technologies they feel their business will need in the future.”

Some IT watchers argue that high-tech remains a successful career option for many. The fact that many jobs remained open during the recession points to a continued need for high-tech talent, and job seekers should consider this a positive sign going forward, researching in what vertical market the skills they possess are most in demand.

“We’ve seen throughout the recession the interesting phenomenon of unfilled jobs even though people are actively looking for work. That is just one measure of the skills gap,” Deloitte’s Schwartz says. “The job market is different than in boom time, and the problem remains to be about matching available skills to open positions.”

And while some say the future for IT professionals continues to look promising, they are quick to point out that it also looks very different from the past.

“Market influences such as outsourcing and budget strain is forcing clarity on how money is spent on high-tech talent,” says Adam Lawrence, vice president of service delivery at Yoh Talent Solutions. “Ultimately it comes down to the worker to move up the value chain from being a great coder to becoming an architect savvy in the business, for instance. Technology workers must know how the business is intricately underpinned with technology and use their technical talent toward making the business a bigger success.”

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Gartner: 2009 a dismal year for the worldwide chip industry

By JM Tuazon on December 18, 2009

By Sharon Gaudin
Computerworld (US)
December 18, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - The worldwide semiconductor industry hit such a slump in 2009 that it will likely go down as one of its steepest sales declines since 1985, according to Gartner Inc.

The Stamford, Conn. research firm issued a report this week projecting that worldwide semiconductor revenues will total $226 billion in 2009, 11.4% — or $29 billion — less than in 2008. Gartner noted that the 2009 results mark the first time ever that semiconductor sales declined two years in a row.

“Revenue dropped precipitously in the first quarter of 2009, continuing a deterioration which started in the last quarter of 2008,” said Stephan Ohr, semiconductor research director at Gartner, in a statement.

Gartner’s projection comes about a month after investment house Morgan Stanley cut its rating on the semiconductor industry from “attractive” to “cautious,” while also downgrading the likes of Intel. Corp., Nvidia Corp. and Micron Technology Inc.

At the time, Morgan Stanley analysts Mark Lipacis and Sanjay Devgan wrote in a note that rising inventories and concerns about PC component sales drove them to be more cautious about the industry.

This is particularly bad news for industry watchers who have been predicting that the semiconductor market will lead the U.S. economy out of the mire it’s been in the past few years.

Gartner noted that the industry saw a slight uptick toward the end of the first quarter and realized quarter-over-quarter growth throughout the rest of 2009. But that growth still wasn’t enough to lift the industry out of the doldrums, it added.

Just last month IDC had reported that worldwide computer chip shipments skyrocketed in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. The IDC report noted that after chip makers had struggled through quarter after recent quarter over the past couple of years, third quarter PC microprocessor shipments jumped 23%.

Nonetheless, the full year wasn’t a good one for semiconducor makers.

“Yes, it was a bad year for the semiconductor segment,” said Dan Olds, an analyst for The Gabriel Consulting Group. “However, it’s interesting to note that the pain was not universal.” He cited Gartner’s projection that Samsung’s 2009 sales will grow by 2.55% while Intel’s sales will decline by “only” 5.4%, “while others like STMicroelectronics and Renesas were down much more.”

Gartner said that Hynix Semiconductor and Qualcomm also showed revenue growth of 2.3% and 0.4% respectively.

The companies hit the hardest this year were Infineon Technologies, whose sales are expected by Gartner to fall by 46.5% drop, and Renesas Technology, whose decline is said to total 19.9%. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is projected to take a 10.1% hit this year, according to Gartner.

“AMD and Intel were definitely impacted by lower demand in PCs and servers,” said Olds. “However, I think there is a chance for a recovery in 2010 as demand picks up. I think that consumer sales will pick up if confidence returns. Business sales will recover a bit in any case, as businesses have postponed purchases that they will have to make at some point.”

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Flash storage should be among top data center priorities, Gartner says

By JM Tuazon on December 4, 2009

By Jon Brodkin
Network World (US)
December 4, 2009

FRAMINGHAM - Flash-based storage will quickly become one of the most important technologies in the data center, Gartner said this week.

Flash-based solid state memory is still 25 to 30 times more expensive than spinning disk drives on a per-gigabyte basis, and there are questions about its durability, but it carries several advantages over traditional storage devices, Gartner analyst Carl Claunch said at the research firm’s annual data center conference.

“If you compare it to disk drives it’s a lot faster,” Claunch said. “It’s small. It’s very rugged so you can put flash memory in something where a rotating disk drive would fail because of the shock.”

There are technical limits that place a ceiling on the number of times you can rewrite data to a particular location with flash drives, but clever use of software that controls how, where and when data is written is extending product lifespan.

“The reality today is you can create flash that lasts about as long as a real disk drive,” Claunch said. “We’re really getting to the point where this is interesting.”

The biggest strategic reason that flash is gaining prominence in the enterprise is that, for years, server processor speeds have improved exponentially while disk access speed has improved at slower rates. “The gap between the two keeps getting wider,” Claunch said.

Using RAM cache and other mechanisms can help eliminate performance penalties, but enterprises are still struggling with erratic application performance because of slow disk drives, Claunch said.

Flash should not replace disk on a one-to-one basis because of the cost, but applications can be sped up dramatically if files and bits that are critical to system performance are moved onto flash, Claunch said.

Flash was one of several products Gartner listed as among “the most important technologies in your data center future.”

Others include green technology, new types of client computing, virtualization, the cloud, and data center pods and zones.

Gartner is also forecasting a major change in how servers are built, from today’s blades to a fabric-based approach that treats memory, processors and I/O cards as interchangeable elements.

Vendor profits have gone down as servers have become commodities, but development of new fabric-based systems can give customers more flexibility in the data center while giving vendors a reason to charge more money, Claunch said.

Future fabric-based servers “will treat memory, processors and I/O cards as components in a pool, combining and recombining them into particular arrangements to suits the owner’s needs,” Gartner has said.

Vendors such as 3Leaf Systems and RNA Networks are working on building data center platforms that offer some of the flexibility of Gartner’s predicted fabric-based servers, and there is plenty of venture capital money out there for vendors with an innovative approach, Claunch said.

“Fabric is a wonderful opportunity,” he said. “It’s in the best interests of the server vendors to get there.”

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E-Biz Enablers

By Fei Lumbania on December 2, 2009

By Tom S. Noda
Published in the CWP November 2009 issue

As the Internet continues to evolve and improve with technologies such as Web 2.0, the expectations of the growing number of netizens are also changing as they expect improved features from websites they patronize—putting pressure on companies with online storefronts and a market opportunity for technology providers.

A big reason for the heightened expectations is that sites like YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Flickr and Facebook continue to push the envelope in terms of new features and the online experience in general, says Gene Alvarez, Gartner’s vice president of e-commerce and CRM research.

In fact, Gartner reports that although IT budgets are shrinking anywhere between 5% to 25%, companies are expected to sharpen the online shopping experiences of their companies’ customers.

“That’s the real big challenge here for e-commerce organizations: The bar keeps rising despite the economy,” says Alvarez. “Whether in business-to-consumer or business-to-business e-commerce, as customers are exposed to new capabilities, they expect those at all other Web sites.”

The demand for new features in websites has not gone unnoticed by many technology providers who have launched software and services that aim to improve the online storefront of companies.

Only recently, Google launched its Google Checkout store gadget that can be embedded in any website without the need to engage in “complicated coding.” It helps people create an online store “in a matter of minutes” with the gadget application using Google’s Checkout electronic payment service and its Docs spreadsheet application.

In the Philippines, a number of technology vendors are currently moving towards the development of e-business applications both in the B2C and B2B space.

For example, ePLDT, Inc. a local ICT firm and wholly-owned subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), is now in the process of developing a suite of business applications that will be available online. It will be a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) type of service which the company will announce probably by the 1st quarter of 2010.

Meanwhile, two other firms, DataOne Asia Philippines Inc. and Ripple E-Business International, Inc., are both offering products and services for business organizations to benefit from e-commerce. DataOne claims to empower company websites, while Ripple claims to be one of the fastest-growing software companies catering to the retail and distribution industry.

Jojo Colina, head of the product management and development group at ePLDT, explains the difference between e-commerce and e-business. He says the placing of one’s information online for promotions is already e-business. But when one starts selling online, it crosses the line of e-commerce.

“Marketing and site optimization all fall under e-business but it may still be called e-commerce but e-commerce is very specific. It is the negotiation of the exchange of value of goods. And that’s the traditional definition of e-commerce,” says Colina.

E-BIZ PARTNER
Servicing a wide range of enterprises across various industries, ePLDT has tools that enable e-commerce and e-business, says Colina. He describes ePLDT at present as more of an infrastructure-enabler type.

Colina explains ePLDT’s portfolio of products is all Internet-related and everything the company offers can be employed in an e-business infrastructure.

“We do not yet make our services available in an e-commerce form, where you go to a portal and click to just sign up for services,” he says. “But our services right now are more geared towards enabling those who are into the e-commerce and e-business fields.”

Colina says from its security certificate authority services, ePLDT has its own payment gateway services and a hosting data center facility.

He says ePLDT is affiliated with the largest certificate authority (CA) firm VeriSign, Inc., a known issuer of digital certificates worldwide. It offers trust services that accelerate the deployment of secure e-commerce applications.

However, for its payment gateway services, ePLDT offers the GetLoaded online PIN purchasing portal that allows an entity to accept online payments. And for its hosting facility, it has its own data center called Vitro.

“As an affiliate of VeriSign, we offer all sorts of certifications. We also provide managed security, firewalls, antivirus, and anti-spam which are all essential to any entity that wishes to participate in e-business,” says Colina.

Colina adds ePLDT can go as far as providing application development as well.

“We have right now customers in the banking sectors and companies that have online stores that use our certificate authority to ensure the authenticity of the transactions,” Colina says, although declining to name the clients.

Colina advises that when selecting a vendor for e-business or e-commerce solutions, one must look for a vendor with a track record and financial capability.

“There has to be a relationship of trust, and that is usually established by an e-commerce site employing the services of a trusted certificate authority that will issue a certificate to verify that it is a real organization and it has gone through some process of verification of its identity,” he says. “It’s a matter of statistics, whether your IT service provider will be there or not.”

EMPOWERING WEBSITES
Meanwhile, DataOne, which envisions itself to be the leading provider of the so-called “new generation telecommunication services” aims to cater to companies engaged in e-business.

“Our company is supported by a carrier-grade technology which offers flexible and innovative solutions to deliver all the potential of convergence,” says Cyril Rocke, president and CEO of DataOne.

Rocke says DataOne offers VoiceOne solution and the WebTalk service, two technologies that are not only meant to aid companies in e-business but to others as well who are involved in sales and customer service, firms with toll free hotlines, multinationals with extensive channel distribution, corporations with global customers, and other companies with extensive mobile workforce.

“VoiceOne goes beyond the traditional voice-based system. It serves as the voice service provider to the enterprise, outbound, inbound, and domestically,” he says. “It’s the converging of voice and data over a single network.”

Rocke explains what VoiceOne does is that it eliminates complexities such as integration with legacy systems and also voice quality problems. It is a solution that offers PBX-like features without the high costs of purchasing and maintaining PBX systems.

However, Rocke claims companies that are into e-business can take advantage of DataOne’s WebTalk service which enables a website to become “the entry point for all business communications.”

In using WebTalk, Rocke says there is no need to have a phone number or download applications, only easy-to-use buttons. Its other features are: No complex IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System), no per minute charges, no expensive toll-free numbers, and no complex integration with existing systems.

“WebTalk empowers your website by turning it into an active site. Voice communication and interaction can take place via a customer’s click in your website,” Rocke says. “Your website won’t be static anymore if you use WebTalk.”

Rocke shares DataOne will soon be targeting around 50,000 companies, or “all” companies in the Philippines with the dot.ph domain for its WebTalk service.

E-BIZ FOR SMES
Yet for Ripple, it has a flagship product called Barter Retail Solution – an end-to-end solution for mid-tier supermarkets, departments store, hyper-marts, depots and other retail establishments.

Some of the well-known clients of Ripple at present include Ever, Super 8, and Gaisano Mall of Davao.

Victor Javier, president and CEO of Ripple, says “Barter solution is ‘online’ since it connects multiple establishments (branches and warehouses) together, allowing retail businesses to capture real time performance of every location.”

Javier says the e-business solution captures the processes from purchasing of goods to point of sale (front end and back-end operation). It also handles customer relationship management and promotion management, covering the entire retail operation.

“Barter provides retail owners real time information of their sales performance and efficiently tracks their inventories to the item level, thus, maximizing revenue and profitability, as well as minimizing loss,” he says.

Among its list of mid-tier clients, some of Ripple’s clients already have existing systems while others are starting from scratch. “We are able to help both types of clients by implementing best practices or transform their existing process to become more optimized and efficient.”

Focusing on retail technology, Ripple is pushing itself to become more than just another enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions firm.

“There are many IT companies offering different solutions. As a retail solutions company, we extensively invest in research and development of different technologies that can be applied in a retail environment,” Javier notes. “While most local IT companies focus on reselling foreign packages or being a box pusher, Ripple continues to innovate and develop Barter solution which I believe is fit for the Filipino sharp trader.”

A member of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), Javier comments that “e-commerce is slow in taking off in the Philippines.”

Javier says the traditional way of buying things, like going to supermarkets and malls is still the norm of today’s consumers. It is the reason on why Ripple is focused on becoming the IT arm of retail firms, mostly small-and medium-size enterprises (SME).

“Although e-commerce experienced a major hype in the past, not many people are making their purchases online,” Javier notes. – With notes from Juan Carlos Perez (IDGNS)

SIDEBAR:

Tips to Stretch the E-Commerce Budget

In order to stretch their resources and meet management’s expectations, e-commerce units can take various steps, including reducing the money they spend on developing in-house applications, says Gartner, Inc..

In particular, IT departments shouldn’t invest on creating their own applications for basic e-commerce functions, since those can be implemented at a lower cost through commercial “off the shelf” software.

Specifically in the case of rich Internet applications (RIAs), the custom development work should be limited to those applications that will generate high sales conversion rates.

“You waste money if you have developers supporting commodity capabilities,” says Gene Alvarez, Gartner’s vice president of e-commerce and CRM research. A company’s e-commerce developers should be focused on building the types of made-to-measure applications that will give the company an edge over its competition.

In addition, IT departments must make sure that their e-commerce groups are maximizing the use of technology tools and products the company already owns.

At the negotiation table, IT departments should be merciless when dealing with their e-commerce software vendors and aim to lower their 2009 license fees between 20% to 50%.

Finally, IT managers need to take stock of their e-commerce staff to see if there are employees elsewhere doing the same tasks, such as separate marketing people for online and offline operations, in which case the work can be consolidated and personnel reduced, according to Gartner. –Juan Carlos Perez, IDGNS

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Gartner buying AMR Research in $64 million deal

By JM Tuazon on December 2, 2009

By Chris Kanaracus
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
December 2, 2009

BOSTON - Gartner announced Monday that it is buying AMR Research for US$64 million, in the latest acquisition by the giant IT research firm. The deal is expected to be completed this month.

AMR is known for its emphasis on supply chain management. It has roughly 40 analysts and 45 sales representatives, and is on track to gross $40 million this year, according to Gartner.

Publicly traded Gartner dwarfs AMR in size, reporting $1.28 billion in revenue in 2008. Part of Gartner’s growth came through acquisitions, such as its 2004 purchase of META Group for $162 million.

Even though AMR is being swallowed into a much larger organization, its customers will see no disruptions as a result of the acquisition, AMR Chief Research Officer Bruce Richardson said in a blog post Monday.

“Your research, client services, and sales contacts will remain the same. All are being retained by Gartner,” he wrote. No changes will be made to AMR’s research agenda or current schedule of events, he added.

There are many positive aspects to the acquisition for AMR, including the chance to address a larger audience and provide clients with truly global support, as AMR has operations in just the U.S. and UK, compared to Gartner’s worldwide reach, he said.

AMR will also be able to expand the number of verticals it covers, Richardson said.

Analysts from smaller firms offered mixed perspectives on the news Monday.

“This transaction essentially makes one big guy bigger, and removes a second from the marketplace, so it certainly changes the analyst landscape in general,” said Stephen O’Grady, co-founder of Redmonk. “That said, we’re pretty highly differentiated from both, in that our research focus, our audience and to a certain extent, our customer base, is distinct from either Gartner or AMR’s. As a result, I don’t imagine we’ll shift strategies.”

Major analyst firms like Gartner, IDC and Forrester tend to speak to CIOs and other top IT executives, O’Grady said. “Our view is that [technology] adoption is increasingly driven bottom-up rather than top-down. … As a result, we’re most concerned with developers, which means that we tend to be more ahead of the curve than the big guys.”

The deal foretells a wave of change in the IT analyst market, according to Jason Busch of Spend Matters, which provides information and services to buyers and vendors of supply chain and procurement software.

“Consolidation will create fewer voices from existing and even new players that continue to adhere to legacy business models. This will in turn open up the industry to new approaches,” he wrote in a blog post. “The market for non-customized paid technology content will continue to decline unless the research is highly focused around a specific vertical or category.”

“With the rise of blogs and expert, in-depth downloadable content, I believe that in-depth analysis that’s paid for by those looking for leads will continue to gain favor relative to per-report or research subscription research models,” he added.

It’s also likely that more individual analysts will become brand names, versus firms, he said.

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Gartner: Server Market Shows Signs of Stabilization

By JM Tuazon on December 2, 2009

By Channelworld staff
Channelworld India
December 2, 2009

BANGALORE - Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2009 dropped 17.1 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period declined 15.5 percent according to Gartner. Worldwide server revenues totaled $10.7 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached 1.2 million units.

“It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, Research Vice President, Gartner. “Looking at the third quarter results from the sequential perspective, they showed an increase of 13.8 percent in shipments and 10.2 percent in revenues when compared to the second quarter of this year. That suggests that the market as a whole is showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009,” he said

IBM held the revenue lead in the worldwide server market for the quarter. IBM’s overall revenue share lead over second-place HP was 1.5 percent for the quarter. Four of the top 5 vendors posted double-digit declines in revenue year over year. However, all of the top tier vendors experienced sequential revenue growth, except for Sun Microsystems.

In server shipments, Hewlett-Packard retained its worldwide server shipment lead, as its market share reached 32.1 percent in the third quarter of 2009. Dell maintained the No. 2 ranking as its share totaled 22.8 percent. HP’s shipment performance was driven primarily by its ProLiant brands.

The overall Indian server market, however, totaled at around $118Mn during this quarter registering a year-on-year decline of 28.3 percent. This market decline could be partly contributed to the sluggish economic situation coupled with seasonality observed around this quarter. Gartner expects that the OND quarter should be much better primarily fuelled by a lot of pent up demand coupled with year end buying. Overall, Hewlett Packard emerged as the market leader followed by IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP and IBM were the worst affected vendors due to the limited market server demand during this quarter in India.

x86 servers accounted for around 59 percent of the market revenue leading to a revenue increase of 4.4 percent, as compared to last quarter. This further suggests that India CIO’s have started selective purchase of servers, which can be considered as early signal of economic recovery. India companies have undertaken a lot server refresh and consolidation projects. Virtualization has been a key driver for such deployments in large as well as mid-market territory. On the other side, non x86 segment of the server witnessed a sequential decline of 35.9 percent this quarter. Some of the large projects seem to be deferred for the next quarter, stated Gartner.

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IBM stays top as server market stabilizes, Gartner says

By Computerworld Philippines on December 1, 2009

By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
December 1, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO - IBM retained its narrow lead over Hewlett-Packard in the worldwide server market as sales began to stabilize during the third quarter, Gartner said Monday.

IBM took 31.7 percent of server revenue in the three months to Oct. 31, up a fraction from last year, while HP’s share stayed more or less flat at 30.2 percent, Gartner said. They were followed at a distance by Dell, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu.

Server revenue overall dropped 15.5 percent from the third quarter last year, to $10.7 billion. But it was up by 10.2 percent compared to the second quarter this year, Gartner said.

“It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective,” Gartner Research Vice President Jeffrey Hewitt said in a statement. The server market is “showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009.”

All the top vendors bar one saw their server revenue improve from the second quarter. The exception was Sun Microsystems, whose business has been hit by uncertainty surrounding its acquisition by Oracle.

Sun’s server revenue was down 32.3 percent from the third quarter last year, much more than its main rivals, according to Gartner. It remained the top seller of Unix systems by volume, but its lead was pared down from a year earlier as shipments declined by almost half.

In terms of dollars spent, HP overtook Sun to become the second-largest Unix vendor behind IBM. HP grew its share of Unix systems revenue from 28 percent to 29.3 percent, while Sun’s declined from 29.2 percent to 24.2 percent, Gartner said. IBM’s share increased from 36.4 percent to 40.9 percent.

The Unix server market overall was worth $2.6 billion, a drop of 21.2 percent from the third quarter last year.

Industry-standard servers fared a little better. Sales of x86-based systems declined by 11.4 percent from last year, to $6.3 billion. HP retained its dominant lead, followed by Dell, IBM, Fujitsu and NEC

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Gartner: Most enterprise collaboration apps moving to Web 2.0

By JM Tuazon on October 28, 2009

By Channelworld staff
Channelworld India

BANGALORE (10/27/2009) - While retaining secondary support for documents, 80 per cent of enterprise collaboration platforms will primarily be based on browser-based Web 2.0 techniques by 2013, according to Gartner. As wiki-like collaboration techniques mature and gain more acceptance, Web 2.0 approaches will become increasingly influential, the report said.

Gartner expects that managing users’ transition from a file-orientation to Web 2.0 approach will be a major challenge for organisations. “There are fundamental differences between working styles that are file-oriented and document-based and those that are Web 2.0 and browser-based,” said Jeff Mann, Research Vice President, Gartner. “Understanding and accommodating these differences will be important factors in determining the success of collaboration platform introductions,” he said.

Typically users fall into two camps: those who prefer to collaborate around files and documents, and those who prefer to interact with content and other people directly on Web sites. The differences between these two working styles goes much deeper than mere user preference or alternative ways of getting things done as the mind-set of working with files affects how people work, attitudes toward security and the impact of governance.

“Users who have spent years primarily working with PC-based office automation suites such as Microsoft Office, tend to favour the file orientation and can find it unnerving to work in a Web 2.0 environment where people can be editing the same page at the same time,” said Mann. “Similarly, users accustomed to free-flowing wikis and blogs can stumble over the process and the more-structured requirements when using document repositories. It is this mismatch between expectations and working styles that lies at the heart of many projects facing issues with user adoption,” he added.

While document-oriented platforms are well established, familiar and more productive for some tasks, the trend is clearly toward more Web 2.0-type tools. However, Mr Mann maintained that Web 2.0 will not take over completely because there are situations where working with documents is more appropriate than the wiki style. Tasks that require sequential approval workflows or where the final product will be a file are often easier to get done in a document repository with check-in/out facilities than in a free-form wiki.

Furthermore, some collaboration products show a hybrid of Web 2.0 and file orientation, while several browser-based office automation products allow working with files. For example, Google Apps, Adobe buzzword and Zoho are firmly in the Web 2.0 camp, but also work with files, either by downloading versions to work with offline or by organizing content online using file-like user interface metaphors. “Evolving technologies and increasing familiarity with Web 2.0 techniques will eventually reduce or even eliminate the distinctions between file-oriented and online environments,” said Mann. “However, while functionality will reduce the gap in user mentality, it will prove persistent and remain a challenge to collaboration managers introducing new technologies to their users.”

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