Industry news

Craig Carpenter, Vice President Marketing at Recommind, discusses how the ‘Big’ in Big Data refers not just to the quantity of data, but also to the much larger variety of sources being analysed – especially unstructured data.

As data continues to be created at an exponential rate, the task of capturing, storing, searching, sharing, analysing and visualising it is ramping up to be a big business opportunity. According to IDC, companies will spend $120bn on analytics software between now and 2015, so they can extract better value from the vast quantities of data they hold, as well as reduce some of the associated IT headaches. The type of information that businesses have to manage and interpret is also changing - specifically, unstructured data requires a different approach. However, before companies dive into their vast ocean of data, it is best to understand what Big Data is in order to extract maximum value from it.

Gartner define Big Data as “extreme information management and processing issues which exceed the capability of traditional information technology along one or multiple dimensions to support the use of the information assets” . It has long been understood that organisations can use Business Intelligence (BI) tools to analyse internal, structured data to transform raw data into meaningful and useful information. However, businesses need to expand their analysis beyond the enterprise data warehouse and look at a much larger variety of sources, including unstructured data both within and outside the organisation, if they are to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making . After all, unstructured data accounts for a large amount of all new content being created today. Merrill Lynch estimated that as much as 80% of all potentially useful business information is unstructured and because of this the real ‘Big’ in Big Data is the sheer variety of information being created and stored.

Unstructured data can take the form of blog posts, call transcripts, instant messages, tweets or other social media, to name but a few. It typically refers to information that has very little or no identified structure and does not easily fit into a relational database. A subset of unstructured data is semi-structured data, which is information that includes some structure but not a formal structure as seen with relational databases, which can take the form of emails or Word or PowerPoint documents, for example. Few companies currently have the technology in place to apply the same degree of sophistication to unstructured data as they can to structured data. Thus, the majority of businesses are only focusing on 20% of potentially useful information – a very “Big” problem indeed.

If businesses rely on internal structured information alone, they are missing out on key information spread across disparate systems as well as conversations taking place beyond their four walls. The true value of Big Data is the ability to identify and extract meaning from myriad data sources – especially unstructured ones – in order to support better business decision-making. These decisions must be based on the totality of information available and not merely a subset of transactional data from a relational database. Therefore, for businesses who are looking to extract maximum value from their data, they must no longer ignore the ‘Big’ in Big Data – unstructured data.

Five councils have reported savings or expected future savings of millions during this week.

The strain on council budgets has increased the attractiveness of sharing services between departments and other councils. The government on coming to power established back office shared devices as a key part of its savings strategy.

Shared services can heavily increase efficiency while speeding up delivery times, however central government departments have struggled to effectively implement such services, with a recent attempt in back office sharing saw prices rise rapidly.

Now that shared services are displaying results throughout the UK public sector, the uptake has increased. Evidence for the public sectors focus on employing shared services can be seen this week, with multiple reports of the success and implementation of such programmes.

Future projects include Cambridge and Northamptonshire councils, who have implemented a shared services agreement which is expected to deliver £5 million annually in cost savings. Current council shared services projects have reported savings this week, these include Devon and Somerset councils, who have saved £1.22 million through shared services in the fire and rescues departments and Herefordshire council which has seen a yearly saving of £619,000 from shared services among NHS services and local government departments.

The success of shared services with the private sector, particular involving ICT, has demonstrated the potential value of the service. Shared services within the public sector have consistently focused on back office functions including HR ICT and finance services.

With the rise of offshore costs, how has O2 been affected?

We have definitely seen over the years the cost of our outsourcing increase offshore. With increasing wages and inflation we’ve had to look at alternatives, despite the Onshore/Offshore price differential.

Although not re-shoring by giving work back to the CSA, we have started to look at robotic automation instead. If we compare UK costs to offshoring costs it is around 1/3 of the price. If we then compare offshore costs to robotic automation it’s another 1/3 cheaper, it’s a route O2 is seriously exploring at the moment.

What other ways are O2 ensuring flexibility in the future and present in the current climate of rising economic costs?

We have seen falling revenue and increased costs, profitability has been falling and outsourcing is one of the ways we look to reduce costs. Our outsourcing relationships give us fantastic flexibility to flex resources both onshore and offshore and that will obviously continue. To ensure costs come down further we even have to reduce are outsourcing costs, through a mixture of robotic automation and process improvement – If we don’t have the failure contacts coming into the business in the first place then, and lower call volumes will also reduce costs significantly.

How is the impact of new technology affecting O2?

Other than the use of Robotic Automation, newer technologies such as the Cloud haven’t really affected O2’s Back Office too much. There are obviously parts of the wider O2 Business utilising newer technologies all the time, taking advantage of the cost saving and scalability that the cloud etc, but other that the Robotic resource now at my disposal the Back Office currently remains unchanged. I certainly see a space in the O2 Back Office for newer services such as “BPM as a Service” but at present this is just at a feasibility stage.

Do you feel that public perception is important to companies that outsource, and if so how can this be improved upon?

My personal opinion is that you have 2 public views. Onshore outsourcing which is seen as positive due to the number of jobs this creates, and then you have offshore outsourcing, which to the public is seen as a bit of a negative. Unfortunately in this day and age, I don’t think there is a way to get around an Onshore/Offshore mix and this does appear to be the norm. O2 has always had a commitment for Voice services to remain in the UK, both in house and through our outsource partners. Outsourcing contributes billions to the UK economy, it is seen as a necessary evil regardless of public perception as revenues fall in the mobile industry, outsourcing is one way we can decrease our costs.

We are currently seeing two schools of thought in the industry concerning BYOD – one convinced that it is the way forward across the enterprise, the other forecasting that BYOD is perhaps not so much of a good thing as we once thought. And whilst the technology is now here for CIOs to choose, they must take a pragmatic deployment approach based on business needs and user roles.

The generation factor: Generation Z vs. Senior Management

As the so-called 'Generation Z' enters the workforce, it has been widely believed that they will be the ones to introduce their own smartphones and tablets into the workplace. But a recent study completed by Computacenter found that 'Generation Z' is in fact far less enthusiastic about using personal devices in the workplace than CIOs are. Less than half of the young people questioned believed that personal devices make them more productive at work, while almost 70 per cent of senior IT decision makers believed it did.

Add to this the fact that just 17 per cent of Gen Z said they wanted to use social media to talk to colleagues at work, with the majority instead favouring either face to face chats or email, and it's clear that perhaps the workforce habits of Gen Z aren't changing as dramatically as we thought.

Match tools with role requirements

So a BYOD policy needs to be based on individual user profiles, rather than on generation profiles. If this is done, then a BYOD policy can reap huge rewards in employee productivity.

CIOs should examine what each employee does within the enterprise, and whether or not they need BYOD to better do their job. Often, if not in a customer-facing role, employees will not see any real gain in terms of productivity. But if used in a retail environment or across a hospital, for example, tablets can hugely improve productivity and make the resolving of customer enquiries or patient health-checks much more efficient – undoubtedly increasing productivity and customer/patient satisfaction.

Put in place a BYOD policy

CIOs should understand where the demand is coming from within their organisation – which generation is requesting a BYOD policy, and which departments might benefit from this approach the most – in order to assess the effect of a BYOD policy on productivity of the workforce, and relate that to the individual employees' benefit.

Then it's key that CIOs ensure they have made employees aware of the dos and don'ts of BYOD through comprehensive company policy usage and security procedures. Only then will enterprises see the real benefits by ensuring optimal employee productivity based on those users that need BYOD and those that don’t.

Reason 5: Encourage Users to Have Fewer Devices

More devices introduce complexity resulting in higher costs. Unfortunately, users needs don’t always match business needs so proper justification for using a device – especially if it’s personally owned, must be demonstrated. If you offer a company car you wouldn’t expect to supply a VW Golf for the week and a Porsche for the weekends!

Even if it makes the employee’s life easier - if it’s going to be too expensive for IT to support, then it’s impractical and needs to be deterred. Where a device is to be allowed then it must comply with company policy and a clear strategy of who is responsible for support developed.

Reason 6 : Maximise Investment in Active Directory

Most organisations will have Active Directory but few realise it can help achieve centralised management and allow a business policy driven architecture. If you’ve got it, why not use the facilities built into the product to enable a more efficient and productive IT system?

That said, there are limits of what you can do in terms of control and security so you might look towards complimenting AD with a third party least privilege solution. This will give more granular control, allowing admin rights to be easily removed without adversely impacting end users and ultimately productivity.

Reason 7 : Regulatory Compliance

Demonstrating compliance can prevent regulatory fines - and a least privilege approach is at its core. Many compliance codes state, either implicitly or explicitly, that users should have the minimum amount of privileges to complete every day tasks.

For example, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) states that the organisation must ensure privileged user IDs are restricted to the least amount of privileges needed to perform their jobs.

Reason 8: Demonstrate Due Care

This goes hand in hand with reason 7 as a least privilege approach helps demonstrate to customers that you’re taking all reasonable steps to protect their information. Many organisations and public services have been publicly named and shamed for data breaches which damages reputations and erodes customer confidence. Of course, this also impacts on the profitability of the organisation.

Reason 9: Improve Network Uptime

Many organisations fail to link lost productivity with admin privileges. By running a least privilege environment, you not only improve stability of the desktop but of the entire network. This is down to various security interdependencies - for example, if a machine is infected with a virus it could issue a DOS (denial of service) attack undetected by the user, with the resultant flood of traffic over the network causing routers and switches to grind to a halt, eventually bringing network services to their knees.

Reason 10: Reduce Complexity

Systems are complex enough without users making additional unauthorised and un-catalogued changes.

Logically, organisations should take five steps to keep things simple:

1. A strategy to implement the right type of security

2. Remove admin privileges from the majority of users

3. Give users the flexibility to use the line of business software that they need

4. Identify any users that may need additional rights to install approved software

5. Keep things as simple as possible, to remain secure, but ultimately enable the business to move forwards.

Introducing a least privilege approach really comes down to a logical decision – do you want the best of both worlds?

Figures from a consultation document published by the Scottish government have revealed that SMEs are far more likely to be awarded public contracts in Scotland than England.

The document revealed that approximately 78% of Scottish public sector contracts are awarded to SMEs. Contrastingly, only 13.7% of central government contracts and 49% of local government contracts are won by SMEs in England. Scottish government also claim that of the 78% of SMEs being awarded contracts, 60% are also Scottish.

Regardless of the impressive figures, Scotland will be looking to make it even easier for SMEs and new business to bid for public contracts.

Alex Neil, cabinet secretary for infrastructure and capital investment: “Public sector spending on goods and services across Scotland amounts to over £9 billion per year. Good public procurement is a vital contributor to growing the economy and done well it can be an effective lever in supporting delivery of the government’s priorities whether that is job creation, infrastructure development, strengthening our communities or supporting our transition to a low carbon economy.”

Scotland claim that between 2006 and 2008 that in only four other EU states - Luxembourg, Slovakia, Germany and Ireland - SMEs had greater access to public procurement.

Logica CEO Andy Green has left the IT service provider as Canadian CGI moves closer to finishing the acquisition.

Gary Bullard, CEO of Logica's UK operations, has also reportedly left the company with Tim Gregory, head of CGI's European division, moving to replace him.

CGI is expected to divide Logica’s infrastructure and combine it with existing CGI business departments.

BP has moved accounting and finance services to Accenture in order to standardise processes and employ data analytics.

Accenture will provide reports, revenue accounting services and order to cash services.

Brian Puffer, group controller at BP, said: “BP sees this partnership with Accenture as an important milestone in driving standardisation in our finance and accounting processes by consolidating our F&A service providers”.

Capita members of the Unite union are preparing to strike after the company announced plans to offshore work to India.

Capita has claimed that moving skilled jobs to India is necessary in order to keep the company competitive and enhance services provided.

The company issued a statement saying: “This consultation process is not yet complete and we are disappointed that 84 employees who are members of Unite – 2% of the entire IT Services workforce - have voted in favour of industrial action”.

Turkish Airlines are expecting to create cost savings valued at more than £10.2 million over five years, through a new global networking deal.

The deal will see Juniper Networks provide networking services to 200 Turkish Airlines business locations around the world.

Adnan Metin, head of IT at Turkish Airlines, commented on new services, saying that: “integrated Juniper-based network infrastructure has enabled us to simplify our operations radically and reduce costs while improving security, performance and scalability.”