Off-the-shelf, p18 ‘Urgent’ talks to save £150m ...

by Ian Grant

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No ‘IT disaster movies’Pinewood studiosoverhauls its ageingIT hardware withvirtualised systemNews, p3 !

Addressing the skills gapIBM launches trainingresources to prepare students for the IT jobsof the futureNetwork Knowledge, p19!

The new frontiers in trainingWhy you needbusiness skills.PLUS: Meeting theBYOD challengeFeatures, pp12-17!

Businesses in inner city areas desperate foraccess to high-speed networks may nothave much longer to wait. The governmentis now in �“urgent�” negotiations with the ECto save its £150m Superconnected Citiesprogramme to get �“superfast broadband�”into two dozen UK metropolitan areas.

ADepartment of Culture Media and Sport(DCMS) spokesperson confirmed that thetalks were under way. �“The SuperconnectedCities programme ends in March, which iswhy we�’re pursuing state aid clearance as amatter of urgency,�” he told Networking+.

The discussions are a sequel to a legalchallenge by Virgin Media and BT to theEC�’s decision to approve £10m in state aidto Birmingham City Council for DigitalDistrict, its high-speed network project (seeNews, June 2012). BT had previously

asked for urban network procurements tofall under the BDUK next-generation ruralbroadband procurement framework agreedlate last year. Its call was rejected, partlybecause of concerns over the number ofcompetitive offers expected for BDUK bids.

The DCMS said �“there is no question�” ofthe urban programme being suspended orof losing the earmarked £150m. �“DCMS isworking closely with Birmingham to find away forward that would satisfy all thedifferent parties�’ objectives.�”

DCMS said the commission publishednew state aid guidelines on 19 December.As a result, all the cities in the programmeare reviewing their projects, including somewhich may not need state aid clearance.The department says it is also talking to thecommission about a state aid umbrella

www.networkingplus.co.uk J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 3

The value of IT services contract signingshas fallen for a second consecutive year,according to Pierre Audoin Consultants(PAC). Its Deal Tracker follows all publiclydisclosed IT services contracts andrecorded �€48bn of deals in 2012, a 10 percent decline from the �€53bn in 2011. PACsays the value of deals has fallen for the lasttwo years as the total in 2010 was �€85bn.

As well as blaming the current economicclimate, it says more contracts are movingtowards commercial models focused ondelivering fixed outcomes and businessvalue. �“A good example from 2012 wasRolls Royce�’s move from a single-sourcedeal with HP to a multisourcingenvironment, with Capgemini appointed tothe role of service integrator,�” says PAC.

It also found that some organisations are replacing onsite infrastructure and

applications with public or hybrid clouddelivery models which will increasingly�“marginalise�” the role of the traditionaloutsourcer. �“The Environmental ProtectionAgency [in the US], for example, awardedCGI a $15m deal to provide infrastructure-as-a-service as part of the agency�’s goal ofmoving 80 per cent of its computingenvironment to the cloud by 2015.�”

Offshore delivery is cited as anotherreason for the decline, with the likes ofApple, ING and Shell all announcingsignificant new offshore-centric projectsin the last 12 months.

PAC adds that low-cost delivery isbecoming increasingly attractive inEurope, particularly in the Nordic regionwhere major new offshore deals weresigned-off in 2012 by Nordea, SAS, UPMKymmene and TDC. "

Deals for IT services are declining

‘Urgent’ talks to save £150mSuperconnected Cities project

Off-the-shelf, p18!

F I X E D & W I R E L E S S N E T W O R K S F O R E N T E R P R I S E U S E R S

notification for the programme which wouldallow it to accelerate the rollout process.

The government says 14 cities will shareup to £116m, and in December itannounced a further 12 should share £50mto get services running at up to 100Mbps.The cities in the first tranche includeBelfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff,Edinburgh, Leeds and Bradford (jointproposal), London, Manchester, andNewcastle. The cities in the second trancheare Aberdeen, Brighton and Hove,Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Londonderry,Newport, Oxford, Perth, Portsmouth,Salford, and York.

Birmingham�’s Digital District projectaims to provide up to 5,000 SMBs with avariety of fibre-based communicationservices in the hope it will lead to theeconomic regeneration of two inner cityareas. According to sources, BT and VirginMedia believe Birmingham�’s proposals willeither overbuild their existing networks orlead to state-funded competition to them.

Virgin Media has previously said it �“fullysupported�” the government�’s Urban Broad-band Fund and its ambitions to bringsuperfast broadband to areas not currentlyserved by existing fibre networks. But the

firm now says: �“It�’s disappointing thatBirmingham City Council has put forward ascheme [that is] not in the interests of localpeople. We believe the EuropeanCommission has made a decision based oninaccurate and misleading informationwhich could waste public money.�” "

UPSThe latest devices that can help keepyour organisation up and running

York will be among 12 cities to share £50m ofpublic funding to provide 100Mbps services.

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A Defence Select Committee has warnedthat cyber threats could �“evolve at almostunimaginable speed�” and has called forimmediate action to protect the nation�’sarmed forces. MPs have criticised defenceministers for their �“complacency�” and a�“failure to think through some extremelycomplicated and important issues�” thataffect national security.

The committee�’s report says much moreneeds to be done to identify the type orextent of cyber attack that would warrant amilitary response. It calls on the MoD tomake the development of rules of engage-ment for cyber operations a priority.

Defence minister Andrew Murrison

reacted by saying the government wasinvesting £650m over four years on theNational Cyber Security Programme (seeNews, December). �“Far from beingcomplacent, the MoD takes the protection ofour systems extremely seriously and has arange of contingency plans in place todefend against increasingly sophisticatedattacks although, for reasons of nationalsecurity, we would not discuss these indetail,�” he told the BBC.

Jeff Hudson, CEO of enterprise securitysolutions specialist Venafi, believes thetechnology solutions to secure the UK�’scritical national infrastructure already existbut appear to have been overlooked by the

government. �“All that is required is thesoftware to effectively manage theelectronic keys to the fortress in the shape ofa good enterprise key and certificatemanagement solution,�” he says.

IT security firm FireEye adds thatcontinuously educating the public on thegrowing security risks would be a positivestep towards controlling the threat. �“Astraditional security tools are no longer fit forpurpose in tackling the threat alone,governments and organisations must startdeploying defences that are as sophis-ticated as the threats they are trying tothwart,�” says Yogi Chandiramani, seniormanager of systems engineering, Europe.

LogRhythm reckons that a deep level ofnetwork visibility is also needed in order toidentify the origins of a cyber attack. Thefirm provides an event management andanalysis platform, and believes thattraditional point security solutions such asanti-virus or firewall tools are not enough.

�“A holistic IT security strategy focusingon the continuous monitoring of networksprovides the visibility and intelligent insightneeded for deep forensic analysis,�” saysinternational markets MD Ross Brewer.�“Only with this deep level of networkvisibility can the UK armed forces ensurecyber attacks are mitigated and accuratelyattributed to the correct perpetrators.�” !

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Manchester’s “most powerful” data centre complexCloud and colocation specialist UKFastclaims to have launched Manchester�’s�“most powerful�” data centre complex.

The £14m DCPlex centre in TraffordPark comprises three new facilities �–Manchester Network Operation Centres(MaNOC) 5, 6 and 7, plus MaNOC4 whichwas launched in 2011 as UKFast�’s firstwholly-owned data centre.

DCPlex is a carbon neutral facilityunder PAS 2060. It has a combinedfloorspace of more than 28,000ft2 and acapacity of up to 950 racks. According toUKFast data centre sales director Rudi

Feitsma, it offers an IT power load of2.5kW per square metre �– claimed to bethe highest facility density in Manchester.

DCPlex features what�’s described as a�“fully-redundant, self-healing network�”.This aggregates bandwidth access from theworld�’s major suppliers in order to provide100 per cent network uptime. The complexis directly connected by multiple links withTelehouse North and East coming fromdifferent telcos. This is backed up by a10Gbps dual fibre ring encompassingTelehouse and Redbus. There are five 1Gband three 100Mb peering points plus six

POPs �– although this number is expectedto grow in the coming months as Feitsmasays UKFast aims to develop a �“genuinecarrier neutral�” network.

The POPs use hardware from Cisco andJuniper Networks. Each one has aredundant UPS as well as two independentUPS units which feed the equipment. 48-hour diesel generators in N+1 configurationpower the entire facility.

As part of its expansion, UKFast addsthat it aims to hire 200 people at its CityTower head office and data centrelocations during the next 18 months. !

2

MPs warn Government is not doing enough to protect defence forces from cyber attacks

Cooling units atUKFast’s new

DCPlex facility.

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Food producer Tulip will use a unifiedcommunications system to provide bettercustomer service and improve internalcommunication among its employees.

Headquartered in Warwick, Tulipannually produces more than 358,000tonnes of meat, and is one of the leadingsuppliers to UK supermarkets with brandssuch as Danepak and Spam. It hasexperienced significant growth in recentyears, largely as a result of acquisition, andhas now installed a ShoreTel UC platformto help it keep up with that growth.

It�’s claimed that the new solution

allows real-time management of allcommunications channels �– email, voiceand web chat �– resulting in a better andmore responsive customer experience.ShoreTel adds that its platform enabledTulip to reduce implementation time andcost, and aims to deliver �“seamless�”communication across all its offices.

The firm has been able to extend thefunctionality of its desk phones to mobiledevices. The next step is to integrate theUC platform across all of its 24 sitesthroughout the UK, allowing for aconference bridge between each one. !

Tulip creates plenty of Spam – but there’s no junk in its newcommunications system

System overhaul means no ITdisaster movies at PinewoodPinewood Studios Group has replaced itsageing IT hardware and infrastructure with amore resilient platform that reduces localdowntime through single point failures.

The IToverhaul was carried out by Poole-based infrastructure and cloud solutionsprovider Codestone. Following an extensiveanalysis of the existing server workloadsand in-depth consultations with Pinewood,it decided to deploy a virtual infrastructurewith offsite disaster recovery replication.

The new platform has been designed todeliver existing and future workloads usingVMware hypervisor technology on HPservers. This is combined with centralisedstorage based on an EMC VNX SAN. CitrixXenDesktop has been installed across thelocal desktops, extending their functionallife from three to over five years, as well ascentralising all application management and

updates. Codestone says this means entiredesktops or applications can be upgradedvery quickly and with no user disruption.

Veeam software is used to backup andreplicate Pinewood�’s data to an offsitelocation. Snapshots of the VMs are takenand the entire workload (or the files withinthem) is backed up during normal workinghours. As part of a five-year deal, the newinfrastructure will be supported andmonitored by Codestone SystemSure.

�“This new infrastructure has beendesigned to incorporate a high availabilityand disaster recovery strategy,�” explainsDarren Woolfson, director of technology atthe group. �“Pinewood has realised tangiblecost saving through the virtualised strategy;from buying lower volumes of expensivehardware through to operational main-tenance including space and cooling.�” !

Outages on a massive scale shake thepublic’s faith in technology – just askBlackBerry, NatWest, and O2 who allsuffered network disasters last year.

It’s vital to spot performance problemsbefore they spiral out of control. We mustask the big picture questions about thecause of such outages – in terms of thevolume, variety, velocity and complexity ofdata that modern businesses have tohandle every day – and whether a whollydifferent approach is called for.

Day-to-day, I deal with largeenterprises that are attacking the ‘BigData’ dilemma head on. I see challengesfirst-hand, with companies tackling datavolumes and complexities that havegrown far beyond the capabilities ofsoftware tools commonly used to capture,manage and analyse them.

Because conventional, rules-basedapproaches to systems managementbecome obsolete due to scale,virtualisation and the cloud, it’s theintelligence in predictive IT analyticapproaches that is now coming to thefore. The truth is that you just can’t keepmission-critical apps and servicesrunning with conventional dashboardsand tools that only alert you to problemsonce performance is already falling apart.

While the technical challenges are verycomplex, the goal is as straightforward asever: to enable large enterprises toprocess billions of infrastructure,application and business metrics fromhundreds of thousands of managedelements, and to truly understand what ishappening across their IT environment. Inshort, to never reach the point of outage.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO...Neil MacGowan, technical director, Netuitive

Network outages are avoidable –you just need the right technology

EDITORIAL:

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ABC audited circulation:19,7531 Jul 2010 – 30 Jun 2011

Pinewood Studio Group’s newvirtualised environment provides

high availability and a disasterrecovery strategy.

Net+ 1301 p3 (news) NEW.qxd 23/1/13 18:29

Nord Anglia Education, which runs 14schools in Europe, the Middle East andAsia, has turned to wireless networkvendor Xirrus to control and exploit theexplosion of BYOD in the classroom.

The deployment is said to enable teachersto deliver more dynamic lessons using onlineresources as well as satisfy students�’demand for wireless connectivity. Accordingto Nord Anglia�’s IT director for Europe,Bartlomeij Cezak, many of the 10,000 pupilsand 3,000 staff use their own devices toaccess educational tools online while inschool. �“It is becoming common practice forteachers to stream or download content inthe classroom, leading to an increaseddemand for Wi-Fi coverage,�” he says.

Nord Anglia has installed Xirrus wirelessarrays and management systems in its

European schools, and plans to do the samein Asia later this year. Cezak claims thesolution provides four times the coverageand up to eight times the bandwidth andcapacity of traditional access points. �“This isideal for the high user density found in aneducational environment,�” he says.

The user experience is optimised byprioritising critical applications, restrictingbandwidth-heavy ones, and blocking those

that are restricted. The school has launcheda number of mobile applications to benefitstudents and teachers, such as the virtuallearning platform, Moodle. This enablesteachers to post interactive video and picturecontent online, and provides a centralrepository for uploaded homework. NordAnglia also plans to launch a wirelessstudent management system application thatprovides teachers and staff with studentinformation, attendance records, medicalhistory, and contact information for eachstudent on their mobile devices.

Group IT director David Kibble saysXirrus arrays will support the new 802.11acstandard which will be certified next year.�“So if we want to upgrade, we can add orswap modules into the existing chassis.�” !

The BYOD challenge �– feature pp14-17.

Kcom has switched on the East MidlandsPublic Services Network (emPSN), said tobe England�’s largest public service networkin terms of geographical coverage.

The Cisco-based network, managed byKcom, connects more than 1,000 schoolsand over 400 Lincolnshire County Council(LCC) sites. It is a multi-million poundrefresh of the network owned by the EastMidlands Broadband Consortium to bring itinto line with the latest PSN requirements.

Following an OJEU-based procurementprocess between 2010 and 2011, Kcomemerged as the sole supplier for the corenetwork and service desk, and one of foursuppliers of access and application servicesfor schools. The shared infrastructureallows regional public sector bodies to

collaborate, save costs, improve servicedelivery to residents, and bring the publicsector closer to their customers usingmobility and flexible working.

Kcom has also created a new customerportal to make it easier for end users tomanage their PSN accounts. They canorder extra services, create and trackincidents and change requests, viewinvoices, and check the performance oftheir network, all through a single sign-on.

emPSN MD Mike Kendall (left) hopes allLincolnshire�’s public sector organisationswill join the network soon. �“We made thedecision to procure a PSN because of thebenefits that can be achieved throughsharing �– in terms of both cost savings andservice level improvements,�” he says.

LCC CIO Judith Hetherington Smithadds that a regional network in rural areas isespecially important. �“It is a case of themore organisations that come on board, thegreater its value will be for all throughcheaper costs and, perhaps moreimportantly, through enabling sharedworking across public sector partners.�”

As usual with framework agreements,organisations will contract Kcom directlyfor the services they require. !


4nn ee tt ww oo rr kk ii nngg january 2013

IN BRIEF

Onyx invests inScottish IT supportOnyx Group is making an unspecified six-figure investment in Scotland to expand its round-the-clock IT support service.It says that this reflects the increased localdemand for outsourced IT solutions thatensure data is protected and IT systems are operational with minimal disruption.Onyx has six workplace recovery facilitiesand five fully owned data centres acrossthe UK, including facilities in Glasgow andEdinburgh. The firm has expanded its datacentre in the latter by adding further rackcapacity for data storage. !

Vodafone uses1,000km of Cat7AcablingVodafone has used Siemon’s category 7ATERA cabling system for the networkinfrastructure at Vodafone Village, its new67,000m2 Italian HQ in Milan. Around 20,000TERA outlets and 1,000km of 1000MHzTERA cable were installed. The cable is saidto offer a sharing capability which allows onecable to deliver up to four independent 1-pairor 2-pair data/voice applications to a singlework area outlet. Vodafone says this hasproved particularly useful in call centreswhere VoIP is used, as it’s reduced thenumber of installed outlets by around 12-15per cent. In the office environment, standard4-pair patch cords have been deployed,enabling Vodafone to take advantage offuture 10Gbps PC connections. !

MDNX gains DNSPPSN certificationMDNX, claimed to be the UK’s largestindependent managed network servicesprovider, has achieved Direct NetworkService Provider (DNSP) accreditation fromthe government’s PSN authority. MDNX is one of the 12 companies selected for the PSN Connectivity Framework. Itachieved its accreditation after a series ofrigorous testing and security audits acrossits entire network services capability. It saysthe tests were in line with the NGN 2-2-4security standards via the CESG AssuredService (Telecoms) scheme. !

Kcom switches on UK’s largest PSN

International school uses Wi-Fi to exploit BYOD

East London�’s Tower Hamlets College(THC) is said to have saved £70,000 byupgrading its telephony software andrunning its VoIP platform on a virtual server.

When its eight-year-old Cisco IP phonesystem was nearing its end-of-life, thecollege turned to network vendor Redstonewhich it had worked with for many years. It proposed that THC run a Cisco UnifiedCommunications Manager system across itsvirtual server but supported, managed andmaintained by Redstone under a five-yeardeal. It�’s claimed that the new solutionallows the college to re-use its 600 existing

handsets, saving over £70,000 compared tothe cost of an entirely new system. RedstoneMD Fraser Fisher believes that althoughbudgets for IT projects are under pressure,organisations can�’t afford to let that pushthem behind the technology curve.

THC head of IT support GeorginaCreighton adds: �“Redstone understood thisproject had clear financial and technologicalgoals, and they put forward a technicalsolution that would meet them all.�”

In a separate development, Redstone haswon accreditation from cable supplierPrysmian Group as an approved installer of

its Draka-branded UC Connect system. Lastyear, Draka launched its trainingprogramme which covers products andinstallation methods to underpin its 25-yearsystems warranty. Lee Stokes, businessdevelopment manager for UC Connect, saysthe programme is proving very attractive.�“To have signed such a significant partnerso soon after its introduction into the UK isa major coup and we are delighted to beworking with Redstone.�”

Redstone is no stranger to Draka andhas used the company�’s products to cabledata centres for customers in the past. !

Discreet as asmoke detector,the Xirrus XR-2420 AP providesconnectivity forstudents and staff at NordAnglia Education.

Tower Hamlets College saves £70k on VoIP upgrade

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Net+ 1301 p5 (IBM1).qxd 22/1/13 18:57


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Red Hat is working with the EU to createthe Large-scale Elastic Architecture forData-as-a-Service (LEADS) thatbusinesses can use to mine and analyse datapublished on the entire public web.

The objective of LEADS is to build adecentralised Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)framework that runs on an �‘elastic�’collection of micro-clouds. It will provide ameans to gather, store and query publiclyavailable data, as well as process it in real-time. In addition, the public data can beenriched with private data maintained onbehalf of a client, and the processing of thereal-time data can be augmented withhistorical versions of all the information.

�“The EU has a strong preference for opensource versus proprietary solutions,�” saysMark Little, Red Hat�’s VP of middlewareengineering. �“With open source at the heartof all that Red Hat does, the results of theintegration effort will be made available

to the community at large, with the backingof strong, established and recognisedcompanies behind these developments.�”

The LEADS consortium is composedof universities and research centres aswell as companies which include Adidas,BM-Yahoo!, and German-based cloudcomputing startup AoTerra. The latteroffers expertise in energy-efficient micro-cloud infrastructures.

The LEADS platform will be designedfrom the ground up to account for privacy,security, energy-efficiency, availability,elastic scalability, and performanceconsiderations. The project will bevalidated on use cases involving thecrawling of web data and its exploitationin different application domains.

Red Hat plans to take the lead inturning the platform�’s technologies andspecifications into standards to helpprevent vendor lock-in. !

Open source elasticarchitecture for Data-as-a-Service project

Just before Christmas, Leeds andBradford shoppers found they couldcompare prices online before parting withtheir cash, thanks to free public Wi-Fisystems from Virgin Media Business(VMB) and Global Reach Technology.

Bradford and Leeds are the first citiesoutside London to offer free public Wi-Fias part of the government�’s £150mSuperconnected Cities programme.

The high performance Ruckus Wireless-based Wi-Fi service is open to all. It is runby Global Reach and backhauled on VirginMedia�’s fibre network, says VMB�’sdirector of wireless Kevin Baughan.

The first locations, covered with fiveaccess points each, are Briggate in Leedsand Bridge Street in Bradford. They�’ll befollowed up with Millennium Square andCity Park Street in each city respectively.

According to Baughan, an average of 50users a day are signing up, bringing thetotal so far to over 1,500 in Leeds, withBradford still to hold a formal launch.

The service follows successful trialslast summer to test whether small cellarchitectures can boost the capacity of 3Gand 4G networks by using Wi-Fi tooffload mobile traffic to fixed wire

networks, thus freeing the airwaves formore traffic. �“We�’re working with thelocal authorities and mobile operators toput in place the infrastructure that willgive residents, consumers and businessesaccess to the wireless connectivity thatthey need,�” says Baughan. !

Virgin Media Business bids to connect the High Street

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a globaltop 20 PR firm with $112m fee income, haschosen Level 3 Communications to supplya WAN to improve communications at itslocations in Europe, North America and theAsia-Pacific region.

The deal includes a network integrityfeature that aims to simplifies monitoringof the global end-to-end network. This ispart of Level 3�’s application performance

management system which is designed tooptimise network and applicationperformance, as well as increase visibilityof network and application data. WaggenerEdstrom CIO John Debarro says this willhelp speed up troubleshooting andresolution of network issues.

He adds that the firm is using Level 3�’svoice and collaboration services to improvethe efficiency of its communications. !

PR firm picks Level 3 for smartWAN links to three continents

6

Many businesses forget that they are not inthe IT industry. They have traditionallybought lots of equipment: software, serversand backup tapes, put it all in a buildingand tried to run it all themselves. But nowthey can purchase an app service andaccess it through a web browser on anydevice, and from any location.

IT is notorious for costing an arm anda leg – but still never working, and witha medium-sized business of say 2,000employees, it is hard to do well. Bymoving to cloud platforms, you provideIT on a pay-as-you-go basis, and inpractice you see the benefitsimmediately, because you are accessingsystems that are already there.

Cloud has many benefits, especiallyfor enterprises that have access to setsof data which could potentially havemassive benefits to the business, buttake a long period of time to analyse and put to good use.

Take a generic TV channel as anexample: they will have figures on whois viewing what and when they aredoing that. They will want to cross-reference this insight with internalsystems like marketing campaigns, andwill have huge data sets they have tocrunch and create statistics from.

This is where the cloud can step in, asAmazon Web Services’ Elastic Map

Reduce allows users to crunch thesedata sets much faster than ever before.Amazon has the capacity to do this in itsdata centres, which might typically takeplace once a month.

For a company to have enoughinternal computer power to run this issimply not financially viable. The powerof the cloud, with a combination ofmassive computer power and betterways of doing it (like Elastic MapReduce) can really help enterprises getthe most from data that they alreadyhold, but have not previously been ableto do anything with.

Oil companies are another example.They have sets of data about the shapeand size of wells and need to processthis information on a regular basis. Thistype of crunching can be taken downfrom weeks to a matter of hours withcloud computing.

It is a huge shift and service providerssuch as Amazon are looking at this asone of its biggest opportunities in themarket.

One might think it would be expensiveto harness this type of powerfulapplication. But businesses are onlypaying for it when they use it, so itmight be cost-neutral or actuallycheaper: a really cost-effective way ofcrunching big amounts of data.

VIEW FROM THE TOPPontus Noren, director and co-founder, Cloudreach

How enterprises can crunch Big Data in the cloud

Briggate in Leeds is one of the first locationscovered and has five public access points.

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Net+ 1301 p7 (Cisco).qxd 22/1/13 19:04

It’s the beginning of the quarter, your IT budget hasalready gone through the roof and your company’s datacentre is almost at full capacity. Time to panic? If you werestill living in the 90s ... yes probably. Fortunately this is the21st century and virtualisation is on the lips of everyone inthe IT industry as a game-changing evolution. OVH,Europe’s leading web-hosting company, gives you thepossibility to virtualise your infrastructure allowing you to

increase your IT structural capacities without having toinvest in expensive equipment or even deploy a dedicatedprivate externalised data centre in less than an hour. Youtake control of a flexible solution that answers your needsin a record amount of time.

Private Cloud, OVH’s IaaS solution takes the concepteven further, offering you the possibility to deploy a

dedicated virtualised Data centre.Building it, no longer requires months ofplanning and construction. Simplychoose the type of host you need, howmuch storage you require and configureyour network. That’s all! After your privateexternalised data centre has been set up,you are in complete control. Only a fewminutes are necessary to increase ordecrease its capacities according to yourorganisational needs and seasonal peakloads. Hélène Caraux, Cloud ProductManager for OVH specifies: “thanks toour distinctive organisation, where wecontrol the entire hosting productionchain, we can supply a Cloudinfrastructure within 30 minutes and it only takes 3 minutes to increase itscapacities according to customerrequirements” before adding: “that cantake months with other provider”. In theera of Cloud computing, having to waitfor scalability makes no sense. OVHunderstood this well and placed thatagility constraint at the heart of its offer.

Regarding security and reliability,everything has been done to guaranteethe highest level of safety for yoursolution: redundant hosts, power andnetwork switches, highly secure datacentres* with 24/7 monitoring andmaintenance as well as one of the mostpowerful fibre networks. Each solution isdesigned to guarantee 99.99% serviceavailability. Furthermore thanks toVMware tools and certifications** yournew virtualised data centre is fullycompatible to work with your pre-existing physical data centres.

Virtualised data centres are the future.According to a Markess study, 74% ofEuropean IT decision makers havealready used or plan to use in the nearfuture virtualised solutions to exter-nalise data centre operations. OVH hasbuilt one of the most complete offers toanswer the requirements that will go withthis evolution: agility, flexibility,reliability and security.

To find out more, pleasevisit www.ovh.co.uk/pcor call 0330 684 0444

* The physical security of OVH’sdatacentres is Tier4 certification, themost rigorous level of safety in the worldrequired.

**OVH is VSPP Enterprise certified byVMware, the highest level of certificationgranted by the world leader invirtualization software.

Data centres 2.0:Virtualisation as

a Solution

Net+ 1301 p8 (OVH).qxd 22/1/13 19:01

towards realising this objective. But therewere several limitations to its existingwireless system that stopped it acting as abusiness enabler. It was dated and featuredaccess points that were actingautonomously, which made the systemdifficult to manage and did not offer anyoperational advantages.

Following a tender process, the hospitalselected Cisilion in October. It carried outa comprehensive wireless survey of theGEH�’s estate which provided accuratereadings of how many access pointswould be required. It then deployed anintelligent network infrastructure which itsays now provides a scalable, resilient,manageable and highly secure trackingsystem for staff to locate equipment,people and all other essential hospitalresources at the click of a button.

Cisilion says its solution utilises thelatest wireless LAN controllers. It claimsthis has resulted in an infrastructure thatfeatures the �“most technologicallyadvanced�” solutions which have taken

business efficiency to �“the next level�”.The firm says the new wireless networkhas helped staff immediately locate assetswithin the hospital. This in turn hasimproved the coordination of resourcesand ultimately released more time andenergy that can be spent on patient care.

�“In a hospital, pressure and secondsmatter, and effective communication iskey. The ability to quickly locatepatients, staff or equipment in a time ofneed can be vital,�” says Cisilion.

The firm adds the platform will alsoenable GEH to support its future plans foradvanced unified communications.

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Greater care through the air

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust has 2,700staff and treats more than 180,000 patientseach year. When it decided to driveimprovements in care, its managementteam chose to upgrade campus-widecommunications to deliver faster clinicalresponse times and enhanced efficiency.

In the first phase, the trust wanted todeploy a system for direct communicationwith doctors under its �‘Out of HoursDoctors�’ initiative. This would allowdoctors to deal with emergencies and adhoc requests faster. Working with SiemensEnterprise Networks (SEC) and EnterasysNetworks, Qolcom installed a pilot systemcomprising clinical-grade wirelessinfrastructure connected to the existingcommunications platform. This secure,high availability network is said to beeasy to manage and is based on VoIPwith a SEC C1000 controller and 30access points (APs). The latter aremanaged via two controllers, ensuringconsistent service levels for multipleapplications on a single infrastructure.

This infrastructure was then expandedenabling doctors to access voice calls andemail from clinical mobile assistants, andstaff to use key applications such as patientdetails and test results from PCs andlaptops. Ward doctors can access detailsusing computers on wheels connected toweb-based applications such as PACS.

Overall wireless connectivity has beenimproved using two Enterasys C4110wireless controllers capable ofsupporting 250 APs per unit (or 500 APsin failover mode). The upgraded wirelessplatform supports a mixed a/b/g/nenvironment ensuring effectiveperformance from individual wirelessclients. It also gives the trust a path tohigh speed 802.11n which it is triallingto improve data throughput.

SEC and Enterasys also provided aplatform for asset management of bedsideinfusion pumps which were hoarded atcertain points, leaving some wards short.The companies partnered with RFIDspecialist Ekahau to implement an app fortagging and tracking the pumps. Thissystem enables staff to quickly locate theunits highlighted on CAD drawingapplications of Airedale�’s main buildings.

The hospital is also piloting an Ekahaupatient tagging system using RFID wrist-band tags. With permission from patientsor their family, staff set parameters for highrisk patients. When a tagged patient passesa set point, the tag activates pager alarms.

Bolting the stable door Following a fire near its data centre,Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHSFoundation Trust (WWL) realised howcrucial it was to protect its key IT servicesand critical clinical data. Ensuring the coreinfrastructure was resilient, stable and ableto provide availability was therefore vital.

But while the trust was driven by theneed for a disaster recovery (DR) solutionwhich minimised downtime, its main challenge was how best to achieve this.Like many public sector organisations,efficiencies were high on its agenda andpresented additional hurdles. It then turnedto storage integrator and cloud enablerProact. After establishing associated riskand cost of its current infrastructure, itdesigned a system that transformed theway WWL approached IT.

Using enterprise technology basedupon NetApp�’s FlexPod architecture(VMware, NetApp, and Cisco�’s Nexusand UCS), Proact provided a consolidatedsolution, ensuring high levels of security,availability and performance plusimproved SLAs. It says the solutionincorporated both a stable primary sitewith a secondary facility for DR services.Proact reckons this significantly reducedrisk, enabling the trust to continue offeringsafe patient care in the event of a disaster.

It adds that virtualisation was a corecomponent of the architecture, and wasinstrumental in delivering flexibility andautomated failover of key services whenrequired.

Proact goes on to claim that the systemdelivered an investment return in less than18 months, and an estimated 70 per centreduction in the cost of a traditional DRservice. As a result, WWL is expected tosave £1.86m over five years, as well as areduce its carbon emissions by more than a million kilogrammes.

Clinical efficiency with no strings attached

George Eliot Hospital (GEH) NHS Trustis a single site hospital on the outskirts ofNuneaton, Warwickshire, and providesservices to around 250,000 people.

In 2010, GEH wanted to improve theefficiency of its patient care, and wirelesstechnology was identified as a crucial step

NHS deploys network solutionsyou can stake your life uponWith government efficiency drives and a savings target of £20bn by 2015, the NHS is undergrowing pressure to deliver and improve its processes. Here’s where the network can help.

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I f your CV is packed with traditional ITqualifications then you may beheartened by a recent study by

ITJobsWatch. It found that the top tentechnical skill areas demanded byemployers in 2011-2012 were: SQL; .NET;SQL Server; Windows; C#; Microsoft;Java; Oracle; JavaScript; and HTML.

Now the bad news. After its analysis ofthe data, e-Skills UK concluded that noneof these core skills is associated withcontinuous long-term growth in demand.

As the Sector Skills Council for business and IT, e-Skills UK works withgovernment, IT professionals and trainingproviders to ensure that Britain has thetalent needed to thrive in the global digitaleconomy. It says that IT and telecomsprofessionals must increasingly adopt corebusiness skills if they are to forge ahead.

�“Creative, technical and entrepreneurialskills alone are not enough. Professionalsneed to manage lifecycles of productdevelopment, and solve real businessissues,�” say the organisation�’s researchers.�“Technical skills need to be complementedby a balanced understanding ofbusinesses�’ broader objectives.�”

Clearly, the role of the IT manager ischanging. So should you be worried?

Paul Martynenko, IBM�’s vice presidentand technical executive for Europe, saysthat while change is a natural part of IT,many of the basic principles that networkmanagers have been used to will always

remain valid. �“The basis of computinghasn�’t changed. The systems management,the security, the approach to delivering areliable service, etc, is still at the heart ofwhat we do. Sometimes the languagechanges, but the need for many of the basicprinciples that network professionals havelearnt, and become skilled and practiced inover the years, has not gone away.�”

Adam Thilthorpe, director of profes-sionalism at the BCS, The CharteredInstitute for IT, agrees: �“To ignore thefundamentals is pretty dangerous. Forexample, cyber security is always in thepress and security is definitely a growtharea. One of the best things you can do toreduce the threats is making sure yourpatches are up to date. Sounds boring butit�’s true. But there are new businesspractices that are changing the landscape,the language, and people�’s expectations.And it�’s that changing landscape whereIT has really got to deliver value.�”

So while traditional IT skills willalways continue to be relevant across all industries, the consensus seems to be that they are evolving.

Neil Lathwood, technical director ofhosted services provider UKFast, saysthat buzzwords such as �‘cloud�’, �‘BYOD�’and �‘Big Data�‘ are all at the heart of thechange. �“IT professionals need to adaptand adopt new skill sets with regulartraining, which any IT manager worththeir salt will do anyway.�”

Don’t just mind your ownbusiness – adopt abusiness mind

The days of remaining cloistered in the ITdepartment awaiting the next troubleshootticket or patch update are long gone. Today,organisations have to work within the con-straints of a tough economic environmentand, as IT recruitment and training agencyRobert Half Technology (RHT) points out,IT is tasked to provide additional value and efficiency. Network managers have toreview the total cost of ownership, strip outcosts, and deliver more with less.

Paul Wright, manager of RHT�’sfinancial service practice, says: �“Networkmanagers have displayed the technicalacumen necessary to reach a leadershiprole. But they must now also demonstratetheir business sense, articulating the valueand benefit of technology to the businesswhile also delivering information tostakeholders that is meaningful andunderstandable to non-IT audiences.�”

Cisco training specialist ClusterLearning concurs here. It advises ITmanagers to focus less on their traditionaltechnical skill sets and recognise that theirrole is now more about being a �“BDM�”(business decision maker) rather than a�“TDM�” (technical decision maker).�“Put simply, they must become more

business savvy and understand that IT hasevolved to become a utility, fundamental to the running of the business,�” says chief learning officer David Stooke. �“ITmanagers need to better understand how IT can improve business processes and

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Technical skills are no longer enough for the IT professional who wants to forgeahead. While knowing about bits and bytes is still crucial, it’s also now essentialto acquire business acumen, as RAHIEL NASIR discovers.

nn ee tt ww oo rr kk ii nngg january 2013 12

New frontiers inIT skills

e-Skills UK says that specific and high level technicalknowledge remains central to nearly all future trends.But it adds that these need to be complemented by abalanced understanding of broader business objectives.

“There are new businesspractices that arechanging the landscape,the language, and people’sexpectations.”Adam Thilthorpe,Director of professionalism,BCS, The Chartered Institute of IT

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training & skillsregister online @ www.networkingplus.co.uk to receive your free monthly copy

13

support the primary functions of makingmoney, saving money, and mitigating risk.IT is an investment decision after all.�”

This view is widely supported by manyincluding Adrian Fletcher, senior telecomstrainer with Telecoms Academy, InformaTelecoms and Media�’s training division. Hesays IT managers need to be considered notonly as technically skilled but equally profi-cient in business planning and knowing howto communicate and collaborate well withcustomers, colleagues and service providers.

The ability to communicate effectively isalso seen by many as a key skill to havemoving forwards. For instance, Wrightbelieves that because today�’s technologyleaders must demonstrate business manage-ment and commercial acumen, they need tohave effective written, verbal and interper-sonal communication skills, as well as theability to explain IT to non-IT audiences.

IBM�’s Martynenko adds: �“A lot of thelanguage that people use is different froman IT space, and being able to sell to theCMO, CFO, and various others (becauseyou are in selling mode) requires all of usto continually assess and improve ourpersonal communication skills. That�’s notmeant as a criticism of anybody; it�’s justanother aspect to the role which I think isvery important.�”

“It’s no longer aboutspeeds and feeds”In its 2012 Tech Trends report released lastmonth, the IBM Centre for Applied Insightsfound that only one in 10 organisations hasthe skills needed to effectively applyadvanced technologies such as businessanalytics, mobile computing, cloudcomputing and social business. IBM isaiming to address the issue with the launchof a new programme of training resourcesaimed at students and the future workforce(see Network Knowledge, p19).

But in the meantime, its report identifiesa skills gap and that would seem tohighlight the need for IT professionals toensure they keep their crystal balls wellpolished. �“The industry moves veryquickly so having an eye on what�’s comingis critical,�” advises Martynenko. �“Thechallenge for IT managers is to spot the

technologies within their industry and howthey can enable their business.�”

According to Thilthorpe, continuousprofessional development is aboutnetworking, going to conferences, andbeing able to spend some time �“horizonscanning�” to see what�’s coming and howthat might impact your organisation.

Cloud, BYOD, and Big Data currentlydominate the headlines as trends that areimpacting enterprise networks. UKFast�’sLathwood agrees that IT managers need tostay one step ahead to ensure that they�’remeeting their organisations�’ evolvingneeds. But he also believes it�’s importantto have the business acumen to knowwhen a technical development is relevantas an essential skill and when it�’s hype.�“Cloud, for example, has been a hugetransformer for IT. But it is not relevantfor every business and shouldn�’t beadopted just because everyone else ismoving to it. A good IT manager needs theskill to recognise this,�” he says.

Cloud has created a great deal of fear,uncertainty and doubt within the industry,and enterprise IT managers in particularhave worried about their long-termprospects in a market where their work isbecoming increasingly outsourced. Butmany commentators have argued that suchconcerns are ill-founded. Rather thanbeing regarded as a threat, new technologytrends present fresh opportunities for ITmanagers to enhance their existing skillsby blending in new ones. For example,Stooke says that as business criticalapplications are increasingly being hostedelsewhere, the IT manager now needs toshift focus to managing the relationshipwith the cloud application providers andensure they�’re achieving their goals,meeting their SLA obligations, andconfiguring the applications appropriately.

�“The IT manager is becoming more ofan �‘IT services broker�’. He or she needs to understand IT planning and businessplanning as effectively one and the samething. To that end, they need to re-focus �–it�’s no longer about speeds and feeds.�”

Thilthorpe adds that with migration tothe cloud, IT managers now have the timeand energy to work out how they canbenefit and change their organisations. �“It�’s not just about writing a decent SLA.You need to make sure that theorganisation is getting what it needs fromthose relationships. Procurement of suchthings is a very delicate skill �– you set outto achieve an objective and you need theskill set to tell you whether it is good or bad and how to fix it.�”

Cloud is leading to a significant changein the way employees use traditional ITservices. As a result, the IT manager mustbe the in-house expert who can advise andassist the workforce during the upheaval.

�“This would be achieved by firstlytraining the manager in the new skillsrequired, with possible training in how totrain and mentor the employees who haveIT responsibility,�” says TelecomsAcademy�’s Fletcher. The IT manager�’srole then becomes two-fold: they�’re theon-site individual who is completelycomfortable in what the employees needfrom services such as the cloud; and theyalso act as the corporate voice responsiblefor the selection and introduction ofemerging technologies that are potentiallybeneficial to the business.

So rather than be fearful of the cloud,IT managers should rejoice in the factthat they no longer have to spend somuch time on the day-to-daymanagement of systems and can insteadconcentrate on innovating andstreamlining cumbersome businessprocesses. As Lathwood says, whereas

the focus for an IT manager used to besolely on the IT department, it now needsto be across the whole operational sphereof the organisation.

�“We recognised this early on in thebusiness and established a research anddevelopment team as well as a technicalteam. This team has developed programsto solve bugs within internal systems(developing the software themselves),and reduced the amount of �‘mundane�’tasks that would normally be required of a technical manager and their team.Having this approach to internal IThas enabled us to massively increaseefficiency across the whole business.�”

While it�’s all well and good tellingnetwork managers that they need tosharpen their communication andbusiness skills, are there enough relevantcourses and training experts out there tohelp them do all that? �“This is a fairlydynamic space,�” says Thilthorpe. �“We�’restill learning about lots these things, andtherefore formal learning in some ofthese areas is not there yet because it�’svery difficult to set a course when thingsare continuously moving.�”

Lathwood�’s concern is that not enoughbusinesses are opening their doors to enableknowledge sharing. He believes that if theydid this, innovation, education and efficien-cy would increase across the industry as awhole and could be a solution to thegrowing skills gap. �“Because changes arehappening on a regular basis, responsibilityshould fall on proactive technology busi-nesses to train up and support their clientsand communities. Established educationalbases will always be one step behind.�”

Stooke doesn�’t necessarily agree. Heclaims that many of Cluster Learning�’scourses are ideally suited to IT managerswho are keen to make the transition from aTDM to a BDM. And Fletcher says thatwhile the availability of appropriatecourses and training experts is limited, theydo exist. For example, he claims thetraining opportunities available from theTelecoms Academy can contribute greatlyto the development of the IT manager andprofessional with courses such as Cloudfor Telecoms Operators, IP in ModernNetworks, Leadership in the TelecomsEnvironment, etc.

IT is the key to successThe IT and network managers of thefuture certainly have their work cut out.And while they will always need theirtraditional skills to keep their organisa-tions�’ engine rooms going, they will needto enhance those with talents that gobeyond core IT areas. While some may

not want to step outside their comfortzones, many are likely to be excited bythe prospect of being able to actuallyinfluence what�’s going on in the business.

�“Networking people have done that it inthe past,�” says Martynenko. �“They�’re theones who introduced networks to startwith, they�’re the ones who spread throughto storage area networks and high-speed,high-volume networks, and they�’re theones who have been leading the way inmany ways. Now they need to go up astage further and ask how can that networkconnectivity start to enable the business todo new things it�’s never done before?�”

The bottom line, as the BCS�’ Thilthorpepoints out, is that what made enterprise ITsuccessful in the past might not be whatmakes it successful in the future:�“We needto adapt and grow with our organisationsand realise what they�’re about. Technologyis right at the edge of everything theorganisation is trying to achieve. I can�’tthink of any sort of business or sectorwhose future success won�’t be determinedby how good they are at IT.�” And that�’swhere you come in. !

According to research conducted by e-Skills UK, specific and high-leveltechnical knowledge is central to nearlyall future trends. For instance, securityand data protection has one of the clearestand most immediate impacts for IT andtelecoms professionals. Employersfrequently associate security related skillsissues with many of the key trends, andthe ability to deal with these issues willbe one of their priority areas.

It adds that analytics is a vitalcomponent of connecting information andtechnology to business problems. Thiswill require organisations to have strongdata architecture in place and then todevelop new analytics skills to bringbusiness meaning to operational data.e-skills UK research for SAS in 2012

found that job vacancies for Big Datastaff had grown by 43 per cent over thepast year. The key �‘technical skills�’demanded from candidates for Big Datarelated positions are: Oracle, Java, SQL,noSQL, Linux, MySQL, Hadoop, Unix,Python, and SQL Server.

Looking at a broader range of skills,the organisation says that longer-termtrends become apparent and these couldbe key skills to watch in 2013 andbeyond. It analysed data fromITJobsWatch from Q3 2011 to Q2 2012and found that there are nine areaswhere a rise in demand has consistentlyoccurred for more than two years. Theseinclude: Android; Apple iOS; CSS3;Dell; MongoDB; PowerShell; RESTful;HTML5; and MCITP.

Technical skills will remain central to all future trends

“Cloud is not relevant forevery business andshouldn’t be adopted justbecause everyone else ismoving to it. A good ITmanager needs the skillto recognise this.”Neil Lathwood,Technical director,UKFast

“Network managers mustnow demonstrate theirbusiness sense, articulatingthe value and benefit oftechnology to the businesswhile also deliveringinformation to stakeholdersthat is meaningful andunderstandable to non-ITaudiences.”Paul Wright, manager financial services practice,Robert Half Technology

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There�’s a short answer to the �‘bringyour own device�’ problem �– don�’t letuser smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc,

touch any corporate information, and sackanyone who does. But how realistic is that?Ramsés Gallego, international vice pres-ident of IT professionals body ISACA andsecurity strategist for Dell/Quest Softwaresays: �“The truth is people are using theirdevices whether the organisation wantsthem to or not. Organisations have littlechoice but to embrace BYOD, as it�’s theway people want to work.�”

The upsideFirms can benefit a lot from the BYODmovement. In these cash-strapped times,they can minimise their outlays for whatare essentially IT fashion items. Thesedevices need never appear on the balancesheet. Staff feel empowered, and they arealso more likely to buy kit that is morecapable than the company requires or canafford. As a result, employees are likely towork longer, harder, and smarter. All thatcan be worth a lot.

Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is an example. It says BYOD isgiving staff a �“richer experience�”, and isalso helping it deliver better services �–for instance, it led to quicker and moreefficient decision-making when floods

hit the west Midlands last year. CIO Steve Halliday explains that so far,

12 per cent of the council�’s 3,500 �“hugelyenthusiastic�” users are on BYOD, and thatthe process is being driven by the staff.�“Nobody is being forced to do [it]. I thinkit is a more pleasant experience being ableto use the device you want, rather thanwhatever the council can afford.�”

He goes on to say that the challenge forthe council was to maintain thesafeguarding of information and datasecurity while allowing employees theflexibility to use their own mobile devices�– any data losses would destroy the trustcitizens have in the organisation.

The council manages BYOD withsecure technologies that are approved byGCHQ�’s CESG (mostly Juniper andGood). Halliday says that these putcorporate information into encrypted,password-protected �“secure containers�” on the user device. If the device is lost, its information can be wiped remotelywithout affecting any personal data.

In addition to office applications such asemail and calendar, Solihull�’s BYODworkers also have access to the councilintranet and to Oracle-based systems suchas their payslips and procurementdocuments on an authenticated basis.

Not only is the council saving money asstaff return council-bought devices, but

they are being more productive andefficient. �“There�’s a third benefit in that, as(an internal) supplier, I�’m giving a servicethat customers want, which is good for ourinternal relationships,�” says Halliday.

Intel CIO Kim Stevenson announced lastmonth that her firm�’s BYOD programmeimproved staff productivity by about 2.75million hours in 2012. With average Intelsalaries above $100,000 a year, thattranslates into well north of $137.5m, ormore than $7,250 per person.

�“We�’ve seen a 14 per cent increase in the use of personal devices. Withapproximately 19,000 employees (about 20per cent of all staff) participating in ourBYOD programme at mid-year andrealising an estimated average savings of57 minutes per day, we have achieved atotal productivity gain of approximately2.75 million hours in 2012,�” she said.

Intel also uses the BYOD programmeinternally with other technologies likecloud and social networking to evaluateconsumer devices (such as Ultrabooks) soit can recommend the ones that provide thebest secure user experience.

Socitm, the local government ITassociation, published a survey late lastyear which found that most staff areunhappy with the technology they use at work. Many don�’t want differentdevices for personal and business use.

Furthermore, the cost of desktoprefreshes in the present climate is budget-busting (hence the 64 per cent rise insales of tablets and five per cent decline

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The daily march of user-owned smartphones andtablets into offices has turned an insidious butmanageable threat into a rampaging assault oncompany systems and information. Or has it? IANGRANT separates the BYOD myths from the reality.

nn ee tt ww oo rr kk ii nngg january 2013 14

How to tame theBYOD beast

London’s iconic Fashion Retail Academy is using a next-generation Wi-Fi system to support BYOD for its 700students. It allows around 1,000 smartphones, tabletsand laptops to link to the academy’s network.

“I think it is a morepleasant experience beingable to use the device youwant, rather than whateverthe council can afford.”Steve Halliday,Chief Information Officer,Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council

How to tame theBYOD beast

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in PC sales in 2012, according to marketanalysts NPD and IDC).

Socitm says: �“BYOD is something of amisnomer, as employees are bringing notjust devices such as their smartphone,tablet or laptop, but also their favouriteapplications to the workplace.�” Theseinclude third-party collaborative workingapplications; cloud apps such as storageand sharing facilities; social media; andblogging. Twenty per cent of Socitmmembers are now running BYOD pilots, and more are considering it.

Chris Knowles, head of solutions atsystems integrator Dimension Data,confirms this. In addition to security, headvises enterprises to think aboutapplications, connectivity, support andpolicy. Each makes BYOD a less trivialissue, and is likely to lead to software andnetwork upgrades as well as changes in

policy, training and management practices.The main risks identified by Socitm and

others fall into two broad categories:behavioural (users abuse the system, losethe device, share data illegally, third-partyliability); and technical (system support,access, and authorisation control).

Last year, the Information

Commissioner�’s Office (ICO) increasedthe top rate it can fine companies for a datasecurity breach from £5,000 to £500,000.Nineteen local councils paid fines totalling

£1,885,000 for breaching the DataProtection Act, and one SMS spammeralone paid £300,000.

ISACA, which represents more than 100,000 IT professionals in 180countries, carries out a respected annualsurvey of IT risks and rewards. In its lateststudy published in December, it found�“people�” (or more accurately theirbehaviour) pose high risks to theiremployers, mainly because of BYOD.Storing passwords in a file on a personaldevice is clearly a high risk, even if theemployer supplied the device.

The very mobility of people and theirdevices is a threat according to Gallego: �“If I travel to Singapore or Chicago with acorporate-owned laptop, my smartphone and tablet, I take the organisation�’sperimeter with me.�”

EMC-owned data security specialistMozy found that 29 per cent of lostbelongings disappear in transit. �“Some 24per cent of all losses are smartphones, eightper cent are laptops, and a further eight percent is paperwork,�” it says.

Some firms do not allow staff, especiallyexecutives, to cross national borderscarrying any device with companyinformation on it. Not only is the potentialloss of the device a high risk, but so is thethreat of unauthorised access and copyingof data at borders.

Mozy�’s Clare Galbois-Alcaix echoesthis. �“We�’d encourage employers to thinkcarefully about what they allow theiremployees to carry with them to and from

BYOD


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1. Get in front of BYOD technology:BYOD should be approachedproactively. Develop policies andprocedures to guide departments andemployees before the purchase ofdevices, not after the fact.

2. Security: BYOD is a part of anorganisation�’s larger security efforts andit should be managed within their overallecosystem �– not as a separate entity.Central management of security effortseases the administrative burden andprovides cost efficiencies.

3. Protect your weakest link: Assessyour overall network and look for itsweakest links, which can often be staff�’spersonal devices. NAC solutions with ahybrid approach allow 802.1x andalternative device authentication as wellas endpoint compliance mechanisms.

4. Set policies that make sense in yourenvironment: In a hospital, for example,securing a patient�’s privacy is one of thetop concerns. This means you havepolicies for typical activities such as whohas access to patient data and storage ofpatient records. But it also means youcan�’t allow screen captures or cloud filesharing �– two possible ways patient datamight exit your secure environment.

5. Visibility into each endpoint: It isvery important to have real-timevisibility into all areas of your networkincluding mobile devices such assmartphones and tablets. Choose asolution that allows you to drill downinto the activity of each device and beautomatically alerted if a security vio-lation or potentially destructive incidentsuch as a malicious worm is in progress.

10 tips for getting bringyour own device right

“In our BYOD programme... we have achieved atotal productivity gain ofapproximately 2.75 millionhours in 2012.”Kim Stevenson,Chief Information Officer,Intel


work, and also consider an online backupsolution as a precaution.�”

The use of online file-sharing and cloudservices such as Dropbox and GoogleApps, and even specialised content deliverynetwork like Akamai and CDNetworks hassoared. But many BYOD users backupwork files to an online site withoutencrypting or otherwise protecting them.ISACA found that, depending on region,between 60 per cent and 76 per cent ofsubjects see online storage as risky. As aresult, up to 67 per cent of enterprisesprohibit online file-sharing services.

What about the workers?Socitm believes that the standard policieson �“conditions of acceptable use�” whichare currently in force in an organisationwill require revision to cover BYOD, and to cope with situations that mightcurtail the employee�’s own use ofpersonal equipment.

It also raises the question of theemployee�’s own security: �“They may welluse the device to access their bank account,conduct financial transactions, and storeimportant personal data. It is all too easy toassume that all activity from within thehost organisation is benign. What liabilitiesmight the employing organisation incur ifan employee�’s device were to be hackedfrom within the secure domain?�”

Firms also risk staff blurring theboundaries between work and play. Arecent survey for K3 Managed Services

found online workers spend almost halftheir time on private surfing. Head of salesJason Price says customers were shockedby how much of their bandwidth goes topersonal use by employees. �“This poses adilemma for managers as the internet andmany social media websites are nowintegral to business operations,�” he says.

Dimension Data�’s Knowles points outthat firms need to consider what devicesthey will support; whether to restrictBYOD to smartphones and tablets, orwhether to include laptops and homedesktops, too. In addition, they need todecide which applications employeeswould be able to use, both for work andtheir own use, and what platforms thecompany is prepared to support. He warnsthat re-writing apps, especially in-house apps, for mobile is a big risk.

Stu Bailey, founder and CTO of network

automation vendor Infoblox, agrees andsays that BYOD �“adds complexity�” to anorganisation�‘s already complex enterprisenetwork environment. He believes that totruly manage BYOD, CIOs need to be ableto know precisely what devices are on theirnetworks, what their capabilities are, whatrelationships they and their owners have tothe firm�’s information assets, and whatusers are allowed to do with them.

To keep things manageable, CIOsinitially responded to the BYOD �‘threat�’ bydeclaring that smartphones had to beBlackBerrys, laptops had to run Windows,and users dialled in using Citrix to set up atemporary VPN. That�’s untenable thesedays. Not only is there a question aboutBlackBerry-maker Research in Motion�’sfuture, but Android and Apple iOS are nowthe dominant mobile platforms.

Knowles says this brings the �“always

on�” nature of mobile broadbandnetworking into the frame. Firms will haveto deal with both the technical andfinancial aspects of mobility, particularly inthe light of sky-high roaming charges(although Europe is trying to cap them).According to ABI Research�’s enterprisepractice director Dan Shey, networkoperators�’ revenue from enterprises alreadyrepresents more than 30 per cent of themobile services market, and will growtwice as fast as the consumers�’ share toreach $340bn by 2017. �“The underlying driver of this growth issimply BYOD and specifically theadoption of smartphones,�” he says.

BYOD looks set to be something thatenterprises can�’t afford to ignore or turn ablind eye to. They�’ll have to take a deepbreathe and plunge in. You might even beable to get an app for that. !

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6. Block and tackle: Take control overBYOD devices from the first encounter.Adopt solutions that allow you to easilyauthorise devices and enforce policies. Forexample, when a new personal device isbrought onto the network, it should beimmediately scanned for compliance withanti-virus and current securitycertifications. If it is not up to date, it canthen be automatically blocked from thenetwork using a NAC solution.

7. Environmentally-aware feature set:BYOD offers costs savings as employeespurchase their own kit. However, theenterprise does need control over thedevice when it is on its network. Consider a BYOD solution that allows youto disable functions such as cameras orBluetooth while users are in the enterpriseenvironment, but enables them once theyleave the office network.

8. BYOD and peace of mind are notmutually exclusive: If you find andimplement the right security solution foryour enterprise you�’ll get piece of mind.NAC solutions with mobile plug-insenable customers to easily institute anyBYOD policy and gives the flexibilityneeded to accommodate employees�’devices.

9. Don�’t just allow BYOD �– embraceit: Smartphones and tablets are here tostay. Embrace their mobility and developnew applications that enhance the workenvironment.

10. Reap the benefits: While the initialreaction may be that BYOD is a pain, it isnot something that an IT department canignore. It is inevitable. And by embracingit, enterprises can reap the benefits whichcan include more productive employees,easier collaboration, and increasedaccessibility.

Source: ForeScout



Eaton Power�’s 9PX range has been devel-oped for virtualised environments, andincludes rack or tower models that deliverup to 5,400W in a 3U form factor and10kW in 6U. The firm says that they

feature up to 95 per cent efficiency inonline double conversion mode, and 98 percent in high-efficiency mode.

All the units have a tilting LCD whichprovides multilingual information such as

The power to succeedoff-the-shelf: UPS

When it comes to business continuity, the uninterruptible powersupply is often the first link in the chain. Here are some of thelatest models to help you keep calm and carry on.

The Green Triera DSP Series availablefrom MPower UPS offers online doubleconversion, a three level inverter, 1 phasein-1 phase out, and 3kVA to 10kVA.

The transformerless, compactUPS has digital signal processorcontrolled IGBT technology todeliver 94 per cent efficiencywith a 0.9 output power factor.The Triera is also equipped withcold start and soft start featureswith availability to start frommains power without batteries.MPower adds that an�“intelligent�” battery managementsystem extends the lifetime ofbatteries. There�’s also a �“smart�”fan which regulates its speed.

A multi-functional LCD can beused to adjust or calibrate the UPS

without the need for software. For example,users can configure units as 50/60Hz frequency converters. The menu enablesusers to monitor 15 different parameters

and up to 500 events can be logged.Additional management andmonitoring software is available

for all operating systems, andMPower says advanced commu-nication is possible via anRS232 interface. SNMP,Modbus, USB, Dry Contact andEPO (with five adjustablerelays) are also available asoptional extras.

Other specs include low inputcurrent THD of <6 per cent, lowoutput voltage THD of <1.5 percent, and input voltage rangingfrom 90V to 270V.

Tripp Lite has upgraded its SmartOnlineseries. It now includes five new modelsranging from 750VA to 3000VA that havebeen designed to deliver greater efficiencyand feature a new LCD control panel.

These new systems are said to have up toa 0.9 power factor that allows them tosupport more equipment, delivering up to2700W in the 3000VA model. Tripp Litesays this means users require fewer UPSsystems and circuits, resulting in higheroverall facility efficiency. It adds that UPSpower consumption can be reduced by anadditional 40 per cent in Economy mode.

With the included PowerAlertsoftware, users can define aschedule to balance energyefficiency and high performanceoperating modes as network needschange, or let the UPS decide itsoperating mode itself. The software

monitors power conditions, controls UPSdevices, and automatically shuts downsystems during a power failure. There arealso USB and DB9 ports plus anSNMP/web interface for additionalcommunication and monitoring options.

The LCD control panel offers nineselectable screens indicating load, voltage,runtime, energy use and other informationfor better power management.

Other key features include online,double-conversion operation with two percent voltage regulation, and zero transfertime to deliver clean power to equipment.

Protect Blue is AEG Power Solutionscurrent flagship UPS. Designed specificallyfor high performance in large data centres,it has an expected 15-year operational lifeand features full rectifier and inverter threelevel technology. This is said to providehigh conversion efficiency, improve overalltotal cost of ownership, cut carbonemissions, and reduce energy consumption.

AEG says the device�’s bi-directionalrectifier is unmatched in the UPS market. It claims its full rectifier and inverter threelevel technology ensures reduced switchinglosses and, as a consequence, each powerconversion module (rectifier and inverter)is able to achieve an efficiency of 98per cent or 99 per cent in Eco mode.The firm adds that this is unique asstandard two level IGBT (InsulatedGate Bipolar Transistor doubleconversion technology limits the overall operating efficiency to 93.5 to 94 per cent.

AEG also says that its technologyremoves the need to purchase expensiveload banks to perform battery dischargetests. These are initiated through therectifier bridge with excess current injectedinto the mains network.

Using a modular building blockapproach, the Protect Blue 250kVA singleunit can be combined to achieve up to8MVA as business demands grow. It alsoincludes the IEC61850 communicationprotocol which makes it SMART GRIDready. Other protocols such as SNMP,JBus, Modbus, Ethernet, etc, are alsooptionally available.

The NETYS range of single-phase systemsfrom Socomec UPS feature models that areavailable from 600VA to 3.3kVA.

The NETYS PL offers 600-800VA and isa multi-socket compact design for thehome or small office. In addition to its sixoutputs (four for power cut protection andtwo for over-voltage) it has a USB port forrecharging mobile devices.

The PE offers from 600-2000VA and canbe monitored via its LCD/LED synoptic panel andgraphic icons. It runs on VI�‘line interactive�’ technologywith AVR (pseudo sinewave). This stabilises outputvoltage and preventscommutation in batteryoperation in order tomaintain the load in theevent of a power cut.

The 1000-2000VA mini

tower PR MT is aimed at SMEs and hasLOCAL VIEW software which enablesusers to monitor and switch off the unitsvia Windows, Mac or Linux.

With increased power, the PR RT offersfrom 1700 to 3300VA and is available as arack or tower version. Socomec says itssine wave inverter technology ensures fullcompatibility with any kind of load andpower. It also has online double conversiontechnology for filtering all disturbancesfrom and to the network.

Batteries are hot swappable and can bereplaced without switching off the utilities.Remote control is enabled by the SocomecUPS LAN NET VISION card.

device status and analytics. Users have theoption to monitor energy consumption viathe LCD or through Eaton�’s IntelligentPower Software Suite which is compatiblewith all major operating systems.

To ensure service continuity, the 9PX isequipped with redundant components aswell as an internal self-powered bypass. OnHotSwap models, a maintenance bypass isavailable for easy UPS replacementwithout powering down critical systems.The devices also allow for paralleloperation so that users can either build aredundant solution or scale up their systemusing HotSync technology to double thepower at a later point.

In double conversion topology the 9PXconstantly monitors power conditions andregulates voltage and frequency foroptimised capacity management. The

5kVA and 6kVA modelsfeature load segment controlwhich Eaton says enablesprioritised shutdowns of non-essentialequipment to maximise battery runtimefor critical devices.

In addition, Advanced Battery Manage-ment technology includes a three-stageintelligent charging process that optimisesrecharge time, eliminates overcharging, andcontinuously monitors battery condition.

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IBM has launched new training coursesand resources to help IT professionalsand students develop technology skillsin preparation for the jobs of the future.

Last month, the company announcedthe results of its 2012 Tech TrendsReport. This revealed that only 1 in 10organisations has the skills needed toeffectively apply advanced technologiessuch as business analytics, mobilecomputing, cloud computing and socialbusiness. Nearly half of the educatorsand students surveyed said that there isa major gap in their institution�’s abilityto meet the growing demand foradvanced technology skills.

According to the report, cyber security isa key job growth area but is the top barrierwhen it comes to organisations adoptingadvanced technologies. As a result, IBMhas expanded its Academic Initiativeprogramme which, for the first time, willoffer access to curriculum and training

resources on IT security to help studentsgain market-ready cyber security skills.

This includes free access to securitysoftware that can be used to teachstudents how to test applications for bugsand check network and virtualised serversfor vulnerabilities. Educators will also beable to remotely access IBM�’s latestzEnterprise mainframe to help studentsprepare for real-world computingchallenges using enterprise IT skills.

In addition to cyber security, thecompany is also providing softwarelicenses and how-to training materials atno additional cost for Big Data, businessanalytics, and mobile computing. Otherresources include the KnowledgeExchange, an online resource whichallows professors from around the worldto share and collaborate on coursewareand best practices.The IT skills needed for 2013 andbeyond �– feature pp12-13

Average IT engineer is ‘over-qualified and underworked’Over-qualified IT professionals arespending nearly a third of their time onlow-level tasks such as responding toincidences and checking for errors,according to IPsoft�’s survey of 100 seniorUK IT managers in enterprises.

The study found a �“clear mismanage-ment�” of resources. Eighty eight per centof respondents said that to make progressin an enterprise IT environment, IToperations staff have to perform day-to-daytasks for which they are over-qualified.

Just over two thirds agreed that this is inpart a direct result of teams having limitedaccess to the right tools and technologiesthat could make them more efficient andproductive. They felt that if their operationsstaff had more man hours available, theywould be used to modernise theirorganisation�’s infrastructure.

�“The research confirms and reinforcesthe level to which valuable expensiveskills are lying dormant,�” says IPsoft�’sUK MD Terry Walby. �“Of course, a skillthat isn�’t regularly used is very rapidlyforgotten. However, the biggest impact ofthis is that IT staff are not being usedeffectively and are missing the opportunityto drive technology innovation, which iscritical to business growth.�”

NEW COURSESCustomer Focus: Advanced BusinessDiploma �– Informa Telecoms Academy

This five-day programme is designed formanagers who need to develop a thoroughunderstanding of the customer in the widercontext of the communications industry.

Fully accredited by the University ofDerby Corporate, the course provides anoverview of the telecoms industry. It aimsto demystify emerging telecoms servicesand applications, and explains the role ofdifferent technologies within future fixed,mobile and converged environments.

It uses case studies and best practiceexamples throughout, and provides tools to help organisations use customer focus asthe basis for improving their efficiency.

The course takes place in London on 4-8 March. www.telecomsacademy.com

Business Continuity in ICT �– Continuity ShopThis residential course at the CotswoldConference Centre takes place on 14-15May and focuses on the technical andprocedural issues of ICT service continuityand disaster recovery. It is designed forbusiness continuity (BC) managers wantingto learn more about the technical issues thatcan support or hinder BC capability, aswell as ICT managers and technicians whoneed to understand how to ensure BC plansmeet business requirements.

The course covers: the technical applica-tion of BC principles; data managementstrategies; telecoms and networking; testingand exercising technical plans; documentingand maintaining technical plans; and BCplanning for the ICT department. Find outmore at www.continuityshop.com.

According tothe 2012 IBMTech TrendsReport, theoutlook amongeducators andstudentssuggests thecurrentshortage of ITskills could geteven worse.

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IBM helps students prepare forthe jobs of the future

IPsoft’s Terry Walbywarns that skills thataren’t regularly usedare “rapidly forgotten”.

Growing skills gap

Net+ 1301 p18-19 (off the shelf &net knowledge) NEW.qxd 23/1/13 18:24 Page 19

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