Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 2 March 2010 at 17:50:00

Stork delivers e-ID common specs and draft planning for pilot projects

An EU co-funded scheme to implement EU-wide interoperability of electronic identities (eIDs) called Stork, has released e-ID common specifications together with draft planning for forthcoming pilot projects.

Launched in 2008, Secure identity across borders linked (Stork) is a three-year pan-EU initiative aimed at enabling businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national electronic identities (e-ID) in any member state.

The advantage of such a system will be to simplify administrative formalities by providing secure online access to public services across EU borders.

Five pilot projects to test the proposed e-ID framework, architecture and common specifications will begin in mid-2010 and run for 12 months.

Stork Pilot Coordinator, Alberto Crespo said the main objective will be to conduct a phased-test of the pilot-specific implementations, involving real end-users.

“This will allow Stork member states to assess whether the Stork defined objectives are satifactory, and decide whether to go ahead with the programme as planned,” added Crespo.

The five pilot projects are:

• Cross-border Authentication Platform for Electronic Services
• Safer Chat
• Student Mobility
• Electronic Delivery
• Change of Address

“These Stork Pilots will represent an unprecedented milestone in the collaboration between European Member States in the field of e-ID interoperability by demonstrating in real life contexts the benefits of cross-border e-Government services,” said Crespo.

The i2010 e-Government Action Plan, aims to provide secure and convenient electronic systems for European citizens and businesses accessing public services in any EU country by the end of 2010.

These systems should work at local, regional or national levels and comply with data protection regulations.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 2 March 2010 at 15:20:00

Bank raises limit for 'touch-and-go' transactions owing to increasing popularity

Barclays has decided to raise the limit of contactless transactions from £10 to £15 owing to growing popularity of the payment technology.

Since the introduction of the payment technology in 2007, more than two million contactless-enabled Barclays debit cards and four million contactless Barclaycard credit cards have been issued.

Contactless technology allows bank account holders to pay for small value transactions by holding their enabled cards over a reader without the need to enter a PIN.

"Contactless technology is undoubtedly the future of payments and we are seeing huge growth in popularity. The new higher limit gives customers the flexibility of paying for even more transactions quickly, securely and conveniently and will lead to more retailers implementing the technology,” said head of debit cards at Barclays, Brian Cunnington.

Retailers including coffee shops Eat and Pret A Manger are among the early adopters of the technology.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 2 March 2010 at 13:53:00

UK Pension Fund Regulator draws a blank in North America

A UK Pensions Regulator pursuing a claim for the remaining assets of bankrupt communications kit maker Nortel, has drawn a blank in North America after Canadian and US courts threw out the attempt, the Financial Times reported today.

The well-known Canadian network equipment vendor collapsed in January 2009 and filed for 'Chapter 11' bankruptcy protection from its creditors.

That protection gave 30 September 2009 as a deadline after which no further claims would be considered legal.

The Pension Protection Fund and Nortel's UK scheme trustees filed a claim before the deadline, but the legal process will not be tied up until June.

The regulator said: “we were surprised by this decision. We have yet to receive the court’s reasoned judgement, and will consider all the options when we do so, including the possibility of an appeal,” according to the FT.

Nortel has been trying to sort out its finances since its collapse, and various sections of its business have been auctioned and sold, some at knock-down prices.

Swedish network vendor Ericsson bought Nortel's wireless division for $1.13bn (£757m) last November, and its GSM/GSM-R businesses were sold to Ericsson and Australian telco Kapsch CarrierCom for $103m (£69m) in the same month.

Also in November, Ciena won the auction against competition from Nokia Siemens Networks to acquire Nortel’s optical networking assets for $769m (£515m).

Unified comms vendor Avaya picked up Nortel's enterprise network assets for $900m (£603m) last September.

Nortel was a sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics, but six months after the collapse in July, it was replaced by network giant Cisco.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 2 March 2010 at 13:41:00

WAC and LiMo join forces to take on mobile apps vendors Apple, Google and Nokia

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), a telco-led organisation announced at the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona, is to co-operate more closely with mobile Linux group LiMo, according to a Reuters report released today.

The 24 members of WAC intend to deliver open platform mobile applications to customer devices, and the co-operation with LiMo will help them to do this, thereby stemming competition from device vendors Apple, Google and Nokia in the mobile applications market.

LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis told the news agency that its initial talks with WAC regarding mobile applications development got a warm response. " The industry is trying to carve out an independent approach. It is trying to deal with the competition in a co-operative, co-ordinated way," said Gillis.

That market is expected to see massive growth in the next five years, but is currently dominated by Apple with its Apps Store.

Gartner figures show Apple gaining 99.4 per cent of mobile applications sales in 2009, and the analyst firm predicts revenue of $29.5bn (£19.7bn) in 2013.

WAC members include carriers AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Telefonica, and Verizon Wireless, as well as hardware vendors LG, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson.

LiMo's brief is to establish a competitive mobile Linux OS fit for the smartphone market, and its members include some who signed up to WAC at MWC, such as Samsung and Vodafone.

How big telecoms firms and mobile operators approach mobile applications will be key to their top line, but industry experts are not convinced that organisations like WAC will be able to compete effectively with smaller agile device vendors such as Apple.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 26 February 2010 at 14:22:00

User's entire account deactivated following dispute with social media management firm

A Computing blogger has had several hundred videos wiped from his YouTube account after a dispute over footage he posted of an audience at a stand-up comedy show.

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary's video of an audience waiting for comedian Jimmy Carr to come on stage was considered to be a copyright infringement by Intelligent Conversation, the firm monitoring social media activity about Carr.

Subsequently Kobayashi-Hillary’s entire collection of more than 900 videos was taken offline.

Intelligent Conversation scans YouTube, Blinkx, Vimeo and other sites daily for footage filmed both before and during the comedian’s shows.

“Whilst we are happy to recognise that ‘free is good’, filming shows spoils it for everyone else and also completely nullifies the effect of the jokes: for music fans, songs can be played again and again, but once you've heard a joke it totally loses its impact the second time around,” a company representative said in an email to Kobayashi-Hillary.

The representative added that his firm's action in this case could be seen to be over the top.

“Although I appreciate this might seem overzealous, it's the only way we can stop footage being spread,” he said.

After numerous attempts by the blogger to contact YouTube’s owner Google, the web giant finally responded with an email earlier today. It states that Kobayashi-Hillary had two other complaints of copyright breach filed against him - both for videos that have since been removed - which has raised the question of whether web site maintains a ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ policy.

“I use YouTube as a business tool – it is an invaluable component of my corporate work. It is just outrageous that [Google] can arbitrarily remove the entire account based on an erroneous copyright infringement,” Kobayashi-Hillary said.

It is not yet known whether, or when the user’s account will be reactivated and if its previously uploaded content will be restored.

Google UK did not respond to calls for comment.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 25 February 2010 at 17:08:00

France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom profits in steep decline

The biggest telecoms companies in the EU, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, reported big drops in profit for 2009.

Deutsche Telekom posted a fourth-quarter loss of €3m (£2.7m) in 2009 on revenue of €16.2bn (£14.4bn), up 0.6 per cent on 2008.

For the 2009 financial year, net profit fell 76 per cent year on year - at €353m (£313m) compared with €1.48bn (£1.31bn) in 2008.

The decline has been caused by €2.3bn of asset write-downs attributed to Deutsche Telekom's mobile operator arm T-Mobile UK, and other operations in eastern and southern Europe.

France Telecom, meanwhile, announced a 26 per cent drop in profits to €3bn on consolidated revenues of €51bn, down from 2008's €53.5bn.

The contraction was blamed on charges levied by the EU Commission for illegal tax breaks received before 2003.

Problems at France Telecom were headline news last year as company restructuring was blamed by unions for a spate of stress-related suicides by its employees.

The two big European telcos are currently trying to consolidate their UK mobile operator arms, merging T-Mobile UK and Orange UK into a single entity.

The Orange/T-Mobile merger is currently being looked at by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) over competition fears.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 25 February 2010 at 15:18:00

Over 11,000 crew members to migrate to Google Mail

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is migrating some 11,200 crew members to Gmail as part of a wider cloud computing deployment.

The carrier says staff familiarity with the Google consumer products meant minimal or no training was needed to use the email platform, which includes messaging tool Google Talk and a translation function.

According to the supplier, KLM has signed up to its entire premier application package and implementation of Gmail could be followed by the suite's calendar tool “in the near future”.

Other airlines interested in cloud-based tools for cabin crew use include EasyJet. The low-cost carrier is currently look into alternatives which include Microsoft and Google products.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 15:06:00

Bank offers security software to customers for free

HSBC is providing a security system to its internet banking customers in an attempt to fend off malware attacks and fraudulent phishing web sites.

The Rapport software is expected to protect customer data and prevent fraudulent activity by "locking down" browsers to prevent unauthorised access to web sites and prevent the flow of confidential information.

The system, which is to be used as an additional defence rather than to replace existing anti-virus or firewall software, is PC and Mac-compatible and can be downloaded from the bank’s web site for free.

Some of HSBC’s peers have been offering security systems for its online customer base for years. Barclays, for example, started distributing Kapersky Lab’s software to its clients back in 2008.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 12:24:00

Transport firm publishes contract notice for prospective vendors

Network Rail is seeking to upgrade its train monitoring system as part of its IT transformation project.

The firm has served a contract notice for the improvement of its infrastructure monitoring a fleet of trains. It is also looking to revamp the measurement equipment on these and other fleet vehicles.

Measurement types covered by the equipment include drivers-view image capture, internal rail defects, rail surface cracks and video track inspection.

The contract may include the supply, support and enhancement of hardware and software, as well as installation and training. Responses from prospective vendors should be submitted by 31 March.

Last year, corporate development director Catherine Doran told Computing that a key project for Network Rail during 2010 would be the introduction of video-based inspection and asset monitoring.

At the time, Doran said the firm was looking at developing software that will enable it to compare video footage and look for discrepancies over different periods of time.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 12:06:00

Transport authority serves notice for IT services underpinning ticketing rollout

The Greater Manchester passenger transport executive (Gmpte) is seeking a vendor to provide the core technology supporting its planned smartcard scheme.

Gmpte wants a managed, hosted platform to run and deliver the region’s public transport smart ticketing services under a contract that could be worth between £5m and £30m.

The project encompasses tasks that include systems design, hosting, back-office hardware and software, and integration to the authority’s host operator processing and card management systems.

Provision of validators and handheld devices to read the smartcards is also mentioned in the tender, as is the supply of retail systems integration to ticket vending machines and other retail systems.

According to the contract notice, Gmpte reserves the “unilateral right” to extend the scope of the scheme to cover the bus and rail network in Greater Manchester, as well as parking and cycle schemes, and any other ticketing related activity.

Interested parties must submit proposals by 25 March.

Mark Kenrick, Computing, Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 11:17:00

Mark Kenrick, a partner at patent and trademark attorneys Marks & Clerk, explores the recent Microsoft injunction, prohibiting sales of its flagship Word program. How did it come to pass that David beat Goliath in this fiercely contested patent dispute, and what does this mean for the software industry at large?

In a courtroom in Tyler, the first decade of the second millennium drew to a close in dramatic style. First in the Texan city – the region being a magnet for patent litigation – and finally in a Washington DC judgment dated 22 December 2009, Microsoft lost out in a long-running intellectual property dispute with small Canadian company i4i. Microsoft was not only ordered to pay $290m (£184m) in damages to its minnow rival, but made to remove existing versions of Microsoft Office Word from its shelves and online store. The injunction, requiring the eradication of infringing features from January 2010, will no doubt improve the prospects for i4i’s business considerably.

i4i vs Microsoft

While the defendant’s history will be familiar to most, the same cannot be said for Infrastructures For Information (i4i). Founded in 1993, the Toronto-based company sought to specialise in “collaborative content authoring” products. The patent at the heart of the Microsoft case, granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 1998, relates to the separate storage of a document’s content and metacodes. It describes a method for editing documents in XML and other similar markup languages.

Throughout legal proceedings, i4i asserted that the damage inflicted by Microsoft infringing its patent was irreparable, and that as such the court should grant a permanent injunction against Microsoft. The invention formed the basis for i4i’s revenue stream in the form of an editing plug-in for Microsoft Word that catered neatly to a niche commercial market. In fact, the relationship between i4i and Microsoft was rather amiable, and even symbiotic, at first. At the turn of the millennium, i4i was enjoying increasing success as XML slowly started to become the ubiquitous force it is today. Between 2000 and 2002, i4i and Microsoft were in discussion regarding the capabilities of XML editing software and, according to reports, even began jointly pitching to clients.

Things quickly turned sour when Microsoft began developing XML editing capabilities of its own. This was then bundled within copies of Word 2003, rendering i4i’s main offering obsolete. Sales plummeted, and the company – already hit hard by the bursting of the dot com bubble – dwindled from 150 staff members to about 50. Believing that Microsoft had appropriated its patented technology, David decided to take on Goliath.

To patent or not to patent?

What is clear from the judgment and the significant damages paid to i4i is the potentially vast com­mercial power that software patents can provide.

The patent system can appear intimidating, especially to small companies. Patent costs often loom large, and the benefits may not always be appreciated. For many, the idea of taking on a rival – let alone a rival the size of Microsoft – may not seem like an option. However, simply assessing the need for a software patenting strategy and deploying one accordingly can provide highly useful commercial leverage in negotiations with competitors. Indeed, it helps substantiate in law the very time and effort put into developing a given product in the first place.

An important distinction here is the level of automatic protection given by copyright and the protection provided by software patents. In truth, the Microsoft case drives to the very heart of why the patent system is important in the field of software: copyright protection alone is not sufficient to protect innovative developments implemented in software. While i4i will have gained some benefit from copyright protection for its code, it would have been entirely irrelevant in this dispute. Microsoft did not copy i4i’s code; it appropriated an invention that i4i had developed. Put simply, if i4i had relied solely on copyright protection, it would have had no complaint against Microsoft.

An innovative strategy

The sheer pace of innovation and the speed and variety of technological means in developing software make the patent system all the more relevant. Often, it is not specific code that provides commercial value; rather, the true value lies in the idea implemented in that code.

What is more, companies rarely have the luxury nowadays of product dominance over a number of years while their rivals struggle to catch up. Continued and long-term growth for many companies will be reliant on the patent system to protect the heart and soul of a company’s inventions being adopted, albeit circuitously, by competitors. Without patent protection, there would be far less incentive for companies such as i4i to develop novel technologies in the first place.

When i4i applied for its custom XML patent, XML was itself far from established. Its commercial potential would only become apparent after the turn of the millennium. So widespread is the use of XML technologies today, that i4i’s patent may well seem obvious, but that was not so when it was filed in 1994. Indeed, Microsoft attempted to argue i4i’s patent was invalid – a claim that was rejected.

Today’s groundbreaking technology can and does sometimes become the industry norm of tomorrow. Not only does this make it all the more commercially necessary to protect revenue from today’s innovation, but essential to recognise that doing so in the future might not be possible.

In putting in place a thorough intellectual property strategy, companies need to think carefully about what they protect. In so doing, they should focus on technologies that they believe will play an important role in their commercial future, and those they have helped pioneer that may be useful to the market at large.

Wrongly, an holistic approach to patent protection is sometimes seen in a defensive light, and likened to patent “trolling”. Yet in the case of i4i, which was actively building its entire business model on its custom XML technology, this is clearly not the case. Rightly, the patent system seeks to reward true invention. For i4i, it should have been in a strong position to reach a settlement, strike a licensing deal, or see itself bought out handsomely in reward for its forerunner status in the area of custom XML.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 22 February 2010 at 16:39:00

Apple removes more than 5,000 applications deemed inappropriate

Thousands of applications have been removed from Apple’s App Store following claims that the content was unsuitable for distribution.

More than 5,000 apps have been ditched, including some deemed to contain “overtly sexual” material.

This includes Wobble iBoobs, an application where users could mark breasts within an image of their choice, shake their phone and watch them wobble.

Other apps that could easily fit into Apple’s criteria of inadequacy – such as the official Playboy app, featuring scantily dressed women – remain on sale.

An Apple spokesperson was quoted by TechCrunch as saying: “Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content, we review them.

“If we find apps that contain inappropriate material, we remove them from the App Store and request the developer to make any necessary changes to their apps in order to be distributed by Apple.”

It is believed that the mass clean-up was prompted by the upcoming launch of its family and school-friendly iPad tablet.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 22 February 2010 at 15:55:00

January growth rates collapse following buoyant Christmas

Web retail growth rates have plunged to their lowest level on record, according to latest research from industry body the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG).

Like-for-like growth for online retailers increased by a meagre five per cent from January 2009 to January 2010, which corresponds to total spending of £4.3bn through the channel.

By comparison, online retailers had a bumper Christmas, with spending reaching more than £5.4bn in December – an increase of 17 per cent from the previous year and up 3.8 per cent from November.

“While annual growth for e-retail was slow in January, we should factor in the fact that December was a very strong month for the industry,” said Chris Webster, vice president at Capgemini’s retail consulting and technology practice.

“Last January, e-retailers’ sales were buoyed up by heavy discounting and promotions that were necessary to sell stock left over from poor Christmas trading resulting from the impact of the recent move into recession,” said Webster.

Despite noting that the results are in line with the usual seasonal trend of sales slowing after the festive season, the study adds that the decline is greater than in recent years.

According to IMRG, the decline in sales was much tougher on multi-channel retailers, where sales declined by 27 per cent over the period, than for pure-play online firms, which suffered a reduction in sales of 14 per cent.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 22 February 2010 at 15:20:00

Sky News launches Android news apps

British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) today said it would support mobile devices running Google's Android operating system, allowing users to view in-depth video coverage of individual stories.

BSkyB subscribers can also watch the latest news headlines video, a top showbiz headlines video clip and an up-to-date weather report. Users will be able to send Sky News their own stories and pictures directly through the application, as well as get breaking news alerts on the home page of their devices.

David Gibbs, BSkyB general manager mobile, said that they recognised the huge potential of the Android mobile platform. "Building on the success of our iPhone apps, we're now planning to release a number of different applications over the coming months, all using the full capabilities that Android offers."

BSkyB's announcement follows last week's BBC launch of iPhone mobile applications for BBC news and live sport streaming. That service will go live in April, with support for Android, BlackBerry and Nokia devices later in the year.

BSkyB has had mobile applications since 2005, and its iPhone and iTouch app passed the one million download mark in January.

Quocirca comms analyst Rob Bamforth said: "The bottleneck is mobile operators' backhaul network and the base station/handset radio efficiency." This means large streamed video clips will have to wait until mobile operators' networks improve significantly.

That bottleneck will delay streaming of large video clips, although Google is trying to solve the problem by purchasing codec and compression specialist firm On2 Technologies for £80.5m, in a deal set to enhance its video capabilities.

Research firm IDC recently predicted that the number of people using mobile business apps would top one billion before the end of 2010. By 2011 IDC says that 1.2 billion workers will be using mobile enterprise tools, a third of the global workforce.

Tom Young, Computing, Monday 22 February 2010 at 12:03:00

Conservative victory would see budgets cut harder but spending will slow under Labour too

Public sector IT spending will grow 2.9 per cent by 2013 if Labour retain power and 0.8 per cent if the Conservatives win the election and enact cuts more swiftly, according to a report by analyst TechMarketView.

The report, UK Public Sector SITS Market Trends & Forecasts 2010, says that central government, the police and defence sectors will be hardest hit by cuts as budgets are less protected than other sectors.

Health is forecast to be the strongest growth sector in both scenarios, followed by education and local government. The NHS and schools which will still require some investment in IT even if large programmes such as the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) and Building Schools for the Future (BSF) are scaled back, the report says.

“With a change of government expected later this year, IT suppliers to the public sector need to be prepared to adapt to new market conditions. The public sector has been the lifebuoy of UK IT for quite some time, so such a significant cut will have far-reaching consequences,” says Tola Sargeant, research director at TechMarketView.

The report says 2011/12 will begin to see the effect of more significant budget cuts and an increase in outsourcing that would likely be more pronounced under the Conservatives. The outsourcing sector is expected to be responsible for most of the growth in public sector IT spending over the next few years.

Shared services are also set for continued growth across the public sector, driven by the need to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

And the gradual trend towards greater use of offshore resources to deliver software and IT services to UK public sector organisations will continue as those providers become more mainstream and pressure to make cuts grows.

The report also says big, national-sale IT projects will be much less common after the election, with smaller-scale, decentralised projects more likely. The Conservatives have already proposed a ₤100m cap on all public sector IT projects.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 22 February 2010 at 10:22:00

ISP offers business grade FTTC, but deployment areas limited by BT rollout speed

Eclipse Internet is deploying businesses connections in areas with fibre-to-the-cabinet connections despite BT's rollout of the technology still being in its early stages.

The service will be available from 12 April, with two grades being offered: a standard service called Eclipse Fibre costing £39.95, and a premium service called Eclipse Fibre Pro costing £49.95. The service is differentiated on download limits and uplink speeds.

The Pro version has a 60GB download maximum, up to 10Mbit/s upload speed and a free ADSL/WAN router. The standard version comes with a 50GB maximum, up to 2Mbit/s upload and the ADSL router is free. Both have maximum download connections of up to 40Mbit/s, with guaranteed bandwidth of 12Mbit/s.

No details of where service deployment is planned were announced.

BT announced its £1.5bn intention to rollout both FTTC and fibre-to-the-home/premises (FTTH/FTTP) in July 2008, aiming to connect 40 per cent of residential and business premises to the technology. A faster pace for the rollout was announced by BT last May, and last October it announced its first FTTH trials.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Friday 19 February 2010 at 15:36:00

The mainframe is dead, get ready for the flashing blade

Mainframe platforms have been the mainstay of firms with large transactional and/or data processing requirements since the 1960's. Over the past five years there has been much speculation that such systems would eventually have to be replaced. The major reasons being the high legacy software support costs.

Additionally, many of the IT personnel overseeing the hardware and software pieces of the platform will be close to retirement.

Computing talked to HP's UK & Ireland storage and server chief technology officer David Chalmers about what might replace these systems, and how he thinks firms currently reliant on mainframes should proceed.

Computing: Are mainframe systems living on borrowed time?

David Chalmers: I think they are, there are two problems, one is the cost of the software. IBM talks a great deal about the hardware costs, but nobody cares, because the monthly mainframe software charges that people pay are so high.

But the second and more fundamental reason why I think firms will move away from mainframes concerns the people who deal with the software used by such systems. Those are the people who know, run, develop, maintain and put new functionality into the applications and business solutions that run on mainframes. They're in their late 50’s and 60’s, and are retiring.

Would firms having these employees upgrade their terms of employment to keep them there for longer?

You certainly see some of that going on, but these people are the tail-end of the 'golden pension' generation, and most have final salary pensions. I think they're the last of the generation who can afford to say – “nah, I don’t need to do that.” But even if they do get financial 'upgrades', that just jack up their costs.

How are firms migrating away from mainframe hardware?

What they’re doing is taking pieces of workload away from the mainframe as quickly as they can, but they're doing it in waves, rather than one big hit. It's rarely a wholesale 'take everything off in one lump and shut it down,’ process. It tends to be moved as a result of business logic first, and then application logic. Data migration tends to follow afterwards.

Won't re-writing my business critical Cobol-coded applications be expensive?

Cobol can be ported to other platforms and there are some vendors, MicroFocus for example, who specialise in doing exactly that. However, the more widely used model incrementally removes application logic to newer, more effective platforms as new functionality or processes are developed.

So what actually will replace the mainframe in these scenarios?

Firms are looking for a platform that’s at least as reliable, and performs as well as the systems they’re looking to replace. It's got to be more flexible as well.

A mainframe is still at heart a big single system, capable of running many different workloads. A modern converged infrastructure can do all this, but also takes scale-down to the next level. Most companies looking to replace their mainframes are looking at much larger, scalable blade server farms.

The replacement will need to run many different workloads, as well as many different applications and operating systems all run dependent on need. When demand is low, not only can the system take down workloads that are not needed but it can power down elements of the physical infrastructure as well, saving power and emissions.

Does Oracle's acquisition of Sun make a new competitor for you in this market?

No - is the honest answer. Oracle is one of HP’s biggest partners, and there are more Oracle databases run on HP than other vendor systems.

Larry Ellison has said that Oracle's business model emulates that perfected by IBM back in the 1960’s in that it involves completely integrated systems. That’s one of the scariest comments for customers that he could make, because customers are very uncomfortable with it, it implies 'lock-in'.

Are Oracle really going to take the hardware market seriously? I would question that, especially if you look at the cancellation of the high-end Rock processor project. I'd also question where the billions and billions of dollars for the R&D for the processors is going to come from.

What do CIOs see as their biggest challenge currently?

Some of the CIOs I talk to still have the same old challenges. Namely, how do I innovate, drive my business forward, but spend less money doing it. It's been like that for 30 years. I think it's the shape of the answers to those challenges that is changing.

Cloud computing, as it becomes a reality, rather than some nice ideas and architectural drawings on PowerPoint slides, will help. However, the big challenge with this technology is going to be governance.

If you're going to start adopting cloud technology, the first thing you have to decide is, what services am I going to implement myself and what services could I buy from the outside.

I was talking to a big oil company recently, and they said they had between 50 and 70 external service providers delivering technology into their organisation. How do you manage that, and how do you integrate the external services with the crucially important ones you've kept inside their organisation?

Nicola Brittain, Computing, Thursday 18 February 2010 at 10:41:00

Application available for iPhone from April, BlackBerry will see version later in year

The BBC has launched a set of phone applications amid the hubbub of mobile-related news to come out of the Mobile World Congress.

The applications, which will see BBC news and sport streamed live, will be available for the iPhone from April with further versions available later in the year for BlackBerry, Android and Nokia devices.

The app will provide live and on-demand audio and video content available over Wi-Fi and 3G networks.

Although the BBC launched a new mobile site in 2008, these are the first applications to be developed by the broadcaster.

By comparison, the Sky News app which was launched in last autumn now has a million regular users.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Thursday 18 February 2010 at 10:22:00

Both BA and easyJet are looking to IT-led initiatives to help them break through the dark economic clouds that continue to hang over the airline sector

As airlines dust themselves down following one of the worst recessions in the industry’s history, IT decision makers are spearheading efforts designed to reverse the sector’s bad fortunes.

An IT reorganisation at British Airways (BA), for example, has contributed towards significant cost reduction at the carrier, which reported its first quarterly profit for over a year earlier this month.

Total technology spend at BA over the past nine months reached £162m, a year-on-year reduction of 17 per cent driven by a complete project review, according to the firm’s chief information officer, Paul Coby.

“We reduced spend by paying a lot of attention to detail and working more closely with our suppliers,” Coby told Computing.

Under the company’s business response scheme, many BA employees volunteered to work for nothing or take unpaid leave. About a third of the airline’s 500-strong IT department contributed to the plan, generating extra savings of about £2m.

IT projects that were prioritised over the period included work on the firm’s online dynamic packaging, allowing up-selling of products and services, as well as increased virtualisation where old servers were replaced by HP kit.

Coby also created what he described as a “star chamber”, where IT spend is scrutinised at a greater level, saving about £1m.

Meanwhile, staff cuts at the airline meant the IT department could reduce spending on end user kit by about £500,000.

Despite the slight improvement of the firm’s financial condition, BA’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, said the latest results reflect “permanent change” to the business.

Large-scale rollouts, such as the enterprise resource planning implementation that was canned last year, continue to rank low on Coby’s priority list, but BA is now working on a subset of the platform to improve payroll processes.

New IT initiatives at BA are likely to centre on the carrier’s prospective tie-up with Spanish airline Iberia. A final deal is yet to be announced, but Coby has been working on the IT integration aspect of the acquisition.

Meanwhile, BA’s smaller rival easyJet has been through a similar, but less dramatic IT review.

The company has in-sourced its aircraft engineering system and improved its crew rostering applications as well as its flight planning application, which enables aeroplanes to use more efficient routes and mitigate the rising price of fuel.

According to easyJet’s IT director, Tim Newing, cost and operational efficiencies could be generated by the use of cloud computing. EasyJet is a Microsoft shop and has asked the supplier to suggest hosted alternatives to its current communications platform. It is also looking at Google Mail.

“Most of the people who use email here are cabin crew, and they are quite light users who don’t utilise all the features of Exchange,” he added.

The firm is also working on im­proving its online set-up and mobile tools to provide passengers with more self-service capability and, as seen at BA, increase revenue.

Newing said he has not been under as much pressure to reduce spend as his peers at larger airlines. “IT is seen as central to our business improvement strategy going forward, so I have not had any significant budget cuts. In fact, I am doing significantly more right now than this time last year,” he said.

Sector seeks more from less

IT spending in the airline sector is predicted to fall during 2010, with resources directed to systems that can provide a quick payback, according to a study by experts.

Technology operational spend dropped by 1.7 per cent in 2009 and the trend is set to continue, according to airline software supplier Sita.

Figures from the International Air Transport Association (Iata) suggest that the sector lost $11bn (£7bn) in 2009 and will lose a further $5.6bn this year.

Reducing enterprise costs and generating revenue are the key focus areas for airlines’ IT, including systems such as advanced revenue management systems, which can improve the yield for each flight and seat sold.

Systems to help bring in ancillary revenue have also been prioritised, as they enable carriers to upsell products and services such as hotels and excess luggage online, as well as keep control of their own sales channels and exclude third parties such as travel agents from the process.

Airline in-house IT teams are shrinking, as is their supplier community, according to Richard Stokes, Sita’s senior vice president of sales and relationship management.

“Most airlines have already begun processes such as rationalisation of IT suppliers, infrastructure consolidation, and headcount reduction. We are also seeing a trend for shorter contracts with some systems to allow for future consolidation,” he said.

According to Iata, some $3bn in yearly savings have already been generated since e-ticketing became compulsory in 2008.

But additional efficiencies and headcount reductions could be obtained by modernising the IT supporting the new standard, says Stokes.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Wednesday 17 February 2010 at 10:14:00

IBM acquires Intelliden

Services and hardware giant IBM has acquired network management vendor Intelliden for an undisclosed sum.

In a statement Intelliden said that it would be integrated into the IBM software Group as part of the Tivoli Software arm.

IBM Tivoli Software general manager Al Zollar said that firms have to manage ever more complex and ever-changing infrastructures, “companies are managing a virtualized computing layer that more than ever relies on the network.”

“Intelliden’s intelligent network automation is an important addition to IBM's portfolio to extend automation across all business and IT assets,” added Zollar.

One of the key network management problems is the capacity for manual configuration errors, which can lead to expensive network outages, especially with customer-facing retail firms. Intelliden specialises in helping very large enterprises in network policy management, especially with respect to them meeting regulatory compliance, whilst at the same time being able to resolve configuration-related network security problems in real time, automatically.

Intelliden chief executive Alan Black said that, “firms are looking for tighter integration and management between networks, the software applications, and the server and storage hardware. We think the acquisition gives new opportunities for our customers, partners and employees.”

No information was given in the statement as to whether IBM was looking to integrate Intelliden’s software into its new Tivoli appliances – launched last Autumn, or what would happen to Intelliden’s hardware appliances which normally run such software.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 14:34:00

Online channel performs well, but growth rate is not as fast

Growth in the e-commerce arm of Domino’s Pizza started to slow after years of increasing sales through the channel, according to the company’s results out today.

Online sales increased by 40.4 per cent for the fiscal year ending 27 December 2009 to £78.5m, by comparison with 73.7 per cent growth and £55.9m posted for 2008.

But the IT chief at the fast food firm, Jane Kimberlin, maintains that the 40 per cent growth rate is still ‘vast’ and that the expansion of Domino’s online operation has not reached a plateau.

“[The web operation] has broken records continuously during 2009 and it continues to be a very important part of how we sell our products to customers,” Kimberlin told Computing.

Over the last year, Domino’s processed around £600,000 in pizza sales online during a single night and launched mobile-based order tracking applications. The firm already offers 17 different ordering channels, which include SMS and a Second Life store.

The company is also placing emphasis in the use of social networking and is present across the most popular platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

A year ago, Kimberlin told Computing the firm would give its website a ‘good lick of paint’. The project is now nearing its final stages of completion and tests are currently being carried out ahead of the relaunch.

“We expect the web to steadily grow as it becomes the de facto way of ordering [pizza] and as we continue to invest in the channel,” she said.

According to Kimberlin, the web represents about 30 per cent of total delivered sales at Domino’s and it is expected to surpass telephone orders in three to five years’ time, though the firm says it will not focus solely on this area.

“We don’t expect it to be like Ryanair and enforce an online-only model, even if there is a natural migration [to the web] taking place,” said Kimberlin.

“It all depends on how much you want to force your customers. We want to offer different ways of ordering to our customer base, but will not exclude other customer communication channels and will continue to offer them a range of choices,” she said.

“But as new devices come online we will [use them], depending on what matches consumer demand.”

Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 14:21:00

Mobile search could generate majority of $7.2bn mobile advertising market by 2012, says Deloitte

Business advisory firm Deloitte is predicting that mobile search applications will become one of the five most-used smartphone applications by the end of 2010.

According to Deloitte, mobile search revenues in 2010 are projected to be a modest $1-2bn (£637m - £1.27bn), but by 2012, Deloitte predicts that Smartphone shipments could pass the half-billion mark. In the same year, the company believes that search could generate the bulk of the $7.2bn (£4.6bn) mobile advertising market.

Deloitte Telecoms partner Tony Cooper pointed out that in the past, mobile search tended to frustrate rather than delight users.

However, he said: "In light of improvements and near-term potential, mobile search’s popularity is expected to grow significantly, and could eventually, in a number of contexts, become superior to search via a PC.”

Although Cooper predicted that this function could prove lucrative to advertisers and the providers of such services, he pointed out some hurdles it would need to clear first.

“Mobile search engine developers will need to consider how best to format user interfaces to ensure that search can be used in a variety of environments - such as at home, at work or while walking,” explained Cooper.

Technologies such as voice recognition, for those in charge of vehicles, or visual search, driven by images, rather than text, are just some examples of interface formats Cooper pointed to.

The prediction that mobile search applications will become one of the biggest growth areas for mobile is one that technology companies are heeding, as evidenced by recent industry acquisitions such as that of mobile search technology provider MotionBridge by Microsoft in 2006 and voice services provider Tellme in 2007, again by Microsoft.

Additionally, Apple acquired mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless for $275m (£169m) in January. Last autumn, Google picked up AdMob for $750m (£478m), a deal yet to be rubber- stamped by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Computing Staff, Computing, Tuesday 16 February 2010 at 12:08:00

New system allows poker site to better manage content and brand

PokerStars, the world's largest poker site, has introduced new software to manage its content across its various web sites.

The new system includes authoring and site design, application deployment, content targeting, site analytics and testing tools.

It will make it easier for the brand to launch new products and services on its site, as well as analyse uptake.

"PokerStars' multinational operations have prompted us to look for cutting-edge technology to boost efficiency, ensure brand consistency across all of our marketing efforts and overcome the problem of protracted and resource-intensive content creation, management and localisation," said Michal Shinitzky, head of Digital Publishing at PokerStars.

The software, from vendor Autonomy, has a simple drag-and-drop interface, easy layout capabilities and existing templates for content.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 15 February 2010 at 17:25:00

100Gbit/s connections to handle rich media in converged datacentres

Communications equipment forms the backbone of any firm's IT infrastructure. A drop in performance as a result of hardware and associated firmware problems will always result in a flood of calls to the helpdesk.

Communications system-testing outfit Ixia focuses primarily on providing resiliency and performance for IP networks as well as tools which load test internet protocol (IP) networks. These include hardware such as switches, routers and security appliances.

Computing talked to Ixia president and chief executive Atul Bhatnagar about how operational testing and measurement can keep networks running smoothly.

Computing: Who do you provide test hardware and software to?

Atul Bhatnagar: Half our business is with equipment manufacturers such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia Siemens. About 20 per cent are carriers, including large service providers such as NTT, AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and France Telecom.

The rest are large enterprises including the big financial firms, government and defence, basically anyone who wants resilient, secure, high-performance networks. The real-time responsiveness of their networks is critical to these customers.

We do all sorts of pre-deployment testing. We can load test networks, check for the compliancy of the protocols, check the security and make sure there are no vulnerabilities in the network.

Would large enterprises actually buy this kit – or would they hire such test environments?

Most of the time, large financial companies would buy this kit to put in their own performance and certification labs, with in-house staff doing most of the network infrastructure testing.

Usually the equipment manufacturers provide specifications, but enterprise labs tend to perform their own tests to validate the performance vendors say th ey can expect. Our role, to some extent, is to provide consulting services, and the kit is required to do the performance testing.



What kinds of issues would enterprise test Labs be looking at?

One would be to check that firmware upgrades to the customer's hardware don't impact performance. As different firmware releases are issued, enterprise Labs will check there are no problems developing in the customer's networks. The repercussions of this development would be very serious, so they’re continually running these tests against network hardware.

When you test network kit from different vendors having similarly specified systems, are there any major differences in performance?

Most of the time the network standards underpinning such kit are reasonably well-defined. That means most of the core functionality of the hardware is similar, but there are some differences, such as how the system behaves under stress, especially in relation to its power consumption.

When you’re running entire systems with the network bandwidth fully saturated, how power efficient is it?

That is one area in which equipment manufacturers can differentiate their systems from the competition. Other areas include how good the system's diagnostics are, as well as what management tools are available to network administrators.

Are enterprises looking critically at the energy their networks are using more than they used to?

Definitely, and the main reason is economics. Constructing a datacentre today is an expensive proposition, with space and power driving the operational cost, so most large enterprises are looking carefully at the total cost of ownership (TCO).

They need to look at how much network capacity a typical load in their enterprise is using and then look at power consumption figures. It is difficult to say how many are doing this, but I think every enterprise should be devising strategies around reducing their power consumption.

What about the 40Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s network standards, is there significant penetration in the datacentre?

Absolutely. This began in 2009, and it’s accelerating. 1Gbit/s connections in the datacentre are being replaced by 10Gbit/s connectivity. Then there will be an aggregation of those 10Gbit/s connections with 40Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s feeds.

In the next five years, network speeds will increase by an order of magnitude, 1Gbit/s and 10Gbit/s connections will be replaced by connections of 10Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s.

Can you see Fibre Channel (FC) network hardware dying off in the next few years, given the roadmaps for 40Gbit/s and 100Gbit/s Ethernet systems?

I think FC will be around a long time, the reason being that this technology fits hand in glove with storage technology. But Ethernet is adding a lot more real-time responsiveness as well as guaranteed delivery enhancements.

With the Mobile World Congress underway this week, there’s a lot of talk about 4G, Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems. What does this technology mean for enterprise customers and operators?

There are a couple of points here, first, the devices we’re seeing coming out like Apple’s iPhone and its recently announced iPad, are extremely rich-media savvy. As such they’ll be sucking lots more rich media, like pictures and video, into operator and enterprise networks.

So operators will migrate to LTE systems, because they can see the amount of mobile data almost doubling every year. Enterprises are becoming increasingly mobile, and running increasingly media-rich mission-critical applications.

This means that operators and large enterprises will have to ensure their networks have enough throughput and real-time responsiveness to provide end-to-end capabilities and provide a decent end-user experience.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 15 February 2010 at 16:14:00

Financial IT firm reports positive results but says 2010 conditions are hard to predict

Financial IT firm Fidessa has reported a 31 per cent increase in full-year profit but remains cautious about market conditions in 2010.

The UK software company supplies brokers and banks with sophisticated multi-asset trading, market data, order management and execution capabilities.

Adjusted pre-tax profit at Fidessa reached £36.2m, while revenue grew by 26 per cent to £238.5m, beating analysts expectations of full-year revenue of £236.4m and adjusted pre-tax profit of £32.5m.

Despite seeing a steady improvement in the business environment towards the end of 2009, the company's chief executive Chris Aspinwall said the current economic scenario and the possibility of government regulation made 2010 difficult to predict.

"On the assumption that markets remain reasonably stable we believe we can continue to deliver good growth for 2010 as a whole. However, the impact of higher levels of consolidation and business closures within our customer base during 2009, will inevitably have some effect on our growth during 2010," Aspinwall said in a statement.

"As a result, we do not believe that the overall rate of growth in 2010 will be as high as that seen during 2009," he added.

One of Fidessa's main customers in the UK is the London Stock Exchange. The bourse signed up the vendor last year to develop the order management and smart order routing technology underpinning its dark-pool facility Baikal.