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CW Europe January 2013 1
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
CWThe DIGITAL mAGAzIne for europeAn IT LeADers from CompuTer WeekLy JAnuAry 2013
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IT spending to rise in 2013
CW Europe January 2013 2
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
EuropEan nEws
Dublin Airport Authority uses virtualisation to overhaul IT
Dublin Airport Authority has launched an it overhaul project with hp converged infrastructure and a VMware vsphere platform, delivering cost savings, standard-ised it, highly available infrastructure and a centrally managed environment.
European Parliament approves single EU patent system
the European parliament has voted in a patent statute to cover the European Union (EU). it is on the road to becom-ing law now 25 states have agreed to the regulation, but italy and spain have cho-sen to stay out due to language concerns.
UK users download highest volume of mobile data
the latest international communications Report from ofcom showed that unlim-ited data tariffs and large allowances are encouraging Uk users to download more data on their mobiles than users in many other countries.
EU businesses embrace remote working
A Eurostat report has revealed that 48% of companies across the European Union provide employees with a portable device for working on the move.
UK CIOs see EU regulation as key, study shows
A third of Uk cios are more concerned with EU regulation, such as the Data protection Directive, than their own local laws, a study has revealed.
Computer Weekly invites entries for inaugural european user aWards in 2013Computer Weekly has launched its first annual Computer Weekly european user Awards, which honours IT professionals in europe who have excelled in their approach to networking, storage, security, business software and datacentres.
running online throughout 2013, a different awards series will take place every two months. entries are open to IT departments and resellers or suppliers that wish to enter on behalf of a customer.
Click here if you wish to enter your team or on behalf of a client.
EC competition authorities delay Google decision
Google could face a multi-billion euro fine as Ec competition authorities debate whether it has tackled issues about abus-ing its dominant market position.
VMworld Europe case study: DER Deutsches Reisebüro
A German travel agent gained control of its it and increased its profits after imple-menting a desktop virtualisation project.
VMworld Europe case study: Bull SAS
the it team at Bull sAs collaborated with suppliers to build a private cloud platform capable of keeping sensitive data secure. n
additional resourCes› uktecH50 2012 coverage
› tHe future of computing at ibm ZuricH researcH labs
› aws re: invent 2012 coverage
› a tour of london’s victorian sewers: geo networks cabling system
› computer weekly supplier directory
› world’s oldest digital computer is back in action
› infrastructure as a service on windows aZure
CW Europe January 2013 3
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
Editor’s commEnt
2013 predictions for tech in Europe
A few years ago, most conversations seemed to be around how to save the business money and make it more efficient, whereas
in 2013 businesses look like they will be asking a different question: how do we generate more value for the business?
this is likely to be achieved through a number of routes. For example, bringing offshore contracts back inland, bring your own device (BYoD), and utilising big data and business analytics.
however, these benefits will also bring downfalls if not monitored correctly. For instance, analysts predict that, by 2014, employee-owned devices will be compromised by malware at more than double the rate of corporate-owned devices.
As businesses start to warm up to the idea of using their ever-growing storage as valuable data, instead of finding ways to minimise it, it will become too compelling for companies not to utilise the information they have in their own databases through the use of business analytics.
however, Gartner predicts that by 2015 demand for big data specialists will hit one million in the Global 1000, but only a third of these will be filled due to a lack of skilled staff in this area.
in this issue of CW Europe you will find several predictions for the continent in 2013, including statistics on how it budgets are expected to grow by 2% and how businesses will seek the best value from their investments as they try to further reduce costs and improve sustainability in their 2013 datacentres.
Read how a cash injection of £270m from Brussels boosted the county of cornwall to enable the Uk seaside attraction to become one of the most connected counties.
2013 looks like it is set to be a challenging time for many European businesses. here’s to an interesting new year! n
Kayleigh Bateman Editor of CW Europe Special projects editor for Computer Weekly
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CW Europe January 2013 4
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
it spEnding prEdictions 2013
Cios across Europe are predicting their it budgets will increase by an average of 2% in 2013, despite the downturn.
But investment on capital projects will slow, as operational spending assumes a higher proportion of the it budget, research by business advisory firm cEB reveals.
the findings are a reflection that it departments have caught up with it projects temporarily put on hold at the start of the recession, says Andrew horne, managing director of cEB, formerly the corporate Executive Board.
Productivitycios will use 2013 to invest in high-return projects to improve employee productivity, collaboration and mobility, the survey of 180 companies with combined it budgets of $52bn shows.
“cios recognise that the nature of work is changing and in this new environment there is a huge opportunity for it to drive employee productivity,” says horne.
it departments are moving away from tra-ditional process automation projects towards more strategic business intelligence, collabo-ration and customer-facing technologies.
the top 20% of organisations, measured by it spending, plan to devote 66% of their it budgets to information management and collaboration projects, the research reveals.
End-to-end servicesAt the same time, more it departments are shifting their focus to provide end-to-end ser-vices to the business, rather than point it solu-tions. Among those companies that already offer end-to-end it services, some 75% plan to devote as much as 30% of their operational it budget on the end-to-end model.
the trend is leading to the development of new it roles as it organisations appoint service managers and user experience designers to liaise with internal customers in the organisation.
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European IT budgets will grow by 2% this year, according to a study of 180 companies with an IT spending power of $52bn. Bill Goodwin reports
IT budgets to rise despite downturn
“these investments suggest that the days of it project queues filled with process automation are over. the best companies are laser-focused on equipping employees with the tools they need to more effectively contribute to the bottom line,” says horne.
Cloud computingthe survey reveals that 54% of it organi-sations plan to increase their spending on public cloud services in 2013 in a drive to make the it department more flexible and efficient.
The Top 20% of firms plan To devoTe 66% of Their iT budgeTs To informaTion managemenT and collaboraTion
CW Europe January 2013 5
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
the true figure is likely to be higher, as it does not include spending by market-ing departments on social media projects without the it department’s involvement.
Maintenance spending still highDespite efforts by cios to free up cash for innovation, mandatory spending and maintenance work still accounts for most of the it budget. on average, more than two-thirds of it spending is allocated to maintenance and mandatory spending.
cios will need to work hard to prioritise the demands of their business this year, given the relatively modest rise in spending, says cEB’s horne. n
spending on cloud computing will rise from 5% to 7% of the it budget in 2013.
software as a service (saas) will account for the greatest spending, followed by infrastructure as a service (iaas). platform as a service (paas) is a small but increasing part of companies’ cloud portfolios.
Mobilesome 75% of it organisations plan to invest in developing mobile applications next year, reflecting the growing inter-est in companies giving their employees access to work-based systems on the move.
spending on mobile application develop-ment will grow by 50% to nearly 2% of total it expenditure.
it spEnding prEdictions 2013
european it outsourCing prediCtions for 2013
on the scale of things, europe’s economic problems rank pretty high. The credit crunch and euro crisis have left businesses in the uk and across continental europe with a lot of challenges.
But what does this mean for the IT outsourcing sector in the continent?
lee ayling, head of kpmg’s technology shared services and outsourcing advisory, says: “southern europe will outsource more. This will see the growth of local delivery centres to sup-port european languages and locales such as egypt and Latin American.
multi-sourcing remains the norm, with most IT deals having service integration layers now.some strategic management functions are being brought back in-house in second-generation
outsourcing deals – often the driver is to manage costs and governance.
Don’t expect double-digit cost savings on outsourcing deals any more – focus on access to better capabilities.”
mark lewis, head of outsourcing at law firm berwin leighton paisner, says: “We’ll see more big companies finally adopting public cloud at enterprise level, and we’ll see some of the banks and other financial institutions using public cloud for parts of their businesses.
The eu will publish standards and regulations for public cloud that will cause havoc with the us tech sec-tor. All cloud providers operating in europe will have to radically overhaul their contracts, especially in the areas of data protection, sovereignty, mobility and portability.
While public cloud will become more important, IT outsourcing will become even harder for complacent or unimaginative suppliers. We’ll see even more industri-alised, shorter-term, multi-sourced IT outsourcing deals. only those suppliers which can offer really smart solutions will flourish. for the rest, margins will sink even lower.”
Bill Goodwin is Computer Weekly’s management editor
“only Those suppliers which can offer really smarT soluTions will flourish. for The resT, margins will sink even lower”mark lewis,
berwin leighTon paisner
CW Europe January 2013 6
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
casE study
Cornwall connected to do business
Cornwall has long been known as a sleepy, seaside county, perfect for rural holidays and cream teas, but rarely has
it been viewed as a hub for business. As the strength of the British economy has
floundered, counties such as cornwall have faced tough times keeping afloat and boost-ing local businesses.
Brussels awarded cornwall £270m in 2006 from the EU’s convergence scheme to bring the area out of the monetary doldrums. Following a consultation, £53.5m of the European Regional Development Fund’s cash was allocated towards making cornwall one of the most connected counties in the world.
the superfast cornwall project was born. With additional funding from telecoms giant Bt and cornwall council, the over-all fund reached £132m, and the cornwall Development company (cDc) was put in charge of planning the roll-out.
cDc set itself the challenge of ensuring at least 80% of the county could access super-fast broadband by March 2014, with harder-to-reach residents and businesses getting at least 2Mbps by the same deadline. computer Weekly visited a number of areas in cornwall to see how superfast internet connectivity has changed the local community.
Trispenthe village of trispen is home to roughly 1,000 people. it is a former “not-spot” in cornwall, but is now benefiting from high-speed connectivity.
For three or four years, residents asked “where is the broadband and when is it com-ing?”, says councillor Rob trethewey, chair-man of the local parish council. “now we get between 30Mbps and 40Mbps on average, and it brings people the chance to work at home or for children to go online and get help with their homework.”
initial analysis of the area found it would be too expensive to convert the copper wiring to fibre, but with fibre-to-the-cabinet (Fttc)
technology, Bt was able to put a new cabinet next to the existing one and join them up, enabling the faster fibre connection to get to the edge of the village and the traditional wir-ing to carry it to the houses.
Resident Grant cullingford, who is the cto of orbiss – the first company to be connected to superfast broadband in the county – has benefited from the superfast connectivity. “i was going from 2Mbps in truro [at work] to 0.25Mbps when i got home,” he says. “now, i get download speeds of around 65Mbps and uploads of as much as 16Mbps.”
Pool Innovation Centrethe pool innovation centre is a European Union-funded hub in cornwall housing 60 small and medium-sized enterprises (sMEs) as well as the cDc’s main base. superfast cornwall is run from a small and unassuming office on the first floor.
“We wanted to be close to the people we help,” says nigel Ashcroft, director of the cDc. “it might be a small office for such a big project [the team consists of just 10 people] but we deal with this through a lot of hot-desking and remote working, all enabled by the technology we are rolling out.”
Cornwall has become one of the most connected counties since it received funding from the EU’s Convergence scheme. Jennifer Scott reports
falmouth fibre poles
CW Europe January 2013 7
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
the cDc and Bt have set up a showcase room to educate prospective partners and users, as well as encourage knowledge-based firms to the area. Locals can learn about all the technologies, from Fttc and Fttp (fibre-to-the-premises) to satellite broadband, see the equipment Bt uses to roll out the connec-tions and watch educational videos explaining where and when the project will take place.
“We need to be out in the community talking to businesses, councils and being the face of the programme,” says Ashcroft. “the whole programme goes out under the superfast cornwall brand, and that pervasive campaign is important.”
Arcol is a semiconductor manufacturer based in threemilestone – named because of its distance from truro. it sits on an industrial estate next to a small number of businesses, which until six months ago were struggling to keep a steady 1.5Mbps connection through-out the day.
“We sell in over 40 countries, so the ability to communicate is imperative to us,” says Alun Morgan, technical director for Arcol. “Before, we couldn’t even listen to a radio stream from the internet and staff were hav-ing to wait until 6pm when they got home to use their email.”
now, not only has Arcol got Fttp providing connections of up to 330Mbps into its office and factory, it has become the base for a Bt trial testing out 10Gbps lines to future-proof Bt’s network.
“this technological proof-of-concept trial is not just about great broadband speeds now, but about future-proofing our network and staying ahead,” says Ranulf scarbrough, director of the superfast cornwall programme for Bt. “We have proved we can do it – we can get 10Gbps, which is 10,000 times faster than what Arcol was getting just six months ago – and although we may be limited by electronics, it is not the fibre that will hold these networks up.”
Tremough Campusthe tremough campus, located on the outskirts of Falmouth in a small town called penryn, hosts two universities – the University of Exeter and University college Falmouth. thanks to EU funding, the site is rammed with state-of-the-art buildings
housing modern technology to bring excit-ing opportunities to both students and busi-nesses in the area.
the campus hosts the Academy of innovation and Research, a sister site to the pool innovation centre, which houses 60 busi-nesses. the main displays in the centre focus on the idea of how connectivity and technology could influence the arts and crafts movement, enabling new techniques to create unique pieces away from traditional processes.
“superfast cornwall is not just about rolling out pipes and cables; it is about the way it changes people’s lives,” says Anne carlisle, rector of University college Falmouth. “cornwall was once considered the edge of Britain, but thanks to this technology, i like to call it the leading edge, with all the innova-tions we are now coming out with.”
the music department has a £45,000 Yamaha Disclavia grand piano, linked through superfast broadband to Disclavias elsewhere in the world, allowing it to replicate a remote performance. Another project is looking at the future of video-conferencing and telepresence for performance, which involves two studios in which each wall is turned into a screen with cameras on every side recording what is going on in the room.
the university is already in talks with local vil-lages to bring the technology into church halls and allow residents to watch performances surrounded by this immersive technology.
FalmouthFalmouth is running overhead Fttp and lightweight fibre cable trials. By using exist-ing poles in the area the trial shows how superfast connectivity could be delivered without having to dig up any roads.
“Falmouth was the first place in the Uk to get this over-the-pole technology,” says scarbrough. “it now covers hundreds of homes, is lightweight for those hard-to-reach places and it is designed to withstand frost, rain and anything else you can throw at it.”
Without the need for digging, there was little disruption to the area and future connections can be made on a per order basis in a matter of days, rather than weeks or months. n
casE study
Jennifer Scott is networking editor for Computer Weekly
CW Europe January 2013 8
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
datacEntrE EfficiEncy
Enterprises want the best value from their investments and will try to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of their datacentres in 2013, according to a study from analyst ovum.
the sustainable datacentre market will see accelerated growth in 2013 as it becomes more focused on cost savings, and provides more efficient internal it delivery methods such as virtualisation, software-defined networks (sDns) and the use of con-verged infrastructure solutions, according to the research.
“Due to the rise of the datacentre infrastructure management (DciM) market – now referred to as it financial management, closely linked to the cost and availability of energy – the role of chief sustainability officer (cso) will become more commonplace in organisations,” says Roy illsley, principal analyst at ovum and author of the report.
Although DciM represents a small market today, it will become more widely used in 2013, as its initial drives will be based on costs linked to energy and change, the analyst predicts.
“As organisations look more into saving costs, energy represents a huge percentage of the cost base,” he says.
Development and operations (Devops) will also become part of a cio’s sustainable datacentre strategy in 2013.
Organisations to focus on datacentre efficiency in 2013As firms seek the best value from investments they will aim to reduce costs and improve sustainability in the datacentre this year. Archana Venkatraman reports
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CW Europe January 2013 9
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
datacEntrE EfficiEncy
Will a fully virtualised datacentre become a reality in 2013?While sustainable it, DciM and Devops will be the key focus for enterprises in 2013, other trends predicted by ovum for the year ahead include the possibility of complete virtualisa-tion of all layers in the datacentre, from the database to storage.
total virtualisation will also drive the need for greater automation technologies and the associated orchestration layer.
Bring your own device (BYoD) will become more in evidence between 2013 and 2014, and the mobile policies for corporate use and the growth of smartphones will be combined to provide a path for increased adoption by employees.
cios will look for technologies to deliver the same or more services at a reduced cost, the ovum study shows.
Effect of cloud computing on datacentresthe analyst also says the hype surrounding cloud computing will not bring an end to the internal datacentre this year.
For many organisations, the question of workload classification still remains a difficult issue. the default position will remain to keep workloads on-premise in the organisa-tion’s own datacentre, says illsley: “Even if the workloads are fully understood in terms of risk, cost and value, the ability to move them is the Achilles heel of current technologies.”
this scenario is highly unlikely to change unless workloads between cloud technologies achieve true interoperability in 2013 or security and privacy concerns evaporate, he adds. so far, lack of cloud portability and interoperability has hindered cloud adoption. n
cloud compuTing will noT bring an end To The inTernal daTacenTre This year
Archana Venkatraman is datacentre editor for Computer Weekly
dataCentre group Collaborates With european Commission over it energy effiCienCy measuresThe european Commission (eC) and datacentre industry consortium The Green Grid are col-laborating on policies to improve efficiency in datacentres. non-profit industry lobby group The Green Grid includes datacentre users, policy makers, technology providers, facility architects and utility companies. speaking at The Green Grid forum 2012, experts said a clear and uniform action plan must be implemented if IT is serious about limiting its greenhouse gas emissions.
“Datacentres consume 2% of total global electricity consumption and this is set to double in the next few years, but currently there is no uniform strategy, metric or methodology to curb carbon footprint,” said Colette maloney, head of sustainability unit at the eC.
“We see a lot of enterprises claiming they have improved their datacentre’s energy efficiency, but everyone uses a different methodology and a different baseline to calculate energy effi-ciency,” she said. “There are a lot of energy-efficiency boosting initiatives undertaken at an individual or organisational level, but as policy-makers, the european Commission is not able to have a view on how all that adds up. The eC is calling for standardisation in IT energy efficiency metrics. We want to see more refinement in metrics.”
one of the most commonly accepted datacentre energy metrics is power usage effectiveness (pue), but experts at The Green Grid admitted pue has been abused and misused. many busi-nesses calculate pue based on just regular cooling techniques and come up with an impressive pue result. But they fail to take into account cooling generated by energy-guzzling ups devices, said Andre rouyer, european chair of The Green Grid.
CW Europe January 2013 10
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
data analytics
Corporate users of it were increas-ingly trying out big data technolo-gies, such as hadoop, throughout 2012. Apache hadoop is the open
source instance of the parallel program-ming framework MapReduce, developed at Google, which simplifies data processing across huge data sets distributed across commodity hardware. it is one technology associated with big data, which includes social media data, machine-generated data and data types that do not fit neatly into the rows and columns of relational data-base technologies.
At the beginning of last year, teradata’s chief technology officer stephen Brobst – a leading thinker from the data warehousing field – predicted that big data would “cross the chasm” in 2012.
At the beginning of 2013, it is still in the post-innovators and early adopter phase, but moving from interactive digital companies such as Google, Facebook, twitter and Linkedin, through financial services, and into telecoms. it is also moving from the Us west coast to the east, and thence to the Uk.
Innovative use of big dataAsked to comment on how they see those pilot projects developing, or failing to develop, and where they see big data in relation to “crossing the chasm”, a number of experts in the field had similar, but differing responses.
MapR, a customised hadoop distribution company, launched its European operation in December 2012, with its headquarters in London. Jack norris, vice-president of market-ing at the company, says customer and partner demand drove the timing of its European launch. in MapR’s experience, Uk organisations are going straight to production, whereas more experimentation has been evident among Us prospects and customers.
norris notes a range of emerging applications where hadoop is being used creatively. “there are the web 2.0 properties in digital. i liked last summer’s story that Rubicon has now passed Google in the reach of its advertising network, based on the comscore measurement. Rubicon happens to be a MapR customer, and so is comscore, and Google is a partner. the other end of the spectrum is a major Us credit card issuer that rolled out a new service based on hadoop in one quarter. We also have a Uk financial services company doing something similar,” says norris.
“We’ve also seen hadoop used to understand sensor information on a global basis to schedule preventative maintenance. And it is being used in government intelligence, and at an internet security company,” he says.
Adoption of big data to growBig data and analytics companies predict increased adoption in Europe, with technologies such as MapR, Cloudera, ParAccel and Pentaho sketching out the likely pattern of growth in 2013. Brian McKenna reports
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Big Data and Hadoop
CW Europe January 2013 11
Home
european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
data analytics
cloudera, a silicon Valley hadoop distributor which wraps its services around the open source version, is also stepping up its European operation. With respect to the phasing of big data analytics, chief operating officer kirk Dunn says that “with a lot of technology the early phase is about evangelism”. But with hadoop for big data analytics, companies are “already feeling pain” in terms of data size and speed. he says the traditional adop-tion curve is less applicable, with adoption proving faster and more in parallel across sec-tors such as digital, financial services, telecoms and government.
“once you have this technology, you can see other possibilities, and the open source nature of hadoop is a wrinkle here. that means adoption is organic, bottom up as well as top down, from cio level,” says Dunn.
his advice for those beyond pilot-stage experimentation is plain. “Don’t go trying to solve any new business problems. Look at your top two or three business imperatives and apply customer-generated big data capability to those. trying to find some esoteric result from an esoteric technology is not to be recommended. Don’t do that.
“the social networking companies have taught us that there is a level of intimacy we can get with who we are connected to. By the same token, enterprises can connect their products and services with customers in a more intimate way, which is like the social networking entities.
Guy chiarello, cio at JpMorgan chase, said the bank wants to understand custom-ers so it gets more share of their wallets in a way which benefits those customers. “it’s the degree of customer insight that big data analytics makes possible that enables that. We are now able to do things that we were not previously able to do because of storage limitations and lack of compute power,” he says.
parAccel, an advanced analytics database company based in santa cruz, is also increasing its activity in the Uk. Vice-president of marketing Rich Ghiossi says big data is only part of the picture, which affiliates more with what Gartner calls the logical data warehouse, spanning data stores large and small, non-relational and relational, from the locus of an analytical hub. other analysts and analyst houses have their own terms for the concept, such as the hybrid data ecosystem.
in relation to big data analytics adoption, Ghiossi says the Us seems to be ahead of London, but only by a few months. there is a sticking point, however. “to adopt hadoop today, you need a slew of expensive programmers. the government and the new dotcom, digital companies have those – other sectors, less so,” he says.
Like norris, Ghiossi sees sensor data as an emerging area for user organisations, as well as social networking data. “companies using control systems are leveraging log data in new ways. small variations in the sensor data from air-conditioning or electrical sys-tems can indicate where preventative maintenance is needed. And we are also seeing, in california, where smart metering in energy can generate data that can change consumer behaviour in ways that could be phenomenal,” he says.
pentaho cEo Quentin Gallivan says the big data phenomenon is fuelling growth for the open source data integration and business intelligence supplier. it helps custom-ers quickly ingest big data into their hadoop, nosQL or analytical platform, such as
teradata’s AsterData, and enables them to visualise and analyse that data.
customers tend to come to pentaho once they have deployed hadoop, he says. “the Us is ahead, but we are seeing lots of use cases in the Uk. And the industry analysts we’ve talked to in the Uk are bullish. My sense is that if you are not an interactive company, in digital or government, you are more likely to be trialling [big data] technology, in an experimental phase,” he says. n
Brian McKenna is business applications editor for Computer Weekly
A Computer Weekly/searchDatamanagementuk survey of 184 uk and continental european IT and business professionals critically engaged with data matters revealed that 27% planned to increase investment in big data technologies in 2013, and 23% of respondents already had big data programmes in development.
CW Europe January 2013 12
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study predicts growtH in tecH
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adoption of big data and data
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ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
cybEr sEcurity
The European commission (Ec) is considering making it mandatory for compa-nies to report cyber attacks to harness the benefits of open dialogue, says vice-president neelie kroes.
Despite industry opposition, open discussion about cyber threats is vital to enable organisations to learn and improve understand-ing of the issue, she told the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Details of the EU’s plans are likely to be revealed with the publication of its cyber security strategy. kroes, who is responsible for the EU’s Digital Agenda, believes cloud computing may give new impetus to the faltering economy, pro-vided people are confident that the new model is reasonably secure.
the Ec predicts that cloud computing could boost European economic output by €160bn a year because of increased efficiencies and lower-cost access to resources by smaller companies.
kroes believes that increased use of cloud technologies will also create 2.5 million jobs by 2020 and help redress high unemployment among youth across Europe.
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Cyber attack reporting to boost defence capabilityEC considers mandatory reporting of cyber attacks. Warwick Ashford reports
EC sets out strategy for
EU cloud data and standards
cloud compuTing may give new impeTus To The falTering economy, provided iT is secure
CW Europe January 2013 13
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european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
cybEr sEcurity
Cloud partnershipin January 2012, kroes called on public authorities, industry, cloud buyers and suppliers to come together in a European cloud partnership.
calling for action to support the speedy uptake of cloud com-puting in Europe at the World Economic Forum in Davos, switzerland, kroes said the main obstacles to cloud adoption – standards, certification, data protection, interoperability, lock-in, and legal certainty – need to be addressed.
the Ec has established a working group to address the need for common technical standards to support and grow the cloud computing industry. the working group is set to tackle thorny issues such as what happens to organisations’ data after the cloud services contract expires.
in november 2012, the steering board of the new European cloud partnership (Ecp) met in Brussels to kick off the process of building an EU Digital single Market for cloud computing.
the board aims to make the most of the public sector’s buying power to shape the growing market for cloud computing services.
the Ecp will develop common computing procurement requirements for use by EU member states and create a common framework for cloud computing across Europe.
the Ecp is also tasked with stimulating the migration of public it to the cloud by resolving barriers to cloud computing adoption in the public sector. n
european parliament opposed to giving Control of the internet to united nations agenCyeuropean mps are the latest group to voice concerns that the International Telecommunication union (ITu) could get control of the internet through its coming revision of telecoms rules.
The un agency updated its International Telecommunication regulations (ITrs) at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December 2012, but some member states fear it will lead to centralised control of the internet by the un.
european mps have joined the us and internet firm Google in saying that the un should not be allowed to take control of the internet in response to reports that russia and its allies want control of key internet systems passed to the ITu, instead of us-based groups such as Icann, which regulates the web address system.
The european parliament says the ITu is “not the appropriate body” to have authority, accord-ing to the BBC. european mps backed a resolution which urged member states to reject changes to the ITrs, which would “negatively impact the internet, its architecture, operations, content and security, business relations, internet governance and the free flow of information online”.
Warwick Ashford is security editor for Computer Weekly
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neelie kroes: obstacles to cloud adoption need
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european news
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study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
nEtwork optimisation
Irish multinational drug maker United Drug has implemented silver peak WAn opti-misation devices that have improved application performance, upgraded disaster recovery provision and saved on bandwidth costs to the tune of €30,000 per year.
the WAn optimisation implementation forms part of a revamp of network and dis-aster recovery (DR) provision under the company’s crystal project, which aims to boost the effectiveness of the business and its it service and will see the current number of 26 it sites slimmed down to three or four main datacentres globally.
United Drug has grown through acquisition over the past two years to span 23 coun-tries and 8,000 employees. it has around 200 locations overall, mostly in Western Europe, with 10 sites in the irish Republic and northern ireland, plus six sites in Britain.
key applications for the business are enterprise resource planning (ERp), quality man-agement, business intelligence, Microsoft Exchange, sharepoint and office. the com-pany runs on an infrastructure of EMc VnX unified storage subsystems, cisco network-ing gear and x86 servers from Dell, hp and iBM. Data replication between sites is dealt with by EMc’s switch-based replication product Recoverpoint.
core applications are delivered from centralised country hubs to remote sites, but United Drug was suffering latency issues that affected replication between the compa-ny’s main site in Dublin, second production site in Belfast, as well as to a new dedicated DR site in Dublin. Also, poor replication performance affected United Drug’s disaster recovery provision, according to it director tim Buckley.
“We had a newly deployed MpLs WAn but were struggling to get the performance we wanted for key apps. We also wanted to change our DR landscape completely. that’s why we looked at WAn optimisation,” he says.
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United Drug makes savings with Silver Peak WAN optimisationDrug maker deploys Silver Peak WAN optimisation products to cure network bottlenecks and ensure effective disaster recovery. Antony Adshead reports
Case study: How law firm
Thomson Snell & Passmore uses Silver
Peak to optimise Citrix
CW Europe January 2013 15
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european news
editor’s comment
study predicts growtH in tecH
spending across europe tHis year
How cornwall is benefiting
from superfastbroadband
sustainable datacentres to see accelerated
growtH in 2013
adoption of big data and data
analytics to rise across europe
ec considers mandatory
reporting of cyber attacks
drugs company boosts efficiency
witH silver peak wan optimisation
nEtwork optimisation
so far, in ireland and the British mainland United Drug has deployed silver peak VX-5000 WAn optimisation appliances at central hubs and nX-3700s at remote sites. the devices have been rolled out to 12 sites so far. the project will see silver peak hard-ware rolled out to the rest of Europe in 2013 and other worldwide sites in 2014.
WAn optimisation products reduce the load on existing bandwidth by a combination of data deduplication, caching and optimisa-tion of network protocols and application traffic. WAn optimisation is often deployed to help with replication of data between sites to effect disas-ter recovery provision.
Optimising network efficiencyBuckley says network traffic efficiency has improved by between 50% and 90% since the silver peak implementation, and this has boosted application performance and allowed effective disaster recovery provision to be assured. he estimates that the company avoided bandwidth upgrade costs of €30,000 last year, with increas-ing savings expected over the next few years.
“Remote office locations have seen much improved app response times, and WAn traf-fic is much improved. Disaster recovery now presents a much lower risk for a company of our stature,” says Buckley.
silver peak was chosen in an evaluation process alongside Dublin-based reseller comsys from a field of WAn optimisation suppliers that also included Blue coat systems, cisco and Riverbed. Buckley does not give details on why silver peak was cho-sen, other than to say it came out best on “speed, quality and cost”.
Asked how silver peak could improve its product in future, Buckley says: “currently when silver peak devices go down at remote sites we have to reboot them from the cen-tral hub. it’d be good if this wasn’t necessary in future, although we haven’t checked the upgrade documentation, so it may have already addressed this.” n
neTwork Traffic efficiency has improved by beTween 50% and 90% since The silver peak implemenTaTion
Antony Adshead is storage editor for Computer Weekly
Case study: Cern adopts openstaCk private Cloud to solve big data ChallengesThe Large hadron Collider (LhC), which aims to answer fundamental questions of the universe’s existence, is one of Cern’s most important projects. But as the LhC produces 1pB of data every second, big data and lack of computing resources were becoming the european organisation for nuclear research’s biggest IT challenges.
The IT team has been using the open source openstack-based private cloud environment in the testing and development stage. Cern started using the openstack private cloud about 12 months ago in the testing environment, upgrading more recently to the fifth version of openstack – the essex release. Cern hopes to go live and use private cloud infrastructure in production by february 2013, according to infrastructure manager Tim Bell.
“This month, we will upgrade to the sixth version of openstack – folsom. We will test it for a month and go live in february,” he says. moving to a large-scale infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas) cloud based on openstack will help the european organisation for nuclear research significantly expand its compute resources and support more than 10,000 scientists worldwide using the infrastructure to find answers to questions such as what the universe is made of.
