The most recent articles from IT Week

Review: Lee Siegel's Against the Machine

David Neal — 2008-08-19T11:11:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Tuesday 19 August 2008 at 11:11:00

In Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob, Lee Siegel ponders the dark side of the internet

IT Week receives many books these days, most of which are full of praise for technological advances of one kind or another. This one is different, however, and urges internet users to consider the downside of our connected world.

The fact that the author, Lee Siegel, is a cultural commentator and art critic, rather than an authority on IT, speaks volumes about how the role of technology in society is changing. One of his aims is to make sense of our relationship with the internet. “Are we sacrificing our identity?” Siegel asks, questioning whether we use the internet, or the internet uses us.

Early in the book, the author notes some parallels between the growth in the internet and the boom in car ownership in 1960s America. “The internet has its destructive side just as the automobile does, and both technologies entered the world from behind a curtain of triumphalism hiding their dangers from critical view,” he writes. “As with the car, a rhetoric of freedom, democracy, choice, and access has covered up the greed and blind self-interest that lie behind what much of the internet has developed into today.”

Siegel ponders whether we can actually get by without the internet. Although he acknowledges that there are many ways in which it can make our lives easier, such as when house hunting, he asserts that few activities are completely reliant on the internet. “No one can deny the internet’s capacity to make life easier. But let’s be honest, I would have found an apartment,” he writes.

Siegel believes society must try to rein in the internet before it gets out of hand. Built to support commerce and capital, he argues, the internet is now an unruly beast that controls our lives, dominating our attention and time. In short, Siegel thinks the internet is becoming too pervasive, too quickly.

Many who have studied the internet and its impact in the past have a far more positive outlook, but these people do not impress Siegel. For example, he dismisses the findings of the Pew Internet Group by asserting that eight out of the 12 people who write its reports have “a financial or professional stake in the internet”.

Siegel also discusses Bill Gates’ admission that while technology has created problems, it is technology that we must turn to for a solution. To which someone with Siegel’s frame of mind would no doubt retort: “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Government proposes to slash compliance costs

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-08-07T16:07:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 7 August 2008 at 16:07:00

IT will be able to reduce its compliance costs

Central government is to make individual departments accountable for the business cost of introducing new legislation, under new proposals issued by the Department for Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). Those proposals also accentuate the pivotal role IT will play in ensuring that compliance is affordable.

BERR intends to compel government departments to make business-cost assessments of any new legislation. Departments will be allocated annual budgets to ensure those costs do not spiral out of control.

"If the UK is to remain a respected place to do business, we must not expect business simply to absorb the costs of a stream of new Government initiatives,” said John Hutton, secretary of state for business.

"This innovative approach will build on efforts already in place to cut the burden to business by 25 per cent by 2010."

Under the proposals, government departments will publish best-practices guides to ensure the task of automating compliance procedures is as effortless as possible.

Consutlation on the proposed budget system is now underway, and the first budgets could be set later this year.

New ECM standard is coming

Phil Muncaster — 2008-08-06T10:55:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Wednesday 6 August 2008 at 10:55:00

BSI and The Content Group launch new Steering Group

A new steering group has been launched with the aim of creating the first ever publically available specification (PAS) for enterprise content management applications, to create more clarity for IT buyers around the term.

The new Steering Group will be led by ECM consultancy The Content Group and the BSI British Standards to create a PAS by the end of the year, according to The Content Group. The PAS is a vital first step on the road towards an internationally agreed standard, accordint to Content Group founder, Ben Richmond.

Members of the steering group have been gathered from industry associations, analyst firms such as CMS Watch, system integrators like Logica, technology vendors and end user organisations including Credit Suisse.

"Unless organisations take a step back from the technology and adopt a best practice approach to defining and implementing an ECM strategy, the potential of this powerful solution set will never be realised," said Richmond in a statement. "This standard will provide a clear frame of reference for those engaging in ECM initiatives.”

Symantec snaps up nSuite for virtualisation

Phil Muncaster — 2008-08-05T15:38:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 15:38:00

New technologies will help improve user productivity, says Symantec

Security and systems management giant Symantec has beefed up its virtualisation offerings with new technologies it plans to acquire with the purchase of virtual workspace management firm nSuite.

The proposed acquisition, slated to be completed by the end of the month, will give Symantec presentation virtualisation technology, which enables staff to use applications running on remote servers as if they were running locally.

Symantec will also gain nSuite's expertise in connection broker technology, which allocates resources such as user profiles and applications to the endpoint, whether virtual or traditional.

NSuite's heritage has been in selling its products to hospitals. There, medical staff are able to take advantage of the technology which can virtualise their data and applications, port them to which ever desktop they happen to be working on at the time, and remove them from the desktop once they move on.

“The real promise of endpoint virtualisation is improving the end-user experience while helping to lower the cost of managing endpoint devices,” said Ken Berryman, vice president of endpoint virtualisation at Symantec. “Symantec’s strategy is to help enable a truly dynamic endpoint where applications and information are delivered to any computing environment in a seamless manner."

LogMeIn makes support integration easier

Dave Bailey — 2008-08-05T15:16:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 15:16:00

Help desk tools to be integrated with other on-demand apps

Secure remote access vendor LogMeIn today published the application programming interface (API) for its on-demand support tool, which it claimed will make it easier for customers to integrate the tool with third-party applications.

Firms will be able to better serve the needs of remote workers by integrating the LogMeIn Rescue tools with other critical business applications, such as customer relationship management systems, said Kevin Bardos, vice president for product management at LogMeIn.

"The API makes it easy to connect Rescue with other critical on-demand tools, " he said.

LogMeIn Rescue was first made available on the Force.com AppExchange from Salesforce.com in July. LogMeIn's Rescue API available now to current LogMeIn Rescue subscribers at no extra cost.

IT chiefs urged to take lead on carbon

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-08-04T12:43:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Monday 4 August 2008 at 12:43:00

Communications Managers Association to show how IT can cut carbon emissions

Trade body the Communications Management Association (CMA) has urged IT leaders to make technology the cornerstone of organisational efforts to cut carbon emissions.

The CMA has joined forces with the Carbon Trust to develop best practice guidelines on how businesses can use information communication technology, such as tele-conferencing and home working, to realise carbon savings.

A joint project, called Carbon Intent, will include a thorough review of all existing research on energy saving strategies businesses have been employing and highlight companies that deploy green products, systems and business processes efficiently.

“Through the Carbon Intent initiative we propose to draw together and share examples of current best practice from video-conferencing to logistics and transport planning to home working,” said Glenn Powell, CMA chief executive, in a statement. "The aim is to create industry-wide guidelines and benchmarks that any ICT professional anywhere can tap into for assistance.”

Icahn gripes about Yahoo board place

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-08-01T16:02:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 1 August 2008 at 16:02:00

Yahoo new shareholder Carl Icahn will not attend firm's annual meeting

The day before Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting, activist shareholder Carl Icahn announced in his blog he would not be attending and described his new appointment on the Yahoo board as an unhappy compromise.

Icahn agreed to join Yahoo's board 10 days ago, having previously attempted to replace it altogether with a team more compliant to a Microsoft acquisition.

If Icahn’s proxy fight had been successful, the annual meeting would have seen Icahn’s nominated board candidates stand in an election, a negotiation with Microsoft on the cards and the likely dismissal of Yahoo’s chief executive, Jerry Yang.

But Icahn blamed “today’s corporate governance system” for his failure to overthrow the board. “Where large mutual funds control so much of the stock, it is extremely difficult to oust an entire board, no matter how strongly a large number of shareholders feel about the board’s previous actions,” he said.

Icahn said he had joined the board as a last resort. “Realising I could not gain control, I saw no point in spending the final two weeks in a debilitating fight, where little would be accomplished except to build animosity between both caps”.

Icahn will now miss any disappointment aired by Yahoo shareholders on how the board handled the Microsoft purchase offer. His argument for not attending the meeting was because it would turn it into “a media event for no purpose”.

Oracle acquires Global Knowledge Software

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-31T17:42:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 17:42:00

Oracle aims to build up its offerings in software training

Oracle will acquire Global Knowledge Software for an undisclosed sum, to boost it software training offerings.

Global Knowledge Software (GKS) produces programmes that train users on different business software, including that from Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.

“Our customers are looking for a consistent, cost effective training solution across the enterprise to speed software adoption by end-users,” said Ed Abbo, Senior Vice President of Oracle Application Development.

GKS’ products will complement Oracle’s existing training software, Oracle Tutor, along with its learning management software, iLearning and eLearning. Oracle intends to form a global sales unit to extend all its software training offerings across the enterprise.

The transaction is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2008.

ECM needs "exploding" says Interwoven

Phil Muncaster — 2008-07-31T17:37:00.000Z

Phil Muncaster, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 17:37:00

Confusing term is misleading IT buyers,according to WCM vendor

Enterprise content management (ECM) is an inaccurate term causing buyer confusion and needs to be "blown apart into its constituent parts" according to web content management firm Interwoven.

Speaking exclusively to IT Week, Interwoven's vice president of Europe, James Murray, argued that the term ECM covers such a broad range of technologies that it lacks any real meaning. The industry should instead revert to talking about its individual components such as document management, search, and records management, he added.

"ECM is poorly understood and our [part of it] is poorly understood – it's time for ECM to be blown apart into its constituent parts because it's confusing for customers," Murray argued.

He added that customers are often misled by the term ECM when applied to technology products, thinking that it will take care of all their content management problems, when in fact an ECM solution is likely to only address a small part of their requirements.

Gartner dismisses $100 laptop claims

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-31T17:07:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 17:07:00

Gartner rubbishes OLPC claims that it will produce a $100 laptop within three years

Analyst group Gartner has poured scorn on claims by the One Laptop Per Child group, that it will be able to produce a laptop costing £50 ($100) within the next three years. But Gartner does acknowledge that prices for portable computers are set to tumble.

Prices will be driven down by the combination of demand and declining component costs, said Gartner analyst Annette Jump. But those costs are not falling fast enough to make a $100 laptop a viable proposition within three years, she noted.

Gartner's latest market figures show sales of laptops in Western Europe grew by 45 per cent year-on-year for the second quarter of 2008.

The cheapest laptop in the market, according to a cost breakdown from Gartner, is the OLPC Device. “The OLPC-XO device is slightly cheaper than the other products because of lower processor and motherboard cost, and battery and packaging cost,” noted Jump’s report. Closely following the OLPC-XO in cost is Intel’s Classmate PC and the Asus Eee PC.

Nevertheless, OLPC remains adamant that its target of developing a $100 laptop is on track. “OLPC is going to bring the cost down to a lot less than $100 much sooner than three years,” a company spokesman told IT Week.

SAP refuses to budge on hikes in support costs

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-31T14:55:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 14:55:00

SAP admits some customers will not benefit from rising support costs

SAP has admitted that its plans to force its customers on to new support contracts will result in many of them paying for services they do not need.

The software maker has angered many of its users by insisting on changes to its support contracts.

Earlier this month, SAP confirmed customers on its Standard Support contracts would be transitioned to Enterprise Support agreement, which provides a more comprehensive level of support.

The UK User Group chairman Alan Bowling argued the new offering was “a one size fits all strategy for support”, and that many users would not use the extensive support package they would be paying nearly 30 per cent more for.

But SAP has no intention to add more flexibility to the support offering, even if it means users paying for services they do not need.

Bill Wohl, SAP vice president of product technology group communications, acknowledged not all customers would benefit from the new offering. “Is it perfect for 100 per cent of our customers? No, but neither is our software. We will go ahead with the programme as planned.”

Wohl maintained that the majority of its user base would benefit from the changes.

“Our job is to be broad enough to help the majority of our customers,” he said. Most customers need a level of support that addresses expanding IT complexity and increased adoption of a service-oriented-architecture (SOA) strategy.

With Enterprise Support, which SAP calls “proactive risk reduction”, customers will be given guidance on how to improve business processes and how an SOA strategy can be successfully delivered.

Wohl added the remaining customers that did not need the next generation of support now would do in years to come. “Our job is to provide support offerings whether they [SAP customers] need it now or in the future,” he added.

But users remain unconvinced by these arguments. “The fact still remains that our members are unhappy about the mandatory nature of this change,” said SAP UK User Group chairman, Alan Bowling.

EC appoints tech institute board

Gareth Morgan — 2008-07-31T14:08:00.000Z

Gareth Morgan, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 14:08:00

Flagship body to promote technology innovation in business confirms board membership

The European Commission has confirmed the appointment of 18 board members to its flagship institute is charged with promoting business innovation through technology.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) new Board includes a number of academics specialising in technology and science, as well as business representatives, including Viik Linnar, a director at internet telephony pioneer, Skype.

"I am delighted with the nomination of the EIT's first Governing Board," said European Commission President José Manuel Barroso in a statement. "The EIT is soon to become a reality. Europe needs more than ever a strong commitment to innovation and technology."

The EIT board members are responsible for establishing so-called Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), which will be the primary mechanisms that will allow European businesses to tap into the latest technology advances.

The EIT board will hold its first meeting in Budapest on 15 September 2008.

Kewney: Positive feedback

Guy Kewney — 2008-07-31T12:27:00.000Z

Guy Kewney, IT Week, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 12:27:00

Comments on the web are two-a-penny, but a response from an IT Week reader is priceless

One problem never facing “Cut Me Own Throat” Dibber a fictional character from Terry Pratchett is the question of whether people buy his sausage-in-a-bun products because of the quality of the produce. As long as he doesn’t actually kill his customers, he’s happy to take their money. Which leaves the question of whether people read this column because of its incredible quality, or because it’s got the back-page slot.

Whatever the reason, this column has been the most rewarding of all the things I write. Not only have I enjoyed it, but enough of your fellow readers have, too, judging from the feedback I get.

Feedback from a web page is easy. You can tell from the sorts of things people say in the forum sections of major web news sites how much intellect is involved. I still cherish one comment of: “La la la la, I’m not listening!” after my carefully argued online article about the iPhone.

By contrast, someone sitting down with a copy of IT Week on their lap has to be stirred if not emotionally, at least physically. They have to put the paper down, go and find paper or keyboard, and stick the printout in an envelope. And they have to want to talk to the writer it’s not an exhibition, strutting in front of your fellow readers, hoping to score points.

Truly, one feedback item from a print reader is worth dozens of “click here to comment” remarks online.

A sense that out there is a keenly interested audience expecting something good always inspires me, and it seems to work.

One editor did remark that my column was “the most popular item” in the paper. Flattered? Well, of course, but writers are insecure little bunnies, and constantly need reassurance. Could it be “I read it because I start on the back page”?

IT Week readers have been remarkable, maybe even unique, in my experience; much more focused on their overall role in the corporate structure, much less obsessed with the basic technology facts, than some other groups. Let’s call it a “successful partnership” and see where it takes us in future.

There. Is that good enough feedback for you?

IT Week IT leader profile: Ibukun Adebayo

IT Week staff — 2008-07-30T17:18:00.000Z

IT Week staff, IT Week, Wednesday 30 July 2008 at 17:18:00

Ibukun Adebayo heads up the 20-strong IT team at social care organisation Turning Point

What does your job entail?

I am responsible for formulating Turning Point’s IT strategy, and ensuring alignment with our organisational strategic objectives. On a daily basis, this involves co-ordinating the delivery of IT to around 220 sites and ensuring all IT stakeholders are satisfied with our provision.

What was your first job?

Junior news reporter.

How did you get into the IT profession?

I learned how to build PCs and networks at a brief evening college course, and have never looked back.

If you weren’t in IT, what would you be doing?

Journalism or motivational speaking.

How often do you check your BlackBerry?

Too frequently. I sent an email to announce my baby’s birth half an hour post-delivery and quickly responded to a few emails that had come in since I left the office the previous evening.

What is the most ridiculous IT support request you’ve had?

When Windows came out in the early 1990s, a user was asked to point their mouse at the screen and they picked it up remote control style and pointed it and clicked. It didn’t work so they rang the support desk to ask why. The user was me, by the way.

Which person do you most admire in the IT industry?

Bill Gates was a hero to me for his Windows vision. In my mind, he’s now a legend for his retirement plans.

Who is or has been the most influential IT vendor?

I’d say Microsoft.

Which technology has had the biggest impact on your working life?

My PDA.

Which technology would you most like to have invented?

Retractable landing gears for aeroplanes.

IT ill prepared for forthcoming carbon rules

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-07-29T17:24:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Tuesday 29 July 2008 at 17:24:00

IT departments must lead compliance effort for carbon reporting rules

Experts have warned IT managers need to prepare for the introduction of a forthcoming carbon cap and trade scheme before it is too late.

The cap and trade scheme is part of the Carbon Reduction Commitment as detailed in the government's 2007 Energy White Paper. Under those proposals, the government plans to reduce UK CO2 emissions by 1.2m tonnes by 2020.

In order to achieve that, the government is targeting organisation which expend more than 5,000 KW of electricity a year – roughly 10 per cent of UK enterprises.

Those organisations are expected to have carbon reporting processes in place by 2010 – much of the responsibility for that will fall on IT.

And Richard Kellett, head of solutions and technology marketing at business intelligence firm SAS, said organisations need to start applying the technology needed for the scheme now in order to be properly prepared.

It is tempting to aim to meet the basic requirements of legislation, he explained, but this can mean business leaders become blind to opportunities to improve business processes. "This type of approach is extremely short sighted, and puts you in a constant game of catch up."

Business leaders may come unstuck unless IT is proactive in preparing for the introduction of carbon reporting, warned Jes Seymour at consultancy company IT Insight. “IT departments have a tendency to trip over when they do things in a rush,” he said.

The biggest risk was that IT would underestimate the scale of process changes that carbon reporting could introduce he said. “Although it may seem a simple requirement, the devil is in the detail. The scheme may mean changes to older systems and significant overhauls.”

Under the government proposals, organisations will be given a three-year period of grace in order to establish adequate carbon reporting processes. Businesses that fail to comply by April 2013 face being fined.

Last week the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) wrote to 10,000 organisations, all of which may be included in the scheme, to ask them to register.