Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
com
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
FILLIPEFRAZAO/ISTOCK
DOWNTIME
THE WEEK IN IT
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Cloud computing
Financial services
Cloud computing
Wireless networking
WIMBLEDON ANALYSES
SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTION
THINKSTOCK
THE WEEK IN IT
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Dominos Pizza cyber breach underlines UK spy reveals online snooping policy
value of personal data, say experts
A top UK counter-terrorism official has
8.7%
Global security
spending reached
$19,972bn in 2013
5.7%
5.6%
3.8%
18.7%
7.5%
Symantec
McAfee
IBM
Trend Micro
EMC
Others
Source: Gartner
ANALYSIS
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
Salesforce.com can
cut the amount of ERP
customisation from
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Salesforce.
com opens UK
datacentre to
support data
sovereignty
Salesforce.
com: a CIOs
friend or foe?
questions to ask doctors based on personality type. Koach was integrated with
Salesforce.com and an internal intranet, so
employees had access to all information at
their fingertips, according to Bluewolf.
JAIME DE LA FUENTE/FLICKR
HOME
ANALYSIS
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
FINANCIAL CONDUCT
AUTHORITY DEPLOYS
SALESFORCE.COM
Salesforce.com recently announced its
first UK datacentre, which is also its first
in Europe. One organisation assessing the
UK datacentre is the Financial Conduct
Authority (FCA).
Gareth Lewis, CIO of the FCA, said financial stability is incredibly important and
consumers need a degree of protection.
The FCA needed new systems to support
consumer credit regulation. We had six
months to set up a platform. We started
in January 2014 and went live on 1 April,
he said.
The implementation was not trivial. It
could not be achieved in-house, so we bet
the farm on Salesforce.com, said Lewis.
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 5
ANALYSIS
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Ukrainian
IT industry
calls on
government to
invest time
and money
Interview:
Carlos
Morgado,
CTO, Just Eat
Ukraine is emerging as
an IT outsourcing rival
to India, with workers
who understand
business needs as
well as offering
technical skills
THINKSTOCK
HOME
Humble beginnings
ANALYSIS
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
When we have a
problem we sit down
with Ciklum and it
NEARSHORING IT TO
UKRAINE: AN OVERVIEW
Ukraine offers highly skilled IT specialists at
low cost for companies looking to develop
projects in Europe. But problems of corruption and social unrest remain stumbling
blocks for some companies.
When UK organisations consider offshoring, India has tended to be the first port of
call, due to its technical expertise and the
cultural ties between the two countries.
But that could be changing, with nearshore
locations such as Ukraine vying for a share
of the market over the last five years.
Figures from the Ukrainian Hi-Tech
Initiative, the countrys outsourcing
software development alliance, reveal
Ukraines outsourcing industry was estimated to have grown 20% in 2010.
It looks set to face India head-on, with
software development the most popular
outsourcing service, followed by software
testing and application maintenance.
In Ukraine, there were 18,100 IT specialists working in the outsourcing industry in
2009, but that figure was estimated to have
risen by 2,400 in the next year.
However, growing technical expertise
and demand for developers has led to
increasing labour costs. According to the
European Business Association (EBA),
the monthly earnings of IT specialists in
Ukraine rose to $1,500 in 2011, compared
with just $500 in 2005.
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 7
CASE STUDY
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Birmingham
rolls out free
public Wi-Fi
London
Symphony
Orchestra fine
tunes Wi-Fi
THINKSTOCK
HOME
CASE STUDY
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
No cabled network connection was necessary, which meant there was minimal disruption to the citys infrastructure.
This also pleased the council, which had
asked for a speedy delivery for the project.
All three sites were installed and operational
in a matter of days and the project completed in January 2013.
INTERVIEW
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
CW500
interview
Bet365
improves
latency with
network
upgrade
Betting site
YouWin speeds
response times
with MongoDB
database
INTERVIEW
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
EDITORS COMMENT
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Todays IT professionals
are key to securing
the UKs digital future
Computer Weekly/ComputerWeekly.com
1st Floor, 3-4a Little Portland Street, London
W1W 7JB
GENERAL ENQUIRIES
020 7186 1400
EDITORIAL
Editor in chief: Bryan Glick
020 7186 1424
bglick@techtarget.com
Managing editor (technology): Cliff Saran
020 7186 1421
csaran@techtarget.com
Head of premium content: Bill Goodwin
020 7186 1418
wgoodwin@techtarget.com
Services editor: Karl Flinders
020 7186 1423
kflinders@techtarget.com
Security editor: Warwick Ashford
020 7186 1419
washford@techtarget.com
Networking editor: Alex Scroxton
020 7186 1413
ascroxton@techtarget.com
Special projects editor: Kayleigh Bateman
020 7186 1415
kbateman@techtarget.com
Datacentre editor: Archana Venkatraman
020 7186 1411
avenkatraman@techtarget.com
Storage editor: Antony Adshead
07779 038528
aadshead@techtarget.com
Business applications editor: Brian McKenna
020 7186 1414
bmckenna@techtarget.com
Business editor: Caroline Baldwin
020 7186 1425
cbaldwin@techtarget.com
Editorial content assistant: Clare McDonald
020 7186 1426
cmcdonald@techtarget.com
Production editor: Claire Cormack
020 7186 1417
ccormack@techtarget.com
Senior sub-editor: Jason Foster
020 7186 1420
jfoster@techtarget.com
Senior sub-editor: Craig Harris
020 7186 1416
charris@techtarget.com
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
Sales director: Brent Boswell
07584 311889
bboswell@techtarget.com
Group events manager: Tom Walker
0207 186 1430
twalker@techtarget.com
Bryan Glick
Editor in chief
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 12
OPINION
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Whitehall
could save
33bn with big
data analytics,
says Policy
Exchange
Report
wants
government
remake for
digital age
Technology Manifesto
Developing talent
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
Co-ordinating IT to align
with business processes
Organisations and their IT departments must learn to work differently if they
want to take full advantage of business process automation, says Cliff Saran
BUYERS GUIDE
DOWNTIME
Automating
workloads to
improve
business
efficiency
Automated
reference
checking
software cuts
turnaround
time
THINKSTOCK
BUYERS GUIDE
BUYERS GUIDE
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
But agile methodologies fall very much under ITs control. Business process automation
(BPA) represents a different approach to developing software, in which much of the upfront
work is undertaken by the business , rather than IT.
Neil Ward-Dutton, research director at analyst firm MDW, says people typically do BPA
because they realise their IT systems are not aligned to the way the business gets work done.
They may have siloed IT that does bits of business process, but no common way for people
to engage totally, so people send internal memos, email and spreadsheets, he says. Theres
loads of rekeying, latency, and work gets redone.
Turnaround time and delivery times are getting faster, but companies realise they are
very inefficient because there is no clean flow of work. Often there isnt a system in place
that maintains a memory, says Ward-Dutton. The customer goes on a journey and
you need to support them, so systems need to be
designed this way, with a thread tying the customer
journey together.
nce we
However, traditional enterprise IT that has been
developed over time is not capable of maintaining
understand the
such a memory of the customer. Ward-Dutton adds:
Instead, we have siloed systems, designed for very
business process
specific people, and they are very transactional. They
we get real
are big buckets for information.
What is missing from traditional enterprise sysbusiness value
tems, according to Ward-Dutton, is a way to coordinate work so it gets done in a consistent fashion.
David Byrne,
Knowledge share is the missing layer [in traditional
enterprise IT], he says.
Carphone Warehouse
BPA co-ordinates work and enables sharing of
knowledge. For instance, in retail or the service industries, where the least-well-paid people are facing the customer, BPA can be used to make
sure they have the support they need to get the job done, says Ward-Dutton.
Carphone Warehouse has been using Tibco since 2005 to support its business process
for signing up customers to new mobile phone contracts. David Byrne, CIO of Carphone
Warehouse, says: Once we understand the business process, we get real business value.
Using instrumentation, he says, Carphone Warehouse can see where customers turn away in
the sales cycle. It is very important for us to see the route they have taken, so we can understand performance of staff in-store and can see if the process is being followed and whether
the process can be improved.
The architecture Carphone Warehouse has developed is now being used to power its
ConnectedWorld subsidiary, says Byrne: We recognise many of the services within our business can be transferred to other businesses, but much of the know-how is difficult for other
businesses to acquire. In retail, for instance, selling devices with mobile connections has a
BUYERS GUIDE
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
steep learning curve, he says. ConnectedWorld provides software as a service (SaaS), which
offers system-to-system business process automation to enable retailers to buy network
connectivity for mobile devices.
Rather than attempt a big bang rollout, Carphone Warehouse used Tibco for back-end integration, allowing it to modernise enterprise applications as and when there was a business
need. We decided to extract business functionality when there was a need by the business
to carve out monolithic code [from the legacy applications] and make them available to other
applications, says Byrne.
Carphone Warehouse uses service-oriented architecture (SOA), a service registry and lifecycle governance
for SOA services. New applications are built using a
ou need
componentisation architecture, where developers reuse
input from
services published in the service registry.
From an IT perspective, Byrne says the architecture
management
has simplified licensing, improved code quality and has
allowed Carphone Warehouse to benefit from the R&D
which requires
that Tibco puts into its industry-proven platform. Also,
Byrne has been able to move offshore software developa different
ment to another supplier relatively easily. It has been
mindset
much easier to communicate what our applications do
so the incoming [outsourcer] organisation can come on
Teresa Jones, Gartner
board quicker, he says.
Byrne says the architecture enables Carphone
Warehouse to locate components of its IT systems in
different parts of the world, based on business requirements. We can run common services
that require a high level of security in our own datacentre, but other components can be run
in the cloud, he says.
Gartner analyst Teresa Jones says: Previously, business process automation tools were
deployed to automate manual work, such as opening a bank account. But now, organisations
are using such tools to differentiate. For instance, it may be possible to use a mobile device to
change the business process, allowing the business to operate more efficiently, says Jones.
Garter describes this as the business moment, and Jones adds: To do something cool
and different, you need a platform that is very quick and be able to reuse what you have in
a well-controlled manner. The challenge for IT departments is that BPA is not the same as
software development in the traditional sense, says Jones. You need to bring in input from
management, which requires a different mindset from business.
Crowd-sourced ideas
It is about getting crowd-sourced business process ideas, and this is not the way IT functionality is developed in many organisations. The most common way is to get the requirements, code in a traditional environment, test, then go live, says Jones. But in BPA, everyone uses the same tool. Business people need to interact with a visual metaphor to see the
business process, while developers need to take the layers of the suppliers platform and do
the development work.
The experts Computer Weekly spoke to agree that BPA requires a change in mindset.
Ward-Dutton says: A process automation tool is not general-purpose, but for domains like
workflow, it gives you a huge amount of stuff out of the box. So there is significantly less work
to do than when you use .Net or Java perhaps 30-40% less work.
But he warns that not all organisations will find it possible to use BPA. MWD has developed
a business process maturity tool to help organisations measure their readiness, he says.
It is difficult to automate everything, but as Byrne at Carphone Warehouse has shown, a
big bang approach is not necessary. Processes can be automated over time, and new services
can replace legacy code as and when the functionality needs updating. n
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 16
DATA RECOVERY
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOME
As users
search for Raid
alternatives,
erasure coding
returns
Erasure
codes and
multi-copy
mirroring
ith hard disk drive (HDD) capacities edging upwards 6TB HDDs are now
available Raid is becoming increasingly problematic as a method of data
protection against hardware failure. As a response, erasure coding has
emerged as a method of protecting against drivefailure. Raid just doesnt
cutit in the age of high-capacity HDDs. The larger a disks capacity, the greater the chance
ofbit error.
When a disk fails, the Raid rebuild process begins, at which time there is no protection
against a second (or third) mechanism failure. So, not only has the risk of failure during
normal operation grown with capacity, it is actually much higher during Raid rebuild.
Also, rebuild times were once measured in minutes or hours, but disk transfer rates have
not kept pace with the rate of disk capacity expansion, so large Raid rebuilds can now take
days or even longer. Consequently, many argue that alternatives to Raid are now needed, and
one alternative iserasure coding.
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 17
DATA RECOVERY
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Erasure coding is a method of data protection in which data is broken into fragments that
are expanded and encoded with a configurable number of redundant pieces of data and
stored across different locations, such as disks, storage nodes or geographical locations.
The goal of erasure coding is to allow corrupted data to be reconstructed using information
about the data that is stored elsewhere in the array or even in another location.
It works by creating a mathematical function to describe a set of numbers so they can
be checked for accuracy and recovered if one is lost. Otherwise known as polynomial
interpolation or oversampling, this is the key concept behind erasure coding methods that are
implemented most often using Reed-Solomon codes.
Developed in 1960, Reed-Solomon is found most widely on CDs and DVDs, where error
correction allows a player to calculate the correct information even though part of the discs
surface may be obscured. It is also used by space agencies to pick up signals from far-flung
spacecraft, such as the Voyager probes.
Erasure coding
25%
THINKSTOCK
HOME
DATA RECOVERY
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
However, the drawback of erasure coding is that it can be more CPU-intensive, and that can
translate into increased latency.
Any time youre adding processing which is what youre doing, because youve got
to process a lot of different chunks versus just read it all as one sequential data chunk or
datagram youre going to add latency, says Staimer.
And, when you have latency, that affects response time, and you can get high latency if you
distribute this geographically or over a lot of different systems.
The more chunks that have been distributed, the more resilience the technique provides,
but the greater the latency. So the decision about how the trade-off will be made depends on
the value of the data.
The high CPU utilisation and latency of erasure coding make it well suited to archiving
applications due to the long-term nature of the storage where, over time, a number of
storage elements can be expected to fail. It is
also suited to those with large datasets and a
correspondingly large number of storage elements.
rasure coding
You could start thinking about erasure coding
in thehundreds of terabytes, but once you get
provides better
to a petabyte, you should definitely be thinking
about it,says Staimer. And, once you get into the
resilience and
exascalerange, you have to have something with
erasure coding.
better durability
Erasure coding is also found in the context of object
than aid
storage, with very large-volume cloud operators the
most likely users now. This means erasure coding is
Tony Lock,
less suited to primary data and, like Raid, it cannot
protect against threats to data integrity that are not
Freeform Dynamics
a result of hardware failure. For applications where
latency is not an issue, such as archiving, erasure
coding works by ensuring that the life of the storage
medium, which on its own can never offer a 100% guarantee, is extended.
Use of erasure coding by organisations is limited at the moment, says Tony Lock, an analyst
with Freeform Dynamics, who describes it as very niche.
But this is set to change, according to Staimer. Long term, I see it getting better, he says.
DOWNTIME
I see the latency being managed in silicon or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). I see
the latency algorithms getting faster, so youre not going to have as much latency, and it can
replace, for active data, Raid 5 and Raid 6.
But, for passive data, its going to replace Raid, period. You dont need Raid if youre using
erasure coding because it provides better resilience and
better durability than Raid.
Erasure coding offers cloud data protection
Suppliers that are already offering erasure coding include
Erasure coding needs additional storage
NECs
Hydrastor, a scale-out global data deduplication
DDN WOS takes erasure coding global
system for long-term storage, and Cleversafe, which uses
erasure coding for its large-scale dispersed storage systems.
Erasure coding can save capacity compared with mirroring, offers higher and configurable
levels of protection against hardware failure, is suited to very large-scale and archival
storage but, for the moment, less so for production data.
Lack of education among storage managers and buyers compared with well-understood
Raid techniques are probably the biggest barriers for erasure coding, although, as capacities
grow, this could change. n
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 19
DESKTOP VIRTUALISATION
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOME
Computer
Weekly Buyers
Guide to
tablets
Managing
the mobile
enterprise
t seems as if everyone is talking about enterprise mobility and how important tablets
and smartphones are. For years I just rolled my eyes at this notion. Im a desktop guy, I
thought. Those phones and tablets are not my concern. I wasnt trying to say that tablets are just toys and not real work devices; I just felt they were someone elses problem.
Phones are like BlackBerrys, and BlackBerrys are handled by the email team. So why should
I care? I just do my thing, delivering, maintaining, patching and keeping my users desktops in
good shape, and all should be well.
Unfortunately, I recently realised that, even though Im a desktop guy, my days of ignoring
phones and tablets are over. I realised this for two reasons.
First was the iPhone. When they first entered the company, I ignored them like everyone
else. I knew we could use Exchange ActiveSync for email and more, but what did they have to
do with me? I had a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment, so anything else the
users wanted to do outside of email could be done in our VDI environment. That applies to
iPads too, since Citrix and VMware marketed their desktop virtualisation solutions as solving
the iPad challenge. From my standpoint as an IT professional, that solved the problem.
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 20
DESKTOP VIRTUALISATION
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
BETFAIR RAISES ITS
GAME WITH CLOUD
PUNT FOR FIFA 2014
EDITORS
COMMENT
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Unfortunately, from the users standpoint, that didnt suffice. The problem is that accessing
a Windows desktop environment from a phone or tablet is a great party trick, but its not
particularly easy to use. Sure, Citrix and VMware did a great job with their remote access
protocols and iOS and Android clients, but the fundamental problem is that the Windows
desktop is meant to be used with a big screen, a keyboard and a mouse.
Which Office?
After using a virtual desktop on an iPhone for a few days, a typical user would think Hey,
I have this great email client on the phone, but for my Office apps I have to use this kludgy
VDI interface. Why dont I just download Office for iPhone?
So the user goes to the App Store and searches for Office. Now we IT professionals know
that, until recently, there was no Office for iPhone, but the users dont know that. When they
search for Office they get a slew of results Quick Office, Smart Office, Polaris Office and
dozens of other apps. They download whichever looks the most like regular Office, unaware
that what theyre downloading is probably not the office Microsoft Office.
So, great! Now they have Office on their iPhone. Of course Office is pretty worthless
without their documents and files, so they click the button in their new app to connect to a
file source. When they do that, what options do they see? DropBox, Google Drive, Box, etc.
At this point the user is probably thinking OK, so which one of these is my T: drive? Then
they shrug their shoulders and think: Well, whatever Ive been hearing a lot about this
DropBox thing on the news so Ill just go ahead and download that. And hey presto, they can
install the DropBox agent on their Windows desktop, so they instantly have all their Office
documents and files available to them on their phone or tablet. Problem solved, right?
Now lets take a step back and look at what happened from the IT point of view. I thought I
was doing everything right. I used desktop virtualisation to deliver the corporate Windows
environment to my users regardless of whatever device they used. The result? Not only did
the user not use my system, the inconvenience of my system drove them to find ways around
it and now all their files are in the cloud.
The traditional IT response is to defend and block. I could block DropBox from the corporate network, but then the users would use Box. When I block Box, theyll use Google
Drive. When I block everything, theyll email the files to themselves. When I add data loss
prevention software to the email servers, theyll connect via 4G. Its a constant game of
Whack-A-Mole Ill never win. So whats the right approach?
First, its pretty clear that we cant ignore mobile devices. Sure, users can easily hook them
into our email systems, but we also need to ensure we provide access to the apps they want,
in the way they want to use them.
Fortunately thats easy enough to do. The same companies whose desktop virtualisation
products we use Citrix, VMware, Dell and so on also sell software to manage our users
mobile devices. And if you dont like their offerings, there are dozens of other mobile management software options, from companies such as Symantec, Good, MobileIron, Oracle,
IBM and others. All of these products collectively called enterprise mobility management
or EMM suites provide simple ways to apply security policies to mobile devices, deliver
mobile apps in encrypted, secure containers and control how corporate and personal apps
interact with each other.
At the end of the day we have to realise that its no longer about mobile computing versus
desktop computing. Rather, its about mobile computing and desktop computing. We
collectively refer to this as end-user computing and its why even hardened desktop folk like
me have to consider mobile devices as were building our desktop strategies.
Fortunately the software to do it exists and is easy to use, we just have to get started. n
Brian Madden is editor of BrianMadden.com and an internationally recognised expert on desktop virtualisation
computerweekly.com 24-30 June 2014 21
DOWNTIME
HOME
NEWS
SALESFORCE.COM:
RE-ENGINEERING
BUSINESS IT
JUST EAT BUILDS
IT SKILLS POOL IN
UKRAINE OFFICE
HOW YORK CITY
COUNCIL INSTALLED
A WI-FI NETWORK
OPINION
BUYERS GUIDE TO
BUSINESS PROCESS
AUTOMATION
ERASURE CODING
MORE EFFECTIVE
THAN RAID
WHY VDI CHASES
MOBILE USERS OFF
THE NETWORK
DOWNTIME
Read
more on the
Downtime blog
WIKIPEDIA
EDITORS
COMMENT
THINKSTOCK